The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox doesn’t feel safe. But he doesn’t jump at the sound of knocking. He shuts the laptop and eyeballs the peephole to the hall.

  “One second, please,” he says.

  He keys open the safe and leaves it ajar. He can have the gun in hand in a second, or less.

  He opens the room door, his foot blocking it from the inside. She appears to be alone. He admits her and locks the door, security bar and dead bolt.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, taking her by the forearm. “I’m going to need to search you and your purse.”

  Victoria Momani’s eyes blink slowly, giving her consent. Knox is gentle but thorough, sparing no contact—up between the legs, under and around her breasts from behind. He dumps her purse on the carpet and inspects the contents as he returns them one by one. He pulls the battery from her cell phone and drops them both into the bag.

  “Which agency do you work for?” he asks, still working her belongings. “You had me going with all the complaints. I bought that fair and square. A wonderfully executed diversion. Well done.”

  “You cannot be so ignorant.”

  “Who but a police officer or agent could find my hotel room in a city this size? And you did not follow me.”

  “What kind of import/exporter can track who’s following him?”

  He hands her back her purse, motions her to a chair. “The one thing you learn in my business is this: a simple robbery is rarely simple. At any given time, I might be carrying a coin or a stamp, a letter, a photograph worth a small fortune. One learns to protect his assets.”

  “Okay.”

  “You answered a question with a question,” he says. “So you’re trained at this.”

  “No. I am a woman.” She points to the table. Knox does not want her messing with his laptop. “You pulled out your key card when you paid the bill.”

  Knox sees his key card on the table next to the laptop. The card’s paper slipcase carries the hotel logo. He can’t believe he made such a freshman mistake.

  “A friend’s sister works on the hotel’s event staff. Amman is not such a big place. You . . . you stand out. It wasn’t hard. I was given five rooms to try. This was my third.”

  “That’s a lot of effort to go to for a drink.” He’s bent at the minibar.

  “White wine,” she says.

  He pours it into a water glass. “So?”

  “Your arrogance is insulting.”

  “Is it?”

  “Your ignorance as well.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Then you knew it’s my gallery? Brilliant?”

  Bile stings his throat. He works to mask his confusion with a wry smile. His mind grinds. When the shit flies in your face, you’d better be wearing goggles. He’s rarely forced to deal with bad luck; is something of an amateur at it.

  “I am called by my gallery manager. Told we flipped—I believe you call it—a piece. Buy and sell same day. She describes a Westerner who buys piece. Same man meets me for a drink not so long after. I have neighbors, Mr. Knox, neighbors who saw a big man, a Westerner, enter my apartment building with a heavy crate or box, and leave empty-handed.”

  He’s assembling his explanation as she continues.

  “Shortly thereafter, same box picked up by delivery service. Object is heavy, but what? A bomb? Explosives? Ammunition? Something sent to Akram, perhaps? With my name and return address on it, his ex-girlfriend, someone to take blame.”

  “Too much television.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Irate.

  “Far too dramatic, Victoria. Have you heard of value-added tax? Not nearly as sexy as bombs or ammunition, but I’m not an arms dealer. I’m in import/export. I just exported a pretty ugly piece of artwork I may find a market for outside of Amman. But if I pay the VAT and fail to recover it, I’m out what slim margin I might have to turn a profit. It shouldn’t take you too long to determine who might be interested in this artwork, eh? How else would I have gotten your contact information?”

  She’s visibly upset, and to his surprise, it’s not directed at him. Again, he’s a fraction late in realizing what’s at play.

  “You actually thought I was sending a mail bomb? Me?”

  She holds a finger to her lips, silencing him. She points to her hairband. The one place he failed to check. It could easily contain a microphone or GPS chip.

  Driven by her anger with Akram and Moshe Okle, her mistrust of Knox has resulted in a call to the police. Judging by her pallor—she’s an eerie green—she regrets that now.

