The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  “I’m not liking this,” Knox says, again breaking the silence.

  “Act in the valley so you need not fear those who stand on the hill.” She speaks Mandarin, allowing Knox to appreciate the nuance of the proverb.

  “Did I miss something, or are we as prepared as can be expected?”

  “We shall find out,” Grace says with more dread and apprehension than confidence.

  “On convoy, when I felt like this, I ordered us to turn around. Or at least stop.”

  “The choice is yours.” She isn’t going to stop him. He can smell her fear.

  “We’re going to be all right.”

  “Is that for me, or are you thinking with your mouth?”

  On the phone, the slow-moving blue dot arrives at the red destination pin.

  “Shit,” Knox says.

  The location is a quaint tea shop, the sweet smells of chai and tobacco burnished into the nut-colored walls. In a city of Greek, Roman and Ottoman influence, it feels strangely and warmly British. Akram waits at the far end in front of a waterfall of beads that obscures a doorway to a private room that holds floor pillows and a large round table. The table is scarred with cigarette burns around its edge and stained interiorly by a thousand overlapping circles left by wet mugs.

  Akram is genial and relaxed. His shirt is white linen under a forest green vest of hand-tied knots, paired with black trousers. His mustache is bold, his cheeks covered in five o’clock shadow, his hair cropped. His bloodshot eyes contradict his congenial smile; he’s uncomfortable, exhausted and uptight.

  “I did not expect two guests,” he says, sitting across the large table from them. “Especially one so lovely as you, Miss Grace.”

  “You honor me,” Grace says, demurely.

  Akram’s eyes inform Knox that Grace’s presence is not appreciated.

  “You can understand, my friend,” Knox begins, “that in a deal with a sum so high as this, all precaution and due diligence must be conducted. I must ensure that there are no surprises.”

  Akram nods. “So,” he says, palms down on the table. “Tea?”

  His eyes flick toward the door, no doubt anticipating the fact that Knox has brought the Harmodius with him to be assayed, its authenticity confirmed. He has another think coming.

  An aproned man waits on the other side of the beaded doorway. Grace orders green chai; Knox, Assam with milk and sugar. They wait until the server is out of earshot.

  “As Mr. Knox’s accountant,” Grace begins confidently, “you can understand the need to determine the source of funding for a transaction such as this. It was imperative not only that a deposit be placed in escrow, as you have so kindly done, but that the source of the funding also be confirmed. A drop of water does not make a well.”

  Akram’s distrustful eyes dart between Grace and the silent Knox.

  “Furthermore,” Grace continues, “due to the sensitivity of such an exclusive exchange, both the source and the depth of the well comes under consideration.”

  “I assure you, the funds are there.”

  “Yes. And I can only hope you do not take this the wrong way, but again the source of those underlying assets is of keen interest to me and my client. In order to protect my client from possible malfeasance, a sting arranged by law enforcement, you understand.”

  “I do not appreciate the implication, Miss Grace.” Again, his basalt eyes flash at Knox. “Since when—?”

  She interrupts calmly. “A piece such as this . . . Authorities would go to great lengths to acquire it. Great lengths, indeed. No man, no country, for that matter, would be able to prevent such an operation. I am not accusing you of anything. I am merely paid to take precautions, so precautions I take.”

  Akram’s nostrils flare. He’s ready to get off the pillow and choke her.

  “Which is why I took the liberty . . .” Grace reaches into a portfolio and slides a spreadsheet across to Akram.

  The proprietor returns with the iron teapots and black iron demitasse cups, placing everything on the table just so, aiming the spouts and handles away. He genuflects and backs off through the beads. Pomp and circumstance. Akram must have tipped well for this room and for his privacy.

  Akram’s dark complexion and day’s growth cannot conceal the color that invades his cheeks. Grace recites from memory the amounts and dates of the cash of which he has taken delivery, the banks that facilitated those deliveries. In some cases, a matching wire transfer to the bank has been highlighted. Akram’s withering expression denotes his astonishment that she has obtained such information.

