The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  “Inside,” he says. Grace takes him by the elbow and steers him toward the museum’s stairs. “Don’t!” he says, admonishing her for her nervous glances in every direction.

  They are well on their way to being soaked by the time they step inside. Admittance is four Turkish liras. Knox has the cash, but their captors have stuffed his belongings into two of the windbreaker’s many pockets, leaving him disorganized. It takes a moment to locate his wallet. In the interim, Grace returns her SIM to the iPhone and the device powers up.

  Knox pays. Grace’s phone chimes, signaling incoming text messages. Once clear of the receptionist, Grace reports in a whisper, fighting the echoing, oversized room with its stone floor and gray marble wainscoting.

  “Besim’s man. We were followed from the meet.” She slips the phone away.

  “Currently?” he asks.

  “Two men. Northwest of us.” She gets her bearings. “Outside the main entrance.”

  Knox is moving better even if she doesn’t notice it. “Remember the ferry dock. The Huangpu?”

  It’s rhetorical.

  “Not exactly like that, but timing is everything.” Knox moves her through the museum with the grace of a dancer. Now, she notices.

  “Look at you.”

  “Amazing what a little motivation can do.”

  “Will they kill you? Us?” Said so matter-of-factly. So Grace.

  “Depends who they are. But why not? Who knows?”

  “His health. His failing like that. That was us.”

  “So noted. Do you know how?” He steers her through a room with paintings.

  “My phone. Maybe yours, too. That is only hardware we carry.”

  “Turned off. Chips pulled. Is that possible?”

  She is already a few steps ahead of him. “Dulwich switched them on us. I left mine behind when entering the Red Room. It had to be then.”

  Knox stops abruptly. They’re in a room with five majestic wooden vessels. “Use of the Red Room wasn’t about secrecy,” he proposes, “but about disconnecting us from our phones?”

  She nods vigorously. “Digital Services needed time to clone our data into matching phones already engineered to interfere with BioLectrics pacemakers. Replaced them before we were out of the Red Room.”

  “Are we just guinea pigs? We field-test a new technology for them? If successful, they use it on some dictator? If we fail, it’s not blamed on them!”

  She prattles on about how iPhone batteries cannot be removed, how the trigger had to be the phone being switched off and the SIM card removed in combination. She talks about exciting lithium but it’s not exciting him the way it is her. “The driver’s wristwatch overheated. My captors. Lithium battery! The van malfunctioned, which could have been the failure of computer cards controlling the engine. His pacemaker lost power.”

  “Then he should have dropped dead.”

  “Depends if his condition was serious. He grew weak, quickly. Resting restored his health. Remember? He was not faking. No matter, it is not our concern, John. You are our concern. You and that card you now carry.”

  “I won’t play along. I refuse to play along. I told Sarge: no way.”

  “No longer our concern.”

  “You think? The plan is to make him weak knowing he’ll head to the hospital.”

  “Where he defects. Not our concern.”

  “Or they install one of the switched pacemakers into him. This is the Israelis, count on it. This is Iran’s nuclear program, Grace. Sarge can’t make a promise like that. Once the device is in him, then what? They kill him, like in Homeland.” He can tell the reference is lost on her. “We’d never hear about it, and if we did, Sarge would claim the guy had a heart attack.”

  “That is a great deal of speculation, John. Too much.”

  “Xin’s pal never got back to you about the pacemaker’s innards, correct? Now there’s a surprise.”

  She had asked for his analysis of the pacemaker’s circuitry. “True.”

  “Listen to me. We cannot afford to have Mashe’s blood on our hands, Grace. You think no one will remember him getting faint during our meeting? Seriously? The Muslim culture can be unforgiving. I have family. I . . . we . . . can’t endure a fatwa. I can’t live that way.” He pauses, fixes his eyes blindly on the wooden boats. “We have to stop him. Get him to another hospital where the pacemakers haven’t been switched. We can still make their plans go to shit.”

