The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  He focuses on his phone’s screen. Dulwich reaches for it, but Knox has several inches more arm span. He holds it at bay. He and Dulwich are practically kissing.

  “You have no fucking idea how wrong you have this.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  Grace steps forward to pry them apart. Her intervention catches the attention of an orderly down the hall. She spots the man a mile away, thanks to his oversized shoes. He had to change out of his leather-soled shoes to look the part, she guesses, and he couldn’t find any his own size in the staff lockers he broke into. In her mind’s eye, Grace can see the man panicking and settling for a pair several sizes too large. But he looks like a carnival clown; it might have been smarter to risk wearing his own shoes. He’s moving to help her.

  “David, your six o’clock,” she hisses. The men stop wrestling.

  51

  Dulwich grabs Knox by the back of the head and presses his lips to his ears. “Thorium,” he manages to say before Knox bats his arm away, bruising him. Knox intentionally flares his eyes.

  “Can I hel—”

  Working from Knox’s signal, Dulwich rotates and hits the orderly in the jaw. Grace moves like they’ve rehearsed for it, catching the man as he sags, unconscious, while driving her fist into his chest and stunning his diaphragm. Dulwich drags the man from behind, Grace catching the door and toeing it open.

  Knox watches it all as his thumb directs the phone away from his search for Brian Primer’s direct line to its search engine.

  thorium

  Google.

  Dulwich makes excuses to someone who’s complaining from within the room. He says the man fainted. He and Grace drag the man into the bathroom, where a soft thud confirms the man won’t be interfering further.

  a cheap, plentiful source of energy

  Knox has it worked out before Dulwich returns. He recalls Rutherford Risk telling him his ID had come up as “on leave.” Dulwich is rogue, as Knox suspected, but maybe not the villain he thought.

  “We caused the heart problems. Our phones. Forced him here, where your client and his guys put his mother—”

  “I know only the client. No part of any government agen—”

  “Save it for the congressional hearing. They replace the failed pacemaker with one containing a GPS chip. The Israelis track him back to his bunker lab in the Iranian desert—”

  “And we ensure that no one mistakenly bombs it,” Dulwich says, staring Knox down defiantly. “You two got it backward, pal. Had it backward from the start. It was never in the plan to harm this guy. His thorium research would be spared. We save him from the firestorm. And, mark my words, the firestorm is coming. Neither he nor anyone else was going to tell us which bunker not to bomb.”

  “No way Primer sanctioned this,” Knox says. A combination of anger and resentment floods him, makes him want to throw a punch. Dulwich put him in the path of an unforeseen dead drop that has put Knox and Tommy at permanent risk. “Unintended consequences,” it’s called in the business. Knox never wanted to be on the wrong end of it, but he is now, and there’s no sense complaining. Not even Dulwich can change an unintended consequence.

  “We must move,” Grace, ever the practical one, announces. “Now.”

  Knox bumps Dulwich back a step. He and Grace walk side by side as he shoves him a second and third time, closing the distance to the exam room housing Mashe Okle.

  To his credit, Dulwich doesn’t fight back. The man’s nervous eyes reveal his search for a solution. If Knox exposes the pacemaker’s true purpose, the Israelis lose their op. But more important to Knox right now is distancing himself from any dead drop. If he’s believed to be the courier, he’ll be followed, hunted and squeezed dry. The Mossad won’t rest until they get what they want.

  Grace tugs on his sleeve, points out two men at the end of the corridor. They’re not hospital employees.

  If Dulwich abandons him now, Knox is in the kind of trouble you don’t get out of. The magician’s trick is sleight of hand.

  Knox fishes the business card he stole from the nurse’s station out of his pocket. Angles slightly to the right, turning Dulwich with him as he does. He wants both the security camera and these two men to get a good look at what he’s doing as he carefully hands Dulwich the card, doing an intentionally poor surreptitious pass.

  Knowing no better, Dulwich accepts the card.

