The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  Akram’s eyes grow distant. “You will please to tell her I love her.”

  38

  The text of a thumbs-up spurs Grace on. Time is more critical than ever—if they are to understand how the Israeli intercept of the pacemakers fits into Nawriz Melemet’s purchase of the Harmodius, it comes down to the next few hours. Knox works to avoid frightening her; sees her as a neophyte in the field. The great unspoken that lies between them is that the bullet that killed their driver, Ali, was meant for her. Her meddling in Mashe Okle’s identity resulted in her abduction. It was nearly immediately followed with an attempt to kill. Although she considers valid Knox’s theory of a possible exchange between the heavily sanctioned Iran and one of its trading partners, she can’t dismiss her own role. There could have been a trip wire in the FedEx server that sourced the shipment of the pacemakers; a mistake could have been made that alerted others to her probing. Working off the axiom “knowledge is power,” Grace is controlled by her training: the more she knows about the Israeli switching of the pacemakers, the more negotiating power she and Knox possess; the more possible it may be for them to talk, instead of fight, their way out of this.

  They won’t win a fight against Mossad.

  The nurse is taking her sweet time, leaving Grace to wonder if she’s been set up, if the delay is a stall tactic to allow hospital security time to reach them. The wall clock appears to be part of the conspiracy. Grace makes her move into a hallway that accesses examination rooms. She steels herself, prepares for a rebuke or reprimand. But within a few paces, she’s just another patient among many keeping appointments.

  As she reaches the nursing station, she identifies the woman she talked to by the woman’s wide-eyed response. The tell is the woman’s glance to the phone, as if it will save her. That is when Grace knows security has indeed been called.

  “I need that device, now!” Grace says sharply. “This is a matter of international security, of the utmost importance.” She draws the attention of two other nurses. “Your call to hospital security will only delay the inevitable and put you in a situation with which you will wish you had never involved yourself.” Her guess proves accurate. Mention of hospital security devastates the nurse.

  “If I am not out of here before they arrive, if I am delayed because of actions you have taken . . . I hesitate to think of the repercussions for you.”

  “When I spoke to the doctor—”

  “Do you think a doctor has any say in the United Nations’ efforts to police manufacturing standards? Do you think it is in the best interests of your doctor to install defective devices? I will speak with this doctor now.” Grace appreciates the resulting terror that crosses the nurse’s face. “That, or you will give me one of the pacemakers from the lot I specified. Your choice.”

  She allows the woman time to consider her options. “I am happy to await security. You will be less so.”

  The nurse reaches into her pocket—she had the pacemaker all along. It is sealed in hard plastic against a thick paper backing and rattles like a child’s toy as she passes it with a trembling hand.

  Grace accepts the package with a sniff. “An exit, other than reception?” She turns in that direction at the moment a tall man in sport coat, dark slacks and black athletic shoes arrives at the end of the short hallway. He carries an intensity that immediately identifies him to Grace.

  The nurse’s eyes flick, perhaps unintentionally, to her right.

  Grace is off in that direction before anything more is said. Turns down a hallway, picking up her pace. Hears voices back at the nurse’s station, including a man’s. She reaches a T, looks right, then left. Spots a green EXIT sign with an arrow left.

  It’s a maze. She’s running now, painfully aware that the security man can be but a matter of paces behind. By running, she has tipped her hand, a mistake she now regrets. The starting pistol has been fired. This man, double her size and weight, is certain to match or exceed her speed. He has full knowledge of the building. She has only her training, her wits.

  Grace punches through the exit and into an echoing stairwell, her hand already fishing lipstick out of her purse. She tosses the lipstick down the stairs straight ahead and then bounds up the flight to her left, two treads at a time; dives onto and across the landing as she hears the door smack open behind her. She lies prostrate on the cool concrete. She will lose precious seconds trying to get to her feet if he guesses correctly and follows her up.

