The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  “On the contrary, it is quite dignified, which is why you do not recognize or understand it.”

  “I won’t dignify that with a comment. Look, we wait a day for Mashe and Akram to settle out the funds. You need to be ready by then. Thirty-six hours, max. Then we’re on a plane home.”

  “I may need more time. David’s plan is more . . . evolved. I am to challenge the sourcing of the funds, demand an explanation. This provides you—us—with the meet. The five minutes.”

  “Doesn’t mean I like it,” he grumbles. “So, we’ll make our move once the deposit and sourcing are confirmed. ‘Action breeds success.’”

  “Given that my work cannot commence until the deposit of the funds,” Grace says, “we are presented with ample opportunity to shoot more video tomorrow. We then download it to Xin for analysis. We meet here again tomorrow, sixteen hundred.”

  “You’re putting too much on this,” Knox says.

  “It is tangible. Actionable intelligence.” It will impress David. “We must know why this agent spent time here. Perhaps to meet his control. Neh? How pleasing would it be to identify not only this agent but also his control?”

  “You’ve grown your hair longer,” he says. “And changed perfumes. This is tangible.”

  She swallows her surprise, is able to contain her reaction.

  “Enough! It is past five,” she says. “We are done here.”

  19

  Maybe it’s the three beers or the bone-aching numbness of isolation, of time spent in his hotel. It may be the lively patter from the terrace below, the internal echo of the earlier call to prayer still reverberating through his body—whatever it is, Knox’s sense is that he’s missing out. His dedication to fixing Tommy up with private care for life rules out all else. Undermines him. He’s either chasing a deal on rattan chairs in Indonesia or pursuing black marketers in Amsterdam. He lives in airport lounges, discount hotels and the backs of cabs. When he gets a break like this—a four-star hotel in a picturesque location, gorgeous women planting their oversized lips on oversized wine goblets that chime when their nails ring against the glass—and he’s confined to his room, whether by dictum or common sense, he curses the likes of Dulwich and Primer—even Tommy and Grace—all those figures who in some way control him.

  It’s the beer, he decides. Sometimes it fills him with elevated joy. At other times, despair. He guessed wrong tonight.

  His big moment of the night comes when he wheels room service into the hall and heads to the hotel business center, an unpretentious glorified closet containing three Dell computers and an HP printer. He transmits the videos he and Grace have taken to Hong Kong as requested. But bored—again he blames the beer—he also uploads them onto YouTube without sound. Posts them as tourist videos. Calls one up on the computer to his left, the second on the computer in front of him. Uses Rewind and Play to closely synchronize the two so they play at roughly the same minute of the day. Requests a fourth beer from room service, letting them know his location. Turns off one of the monitors as the beer is delivered.

  With the opening of the door, he hears more activity from the lobby and the pulse of a Killers song. He pays for the beer. Lights up the dark monitor.

  He studies the two videos side by side in ten-second clips. Chuckles to himself when he identifies the same pigeon. He can envision a children’s picture book, The Pigeon Is the Spy. Checking his mirth, he slows his consumption of the cold beer.

  Person by person, nearly frame by frame, he compares faces, profiles, shoes, backpacks, head wraps and scarves. Smokers and nonsmokers. Right down to the make of cameras being used by the tourists. He keeps notes on a hotel pad using a hotel pen. The sight of the pigeon has him tracking dogs.

  A hotel guest enters and prints a boarding pass on the third machine. Nothing is said between the two. But Knox knows the guy’s name and frequent flyer number, the flight he’s on and the fact that he’s not checking bags.

  It’s the only interruption over a two-hour period. Knox shrinks the open windows when he takes a break to the washroom, returns to work refreshed. The cause of boredom isn’t sitting around; it’s lack of purpose. Energized by the puzzle of trying to spot similarities on the two screens, time passes quickly. The roughly one hour of video takes three hours to get through.

