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6. CITY OF DOGS

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In July 2009, Mr Ibrahim Noman resigned from his adjunct teaching position at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, subleased the Leopoldstadt flat, and booked two one-way tickets for himself and his daughter to Cairo.

Once in Cairo, having run a sweeper to his parents’ rundown house in Old Cairo, the former OPEC secretary-general called in his chits with the dean of Cairo University to enroll Fifi there. His sister’s institute was a no-go zone at the time, because of a family dispute that would settle later.

After that, the Big No started up an NGO, which he named Haram, after the Arabic word for sin or generally wrong.

Haram called for electoral reform, stricter laws against corruption, and accountability for police brutality. Soon the Nomans’ Old Cairo house—Haram’s HQ—became a Mecca for all political desperadoes of Egypt. Haram grew so quickly like a tumor, despite its founder’s early pessimism:

“Egyptians cannot tell a ballot box from a fruit box,” the Big No had said in a notorious TV interview that had cost him a thick swathe of his popularity a few months after his return.

No one had seen it coming. People from all streams of life converted to the new creed. Callow idealists. Stiffened skeptics. Lefties. Islamists. Technocrats. Nubians. Copts. Couch Party sloths.

Yet even then, the Egyptian government kept its cool. We’ve seen it all before, they said. Can grassroots do anything? They just toke and shout at one another. Let them play, let them play.

Before the year rounded, though, the government had blown a fuse or two. Haram activists had mustered their courage to go out on a few protests. Noman had also refused every honorary position he’d been offered. The West was supporting him, evidently, since he was visited by a miscellany of envoys from around the globe. Something was not right about him, for unlike the human-rights and democracy mongers of Cairo, he refused all aids and donations. The Egyptian Intelligence monitored his finances closely. They monitored him. They paid people to join his movement.

So when the Revolution finally erupted, it took everyone by storm. Even the Big No was surprised.

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History has taught me never to take Him for granted

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He wrote in his bestselling second memoir.

* * *

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In Europe, Hector had been feeling the heat, but his spying prowess had not taken him far.

By this time, the Cardinal had left the CIA for the White House gig and Hector was bossed by the DO’s new director, Thomas Bolgers, the lanky albino from Palo Alto who seemed so sociable and easygoing but was in fact a psycho whose sport was feeding his agents hogwash.

Hector tasted this hogwash himself when he handed Bolgers a 72-page memo on the reviving defense industries of Europe and what that meant for the future of NATO, only for Bolgers to stare at him behind his squarish, gold-rimmed glasses, and say, “Now I’ll be damned. I was joking with you, brother. Jesus.” Bolgers held the heavy, double-spaced, black-wired memo, then added, “I’ll put it to good use, though. Someone in the DIA may find this handy. Meanwhile, you may want to take a breather... especially after Ozgur, you know. You guys were close. And emotions can dampen a spy’s judgment. You can’t work with me if you’ll lose your acumen, Hector. Now get out.”

Ozgur’s death had flung Hector into a maelstrom. But in truth, he’d grown weary of Europe long before. He could definitely use a breather to recover, cogitate, and regain at least a smidgen of his earlier excitement about the trade. But at this point in his career—as happens to the best of spies—he didn’t want to go any farther. And the idea of resignation seemed too defeating. He didn’t want to do or undo anything. He just drifted on, hoping for the worst to pass without his interference.

Thus April 2010 had passed. Peacefully. Hector buried himself in his day job and was rewarded with a good raise. Since 2005, he’d bounced all over the Continent from one think tank to another, procreating his legend, as instructed. He met diplomats, professors, and scientists from every community on earth. He’d objected to this arrangement at first, desiring a full-time commitment like Ozgur’s, but slowly he came to appreciate his cover: It wasn’t love, but respect, or simply gratitude.

Political analysts are a downtrodden bunch: They hardly get paid at all, and if they do, not for long, and not much. Not Hector. The Company had given him a lucrative job at one of the pinnacles of political research: the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It was a dream job even for someone who took it merely as a cover.

This job had come his way as a direct placement, which was unusual for a Langley boy. Previously, the Company had desisted from influencing his cover, fearing smudges on his legend. But in February 2008, six pounds of enriched Uranium were intercepted in Helsinki. The source was the dismantled Soviet strategic arsenal in the near abroad, the lab confirmed. One lead led to another, and the CIA ended up tilting at windmills in Latvia. The chase had been a farce, but it had proved Hector’s theory about a nuclear smuggling network across the Baltic—a theory that hadn’t come out of his spying work, but through the drudgery of his cover job.

The Company had wanted him in Scandinavia, fast, so they risked making a few phone calls.

And in Stockholm, he’d soon floundered into a new relationship.

This one was called Lyra, like The Golden Compass character—though born long before the book had been conceived—but she pronounced the Y as an A. Everyone called her “Lara.” She was the least beautiful of all his girlfriends: too skinny, too sweaty, her eyes protruded a bit, and her chin was sharp like a witch’s. Yet she was the sweetest gal a man could meet. A physiotherapist, she tickled her patients’ stiff knees and hips and chanted ABBA songs to them and made them dance with her smiles. Everyone loved her. Life loved Lyra, and Lyra loved life, and Hector. Why? His looks, for the most part, plus the spleeny moods he dropped into after sex. Often Lyra realized he didn’t like her very much. But he’d stuck with her for over a year and had shown no signs of fleeing, which reassured her to some extent.