  “That will help us, how?” She pauses. “John, let us say what you propose is accurate? Then we have finite time to leave country. The business card is our exit strategy. Mashe said this.” Knox remains silent. “I like job. I like work.”

  Knox shrugs. He leaves her the choice to join him or not. It will be more difficult without her. She has no trouble reading him.

  “Text Akram,” she says. “Tell him he must switch hospitals.”

  “Get real. What? I send him a two-page text? He won’t believe a word of it.”

  “This is his problem, not ours.”

  “No. It’s on us. That’s the way this’ll work. Now. Six months from now. This is on us. Sarge fucked us. Maybe not on purpose, but he fucked us.” It’s the Vicodin talking. “There’s a ferry dock behind the next building to the east. Make sure you’re the last to board the ferry, so no one boards after you. We need the definitive word on what’s with the switched pacemakers. Then, the same again, you need to be last onto a return ferry to Karaköy. From there, catch the tram to Tophane, Taksim and the Metro to Sisli. Repeat it.”

  She repeats the instructions, but is shaking her head.

  “I need your help,” he says. “I can live without it. I won’t beg.”

  “We switch SIMs. Remain in contact,” she says.

  Knox takes that as a yes. “Tell Besim to meet me here at the museum. Your job is the pacemakers. I will run interference on Mashe Okle.”

  “I can do this. But I must remind final time: we lack proper intel to make a reliable assessment.”

  “Israelis and Iranians. That’s reliable.”

  “If we interrupt a defection, the Israelis will not be pleased.”

  “I’m way too stoned for that,” he says.

  Her laugh echoes. She rises onto her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. For a moment, neither knows what to do next. “I will go to the ferry,” she says.

  “Relax,” he says. “Deep breath. At all times be yourself. At no time—”

  “—be who they expect.”

  Knox hears something grumble from deep in his throat. He’s grateful no words have come out.

  48

  Grace finds it difficult to reconcile the beauty and tranquillity of the Bosphorus with her current assignment. A sense of impending dread and impatience feels misplaced among the churning green waters, the bobbing boat traffic, the stillness of both shores. Men have fished these waters since before Christ. The Crusaders crossed this way, as did the Romans and the Greeks before them. Western civilization’s storytelling origins connect to these twin shores, and though thousands of years behind that of her own Chinese culture, she can’t help but respect the history.

  Indeed, she’s left with no choice but to appreciate the few minutes for the respite they offer. A lungful of sweet air, a study of the silver beads of rainwater as they plunge from the awning’s edge to the deck and splatter. The murmur of Turkish. A child’s self-conscious laugh.

  It ends too quickly with her feet working furiously to fight the crowds. She window-shops, using the glass as a mirror in which to search for predators. As she catches sight of her own reflection, she understands herself, believes in her abilities, defines herself through this work in ways her forensic accounting cannot. The fieldwork strikes a balance that suits her, allowing her to exercise two sides of her being. Yin and yang. Her father would be proud, would understand, while her mother would f
ear for her and counter any justifications Grace might have with concerns for her safety.

  But it is exactly that, her safety or the threat thereto, that thrills, that excites, that boils away the tedious hours of searching spreadsheets for inconsistencies and leaves behind a hard layer of purpose.

  She boards the return ferry so late that she has to talk the deckhand into reopening the chain that blocks her way. She has yet to spot a tail but knows she will not if Mossad are involved. Knox has made a decent plan, but it can be easily defeated if there’s a team surveilling her. She heads toward the electronics shop cautiously, still stinging from her last visit and Dulwich’s presence. Xin had obviously betrayed her to the man—something she would have considered impossible. It’s an odd and indifferent world, she thinks, when the only person left to trust is John Knox.

  By the time she climbs into a taxi in Tepebasi, she can’t sit still. She itches all over. Her throat and mouth are dry. Her feet are sweating and her eyes sting.

  She circles the block on foot twice before entering the shop and confronting the young man behind the counter for a second time. She locks the door behind her.

  “What did you discover about this pacemaker? Why have I not heard from you?” she asks. Her underlying confidence and intention cause the kid to lean back from the counter separating them. She was the last person he expected.