  Seeing the exchange, Grace covers her teeth—her automatic response to an unwanted smile. Another op, another time, she might have warned Dulwich.

  Knox backs up a step. Under no circumstances does he want the business card passed back to him. He amuses himself by thinking: It’s radioactive.

  “Good luck with that,” he says.

  Dulwich studies the card thoroughly, flipping it over twice. He couldn’t play act it any better if Knox had coached him. Then comes the moment Knox hoped for.

  Dulwich pockets the card.

  Grace tugs Knox away. “Come on, John. We were wrong.”

  As they walk past Dulwich, the man nods and grins, appreciating her humility.

  The door to the exam room in question clicks open. Knox ducks his chin. Grace has the wherewithal to snuggle into him and bury her face in his pajama top as they walk; she partially screens Knox.

  Akram Okle comes out of the exam room, passing within feet of Knox and Grace. He doesn’t look up.

  Knox risks a final glance over his shoulder.

  The two agents have converged on Dulwich.

  52

  Thorium,” Grace says.

  “Sounds like a vitamin supplement,” Knox says.

  “Poor man’s uranium,” Grace says, speaking in professorial mode. “Abundantly available. Same energy benefits, but without the degree of waste and nearly impossible to weaponize.”

  “McEnergy.”

  “Something like that.”

  “He should have told us,” Knox repeats. Before Grace has a chance to defend Dulwich, Knox cuts her off. “Don’t start!”

  They step through a door into a fire escape. Grabbing her arm, Knox turns her. “They’re looking for two of us.”

  Grace is already pulling off the scrubs. Knox holds her inside shirt down so it won’t ride up and expose her as she strips off the top. Her look softens as she tosses the scrub top into the corner.

  “When they see it’s a hospital card, they will come for you.”

  “Yes,” he acknowledges. “I’ll head up, you go down.”

  She objects. “Absurd. I will go up. My legs function properly. You leave as quickly as possible.”

  He nods reluctantly. “We rendezvous at the Holiday Inn across the street. North a few bloc—”

  “I know it.”

  “There’s a booth by the café’s exterior door. Wait there thirty minutes, no more. If I don’t show, I’ll see you at your place in Hong Kong.”

  “I am not leaving Istanbul without—”

  “Yes, you are. It’s protocol.” He hits her where she lives—the front-row student.

  “The client is connected to the Israelis. Shabak? Mossad? Does it matter?”

  “It’s an unsanctioned op,” he reminds her. “We both know that. If we appeal to Primer to intervene with the Israelis, the roof’ll come down on Sarge.”

  “You care.”

  “I care.”

  “Who shot at us?”

  “Not here.” Knox has a theory that the Israelis are a house divided, but she won’t believe him; Dulwich won’t believe him. He checks the door, checks the staircase. The Israelis seem to be the least of their worries; in a few short hours, Mashe Okle’s heart troubles will bring down the wrath of the Iranians. They won’t care about evidence: they will want words with Knox. “Thirty minutes. Then you abort.”

  Knox takes off down the stairs with difficulty. Mulls the fact that she switched
their assignments. She likes to play so hard-nosed, but Knox is not easily fooled. He waits to make sure he hears Grace ascending.

  At the next landing, he quietly opens the door and steps into the hall. It’s a patient floor. He walks slowly, peering through partially open doors. The third room is a double: one bed untouched, the other has its bedding turned back and unkempt; it’s unoccupied. Knox steps inside, eases the door nearly shut.

  “Hello?” He’s worried the patient could be in the bathroom.

  No reply.

  He moves quickly to the bedside phone. Reaches the hospital operator and asks to be connected to a patient. “Family name, Melemet.”

  Waits, hoping he has guessed correctly—would she, too, now use Okle?

  A click, a woman’s quavering voice answers in Turkish.

  “Victoria Momani,” Knox says.

  The old woman replies in Arabic.

  Victoria answers in Arabic as well. “Yes?”

  “This is important. Drop your cell phone in the toilet. Leave the room with it, but dump it as soon as possible. You understand?”

