The Cairo Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself. He was all muscle—not tall but wide—with muddy blue prison tattoos creeping out from under his collar. A man of absolute violence, like those tracksuited Balkan mafiosi she occasionally saw in overpriced bars. He wasn’t looking at her, though, but at Emmett, and he was holding a pistol in his hairy hand.
    It was the first time she’d ever seen a gun in a restaurant. She’d seen hunting rifles disassembled in her childhood living room, then put to use outdoors when her father went hunting for red stag deer in West Virginia. She once saw a pistol hanging from inside a jacket in their Cairo kitchen when an agent of one of the security services had come to have a talk with Emmett. In Yugoslavia, they had been on soldiers and militiamen and in one grimy kitchen that still sometimes appeared in her dreams, but she had never seen one in a restaurant. Now she had, and the pistol—a modern-looking one, slide-action—was pointed directly at her husband.
    “Emmett Kohl,” the man said with a strong accent, but it wasn’t a Hungarian accent. It was something Sophie couldn’t place.
    Emmett just stared at him, hands flat on either side of his plate. She couldn’t tell if he recognized the man, so before she had a chance to think through the stupidity of her actions she said, “Who are you?”
    The man turned to her, though his pistol remained on Emmett. He frowned, as if she were an unexpected variable in an equation he’d spent weeks calculating. Then he turned back to Emmett and said, “I here for you.”
    Mute, Emmett shook his head.
    Behind the man, the restaurant was clearing out. It was surprising how quietly so many people could retreat, the only sound a low rhubarb-rhubarb rumbling through the place. Men were snatching phones from their tables and holding women by the elbows, heading toward the door. They crouched as they walked. She hoped that at least one of them was calling the police. A waitress stood by the wall, tray against her hip, confused.
    Sophie said, “Why are you here?”
    Again, the look, and this time she could read irritation in his features. Instead of answering, he glanced at the gold wristwatch on his free hand and muttered something in a language she didn’t recognize. Something sharp, like a curse. He looked back at Emmett and, his arm stiffening, pulled the trigger.
    Later, she would hate herself for staring at the gunman rather than at her husband. She should have been looking at Emmett, giving him a final moment of commiseration, of tenderness, of love. But she hadn’t been, because she hadn’t expected this. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she hadn’t actually expected the man to shoot Emmett twice, once in the chest and, after a step forward, once through the nose, the explosion of each shot cracking her ears. She supposed it was because she was still dealing with the shock of Zora Balašević, of Stan, and the novelty of a gun in a restaurant. It was so much to deal with that she couldn’t have expected more novelty to come so quickly. Not that night.
    Yet there it was. She turned to see Emmett leaned back against the wall, his hazel, bloodshot eyes open but unfocused, sliding out of his chair, his face unrecognizable, blood and organic matter splashed across the wall and a sepia city scene. Screams made the restaurant noisy again, but she didn’t look around. She just stared at Emmett as his body slid down, disappearing gradually behind the table and his plate of half-eaten steak. She didn’t even notice that the gunman had jogged out of the restaurant, pushing past the remaining witnesses—this was something she would be told later.
    For the moment, it was just Sophie, the table with their wine and blood-spattered food, and Emmett slipping away. His chest disappeared, then his shoulders, his chin pressed down against the knot of his tie, then his face. The gory face that was missing the short, almost pug nose that, more than his hair or his clothes, always