Countdown in Cairo

“I got real good real fast,” Janet said. “For some reason, most of the partners I worked with dropped surveillance devices in cars, offices, houses, and apartments. It was always male-female teams. The guys did the dumb work of breaking and entering and watching the street. The girls were the ones who really put our butts on the line, going into people’s homes and setting up the electronic ears. It just seemed to work that way.” She paused. “Once I bugged a guy’s golf bag while he was putting.”

“How’d you manage that?” Alex asked.

“Me and this other girl, we bribed the attendant to partner us up in a foursome where our mark played golf. The other girl never wore a bra. She kept the guys distracted with her T-shirt and size-six shorts while I put an ear into the guy’s bag.”

“Good work,” Alex said.

The company Janet worked for was one of those incorporated-only-on-paper concerns, she continued. It was technically a private contractor. But there wasn’t much doubt as to where the big boss was: Langley, Virginia.

Eventually, she partnered with a dude name Carlos, she said, first at work and then in the off hours.

Don Tomas intervened. He spared his niece the agony of plodding through the most painful part of her past history, the way Carlos had been obliterated by a car bomb in Cairo. He summarized that as quickly as possible and brought Alex up to present day on the sighting of a former boss in Cairo, Michael Cerny.

“He was kind of my everything,” Janet said. “My Carlos.”

“I’m really sorry. But I can relate,” Alex said.

“Yeah. I know,” Janet said. “Like I said, I know who you are. You just didn’t know who I was.”

“That seems to be changing,” Alex said.

“We used to talk a lot because we worked together,” Janet said. “Carlos and me. We were both interested in seeing the sights in the Middle East. You know, the pyramids, the Holy Land, Jerusalem. I didn’t have anyone to go with and neither did he. But we had some vacation time. So we saved up some bread and put a trip together.” She paused. “Single girl, traveling alone in that part of the world can’t be too careful, can she?” she asked. “I didn’t want to be sold into a harem or something. I mean, much safer to have your guy with you.”

“Makes sense to me,” Alex said. “Seriously. The last time I was in North Africa the whole delegation nearly got killed. I have no desire whatsoever to set foot in the place again for a good long time.”

“Understandably,” intoned Don Tomas. “Where exactly were you in North Africa?”

“Lagos. Nigeria.”

“Ah,” he said. “One of the great hellholes of the world. That area is hardly safe for any American traveling alone,” Don Tomas chipped in with his usual cynical charm, based on a quarter century in the diplomatic corps. “Much less a young woman.”

Alex turned back to Janet. “Here’s what I’m having some initial trouble with though. I worked with Michael Cerny in Paris. The last I saw of him he was slumped low in the front seat of a car, blood on his body, with a broken windshield and a bunch of bullet holes in the glass.”

“He’s alive,” Janet said. “Sure as I’m sitting here, he’s alive and I saw him.”

Following the two days she had had in New York, meeting Paul Guarneri, spending time with Yuri Federov, and interviewing for a new job, Janet’s assertion had a kooky Twilight Zone ring to it. Alex felt a strange rumbling in her stomach and didn’t know if it was nerves or fear or just outright disbelief.

“Why don’t you tell me what you want to tell me, Janet,” Alex said.

Janet led Alex through the story of what had happened in Egypt, how they had gone from their hotel one night to the Royale, the joint with the crunchy floors, the stinking cigarette smoke, the fake luxury scotches, and the Cerny clone with his two friends, one of them named Victor.

Then there had been the trip to the men’s room, a few days of peace while they speculated on the sighting, and then the explosive device that killed Carlos.

Janet finished. Alex gave her a moment to recover. Janet used the time to fetch herself another beer. The room was silent for several seconds, aside from the refrigerator closing and the cap from a beer bottle coming off.

Alex turned to Don Tomas. “If my apartment is bugged, how do you know yours isn’t?” Alex whispered.

“Janet checked,” Don Tomas answered. “She has some equipment on permanent informal loan from her former employers.”

“I get it,” Alex said.

Janet returned and sat down.

“This bomb that went off,” Alex inquired gently to Janet. “You think it was intended for the two of you?”

“Absolutely,” Janet answered.

“Might it have been intended for Carlos alone?”

“We were with each other the entire time. If Carlos had enemies from here, why would they trail him all the way to Cairo? It was in response to what he’d seen, what we’d seen, in Cairo. At the Royale.”

