by Dana Arama
“But today is Saturday,” I said, noting the obvious, not understanding at all.
“Yes. Space doesn’t wait for weekdays for rare occurrences.” After a moment he added, “I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing to apologize for,” I said, soothingly. His nerves, and everyone else’s, were on edge. I asked, “Will a cop escort you?”
“No, there is no need. I only need to return some papers and ensure sure my students make good use of their time with the telescope. Nothing will happen to me on the way and at the university they have guards.”
“I don’t like it,” I answered. He wouldn’t look at me. Something in my brother’s eyes told me another story, like a man lying to his wife that he’s not having an affair.
My brother lifted his head and looked if he was seeing me for the first time. “And where are you going, dressed like a groom in those pants? I think it is the first time I haven’t seen you in jeans.”
“Work,” I answered nonchalantly, then added, “We’ll see each other later.”
***
It was already one in the morning and the hospital parking lot was almost empty. I parked in a space reserved for doctors, and confidently made my way to the entrance. A cold wind hit my face and brought with it the first drops of rain that had once again begun to pour down. It was a good reason not to be outside. Near the entrance, three staff members stood smoking cigarettes, standing with their working gowns wrapped tightly around them, as if the thin fabric could guard them from the cold. A break for the brave, which would end soon enough.
All hospitals used the same logic to create building layouts, which is why one could almost always count on the morgue to be located in the basement. With the confidence of someone who belongs, I turned towards the elevators and hit the button for -2. I assumed that -1 was where the X-ray machines were situated, and -3 was where the emergency vehicles were parked. Even if I was wrong, there wouldn’t be any guards there and I could walk around between the floors and easily find the right place.
Karen was already waiting for me at the entrance to the morgue and, without saying anything, I followed her to a side room, where my disguise awaited me. “You look good in a white gown,” she said, and pinned a badge on the white robe that said I was a senior urologist. Karen hung a stethoscope around my neck and put a pen in my pocket. The last addition was a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, which had a miniscule camera the size of a tiny screw embedded in the frames. It would pass information directly to whomever needed to receive it.
“Which floor is she on?”
“Fifth. Room 514.” Karen took a step back, looking dissatisfied. She stifled a yawn and mumbled, “Something is missing.”
“I think what is missing is your sleep.”
“Of that I have no doubt. I have been here over twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe paperwork about the patient?”
Her face lit up, and she walked over to the metal desk. She took a file from the drawer and took a thumb drive from her pocket and put it in the computer on the desk. She tapped a few keys and then printed out Ashley Holding’s paperwork.
The file was a stack of sheets, which included pictures of Ashley’s injuries. Karen was smiling now. She had a nice smile, and she was clearly exhausted. It was time for me to go up. I patted her cheek lightly. “Soon you will be able to go to sleep.” I took the file, I saluted her gently, and made my way towards the elevators.
***
I passed by the police officer guarding the room with no issues, opened the door and asked, “How are you Ashley?”
She stared out the window at the rain that lashed against the glass, and did not answer me. Ashley Holding looked much better than the last time I saw her unconscious on the floor, but less good than the first time I saw her, when she had hidden Jonathan. Then, she’d been wearing makeup and a sheer robe, which had been expected by her clients. Now she looked small and frail and was almost as white as the sheet she lay on.
I closed the door behind me and walked over so I stood between her and the window. As soon as she recognized me, a smile crept up on her face, but disappeared almost immediately.
I pulled up a chair to sit next to her. She deserved personal attention, but I also wanted the camera to record everything clearly.
“I understood you wanted to talk to me,” I said, gently and looked into her eyes. “Do you want to tell me what happened? Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Is Jonathan okay?” she asked.
“Do you have any information about Jonathan?”
“I am not sure…I think whoever collected me was interested in what Jonathan was doing.”
“Start from the beginning, so that we paint a full picture.”
“Someone came to pick me up.” Ashley barely managed to get the words out and avoided eye contact as she spoke. Usually it would bother me, but in this case, I thought she seemed ashamed. “It has happened before,” she whispered, adding, “That a client from the casino requests something special and I suit the description, and then they came to pick me up and take me to him. This time they said he was an English nobleman and that his fantasy was a Texan girl. Something about our accent arouses him…” A small smile flitted across her mouth, but it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
“Can you describe the person that came to pick you up?”
“He had a heavy Russian accent and looked like an accountant. Not scary at all.” She wracked her brain some more and then added, “Except for his eyes. They seemed empty. As if he was on drugs or something, but they were still very sharp…”
I had encountered those types before. Ex-KGB agents who’d moved to the private sector. The kind that could sit in a coffee house, order coffee and cake, go out for a break, assassinate someone, and come back before his coffee was cold. “What happened to the Russian who picked you up? Did he ask you anything?”
