Countdown in Cairo

by Noel Hynd

  He made a move toward it: a final zigzag route of a hundred meters weaving around trees, following a path that might have been imperceptible to anyone else.

  He came to the clearing. Down a slope below him, about fifty feet away, was the same highway from which he had been dropped off, except this part was on the American side and had gone past the immigration station.

  He looked at his watch. It was time again. Five twenty-three.

  He looked to his left. An old Ford station wagon approached in the Canada-bound lane, its lights on, a freezing mist still falling. That was the type of vehicle he had been told to expect. Nagib stepped from the trees and waved.

  The driver cut his lights for a moment, then put them back on. That was the all clear. Then he cut them a second time, flashed twice, and accelerated.

  Nagib hurried down the embankment. Across the highway the Ford slowed, eased into the slow lane, then left the road. It drove down into the deep furrow between the northbound and southbound roadways and executed a U-turn, coming up onto the southbound side.

  It slowed to a stop where Nagib stood by the side of the road. He was shivering but smiling from behind his growth of rough beard. Inside the old car the driver leaned over and unlocked the door on the passenger side. Nagib opened the door and got in. The interior smelled of sweat, stale tobacco smoke, and car deodorizer.

  The driver checked his rearview mirror and hit the gas. There was no suggestion of any complication.

  They spoke Arabic. “Have any trouble?” the driver asked after a minute. Nagib recognized the accent as Egyptian.

  “None,” Nagib answered.

  Another minute passed. The car moved as quickly as the icy highway would allow. “Good,” he finally said. A few miles later, he added. “We’re going to Brooklyn, New York, first. You’ll get a weapon, some money, and some clothes. Do you know your assignment yet?”

  “I know what I’m supposed to do,” Nagib said. “I don’t know who or where.”

  The driver grinned slightly. “You’ll be instructed on that too,” he said. He flipped a pack of Marlboros to his passenger. “There’s food in a bag on the seat behind you. We’ll be driving for seven hours. Be comfortable.”

  Nagib nodded. He grabbed a gas station sandwich from the seat behind him and a carton of juice. For much of the rest of the ride, no one spoke. A million thoughts passed through Nagib’s head as they traveled, but most he thought of his wife and two young children who were back in the Middle East. In Damascus. That was all part of this assignment and part of the irony. If Nagib completed his assignment, it would be his last. He would be paid a lot of money in cash. His handlers would whisk him out of America quickly and relocate him to London. After a year, when the coast was clear, his family would be smuggled into Great Britain to join him.

  It all made sense.

  For half of the ride, Nagib slept. He had come a long way on a special assignment and was very much on schedule.

  SIX

  Eight seventeen the same morning.

  Alex’s cell phone was yakking at her.

  She was in the cold parking structure that led to her office at FinCEN; the structure was open, and the cold wind from the Potomac swept through like a Russian scythe. Her cell phone had come obnoxiously alive with a text message.

  Her boss, Mike Gamburian, already had a burr in his butt for the morning:

  Alex—Come see me right away this a.m. mg

  She texted back.

  OK

  Seventeen minutes later Alex wandered down the corridor toward her boss’s office. Mike’s door was usually half open. Alex could never figure out whether that was a good sign or a bad one, the in-between nature of the door. Was it a metaphor, an omen, or a gravitational quirk in the old building?

  Today, however, as she approached it, she was not in the mood to overanalyze.

  She arrived at Mike Gamburian’s door and used the toe of her shoe to nudge it open.

  Gamburian was at his desk, leaning back.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “You asked to see me?” she said.

  “Yes. I sure did. Come in and sit down,” he said.

  “Will I be sorry?”

  “Probably,” he said. He was seated in front of his Fenway Park montage that still hung from 2004. Alex settled into the leather chair in front of his desk.

  “So? What’s up?” Alex asked.

  “Name the most disreputable person you’ve ever met in your life,” he said. “Aside from me, of course, I don’t count.”

  “Hard to name just one,” she said. “I’ve been compiling a pretty good list in recent years.”

  “Try for just one,” he asked.

  She named a former President of the United States whom Gamburian had once worked for. Gamburian laughed.

  “Think closer to home,” he said. “From your recent experience.”

  “You’re steering me toward Yuri Federov,” she said after a second.

  “Very good. Your Russian-Ukrainian mobster. Guess where he is right now.”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea,” she answered. “After two heavy doses of him I assumed he was out of my life completely.”

  “Naive assumption,” Gamburian said. “He’s in New York.”

  She was visibly surprised. “He entered the US again?”

  “Yup. I suppose if I told you that he arrived here two days ago on a direct flight from Switzerland, you’d share my consternation.”

  “Seriously,” she said. “Why is he in the US?”

  “We’d like to know that too,” Gamburian said.

  “Aren’t there warrants still out?” she asked. “Tax liens? A half-dozen or so felony indictments scattered across the northeast? A whole host of things that might deter his tourism here?”

  Gamburian flew his chair back down to earth and leaned forward at his desk.

