18
By one p.m. they were in a sixth-floor café just off of Tahrir Square. They had a corner table that offered them a view of both the square and Qasr al-Nil Road, which angled in from Talaat Harb. Leila ordered mint-tobacco water pipes and they sipped at the cool, sweet smoke and drank tea and watched the passersby below. There were two tourist buses in front of the museum. Before the revolution, Leila told him, a quarter of the square would have been filled with buses, and the line to enter the museum would have snaked around the block. A few Japanese tourists wandered around taking photos.
Leila pointed out several undercover security personnel, who were there on top of the usual heavy police presence, and soon Quinn was able to spot them as well: they were bulky and wore sunglasses,