  But the descending sound of the rolling lipstick carries him down. His shoes clap on the landing as he leaps and turns the corner. Grace nimbly finds her footing and scurries silently up the stairs. A volley of footfalls below stops abruptly as the security man suspends his descent to listen, perhaps to look down the narrow gap between the rails. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he prolongs the silence. They are a landing apart, unmoving.

  The moment she hears him speak into his radio, calling for backup or video assistance, she moves. She’s outnumbered and the technology she so loves is now working against her. She has no choice but to move, as silently and quickly as possible. She’s aware now of unseen cameras bearing down on her, of security personnel rallying to intercept her. Of Knox needing her at the university. Even if she’s able to talk herself out of the situation—however unlikely—she can’t afford the delay.

  She’s up the stairs as lightly as her feet will carry her. Perhaps not lightly enough. The security man has reversed, ascending as well.

  Reaching the fourth floor, Grace takes the door. Faced with another long hallway, she balks. This is the OB/GYN wing, judging by the presence of stirrups on the exam tables. She backs up to the first exam room, closes herself in and climbs onto the table fully clothed. She throws her feet into the stirrups and pulls a linen over her, hiding her face behind a tent formed by her bent knees.

  She hears footfalls stop in the corridor. He’s measured the empty hallway, perhaps. Believes he should have caught sight of her.

  The door is thrown open. A pause. Grace sees the problem now: if he looks into the mirror above the sink, the angle will allow him to see her. She turns her face away.

  The door shuts without a word. She exhales.

  39

  Akram makes a phone call and less than five minutes later there’s a knock on the door of the safe house, and Knox knows the Iranian guards were never far away. He has no qualms about seeking help; for the next few hours he’s in league with Akram, Mashe and the Iranians. There’s no way to hide it.

  He must consider the possibility that Akram has been followed to their meet, and that the Iranians would not have picked up on it if it was the Israelis trailing him.

  “This is going to go a little differently,” Knox says to one of the two men. “You understand?”

  The man grunts his assent. But no love lost.

  Knox spots the white van they’re walking him toward and his world spins—Grace was abducted in a white van.

  He says, “You’re going to slide open the side door for me to go inside. You’ll close it all up, wait twenty seconds. You understand?”

  “One . . . two . . .” An accent so thick Knox has to interpret.

  “Correct. To twenty. Then drive off.”

  The guard furrows his brow, having no idea what Knox has planned.

  “Exactly as I’ve said. You understand?” He nearly adds, “You didn’t think I was actually going to get into that van, did you?”

  Moments later the guard opens the van’s side door. Knox steps in front of the man and drops to the curb like he’s been Tasered. He slips between the curb and the undercarriage and is gone from sight by the time the perplexed guard steps into the van. Knox belly-crawls beneath the rear axle and differential then scurries beneath the truck parked closely behind the van.

  . . . twenty . . . The van pulls away from the curb and into traffic.

  Knox has to keep an eye on his
wristwatch because he’s lost all sense of time. At ninety seconds he crawls back out and takes to the sidewalk, brushing himself off. He feels clever and proud and wishes Grace had been there to witness it, wondering a moment later where such thoughts come from and what kind of hold he’s allowed her to have on him. He’s not in the habit of caring about others’ opinions, wants to be liked but not at too high an expense. Tries to clear his head, wondering when he last ate.

  He keeps the Tigers cap pulled down low. Still, he can’t stop himself from remembering Ali’s head blowing open as it slumps against the wheel. Knox moves quickly and somewhat erratically, hoping to make himself a difficult target. Wants off the street.

  The neighborhood he’s in is not on the Star Tour maps. His height and coloring call out for attention.

  He tightropes the curb to stay away from street-side doorways. Any one of them could suck him in and swallow him like Jonah into the whale. He keeps alert for new vehicles while measuring the nerves of those within reach of him. Body language and posture can telegraph intent. He pays particular attention to anyone wearing earbuds. Wishes he had backup. Curses Dulwich. Wonders if he should have risked a ride in the white van.

