The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  She’s struck in the back. Stabbed by a tine of the pitchfork, aimed at only the sounds she’s making in the dark. Her side clenches into a painful knot. She’s on the stone floor and crawling. Hears him dragging his leg as he comes up from behind her.

  Somewhere ahead, the air glows a shade other than black. She’s drawn to that change. But he’s on foot and she’s on hands and knees and the accountant can work out the equation: he’s closing on her.

  Grace reaches out blindly with both hands, searching. Backs herself into a narrow, angled space between the rough wood of the crates and lowers her head like she’s carrying out afternoon prayers.

  The sound of his panting and the dragging of his leg draw closer. He has lost the sound of her, the sense of her, and he’s professional enough to turn that into caution. She smells him now—sour, slightly metallic from the bloody wound. Perhaps he smells her, too, for he stops.

  There is no sound. It is a vacuum of space, without light, without so much as a hum or crackle. They are locked in a three-thousand-year-old vault playing a child’s game of who can hold his or her breath the longest.

  Grace’s lungs burn. Her diaphragm convulses in sharp attacks, begging for air.

  She feels it too late—a single bead of sweat runs down her jaw from her hairline to her chin. It settles, grows fat and falls as loudly as a cymbal crash.

  49

  Excuse me, sir?” Besim pleads with Knox, desperate to correct his impression of Knox’s request.

  “Just so,” Knox says. He’s not going to argue strategy with a limousine driver.

  “Please allow me to—”

  “No.” Knox leaves it at that. “The Holiday Inn. Hurry, please.”

  It’s true they won’t be watching the hospital for Victoria, but Knox is a marked man. With each assault, his enemy has escalated its effort to abduct him. With Mashe Okle’s “Get Out of Jail Free” business card hot in his pocket, Knox doubts they will be any less forgiving.

  He pulls up his pant legs and scratches loose the scabs from the bruised welts on his shins, crying out regardless of his effort not to. Besim checks the mirror. Knox has to pull the scab from his right leg to get the wound open. Blood trickles down both shins.

  Just right.

  The car slows and pulls to the curb. Knox looks for the hotel.

  Too soon, he thinks.

  “Please, the address once more?” Besim is turned, looking back between the front seats.

  “The Holiday Inn,” Knox says, unreservedly impatient and demanding. “It’s right there north of the hospital.”

  Only as the driver’s left arm swings around does Knox rehash a laundry list of do’s and don’ts. Do thorough background checks on even the most inconsequential contacts. Don’t ever become complacent in the field.

  A bright flashlight beam stings Knox’s eyes as a red laser dot finds his chest. The Taser hides well in Besim’s gloved hand. Knox feels the impact—two needles shot at ninety-five miles an hour, capable of piercing two inches of fabric.

  But not a passport.

  The windbreaker’s myriad pockets save him. It’s the sheriff with the Bible in his pocket; zipped into his jacket’s internal chest pocket, a space meant for his phone, is his passport. It has taken the hit from the Taser’s darts. Knox rolls against the stubborn door. Locked by Besim, it doesn’t open. Knox reaches for the knob as Besim ejects the Taser’s dart cartridge, converting the device into a stun gun. The man’s fluidity and speed tell Knox all he needs to know: this man is not a career limo driver.

  The door comes open. Knox falls to the curb. Besim dives between the seats, lunging and leading with the Taser. He makes contact, but Knox feels nothing. The Taser has not had time to recharge.

  Knox is up and on his feet. His right pant leg is hoisted, his shin bleeding badly. Pedestrians coming toward him jump out of his way, which is not what he wants; he could use the cover of a crowd.

  Besim proves himself agile and fast as he claws his way across the backseat and out the open door. Knox’s legs are no match for such a man; he is certain to lose this race.

  His gift is forethought, the ability to see around corners. The small Taser will be used to buy the owner thirty seconds to flee the scene—or search the victim. Besim is on the team that’s pursuing Mashe Okle’s dead drop in a humane manner, not the team aiming to put a bullet in the back of their subject’s skull. It’s all the information Knox needs.