  She leans across the counter. “What was found inside this device?” The chill resulting from Knox’s suggestion that Mashe Okle’s death, now or later, from his apparent heart condition will result in Knox being a scapegoat, has not left her. Perhaps the pacemaker is to cause a stroke, or permanent disability; for Knox, perhaps for her, the result will be the same.

  For her and this kid, it is as if they are picking up an ongoing conversation. But he has no desire to participate. From the looks of him, he’d as soon vaporize than face this fire-breathing woman with her bloodshot eyes and sour expression.

  “Programmed with a timer? What makes it different?” She considers other possibilities. Mashe’s passing of his business card and his emphasis of its importance suggests it must carry the spycraft, leaving the pacemaker as a weapon against Mashe. “The battery contains compounds that respond to radio waves? Depletes the charge?”

  The mention of radio waves wins a tell—the kid’s right eyebrow twitches perceptibly.

  Adrenaline floods her veins and she vaults the counter, terrifying the young man, who outweighs her, is taller by nearly a foot and has a sizable reach on her. But he cowers as she takes him one-handed by the front of his shirt and, dropping her purse, pushes him out of his chair and against the wall. He raises a hand defensively and she gut-punches up under his ribs.

  “Tell me what you told our people about it.” She knees him in the groin. She wishes the punishment didn’t feel so good, wishes she didn’t want to keep going. Three or four more blows, and he’d be on the floor unconscious. The urge is so great she has to battle it to prevent herself from losing the information she’s after.

  A blink of light on the wall makes her knees go weak. She drops, bringing the man down with her, a response conditioned by training and instinct. The immediate thought is of a rifle scope’s lens. But a second look out the shop and across the street tells her it was likely the face of a cell phone. She focuses in on a strongly built man with a phone to his ear.

  John was right. She’s been followed.

  The impossibility of it won’t allow consideration. Her brain won’t go there. She took every precaution boarding the ferry; circled the block twice. Never an inkling of a surveillant.

  How? she wonders.

  Her heart is working so fast, pounding so hard that she can’t get a word out. She has the boy gagged with her palm, his ear lobe twisted and ready to be torn from his skull in a bloody mess. In a nanosecond, she relives her exchange with Knox, the ferry rides, the tram and funicular.

  “Oh, my God!” The man outside didn’t follow her here; Dulwich didn’t follow her here.

  She stares into the eyes of her captive, awaiting confirmation.

  Terrified, he looks away.

  Grace’s immediate thought is to stop John, but first there’s the agent watching the shop from across the street and the witness on the floor whose allegiances are well known.

  “A GPS chip,” she says in Turkish, although she’s asking him a question. “You found a GPS chip inside the pacemaker.” Dulwich hadn’t been told by Xin, he’d followed the GPS signal. The man outside didn’t follow her, he’s been watching a store indicated by the same signal.

  The boy cowers. She reaches for his throat; it’s a mistake. He reacts primordially, knocking her arm away, rolling and elbowing her in the chest as he struggles painfully to his knees. He reaches into an open drawer overhead. There’s a glint of a blade. Grace arches away from the box cutter as it swipes within an inch of her chin, so close it cleaves away a wedge of her hair. The severed strands rain to the floor. The loss inspires rage, more so than a nick or the drawing of blood. Grace blocks the man’s forearm, grabs his wrist and bites into his flesh like a hungry dog. He screams and releases the box cutter. Grace drives a tight fist into his nose, flattening it. Chops him below the chin, disrupting his airflow, then slaps him twice, side to side. His broken nose gushes blood; his eyes roll. She slaps him again.

  “Who else did you tell?” she demands, stretching to reach her purse.

  “Hong Kong. I swear. Only Hong Kong.” No name. Oddly, it’s what convinces her he’s telling the truth.

  “Doors, front and back. Any other way out?”

  When he hesitates, she raises her bloodied fist a second time.

  “Below,” he says. “Romans.”