“In the middle of the journey he locked the car doors and started questioning me about the day before… Asked me to focus on the young boy I was seen leaving the casino with.” She reached for the cup which stood on the table next to her, but it was empty. She silently returned the cup to the table, as if she felt she needed to be punished and should stay thirsty. I got up and filled the cup with water. Ashley continued, “I realized then that they were onto us. That the casino knew that I had helped him escape and that I was in trouble.”
“What did you do?” I asked, wrapping her fingers around the cup.
“I made up a story…” She drank greedily. A little water ran down her chin. I handed her a paper towel to wipe her chin. She continued, “I learned from the first time I did drugs that a good story can cast doubt over everything. I laughed and asked him if he was talking about the cross-dressing man I’d had met in the bathroom. I said that his dream was to wear women’s clothes. I told him that I had just finished with a client and went into the bathroom to change my clothes and found him there crying and that we got talking, and it was spur of the moment. I put my wig on him and when I saw how happy he was, I’d added the cape and makeup. I said he was so proud of himself that we went to have coffee together at this new French place nearby with croissants, so crisp and delicious, with chocolate oozing out of them. And I said that I was happy, too, because for the first time since I moved here, I had found myself a friend… And I just babbled on and on.”
“Did he believe you?”
“He didn’t kill me…”
“And yet you’re here, in the hospital.”
“That’s because of the client.”
“What do you know about him?”
“That he is very rich. He had a heavy British accent, but he was dressed like an Arab man.”
“Remember anything else?”
“He likes beating women. I think his name is Yassin. Maybe that was his nickname.”
“Where did you m
eet him? Could you identify the place? The route they used to take you there, a landmark, at the very least?”
“We drove to some sort of airstrip and from there we took a helicopter. It was grey with a red and gold emblem on it.”
“Where to?”
“To a ship at sea.”
That at least explained why they couldn’t find him. Yassin wasn’t in New York or even on US soil. He was on a boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean, far from the shore. How can he be at in multiple places at the same time? Did he have a double? Maybe a few people posing as him?
“Did you see the name of the boat? Maybe when you got closer? Usually the name is written in big letters and can be seen from afar.”
She shook her head apologetically. “I think I was too frightened… The whole way I thought he was going to throw me out of the helicopter into the sea, and then no one would be able to find my body. I only remember that when I saw the boat, I was wild with relief. After we landed, I thought it didn’t look like a regular luxury yacht, white and clean, but more like a cargo ship, but inside… It was the most luxurious place I had ever seen in my life. Fancier than any of the VIP rooms in the casino.”
“Did you see any crew?”
“I saw servants. Is that considered a crew?”
“Only servants?”
“And a lot of other men…” Once again, she lowered her eyes.
“Did they beat you? Or only him?”
“Just him…” Her voice was but a whisper and I could barely hear when she added, “I was just a punching bag to him. After he wore himself down from beating me, he passed me onto them…”
I knew it was hard for her but still I pressed on. “Do you remember how many men there were?”
It was excruciating for her to recall. It was clear, the way she grasped the sheet in her fist, twisting until her knuckles went white.
“There were six, and three more stood around and just watched.”
Voices sounded outside Ashley’s closed door. “The patient is still too weak for interrogation,” a male voice was saying, aggressively.
“I am sorry, doctor, but it is a matter of life and death. We have orders to investigate every single lead.”
Ashley looked at me, frightened. “What do I tell them?” she asked.
“The truth. You can’t lie to them. The stakes are too high, and I don’t want them indicting you for cooperating with terrorists.”
“And if they ask about you, if you visited here?”
“Don’t lie Ashley. I’ll manage.”
“I can’t say that I’m a sex worker. I’ll tell them I was raped.”
There was something defiant in her face and I knew that there was no question of persuading her otherwise. I also didn’t have time to listen to the argument happening on the other side of the door. I gently pressed Ashley’s hand, and then bent down and carefully kissed her bruised cheek. I walked over to the window and checked it. It was a public hospital, and the building was old, so the windows opened upwards. There was a wide ledge outside to prevent accidents. I quietly lifted the window, slipped through and closed it behind me.
Exiting through a window that only opens from the inside is a point of no return. I was now stuck on the fifth floor on a ledge wide enough to prevent falling, but not wide enough to walk on. The darkness enveloped me protectively, like a mother. The weather, on the other hand, antagonized me. The wind was terribly strong, and so I pressed myself to the wall, relying on the light flowing from the other windows on that floor to guide my escape route.
All that was left to do was to continue on the ledge until I reached an open window or an empty room whose window I could break. Thanks to the cold, the few people who were walking across the parking lot were rushing to reach the warmth of their cars. They wouldn’t think to look up, and there was little chance that, even if they did, they would see me on the ledge above. I felt my way, step after step. Even a small gap in the ledge could spoil my plan, and so I moved gingerly – I would rather not fall five stories to my almost-certain death.
There were no empty rooms. The sounds of a particularly loud argument came from a room ahead of me. I heard a voice say, “I am choking in here. Open the window and leave it cracked.”