  “I will not put my client in harm’s way, Mr. Okle. The majority of the escrow’s funding is through wire and cash conversions originating in Iran.”

  “Inaccurate!” Akram’s adamancy is matched by the darkening of his complexion. Knox deduces it must have been his job to wash the wire transfers and make the deposits.

  Grace calmly slides several pieces of paper across. “You’ll notice the various withdrawals, ATM transactions and how the sums match with the resulting deposits and payments.”

  His eyes track and he goes pale. He’s a chameleon reacting to his background. Pale, like the color of paper.

  Grace keeps him off balance. “You are aware that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has placed into motion what it calls ‘an innovative initiative to support the Islamic Republic of Iran’ in protecting its cultural heritage and combating trafficking in cultural property?”

  Her steadiness and resolute determination to win the information from Akram is apparent in Grace’s steady voice and controlled motions. She is a professional driver so accustomed to high speed that she can take her eye off the track to calm her passenger.

  “It is a matter of procedure, nothing more. Mr. Knox has assured me he does not doubt the intention behind the exchange, but alas, I cannot take such luxuries.”

  Alas. Knox must suppress a grin. Where does she come up with this stuff? Knox strains and pours his tea, adds sugar and milk, and then a bit more sugar. Stirs. An elixir of the gods. But Akram has not touched his. Grace is ahead of both men.

  “The Iranian funds originate from the investment accounts of one Mashe Okle, your brother. These accounts received recent deposits. I am unable to verify the origin of all deposits. For this reason, I must speak to Mashe Okle and be provided records of these transactions.”

  “Impossible. Absurd!”

  “It is no problem—your being a proxy. The way of business, of course. But either I meet the buyer and vet his funds, or there is no sale. I will not have my client spending the rest of his days in a Turkish prison. How will I collect my retainer?”

  She smirks. She should copyright that half-grin, Knox thinks. Trademark it. As subtle as the Mona Lisa.

  “What prison? What the fuck?” Akram addresses Knox. “We have done business before.”

  “Not on this scale, we haven’t,” Knox replies stonily.

  “Out of the question.”

  “So be it,” Knox says, playing the only card left.

  “If you should change your mind.” Grace passes a business card across the table, steering it with a painted nail.

  Akram is nonplussed. For a moment, he hesitates, expecting Knox to raise the price to accommodate the risk involved. When it grows apparent that the two have every intention of leaving—never an easy thing to determine—Akram is up and following.

  “What do you expect?” He sounds desperate. “It is unreasonable.”

  Grace spins. Akram stops short. “It is the very definition of reason, Mr. Okle,” she says sotto voce. “Nothing more.” Now, so quietly it sounds more like a sigh, “There is no shortage of buyers, I assure you. Each with its own uncertainties and possible consequences. Mr. . . . my client,” she says, judging the space around her, “favored you because of your personal history and your industry.” />
  Knox says, “I’m sorry, Akram.”

  The man’s feet are cemented to the wood floor. He has no choice but to interpret this as gamesmanship. A ploy. A day will pass. Two. Knox will be back, for certain.

  “Out of the question!” Akram repeats loudly.

  Knox tips the proprietor, asks him to call them a cab. He and Grace wait on the sidewalk, not a word spoken between them.

  “Nine o’clock,” Grace says without looking at Knox. She isn’t referring to the time.

  “Yes.” Knox is impressed she picked up on a man who has been surveilling the meet. A wink from the rooftop of a building up the hill. Grace continues to surprise him.

  The taxi arrives, finally. Knox provides a destination he will change in a minute, but his true motive is to compare the face of the driver against that of the face on the driver’s ID and to evaluate the ID itself, making sure it does not look as if it’s been printed in the past ten minutes. It passes muster. Ali is their driver. Knox and Grace climb in.

