The Korean Woman

by John Altman

  “You don’t need a five-thousand-dollar space for an elementary school fund-raiser.” Nina’s slate-gray Lexus pulled up, and the attendant stepped out. Nina handed him a folded-up bill. With her white linen sundress and a hank of red ribbon in her blond hair, she looked very young. “But Jackie has her heart set on this place,” she prattled on. “Prada and Phillip Lim both rented it, she said. She must have said it a thousand times. Prada and Phillip Lim, Prada and Phillip Lim.”

  Her sunglasses were Oliver Goldsmith, like Audrey Hepburn’s. Before climbing into the Lexus, she tipped them down onto the bridge of her nose. Above the lenses, her eyes looked sad, vaguely dreamy. “Want a ride?”

  Song had been expecting the offer. She moved her shoulders easily, then nodded.

  Heavy lumps sagged inside the canvas bag as she slipped into the passenger seat. A standard SIG Sauer magazine held ten rounds. Assuming the agent had kept his weapon fully loaded, seven remained.

  She must be ruthless.

  Nina took a long time readjusting her seat and all three mirrors. Pigeons cooed on a windowsill high above. Up the block, a car honked. The air held the smell of encroaching midday, of sunbaked tar heating up. Song fidgeted. She wanted to do it before she lost her nerve. She would force Nina to cross the Queensboro Bridge, then find some back lot in Long Island City. A dumpster or a loading dock, somewhere off the beaten path. The body would not be found for a few days at least.

  “Ready ready,” Nina said, and latched her seat belt.

  They turned east. Song, donning a blank half-smile, gazed out her window. They passed trees, construction scaffolding, a double-parked FedEx truck. The same sights, give or take, that she had seen every day for the past six years. Suffused now with new layers of meaning. These were ghosts from a life already finished.

  Nina switched on the radio. “Current traffic conditions for Manhattan including all local bridges and tunnels, weather, and more. That’s next. Now here’s Ten-Ten Wins news anchor Roger Young.” An orchestra swelled. “All news, all the time. This is Ten-Ten Wins. You give us twenty-two minutes; we’ll give you the world. Good morning. Seventy-one degrees at one o’clock, Sunday, June second. And here’s what’s happening. A stabbing spree in Lond—”

  Nina turned the sound down. “Traffic’s every ten minutes on these ones, right?”

  Song shrugged absently.

  “Call me crazy. But I think something like this should be old-fashioned.” It took Song a minute to realize that her friend was back on the penny social. “Poodle skirts and letter sweaters. Not chrome and black. Not fucking Miami Vice.”

  Nina had barely listened to Song’s murmured excuse (early Father’s Day shopping) for being downtown. She was far more interested in venting about Jackie McNamara. “And why today? I’ve got my hands full getting ready to go get the house in shape. It couldn’t wait a week?”

  The house in Southampton, she meant. The memory clicked into place like a key slipping into a lock. “You’re going out tomorrow?” Song asked.

  “Yup. First time each year you always find some nasty little surprise. Last year it was bats in the attic. The year before, a squirrel nest in the chimney. That’s why Tristan sends me up early. I’m the canary in the coal mine. Three years ago, there was a beehive in the wall. It was like something from The Exorcist, I swear to God. Ten thousand bees. The exterminator said he’d never seen anything like it. He said he’s never been scared on the job like that before.”

  They turned north onto East River Drive. Song considered her friend from the corner of her eye. Nina expected to return to her clean, safe apartment, to her waiting husband and child. She would take a catnap to sleep off the mimosas she’d had that morning—you could smell it on her breath—while Yasmin, the hired help, kept an eye on Morgan. In the morning, she would go to Southampton. She would spend the next week sleeping late, eating well, relaxing, “getting the house in shape.”

  Southampton would be far enough away for Song to lie low, but close enough to get back to the city on short notice when the rendezvous instructions came. But Nina was a problem. In this scenario, Nina was nothing but a potential liability.