  The woman approaching is low to the ground, thin and proves herself deceptively fast. She’s in her twenties, a loop of silver pierced through her eyebrow. Something slips into her hand from up the long sleeve of her flouncy top, like a derringer in an old Western. Knox figures it out only after the rebar is swinging for his shins. She connects there like a polo player. She was aiming for his kneecaps, but Knox leaps instinctively, straight up. Even deflected, the impact stings—cracks—he returns to earth collapsing to the sidewalk.

  Loses his vision to the pain—a gooey purple orb swims before him. Sensing a second and perhaps final blow coming, he attacks blindly, working off the sound of her sandals and the adrenaline of threat.

  He dislocates her knee with an elbow butt. She buckles and comes down on him like a felled tree. His eyesight returning, he tears the loop from her eyebrow, winning an animal cry. He bucks her off.

  An ambulance races up the street.

  Ingenious. Creative. Expensive.

  He rises onto his knees—nothing can hurt this much—and breaks her ribs with a fist blow; makes peeing blood a part of her future and dislocates her jaw to cut the chatter. Men rush to attack Knox for assaulting a woman.

  Knox grabs the rebar and defends his turf as he hobbles into the street. The ambulance pulls up. Knox drives the butt end of the rebar into the grille and through the radiator, releasing a torrent of steaming green water that falls hissing to the street. Hauls the rebar up, cracks the windshield and catches the legs of the imposter emerging from the front passenger seat. Tit for tat. Takes two of the most painful steps of his life and greets a motorcyclist trying to sneak down the side of the stopped traffic; sends the man airborne. Walks stiff-legged like Frankenstein, recovers the fallen motorcycle, its engine still running.

  Gives a look to the ambulance driver, who rounds the nearest vehicle. The guy is poised, ready to pull a concealed weapon on him. But to what end? To shoot Knox in the back with a dozen witnesses watching? Possibly?

  Knox gives himself the cover of smoke from his back wheel, cussing with each toe shift as he screeches away.

  40

  The funicular, dangling from its thread of twisted steel, floats down into the Tophane district. Grace feels like a spider off to mend her web. The street address and name of her contact are written on opposing palms—the scribble on her right nearly impossible to read.

  Across the dark green waters of the Bosphorus, sliced white by wake and the occasional ship, she sees southern Istanbul on the Asian continent. Below her, a patchwork of rooftops spill toward the water, broken by the green of an occasional park. Its picturesque quality is opposed to her thought. She’s cranked and unable to appreciate it. If she knew more clearly the exact location of her destination—an electronics shop Xin has arranged for her—she could likely see it, so clear is the view. But it’s lost on her.

  Forty-five minutes later, having ferried across the river and ridden the back of a hot taxi through a decidedly more Oriental Istanbul, she resents the lack of anything more from Knox. She has switched SIM chips and texted all three of his numbers.

  Nothing. Asshole!

  The wheels are coming off the op. They have only a matter of a few hours before the proposed meet with Mashe Okle and she has yet to determine what their secreted role is; what purpose the five minutes with the POI is to serve.

  She is alone. Knox is alone. Together, they are alone. For a time, her mathematical mind could project a resolution to the op, but now it’s more ephemeral; Knox believes them both to be sacrificial lambs, and she has no evidence to dispute this. Dulwich has expected them to do this alone. There is no exit strategy in place.

  A strong scent of cloves mingles in the air, tinged with cinnamon. It somehow permeates the taxi’s cigarette-stained interior to intoxicate her and remind her of life now past: leisure time in a Hong Kong café with a cup of chai, the Financial Times, under a clock with no minute hand. She can envision herself flipping through family photos she recently downloaded to her phone in order to make a birthday collage for her somewhat estranged father, who turns fifty in three weeks. Imagines herself smiling at memories. Laughing internally. Of shopping irresponsibly, of making herself feel pretty and feminine and maybe even available.