  He prepares himself for defeat, an anathema.

  The three flags hanging off the building at a forty-five-degree angle signal the finish line. He will accept defeat only once he’s there.

  He’s suddenly looking down the wrong end of the telescope—thirty meters becomes three hundred as an ill-advised glance back confirms Besim is up and shoving pedestrians aside like they’re Styrofoam. Knox has ten meters on the man and twenty to go. Eight and eighteen. Six and fifteen. The math doesn’t hold up; he won’t make it.

  A dozen thoughts crowd his brain, none acceptable—holler for help; turn and fight; use a human shield to take the next attempt with the stun gun. Knox works the slalom to avoid giving the man an easy shot, but he stretches out the distance to the flags by doing so. He uses a mother and stroller effectively and is able to move for a few meters in a straight line. But he feels Besim closing, hears him yelling at pedestrians to get out of his way and shouting, “Police!” in a bid to promote himself as an authority.

  The stun gun may be the least of it, Knox realizes.

  Unable to get up any head of steam because of his injured shins, Knox is bracing himself for the inevitable when the gods of chance give him a gift. Traffic is at its standard-issue Istanbul standstill; a private car has seized upon an open space at the curb and is being loaded far from the three flags at the hotel entrance. The hotel bellman wears a narrow-waisted black collarless jacket with silver frog button loops and tuxedo pants with a satin stripe down the side. His narrow head hides itself in an oversized purple fez with a gold tassel that has lost most of its sheen, like the unkempt tail of a nag long since put to pasture. The placement of the car shortens Knox’s destination by ten meters or more. He eyes the man’s jacket again as he crashes into him, screaming that he needs a hospital. Clings to the bellman, panting, sweaty, his blood-covered leg echoing the alarm.

  “Nightingale Hospital! Please! At once!”

  Besim stops and is immediately shoulder-bumped by a pedestrian who didn’t anticipate the obstacle. The collision half spins him, leaving him scowling over his left shoulder at Knox as the two meet eyes. He radiates a predator’s determination, tries but fails to contain his seething frustration.

  Knox allowed himself to trust the man. Chastises himself for that oversight. Wonders if there’s any way to catalogue the damage done by his planning sessions with both Grace and Victoria in the backseat. What pieces of the plan, if any, are out there? How much does Besim know?

  Damage assessment is critical, but there’s no time. The bellman has called over a pair of his fellow bag handlers; because of the availability of the luggage cart, the three install Knox on its platform like a trio of doting aunts. A group of Turks forms around the injured Westerner, and one rough-faced man has the audacity to stab Knox’s shin painfully with a probing finger. The bellman slaps out, pushes away the curious offender.

  His head swimming, Knox has a memory of his brother, Tommy, pulling him along an uncooperative sidewalk in their Radio Flyer wagon. It’s a painfully vivid and present image, so overwhelming that for a moment he’s transported back to Hamtramck beneath the clattering leaves of seasonal maples, shedding their leaves for fall in a sound eerily reminiscent of the plane trees that rattle overhead. The sound stitches with that of a siren blaring, and Knox realizes he’s lost more than a few seconds.

  “Police!” Knox hears a new voice enter the mix. Besim is coming in for another pass.

 
Knox grabs the sleeve of the bellhop that rescued him—Furkan, his name badge reads—and pulls him down. “No badge! Not police. He is who hurt me!”

  Furkan’s head snaps up in Besim’s direction; the bellhop comes around the moving luggage rack with alacrity and gets up in Besim’s grille, demanding to see his identification—

  An instant later, Furkan sinks bonelessly to the sidewalk, a limp pool of flesh and fabric. The man’s collapse is so immediate and frightening that his fellow workers attack Besim as a unified tag team, driving him back into a parked car in a resoundingly aggressive move that pins and punishes Besim while simultaneously searching him. The Taser that dropped Furkan clacks to the concrete, followed by Besim’s cell phone, which breaks into pieces. A black leather wallet falls. It is snatched up and opened.

