Harry had been confused. “Look, I don’t have it straight yet, but John has filled in some details, and tomorrow I’m meeting with the Egyptians to sort out the rest. Maybe you want to help me out in the meantime?”
“Is Stan really dead?”
He hesitated, then nodded.
“Are you meeting with Omar Halawi?”
Again, he nodded.
“He’ll explain it,” she said, for she didn’t want to explain anything to anyone anymore. She was sick of the act of conversation, but primarily she was terrified that, were she to start speaking she would tell him everything, and he would not let her leave.
On the second plane, which left from Amsterdam, she’d sat beside a nervous woman who, twice during the flight, took out a prescription bottle and dry-swallowed a little blue pill with a K-shaped hole in the center. The second time, the woman—Irish, by her accent—self-consciously explained. “Klonopin. Modern pharmaceuticals are a godsend.”
Now, as she lifted her shoulder bag higher and wandered through the crowd, following signs toward the exit, Sophie thought that she could use a godsend. Prayer had never been her bag, as Zora put it. A blue pill might do the trick.
To go. To see. To experience.
Enough of that.
Get thee to a nunnery,
she thought. To a cathedral of pharmaceutical revelation.
John Calhoun had driven her in silence to Cairo International at three that morning. He’d been quite the gentleman, carrying her bag for her and talking for her at the check-in desk, gathering the boarding pass and walking her all the way to security, where she was scanned. Appropriately, she set off an alarm, but it turned out to be only a hair clip left in a hidden pocket of Fouada Halawi’s dress.
On the other side, she looked back to see John Calhoun, massive in the crowd, still watching, a phone to his ear, reporting her successful exit. Then, as she wandered to the gate, she saw Omar’s young man, Sayyid, waiting at her gate, hanging up his phone. He smiled at her but didn’t kiss her cheeks as he’d done with Fouada. After what they’d been through, this was a disappointment.
He asked how she was feeling and told her what her gates would be in Amsterdam. When she asked after Fouada, he shrugged. “She is good. She says you can keep the dress.”
“Thank her for me.”
“You must be looking forward to getting home,” he said.
This confused her, though it shouldn’t have, and she ended up using a cliché to express herself: “I don’t know where home is anymore.”
“It’s with your family,” Sayyid said matter-of-factly. It was so obvious. He frowned at her stupidity.
As she broke through the Boston crowd, it occurred to her that she might have dreamed the boy who had been watching her. That didn’t seem out of order. She turned, scanning the crowd, but he wasn’t there. Had he been, she might have marched over to him and told him that he wasn’t real. No, he wasn’t, but she was. She wanted to tell someone. Someone should know that Sophie Kohl was real now.
When she continued forward, though, she spotted three men in suits walking briskly in her direction. One still wore his sunglasses, while the other two—one young, one old, all three so white that they were pink—homed in on her. “Mrs. Kohl,” said the older one. “I’m sorry—we were running late.”
She stopped, the three men forming an arc around her, just in case she made a run for it. Were
they
real?
The one who spoke took out an FBI badge. It looked just like the one Michael Khalil had shown her. His name was Wallace Stevens, just like the poet. “When you’re rested, we’d like to ask you some questions. Is that all right?”
Questions. They had questions for her, but standing in the desert, only yesterday morning, she hadn’t had any at all. When she’d looked down at the heavy, sweating man tied to the chair, shaking his head yet
smiling,
so many questions had been blazing through her, but she’d only asked one:
This is him?
Omar said yes. Then, like Emmett twenty years ago, resolve took over, and she knew precisely what was required of her. Lips pressed tight together, she raised the gun and fired once. Her ears rang as the man screamed and shivered. She shot him once more and then let the pistol drop into the sand just before she dropped as well, weeping, all control gone. Sayyid helped carry her back to the car.
“Okay,” she said to Wallace Stevens, no more than a whisper.
“We’ve got you a room at the Hyatt. I hope that’s all right.”
It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought to reserve a room. Just getting back had felt like enough.
The one with the sunglasses offered to take her bag, and she let him. As she left the airport with her full contingent and they headed toward a Ford Explorer—black, of course—Wallace Stevens said, “I don’t know if you’ve made plans, but tomorrow, after the interview, we can set you up with a lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” she said. Christ, they already knew how real she was, and she’d just
given
herself to them! “Why do I need a lawyer?”
