The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer

jockeying for power? All of them, really, but there were easier ways to unseat Stan than throwing mud at his sexual life.
    Maybe it wasn’t anyone in the embassy, but a representative of another government. The Egyptians, the Serbs, or even, for all he knew, the Hungarians. But why? The affair had been over for half a year—what would the embarrassment serve at this point?
    He scratched at the side of his nose, remembering Sophie’s burgundy lipstick, the arch of her calf, the cinnamon tint of her perfume. Stan wasn’t a man of great experience; at thirty-seven, he could count all his lovers on a single hand, and perhaps for that reason it still hurt to remember the end of his relationship with Sophie Kohl.
    It had been sudden, so abrupt that they hadn’t even had time for a final teary fight. Her husband announced that they were moving on to Budapest, and then she stopped answering his calls. Just like that. Had she known that their flight from Cairo was a direct result of his investigations? He didn’t think so, but he had suddenly become her husband’s co-worker again, and nothing he whispered during their brief moments in the same room did anything to change that. Her excuse, muttered under her breath, was that they’d both known this time would come, and ending it quickly was the best course. She hadn’t been cold about it; she’d just been incomprehensibly rational. Stan, on the other hand, had not been. He began drinking too much, slipping up at work, and it took many weeks before he was able to climb out of his hole again. Then, six months later, at three in the morning, she was calling him. How could he not be surprised?
    You told him about us, and you said you were in love.
    He had not told Emmett any such thing, but he easily could have.
    “Mr. Bertolli?”
    He was at his corner, and the voice belonged to one of two men with dark hair and severe smiles. He’d been too distracted to notice them approaching.
    “Mr. Bertolli, right this way.”
    Polite but firm. Late twenties, Slavic accents, and tight-fitting suits. No guns, but their manner suggested they didn’t really need them. So he followed them to a black Audi parked on the other side of the street, in front of his building. One of them opened a rear door, and, before getting in, Stan peered inside to verify his suspicion: It was Dragan. He was sitting back against the opposite door, an arm across one headrest, his free hand holding a highball glass with an inch of something strong in it, an old man at rest. He was smiling, winking. “Come, Stan. A quick word.”
    He slid in; the young man behind him closed the door.
    “Drink?”
    Stan shook his head, for all he really wanted was sleep.
    Dragan looked into his glass. “ Vinjak, a lovely brandy from home.”
    “I’m sure it’s lovely, but no thanks.”
    A shrug, and he took a swig. “That woman, Zora Balašević. You are still interested?”
    “Absolutely.”
    He nodded, closing his eyes briefly, then said, “I was not giving you the runaround earlier—I told you what I knew. But I made some calls. She’s in Novi Sad right now. She came into some money last year—Egyptian, no doubt—and now she’s living in an enormous house on the Danube. Amazing security system on this place, they tell me. If you like, we can pick her up and have a word with her.” He waited, and when Stan didn’t answer he said, “All you have to do is tell me what questions to ask.”
    On the surface, it was an excellent offer, but Stan hesitated. All Dragan wanted in return was to know everything that he knew—or to know what he didn’t know, which in the intelligence game was the same thing. What Dragan didn’t realize was that Stan didn’t know anything yet. “I just want to know who she works for—or who she worked for when she was in Cairo.”
    “Nothing more?” Dragan asked, but the answer hadn’t disappointed him at all, and that was when it happened: Stan became his father. Such moments were