Agent of Influence: A Thriller (28 page)

“How did you meet Aziz? Did he approach you?”

“No, he didn’t. I sought him out after seeing him around town at some of the political gatherings. That was one of my first jobs when I originally got assigned here; check out the local scene. The good and the bad. I took my time and tried to see if there was anyone willing to give me information. Most of the major players in this area show up at the big events to try to make a name for themselves or their organization.”

“Let me guess, y
our superiors told you they wanted a feel for the Arab street?” She watched as he nodded an affirmative. Then she continued, “That’s their favorite phrase, mainly because it can mean anything they want it to mean.” 

“Won’t argue with you there. Anyway, it took me a few months of seeing Aziz around before I approached him. I think it was around one of the last times Aman was in town. I spent some time debating the pros and cons of different societies with Aziz. Nothing serious. He lived in Old Cairo
, so I thought he would be the perfect person to send me stuff on some of the more dangerous organizations in the area. A lot of them operated on his turf.”             

“Did he agree to help
you out immediately?” Anna asked with a surprised look.  She waited while Colin pressed the gas pedal. Traffic was moving again.

“No. I
t took a few more meetings and debates. Don’t get too many people around here willing to talk if they suspect you’re an American. I think he’s just an old man who likes attention. He gives me something useful every now and then, but not much. I think he just enjoys my company, so I’ve kept up the contact. I’ve noticed one thing though.”

“What’s that?”

“The few times I met him inside Islamic Cairo I noticed that he sure was treated with some reverence. He may keep a low profile, but even other guys his age steer clear of him. I asked him why.” Colin made a quick left. They were almost back to the hotel.

“And the reason?” Anna asked.

“He says they’re scared of him because he knew King Faisal. I checked around, and it seems when the King was deposed after WWII anyone with close connections to him was rounded up and made to disappear if you catch my drift. But Aziz is still around. The King’s personal horse trainer survived. Some of the locals are convinced he has friends high up in the government, as well as some pretty good blackmail information on someone. Otherwise, they claimed, he would have been dead a long time ago.”

“Did you ask Aziz if any of it was true?” Anna was intrigued.

“He laughed them off. Said they were all superstitious crazies.” He pulled up to the front of the hotel to drop her off.

“Thanks for the lift. I’ll
call you tomorrow after my morning session at the ministry,” Anna said as she stepped out of the car.

“Sounds good.” Colin floored the gas pedal
. The boxy French Renault burst into the street, leaving behind a cursing bellhop.

Anna walked up several flights of stairs until she reached her floor. She always avoided elevators if at all possible. They were death traps. She
cautiously opened the door that led into the hallway. Her room was just three doors down, and she could see the door was slightly open. A stream of light escaped into the poorly lit hallway. She yanked out her gun and waited patiently. Five minutes later a young man came out, took several furtive glances down the hallway, closed the door to the room, and walked briskly towards the elevator. Anna dashed back down the stairs she had just come up. It seemed that someone in town was interested in her.

             
She reached the ground floor and remained in the stairwell until the young man came out of the elevator. He immediately headed to a pay phone on the other side of the lobby.  As he whispered furtively into the mouthpiece she studied him carefully, memorizing his features.  He was in his early-twenties, perhaps even younger, but his budding mustache was deceiving from a distance. It was more peach fuzz than real hair. The traditional robes he was wearing suggested he was more studious and religious than most boys his age. He looked out of place in the cosmopolitan lobby of the hotel, like a character in a play stepping out of rehearsals for a quick break.

Anna smirked as she realized he was at most ten years younger than her
self. Despite this fact she still thought of him as a boy. He turned away from her to watch the entrance of the hotel, and she used the opportunity to move out of the stairwell, and walk towards the enclave of the restroom. She was too far away to make out any of the conversation, but he was clearly agitated and talking quickly. After a few more seconds he put the phone down, glanced around, and scurried out the front door of the hotel. His flowing robes almost catching in the revolving door.  She walked briskly after him.

The sidewalk ou
tside was full of tourists sprinkled with a few locals coming out to enjoy the cool evening. She picked her way through the crowd on the sidewalk and headed in the same direction she had taken to go to the museum earlier in the day. She could see the flowing robes of the young man two hundred feet ahead of her. His jittery movements continued to scream that something was not right in his world. Without warning he sprinted across the street, causing a few cars to slam on their brakes and the drivers to hurl insults at him. He ignored them, continuing on his mission.  Without looking back to see if he was being followed, he jumped into a taxi idling quietly on a side street. 

Anna waived at another cab that was approaching the hotel. The taxi slowed, but the drive
r flashed a disapproving look, indicating she should go back to the hotel and wait in line for his services. She stepped into the road anyway, forcing him to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting her. She quickly slid into the backseat and barked instructions. His protest stopped short as a wad of American dollars was tossed into his lap.  A promise of more to come caused him to forget her cutting in line. He spun the rickety taxi around blindly, causing several vehicles to grind to a screeching halt while the cab driver waived a hand of apology. The taxi tore back up Muh Bassiunit Street and headed east.  Anna’s Arabic, more importantly her ability to speak like a native Cairene was impeccable, and she fired off a quick story about a friend’s cheating husband, caught with an American no less. The driver reacted as she hoped he would. He pressed the gas pedal further down, trying to coax as much power as he could out of the circa 1975 taxi. 

The poorly maintained roads were clogged with a mix of people getting off work, going out to dinner, or heading for late afternoon prayers at their mosque of choice.
She finally spotted her quarry a few blocks further down the road. His taxi was stopped in traffic. He was at a standstill at the corner of Muhammad Fari and Al-bustan Streets, waiting for a three-car accident to be cleared from the intersection. An overweight, irate policeman ran around the intersection, practically foaming at the mouth while screaming orders at the parties involved. It appeared none of them were happy with what the patrolman was yelling to them. 