  “Forest for the trees” becomes a mantra for him when he catches himself going screen blind. Rewinding.

  When he spots the boy, he’s eager to call Grace and loop her in. But he knows the trap of such knee-jerk reactions; it’s better to finish the job and deliver a full list. Nearing midnight, he has all but settled on making the call. He’s reached the end of the two videos. Both are paused on their respective screens. Catching himself studying a woman’s backside, he runs a hand over his face: it’s bedtime.

  Frozen alongside the woman is a white Mercedes G-Wagen in traffic and he’s reminded fondly of a buying spree in Morocco where he suffered two flat tires and was stung by Buthus occitanus, a scorpion that caused a painful lump on his calf the size of a navel orange, an injury that nearly itched him to insanity.

  “Oh, shit.” Knox says it out loud, acutely aware of his own nervous perspiration. “Fucking idiot!” A little too loudly. Doesn’t want to set off alarm bells for a sedated night desk clerk. Doesn’t like talking to himself. Hits buttons to return the two videos to their respective starts. Does his best to resynch them, but is less concerned with it this time through.

  It’s all making sense now. Maybe the beer fog is lifting. Maybe it’s the stab of common sense, an ah-ha moment when the crystallization of thought coincides with reason. Maybe he’s overly tired and making less sense than he thinks. But at the moment, he’s Einstein. He’s being played by Russell Crowe or Vince Vaughn or Sullivan Stapleton. Tense music.

  He deletes the two YouTube videos. Erases the history in both browsers and closes them. He returns to his room, moving with an invigorated stride. He can’t wait to call Grace.

  “Are you kidding me?” He can hear Grace moving.

  “It’s early.”

  “In Delhi, maybe.”

  “As if you were asleep.”

  She doesn’t have a comeback.

  “There’s a kid in the video. School uniform. I caught the backpack. Black and white. Unusual. Most of ’em are black or another solid color. This thing looks like a panda.”

  “We are off the scent?” she asks, her voice more vibrant. “Not about Mashe or Akram, but one of their children? Or the child is to be used as leverage.”

  “It has to be factored in.”

  “Listen to you!”

  He can hear the mirth in her voice. He’s used a math reference. She will take credit for it. Grace wants to change him. He wants to tell her others have tried, but he enjoys the pursuit too much to stop her now.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he says. It slips out. It’s what his brain was thinking but not what he wanted to say.

  An unnerving silence settles between them. He’s seen her hit the vodka before. Not often, but hard. Her reaction throws up the guilt flag.

  “I’ve had four beers.” He tries to make light of it, to include her in the club. It isn’t working.

  “Factored into what?”

  “There’s more.”

  “We were going to send the videos to Xin. What happened to that?”

  “I did as you told me,” he said. That isn’t a sentence he’s used often in his life. Doesn’t sound like him. He looks around for anyone else, another speaker, but he’s all alone.

  “Traffic,” he says. “We were focused on people. Faces. Shoes. Repeat visitors. We have the kid—the student, the panda—and maybe he’s worth something, but . . . listen, I don’t expect this to make sense, it’s more of intuition . . . and thinking it is one thing, saying it, another, but we’re in the business of speculation, right? Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. I
watched the videos side by side, just now, trying to focus on nothing but the traffic—the cars, the trucks, motorcycles. Both lanes, okay? Forest for the trees,” he says, wondering if she’ll understand the reference. “And maybe there was . . . I mean there could have been . . . something I missed. Easily. But I tried to separate out the same vehicles, the same colors by antennas or how dirty they were, wheels, dings, stickers—anything to distinguish them. Okay? And sure, way too many Fiats, Opels and Renaults to know if I accounted for them all. It’s something your team back at the office can do better, or do again. But the one thing I did see, the one thing there was no mistaking, was a FedEx truck. White FedEx van in the near lane. North to south. If my timing’s right, and it may not be, it was maybe five minutes later the second day. But here’s the thing: in both videos, its blinker is on. Driver’s hitting the brake lights.”

