The Midnight House (11 page)

“Of course.”

Room 2218 had two queen beds and a pleasant view of the luxury hotels and apartment buildings along the banks of the Nile. Feluccas, single-masted Egyptian sailboats that catered to the tourist trade, puttered along the water, along with open-air cruisers that ferried tourists and even some native Cairenes between the riverbanks. Wells watched for a while and then pulled the curtains and closed his eyes. When he left this room again, the mission would begin in earnest.

 

 

HE SLEPT WITHOUT DREAMING
and woke dry-mouthed but refreshed. In the bathroom, he stripped. A day earlier, at Langley, he’d taped a plastic bag to the back of his thigh. Now he pulled it off, trying not to take his leg hair with it. He showered and scrubbed, and when he was done, he looked himself up and down in the bathroom mirror. Despite the wounds he’d suffered on his missions, age had been kind to him. Being free to work out for hours every day helped, too. Only actors, pro athletes, and spies, perfect narcissists all, could devote so much time to their bodies. And, of course, he didn’t have a wife or family or kids to distract him. Though that wasn’t entirely true
.
Wells closed his eyes. His boy was a ghost to him. When this mission was done, he would go to Montana and insist on seeing Evan, whatever his ex-wife said. It was time.

Back in the bedroom, Wells popped open his suitcases. The first was filled with jeans, khakis, polo shirts, sneakers, even a Dallas Cowboys cap. Just what the housekeepers at the Intercontinental would expect William Barber to be wearing. Wells neatly folded the clothes in his dresser and turned to the second, larger case.

It held a different culture’s clothes. One brown
galabiya,
the simple robe worn by many Egyptian men. Two pure white dishdashas, the more elegant robes favored by Saudis and Kuwaitis. For his feet, heavy brown leather sandals. A cell phone with a 965 prefix, the code for Kuwait City. A thick steel Rolex. No self-respecting Kuwaiti man would be caught without one. Under all the robes, an expensive Sony digital video camera and a brushed-aluminum iMac.

Wells considered a
galabiya,
then changed his mind and decided on a dishdasha
.
Then he pulled the fake passport that the agency had given him from the bag he’d carried strapped to his legs. According to the passport, he was a Kuwaiti named Nadeem Taleeb. An Egyptian visa showed that he’d entered the country at Suez, on a ferry from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The passport came with Saudi entry and exit stamps to support the story.

Back at Langley, Mike Merced, a talkative twentysomething who was Wells’s favorite document geek, had promised Wells that the passport would hold up to almost any inspection. “As long as you don’t try to get into Kuwait with it,” Merced said. “Though I don’t know why anyone would ever want to go to Kuwait.” Besides the passport, Merced had given Wells a wallet stuffed with Kuwaiti dinars and Saudi riyals, along with credit cards and a driver’s license in Taleeb’s name.

But Wells was missing one item that he normally would have considered essential. A weapon. He could have connected with the station here for a pistol. Instead, he was coming in dark. Not even the chief of station knew he was here. He’d chosen this course for two reasons. One was logical, one less so.

First, the Egyptian
mukhabarat
would have tails on all the station’s couriers. Wells preferred not to risk blowing his cover before his mission even began. More important, this mission wasn’t the kind for which a gun would help. If he wound up sticking a gun in someone’s face, he’d already failed. No, to succeed in this mission, Wells would need to
become
Nadeem Taleeb. And Nadeem would naturally stay as far from the CIA as possible. So Wells wanted nothing to do with the agency. Now, as Nadeem, he flicked the television to channel 7, MBC, and watched an Arabic sitcom, talking back to the screen, finding the rhythm of the language for the first time in years.

After an hour, he rose, pulled the curtains. The sun was sinking behind the city. As the heat of the day eased, Cairo came alive. On the Nile, the boats flipped on neon lights and glowed red and blue and green. Couples and families and packs of teenagers filled the sidewalks on the Tahrir Bridge, savoring the breeze that fluttered down the river. Beside them, battered black-and-white taxis and boxy green buses filled the pavement. The sun disappeared entirely, and the sky darkened. From every direction, the calls to evening prayer began, eerie amplified voices that echoed through the city.