“Oh!” Wallace Stevens said, embarrassed. “Not that kind. I mean, an estate lawyer, to discuss your husband’s finances, offer advice. That sort of thing.”
She relaxed, but only a little, for he had to have noticed her panic, and the cop part of his brain must have gleaned that she was covering up something. By morning, she was suddenly sure, she would be in a jail cell.
Yet in the back of the Explorer, he only said, “I forget myself sometimes. You’ve been through a lot. I should have been clearer. I’m just trying to help.”
He reminded her of Gerry Davis. Forward-looking, all about the future. All she wanted was to listen to his soothing voice tell her what tomorrow was going to be like.
Then they were riding down the highway and through busy streets. It was overcast and beautiful in a way that Cairo never could be. It was Emmett’s city, and in this town they had met at a keg party more than twenty years ago, him slender and intense and, almost from the start, completely in love with her. Then they saw the world together.
What else could anyone ask for?
Wallace Stevens noticed her smile. “Something funny?” He asked it in a way that suggested he could use a good joke.
She shook her head, but the smile wouldn’t go away. “Just thinking about my husband.”
“I heard he was a good man.”
“Yes,” she said. “No worse than most good men.”
He rocked his head from side to side, and there was something childlike in that movement, something that made her realize that she could do this. She had murdered a man in the desert, but no one here knew about that. Or if they knew, they didn’t care. They were taking care of a woman who had never stepped foot in America before, and her name was Sofia.
What would Emmett think of this new woman? Would he find her alluring? Would Stan still find her so appetizing? Her poor dead lovers.
She relaxed. Her back and shoulders tingled. Then she began to laugh involuntarily.
“Are you okay?” asked Wallace Stevens. “You need something to drink?”
She shook her head, covering her mouth, the full, sudden release of years of anxiety nearly gutting her, for what was left? Was anything left now that she had followed her life to its inevitable climax?
She looked at Wallace Stevens. He seemed very kind, but what did she know? She said, “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”
He cracked a smile, bashful, but pleased by the recognition of his namesake.
What was left once it all ended?
Everything.
2
Omar immediately regretted having accepted Harold Wolcott’s suggestion of a meeting in the Marriott’s Garden Promenade restaurant. The busy dinner crowd was noisy, and to his right a big table full of laughing Americans made him long for a quiet rooftop dinner with Fouada. But such were the responsibilities of administration.
Wolcott was in the rear corner, drinking a gin and tonic—Omar knew from the file that it was the man’s only drink—and when they shook hands he felt a thin, sticky layer of moisture on Wolcott’s hand. He’d probably spilled some tonic. Omar ordered coffee.
It had been a day and a half since the execution of Ali Busiri, though in the office they were calling it a disappearance. Without a body, what else could they call it? Central Security agents were turning over stones throughout the city, and when he wasn’t found, probably by Friday, Omar would lead an investigation. This was how it was done, for as the new section head it would be his responsibility to clean up any possible embarrassments from the previous administration. This was also why he had agreed to meet Wolcott.
“They’re a film crew,” Wolcott told him, nodding at the loud Americans. “Scouting locations for some kind of romantic comedy. Exotic location, some big stars, and you’ve got a hit.”
“Good for them,” said Omar.
“Sophie Kohl should be landing about now.”
Omar nodded. Sayyid had helped her onto the plane and phoned in as soon as it took off. “And John Calhoun? How is he?”
“Good,” said Wolcott. “Giving him a few days off, but he’ll be back soon enough. Good guy. I like him.”
Omar had no opinion of the man, but he filed away Wolcott’s opinion; it was inside information. Just as he had filed away Jibril’s precious notebook, though he had no intention of ever using it. This was how he would have to think from now on—collect everything, no matter how insignificant. He would be a hoarder of intelligence, just as Ali Busiri had been. Information was the only true currency, impervious to economic crashes, natural disasters, and even revolution. “Calhoun is a contractor, though. No?”
“Sure. But I think I’ll ask to extend his contract. Not many guys around who know how to keep their mouths shut.”
“It is a valuable talent.”
