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others to pass. The two CIA people they’d borrowed for the operation—Phil Thalid, a resident officer who worked with the Egyptian security forces, and Aim Yeklid, an agent who was technically a free-lancer—were waiting just up the street. Thalid and Yeklid would pick up the trail at close range.
     
    Ferguson walked twenty yards past Guns then promptly turned around, ambling diagonally through the different bazaar stalls.
     
    “What the hell is he doing?” grumbled Rankin. “He’s supposed to go back to the hotel. He’s heading back toward the café.”
     
    “Maybe he forgot something.”
     
    “I wish he’d stick to the game plan just once.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    F
    erguson continued down the block, trying to judge whether anyone besides the two men he’d spotted were following him. They had the stiff necks and stooped shoulders he associated with Jihaz Amn al Daoula, the State Security Service, which was part of Mukhabath el-Dawla, the interior ministry’s General Directorate of State Security Investigations.
     
    Though to be honest, the fact that he remembered one of the men from an assignment a year before was a surer giveaway. The men had either decided to trail him because he was acting suspicious or because they were bored. More likely the latter.
     
    Ferguson passed near the empty alley next to the café and then found a watch repairman’s window, where he stopped to admire the man’s small display. Discovering that his own watch was several minutes behind those in the window, he reset it slowly, debating whether he should talk to the Egyptian agents. He had just decided to do that next when the woman who’d approached him in the café came out of the door and walked hurriedly past. Ferg smiled at her; she stared ahead as she passed.
     
    “Excuse me,” said a man walking a few paces behind, nearly bumping into him.
     
    “Sorry,” said Ferguson.
     
    “Qasim’s Tailor Shop in an hour,” said the man. “Give your name.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    T
    hey’re Egyptian intelligence,” Thalid told Rankin as Ferguson entered a carpet shop near the edge of the Islamic quarter. “Ferguson must have figured it out.”
     
    “Maybe we should tell them who we are,” Guns suggested.
     
    “I wouldn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut,” answered Thalid. “Besides, then they’ll have to ask all sorts of questions.”
     
    “Ferg’ll shake them,” predicted Guns. “That’s why he’s going into the carpet shop.”
     
    “Yeah. You’re right.” Rankin leaned out from the corner where they’d stopped. The two Egyptian agents were standing about half a block away, just lighting up a pair of cigarettes. “Guns, go around the back. You other guys, get the cars.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    I
    f the Egyptian agents had been trying even a little, they would have seen Ferguson going out the back of the carpet place. That told him they didn’t know who he was, and so with his trail shorn he made his way over to the tailor’s.
     
    The front door opened into a room packed with jackets and trousers in every conceivable stage of construction. Bolts of fabric lined the walls, and the place smelled of exotic tobacco and hashish. Two Egyptians, one fat, one skinny, stood on separate pieces of carpet nearby, submitting to the ministrations of young tailor assistants who poked and prodded their pinned suits into shape. A short, harried-looking man emerged from the back, a roll of measuring tape partially wrapped around the thumb of one hand and a swatch of fabric in the other. Speaking in rapid-fire Arabic, he berated one of the helpers, then turned to the skinny customer and displayed the sample, which the man reached for but was not allowed to take. At this point he turned to Ferguson and asked in Arabic who he was and what he wanted. Ferguson pretended not to understand, and the man repeated the question in English.
     
    “Ben Thatch,” Ferguson said. “I was told this was the best tailor in Cairo, which must