  “Pulling over,” Grace says.

  “Could be.”

  He hears the blood in his head like a tsunami. It’s too late at night. He’s had too many beers. It was stupid to call her. He should have slept on it. You maintain your position of strength by keeping your trap shut until you know what the fuck you’re talking about. He knows this. Boy Who Cries Wolf, otherwise.

  “You are brilliant,” she says softly and as intimately as if pillow talk. It arouses him. His groin is pulsing. Warming. Hardening. He wants to switch it off. Feels somewhat sick to his stomach over it. Grace? Since when?

  “The text,” she says. “Hang on.”

  He listens. Another rarity. She’s up and moving. He can see her in his mind’s eye. Remembers what she looks like from that hour in the Amsterdam brothel. His friend in his pants is straining the seam of his jeans. No wonder they put rivets on the pockets.

  “The fourth time,” she says—breathlessly, which doesn’t help matters. “The last time the man was at this GPS fix he sent a fifteen-string number by text.”

  He doesn’t know whether to stroke his friend or ignore him. Checks that the shade is down. Works his belt loose.

  “You there?” she says. He can hear her nails clicking on plastic keys.

  “I’m here,” he says.

  “You sound out of breath.”

  “I get off on this stuff.”

  “Right. If I am boring you, I can call back.”

  “No!”

  More tapping. More images of Amsterdam. More confusion. What the hell?

  “Oh . . . my . . . God. . . .”

  She shouldn’t have said it. Not that way. His throat tightens. Eyes close.

  “FedEx international shipments? The numbers? Fifteen digits.”

  Say something more.

  “This is it!”

  Good girl.

  “This is exactly what we wanted.”

  So right.

  “That’s it! That’s the connection. John? . . . John?”

  Eventually, he speaks. “I do what I can.”

  “It may be nothing, but it adds up.”

  “Certainly does.”

  “Hong Kong can—No! What am I saying? Hold on.”

  It’s way past that. He’s headed for the sink, the phone pinched to his shoulder. Six, seven minutes pass.

  “Florence Nightingale,” she says. “The tracking number that was texted.”

  “Brushing my teeth. Speak up.”

  “Florence Nightingale Hospital. Sisli. Same district. It is on Abide-i Hürriyet Caddesi.”

  “Say that three times fast.”

  She misses the reference. Is about to ask him to explain.

  “Date?” he says.

  “Shipped overnight. Delivered the last day his GPS tagged him at this location.”

  “Origin?”

  “Switzerland. The company is BioLectrics.”

  He towels off. Puts the call on speakerphone while he Googles the company. Can hear her doing the same. It’s a race for him. Everything is a competition.

  “Bizarre,” he says.

  “Strange,” she replies.

  “Medical electronics? Why would these bozos care about the delivery record for a package containing medical electronics?”

  “It is too broad, too large a company. BioLectrics makes everything.” She reads, “Vascular intervention. Cardiac rhythmic management. Stents. Pumps. They run clinical trials. We need the invoice to know why this delivery is important. A product number. Product description.”

  “Is this making any sense to you?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “I got it wrong with the FedEx van?”

  “No.”

  “It’s got to be one or the other.”

  “We need more data. Do we copy David?”

  There it is: the question he knew she’d ask. He wants to call her a goody-goody. Teacher’s pet. Knows he resents her rising importance in the company, an ascendance he’s witnessed over the past two years. If there’s a sacrificial lamb on Primer’s altar, it’s him. She’s immune.

  “And look like we can’t figure this out ourselves?” He knows he’s appealing to her profound fear of appearing weak; he’s learned to trigger her paranoia as much as compliment her strengths, to feed her the information she needs—filtered, if necessary—to move her off of an idea and into his corner. If he had resisted her outright, she would have gotten her back up and been intractable.

  He’s learning, or so he convinces himself.