“Indeed,” Wolcott said. He reached for his cigarettes and offered one—Omar refused—before lighting up. “Are you going to tell me anything, or am I just buying you coffee?”
“Why don’t you ask some questions?”
Wolcott took another drag, a hard one that made the end of his cigarette glow fiercely. “How about who killed Stan? That’s something I’d damned well like to know.”
“We are looking into it. We believe, however, that Ali Busiri ordered the killing, just as he ordered the murder of Emmett Kohl. The gunman, for all we know, was the same.”
“Gjergj Ahmeti?”
Omar shrugged.
“He came to Cairo?”
“This is a guess. Does it matter who the gunman was?”
Wolcott’s forehead creased. He wasn’t particularly good at masking his emotions. “It does to me.”
“As soon as I know,” Omar promised.
There was a pause. Omar gave the Americans a look—a pretty blond girl was standing, holding up a glass of wine, making a toast. Wolcott puffed at his cigarette, finally saying, “Look, Omar. I don’t like these games. I want a little clarity. What I’ve got is a nasty stew of names. Emmett and Stan and old Ali. Sophie Kohl and Jibril Aziz are in the mix, too. Connect the dots for me.”
He didn’t have to tell this man anything. He could set down his cup and leave, and all Wolcott could do was file a complaint. With a military government in place, there was little chance of trouble. But he’d lived much of his life in Harold Wolcott’s shoes, pushing around chess pieces without being able to see the other player’s, living with only half-stories to shape his view of the universe. It could be maddening, and there was nothing more troublesome than a CIA station chief who’d gone over the edge.
“I can tell you this,” Omar said, and watched Wolcott lower his cigarette, alert. “Ali Busiri was to blame for all of it. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. But he was always behind the scenes. It’s the oldest story. At first, money. Then survival. The things we all want, but Ali—he lost his moral compass.”
And I would have killed more,
Busiri had insisted under that wide, wind-rippled canvas.
Ten people. Twenty. Imagine what this new government would do with me if they found out I’d been selling intelligence to yet another North African dictator. Given the chance, though, anyone would have done the same thing. Even you, Omar.
Wolcott was still grumbling. He wanted more, but Omar wasn’t about to give him the rest. He wasn’t going to tell Wolcott that Sophie Kohl had been their agent, and that so many of her husband’s secrets had made it from Cairo to Tripoli.
If you want to blame someone,
Busiri had said,
blame Muammar Gadhafi. When the troubles began in Benghazi, he remembered Stumbler, and so he sent his men to execute them all. Jibril got it backwards, of course—you told me that. You told me everything, Omar. Remember?
So you warned Tripoli that he was coming.
My Libyan friends deserved some warning. That’s only fair. Right?
They must have paid you well, Ali.
Oh, they did. And you’re not going to find a single pound of it.
Ali Busiri had been working on another plane of existence, as if last year were still this year. But he had been wrong.
Using Sophie Kohl had been a rash decision, but in the new year, he had come to believe, wrongs should be righted in the correct way, according to a higher law. He’d had no idea how religious he could be. He had surprised himself. And she had surprised him when she climbed out of the car and accepted Mahmoud’s pistol and walked with them to the tent. Ali Busiri, shaking his head and on the verge of laughing aloud, wriggled in the chair. A woman with a gun? he seemed to be saying. This is how you try to scare me?
This is him?
Sophie had asked.
Yes.
Poor Ali hadn’t seen it coming. He’d still been shaking his head, the disbelieving laughter bubbling before the explosion and the shot into his guts that rocked the chair back onto two feet, where it and Ali hovered, nearly falling, before dropping heavily back onto all four.
He’d screamed then. A pitiful, high-pitched scream, almost feminine, then blubbering moans. It hurt to see anyone in so much pain. Sophie Kohl was not a professional. She didn’t know how to do this quickly. She just stood and stared, shocked by what she’d done, stunned by the noise of his misery. He’d been about to rip the gun from her hand and finish the job himself when she silently raised the gun and pointed it at the top of Ali’s bald skull and pulled the trigger again, the pistol bouncing high. As the noise faded in their ears, she dropped the gun into sand that was muddy from all the spilled blood, then crumpled, weeping.