  The thought made her chest contract. She closed her eyes. Black rings spread in ripples behind the lids. She remembered stepping into the black waters of the Tumen. She had moved forward, sending ripples through faint reflections of stars.

  Two nights without good sleep. Her mind flickered like a nickelodeon movie. From the Tumen to the Chinese farmer in his pickup. Then the man in Carhartts, bruising her thighs with his jabbing fingers. So that’s a hundred? Then to the anonymous van, the blinding flashlight, the building thunder of jet turbines. None of it had been real. Firing the gun across the roof of the Volvo. Snapping another shot into the man at her feet …

  How had they found her?

  They must have been watching Walsh. They had followed her home after she made contact.

  Or maybe they had been watching Song herself, for God knew how long.

  Maybe they had hacked the RGB server. Maybe every time she had accessed it, she was shining a spotlight on herself.

  Did it matter? The result was the same.

  Nina droned on: “… skinny ties and those scarves you see them selling in the garment district, with the beaded …”

  Song dreamed of an apartment. Her own but not her own. Wallpaper of blue moiré, furniture of antique walnut. Behind a dressing table, she found a secret door. As she pushed the dressing table aside, she heard Mark laughing somewhere nearby. Behind the door, a cramped hallway led to another apartment. The second apartment was filled with rat droppings and cobwebs. Unbeknownst to her, it had been there all along.

  She tried to rouse herself. She must wake up. She must act. She must be ruthless.

  Instead, she sank again, into black on black.

  “Mi.”

  The voice came from the far end of a dark corridor. Echoing. “Mi.”

  Usually when someone woke her, it was a child, Dex or Jia. But this was an adult voice. A woman.

  A hand touched her arm. Her eyes popped open.

  They were parked outside her building. She recognized the green awning. Phil, the weekend doorman, was standing just inside the lobby, peering truculently at the Times Sunday crossword.

  “You passed out.” Nina looked concerned. “You must be really exhausted.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Well … so here we are.”

  The engine idled. Song took a moment to come more fully awake. She wiped the heel of her hand beneath one eye. “Nina,” she said, “this is going to sound crazy.”

  Nina waited.

  “I need you to take me to Southampton.”

  Nina smiled apologetically. “We’re so booked until August, it’s crazy. But we’d love to have you guys as soon as—”

  “Now.”

  Song unzipped the bag. She wrapped her hand around the grip of the gun inside.

  Nina watched. Still smiling, but tentatively now.

  Song took out the gun and held it loosely atop the bag on her lap, pointing not directly at her friend, but toward the dashboard. She curled her finger through the trigger guard.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Neither noticed the Range Rover double-parking just ahead, emergency blinkers flashing on as two people, one using a cane, stepped out and walked toward the green awning.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  McConnell knocked on the apartment door. Shuffling feet, a turning lock, a rattling chain, and the door opened. A tall man in rumpled clothes filled the doorway. A pretty two-year-old girl with a halo of dark hair peeked out from behind one leg.

  McConnell held out his ID. “James McConnell. JCS, with the Pentagon.”

  The red-rimmed eyes looked at the identification, then at Dalia.

  “Mark Abrahams?” she asked.

>   He nodded.

  “May we come in?”

  Another moment. Then he nodded again and moved out of the doorway.

  “Daddy?” the two-year-old said.

  “It’s okay, honey.” He picked her up. A five-year-old boy wearing Star Wars pajamas emerged from an adjoining room and looked at the visitors with naked curiosity.

  The apartment was in disarray: scattered toys and books, socks, DVDs. Bowls of soggy cereal shared the dining room table with broken crayons. Dalia’s nose twitched. The little girl needed a diaper change.

  “Dex,” said the man, “why don’t you guys watch TV for a few minutes so I can talk to our guests?”

  “Who are they?” the boy asked.

