Countdown in Cairo by Noel Hynd

that you called.”
    She was fiddling with a pen at her desk. “All right,” she said. “How about this? Six thirty at the bar in the hotel lobby. Peacock Alley.”
    “Wear something sexy,” he said. “I want to show you off.”
    “And you wear a suit,” she said. “I don’t go out with men who don’t know how to dress.”
    “Ouch,” he said.
    “Yeah,” she said, half amused, half revolted, fully intrigued. She clicked off, sighed, and wondered where life was leading her this time.
    Ninety minutes later, she was at the Y, playing point guard in a pickup basketball game. Her friend Ben centered for her side. They played two twelve-minute halves and prevailed 37–32.
    After a light workout with weights, she drove home. She noticed two people sitting in a battered Taurus in front of her building but thought little of it. Things like that were part of the urban landscape. No point to let paranoia get the best of her.
    She parked her car beneath her building and then, wanting a little more night air, took the long way to her apartment by coming up out of the garage on the side street and walking toward her building’s front entrance.

NINE
    They sat quietly in the old Taurus, Nagib on the passenger side and his Saudi handler, Rashaad, behind the steering wheel. Under the newspaper on Nagib’s lap, there was the Chinese pistol with a silencer on its barrel. They were like a team of military snipers. The Saudi was the spotter, the one who would identify the target. Nagib was the guy who would get paid to go in and make the hit. Rashaad was also armed, however.
    The serial number had been filed cleanly from Nagib’s weapon, and the weapon had never been used before. Nagib was waiting for his shot, and it thrilled him. He had previously executed successful hits in Egypt, Jordan, and Germany, twice against Israeli informants and once against an American businessman. He wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but he was effective. He had been smuggled into the country for this job and this job alone.
    To Nagib’s twisted mind, there was nothing quite like this—waiting in ambush for a woman. It thrilled him beyond reason. He felt so primal. He was a simple thuggish man who took great delight in life’s simple pleasures and victories, eating and drinking, smoking and fighting, sex, assault, and murder. So he didn’t seek to understand, especially when he was paid to do a job he enjoyed. He sought only to get the job done.
    Ten o’clock came. Then ten thirty. Then ten forty-five. On his car radio, a talk radio show chattered softly, though there was nothing soft about the political content. But Nagib’s mind was on the street and sidewalk beyond his car. He scanned up and down, attentively waiting. So did Rashaad.
    From where he had parked his car, he could easily see the entrance of the Calvert Arms. He watched people come and go and didn’t like any of them. He didn’t even like the building. This was the type of residence that housed quietly genteel and educated people such as Alex LaDuca and her neighbor, the cranky, jowly old diplomat, Mr. Thomas. They lived in this building along with the usual widows, retirees, and seemingly carefree college students, mostly female.
    The college students. He sighed when he thought of them. He might have been on the prowl for them—the young women around twenty to twenty-two years of age—if he hadn’t been on assignment. He gave these girls an extra leer as he sat and waited. He would watch them from the time they emerged from the Calvert to the time they disappeared down the block toward 21 st Street.
    After all, they looked good. They also looked like his intended victim.
    Nagib munched on an apple as he waited. He picked at a small box of raisins. Rashaad had explained that it was his potential victim’s habit to come by this location during the hours from 9:00 p.m. to midnight, scurrying along at a quick pace to the Calvert Arms like the desirable young female that