Countdown in Cairo

by Noel Hynd

  “My pleasure,” she said. “As well as my assignment.”

  He reached to a shirt pocket and pulled out a small device about the size of an iPod. It was common currency between them that it was an anti-bugging foil. He entered a code and replaced the device in his pocket. “There,” he said. “That should wound the fragile feelings of anyone who might try to monitor us.” There, in the open desert, under God’s blue sky, they were absolutely free of any possible electronic surveillance.

  Alex savored the beautiful silence around them, the rugged natural beauty of the Sahara, and the sweep of the sky. The only sounds were from the horses, including the swish of hooves on the sand.

  They came near the first pyramid, the tallest of the three, Khufu Pyramid, called Cheops by the Greeks. It rose to a summit of nearly five hundred feet above the desert. Khufu had ruled Egypt twenty-five centuries before Christ from 2589 to 2566 BC.

  As they approached it on horseback, the tone of Voltaire’s voice changed. “I suppose we should talk business,” he said.

  “Please do.”

  “A few weeks ago this young American girl, the one you know personally …”

  “Janet,” Alex said. “She’s the niece of a friend of mine.”

  “Apparently she was here in Cairo with a boyfriend. They made an unfortunate discovery,” Voltaire said. “A former agent had gone to ground here. Michael Cerny, he was known as, though he seems to like his own code name of Ambidextrous.”

  “That name was mentioned back in my briefing at Langley,” she said.

  “Ambidextrous. Judas. Cerny. Whatever we wish to call him,” Voltaire said. “He has a past so complicated that to recall it or understand it would be like attempting to memorize a chess game and re-create it in reverse. Suffice it to say that he was supposed to be listed as dead and continuing to operate for our side. Instead, your Janet and her boyfriend happened across him while he was trying to do a deal with the Russians.”

  “An officially sanctioned deal?” she asked. “Or his own deal?”

  “As it turned out, his own,” Voltaire said. “And she and her guy just about queered a major financial score for him.”

  “In what way?”

  “Mr. Cerny had no brief to be dealing with any Russians,” Voltaire said. “Not after the Kiev fiasco. The Agency sent him here to do some business with Arabs. But he got greedy. Oh, I’m jumping ahead. When Cerny knew he had been spotted by a couple of young Americans who recognized him, he realized that his whole charade was compromised. Or, he reasoned, it was compromised if Carlos and Janet lived long enough to get back to their employers in the United States and file a convincing report of what they had seen.”

  “So the bomb here was meant to kill them both,” Alex said.

  “That appears to be the case,” said Voltaire. “But the bomb failed. Or, on the other hand, it was only fifty percent successful. Janet gets picked up by the police here, who didn’t know what to do with her. She’s an American citizen, so they go easy on the rough stuff and just make sure she gets out of the country. Plus, by now she’s too high profile for them to just make her disappear.” He paused. “The Egyptian police are a curious bunch of apes, as you’ve probably already noticed. Their job is not to protect the innocent or even apprehend the guilty. Their mission is to protect the dictatorship. The most fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon justice, habeas corpus, is considered a quaint indulgence of the British and the Americans. Nonetheless, the Egyptian police don’t know what to do with Janet, so they pack her up and send her back to Washington.”

  “And she starts telling people in Washington and Langley what she saw,” Alex said, picking up on it quickly. “But Cerny is supposed to be in deep cover. So they can’t admit to her that what she thought she saw was exactly what she did see.”

  “That’s correct,” Voltaire said. “And even worse, she reported to Langley that Cerny was speaking Russian to a couple of men in towel-style headdress. You can imagine how that had hearts fluttering in Langley.”

  “I can imagine,” she said.