  Besim steals it back in a flash and makes the two men pay for their insolence, the first with a sprained knee, the second, a stunned solar plexus. Besim bends for the phone, but Knox is off the cart. He kicks the phone beneath the parked car. Besim levels him, shoving Knox onto his back; Knox’s head strikes the concrete. Besim empties Knox’s pockets like a pickpocket, transferring the contents to his own. Throws open the Scottevest and flattens the nylon mesh lining to inspect the contents. Is given pause by the closeness of the approaching siren. Leaving Knox’s passport and money clip on the sidewalk, Besim keeps the rest as he slips away, blends into the growing crowd and disappears.

  Knox rolls to Furkan, who is coming awake. Knox stretches for the cell phone, pockets it as the wounded bellmen cuss in English, still trying to help Knox. Any one of them might be a candidate for the ambulance as it pulls up, but it’s Knox who’s tended to, his shins dressed with bandages before he’s loaded into the back of the step van.

  Furkan was down for less than a minute. He’s groggy but on his feet and trying to help the paramedics, one of whom is a woman wearing a white lab coat and low black heels.

  “Thank you!” Knox calls out to Furkan. The young man rubs his forehead; he’ll be nursing a powerful headache. He manages a slight nod.

  The ambulance’s rear doors close with a bang.

  —

  WHEELED INTO EMERGENCY on an ambulance gurney, Knox slips undetected past a man who could easily be an agent waiting outside. Knox averts his face—currently obscured by an oxygen mask—while celebrating his decision to complicate his means of arrival. It looks like it’s paid off.

  In the distance, he spots a group of male nurses smoking cigarettes, their backs pressed up against the building’s façade. Any of the staff could belong to the same team as the man watching the emergency room doors. Knox is battling a small army.

  Installed in an examination area sectioned off by a drape, Knox goes to work, painfully stripping down to his bare torso and pulling on the hospital gown left for him. He checks his phone—nothing from Victoria. Considers switching out SIM chips, but fears his original chip can be traced. Can’t afford the delay of being put into the medical system.

  He peers out and spots a line of wheelchairs on the far side of a chaotic, crowded nurse’s station. Bundles the heavy windbreaker and his shirt into a football beneath his left arm. His chest wound chooses this moment to be a violent offender; he stifles his own complaint, burying the pain. Whenever possible, hide out in the open. Knox approaches the nurse’s station and stands, waiting for attention.

  When no one pays him any, he takes a business card from an acrylic stand and moves on, down the hall toward the restroom, passing the line of wheelchairs. Uses the facilities. Takes a seat in one of the chairs and, placing the bundle on his lap, wheels his way past the nurse’s station and along the corridor. When the elevator doors open on the eleventh floor a few minutes later, there’s an unexplained empty wheelchair in the elevator car, looking lost and forlorn.

  True to her word, a text arrives from Victoria. She’s in position to call Akram. Knox, head down, wears the patient frock, carries the windbreaker bundle under his arm. He limps slowly down the hall—doesn’t have to fake it—ears pricked for the strains of “Brown Sugar,” Akram Okle’s ringtone for Victoria’s phone.

  The next people to grab him will find his pockets empty. He will be tortured, possibly to death, for the location of the business card Mashe Okle passed him. A card he no longer has. Referring such people to other agents will only infuriate them and intensify the level of questioning. His presence here, then, has little to do with benevolence: it’s a matter of self-preservation. Survival of the fittest. Knox has an angle to play, a way to avoid a fatwa and turn the agents back onto Mashe.

  But he must get face time with Mashe, and he must make sure any agents wanting him see that he does. Without personal contact, his plan goes bust.

  Victoria, fueled by greed, walked into the snare. Her association with Knox and her history with Akram may put her at risk, something Knox wants to avoid. He’s counting on Akram’s incoming calls being monitored and traced. She is on their radar—electronically tracked. He believes she has led agents back to the hospital. They have observed her entering. Knox’s exchange of texts with her has confirmed his presence here and has hopefully focused attention on the cardiac ward; with any luck, they are monitoring the cardiac ward using the hospital security cameras. Possibly there’s a doctor or nurse working with them.

