“Computers,” Omar said. “They will be the death of us all.”
By the time he next heard from Jibril, two years later, he and Fouada had almost forgotten about the young man, for their country had been turned upside down. Hosni Mubarak was under house arrest in Sharm el-Sheikh, and the nation was being ruled by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The legions of Central Security foot soldiers, most of them uneducated country folk, had splintered, leaving real security to the army as the demonstrators continued, even after Mubarak’s ouster, to rip up asphalt and build barricades, demanding more. Busiri’s old employers, the SSI, were the protesters’ primary target, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the State Security Investigations Service was dissolved completely, its administrators jailed and placed on trial. No one believed the protesters would stop with the SSI, and the Central Security Forces, whose disheveled conscripts had become the black-clad enemy of those heady revolutionary days, was certainly going to be next. Everyone would be out, and many would be forced to mount vain defenses in kangaroo courts.
In the corridors you could hear the hum of paper shredders, and the officers had trouble looking each other in the eye. Some whispered hastily hatched ideas of flight, though only a few—notably Hassan Ghali and Rifaat Pasha from Special Operations Command—had actually disappeared. Then there were the unspoken ideas, the plans to build small fortunes before the purges, perhaps by selling secrets. To combat any sudden loss of patriotism, security was beefed up at all the exits, and by then entering or leaving the Interior Ministry building had become worse than boarding an international flight. The day after Jibril’s call, on February 23, former policemen demanding their jobs back set fire to cars and one of the buildings inside the Interior Ministry complex.
The chaos, coupled with a suddenly enormous workload, served only to exhaust Omar, who kept checking and rechecking his blood pressure. Home was hardly a relief, for a tight paranoia had taken hold of Fouada.
“See those men? Under that streetlamp. They’ve been there for
three hours,
Omar! Look how long their hair is! They’re taking revenge. Where’s your gun?”
Though her words flowed from a wellspring of paranoia, she was right to be worried. His trips to and from the office were often stalled by impromptu checkpoints set up by angry revolutionaries.
With all this going on, how could he even think of Jibril Aziz? He might have been reminded of him when the Day of Revolt occurred on February 17 next door in Libya, but that unprecedented demonstration of popular dissent had given him no more than a passing feeling for the young man who had slept in his guest bedroom and been loved by his wife. So when his phone rang a little before midnight on February 22 and he reached over, his pillow damp from the sweat of a nightmare he couldn’t remember, it took a moment for him to realize who he was talking to. “Omar, it’s me. Jibril.”
Omar got out of bed, padding out of the room in bare feet, whispering, “Jibril?”
“It’s me.”
“Where are you?” he asked as he continued to the kitchen and turned on the light. He was dressed in underwear, feeling the chill, but he didn’t want to go back to get his robe; he didn’t want to wake Fouada. “Are you here?”
“No,” Jibril told him, then hesitated. A transatlantic gap followed, then Jibril said, “They’re doing it, Omar.”
“What?”
“Stumbler. They’re doing it.”
It took another moment for him to reel back his memories to two years ago, that late-night conversation. At first, he didn’t quite understand Jibril’s anxiety. “Thank you for the information.”
“Omar,
listen.
What time is it there?”
“Midnight.”
“Right, right. Sorry. But pay attention. They’re doing it
now,
not five days ago. Are you following?”
Then, like a light being turned on, he saw it.
Now,
meaning five days after the Day of Revolt. Meaning: Libyan corpses in the street. Meaning: a swift overthrow of a regime being softened by the bodies of Libyan citizens. “I find this hard to believe,” Omar said finally. “As far as I know they have said nothing to us. They have not laid the groundwork.”
“They don’t have to, Omar. Ben Ali is gone. Mubarak is gone. No one’s going to stop a band of exiles from crossing the border. If the Benghazi ports aren’t open yet, they soon will be.”
He closed his eyes, trying to envision all of this, and it was frightening how easily it came to him. He opened his eyes, seeing 12:09 on the microwave. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to look into it,” Jibril said with a young man’s conviction. “There’s a man in Budapest who might be able to find out more. I think he’ll help.”
“Who?” Omar asked, a tingle already tickling his scalp.
“Emmett Kohl. He’s a deputy consul, used to work in Cairo.”
