The Marching Season

Egyptian television network. Paprika was the equivalent of Joe Allen in New York, a place where actors and writers came to be seen by each other and by Egyptians wealthy enough to afford the rather mediocre food. One side of the restaurant overlooked the parking lot of Egyptian television. Those were the most coveted tables in the restaurant, because sometimes patrons caught a glimpse of an actor or celebrity or senior government official.
    Michael had reserved a table on the unfashionable side of the restaurant. He drank bottled water and watched the sun setting over the Nile and thought of the first agent he had ever recruited, a Syrian intelligence officer based in London who had a taste for
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    English girls and good champagne. The Agency suspected the Syrian was siphoning some of his operating funds to support his habits. Michael approached the officer, threatened to expose him to his superiors in Damascus, and coerced him into becoming a paid spy for the CIA. The agent provided valuable intelligence on Syrian support for several different terrorist groups, Arab and European. Two years after his recruitment he provided his most valuable piece of information. A PLO terror cell had set up shop in Frankfurt, where it was planning to bomb a nightclub frequented by American servicemen. Michael passed the information to Headquarters, and Headquarters tipped off the West German police, who arrested the Palestinians. The Syrian was paid one hundred thousand dollars for the information, and Michael was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal during a secret ceremony. The medal had to be locked away in a file cabinet at Headquarters.
    Yousef Hafez entered the restaurant. Unlike the Syrian, Hafez had come to the Agency voluntarily rather than through coercion. He had the fleshy good looks of an aging film star: black hair gone to gray, square features gone soft with twenty extra pounds, deep fissures around his eyes when he smiled. Hafez was a colonel in the Mukhabarat, the Egyptian intelligence service, and his job was to combat Egypt's Islamic fundamentalist rebels, the al-Gama'at Ismalyya. He had personally captured and tortured several of its leaders. Cairo Station had recruited Hafez, but he refused to work with Cairo-based officers because their movements were monitored so closely by his own service. Michael had been assigned to the case. Hafez had provided a steady stream of information on the state of the Islamic revolt in Egypt and the movement of Egyptian terrorists around the globe. In return he was paid handsomely—money that helped defray the
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    costs of his relentless womanizing. Hafez liked younger women, and they liked him. He believed he was doing nothing to endanger his country and therefore he felt no guilt.
    He spoke to Michael in Arabic—loudly enough so that the diners at surrounding tables could hear him—and Michael followed suit. He asked Michael what brought him to town, and Michael said business interests in Cairo and Alexandria. The restaurant buzzed for a moment, as a famous Egyptian actress climbed out of her car and walked inside the television building.
    "Why Paprika?" Michael asked. "I thought Arabesque was your favorite restaurant."
    "It is, but I'm meeting someone here when we're finished."
    "What's her name?"
    "Calls herself Cassandra. Comes from a Greek family in Alexandria. She's the most gorgeous creature I've ever seen. She plays a minor character in an Egyptian television drama, a little bitch who's always causing trouble—within the confines of our strict Islamic morals, of course." The waiter came over the table. "I'm going to have some whisky before we eat. What about you, Michael?"
    "Beer, please."
    "One Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, one Stella."
    The waiter vanished. Michael said, "How old is she?"
    "Twenty-two," Hafez said proudly.
    The drinks came. Hafez raised his Johnnie Walker.
    "Cheers."
    Hafez was the Muslim equivalent of a lapsed Catholic. He had no quarrel with his religion, and its rituals and ceremonies provided him the comfort of a childhood blanket. But he ignored anything in the Koran that got in the way of his enjoyment of worldly things. He also worked most Fridays, the Muslim Sab-
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    bath, because his job required that he monitor the sermons of Egypt's more radical sheikhs.
    "Does she know what you do for a living?"
    "I tell her I import Mercedes automobiles into Egypt, which accounts for