The Red Room (3 page)

“This is actionable.”

“Getting that piece of art from Amman to Istanbul is actionable. You’re not the one making the trip. I’m the one making that mistake.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

B
y the time Grace reestablishes herself in a Starbucks on Queen’s Road, the sidewalks are quieting down from the lunch rush. She finds a corner table.

The second of the two four-minute recordings made while she fended off her young thief shows a bank officer returning to work. Taking her seat at one of the unoccupied desks, the woman quickly logs on to the bank’s computer network. The beauty of high-def recordings and retina displays makes itself clear in the ease with which Grace is able to zoom in on the woman’s hands and observe the keystrokes in stop-motion.

She dares not attempt to use this woman’s ID and password while the woman is logged on, so Grace reconnects with the live security camera repeatedly. Forty minutes later, the bank officer logs off and leaves her desk. Grace pounces.

—

S
HE
MEETS
D
ULWICH
on the upper level of an eastbound double-decker tram twenty minutes later and details the encounter with the man in the cafeteria.

“Mashe Okle, our POI,” she says—person of interest—“is indeed paying the medical bills for one Delbar Melemet—female, seventy-three—in care at Istanbul’s Florence Nightingale Hospital. Mashe Okle’s income is bifurcated. His deposits from state-generated Iranian paychecks put him at the mid-to-high end for research academicians. Additional phantom income, the result of pension funds that don’t appear to come with any restrictions, bumps that to six figures in U.S. dollars. He appears to have no mortgage, no housing costs. Utilities, even a wireless bill, all these are a no-show.”

Dulwich’s head pivots back to front, watching the passengers come and go. Experience tells her that even when Dulwich appears distracted, as now, he’s listening closely.

Beside him Grace also admires the well-heeled mix of Europeans and Asians crowding the sidewalk, reveling in the cleanliness of the streets and the elegance of the architecture. Nonetheless, despite its reputation as the “London of Asia,” Hong Kong carries a whiff of malfeasance beneath its white-collar façade—
probably,
Grace thinks,
due to its pirate heritage
. She waits until the tram is moving again, no new passengers having sat down within hearing distance.

“There was a cash withdrawal from the account on the day following the woman’s hospitalization. Fifty million rials. That computes to the cost of a round-trip, first-class ticket, Tehran to Istanbul, with enough left over for living expenses for several days.”

“Good work.”

“An hour later, a first-class ticket is purchased with cash at an Emirates branch office in downtown Tehran under the name of Mashe Melemet.”

“Spell it.” Dulwich scribbles onto a busy piece of notepaper.

“Mashe Melemet, aka Mashe Okle, departs Monday,” she continues, glowing now like the star pupil in the first row. “With a two-hour layover in Dubai.”

“I may be able to pull a passport photo for the Melemet ID.” He tries to cover his excitement. She interprets, deciding he doesn’t have a photo of their mark; realizes she’s given him something he and, by inference, their client, need.

“Book yourself a flight arriving in Istanbul just ahead of his,” Dulwich says. “Arrange a driver and surveil Okle. Nothing stupid. You can pick him up again at the hospital, so you don’t need to stick to him.”

“Yes, sir.” Questions hang in the air. Grace wasn’t aware this would involve field ops. She’s thrilled. She’d love to get out of the office for good. Is she to work directly with Dulwich—no John Knox? She would view this as a promotion of sorts. She’s about to ask the obvious question when he subverts her.

“You’re Knox’s accountant, same as Shanghai,” he says. “Use your EU creds where necessary. They’ll hold up. But in terms of the mark, you’re there in the room to protect Knox from any kind of sting. You and I will need to know the players. You may not hear from me, but I want to hear from you.”

His mention of Knox is bittersweet. “Understood. If I may?”

“Go ahead.”

“Who protects John Knox from himself?”

Dulwich smiles, which doesn’t suit his face. Two of his front teeth are chipped.

“If the POI’s cover is broken,” Dulwich says, “it will be bad for him and everyone around him.”

“Do we extract at that point?”

“You’d have to get in line. A long line, I expect.”

“Behind whom?”

Dulwich smirks. “You and Knox make quite the pair. The point is . . . your takeaway is this: we need to know as much as we can about all the players. That’s how we protect the POI. It’s fluid. White water.”

He’s telling her that the events in Istanbul are moving dangerously fast. The mark, along with her and Knox, are all at risk. The information hit her as a welcome jolt. For the last few years, she has lived for such rushes.

“Look: you two are only there to make Knox’s deal. Anything and everything you do, Chu, has to make sense when viewed through that lens. Copy? You are Knox’s accountant, working to keep him clean in the deal. Nothing more. There’s no backstop. I don’t exist.”