  Knox grabs the laptop, stuffs it into his messenger bag along with its power cord. His Scottevest jacket’s many pockets contain everything he values. The gun carries his prints. Can’t have that. He retrieves the safe’s contents and stuffs them away in the jacket, vowing to be rid of the gun—possession of a handgun will land him in Jordanian prison. Only shotguns and rifles are allowed, and they are hell to obtain legally. He appreciated being able to defend his castle, but out on the streets, he’ll need to rely on his wits. An art dealer doesn’t carry. He never gives the few clothes and toiletries he leaves behind a second thought.

  He picks his hotel rooms carefully. Never takes a room above the third floor for a reason. He’s out on the private balcony in seconds.

  To her credit, Victoria Momani is up there, shouting as if Knox is with her. She’s comparing him to a parasite, attempting to keep the police engaged and at bay.

  Knox dangles from his balcony, swings and drops to the balcony below. He climbs over and hangs, facing too far a drop to the sidewalk. His only hope to save his legs is to aim for one of the rattan tables on the sidewalk terrace. He pushes off the wall and drops, knees bent to absorb the hit. Crashes dead center, rolls, clutching the bag. A few bruises. A stiff ankle. A crushed table. He hobbles off, staying close to the wall, working the rigid joint back to life.

  The rapid footfalls behind him push him faster as he turns the corner. Police or worse. They think him a bomber or an arms dealer. Lovely. The narrow streets twist and turn. If he weren’t being chased, it would be an interesting neighborhood to wander. But whoever’s back there knows them better than he.

  Testing the fitness of his pursuers, Knox turns to head uphill. Faces a dead end. Squeezes between two buildings ornately covered in ironwork. He vaults a low fence and finds himself in another narrow winding street.

  The hill is terraced with major streets, cul-de-sacs and tighter lanes jammed between them. Knox moves in bursts of speed, gaining ground quickly but preserving endurance. He arrives at another thoroughfare and crosses through heavy traffic. Manages to do so without drawing the peal of a car horn. On the opposite side he reenters the puzzle of steep streets cluttered with parked vehicles. Zippered into the pockets of the Scottevest are the tools necessary to jack a car, but he fears the traffic. It’s faster on foot.

  He smells spicy meat and fried bread and his mouth goes wet with saliva. Hears Jay Z and Justin Timberlake cursing through an open window. Could be Brooklyn.

  He pops out onto Khaled Ben Al Waleed and is crossing the wider avenue when a minivan skids to a stop on the skim of windblown sand. The side door slides open.

  “In here!” The driver is leaning well out of his seat. Knox can’t place the accent. It’s definitely not Jordanian. The driver rolls a balaclava down over his face.

  Knox pauses. He’s not getting into the van.

  “Now! Or you’re with GID.” General Intelligence Department. The accent is vaguely Eastern European. Possibly forced. Croatia? Bosnia?

  Knox’s efforts have done nothing to slow whoever’s coming up the hill; he knows only too well the training required.

  “Shit,” he mumbles as he climbs reluctantly into the tiny van. “Go!” he says.

  The van lingers.

  “Go!”

  Knox reaches to slide the door shut. A hand gra
bs hold from the other side—Knox assumes it belongs to the man following him, a man also wearing a balaclava. He shoves Knox out of his way as he boards. The van takes off. They don’t cuff him. Don’t speak.

  “What the fuck?” Knox says. There are no weapons showing. He can take the man in the balaclava if he has to.

  The flashing blue lights of police vehicles coil slowly up the hill. The van is well out ahead and currently in the clear; the police are searching for a man on foot. Knox puts it together: the one following him radioed how and where to intercept Knox. The why of it lingers. Dulwich is the easiest answer: Knox is being driven to Dulwich.

  He wants to connect these two to the man who followed him to the Internet café, but it’s too big a leap. The easy answer is never the right one. The Iranian agencies recruit men and women who look like Israelis; the Israelis recruit Palestinians. There’s no Who’s Who of black-ops agents. These guys could be on Dulwich’s payroll for all Knox knows.

