What if he changed his clothes? I wondered. What if he shaved off his beard?
I ventured closer.
A line had begun to form at the gate, businessmen and government officials assembling for encampment in the First Class seats. Walking along the wall of windows, I circumvented a Turkish family occupying an entire aisle. The father, a humongous man, stood bellowing into his cell phone, his sons sprawled at his feet over a laptop, his wife and daughters in chic head scarves and big, inscrutable sunglasses, whispering among one another in their seats. Beyond them, the group of Italian students laughingly joked and flirted, while restive tourists gathered their bags, maneuvering toward the line.
Everything looked perfectly normal—or as normal as you could expect on a flight to Istanbul. I stepped into line myself and tried to blend in with the others. Safety in numbers. Another announcement came over the speaker and more people got into line. I glanced down the corridor. No beard, no Hugo Boss, no panting policemen hot on my trail. I was only minutes away now from finally escaping Rome.
The First Class passengers finished boarding, and the line continued slowly moving forward toward the gate. Outside the windows, awash in sunlight, the massive Turkish Airbus loomed. A wind-swept flower logo streaming across its silver hull struck me as a cosmic joke. It may have been a tulip, or possibly a lily, but to me it looked exactly like a lotus.
I almost laughed out loud. But just then I glanced down the corridor again, and the grin on my face went slack.
There was no mistaking the Iranian. Even a long way off. He was wearing the same dark suit and open-collared shirt I had seen him in at the Excelsior that morning. And no, he hadn’t bothered shaving off his beard. If he had any concerns about the police or security, it didn’t show at all in his manner. He was pushing through the crowd with a keen determination—not quite like a madman ravenous for murder, but intently, like a hungry lion tracking down its prey.
I left the line immediately and briskly walked away. Not that I had any idea where I was going. Foolishly, I had made no plan for what to do if he showed up. My only hope was that he hadn’t spotted me.
I nearly sprinted up the corridor, not daring to look back. If he knew what flight I was on, I figured it would take him only a minute to discover I was not at the gate. Then he would continue looking for me, or lie in wait until the plane departed to make sure I didn’t board it. All I had to do was to keep out of sight until finally he gave up and left.
But where could I hide?
The crowd in the corridor was thinning out; I had reached the end of the terminal. Two of the final gates were empty. I spun around, searching for someplace safe.
The Men’s Room. I crossed the hall and ducked inside.
A young Italian father was leading his little boy to the sink. Two other men stood at the urinals. Beyond them in the corner was a bucket and mop with a folding yellow janitor’s sign, and beside me, near the sinks, an overflowing trashcan and a diaper-changing table.
There was only one place to hide. I locked myself in a toilet stall.
To make my concealment convincing—and because I suddenly realized I actually had to pee—I lowered my pants, sat down, and after struggling for a minute to calm my nerves, finally relieved myself. Then I simply sat there, listening.
“Molto bene,” the father said, turning off the tap. The howl of a blowing hand dryer filled the lavatory. “Andiamo,” he called, and I heard the little boy’s feet scurry out the door.
The two other men followed suit at the sinks. Then each took a turn at the hand dryers, which continued to blow well after they left. I sat in silence then for what seemed like several minutes, wondering what the Iranian would do when he couldn’t find me at the gates.
The door burst open again and several men came in, including three chattering college students I assumed were with the group bound for Istanbul. One of them entered the stall beside me and stood before the toilet, continuing to converse with his unseen friends over the deafening plash of his piss. Finally, he lifted his sneaker to flush.
The boys left. The other men soon after followed them out, rolling their rumbling carry-ons across the grouted tiles. The Men’s Room door swung shut. I was left in an echoing silence.
A final boarding call for the flight to Istanbul came muffled over the transom. I imagined the Iranian standing near the gate, watching to see if I’d show—and the frustration he would feel when I didn’t.
A few stalls away, the sudden flush of a toilet startled me—I had assumed I was alone. The metal lock unlatched and the door creaked open, then loudly clattered shut. Water ran in a sink. The man crossed by and the hand blower howled.