  “I understand.” Her voice is shaky.

  “Not English! Think! Switch taxis no fewer than three times, walking fully around the block each time. Head to the train station. Take the first train east toward Jordan. Wait somewhere down the line and join the overnight to Jordan. Do not wait here for the Jordanian train. You understand?”

  She answers in Arabic.

  “Calm yourself. Be polite and sweet. Don’t tell her you’re leaving—say you need to find a vending machine. Something like that. Do not use the hospital’s front entrance. There are plenty of others. Wear your head scarf. You understand?”

  “Thank you for calling,” she says, her voice now relaxed.

  A woman’s inquiry in Turkish. Knox pivots. Gently hangs up the phone.

  The woman coming out of the bathroom is in her early forties. She’s clutching an IV stand and, though facing him, holds her hospital gown closed from behind.

  Knox still wears the gown himself, over his pants. He speaks Turkish. “Lost.” He points to his head. “Not remember what floor is my room. So sorry.” He moves past her. She rotates to keep the back of her gown hidden. Eyes him as the intruder he is. He suspects she may call it in. He thanks her. Hurries.

  Stands briefly in the corridor, busier now than minutes before. Weighs the risk of the slowness and pain of the stairs versus the speed and ease of the elevators, knowing full well there are surveillance cameras in the elevator cars.

  53

  Getting into trouble is not so difficult,” Grace’s army intelligence instructor once said in a lecture. “It is getting out of trouble that requires effort.”

  Grace has climbed three flights of stairs. Is tempted by the thought of an elevator, but knows better. Wishes she had not abandoned the scrubs so quickly, for now she elects to cross the eleventh floor to an opposing set of stairs. She is as much a target as Knox, and they both know it. Any of the interested parties would welcome the chance to dangle her as bait, reel him in.

  She wonders if John has a plan. Doubts it. She has gone along with him because he has a knack for thinking on the fly. Given thirty minutes, she could come up with an exit strategy better than his. But she knows she wouldn’t have thought to pass a business card to David, to scent the hounds in his direction. A stroke of genius, so typically John Knox, and one that may have bought them enough time to find their way out of Istanbul.

  Grace finds the memory of the bloodied taxi and Ali’s unmoving corpse unshakable. Distracting. The same instructor warned her about losing one’s focus. One can stumble into trouble, but then one must plot a course to find the way out. She feels she is stumbling as she lowers her chin perhaps too far and holds back her stride to avoid running. Still, she senses the deliberateness of her movements, the telegraphing of her intentions. Poisoned by doubt, she begins to crumble, pieces of her confident façade falling to the tile floor. She wants to reach out and hold on, but it would be like trying to catch snowflakes.

  Patience! Constant dripping wears away even a stone, her maternal grandmother would remind her.

  Mashe Okle’s advice to barter his business card with the authorities calls into question what authorities he had in mind. Is he aware of all the players? The problem with spycraft is facing a faceless enemy, she thinks. Grace doesn’t appreciate being distracted by such regurgitation. Takes it as a bad sign and curses her culture for instilling in her such a strong belief in bad signs. But the point is taken: she and Knox are hindered by having so little idea who, or how many, are pursuing them. It could be three or four; it could be a dozen or more. They might have shown their faces more than once; this might be the first time she and John have seen them.

  Yet the opposite is just the opposite—she wears a bull’s-eye, front and back. The only upside: she finds it impossible to fear a faceless enemy. Her situation fuels paranoia, suspicion and distrust, but she’s not afraid.

  Three corridors, a lot of weaving through the chaos of medical practice, and Grace arrives at a set of stairs on the north side of Nightingale. Orthopedics. She hesitates, hoping for someone using the stairs. It pays off. She follows behind two nurses. They leave her at the landing on nine. Her feet pick up the pace of her descent automatically. She pulls on the reins. Anxiety produces boogeymen, jumping out at her unexpectedly. They don’t come; it doesn’t happen. Her thoughts settle: of course it doesn’t happen. They’re waiting for her at the bottom in order to limit her options. Either just before she leaves the building, or on the other side of the exit door.