  “Someone going to say something?” Knox says.

  The van obeys the modest speed limit as it climbs through a series of turns and then descends, slowing at an intersection.

  Knox grabs for the handle, slides open the door and rolls out. He’s on his feet and running.

  He hears, “Have it your way, asshole.” The vehicle pulls away.

  He assumes the second guy followed him out. Knox has forced their hand: they’re going to kill him.

  Or try to.

  He glances back to measure his lead.

  No one.

  Have it your way, asshole! What kind of an accent was that?

  He’s alone, suddenly wrapped in a swirling dust-dog of wind and sand.

  “What the fuck?” he shouts, spinning in a full circle to see who, if anyone, he missed. The night air holds only a red glow, remnants of the sandstorm. The haze crystalizes the millions of lights. White diamonds in a ruby haze. He bends over and grabs his knees, his heart racing out of control.

  13

  Grace has arranged herself an apartment rented by the week in a building suited for Westerners. The idiosyncrasy—that in a Middle Eastern nation she might be considered Western—is not lost on her. She and Besim made three stops: grocery store, pharmacy and liquor shop. She has everything from feminine products and mascara to Greek yogurt and vodka.

  The apartment is furnished and well appointed, with a kitchenette, nice linens, Wi-Fi and a flat-screen television with full satellite. It keeps her out of a hotel, allowing a lower profile.

  Already at work attempting to hack Mashe Okle’s investment accounts, she maintains an open videoconference with Xin in Rutherford Risk’s Data Sciences division, which operates 24/7/365. Her VPN connection has been pinged around the world, aliased and encrypted. Slipping into an investment server undetected is impossible, so once again she must cloak herself. The going is tedious. Data Services is advising her as to the exact time to make the hack. She waits, her finger hovering above the Return key.

  Her phone rings, the caller ID on her screen. She mutes the video and takes the call.

  “Ma’am.” She doesn’t like being addressed this way but didn’t have the heart to tell her driver. By arrangement, he remains parked outside, on call through midnight.

  “You have man friend maybe watching building?”

  “Explain, please, Besim.”

  “Man park twice. First time, west of building. Get out. Walk around building. Move car to see east side.”

  “How alert of you, Besim,” she says.

  “This is man you follow, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps.” She thanks him for his attention. Asks him to let her know if anything changes.

  Ending the cell call, she takes the videoconference off Mute. “Xin?”

  “Wei.” Yes. Thousands of miles away on an island in the South China Sea, Xin sounds as if he’s next to her.

  “You have my coordinates?”

  “Within one meter.”

  “How long for you to account for every cell phone turned on within one hundred . . . no, let’s say, fifty . . . meters of me?”

  “How many carriers?”

  “Enough to cover in the ninetieth percentile of coverage.”

  “Soonest? Fifteen minutes. Longest? An hour.”

  “Put someone on it, will you please?”

  “Copy.”

  A symbol indicates he’s muted his line. She does the same, taking note of the time. The minutes drag out. After five minutes, she’s reconnected as Xin gives her a countdown to the hack.

  She’s in. She celebrates the success by pouring herself warm vodka. Wishes she’d given it time to cool. Now, data-mining a major investment firm, she envisions herself as a salmon or sperm swimming upstream, seeking out a specific destination. It’s a journey. She knows she must be patient. As in a video game, there are dragons and demons lurking, traps set, awaiting a misstep on her part. Having extracted Mashe Okle’s password from the bank server, she uses it here, hoping he’s a man of convenience, and gains entrance to his investment portfolio.

  She laughs at the irony of the Iranian’s savings being heavily invested in the U.S. stock market. She’s feeling the vodka.

  He’s a wealthy man, but it’s not the kind of money she might have expected. The stocks and mutual funds favor scientific companies. She is annoyed by the worming thought that this doesn’t pass the sniff test for an arms dealer. Did Dulwich ever confirm that, or was it her assumption? She’s eager to speak with Knox; he knows Dulwich better. At the very least, he’ll have a keener sense of what’s at play. Knox is not one to take on in a game of cards.