  “Cerny’s brief was checked, his logs were examined, his cell phone and home phone records were destabilized and decoded. His emails, official and personal, were downloaded and analyzed. They found Russian contacts and Israeli contacts. This place, Cairo, is crawling with spies and various other intelligence and counterintelligence agents the way Casablanca was during World War II, like Berlin was in the 1960s, like Warsaw was in the 1980s. So then the geniuses in Langley do a reverse search on all of the directories and e-files that Cerny has had access to in the last five years, and they come out shaking their heads. Aircraft, warheads, fighter planes. The man was saving up files for a rainy day, and you know what? To him, it’s suddenly monsoon season. He must have downloaded fifty thousand pages of sensitive military documents onto a box full of flash drives, and he’s running his own flea market. You read about the Jonathan Pollard case?”

  “This morning, yes.”

  “Do you remember it when it happened?”

  “I do. But I was still in grade school.”

  Voltaire gave her a double take and shook his head. “Yes, of course,” he said.

  He laughed. So did she.

  “You know, Josephine,” he said, “if I were thirty years younger I’d put another move on you. But I can’t imagine what a fifty-nine-year-old man—even a fit one—looks like to a twenty-nine-year-old. The ruins of Pompeii? Vienna after the world war? Stonehenge?”

  “Maybe the Sphinx’s younger brother,” she said. “But keep in mind I’m traveling a long distance to see such a sight. So be consoled. There’s hope for you yet.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “Well, anyway, think of Cerny as another Pollard case, except on steroids and even worse.”

  Farther on, coming into view, was the second of the three Great Pyramids, that of Khafra. As Alex eyed it, it looked taller than the first pyramid, but she realized that was because it had been constructed on a hill.

  “Is Cerny selling to Israel?” she asked.

  “Possibly. But we don’t even know,” he said. “He has contacts with the Israelis as well as the Russians. The two Russians he was dealing with are freelancers also. They’ll make deals with the Putin government, and they’ll make deals with Tel Aviv, and they’ll be very happy to have their little brown brothers, the Arabs, help them murder anyone who gets in the way.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I follow it.”

  “All of that leads us to here. You and me, on a couple of pathetic old horses, in the cradle of civilization. And our assignment is to apprehend Mr. Cerny before he can complete any transactions, or any further transactions, and make sure his Russian friends go home empty-handed.”

  “Who were the Russians?” she asked. “Do you have names?”

  “Boris Zharov and Victor Kharniovski,” he said. “Nasty couple of characters, every bit as foul as that disreputable retiree you hang out with in Switzerland.”

  “I consider Yuri Federov one of my assets,” she said.

  “And a wonderful asset he is. But here’s the thing on Zharov and Kharniovski. Kharniovski isn’t our problem anymore. Victor took a silk rope around his throat in a back alley in old Cairo two weeks back, courtesy of Abdul, Tony, and a few of their friends. Careless of him, don’t you think? You should never step into an alley in this city with someone you don’t know.”

  “I did that with you the other night.”

  “Oh, but I’m okay,” he said blithely. “But at least it’s a mistake Kharniovski won’t make twice. And we managed to keep it out of all the newspapers so Boris doesn’t know. He thinks his Kharniovsky buddy is back in Moscow selling the deal.”

  “Then what about Zharov?” Alex asked

  “Staying at the Radisson Cairo,” said Voltaire, “under the name of Engstrom. He’s waiting for his dead associate to return from Moscow, and then he can get Cerny to come forward and close the deal.”

  “Why don’t you just go in and grab him?”
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br />   “He’s wary,” Voltaire said. “He’s heavily armed. And he knows who all of our supporting cast is here in Cairo. And there’s no room for a slip. But like any Russian, he has his weaknesses. So this is where you come in. Follow?”

  “Follow,” she said.

  They continued to Menkaure Pyramid, the smallest of the three, and by this tomb there were three smaller pyramids, those of Menkaure’s children. Alex tried to conceptualize how long five thousand years was. When they reached the three smaller tombs, Voltaire turned to her again. “Want to go in?”

  “In where?” she asked.

  “The Great Pyramid,” he said, turning and pointing, indicating the first and largest of the three. “This is as far as we go. Have to go back, anyway. Not much in it. A lot of stone. Unmarked walls. The mummies and the treasures have all been removed to the museums. But it’s still an experience.”

  “I’m game,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s be tourists for a few minutes.”