  Through the gray glass of the display cases, and out through the equally gray windows to the street, she sees the agent approach the shop. His patience tested, he wants a closer look. She knows such training. When he sees the empty shop, he will call it in and kick the door open. She has, at most, a few seconds’ head start.

  “Stairs?”

  The shopkeeper’s eyes direct her to a beaded doorway.

  She’s fumbling with her phone as, descending too quickly, her feet slip out from under her. She hits the cellar floor bruised and hurting. Using the phone as a flashlight, she takes in low stone arches and a cobblestone floor connecting them. Stone walls form small bins and narrow stalls, which are now filled with crusted furniture and rusting paint cans. The projected light casts a sterile cone out into the dust kicked up by her rapid movements. She hurries through an ancient arch, then backs out because it dead-ends in clutter.

  Has he trapped her?

  She shines the light to the left of the stairs; hears the crash of the front door coming open. Another arch. Beyond it, another dead end.

  Voices from above. The rattle of plastic beads. Grace quiets the light and pockets the phone in her shouldered purse. Think!

  The lights go on. Two lights. Compact fluorescent bulbs, a faint yellow as they warm to their brighter setting. Grace ducks through an arch, moving away from the stairs, facing a low wall of mortared brick and rock added centuries after the Romans. To her, it marks the start of another building. She has an image now of an alley overhead, a cluster of four structures sharing an interlocking cellar, the livestock sequestered beneath the living space as a source of heat.

  It follows that there would have been a ramp to street level. Whether that exit still exists is anybody’s guess, but much of the furniture appears to be too large for the stairwells and, as she comes across a crumbling single-horse buggy, its leather cracked and mouse-eaten, her hopes rise. She crosses beneath one building to the next. Here, the low stone archways are of a wider design. The distant light, now a pale luminescence, fails to reach around corners.

  Her stalker has gone silent, expertly navigating the treachery of the cellar’s contents. He could be two feet behind her;
the knowledge puts her head on a swivel and sends her heart into her throat. Sweat catches her ribs and rolls sticky beneath her breasts. Increased distance equals increased darkness. The air smells of rodents and rust.

  She ignites her phone, as much for the light of its screen as to check its signal. No bars. Making it dark again, she slips it away and uses the fading mental image to avoid twin stacks of sagging cardboard boxes, turns sideways to negotiate the narrow aisle between. Burned as a gray blue into the complexity of her optic nerve is the graphic of wooden handles collected into a whole. Gardening tools: spades, forks, a hoe, metal rakes.

  Behind her, the bump of a leg against a cardboard box. Mingled with her panic is disbelief—how could he be so close? How has he caught up to her so quickly? She stumbles with the surprise.

  From a pinprick in the dark pours blue light as her pursuer switches on a penlight. The light—only the light—lunges. Grace defends with a block. A flash of sparks. A jolt of electricity. He’s got a Taser. She chops the man’s arm and stumbles back, tripping over her own feet but catching herself before fully falling. Throws a basket at him as the device whines, recharging.

  Her hand wraps around wood. She lifts the spade from her waist with both hands and stabs for the light. She connects. He belches. The light aims skyward, illuminating cobwebs and gobs of cement frozen between seams. Returning her blow, the man knocks the spade from her hands with such force that it flies into the darkness and crashes. The high-voiced squeal of rats and the scampering of scratching nails on the stone send chills through her. Something hits her ankle and she hops and screams.

  The whining of the device stops. The man lunges. Grace crashes, grabbing whatever is nearby and raising it between herself and her attacker. She feels the object drive into him, hears his raw cry.

  The device clatters to the cobbles. The penlight rotates through the air like a spinning baton. In the strobe light, she catches the flashing image of the man; he’s clutching a pitchfork, its blade embedded in his left thigh.

  As the light hits the stone, it goes dark. Grace has the presence of mind to retrieve her purse as she leaps past the staggering man. She collides with a stack. Another. Dust and cobwebs consume her. She spits and coughs and claws at nothing, running, falling forward, fighting against the sticky spider webs most of all. She hates spiders.