  On the second floor, she leaves the stairwell, rejoining a hospital ward. Pediatrics. She feels the cameras burning against her shoulders like the sun after too long on the beach. Think!

  Only three entities could be monitoring the hospital security cameras: the Israelis, the West or the Turks.

  The Israelis will want to protect her and John, will want to see their pacemaker op through to its rightful completion. Western agents will want the contents of the business card, and will go to great lengths to obtain it. The Istanbul police, if present, will want answers about the murder of an innocent taxi driver. The accountant sees the cameras as two-thirds against her, so abandons any consideration of appealing directly to them.

  Considering it more dangerous outside than in, yet feeling eyes upon her and unable to leave, Grace begins to feel dizzy. As she was once taught, she free-associates, something that does not come easily nor endure for very long.

  Hospital. Health. Patients. Doctors. Healing. Chaos. Order. Patience. Panic. Operations. Prescriptions. Tests. Privacy. Tears. Crying. Diagnosis. Terminal. Cancer. Viral. Bacteria. Flu. Insurance.

  She has it: a way out.

  54

  The heel of his shoe is used to eliminate the fisheye lens in the upper corner of the elevator car. Knox slams his thumb against the buttons, lights up three consecutive floors below him. After an empty stop, he’s joined by several nurses and an orderly tending to a young girl in a wheelchair. They all look at him when the elevator makes the next stop and Knox doesn’t depart. They disembark at lobby level. Knox rides to the first of three marked basement levels.

  He moves quickly for the nearest exit. It’s all timing now. They can’t cover every exit, every street.

  He’s comfortable with his chances. His shins feel surprisingly better; he’s found the right balance of meds. He’s through the exit and into a dark, underground parking garage before he can blink. Ducking, Knox works his way through the parked cars and light trucks, hoping to avoid closed-circuit cameras, though he doubts their existence due to the gloom.

  At the exit, he stops to shed the pajama gown, pulls on his shirt, dons the windbreaker and hurries up a concrete ramp to join the crowd on a busy sidewalk. He’s all sparks and electricity, his motor red-lining. It’s a high that blows away the pain med
s, sending him into a giddy mental frenzy that results from this life-threatening game of hide-and-seek.

  Two intersections north, he circles the block fully and uses a variety of methods to surreptitiously check for ground surveillance. It’s a fool’s errand—a small mobile team can easily follow him without detection. But he knows the drill, and he stays with it before mixing with the crowds at the Sisli Mosque plaza where he and Grace stood only days earlier. It feels much longer ago, and Knox wonders for a moment at the outcome had they never pursued the switched FedEx package.

  He pictures Mashe Okle’s forty-five-minute procedure. The man walks out of the hospital with a GPS in his chest and leads the Israeli Air Force to the location of his thorium research bunker, none the wiser about the protection he’ll be rendering. The Israelis will be able to track him for ten years, kill him at a moment’s notice.

  Knox enters the Holiday Inn minutes later. Heads toward the booth by the alternate exit.

  No Grace.

  55

  It takes Grace time she doesn’t have to find the hospital’s staff lounge. It’s down a fluorescent corridor thirty feet beneath street level on S2, flanked on either side by men’s and women’s locker rooms where no security cameras cover the toilets and showers. Here she finds an abundance of hospital gowns, rubber gloves, masks, hats and shoe covers. She dons a green jumpsuit, waits for two cleaners to leave, and follows closely behind. By the time she’s left all this behind and is on the street again, she’s confident she has avoided detection.

  She finds Knox in the restaurant booth drinking black coffee. Either the pain or the meds or both have spread fatigue onto his face. He tries to smile for her.

  The bench seat is plastic, the lighting environmentally friendly, the buffet picked over. Grace shifts back and forth, unable to get comfortable.

  “Making it a few blocks up the street is very different from getting through Customs.”