  “Oh, there used to be a lot of crap,” he said. “Warrants, liens, subpoenas, indictments. All that plus a few dozen old enemies hanging around who wanted to blow his head off. Normal stuff for a thug in his line of work. But he’s clear with the United States government these days, and all of the state and local stuff went out the window too. That ten-million-dollar tax assessment against him went down the tubes in exchange for his help in Spain, as did just about everything else. Recall?”

  “That’s been resolved already?”

  “Two weeks ago, and all the other stuff got washed with it. He’s as clean as Mother Teresa, except he has the added advantage of being currently alive. What do you think about that?”

  “Shows you what friends in the right places can do.”

  “Absolutely. And next thing you know, after he’s got a legal green light, he’s on a plane for New York. Nonstop from Geneva. First class, naturally. I refer here to the seat location, not the passenger. I still personally think he’s a piece of—”

  “I know what you think, Mike.” She considered the situation. “I’m a little surprised at his coming to the US,” Alex said.

  “So are we.”

  “Ten million dollars was a hell of a ‘fee’ for his cooperation,” she said.

  “You helped arrange it.”

  “It wasn’t my idea; it was my assignment. There’s a difference.”

  “No need to stress,” Gamburian said. “Uncle Sam got what he paid for, and the state and local DAs and AGs were willing to play along. No one was ever going to get an indictment against him anyway. And how much would it have cost to rebuild our embassy in Madrid? Fifty million? A hundred? Not to mention the loss of life? And you know as well as I do he was never going to pay the ten million anyway. So to some degree, it was ‘funny money.’ He worked for ‘free’ and didn’t even know it.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “That’s the only way to look at it,” Gamburian said. “But at the same time, we still might be interested in his current movements. Why is he visiting the US? Can’t be women, can it?”

  “He’s got the
m scattered all over Europe. He doesn’t need to fly here for assignations.”

  “What about friends or family?”

  She sensed where this was going. “As far as I know, his only blood relative are two daughters who live in Canada and hate him. And as for friends, those are the people who’d probably want to kill him.”

  “So then maybe you can find out for us.”

  “Find out what?” Alex asked.

  “Why he’s here.”

  “How?”

  “Ask him?”

  She laughed. “I should just ring him up on the phone. ‘Hi, Yuri, it’s Alex. You alone? Can I come over and give you an evening you’ll never forget?’ ”

  “Well, not quite like that. Or maybe exactly like that if it floats the boat.”

  “Come on, Mike, what am I?” she asked. “Your Ukrainian gangster expert, specializing in this one?”

  “Well, in a way, you are,” Gamburian said. “Look, Alex. We could assign some FBI and Treasury teams to tail him; we could drop electronic surveillance on him; we could see if the NYPD would do some pavement work on him. Or we could send you up to New York, put you up in a nice hotel for a few days, have you make contact, flirt a little, and see what you come away with. Frankly, for whatever reason, he’s more likely to voluntarily leak information to you over three or four martinis than he is to slip up with our surveillance teams.”

  She folded her arms. “Uh, huh.”

  “He’s staying at the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue along with another several billion dollars’ worth of Eurotrash guests.”

  “I know where this is going, Mike,” she said.

  “Of course you do. Is there something on your desk more interesting? Don’t even answer that. Look, why don’t you go up to New York and see him?”

  “Do you already have a surveillance team on him?” she asked.

  “Didn’t I just say that would be a waste of time?”

  “Sure, you did. But the FBI wastes money all the time. Answer my question.”

  “It was suggested by the FBI, but I talked them out of it. Federov would spot them a mile away anyway. Waste of time, you’re right. I nixed it.”

  “Is he traveling alone?” she asked. “Or is there an entourage?”

  “Federov came into the country alone,” Gamburian said. “Take it from there.”

  She thought about it for at least three seconds, plus another two to consider the tedium on her desk. “Okay. I never mind a trip to New York,” Alex answered.

  “Good!” he said with finality. “And it’s funny you should answer that way. That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about—New York.”

  “What about it? I like New York.”

  “FinCEN is going to open offices there,” Gamburian said. “We’re going to move some of our experienced people from here in Washington up to the big city.” He paused. “Interested?”

  “In being transferred to New York?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  A swarm of emotional reactions were upon her, not the least of which was a lingering disquietude over life in Washington. Yes, it was tranquil. Yes, it was comfortable. But day to day, there were still too many memories of the way things had been a year earlier before her fiancé, Robert, had died in Kiev. She was, she knew, fighting a daily round of small avoidances, dodging associations of how things had been and how things could have been.

  She even knew that she had stayed on in Madrid and taken the Pietà of Malta case to avoid coming home. And since coming home, she had already started to entertain the wanderlust that was in her, a desire to be part of the action, to keep shaking things up.

  Then, “I still have a brief trip to Venezuela coming up,” she said.

  “Any dates on that yet?”

  “None yet. I’m thinking within the next few weeks.”

  “What’s the guy’s name, the philanthropist, who sends you?”

  “Joseph Collins.”

  “That could be worked into the equation,” Gamburian said. “When might you know the dates on that?”