  20

  Grace chides Knox for his impatience but only because she is no stranger to its irritating and unrelenting hold. It is an unusually warm fall day; golden sunlight floods the vast sea of red terra-cotta roof tiles, spills through the impossibly narrow streets, the ancient buildings so closely packed that, from a distance, they appear as a warped red mass rising slowly to the north, a packed line interrupted by pale chimneys, satellite dishes, minarets, domes and laundry lines.

  On the apartment building’s rooftop, Grace occupies a patio chaise lounge. Her laptop is open as an iced tea glass sweats on the side table. Grace wears a collapsible hat; her mother has instilled in her a belief that her skin must never be exposed to the sun. She rechecks the ghost escrow account established by a Cayman lawyer’s office. No deposit has been made. She’s beginning to wonder if Akram Okle and his brother really intend to make a move for the Harmodius. If not, she and Knox will pack up and go home. For every two or three successful ops, there’s a failure. She has yet to be attached to one, dreads the day, but knows it will come.

  She sloshes some of the iced tea onto the terrace’s rough gray tile as a thought paralyzes her brain like a seizure. Returns the glass to the side table with her right hand; her left is already working the computer.

  Her vision dances between the expansive view, attempting to isolate a single large structure she knows is out there, and her computer’s screen, where Google maps is now open and determining her current location. Her right hand seeks out her iPhone, enters its passcode and texts a message to Knox.

  missed overlap

  Blames her racing heart on the tea. The map directs her eyes. She gets her bearings. Throws her legs off the chaise, moving to include the area 160 degrees from north.

  ?

  Knox is perplexed by her text.

  meet across from FNH—20 mins

  He texts:

  copy

  Grace changes into her only pair of running shoes, not as white as she hoped, a form-fitting Nike T she wears to work out, and a pair of black yoga pants. On each op, she carries five sets of fake glasses. Selects a geeky but stylish pair. Ties a brown scarf over her head, imitating the Muslim women—far more for coverage than looks.

  Has the op planned, but continues to hone it as Besim drives her across town. They pass handcarts carrying fruit, clothing and spices. Stall-sized shops manned by a merchant crouched on his haunches. The men smoke cigarettes while women toil. B
oys play soccer in the streets.

  Besim leaves her three blocks from her rendezvous. She must not attract attention, hopes the scarf hides her well.

  On her walk, she passes a three-story white colonial on two acres behind twelve-foot rock walls. She wonders about its history, its former residents, but her mind makes no attempts to supply a story. Grace yearns for imagination. She questions what she and Knox are doing so far from home. She finds Istanbul’s continual reminders of history and the passage of time daunting. Its confused cultural identity dispirits her. She longs for the simplicity of China.

  She wonders if this is contributing to her sense of vertigo. The concrete beneath her feet is undulating.

  Grace locates a uniform supply store and purchases a slightly oversized nurse’s uniform. Pulling the dress on over her clothes in the dressing room, she now wears the uniform out onto the street. She carries two different colored head scarfs stuffed into her purse—tricks of the trade. Hide and seek.

  Knox is enthroned at a café table, his legs stretched straight out, impossibly long as he semireclines. He’s well through a double espresso. Looks half asleep. Detroit Tigers baseball cap low over his eyes. That same windbreaker he always wears, with its many interior zippers concealing his worldly possessions.

  For a split second she wonders once again what the world looks and feels like from inside the head of John Knox. Dismisses it quickly; there are times she doubts he has a single thought in his head. She has no idea what that would feel like.

  He kicks back a chair for her.

  “Now you’re messing with my fantasies, Nurse Jackie,” he says, admiring her garb.

  On the facing street, seven-story office buildings trade places with apartments, the street-level retail space occupied by designer boutiques, camera shops, shoe stores and cellular carriers. It could as easily be a street in Moscow or Paris as Istanbul, the road divided, the island planted with scrawny immature trees. The city can go from fascinating to boring in a block.