I waited, listening for the sound of the door as he left.
The blow dryer stopped. The man had not gone out. Instead, he walked leisurely past my stall.
It sent a shudder through me.
24.
The Grip
I HEARD THE RATTLE of the metal bucket, then a clap as the man closed the folding janitor’s sign. He headed back toward the entrance with them.
Thank God—the janitor. I breathed a sigh of relief.
My watch read 1:39 P.M. In eleven minutes, the Turkish Airbus would pull away from the gate. Vanitar Azad would leave to look for me elsewhere. I could finally emerge and find another way out of Rome.
The Men’s Room door opened and closed, swallowing a rush of noise from the hall. In the silence that ensued, I assumed the janitor had left. His approaching footsteps alarmed me. What had he done? Put out the sign?
He walked directly to my stall and stood before the door. “Excuse me, please,” he said in accented English. “Be so kind. The bathroom must be cleaned, Signore.”
A sudden rush of awareness overcame me. My eyes were locked on the sagging cuffs of the man’s damp dress pants, breaking over highly polished, black leather shoes.
“I’ll…be out in a minute,” I uttered. My voice choked with fear.
The Iranian didn’t move. He abandoned the feigned politeness. “You must come out now,” he said.
My mouth opened, as if to reply, but couldn’t seem to form any words. My jaw began to quiver. The fear bottled up in my gut was spilling out into my body. I sat frozen on the toilet seat, staring at the door in front of me. The harrowing rush of awareness narrowed my focus into a beam. The enameled door had been nervously scratched, leaving scars like the claw marks of an animal. The box I had hidden in was nothing but a trap. All I could think of was the Damascene dagger. And all that kept me from it was this flimsy metal door.
“Open,” he demanded.
Time stopped. My thoughts became oddly detached and distinct, like another man’s voice coolly whispering in my head. Of course I don’t have my dagger, you fool—how could I have passed through security? But I am a trained assassin. I will take your life using my hands. That’s why I put out the janitor’s sign—to make sure we won’t be interrupted. Your murder is going to take time.
Azad shouted something I couldn’t understand. A coiled strap dropped to the floor. At the top of the door, his fingers appeared. He shook the door violently, rattling the lock.
The strap lay coiled on the floor like a snake.
I was about to be strangled to death.
The stark realization paralyzed me. I found it impossible to breathe.
The ‘grip’ is what Phoebe’s father called it. The brain freeze of fear. The panic that takes hold of the mind as the body prepares to defend itself. I felt myself succumbing to it, reflexively giving way, unable to keep control of my will, or even my bodily functions. Energy was moving to where it was needed. Blood roared out of my pounding heart to the muscles of my abdomen and limbs. The stimulated muscles started trembling. A sick feeling of queasiness spiraled up my belly—the immune system engaging. The digestive system—useless in a fight—was rapidly shutting down. Salivation stopped; my mouth went dry. The contents of my stomach suddenly surged up into my throat.
I vomited.
The half-digested somosas spewed out over the tile floor and splattered the Iranian’s shoes.
He stepped back quickly and cursed.
His foot flew up in a sudden rage and slammed the metal door. The impact shook the row of stalls. Again he shouted something. Then he took a step back and prepared to kick again.
I could see the brace that held the lock had loosened in the door. Another battering would break it. He would burst into my cell.
“Vanitar!” I shouted.
The man hesitated.
At that moment the Men’s Room door banged open. In walked a pair of clicking high heels.
The assassin spouted angrily, “Lady, is for men—”
The heels marched up to him. An odd, electronic bzzzzzp sound suddenly cut him short.
The Iranian collapsed. His knees buckled and he dropped to the floor, smacking face-down in the vomit.
The heels turned toward me, pausing for a moment. Cherry red leather topped with tiny black bows. Tanned, slender ankles. The heels quickly pivoted and strode off toward the exit. The door swung open and shut.
Again the room fell into silence. The assassin lay utterly still.