Wells turned east, away from the river—the orientation was easy enough, since the room faced straight west to the Nile—and fell to his knees and pushed his head against the carpeted floor and prayed. As Nadeem. As a Muslim.

 

 

A HALF HOUR LATER,
he walked out of the Intercontinental’s side entrance, carrying the larger suitcase
.
Before he could even get a hand in the air, a cab stopped.

“Salaam alekeim,”
Wells said. Peace be with you. The traditional Muslim greeting.

“Lotus Hotel,” Wells said in Arabic.

“Come on, then.”

Wells slipped in.

“Where you from?”

“Kuwait.”

The driver was silent. Other Arabs often viewed Kuwaitis as arrogant. Then, as if realizing he might be missing an opportunity, the driver put a hand on Wells’s arm.

“First time to Cairo?”

“First time.”

“Tomorrow. I take you to the pyramids! Giza, Saqqara, Dahshur. All-day trip. Only two hundred fifty pounds”—about fifty dollars. “Give me your mobile number!” The driver was a bit deaf, or maybe he thought he could shout so loudly that Wells would have to agree.

“I’m here on business.”

“I drive you around Cairo, then! Very good price.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely! ”

Wells didn’t respond, and eventually the driver dropped his arm. They fought through traffic onto Talaat Harb, a brightly lit street crowded with clothing stores, restaurants, and travel agencies. The pavement ahead opened up, and the driver gunned the gas.

As he did, a woman in a burqa stepped into the road about fifty yards ahead. With her feet hidden beneath her black robes, she looked as though she were floating over the pavement on an invisible river. A very slow river.

The driver honked furiously. Still, the woman didn’t hurry, didn’t even turn her head to look at them, as if her robes were a force field that would protect her from harm. Finally, the driver gave in and slammed his brakes. The taxi, a cheap old Fiat, pitched forward on its springs and skidded to a stop just short of the woman. She walked on.

“Women,” the driver said. “Crazy. How many wives you have?”

“Only one.”

“Hah! And you a Kuwaiti! I have three. Three wives! And ten children!” The driver smiled at Wells with teeth as yellow and battered as the Cairo skyline. “How many children you have? Two? Three?”

“Eleven,” Wells said, trying not to smile.

“Eleven?” The driver frowned. Wells wondered whether he would try to have another baby tonight, or maybe two, to retake the lead. “And only one wife? You keep her very busy! I have six boys! How many boys you have?” “None.”

“All girls and no boys! You need new wife,
habibi.
She wastes your time.” The driver patted Wells’s arm happily. He might not have as many children as Wells, but he had more boys, and boys were what counted.

At the hotel, the driver, still hopeful, pressed a tattered business card into Wells’s hand. “Al-Fayed Taxi and Car for Transport.”

“You call tomorrow.”

“Shokran,”
Wells said.

 

 

THE LOTUS HOTEL
was eight floors of dusty concrete. The receptionist gave a bored look at Wells’s Kuwaiti passport, took his credit card, and handed over the brass key—no programmable cards here—to room 705. The elevator was an old-school model, a metal gate on the inside. When Wells closed the gate and pushed the button for seven, it didn’t move for a while and then ascended as huffily as a smoker in a marathon. His room was narrow and dark, with a creaking three-bladed fan pushing the stale air sideways. Wells stripped off his dishdasha and lay diagonally across the sagging double bed, his feet hanging off the corner. The perpetual honking from the street should have bothered him, but instead it soothed him. He fell asleep instantly.

He woke to the sound of the morning call to prayer, showered under a surprisingly hot stream, and slipped on his
galabiya,
feeling its loose folds envelop him. He lifted the mattress and slid the keycard for the Intercontinental into a tiny seam in its bottom, where it would be hidden from the most thorough of searchers. He peeked out the window. The street was temporarily empty, aside from a handful of teenage boys joking with one another. They looked as though they’d stayed out all night, smoking flavored tobacco from the tall water pipes Egyptians called
shisha
.