  Grace has a compact out and is about to touch up her lips when she says, “Damn!” and pulls Knox forward with her as she lurches into a crouch, bending from the waist.

  Knox feels heat on the back of his head. It coincides with the thwap of what turns out to be a hole in the taxi’s rear window. For Knox, it’s the bee sting on his skull, the warmth on his neck and the dizziness that wins his attention. The dizziness turns out to be external, not internal. The taxi, aimed downhill, careens off a parked car and ricochets to the opposite side of the street, gaining speed all the while.

  It’s only as Knox notices the bullet hole through the Plexiglas barrier and another hole in the driver’s headrest that the red spray across the dash makes sense. This, because the bridge and right nostril of the driver’s nose is lying across the defroster vent. Ali is slumped against the wheel, his body shifting as the car jerks with each new collision. It’s a pinball ride. As if gravity isn’t enough to contend with, Ali’s dead right foot is leaden against the accelerator.

  Knox has it in an instant: Grace saved his life by yanking him down with her; a bullet grazed his scalp and took out the driver; the taxi is heading downhill at an ever-increasing pace, checked only by repeated collisions with other cars parked on opposite sides of the narrow street; Grace is white-knuckled, still hunched over. Each time Knox is about to clear his head, the car crashes again. Neither he nor Grace are seat-belted, and the Plexiglas barrier meant to secure the driver from his passengers proves effective. Knox tries to force his hand into the swiveling pass-through intended for payments. No way.

  “Shit,” he says.

  Heads are bleeders. His inch-long gash has soaked his hair and spread rivulets of red down his face and neck. Grace gets a fleeting look at him in the strobe light from the streetlamps, and her training fails her. She screams.

  Knox pounds on the barrier. The taxi is tearing down the hill at breakneck speed. Their necks. Their breaks. It flies through an intersection. The front wheels get air and Knox’s raw scalp impacts against the ceiling. He swears, loudly.

  Grace screams again. She reverses herself, turning so her back is to the floor. She kicks out at the rear window. The safety glass cracks and cubes with each hit but does not yield. Knox tries the same on the Plexiglas barrier, with the same results.

  He’s braced for one of the collisions to stop the taxi cold and smash them both into the barrier, but it’s as if the vehicle’s on a track at an amusement park ride. The collisions propel it forward in a rain of metal, which pries loose with a shrieking cry amid the clash of broken glass.

  The taxi bumps into a second intersection. A severe collision spins it like a top; they’ve been hit by another car. Grace is thrown into Knox; the two are pressed into the rear door—which pops open. Knox grabs for the unused seat belt and it plays out from its geared mechanism. He falls out of the car, Grace atop him, caught at last as the belt’s speed triggers it to latch. He’s a crewman for the America’s Cup, hiking out over the leeward hull. The taxi’s spinning slows almost gracefully. It skids to the precipice of the continuing hill, teetering there. Seconds before it stops completely, before Knox’s blurred vision can make sense of what the hell’s happening, the taxi dips over the edge and picks up speed.

  Backward.

  “Fuck!”

  Knox rocks forward, carrying Grace with him, driving them both into the backseat as the vehicle’s rear door collides and bends against the frame.

  Crying out at a fever pitch, she pulls away from him and returns to kicking at the rear window, this time with twice the power of her initial attempt.

  Knox feeds off the adrenaline, his mind clearing quickly. Her efforts are admirable, but it won’t do them any good to climb out of what is now the front of the moving vehicle. The taxi crashes left, right, left in quick succession. The hill is steeper on this stretch, and though the front-wheel drive is still active and sending out plumes of burning rubber, and Ali’s body has shifted and his weight is off the accelerator, it’s not enough to counter gravity—they are once again gaining speed in their descent.

  Knox reaches out and pulls mightily against the snapped door. He’s making progress when Grace grabs his shoulder: the taxi sideswipes a parked car, a collision that would have pancaked him. It removes the door completely.