“Right,” Omar said, thinking of that man’s wayward wife. What a small world it was.
“I’ve gotten word to some exiles who can meet me in Budapest. Then I’ll fly to Cairo.”
Recovered now, Omar said, “Fouada will be happy.”
“Don’t tell her,” Jibril said quickly. “Don’t tell anyone. I don’t know who to trust yet.”
Though he promised to remain silent, it was a midnight promise made only half awake. So in the morning, after laboring over the issue as he suffered the indignities of front-door security, he knocked on Ali Busiri’s door and sat down to explain the situation. Busiri seemed angered by it, but said, “We know about Stumbler already.”
“How?”
“How do you think? Sophie Kohl passed it on to Zora Balašević.”
“Well, Jibril is going to meet with Emmett Kohl.”
Busiri frowned. “Why?”
“He thinks Kohl is trustworthy. Of course, he knows nothing about the wife.”
This seemed to trouble Busiri. He looked at some papers spread across his desk. “What do you think, Omar? Are the Americans really stupid enough to do this?”
Omar didn’t think so, but … “After the Bay of Pigs, who knows?”
Burisi stretched out and pulled at his ear. “Maybe the Libyans will welcome them with open arms.”
“At first.”
“At first, it’s always sunshine and flowers, isn’t it?” Busiri said, grinning; then he got hold of himself. “Thank you for sharing this, Omar. If he gets in touch again, let me know.”
Jibril called again on Saturday the twenty-sixth. He was in town, and Omar went to his room on the sixth floor of the Semiramis. He had told Fouada that there was an evening meeting, an emergency, and at first she had blocked his exit. “It’s
dark
out there, Omar. You won’t be able to see them until they’re right on you.” Riding the hotel elevator skyward, he could still feel where her fingers had clawed at his arm.
Jibril looked haggard and unshaven, but he was still the same boy they had welcomed into their home. He kissed Omar’s cheeks and asked after Fouada. “All this hasn’t been too hard on her?”
“She’s strong,” Omar lied. “How is marriage?”
Jibril blushed. “I’m going to be a father.”
Omar clapped his hands and gave him a congratulatory hug. “Tell Inaya that we are wishing her all good things. Does she even know about us?”
Jibril nodded, smiling. “I left her your phone number. In case.”
“Should we expect a call?”
Jibril shook his head. “She just wanted a number. Any number. She’s worried about me.”
“That is because she loves you.”
The moment passed, and Jibril’s smile faded as he went to the clock radio by the bed and turned it on. It was tuned to 92.7 “Mega FM,” a pop music station. Jibril raised the volume to an uncomfortable level, then sat on the edge of the bed, waving Omar to the chair he’d positioned close to him. Omar settled down as Jibril leaned close and spoke softly. “I’m going in. On Thursday.”
Omar had expected this. “You need help?”
Jibril shook his head.
“What did Emmett Kohl say?”
Another shake of the head. “He’s more deluded than I thought. He doesn’t believe it.”
“What does he believe?”
“He doesn’t think anyone’s doing it. He thinks that, if anything, someone’s trying to shut down Stumbler before it starts.”
“But you do not believe this.”
“I believe the data, Omar. I believe what I can see.” Again, Jibril described the abductions. “They haven’t been seen since. Nowhere. They’re either in Egypt or Tunisia, or they’ve already crossed the border.”
“So what can you do?”
“My networks weren’t entirely destroyed—you know that. They’re part of the uprising, I’m sure. I need to meet them face-to-face and tell them to defend their rear. The last I heard, a few were sighted in Ajdabiya. I’ll get the updated list from my Bedouin in Al `Adam, and then track them down.”
“How are you getting in?”
Jibril seemed to blush. “The Agency’s giving me someone from the embassy.”
Omar hesitated, not sure he’d heard right. “The CIA is giving you a guide?”
Jibril nodded stiffly. The radio cut to an old Britney Spears hit.
“Does this not suggest,” Omar said slowly, “that they are
not
behind Stumbler?”
“What it suggests,” Jibril said, for he’d dealt with this contradiction already, “is that they want to make it appear as if they aren’t behind it.”
Omar held up a hand. “Wait. You are talking to your employers. They’re helping you go in. What is their story?”