  But she feels none of these things. Instead, she’s bound in servitude, rough and unkempt. She is predatory and hostile, optimistically ambitious enough to believe there may be a way out of this yet. Some heads will likely be broken before it’s over: Knox’s job. Which heads: her job.

  The sidewalks are crowded, the Asian, southern side of the city more dense, more ethnic. Conflicting Middle Eastern melodies pour from shops and loudspeakers; the grating dissonance of half-toned scales that rub together caustically do nothing to prolong the fantasy.

  She arrives at a shop with rain-gray windows and peeling forest green paint. It’s marked with a rusted sign, the letters faded until they’re unreadable. Taped on the inside of the glass is a computer-printed typewritten sheet with an oversized single word: ELECTRONICS.

  The shop matches Xin’s description. She hadn’t fully trusted his information, given that she’d caught Xin in an inebriated state in a Hong Kong bar well past midnight.

  Inside the shop, the air hangs heavy with the cloak of serviceability mixed with the sting of sour perspiration, tobacco smoke and a smell she doesn’t want to place. The atmosphere speaks of young men and Internet pornography and turns her stomach. She thinks she must be getting old: at university they laughed about places like this; now they merely disgust her. A man-boy is summoned from the back by the electronic chime that died with her entry.

  “Xin,” she says.

  “May I see please?” He speaks with a British accent. Wears an ill-fitting brown vest over a royal blue T-shirt. Stretch jeans. Thick-rimmed black glasses that enlarge dull brown eyes. He’s left-handed, according to his tobacco-stained fingers. Diminutive, his flesh has shrunken onto a frame that could and should support more.

  She produces the pacemaker.

  “You want?” he says.

  “Is it operable? Correct voltage? Able to hold a charge?”

  “Medical,” he says, turning the packaging over. “Cardiac.”

  “A pacemaker, yes.”

  He steps back, away from the device. “Such pacemakers are programmed and communicated with via radio waves. I lack any such equipment. I’m afraid—”

  “The battery,” she says.

  “Sealed. Interior.” He spins it over, examining it. “Without cutting open, primitive analysis, best offer.”

  “Please.”

  “You wait?” He cuts the plastic packaging with a box cutter. She doesn’t appreciate that being in his hand.
/>   “How long?” She doesn’t like his question. She scribbles out the phone number of her least used SIM chip. Paranoia sickens her stomach. “Text me.”

  She heads for the door.

  “Please. One minute, ma’am!”

  She gives him twenty seconds of the minute when his effort to touch the tester’s probes onto the leads from the pacemaker turns her once again for the exit. She’s crawling out of her skin. He’s so obviously nervous he can’t connect a probe to a wire. No matter that the wires are tiny, it’s a task he must have performed thousands of times. So why fumble?

  She’s thinking: Xin, you bastard.

  She turns the dead bolt. Hurries back to the counter with an urgency and energy that causes the technician to step back.

  “Charge is complete,” the man-boy says, looking up at her. “Battery life—measurement of ampere-hours is calculation of voltage and known load. According to specs,” he says, indicating printing on the flip side of the disk, “this runs for years.”

  “You are certain? A healthy battery?” Grace’s own internal battery is overheated and sparking. She expects someone to arrive at any moment, drag her kicking and screaming into the street.

  “You make joke? ‘Healthy battery’?”

  “It is a normal, working device,” she states.

  “I not know this without opening.”

  “Opening . . .” she mumbles, allowing the thought to escape her. “Yes. Please.”

  “It is sealed unit. Replace unit, not battery.”

  “No way to open it?”

  “Correct. Short of destroying it.”

  “Please.”

  He studies her curiously. “It will be destroyed if—”

  “An extra two hundred liras.” Grace digs out the cash as she glances toward the street. “Quickly, please.”

  The technician takes a hacksaw to the device. The five minutes needed to saw off one end feels much longer to both of them. His face is perspiring. She doesn’t think he exerted himself enough to explain this.