  Survival is about timing now. Knox’s bloodied head is on a swivel. The back window is so destroyed he can’t see out of it. He has to judge the taxi’s erratic movement from one side of the street to the other.

  “You are not!” Grace hollers, seeing his intention in his eyes.

  “I am,” he says, making his move. He lurches out the open cavity, grabs the driver’s door handle, and pulls. The awkward angle allows it to open only inches. He dives back in with Grace as she shouts words he can’t make out. The taxi smashes into another parked car, accordioning the driver’s door. The jolt destabilizes Knox, but he kicks out and opens the crippled door; taking a two-handed hold on the frame, he swings out and around and feetfirst into the driver’s area, kicking Ali’s corpse over. The driver is seat-belted, so the faceless body only leans away.

  Knox throws himself into Ali’s lap, digs down between the dead man’s arm and rib cage, and sets the emergency brake. The taxi skids to a stop.

  For a moment: silence, intermingled with the mechanical sounds of the car settling and Knox’s heavy breathing. For a moment he expects the vehicle to come to life again, like Stephen King’s Christine. For a moment, his and Grace’s defense mechanisms are held in stasis as they inventory their injuries, seek to determine major from minor, life-threatening from unimportant.

  “I’m good,” Knox announces, looking like death warmed over.

  Grace slaps the barrier and nods, her eyes like those of a scared horse.

  Knox backs out and off the driver, having picked up some of the man’s blood to add to his own wounds. He’s testing his legs and joints as he stands. His wounded thigh hinders him. Grace slides out.

  Curious bystanders emerge from the doorways of the four-story apartment buildings on either side of the hill. Knox is less worried about his face being remembered than he is about being surrounded and contained. Crowds form fast in Istanbul. Thick crowds. Deep crowds. He and Grace can ill afford questioning by the police.

  He reaches for her hand. Grace places hers in his sticky palm; for a brief moment, she can’t take her eyes off the blood. They’re in shock, but Knox has been here more often than she and so he navigates his way to the sidewalk and starts them off downhill.

  At the first intersection, he turns them right. Several daring males follow, a matter of yards behind. Knox can’t find the translation. “What’s Turkish for ‘back’ and ‘off’?”

  Grace looks up at him, too disoriented to reply.

  Knox releases her hand, spins around and shouts a growl at their followers that so surprises Grace her knees give out
.

  The men turn and run.

  Knox supports her by the elbow, dragging her with him. His mind is beginning to return: he needs to clean up before they go much further. The wound will have to wait, but he’s losing blood, so at the least, compression is urgent. Grace needs a strong drink and a toilet. Transportation. A new location. Time to think.

  Something about the way she looks at him; he knows exactly what she’s thinking.

  “No,” he moans.

  She nods. “He’s our only chance.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  Sirens punctuate the night.

  “Very well.”

  Ever the geek, Grace snaps a screen shot of the phone’s map app that shows the blue dot representing their GPS location on the streets of Istanbul. She texts the image along with what could easily be mistaken for a failed attempt at a social media hashtag but is something else altogether, something worked out days ago.

  #+#

  —

  KNOX ASSUMES there will be an attempt made to confirm the kill. When only poor Ali is found in the vehicle, the shooter will try to complete the assignment. Given the distance the taxi traveled down the hill and depending on whether or not the shooter is on foot, they have anywhere from a few minutes’ head start to ten or more. But Grace is in no condition to outrun an executioner, and Knox cannot find a single spot on his body that is not throbbing with pain or bleeding.

  The sirens draw closer.

  “Damn.”

  She tells him, “We need to get you cleaned up if we are to have any chance of running under the radar.”

  Her use of the expression “under the radar” amuses him. It’s a non sequitur coming from her mouth. He cracks a smile and winces.

  Grace works her phone. “There is a hamam three blocks”—she looks in both directions to determine their orientation—“this way.” She points to the right. East, away from the wrecked taxi.

  “No thanks. No appetite,” he says.