She wants badly to ask about the deal. But Dulwich made it clear when he briefed her in the Red Room that this is a Need To Know op. She has never operated under such restrictions. She doesn’t know if Knox has or not, but she can guess he will not respond well to them.

In contrast, Grace can and does follow orders. She’s all about team play. A dozen questions crowd her thoughts. She says nothing.

A
mman, Jordan, is the color of bleached sand. The buildings, the roads, the clothing. The palm trees that attempt to interrupt the sameness of the bigger avenues look like candles on a sand-colored birthday cake.

Knox wears a sand-colored suit with a white shirt and no tie. Loafers without socks. His hair is moussed back. He wears wraparound Ray-Bans. A gold chain bracelet adorns his right wrist. None of this costume feels natural to him.

People who can take photos of a person over an eighteen-month period are people to steer clear of. Their employers are often identified by acronyms. If they can aim a camera, they can aim a rifle. And if they’re keeping an eye on Akram, on Saffron, his restaurant—and there’s no reason to think they are not—Knox will never know. The casual pedestrian won’t spot them; they won’t be holed up in a utility van across the street.

They will see him. He will not see them.

The loose disguise is an attempt to separate himself from his former self, to prevent an instant connect-the-dots moment on the part
of the surveillance team. The computers may make the face recognition for them later, but for now he’s just another patron of an Indian restaurant. That the surveillance team may have an asset or audio/video on the inside must be considered. But Knox embraces such moments. He’s as comfortable in his skin as he ever gets.

He fingers the twenty-dinar note in his pocket. On it, written in Arabic, is Akram’s name followed by Knox’s phone number.

Knox has memorized a line of Arabic. He practices it in a head chaotic with thought.

He orders
palak paneer
,
dahi gosht
and a beer from a subdued young woman with amazing skin and eyes like black olives.

He finds it impossible to immediately spot the plant, if he or she exists. Is troubled by the feeling of being watched, photographed, accounted for; he’d rather be the one doing the surveillance.

Dulwich had not confirmed or denied Mashe Okle’s connection to the weapons trade. Knox’s subsequent Internet searches returned only a holistic physician in Oceanside, New York. A Middle Eastern Mashe Okle does not exist. Knox is attempting to spend five minutes in a room with a nonentity, which has him wondering if Mashe is in fact real, or if Akram is the proxy for some other dark lord whom Dulwich cannot or will not divulge.

There’s a reason people on this side of the profession are called spooks. Knox prefers things clean and tidy. He already regrets taking this job. Spooks operate in Spookdom with their own rules, their own stakes. They are flag-wavers who can make toxic decisions because they’re weighing the good of an entire nation against an individual deed. They’re comfortable justifying anything.

Knox doesn’t want to be locked on that playground. But he gladly indulges in the adrenaline rush of sitting in an Indian restaurant, dressed as somebody else, waiting to make contact with a man he knows is likely out of the country. It’s Spooky behavior, and he
enjoys it—it’s this stab of hypocrisy that troubles him. Waffling between a sense of displacement and yet enjoying the party . . . it doesn’t sit well.

The meal is excellent. As Dulwich said, and Knox planned for, Akram is nowhere to be seen; he’s in Istanbul at his mother’s hospital bedside. The stop in Amman is what’s known as a back door. For Knox to arrive in Istanbul without suspicion, he must arrange for Akram to invite him, to allow the man to think their meeting is his idea, not Knox’s.

Knox gives himself time to finish the beer. Orders another. He’s a man in no hurry.

He asks after the toilet, despite the sign, despite being aware of the floor plan. He’s directed to the back.

He approaches the counter where the waitstaff drop off dishes. His hand finds the bill in his pocket. As he reaches the dish drop, he peers inside at a gaunt, forty-something male wearing a head wrap and a heavily stained apron.

“Do this for me, it is yours,” he tells the man, handing him a day’s wages.

The dishwasher takes the note, mutters something. Knox translates only: “is mine.”

Knox lingers long enough to make sure the man sees the writing on the note. The dishwasher’s expression turns more severe as his eyes bore into Knox.

“Go,” the man says sharply in English.

The twenty-dinar note disappears beneath the apron.

As Knox urinates into a porcelain hole in the floor, he wonders about the severity of the dishwasher’s expression. Was it the result of his attempting to reach the owner? Was it that Knox is a Westerner trying to reach the owner? Will the clandestine nature of his effort cause him to be followed as he leaves?

He hopes so. The beer is tingling his head. He’s sorely missed this part of the game.