Anna relaxed; they were only
five cars behind the other taxi and should be able to stay on his tail now. The cab driver turned his head to face her, and gave her a leering smile that was short a few teeth.  His blotched skin, dirty face, and yellow teeth made him look much older than he probably was.              

              Twilight was descending upon the capital when she spotted the boy’s taxi as it made a quick U-turn and pulled up along the opposite side of Samiel Barudi Street. She commanded her driver to pull off onto a side road. The taxi she was following had stopped in front of the Sultan Hassan Mosque, one of the most revered monuments in the Islamic world.              

She watched as the
young man was yanked out of the taxi by the driver who was holding him by the scruff of his robe, a look of annoyance on his face. The petty quarrel was unbecoming of the scenery around it. Anna watched them in silence, trying to figure out what was going on. She knew not to go any closer. This was not a place for a woman to be. She would immediately stand out.

The driver’s hand gestures seemed to su
ggest that he wanted to be paid. The young man continued waving his hand towards the mosque where a small group of men stood by the entrance, huddled together in private conversation. A face she immediately recognized suddenly appeared. The huddled group moved out of the way, showing great deference to the short, gaunt man. He wore the full beard of a pious imam, along with a large turban on his head. His white robes were flawless, and he looked amazingly similar to Osama Bin Laden except for one obvious feature. While Osama was a literal giant in the Arab world, standing six feet five inches, this man was tiny, just barely reaching five feet tall. The watchers in the counter-terrorist center of the CIA jokingly referred to him as Mini-Bin Laden, in homage to the villain of the Austin Powers movies.

Anna thought the name suited him
perfectly. His real name was Quasim Zahir, and Anna had read about him many times. He was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps it’s most feared. The Muslim Brotherhood was once one of the most radical and dangerous terrorists groups in the world. Anna knew that Quasim had been one of its guiding lights for the past fifteen years, and rumors flowed throughout Egypt that he still had connections to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who left behind his native country in the late 1980s to follow the real Bin-Laden on a worldwide killing spree.

The cab driver immediately released his grip on the young boy and Quasim handed him payment for the boy’s fare. Quasim wagged a menacing finger at the driver indicating for him to lea
ve. The driver did not hesitate and quickly drove off in the direction from which he had arrived.  Quasim appeared to reprimand the boy before they disappeared together into the cavernous interior of the fourteenth century mosque.

Anna pondered the situation a few more seconds,
then quietly asked to be taken back to her hotel. Things had just become more interesting, and more dangerous. Why would Quasim have any interest in me? And more importantly, how did he know where to find me? The thoughts immediately flashed through her mind. She knew she would be paying a return visit to this mosque in the very near future. Colin would have the necessary equipment that would allow her to enter. Whatever she found inside, she knew it would have to be better than the useless paperwork the Egyptian government was going to let her peruse tomorrow.

***

Anna stared incredulously at the uneven rows of filing cabinets scattered throughout the room. There were stacks of typing paper piled randomly on top of several of the cabinets, mixed in with yellowed, parched documents that were aging prematurely due to neglect. It was worse than she even expected.

“This is it?” Anna
asked the government worker who showed her into the room inside the Ministry of the Interior of the Egyptian government. Anna arrived promptly at ten a.m., and was forced to wait for nearly an hour before the man finally appeared from the back of the building.

             
“Yes, all the birth certificates and other information for the time period you requested are here.” The government worker adjusted his tie while giving her a surly look.

“Is there any order to the files?” Anna asked.

              “I’m not sure. No one ever comes in here,” he said with disdain. He was determined not to provide any useful assistance.

Anna glanced
around with annoyance at the thin layer of dust that covered the entire floor of the square room. She doubted there was any particular order to the files. They could not even keep their current records in order, much less information pertaining to births from forty to fifty years earlier.

“Would you mind
finding out? I would appreciate it.” She tried her best to be friendly. 

The man jum
ped at the opportunity to leave and disappeared down the hall. She gave one of the filing doors a solid pull and began the official part of her investigation.

             
Four hours later her time had expired. Her unhelpful assistant finally re-appeared and told her what she already knew. There was no order to the files. He explained that her allotted four hours were up, and she was unceremoniously ushered into the blistering hot sun of mid-afternoon Cairo. She climbed into a taxi, ordering it back to her hotel.  Colin should be there by the time she returned. They were going to formulate the specifics for their infiltration into the mosque later in the evening. She wanted a closer look at Quasim Zahir.

***

              Several hours later Anna was standing in the central courtyard of the Sultan Hassan Mosque. She stared silently at the elaborate central fountain while she waited her turn to wash her hands before evening prayers. Crowds of men all dressed in traditional robes milled about the courtyard. They talked to friends in hushed tones while waiting for the imam to appear. Colin stood uncomfortably beside her. He had voiced his concerns early and often, but she ignored them at every turn. She was unrecognizable thanks to the make-up, fake beard, and additional tricks that Colin used to transform her into a man for the evening.

Colin
had visited many of the mosques in the area. Many of his contacts insisted on meeting him at whichever one they usually attended. It made them feel safer, which normally led to better information. However, he tried to steer clear of the mosques during the major prayer times. All the regulars were here, and although Anna had the best disguise the U.S. taxpayer could supply, they still received stares and occasional looks of curiosity from the regulars who instantly knew when strangers were in their midst. Anna stole a look at Colin and could see that he was nervous.