Voltaire leaned to Alex and held her arm. He leaned to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Want to invite me up to your room?” he asked. “There’s still time.”

“Nope,” she said.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said. “I’m the most experienced lover that you would ever have.”

“Is that right?” she asked.

“It is.”

“Then actually you’d be the most experienced lover that I might never have,” she said. “The answer is still no.”

“I didn’t think I’d be successful. But I thought I’d ask.”

The driver seemed intent on ignoring Voltaire and his advance.

“Good night,” she said. “Three p.m. tomorrow, correct?”

“Correct,” he said. She opened the cab door and pushed one leg out. Voltaire grabbed her arm to stop her. She turned back to him.

“One other thing, Josephine,” he said.

She waited.

“Keep your guard up at all times here. Don’t ever assume anything. Always question everything you see. Want me to give you another example, how things aren’t always how they seem?”

“Go for it,” she said.

He released her arm and turned back to address the driver.

“How you doing tonight, Tony?” he asked in English.

“I’m fine, Mr. Lamara, sir,” the driver answered in English with a broad smile. “How’s it going for you, aside from getting turned down by the lady?”

“Could be better, could be worse,” Voltaire said with a laugh. “This is my associate. Josephine. She’s going to be working with us on a mini-project.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” the driver said. “Welcome to Cairo. Hope you liked the crazy ride.”

Stifling her shock, Alex only stared at the driver.

“Tony is from New York,” Voltaire said. “He’s one of our street people in Cairo and one of my bodyguards. He came on duty when Abdul went home.”

The driver raised a hand, which now held a massive black pistol. He used the nose of the weapon to push back his Olympique de Marseille cap, giving it a polite tip. He grinned again, then stashed the weapon back under his jacket where it had been.

A beat while it sunk in. “I should have known,” Alex said.

“Yes, you should have. See you tomorrow,” Voltaire said.

After ordering breakfast in her room the next morning, Alex pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. She sat down at the desk in her suite and opened her laptop. There was a double window open to the daylight, and the sounds of the city-traffic, voices, children, car horns, vendors-were more distant because her window faced the swimming pool and the hotel’s private enclave.

She sorted through personal emails from home, answered some, and put others on hold. She opened one from Janet, who was kicking back in New York and had developed a crush on one of her bodyguards. Well, at least things were under control on that front, Alex theorized. Maybe if Janet was really lucky she’d get taken to some velvet-rope mob joint with some of the guys. Who knew? She took Paul Guarneri at his word that Janet would be kept safe and well treated.

Alex’s breakfast arrived via room service. She tried to eat lightly in hot countries and stick to bottled water, fruits, and food that couldn’t easily contaminate. Looking back to her laptop, she found a transmission from Fitzgerald. Alex opened the CIA file and, wondering what impact it might have on her own operation, began to read.

It was a single document, the result of several other documents merged into one in order to provide her a background briefing. She was tempted to skim, but knew better. So she read carefully.

Israeli espionage efforts against

the United States

Document Is/2009/19/07/cia- Esp.hg.7

On June 5, 2008, the US Central Intelligence Agency intercepted a conversation in Berne, Switzerland, in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had written two years earlier to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from “Kanga,” apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.

This revelation has again been treated by much of the American and Israeli press as an aberration, as over sixty years Israeli officials have claimed that they do not spy on the United States. Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy once told the Wall Street Journal (7/6/2007) that “our diplomats all over the world, and of course specifically in the Unites States, don’t engage in such things.” Similarly, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office once declared, “Israel does not use intelligence agents in the United States. Period.”

Yet this has demonstrably not been the case. From the very infancy of the nation-state of Israel, espionage activities and theft of information have occurred from friends and foes alike, often more from friends than from foes.

For example, in 1954, a hidden microphone planted by the Israelis was discovered in the office of the US ambassador in Tel Aviv. In 1956 telephone taps were found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché.

The most damning and notable case is the one of Jonathan Pollard, which dates from the 1980s.

Jonathan Jay Pollard, a veteran of US Navy intelligence forces, sold secrets to the Israeli government during the 1980s. Pollard claimed that although he did spy for Israel, he did not conduct espionage against the United States.

Born in 1954, Pollard majored in political science at Stanford University. He longed to emigrate to Israel, imagining himself as a superspy fighting on Israel’s behalf. Instead of moving to Israel, however, he enrolled at the School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. At Tufts, he sold information on foreign students to the CIA.

Although he already had his foot in the door with the CIA, the Agency turned him down when he applied for a job. After attending a 1982 meeting between US Navy and Israeli intelligence officers, Pollard was convinced that Israeli security was threatened because the US was withholding crucial secrets from its ally, particularly in the area of poisonous gases manufactured by Iran and Iraq. By that time, Pollard had a security clearance that gave him the authority to check out classified documents and take them home. Soon Pollard was smuggling out suitcases crammed with highly classified material from US Naval Intelligence. The US government claimed Pollard eventually leaked classified information on the layout of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters in Tunisia, which Israel eventually bombed…

As an agent with the FBI, Alex had been familiar with the Pollard case. But refreshing herself on the background details, while on assignment in Cairo, had a chilling edge. She continued reading.

Pollard photocopied and turned over to Israel more than fifteen hundred classified messages and more than a thousand documents. The Israeli government paid Pollard $2,500 per month. They also financed trips to Europe and a $7,000 ring for his wife…

(Examining officer’s note: It is no small irony that Pollard was actually on the payroll of the taxpayers of two separate countries: GHL 12-24-04)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was finally alerted by suspicious coworkers to the quantities of files that Pollard was signing out. Eventually, the FBI put surveillance teams on Pollard to discover what he was doing with the material, suspecting that he might meet with a foreign representative. Within a few weeks of 24/7 surveillance, however, Pollard apparently became aware of the attention.

(Examining officer’s note: It has never been established how Pollard became aware of the surveillance efforts, but it is widely believed that he was tipped by the Israeli service he was supplying: GHL 01-23-05)