  She pulled the horse’s bridle to the right, and they turned their mounts together. They rode back to the tallest of the three pyramids. There was another Bedouin with a hitching post near the Pyramid of Cheops. They turned in their horses. Alex had to stretch out her legs to feel right walking again.

  They walked from the hitching posts and stood in line. Alex put her hand to the exterior stones and found them cool, like a bottle of chilled water, even though they had been baking in the sun all day. Then she and Voltaire entered the massive edifice of stone. They began to walk down a short descending corridor and then followed a steep passageway up into the center of the pyramid. The tunnel was narrow and short. With a tremor, she flashed back to her experiences in Madrid and the claustrophobic fear from when she had been pinned in an old passageway under the city. But her movement here was free, even though she needed to proceed single file and a bit bent over. She followed Voltaire, who had made this trek many times before, he said. And the place hadn’t caved in on him yet.

  The passageway was about a hundred feet long and led to what the guide called “The Grand Gallery,” a vaulted and arched staircase of about the same distance that led to the King’s Chamber. The chamber was empty. Below it lay the Queen’s Chamber. No king, no queen, either. Not even a bishop, a knight, or a rook.

  They were in a small group of people climbing up into the pyramid, following one of the guides who must have made this trip a hundred times per week. From somewhere, Abdul, Voltaire’s bodyguard, had reappeared. A German woman behind Alex became claustrophobic and insisted the walls were closing in on her. She insisted on turning back and did. Alex was sympathetic but continued onward and downward.

  The inside of the pyramid was undecorated. No reliefs, no carvings, and other than small graffiti from modern-day vandals, no marks at all. High up on the walls above the King’s Chamber, however, there were hieroglyphics about the work gangs building the pyramid. The guide attributed it to Cheops, who had conceptualized his own tomb.

  In the evening, they stayed and waited for the light-and-sound show of the Great Pyramids. They sat on a terrace of a restaurant, enjoying a drink. Abdul was again visible, chatting up some tourists at a nearby table. The heat of the day had turned to a desert chill but there was still some glow from the Sahara sunset on the horizon. Watching the Pyramids and listening to the peaceful sound of the desert before and after the light-and-sound show, Alex got goose bumps.

  When it was sufficiently dark, the extravaganza began. The commentary did not impress Alex, but the dazzling light show and awe-inspiring backdrop of the Sphinx and Pyramids surely did. Red, blue, and gold strobe effects flashed across the timeless architecture of Giza, matched with, perhaps inappropriately, the grandeur of the score from Beethoven.

  The Sphinx played the role of storyteller. Even though in reality the Sphinx never spoke, tonight a creative conceit was allowed and the old stone lion-woman narrated the history of ancient Egypt in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic. Fragments of many languages floated up from various handheld speakers in a bizarre audio mix. It was hokey and touristy, but it worked.

  Alex and Voltaire ended the evening by taking a riverboat back up the Nile to Cairo, a ship modeled on the bateaux-mouches of Paris. Once again Voltaire knew exactly which shots to call. The food on the ship was traditionally Egyptian, tasty but heavy, and Alex started to feel ill effects in her stomach again. But she didn’t mention it. Her head pounded from time to time also. Then it would stop. She wondered what she had eaten or what she had been exposed to. Or maybe it was just the heat. She tried to ignore it, to will it away.

  “I wonder if you could set something up,” Voltaire said midway into the voyage back to Cairo. “A meeting between you, me, and Fitzgerald from the embassy. We need to get together face-to-face at least once. We both have information to convey to each other and to you. I don’t want any electronics involved. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to access Fitzgerald. So can you set something up?”

  “I could do that,” Alex said. “How soon?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “It could be done, I’m sure,” she said.

  “Needless to say,” he said, “I never set foot in that embassy or any other. In my persona of Monsieur Lamara, why would I? So we need to have a neutral site, someplace above suspicion.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “We were surrounded by desert today, right?” she said.

  “As I recall,” he said.

  “Then tomorrow we’ll be surrounded by water,” she said. “How would that be?”