  She clicks through to the portfolio’s history, increases the time sample and prints to a PDF file. On point, she flies through menus so quickly another’s eye would be unable to keep up. Multiple files are saved and archived in a matter of seconds for later analysis. This is not a time for window-shopping. She prides herself on the speed and agility with which she extracts every morsel of relevant data. When she logs out of Mashe’s account, she’s at forty-seven seconds. She closes the firm’s web page at forty-nine, giving her a total of under a minute. She celebrates by throwing her arms in the air, an Olympian sprinter at the tape.

  “Three hundred seventy-one.” It’s Xin from the video window in the corner of her screen.

  “Within fifty meters?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Of those, how many have called or been called by known law enforcement, domestic or foreign, in the past ten days?”

  “Published, or known to us?”

  “Known to us,” she says.

  “Back at you.” His line mutes. Xin loves this stuff as much as she does.

  She pours herself another drink, this one on the rocks. Warns herself to take it easy. She likes vodka a little too much. Has no remorse about drinking alone. She’s always alone. Even in a mixed group she feels isolated, believing her mind more facile than most, her personal history more complicated. The truth is, most people bore her.

  “No joy,” says Xin.

  The trouble with vodka: it skews her sense of time. Ten minutes have passed. She’s been surfing Mashe Okle’s investment files offline. The vodka level is halfway down the ice.

  “Calls and texts placed outside Turkey in past ten days,” she states.

  “Hang on. That shouldn’t take but a moment.”

  She finds the British accent on her fellow Chinese appealing. It’s either Xin or the vodka warming her.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Better,” she says. “We can work with that. You’ll need a phantom caller ID. Untraceable. Australia. UAE. Israel. UK. Washington. Maybe a rotation.”

  “Copy.”

  “I want you to ring each of the fifteen numbers in thirty-second intervals. Wrong number, but sell it. Maybe a child’s voice asking for mother.”

 
“Copy.”

  “Let me know when you’re ready. I’m here.” She mutes the video window. Considers another three fingers of vodka. Convinces herself it doesn’t negatively affect her thought process—if anything, it enhances it. Knows damn well it’s a lie. Pours more anyway.

  Yum.

  She calls Besim. “Can you see him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He can see you?”

  “Not probably. My seat low whole time. Resting. Who knows?”

  “I’m going to keep you on the phone. You need to tell me if he answers his phone. The moment he answers his phone. You un . . . derstand?” She slurs. Thinks nothing of it. Checks the glass. Half of what she poured is gone. She obviously shorted herself. Wouldn’t mind topping it off.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Stay on the line please.”

  Feeling incredibly good, she closes her eyes, celebrating the vodka’s ability to cleanse her fatigue, settle her racing mind and warm her limbs. What’s not to love? Opens her eyes again when Xin speaks.

  “You napping on me?”

  “Ready?”

  “Will call all fifteen, thirty seconds apart.”

  “Correct.”

  “Here we go.” Her head clears; she is instantly sober despite her efforts otherwise. This is not the first time this has happened; where the alcohol haze goes, she has no idea, but it’s undetectable. She has the cell phone to her ear. She watches Xin. He’s gotten a young woman in her early twenties to make the calls. The woman’s face glistens with a sheen of nervousness. Grace wants to caution her to do it right, but knows it would only add to the woman’s anxiety. She has to trust Xin. She chuckles to herself—his name, a common one, means “trust.”

  “Something amusing?” Xin asks.

  “You had to be there,” she says. She drains the remaining vodka. Trust is not found in her personal lexicon. She knows its absence is the source of much of her inner struggle.

  The calls go out. The young woman does an excellent voice, sounding about thirteen and troubled. Three calls. Five. Grace keeps eyeing the vodka bottle, knowing she’s over her efficacious limit but wanting more.