Noel Hynd - Countdown in Cairo

“I know what you mean,” Alex said. “Exactly.” She thought for a moment. “If the devices are still there do you think they’re working?”

“Oh, sure. They’d be working. The audio feed is going into somewhere. I don’t know where, but it’s most likely being stockpiled and inventoried somewhere. Maybe by computer. They have somewhere they can download it into a written translation, and there’s probably someone who reads the stuff every day. If nothing else, just for kicks.”

“For kicks,” Alex agreed.

Janet nodded. “You know? To see who’s in who else’s bedroom who shouldn’t be. Never know who you’re gonna catch in that net.”

“On the taxpayer’s dime,” Don Tomas said. “And by the way, I’m really sorry about this, Alex.”

“No, no. I just thank you that you called it to my attention.”

“I just learned about this two days ago. I knocked on your door yesterday,” he said.

“I was in New York.”

“As you can see, Janet is quite frightened.”

“Of course,” Alex said.

“I’ve been hanging with friends,” Janet said. “I’ve been afraid to go to work. Never sleep more than three days in a row in the same place, don’t go to any of my usual stores. Nothing. They questioned me for five days. It was like Guantanamo North. I didn’t have a lawyer there, and I never felt like I was free to go when I wanted. They kept insisting I was wrong, wrong, wrong! Like they were suggesting that I change my mind. Why would they do that if they weren’t hiding something or if I wasn’t onto something?”

“I don’t know,” Alex said.

“Then on the third day I made a mistake. I mentioned the picture I took.”

“What picture?” Alex asked.

“When Carlos went over to try to take a look at the man we saw in the bar. I snapped a picture. I was tired during the interview. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But they pressed me. They asked if I still had it. I thought it might get them off my case if I admitted it. So I said, yeah, I have it, it’s still on my camera. They asked if I had downloaded it onto a laptop or gotten prints. I said no.”

“And?” Alex asked.

“They went over to my apartment and broke in. They took my camera. I saw it was missing when I got home. And when I turned on my laptop, the memory was broiled. They had zapped it. Can you believe it?”

“I believe it,” she said with feeling. She held a silence.

“It became the big issue for the next two days. They kept hammering me. ‘Janet,’ they said, ‘where are the other copies? We know you must have made other copies. Where are they?’ ”

“But if Cerny was dead, as they said he was,” Alex asked, “why on earth would they have cared about these pictures?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she said. “And I said that to them too, that it was pointless of them to care about the picture if they were so sure Cerny was dead. But they didn’t like the situation. Next thing I know, they called in another man. Big ugly SOB with a bad haircut and halitosis. A real thug! He just sat there with his arms folded and glowered at me. Never said anything. Then I started asking if I had the right to see a lawyer.”

“You did.”

“They told me I didn’t. They told me they could keep me locked up for weeks, and I’d do better just coming clean with them right away. They wore me down so much I started to cry.”

“Got it,” Alex said. She looked to Don Tomas and then back to his niece. “I want to ask you two things,” Alex said.

“Sure.”

“You used to work for Mr. Cerny. And you knew me from being in this building to drop a bug on me.”

“Uh huh.”

“But how did you know I worked for Mr. Cerny?” she asked. “I could have been just someone that he wanted to eavesdrop on.”

“I kind of figured it out,” Janet said sheepishly. “After that mess in Kiev in February, I saw you on the news a few times. TV, you know. I recognized you from the building here. And I recognized your name because they always had to tell us who we were dropping a bug on so we could find the right place. So Carlos and I were really following the whole Kiev case. I’ve known who you were since then. And there was this guy named Pete who was our supervisor. Pete talked too much when he gave out the assignments. We’d figured out his boss’s name. Pete had all these records in his office that he was supposed to keep confidential. But everything was all over his desk. So Carlos and me, we saw names. Then, follow this, we weren’t in line for this assignment to bug you here, but Pete knew that I knew the building. And he made a wisecrack. He said that you’d been a lousy employee and your boss wanted to drop a bug on you. Wanted to know about your social life or something. So I put it all together. This was even before Kiev.”

“My boss? Mike Gamburian?”

“No, no. Mr. Cerny wanted a special watch on you.”

“Cerny?”

“Cerny. That’s what Pete said.”

“I see,” Alex said. But actually, she didn’t. Events and details seemed to float around as if in a fog, threatening to connect but failing to. Questions suggested themselves to her and then eluded rational resolution.

Had Cerny been monitoring her out of some perverse personal interest, or had there been a professional agenda? And if it had been a professional agenda, whose was it? American intelligence or something farther afield?

For the first time, Alex tried to examine the question by pulling it inside out and then apart.

“And then when everything hit the fan about a week ago,” Don Tomas interjected, “I told Janet she could stay here. But I insisted that I know what sort of trouble she was in. That’s when so much of this came into view.”

“Of course,” Alex said, finishing her scotch and putting the glass down.

“Would you like another drink?” Don Tomas asked.

“Maybe some other evening,” Alex said. “I want to keep a clear head.”

“You don’t mind if I do?” Don Tomas asked.

“Keep a clear head or have another scotch?”

“Hopefully both,” Don Tomas said, rising. “But maybe just the scotch.”

Alex turned back to Janet. “Did you finally convince them about the picture? That you didn’t have other copies?”

“I did,” she said. “Or at least, I think I did.”

Several seconds passed. “If I’m going to help you and hopefully protect you,” Alex said, “you know you need to be completely honest with me. Right? You understand that, correct?”

Janet looked at her warily.

“I don’t think you’re foolish,” Alex said. “I have a feeling you downloaded that photo somewhere. Just for safekeeping.”

Another wary pause from Janet.

“My guess is that you were, shall we say, one step ahead of them,” Alex continued. “You don’t have to admit it out loud. Just nod if I’m right.”

Several seconds passed. Janet nodded.

“Where is it?” Alex asked. “Stored in cyberspace maybe?”

Janet grimaced and pulled a new iPod out of her backpack. She fired it up and brought up the photograph. She handed the iPod to Alex.

Alex looked down and, on a two-by-three-inch screen saw the photo from the Royale in Cairo. The figures were too small to be of any value to the naked eye. The iPod was big-screen only if the viewer was a mouse. But Alex saw a small snapshot of two men facing and one, the Cerny clone, with his back to her.

Alex looked back up. “Does anyone else know you have this?” she asked.

“Just you and my uncle.”

“I need to copy this,” Alex said.

“Please be careful,” Janet begged again.

“I’m not going to put it through any intelligence system or computer network at work. If Mike Cerny is alive, who knows what’s compromised and where? I just want to run it to my own iPod. All right? Please say yes.”