“That they don’t know. But they’ve seen the data, too, and they’re worried someone else has gotten hold of Stumbler. Their worry, they claim, is that al Qaeda is going to use it to take over Libya.”
Thinking of the Stumbler plans moving from Sophie Kohl to Zora Balašević to his office, Omar said, “Maybe not al Qaeda, but someone could have gotten hold of the plans. Information leaks. You know that.”
“Is Egypt running Stumbler?”
Omar gave it a moment’s thought. Busiri had probably passed the plan up the ladder, but what were the odds that their new military leaders would attempt to manipulate the Libyan revolution? They could hardly maintain control of their own country. “No,” he said.
“Right,” Jibril agreed. “And Tunisia doesn’t have the resources to pull this off.”
“So you are convinced America is doing it.”
“I don’t see any other options.”
“Yet you put yourself into their hands,” Omar said. “They are going to kill you.”
“They won’t,” Jibril said, shaking his head. “Not before they get my network.”
“You didn’t give it to them?”
“Why do you think I was sent back to Virginia?”
“You were blown.”
“Maybe, but what Langley really wanted was the network, so someone else could take it over.”
“Why…” Omar began, shocked by this insubordination. “Why didn’t you give it to them?”
“Eleven of my people were killed. I still don’t know how they were discovered, and I wasn’t about to share the names of the survivors with a bureaucracy as big as the Agency’s. I wanted to give those people a rest.”
“You took a rest as well. Six years later, you’re coming back.”
Locating the events in time seemed to put them in perspective. Both men were silent a moment. Omar said, “Did you promise them the network?”
He smiled. “Of course, but I’m not handing it over. I kept their names in a book that I left with my Bedouin. Only I can get hold of it. As long as Langley doesn’t have that book, I’m safe.”
“Let us hope they don’t get it.”
“Agreed.”
“And let us hope that your Libyan friends welcome you with open arms.”
The radio sang,
Oops! I did it again
.
“The most important hope,” Omar continued, “is that this is a quick and safe trip, and that you are home soon with your wife and child.”
Jibril nodded. “God willing,” he said, then got up to turn off the radio.
3
After the Semiramis, he called Busiri and drove over to his opulent villa in Maadi, an upscale neighborhood full of embassies and foreigners and affluent Egyptians. Quiet, unlike Omar’s place in the twisting cacophony of Giza. It was nearly ten when he parked outside the gate. He didn’t get out. Five minutes passed; then Busiri stepped out the front door and crossed the dry lawn, wearing the same suit he’d worn to the office that day, but no tie. He opened the passenger door and got inside. “It’s late, Omar,” he said with a hint of impatience.
In great detail, Omar told him of Jibril’s plans.
“So he really does believe America is doing this?”
“He does, but Emmett Kohl doesn’t.”
“What does Kohl believe?”
“The opposite. He thinks someone is shutting it down.”
“CIA?”
“The Libyans. If so, then the question is: Who told the Libyans?”
Busiri frowned, considering this. “You say the embassy has given him a guide?”
“I don’t know who, but I can have Mahmoud keep an eye on him.”
“No,” Busiri said, shaking his head. “We’ll need Mahmoud for other things. Sayyid, too. This is going to be another busy week. It doesn’t matter who’s taking Aziz in—it just matters that he’s going in.”
“You’re not going to pursue this?” Omar asked.
“I’ll go upstairs and talk with our masters. But I don’t think they’ll believe it. Other than a few public statements about the will of the people, the Americans resisted the temptation to meddle here.”
“Mubarak was their friend. Gadhafi isn’t.”
“Friends?” Busiri asked with a wry smile. “In international diplomacy?”
“Well, someone who gave them what they wanted more often than he didn’t.”
Busiri rocked his head, as if this were a marginally better description. “Well, we’ll see what our masters think.” He patted Omar’s knee. “I appreciate this.”
“It’s my job,” Omar pointed out.
Busiri sniffed. “Maybe, but you needn’t have been such an excellent co-worker. After all, you did expect to be sitting at my desk when Abdel retired.”
The subject had never come up between them. “Decisions were made. I’m not complaining.”
“It’s a thankless job, you know. The pay is atrocious, and those friends you see filing in and out of my office? Wolves, every one.”