  “I like the way you think,” he said. “So we’re going to meet on a papyrus raft on the Nile?”

  “I was thinking more prosaic,” she said. “The pool area of the hotel.”

  “That would work for me,” Voltaire said.

  There was entertainment on the boat, planned and unplanned. They had live music, and then a belly dancer appeared when they were halfway to Cairo. Alex, who had never been to a belly dancing show before, looked at it with great amusement, and wondered if the dancer was enjoying it as much as she seemed to be. The Egyptian girl flirted with every man in the place, getting reams of dollar bills tucked into the waistband of her skirt and getting her exercise as well.

  Voltaire fell into conversation with some wealthy Egyptians who had brought relatives from Europe to see Giza. This dancer was better than average, the Egyptians said. And at the same time, Alex noted Voltaire’s technique. He was always striking up conversations, keeping his ear to the ground, being friendly with everyone. He must have picked up tons of information and scuttlebutt that way. He was good at what he did.

  In any case, Voltaire liked the dancer a little too much. He enjoyed playing the buffoon tourist instead of the master spy. He got up and danced opposite her and then rewarded her by sticking a US twenty-dollar bill in her skirt. In doing so, he had set a tone for the evening and loosened up the crowd for even heavier tips. She would go into the crowd and grab other victims and drag them up to the stage to dance with her too, which caused most of the excitement. She seemed to specialize in victimizing Americans and did well at it, innocent as it was. She gave Voltaire a wink and a kiss on the forehead when she finished her show and swept past.

  Later on the boat ride, Alex and Voltaire talked with an Egyptian man who spoke nearly flawless English. He was berating everything from Mubarak, to Obama, to the captain of the ship, to the French woman standing next to him who seemed to be his wife.

  Ever the diplomat, Voltaire agreed with everything he said, except that he offered high praise to the bearing and patience of the French lady. As the ship docked, the day seemed to have acquired a surreal tone to Alex. In some ways, she was a little kid again. She couldn’t believe that she had seen and touched and even entered the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest and largest pyramid in Egypt.

  Off the boat, Alex spotted a familiar face waiting for them.

  Tony with his cab and, presumably,
his artillery.

  Abdul ducked away into the chilly night, and Tony was back on duty.

  FORTY-THREE

  Like any fine hotel, the lobby of the Metropole boasted an arcade of overpriced specialty stores catering to the hotel’s international clientele. Alex visited the shopping area the next morning and found what she was looking for. A plain navy-blue maillot to use in the hotel’s vast swimming pool. A size ten was a perfect fit and the suit flattered her. Not too sexy, but not too demure. It would work.

  Toward 1:30, she went to the well-guarded pool area behind the hotel. She entered the water on the shallow end and began doing laps, a small fresh bandage on the scar on her arm. At least she could combine some exercise with business. Despite showering and washing well the night before, the parched atmosphere of the desert remained upon her. The water soothed her.

  She completed a brisk ten laps, watching the other visitors to the pool as she swam. She saw Richard Bissinger enter the hotel’s pool area, using the guest pass that she had left for him at the front desk. She continued to do laps as Bissinger, or Fitzgerald, disappeared into a bathhouse at the far end of the pool.

  Voltaire, she noted, didn’t need a pass. He apparently had whatever access he needed to anything he wanted all over the Middle East. He arrived a few minutes after Bissinger but, wearing a pair of shorts suitable for swimming, was faster at getting into the water. He stood at the shallow end and waited for her.

  Bissinger emerged from a locker area and slipped into the pool. He moved to the area where Voltaire stood. Alex did a final lap, then emerged and grabbed a towel and a pair of sunglasses off her deck chair. Then she joined her two visitors in waist-deep water.

  It was midday and the pool was otherwise deserted, other than children and nannies. The children, splashing and screaming, formed a perfect acoustical backdrop to make electronic eavesdropping on them impossible, even via a rifle mike aimed from a hotel window.

  “I’ve been to meetings that were all wet before,” Bissinger said. “But to actually be in a pool is a first.”