The fear that had rendered me so wretchedly helpless finally released its grip. Nauseous and numb, I buckled my pants, grabbed my pack and opened the loosened lock.
Sprawled on the floor outside the stall, Vanitar Azad lay prone with his head turned slightly, exposing a portion of his bearded face. Blood flowed into the puddle of puke. His eye was closed, his mouth partly open. I noticed a thin, pink scar above his lip. He didn’t appear to be breathing.
I carefully stepped over him, avoiding the vomit and blood. For a moment I stared down at his body, wondering if he truly was dead. There wasn’t the slightest flicker of life. In the side pocket of his suit jacket, I spotted his boarding pass. I reached down and slipped it out.
Flight 33, Istanbul. Passenger: Vanitar Azad.
The door to the Men’s Room opened. I turned toward it, startled. An elderly little munchkin in a threadbare suit carried in a beat-up suitcase. He looked up and suddenly stopped in his tracks when he saw me standing over the body.
For a moment he simply stood there, grimacing slightly at the smell in the room. His whiskered, weathered face looked Turkish. He squinted at me and said something I didn’t understand.
I gave him a knowing grin, and tilting back my head, made a drinking gesture with my thumb and fist. “Whiskey,” I said.
It may have been the only English word he understood. He shrugged with the customary frown of the worldly: What can you do? The man trudged past me toward the urinals.
I hurried outside. Quickly surveying the various women in the hall, I searched their faces for some sign of recognition, and checked their feet for the black-bowed shoes. But the woman who had saved me was nowhere in sight. Whoever she was, she was gone.
The flight to Istanbul was set to leave in seven minutes. I tore up the assassin’s boarding pass and dropped it into the trash, then raced back toward the gate.
25.
Gods and Beasts
IT WASN’T UNTIL THE AIRBUS lifted off the ground that I finally began to breathe again like a normal human being. Relief unleashed a mountain of fatigue. From the moment of the break-in the night before, I’d been running on adrenalin and hounded by fear. More than once I’d come within an inch of being murdered. Finally, in the Men’s Room, the tension turned into panic and I froze.
Withered, really. And a woman in heels had saved me?
I tried to make sense of it, but the fog of exhaustion befuddled me. It’s the lack of sleep, I decided. I’d gone nearly thirty hours without rest. As I settled down now in my aisle seat—beside a Turkish teenager lost in the tin din of his iPod—I quickly disappeared into an obliterating sleep.
An hour or so later I was awakened by the boy. He had to get by me to make his way to the bathroom. I stood up groggily and allowed him to pass. Across and up one row sat the boy’s loud-talking father—the Turkish tycoon I had seen earlier at the gate. The remainder of his family sitting alongside him took up the entire row.
I stood there in the aisle for a moment, eyeing the overhead bin. As drowsy as I was, I couldn’t restrain my curiosity any longer. I unlocked the bin, reached into my backpack, and took out the old text and the leather sketchbook Maya had hidden in her suitcase.
The first I examined was the sketchbook. It was about an inch thick, maybe 100 pages. Dan had filled it with pen and ink drawings of various Eastern religious subjects: enlightened bodhisattvas, horrifying demons, multi-armed deities, meditating monks. The figures were set amid landscape features like mountain ranges and winding rivers, with caves, villages, temples and the like. The sketches appeared to be freely drawn copies of original Asian paintings. Though each was unique, a certain similarity of style suggested the work of a single artist. I couldn’t say for sure: Dan had left no accompanying captions or notes of explanation.
Many of the pictures were startling. One human demon had a reptilian head, with terrifying jagged teeth and claws. Another, with bulging eyes, wore a hideous chain of human skulls. More docile deities, both males and females, airily reposed on puffy white clouds, while cross-legged yogis, firmly rooted on the ground, exuded a benevolent serenity.
One yogi sat with a woman facing him on his lap, the two of them locked in a sexual embrace.
