The Midnight House

fingernail under the tape and detached the bug. He’d toss it on the way to the cemetery, after he lost the tail that was surely waiting for him.

OUTSIDE THE LOTUS, the downtown streets bustled. Couples strolled side by side. A few even held hands. Discreetly, of course. A mother and a daughter, wearing matching pink head scarves, giggled as they bought Popsicles from a stooped man pulling an ice-cream cart. The lack of alcohol gave the streets a pleasant, relaxed feeling. The crowds were lively but not rowdy, the sidewalks free of broken bottles and shouting matches. And Wells walked, his hands at his sides, split from the ordinary lives around him by a wall only he could see. The curse of the spy, at once present and absent. He walked, and he wondered whether anyone was on him.

Build countersurveillance into your schedule. If you don’t have time for it, you don’t have time for the meet. Even if you don’t think anyone’s on you. Even if you’re sure no one’s on you. The life you save may be your own.

Guy Raviv, one of Wells’s favorite instructors at the Farm, had given him that lesson a lifetime ago. Raviv had striking blue eyes and a smoker’s hoarse voice and hair too black to be anything but dyed. He seemed to be in his mid-fifties, though he could have been older. My children, he called his trainees. My precious, precocious youngsters. He’d been introduced to Wells’s class as a legend who had shucked whole teams of Stasi agents in East Berlin. Wells assumed that the story was exaggerated. Instructors at the Farm had a habit of embellishing their resumes, perhaps with the agency’s encouragement. Far better for new recruits to believe that they were learning from stars than from failed ops put out to pasture.

But whatever Raviv had or hadn’t done in East Berlin, he was a master teacher, as Wells learned firsthand when he and a team of recruits chased Raviv through the crowded streets of Philadelphia on a Saturday in July. Raviv lost them twice in two hours. He didn’t run—Please remember that anything more than a brisk walk is reserved for emergencies—but he had what Wells’s linebacker coach at Dartmouth called “quick feet,” the ability to change speed and direction almost instantly. Coming back from Philly, Raviv stopped at a McDonald’s on I-95 and distributed a full tray of bon mots along with his Happy Meals.

Your first goal is to make your pursuer show himself. He knows you. You don’t know him. Before you can lose him, you have to find him. And give yourself time. Listen to the wisdom of Mick Jagger, children: Time is on your side; oh, yes it is. More time equals more moves. More moves equal more chances to make your pursuer show himself. Will you be eating those fries?

In retrospect, Wells was shocked that the agency had allowed Raviv near them. Langley had always been a tribal place, unfriendly to oddballs. In the 1980s, the agency had become especially macho, spending its energy and money running guns to tinpot Central American dictators, operations that didn’t exactly match Raviv’s skill set. Wells supposed that Raviv had survived the Reagan years by bobbing, weaving, and staying low to the ground, skills as useful at Langley as in East Berlin. He’d become an instructor around 1990, and by the time Wells’s class of recruits arrived, he had his act perfected.

After his stint at the Farm, Wells never saw Raviv again. Wells always imagined he would. He tried to look Raviv up after he got back from Afghanistan. But Raviv seemed to have shed the agency. Wells assumed he was retired, living someplace warm with his wife. If he had a wife.

“Whatever happened to Guy Raviv?” he asked Shafer.

“Good old Guy,” Shafer said. “Died. Lung cancer.”

“When?”

“You were in Afghanistan. Maybe three years ago. Don’t look so shocked.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Ellis. Real humanitarian.”

“He smoked like two packs a day is all I’m saying. Pretty good at CS, though.”

And that was Raviv’s epitaph.

* * *

WELLS WALKED toward Midhan Tahrir, the heart of Cairo, a big, brightly lit square formed by the intersection of a half-dozen avenues. A pedestrian walkway ran under the square, leading to a subway station and offering a dozen exits — a nightmare for a surveillance team. Once Wells got underground, any tail would have to stay close or risk losing him.

At the square’s northeastern corner, a waist-high railing blocked pedestrians from crossing at street level, forcing them to use the underground passageway. Wells stopped, apparently lost, as an old man walked slowly by. Wells touched his arm. “Salaam alekeim.”

“Alekeim salaam,” the man murmured, his voice barely audible above the traffic.

“Sorry to bother you, my friend. What street is this?”

“Talaat Harb. Of course. Very much so.”

“I’m looking for the movie theater.”

“The Cinema Metro?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“This way.” The man pointed up the street. “Past the next traffic circle. And then a few more streets. But I must tell you, there aren’t any more films tonight.”

“My mistake. Shokran.”

“Afwan.” Welcome.

The man walked on. But the conversation had given Wells what he wanted. From the mass of pedestrians around him, he’d picked out five possible tails. Two men in dark blue galabiyas, their arms interlinked, walking slowly down Talaat Harb. A tall, light-skinned man in a striped blue button-down shirt, lighting a cigarette just a few feet away. Another, glancing at a shoe store as he dialed his cell phone. And a fifth, younger, drinking a Pepsi, casually watching the traffic roll by. They weren’t the only possibilities, but they were the most likely.

Trust your instincts, Raviv always said. Unless they stink, in which case you shouldn’t.

But then you shouldn’t be in the field at all. So I’m gonna assume a certain level of competence here. And my point is, you have to guess. And always remember that most of the time there won’t be anyone on you at all. You’ll be playing a little game with yourself. And then sometimes it’s the other thing.

What other thing? someone had asked.

If you’re lucky, unlucky, however you want to look at it, at least once in your career you’ll wind up with a whole platoon on you. Cars, motorcycles, helicopters. I know it seems impossible, but it isn’t, not in Moscow or Beijing or Tehran or a few other places where these little games are taken seriously.

What do we do then?

Abort your meeting. Head for the nearest house of worship. And pray.

WELLS HOPPED the railing and picked through the slow-moving traffic on Talaat Harb. Across the street, stairs led to the underground walkway. Wells stepped down them, not quite running, the camera bouncing in his backpack. He made his way along the tiled corridors of the underpass, past a blind man selling packets of tissues, a grimy teenager wearing a New York Yankees cap. Wells turned right, left, and then jogged along a passage and up a stairway. He’d crossed all the way under the square, to its western edge. From here, a wide avenue, three lanes in each direction, ran west toward the Nile.

Wells stepped around the stairs, positioning himself so he could spot anyone coming up the steps without being seen himself. And sure enough the man in the striped blue shirt emerged from the passageway and jogged up the steps. His cigarette was gone, but he was the same man who was standing next to Wells on Talaat Harb.

Wells heard Raviv’s raspy voice: You found him. Now lose him. Wells stepped onto the avenue as a bus passed, moving maybe fifteen miles an hour. He moved around the back of the bus, then sprinted along its left side, where its body shielded him from the sidewalk. He kept pace, barely. A taxi honked madly at him, and its passenger-side mirror whacked his ass. He stumbled in his robes but didn’t fall. After thirty seconds, the traffic lightened and he crossed to the south side of the road.

The move was ugly and unsubtle, but it worked. Wells was two hundred yards from his pursuer, effectively