“Did the police tell you anything about the bomb? In Cairo?”

“No. They treated us like a couple of dumb young Americans who’d brought trouble on themselves. They accused us of dealing drugs and all sorts of things. I was scared. Real scared. I got out of the country as soon as I could.”

“Janet phoned me from Cairo,” Don Tomas said. “I arranged for one of the consular officers to come see her at the police station. Otherwise, they might still be holding her.”

“And what happened when you returned to America?” Alex asked.

“The people I worked for debriefed me for hours,” she said. “Even the evening after the memorial service for Carlos. I told them what I knew; I told them what I thought. They told me I was crazy. They told me that Mike Cerny being alive was the most preposterous thing they’d ever heard.”

“That’s my initial reaction also,” Alex said. “But that’s also a rather strange approach on their part.”

“That’s what I thought,” Janet said, angry and defiant.

Mystified, Alex took a moment to catch up with her own thoughts. “I’m losing you a little here. Who did the ‘debriefing’?”

“CIA,” she said. “CIA?”

“That’s who we worked for, once removed.”

“Do you have any names?”

Janet gave some. Alex was suckered in by now. She glanced around for a notepad. When she didn’t see one, Don Tomas provided one, plus a pen.

“They treated me like a hysterical woman,” Janet said. “It was as if they had an agenda, you know? The longer it went on, the longer they kept trying to tell me that I was mistaken, that I couldn’t possibly have seen Mr. Cerny. First, they were patronizing. ‘Really, Janet,’ they said. ‘You mustn’t make up stories like that.’ ‘Really, you’ll start all kinds of trouble if you start going around Washington saying things like that. People will think you’ve lost it.’ I know how the head games work. They were trying to see if they could convince me that I’d been mistaken. I mean, I was traumatized and vulnerable. So they were trying to get inside my head and move the mental furniture around. Then within a few days, the tune had changed. I got another team of interrogators. The lead guy, he was almost threatening. Check that, he was threatening,” Janet said. “He told me that Michael Cerny was buried in a family plot in Muncie, Indiana, and his wife had moved back there with a generous widow’s pension. He told me that obviously I was under great stress from having lost my fiance, but that made no difference. If I kept saying things like that, they were going to invoke one of the psychiatric codes on me and have me locked up. ‘For your own good,’ he said. He floated the idea of sending me back to Egypt and letting the local police take care of me. I said he couldn’t do that and he laughed and said he could do anything he wanted to. Patriot Act. National security. By this time, my head was really spinning. He even claimed at one point that he was a shrink and he could have me committed to a mental cracker box on the spot and then sent to Egypt. Well, bull! This guy wasn’t any shrink. I could tell. I’ve been to shrinks and they’re not like this guy.”

“What was this interrogator’s name?” Alex asked.

“Evans,” she said. “That was the name he gave. John Evans. But with those people, who knows? I figured it was a fake.”

“What about the other ones? The previous interrogators?”

“The first one called himself Fisher,” she said. “Mr. Fisher. Like in ‘Fisher of Men.’ He was a rude bastard,” Janet said. “In a way the first guy wasn’t as bad as the ones who followed. But probably none of them used their real names.”

“Would all of those be fake names?” Don Tomas asked.

“Most likely,” Alex said with a sigh. “That’s how these creeps work. The scotch is excellent, by the way.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Worth every dime of the five hundred dollars.”

“Let’s try not to drink the whole bottle this evening,” Don Tomas said. “It’s always nice to have some left over for breakfast.”

Janet forged on. “They kept asking if I had seen him myself, Cerny, if I could pick him out of a lineup, for example.”

“And what did you tell them, Janet?” Alex asked.

“I said I could.”

Alex was still processing the bulk of this when Janet sent the dialogue in a different direction. “I’d like to show you where the listening devices are,” Janet said. “The ones in your apartment. I remember when we dropped them on you. Did you ever discover them?” she asked.

“No. I had no idea there was anything in there. How do you know if they’re still there?”

“Most likely they are,” Janet said.

“Keep in mind I’ve been away from Washington for several months over the last year,” Alex said.

“I know. I know all about you,” Janet said.

A feeling of indignation washed over Alex, first being bugged by the very people she worked for. Second that this girl, Don Tomas’s niece, knew all about Alex and Alex knew nothing about her in return. And third that the devices were still there.

“How do you know they might not have been removed?” Alex asked.