I noticed several holy men sat on thrones of lotus petals, and toward the middle of the book I came across a drawing of the Buddha himself with a lotus. He sat cross-legged in a large, empty space, holding the flower in his upraised hand. The image looked simpler, more iconic than the rest, and felt somehow central to the book. But as much as I wanted to make something of it, I had to remind myself: The lotus flower is a basic motif of Hindu and Buddhist religious art. In India, I had seen it everywhere—in paintings, sculptures, temple decorations, incense holders and oil lamps. It was easily as common as the cross was to Christians.
The boy with the earphones appeared beside me, waiting to retake his seat. I got up to let him past.
When I sat down again I took up the tall, narrow book with the frayed, green cloth cover. Gold Sanskrit lettering crossed the cover lengthwise. Inside, the writing on the pages was the same, as if the old book had been printed sideways.
On a number of pages, Dan had inscribed lightly in pencil various words and phrases, presumably bits of translation: Exhilarating. Invigorating. Swifter than thought. The pure. The purifier. Destroyer of enemies. Chief of the gods. Terrible as a lion. Several fully translated lines were jarringly odd and obscure: The dripping juice brought by the falcon has increased in the waters, or When you penetrate inside, you will know no limits, and you will avert the wrath of the gods. Other lines suggested a vision of heaven: Where there are joys and pleasures, gladness and delight, where the desires of desire are fulfilled, there make me immortal. Still more lines, equally evocative, exhibited a martial character: Let loose with a shout by ceremony, as a horse is let loose by the finger in a battle of chariots.
The text seemed primarily concerned with invoking a powerful god named Soma. Soma was apparently the god of the moon, and connected somehow with a nectar or drink. He appeared to be an oddly paradoxical deity, representing both happiness and war. Here’s one of the longer passages, crammed into the margin in Dan’s tiny script:
Flow forth, O conqueror of thousands, who conquers and is not conquered, and attacking slays his foes. Pure-dropping, bounteous nectar, welcome the gods at our rite, overcome the demons and make us happy.
Another passage continued the militaristic tone:
Flow thou who hast a host of warriors, who has all the heroes, full of strength, victorious, the giver of riches, sharp-weaponed, rapid bowman, irresistible in battle, overthrowing the enemy arrayed in hostile armies.
The poetry, however obscure, was curiously stimulating. Descriptions of the heavenly utopia enchanted, while warlike passages quickened the blood. It was clear you would
want to have this god Soma on your side, but I found no mention of the lotus plant, and the text offered no clue as to the whereabouts of Dan.
I continued pouring over the sketchbook and the text until drowsiness overcame me again and I drifted back into sleep. The poetry and pictures comingled in my dreams, along with the loud voice of the dad across the aisle, until finally I conflated the talkative Turk with the taciturn Buddha from the sketchbook. The Buddha held out the lotus flower, imploring me to take it. “Please. Sir. Please.”
I awoke to find the Turk proffering what looked like a half-eaten Danish, wanting to share it with his son. After passing it between them, I went promptly back to sleep. An hour later I woke up again as the plane touched down in Istanbul. My fog of exhaustion had lifted, leaving a single thought perfectly clear.
I needed to call the DSS agent, Harry Grant, at once.
26.
Istanbul
THE FLIGHT HAD ARRIVED EARLY but we were forced to wait for a gate. By the time we finally deplaned, I had less than thirty minutes to make my connecting flight to Baku.
I hurried through the terminal, throwing anxious glances back to see if I was being followed. If the Iranians had found my name on the flight list, they had to be aware of the connection, and I thought it very possible they might try to intercept me. Istanbul, after all, was the gateway to the East. They might well have an agent in the city.
I prayed they hadn’t yet discovered what went down at the airport in Rome.
As it turned out, the departure gate was not too far away; I reached it as the line was just forming. My cell phone had been smashed by the assassin in Rome. With a few minutes to spare, I stopped at a credit card phone kiosk and made a call to Harry Grant.
This time I got him.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Jack. Where are you?”
I didn’t want to say. “Is Oriana with you?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“I’d like to know why she followed me to the airport in Rome.”
The Assassin Lotus Page 10