Before Lyra, Hector had had only two girlfriends in Europe. Hayley was a professional chef based in Notting Hill whom he’d met while working for Chatham House. In a quirky way, she took Hector up as a reprieve from a controlled life. She took him to cheap Irish pubs, seamy underground clubs, and crack sessions. They didn’t bond, and after five months they broke up amicably.

With Maureen, his coworker at the French Institute of International Relations, Hector had finally contemplated settling down, or in the least, extending his stint in Paris. Maureen was a smashing five-foot-four blonde, with a PhD in non-proliferation and disarmament. She spoke four languages and had a brown belt in judo. Barely beyond the dreaded thirty, she pushed him hard toward the cage of spousehood. But Hector was adamant he couldn’t, because his “career” was “rocky.” After a passionate—verging on violent—one-year romance, the relationship ended with her cheating on him, in a stuffy 10th Arrondissement basement, with Guillaume, their goateed, soccer-crazed, favorite bartender. Hector was devastated. He saw her only once after that. It was at a conference in Amsterdam. She looked older and wise in a cruel way. She gave him a warm hug and pecked his cheeks. Then she said she would love to visit him in Stockholm sometime.

Thank God, she never had.

What was new about Stockholm—and Lyra, by association—was the quietness. The Swedes were lovely people: too polite, too smiley, too handsome. They struck Hector as a refined version of his early countrymen, the Canadians. Something about the snowy North appealed to him in general. The frozenness of his fingers near Christmas. The short days. The heaters. The tuques. The close alleys of Gamla Stan when they pulsed with electricity and music. Stockholm was a place where he could retire. And Lyra would make the perfect wife.

* * *

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One day, a week or so after the raise, Hector went home to find the lights turned off. He lived in a spare, two-bedroom rooftop apartment overlooking Stureplan Square. You could see the Spy Bar’s steeple on your left, and the Sturegallerian shopping center across, with its flags and façade assailed by headlights. An unexpected guest was standing on his balcony.

Hector closed the front door and fumbled his way past the dark furniture. “What would have happened if she opened the door?” he asked.

“She won’t be back before midnight,” the Cardinal said, leaning over the mildewed railing. “We made sure of that. Good view, by the way.”

Hector joined him in the balcony. “What are you doing here, sir? Not enough action in Washington?”

“It never stops.”

“Then what? Bolgers didn’t say anything.”

“About what?”

“Whatever job you’re here for.”

“You don’t like your current job?” the Cardinal said with a turn of his face.

“I never said that.”

Hmm. You don’t like her then.”

Hector didn’t respond. He grabbed the railing with both hands and leaned over. Down on the street, in front of a Starbucks, seven adolescents lounged on their bikes, sipping frappuccinos and moaning in unison about a bad movie they’d watched. Stureplan was busy but never quite noisy. If a cat mewed a hundred feet off, Hector would hear it.

“I came to say congrats,” the Cardinal said, “for the promotion.”

“It’s only a raise, sir. Bolgers got it all mixed up.” Hector puffed.

“He said you needed fine-tuning for your ears, and I can see why,” said the Cardinal.

“Why’re you really here? A new operation?”

Despite the optimism Hector had brought with him to Scandinavia, a nuclear dealership network across the Baltic had never been found. Hector had spent the past thirteen months doing what he’d been doing in Western Europe: Islamic terrorism stuff. And he was tired of it all.

“It’s time you moved on,” the Cardinal said.

“Where to?”

“Cairo. A full-time job. That’s the promotion I came to congratulate you on.”

Incidentally, a car honked on the street, and Hector felt queasy, as if he were going to plummet there. He’d accepted a floater position in Europe principally to avoid Cairo. He would use his political science background, he had convinced the Cardinal many years ago, along with his three languages—English, French, and Arabic—to serve at any station in Europe. At one point even, he’d considered applying for a desk job at the Directorate of Analysis to avoid a vacancy in Baghdad for which he’d been rumored to be “a strong candidate.”

Hector and the Cardinal left the balcony, and Hector went to the kitchen to boil water for two cups of Earl Grey tea. He was distraught. It took him a long while to calm down and prepare the drinks, during which he revisited his entire childhood.

Cairo? How could he go back there after all he’d been through? And why now? There must be a strong reason. He wasn’t the sole Arabic-speaking agent in Langley’s registry. Not by a long shot. Far more capable agents would kill to prove their mettle before America’s new nemesis, Islam. So why him?

The boiler whistled, for the second time, and Hector poured the water and took the tea out to his guest. The Cardinal was bracing one foot on the coffee table. Hector placed the mug inches from the Cardinal’s polished boot.

“You haven’t asked why,” said the Cardinal.

“I don’t need to.” Hector seated himself in a brocaded seat across from him and sipped his tea. “Orders are orders.”

“You’re a good lad.”

Hector took a deep breath. “I think I do want to move, sir. I’ve been in Europe far too long. There is this book I read, it says a man must specialize in his thirties. Europe is pretty, but a man can’t specialize here.”

“How old are you now?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Still a puppy.”

“I don’t like pets.”

“Well, you’ll have to adapt.” The Cardinal reached for his mug. “Cairo is teeming with dogs.”

* * *

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Hector hadn’t mulled over why the Cardinal, a former spook at the time, had bothered to deliver the promotion himself. But he should have. It took him a year after the transfer to rethink that visit and marvel at his stupidity.

In Langley’s dogma, the sins of the recruits were always visited upon the recruiters.

The Cardinal had come to admire the view from his Stockholm balcony not to deliver a promotion, but a punishment.

Cairo was Hector’s sentence.