  “Go watch TV with your sister.” Abrahams set the girl on the floor and pointed her toward the living room. “Watch TV, Jia.”

  “Watch TV!” She ran ahead, and her brother followed.

  Mark Abrahams led them past the kitchen, master bedroom, nursery, boy’s room, and into a study. Dalia felt strange seeing it all in person, in real colors.

  In the study, diplomas from NYU and Columbia Law hung on walls. A frame on a desk displayed the same picture they had found on the woman’s Facebook page: a happy pose before sun-flecked water. There was only one chair. The men left it for Dalia, who remained standing with her cane.

  A cartoon theme song started in the other room. Mark Abrahams listened for a moment, then turned to face his visitors. His body language was complex, both aggressive and defeated.

  McConnell took out his phone. “Surveillance footage from Lex and Eighty-Fifth, about eleven last night.”

  Abrahams accepted the device warily. For a long moment, he looked at McConnell. Then he pressed play on the screen.

  Dalia had watched the video again in the car. Shyam Radha had done an expert job. The final product would be the envy of any Hollywood 3-D animator or visual-effects artist.

  After the video had played, McConnell took the phone back. He replayed the footage, freezing on the clearest image of the young man’s bearded face, and reverse-pinched the frame to enlarge it. “Know him?”

  Abrahams looked pale. He shook his head.

  “His name is Yusuf Bashara. He drives a cab in Jersey City. He’s been on Homeland watchlists for the past two years. Ever since a new imam took over his mosque—a Wahhabi Saudi named Muhammad ash-Sheik.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we,” Dalia said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “Was that my wife? With this Yoosif character?”

  McConnell nodded.

  Abrahams closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes again. “This is surreal.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?” McConnell asked.

  “Last night.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time?”

  “I was at my office until around … I got back here around nine thirty. I remember because there were some men working in the hallway. I made a joke about working late.”

  “And then …”

  “I took a shower. We went to bed.”

  “Anything seem unusual?”

  “No.” Abrahams rubbed one hand across a day’s growth of stubble.

  “And then …” Again McConnell trailed off encouragingly.

  “This morning, she was gone.”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone. I asked the doorman when she left. He said she asked for the car around ten thirty.”

  Dalia frowned. “You were already asleep?”

  “I was exhausted.” A defensive note. “It was a stressful day.”

  “Did you hear a phone ring, or a text come in?”

  “No. But I don’t see who might’ve called or texted that would make her leave like that … without telling me.”

  A tactful pause. “She never mentioned a Yusuf Bashara?” Dalia asked.

  “No.”

  “Did she ever go to Jersey City?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  From the next room, a small child’s gleeful laughter.

  “Forgive me, McConnell said, “but I have to ask. Have there been problems in your marriage lately?”

  “There have not.”

  “Has your wife been behaving strangely?”

  “No. I … no.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “The answer is no.”

  Dalia asked, “Is it possible that your wife met Yusuf Bashara somewhere, without your knowing?”

  “Of course it’s possible. She has her own life.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Six years.”

  Dalia’s knee flared. After another moment’s hesitation, she lowered herself into the chair. “How did you meet?”

  “Through a mutual friend.”

  “Named?”

  “Eliza Crystal, a paralegal I used to work with.”

  “Has your wife ever expressed sympathy for Islamist causes?” McConnell asked.

  Abrahams snorted.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “She’s apolitical.”

  “Korean?” Dalia said.

  “She was born in Seoul. She’s American now.”

  “Family back home?”

  “No. Both her parents have passed. She’s an only child.”

  “Mr. Abrahams,” McConnell said, “two federal agents are in critical condition as a result of Yusuf Bashara’s actions last night. And your wife appears to be an accomplice. We’ve got a BOLO across the tristate area. You can imagine how cops deal with someone who’s hurt one of their own.”

  Abrahams looked at him heavily.