—

T
HE
SANDSTORM
ARRIVES
AT
DUSK
. Knox witnesses the diminished light from his second-story room at the Canyon Boutique Hotel. The sky darkens dramatically in little time. Parting the privacy curtains, he’s presented with a golden shimmer in the air, like a wand has been waved over the city, covering it in pixie dust. It is too beautiful to turn away, yet the color is foreboding. At first Knox mistakes it for toxic smog, an inversion or other weather phenomenon having nothing to do with the desert discharging a hairball.

But over the next five minutes, the sky changes from gold to bronze, from bronze to copper. Strong wind whips rooftop Jordanian flags. Fine, powdery grit infiltrates the louvered window frame, enticing Knox to test the iron lever. Finding it not quite sealed, he lowers it fully into a locked position.

The grit continues to invade.

In the reflection off the glass, the door’s security peephole blinks, going dark. Someone is out there. Knox is already moving toward the door, thinking that without the sandstorm, without being drawn to the window, without the contrast between the dark sky and the well-lit space, he wouldn’t have seen the flicker suggesting someone is there, in the hallway. Knox doesn’t consider himself a fatalist, more an agnostic with inclinations that allow for a force or presence behind creation. Yet he acknowledges internally that he’s the beneficiary of a string of events—that he’s been offered an opportunity.

He doesn’t question Dulwich’s ability to place a handgun in his hotel room safe. The man has his end of the bargain to uphold, whether it’s documents, background cover stories or small arms. Knox keys in the four-digit combination. Inside is a Jordanian-made
9mm Viper in a SERPA CQC holster. Along with a hundred rounds of ammo is a CRKT folding tactical knife and a pick gun capable of picking 98 percent of all locks, dead bolts and nondigital car locks. Two prescription bottles containing antibiotics and pain medicine. Nine hundred dinars in small bills left in a brown A4 envelope.

Knox pockets the knife and cups the Viper, kneels as he trains the barrel into the wood of the door so he can shoot through it if required.

The glass peephole is now unblocked, but Knox is not about to put an eye to it, not about to announce himself or take a round in the head. Knox cannot be made small, but he can be made less big and lower. The door’s interior lever automatically unlocks the dead bolt. Crouching now, he yanks open the door.

The man on the other side is looking for someone at head height, lending Knox a split-second advantage. Knox comes to his feet spreading the man’s arms wide. He spins his visitor so the man’s throat slides into the crook of his own left elbow, grabs the right arm, wrenching it behind the man’s back with the barrel of the gun aimed into the base of the man’s skull. One twitch and they’ll be scraping gray matter off the ceiling.

He drags the choked man into his room and kicks the door shut. Total time in the hallway: four seconds. His victim has yet to register what’s happened. The man tries to speak, but can’t in the chokehold.

After thirty seconds without blood to his brain, the man slumps to the floor. Knox has already ID’ed him by holding him up to the room’s mirror: it’s the dishwasher from Saffron.

He ties the man’s ankles together with a terry-cloth robe belt. Secures his wrists with the laces from the man’s running shoes. Gags him with a washcloth. Slips the Viper into the small of his back—no need to advertise. Unfolds the knife, using its tip to coax open the
man’s thin wallet and clamshell cell phone. He memorizes the last four numbers called. He’ll need to write them down in the next few minutes; his memory isn’t what it once was.

The dishwasher regains consciousness with a kind of terror in his eyes that serves a purpose for Knox: the man is not used to this kind of treatment. He’s new at this. An amateur.

Things just keep getting better and better.

Knox can taste the sandstorm; feel the grit between his teeth. A look out the window confirms a premature nightfall; the city’s in the heart of a violent dust cloud. The condition can last for days. It can ground aircraft, stop taxis and buses from running. Be a real pain in the ass.

Knox speaks kindergartner Arabic, hoping his message gets through.

“You were sent?” Knox says. He moves his own head first in a nod, then shaking to indicate “no.” He repeats his question.

The man nods.

Knox has found no weapons on the man.

“To hurt me,” he states.

The man panics.

“To watch me.”

Another violent shake of the head.

“To warn me.”

Again.

“To tell me.”

The man nods.

Knox plucks the towel from the man’s mouth. The dishwasher speaks far too fast. Knox picks out: “Akram,” “speak,” but loses the rest. He allows the man time to calm down.

“Again,” Knox says.

This time he gets: “Akram speak you.”

Knox toys with the man’s phone with the knife.

“I call?”

The dishwasher shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“Where?”

“Machine café.” It takes Knox a moment to process “machine” as “computer.”

He glances back at the window, moving like the skin of a timpani drum as it’s buffeted by the wind.

“Shit,” Knox says.