  Despite the wall stickers advising all persons in the hospital to turn off cell phones, Knox hears the opening riff of “Brown Sugar” from down the hall. He’s still too far away to pinpoint the exact room—but he’s moving closer. He pushes his agonized legs faster, finally raising his chin and daring to show his face to the security cameras.

  Knox stops abruptly.

  From the end of the hall, David Dulwich looks back at him.

  50

  John!” Grace calls out, just loudly enough to be heard. The cardiac ward’s corridor stretches out before her. David Dulwich steps closer to John, which explains why John doesn’t turn his head.

  She has to assume he can hear her. “It is GPS. The device was modified to contain GPS!”

  Now he does look her way, shoots her an expression of shock, disbelief and victimization. John thinks she has betrayed him.

  “GPS,” she says again.

  From the moment she saw the man observing from outside the electronics shop, she knew: it was virtually impossible he’d followed her; beyond any possibility of coincidence that he might be surveilling a random electronics repair shop. No, he had followed the device she’d stolen. Thus, the only possible explanation: the device contained a GPS chip.

  She now believes Dulwich’s claim that his client did not intend to kill Mashe Okle, but only follow him. Whether such surveillance would result in his death was beyond her ability to determine, but she could make assumptions, as John was now doing. She stands less than a meter from both men.

  “The Israelis,” Knox says to Dulwich. No one is within earshot, but he wouldn’t care if they were. His anger shows as a tightening of muscle and sinew, as though his body is preparing to take a blow. Both men know where this is headed.

  Dulwich does not look thrilled about it.

  “You are so far out of your element.” Dulwich is more mindful of volume than Knox. “You did what you came to do. Now, go home.” He reluctantly takes the last few steps and plants himself within striking distance. Lowers his voice further. Grace can barely hear him.

  “You two . . .” Dulwich looks past Knox at Grace. “You should have left well enough alone.”

  “You can’t leave something alone unless you know about it in the first place.”

  “The op is a thirty,” he says, indicating that it’s over; they’re done. “It’s a fat paycheck. Don’t jeopardize it.”

  “I’m going in there,” Knox says, glancing at the room’s door. “I won’t be part of his death.”

  Dulwich shakes his head. “I told you up front: no killing. It’s NTK, Knox. Leav
e it!”

  “You made like he was a monster!” Knox spits unintentionally.

  “You like things neat. Like your booze.”

  Knox shakes his head. “The GPS tracks him to a bunker the Israelis have been unable to find.”

  “N . . . T . . . K.”

  “They add it to the sortie when the time comes to start taking out Iran’s nukes. Those bunker busters the U.S. has been so hesitant to provide. No stone unturned. No bunker left operating.”

  “You have to learn when to turn it off.”

  “I’m missing that switch. This model didn’t come with one.”

  Dulwich collects himself. “Come on, John.”

  Grace adjusts her position, believing she’s going to have separate them.

  Knox produces his phone. “What say we give Primer a call and sort this out?”

  “He’ll deny it all.”

  “Impressive. You didn’t so much as flinch.”

  “We’re making a scene. Let’s take this down to the cafeteria or outside.”

  “A scene? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Knox moves to push past the man, but Dulwich is faster on two good legs. They stand chest to chest.

  “Boys.” Grace indeed closes the distance. She stands behind Knox, a gesture he takes as both symbolic and significant. She can be his legs.

  “Tell him we don’t need a scene,” Dulwich says.

  “You lied to us,” Grace says. “Omission. Commission. No matter. You lied.”

  “You are both disobeying the directive. You are also misunderstanding what’s going on. It’s Need To Know.”

  “I need to know”—Knox emphasizes the words mockingly—“why you lied. I suspect Primer will be interested as well, denial or not.”