During the early twentieth century, Cairo had been one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, a place where Muslims, Christians, and even Jews lived together peacefully. During World War II, brothels had operated openly just east of downtown, in a district Cairenes had jokingly called “the Blessing.” Egypt’s version of Islam was generally more moderate than that practiced to the east in Saudi Arabia. After all, Egypt’s history long predated Islam. Its proudest moments had come not as a Muslim state but under the pharaohs. And almost ten percent of Egyptians were Christian.

In theory, Egypt still remained moderate today. The nation was the only big Arab power to have made peace with Israel. Women here were allowed to drive and didn’t have to wear head scarves, much less burqas. Cairo was home to an English-language radio station whose announcers openly offered relationship advice. Alcohol was legal, and the city’s big hotels even had casinos, though they weren’t supposed to be open to Egyptians.

But in reality, Egypt had swung toward Islam since throwing off Britain’s colonial yoke in 1952. High birth rates, government bureaucracy, and slow economic growth had left tens of millions of Egyptians living in destitution in the vast slums in and around Cairo. Millions more aspired to the middle class but could not find decent-paying jobs despite college degrees. Many saw Islam as the answer to their country’s crisis. Islamic charities fed and clothed poor families. Islamic courts offered quick decisions to people who couldn’t afford to wait years to be heard by the overcrowded government court system.

But as they promoted charity and community values, Islamic leaders also stoked a fierce anger among their followers: at Egypt’s government, at Israel, and at the United States, which supported both. The United States, so concerned about bringing democracy to Iraq but happy to look the other way when Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president, rigged elections to stay in power. Egyptians called Mubarak “the pharaoh,” not only because he had been president for almost thirty years but because he was trying to anoint his son Gamal as his successor.

Year by year, the radicals gained influence. Despite being outlawed, the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important Islamist political party, had won twenty percent of the seats in the Egyptian parliament in the 2005 elections—more than ever before. On the streets, too, the changes were obvious. Even in downtown Cairo, most women wore head scarves, and burqas were not uncommon. Alcohol had largely disappeared outside hotels and a handful of restaurants that catered to tourists. The calls to prayer grew louder each year. And except for the Egyptian Museum, the pyramids, and a few protected neighborhoods, tourists—or non-Arab foreigners of any kind—were almost invisible in Cairo. Despite its grinding poverty, the city was not particularly dangerous for locals. In fact, street crime was rare. But foreign visitors, especially women, faced constant harassment. And with the threat of terrorism vague but real, most tourists stayed off the streets.

Too bad, because Cairo was fascinating, Wells thought. After breakfast he’d walked around downtown, orienting himself, talking to shopkeepers to scrape the last of the rust off his Arabic. Now he was heading east along Sharia al-Azhar, a narrow road that ran under the concrete pylons of an elevated highway. The streets around him formed an area called Islamic Cairo. Almost all of Cairo was Islamic, of course, but this district was the historic center of Islam in Egypt, filled with mosques and madrassas. At its center was al-Azhar University, the second-oldest degree-granting school in the world, established in 975 A.D., hundreds of years before Oxford and Cambridge.

Around Wells, boys carried trays of tea and coffee to men who stood outside their shops. In Cairo, as in many Third World cities, the stores clustered by type. This stretch of road had nothing but textile stores, as though humans needed only brightly colored cloth to survive. The din was constant. Three-wheeled tuk-tuks and skinny 125cc motorbikes buzzed by, and shopkeepers incessantly shouted the praises of their wares.

“Best quality, best quality!”

“Extra-special!”

“Sir, sir! Take a look!”

And step-by-step Wells edged closer to his destination, a mosque a few blocks south, in the very heart of Islamic Cairo.

 

 

AN HOUR LATER,
just in time for midday Friday prayers, he arrived. The mosque wasn’t big or famous or even particularly old. It had yellow-painted concrete walls and a low minaret mounted with speakers to broadcast calls to prayer. It was the home mosque of Alaa Zumari, the would-be cell-phone mogul scooped up in Iraq and sent to Poland for interrogation by 673.

Wells could have gone straight to the house of Zumari’s family, of course. His dossier had the address. But Zumari was missing. And his mother and father wouldn’t exactly be eager to help a CIA agent find him.