A woman’s voice said, “The whole room is freezing because the window is open and you’re not the only one in here.”
“So then put me in a room by myself! I swear to you, I will break this window if you don’t leave a little crack open!”
I heard the window slam closed and I hoped that the patient insisting on leaving a gap would win the conversation. After all, the nurse was right. The temperature outside had dropped, and with it the chances of finding another open window. In the end, she gave in and opened the window slightly. I made my way towards it. The room was lit dimly with nightlights. I could just make out three patients lying in their beds. The one furthest from the window was asleep. The patient in the middle bed was standing behind a partitioning curtain. He was probably being tended to by the argumentative nurse. The third patient, closest to the window, lay still, staring out at the night sky. He was covered in plaster casts from head to toe and looked like a mummy. The cool air probably felt wonderful on his face.
He saw me immediately. His head rose from the pillow and then his gloomy face showed a look of astonishment. A bolt of lightning illuminated the sky behind me. I waited for the thunder to start rolling and moved my hand towards the crack in the window. Swiftly, I lifted the pane. The patient in the cast, a young teenager, started smiling. I put a single finger to my lips to signal him to keep quiet and he nodded his head. I jumped into the room and slowly closed the window. The curtain opened just as I turned away from the window and the nurse looked at me, not recognizing me. Her eyes scanned my doctor’s badge.
“Thanks for coming to visit, doctor,” the youngster in the cast lied. “It was nice to see you, and you have made me very happy.” I smiled at him and answered, “I promised I would come during my next shift.”
The nurse smiled at us and said, “I don’t recognize you, but at last our Jeremy is smiling. It’s too bad you didn’t come earlier. Maybe you can persuade him to close the window.”
In response, I winked at the boy and he grinned widely.
The nurse collected the garbage she had left behind her, washed her hands with disinfectant soap and left the room.
Jeremy said, “This has been the most exciting thing that has happened to me since I arrived here. You really are welcome to visit me again.”
“Thanks Jeremy.” I smiled again. “I hope you get out of here fast!”
Once I was out in the corridor, I whispered, “Did you record everything?”
In the earpiece I heard, “The information has been passed on to the Americans. We are continuing operations as well.”
I knew that outside the waters of the territorial US, there were thousands of ships, and in order to find the one that Yassin was hiding in, we would need supporting data. The GPS devices which we planted in the suitcases had now become crucial.
Murat Lenika,
En route to an unknown destination,
November 15, 2015, 2:38 a.m.
The buzzing of the device I had put on the wooden chair next to me woke me up. I glanced at the clock. I had slept only one hour. The number flashing across my screen belonged to the disposable phone I had given Yassin. Unwillingly, I pressed accepted the incoming call. The more excited Yassin became the more he monopolized people around him. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe it was intentional, allowing me to leave the spice shop, making me feel as if I had been saved and then, a few hours later, calling me again. For what? Perhaps he realized that I knew too much? Or maybe he wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t run out on him? Perhaps he had a role for me in his layout plan. When it came to Yassin, one could never know when the next big surprise would come, and how
.
“Murat, I need you here now!” he said, excitedly. I looked at my watch again. How on earth did he sound so awake and so enthusiastic in the middle of the night?
“Where is here?” I asked. Inside my head, the remnants of the amphetamines and total exhaustion were fighting each other.
“There is no use in explaining it to you… You aren’t coming alone, anyway. Just tell me where you are, and I will send you a personal driver.”
“Okay… I answered, after a moment. He may have said something else, but I’d drifted back to sleep again. “I’ll get my gang together.”
“You’re coming alone. Your bodyguards aren’t needed here.”
His comment was like a bucket of cold water washing over me. Now, I was wide awake. I needed a moment to organize my thoughts, so I said, “I’ll get back to you with the address.” I hung up.
I woke up Aldo first, and then Alex. “They are coming to pick me up soon,” I told them. I couldn’t look them in the eye. They jumped from their beds and Alex said, “I’m going to make coffee. Or would you rather take a pill?”
Aldo and I said in unison, “Coffee!” and Aldo added, “Can he just summon us like this, boss?”
“Not ‘us’…”
Aldo stared at me. “You mean you are planning on going to him alone?”
Alex looked in from the kitchen, shook his head and said, “I don’t like it, boss.” The look on his face said it all and still he said, “I have to notify your father, boss.” He sounded almost apologetic, but decisive. “Or you take one of us with you, to watch your back.”
I gave him a comforting smile. “What about the coffee?” I asked, and when Alex returned to the kitchen, I said to Aldo, “Wait until morning. If I’m not back by then, it is time to start worrying.”
“Boss, if you’re not back by morning,” he answered me, “it’ll be too late.” I was afraid he was right, but I didn’t know what to say. I was too deep in Yassin’s secrets, which I kept from my closest friends for their sake.