  “But she’s got no history,” McConnell continued. “No priors, no motive, no red flags. Maybe she’s been abducted. Or extorted. But we can’t figure out how, exactly, Bashara got to her or why she’s helping him.”

  “If she turns herself in, things will go better.” Dalia paused artfully. “For everyone.”

  She held her breath. If the man refused to play along, the entire visit would be for nothing. But Abrahams frowned, blinked slowly, and nodded.

  Southampton, NY

  Nina’s phone was ringing. Song went through her friend’s bag and found the phone. Rummaging a bit more, she found a nail file and used it to pry apart the casing. She removed the battery. Throughout, the gun remained on the seat, near her right thigh.

  Nina stared at the road. Scrubby trees lined three eastbound lanes and three westbound. Song smelled the first hint of seashore coming in through the air-conditioner vents.

  When they left the highway, traffic thinned to a trickle. They went through the outskirts of a small town, then into a residential neighborhood. Before long, slices of water glinted through trees between the houses. The road grew rougher, the houses less frequent, the glimpses of water longer.

  As they pulled up to a gate, Song spied a stretch of private beach through a screen of trees. In all the times Nina had described the house—usually during funny rants about the snooty neighbors—she had neglected to mention that it was right on the beach.

  They left the car together. Gulls wheeled and cawed. Song held the gun pointed loosely at the sandy ground as Nina programmed a code into a keypad.

  Small purple flowers speckled the unpaved driveway. It was rutted and potholed, but that was part of the rustic charm. So were the big, mossy oak tree that had fallen alongside the drive, and the crumbling rocky seawall.

  The house, wood frame with a fieldstone base, had a two-car garage, a small covered swimming pool, and a dock and boathouse. Parking outside the garage, Nina seemed oddly embarrassed. “We got such a deal on it, you wouldn’t believe. One of Tristan’s cousins had to unload it fast.”

>   As they left the car again, Song put weight on her left leg and winced. Nina asked too quickly, “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Song’s tone closed the subject. “What kind of security system?”

  “Alarm.”

  “No cameras?”

  “No cameras.”

  “Nina, don’t try anything.” She heard the beseeching note in her own voice. It betrayed weakness. Too late to take it back. But her friend said nothing.

  Outside the front door, they paused while Nina searched on her ring for the key. Inside the foyer, she programmed another code into a box. Song tensed. Maybe Nina could send a signal with the code. Maybe she had lied about cameras.

  Inside, everything was in its place: flip-flops lining a mat, ranks of cubbyholes filled with neatly rolled beach towels. From a sunken living room, a baby grand piano and antique grandfather clock gleamed. Song gestured with the gun, and Nina went in ahead of her. They walked a circuit of the first floor’s lustrous hardwood floors. A jar of seashells made a stylish centerpiece in the dining room. Dried starfish and seahorses had been mounted under glass on the walls. Song could feel Nina’s hand in the design.

  They climbed a half-spiral staircase. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight lanced through skylights. They passed a kid’s room, a bed piled with stuffed animals. Then a bathroom of brushed nickel and Calacatta marble. Song could put off the need to pee no longer. She made Nina stand just outside the open door as she used the toilet.

  A guest room. Then the master bedroom. Hepplewhite armchairs, chestnut night tables, cream love seat and matching wall-to-wall carpeting. The view of mint-green sea through the bay windows was pristine.

  Song absorbed the vista. Two gulls hovered like flat white M’s sketched on the sky. An American flag fluttered softly at the end of the dock. Dappled light moved on the water. Farther out was a floating lighthouse. Not really floating, of course. Affixed underwater, somehow, to a foundation. But some distance from the nearest shoreline. A line of buoys bobbed before the lighthouse. Orange diamonds indicated a hazard. She saw no other houses, no other boats, no other sign of life.

  The gun in her hand was pointed down at the carpeted floor. She could do it now. No one but the gulls would hear. But it would leave one hell of a mess. Maybe better to do it outside, on the beach. Spray the mess into the water and then …