  She shrugged. “I could go see Mr. Collins when I’m in New York and see what his thinking is.”

  “Well, as I said, considering your service and sacrifice this year, I’m sure the powers that be can let you work Venezuela into the schedule,” Gamburian said.

  “Then, yes,” she said, “I might be interested.”

  “The big bosses here see you as the third in command in New York, maybe even the second,” he said. “The top job will go to someone more administrative and, frankly, older, who’s been in Treasury longer. But the number two and three positions? They would be ones of senior investigators. Those positions presume youth and energy, someone willing to go out and shake the world up where it needs shaking up. The type of thing you showed you’re adept at in Kiev, Geneva, Paris, and Madrid, and wherever else you’ve been dumping bodies.” He paused. “The age thing is tricky. They look for a balance in these offices. Gray hair and wisdom combined with youth and diligence. A dash of treachery and savoir faire with both. How old are you again? Seventeen?”

  “I’ll be thirty on December twenty-fourth.”

  “Oh. Thirty. Ancient,” he said.

  “So this would be a major promotion also?” she asked.

  “Unquestionably,” Gamburian said. “Bigger title, heavier pay-check, increased oversight and responsibility. More physical risk perhaps. The assignment would start after the first of the year, and the offices will be in the Wall Street area. What better place to watch out for financial crime, right? You can just look out your window if things get slow. Oh, and I’m also told that much of the work will have to do with Central and South America, so the job presupposes fluent Spanish. Not just fluent, but so good that it could pass for an educated native speaker. What the State Department grades a 5 out of 5. Again, that’s you.”

  “That’s me,” she said.

  He leaned forward and wrote out a phone number. “Here’s the number to call for an interview. Think about it,” he said.

  She took the paper and folded it away. “Thanks, Mike,” she said. “I already have.”

  SEVEN

  The car carrying Nagib was in New York City within five hours. The car traveled not to Manhattan, the city of skyscrapers, the upscale, and tourists, but rather to Brooklyn and a neighborhood known as Prospect Heights.

  Prospect Heights lies adjacent to Prospect Park, between Park Slope and Crown Heights. It is surrounded by the finest cultural and recreational institutions in Brooklyn—the Brooklyn Museum, the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the Botanic Garden, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is a polyglot area, with a typically New York mix of everything, notably people from the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. The tenor of neighborhoods change from block to block; boarded up, burned-out structures defaced with graffiti stand next to newly renovated apartment complexes with glass elevators and rooftop gardens.

  Nagib’s car stopped at a three-story tenement on Lincoln Place. His driver guided him inside to the second-floor home of a man named Hassan, who tearfully embraced Nagib. Hassan was Nagib’s uncle, and he too had come to America illegally seven years ago.

  The uncle now had a new ID and a social security card. He had married an American woman of Lebanese descent and was legal to stay. Now he ran a small store and a small cell of conspirators. The uncle’s home was a halfway stop to Nagib’s destination. Hassan served Nagib lunch and provided him with some changes of clothing to take with him. From a safe concealed under the floorboards of a closet, he also provided him with a Chinese-made pistol and a silencer. They went to the basement of the building where there were sandbags and concrete walls. Hassan had built a makeshift shooting gallery there. The man who had guided Nagib this far through his journey gave Nagib a nod, and the traveler took several minutes to practice with his new weapon.

  Then a new driver appeared with a different car, a battered 1990 Taurus with a New York license. Nagib climbed in wit
h his new driver, who wanted to be known simply as Rashaad. He was dark-skinned and seemed more American than the previous one. He spoke Arabic with a Saudi accent, and for that reason Nagib didn’t like him.

  A few minutes later they were on an expressway, going through a long tunnel. Then they were in an area of oil refineries in northern New Jersey, continuing south. They passed Philadelphia by 2:30 in the afternoon and Baltimore two hours after that. Nagib said little on this leg of the journey. Rashaad said even less. Halfway there, Nagib reached into his pocket. Folded up with some American money was a crinkled photograph of his wife, a pretty woman of twenty-four in a green prayer shawl.

  The driver glanced over and spoke in Arabic.

  “Put that away,” Rashaad said. “You shouldn’t even have that. I should take it from you and burn it.”

  “You try to take it and I’ll break your wrist,” Nagib said. “Then I’ll break your neck.”

  Rashaad swore bitterly at him but didn’t do anything. Nagib then thought better of things and put the picture away. There was an old Arab proverb: Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against a Christian.

  He spoke the proverb aloud, but the Saudi only glowered. Nagib might not have liked his partner, but there was no need to make an extra enemy either.

  They continued on in silence.

  There was little to talk about and little to joke about. But there was much to think about and much to plan.

  EIGHT

  Later the same day, as Alex tidied up some final points on the Medina securities case, she phoned one of her favorite New York hotels, the Gotham, on West 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. She booked herself a room for the next evening.

  She followed this with a call to her FinCEN contact in New York and arranged for an interview in two days. The FinCEN offices had an address in the financial district, not too far from Ground Zero. They had a time slot open for her in the morning at 10:00 and she took it.