The Red Room

by Ridley Pearson

  All of Knox’s worlds are spinning into one, like water down a drain. And he’s running down with them. His being detained could be the result of his passport being tagged, but he doubts it. More likely it’s the result of face recognition software or vigilant eyes behind one-way glass on the other side of a CCTV camera’s video monitor.

  Cause and effect matter to him. He can only hope it’s the passport.

  When two more security men arrive to escort him, that hope is dashed. With his guards the product of steroids and workout videos, Knox knows the depth of the trouble he’s in. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Grace, from the back, as she hesitates a fraction of a second before joining a screening line. He wills her to stay out of this.

  The walk is longer than he expects. With a guard on either side, he feels like a death-row inmate, a dead man walking. With airports better manned, better guarded than prisons, there’s nowhere to go. The thought of Turkish prison stirs his imagination. He’s not going down without a fight. The only question is when to start it.

  The key is knowing at what point to play his card: too early and it may be ignored; too late, and its significance may be missed. He curses himself for allowing Dulwich to move him into the world of spooks. No one ever accused Knox of being subtle, and this is a game of shades, not colors.

  He’s treated respectfully. Placed in a chair at a desk alone. The room is undoubtedly locked. Both guards remain on the other side of the door. A ceiling-corner camera stares at him unflinchingly.

  The uniformed supervisor who enters five minutes later carries the fatigued eyes of an overworked bureaucrat. His mustache is neatly trimmed above poor teeth. The man’s attention is on the paperwork in front of him. He makes no real effort to connect with Knox.

  “Name.”

  “John Knox.”

  “Nationality?”

  “What’s this about?” Knox knows the questions to ask in order to appear Joe Normal.

  “Nationality?”

  “USA. American.” The redundancy causes the supervisor to issue a look of complaint: he doesn’t want his time wasted. “What have I done? I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  “Last country visited?” The man flips through the passport.

  “Jordan. Last week. Amman.”

  Another disapproving look.

  But Knox is not about to act the professional. He won’t be lured into it. “I have a plane to catch!”

  The man continues working the passport. Knox doesn’t like that camera staring at him. Passing Mashe’s business card could be construed as an attempted bribe. He has little idea of how Turkish law works. Or doesn’t work. Perhaps he’s supposed to offer money. He should have studied up in all his free time.

  “Purpose of your trip? Business or pleasure?”

  The man has set the bear trap; he now invites Knox to put his foot inside. If his being detained has to do with the sale of the Harmodius, a lie could entrap him. If, however, this guy is fishing, the claim of business invites more questions, more chances to answer incorrectly. Knox’s position is to lessen the depth of the interest in him.

  “It depends if you consider a woman business or pleasure,” Knox replies. He wins a slight twist of the man’s mustache, like a cat flicking its tail against the cold. “There was the business of a lover of hers in Amman, you see. But the pleasure was all mine once we got to Istanbul.” Knox hopes his timing is good. “Victoria Momani, if you need her name. She’s returning by train to Amman. Left this afternoon.”

  Detail, especially unsolicited detail, has a way of authenticating a statement. It can’t be forced, can only be used when the opportunity is presented. Knox prides himself on timing, whether in lovemaking or Immigration interrogations.

  The man excuses himself and leaves the room. Returns several long minutes later.

  This isn’t the guy to approach, Knox decides. He’s made no attempt at eye contact, has offered not the slightest of signals. He’s following up on Knox’s statements, moving information from point A to point B. Stalling, Knox hopes.

  Knox checks his watch. “My plane . . .”

  “This is an airport,” the man replies. “Plenty of planes.” His teeth look like old patio bricks.

  “We stayed at the Alzer Hotel,” Knox says. “Separate rooms in case her lover checked up on her.” He adds, “My room did not get a lot of use.”

  The man is clearly titillated. Knox can keep him occupied if need be, but he’s supplying information the man already has. He allows himself the fantasy of wondering whether his detention could possibly be random. Such thoughts are dangerous; they allow him to lower his guard. He warns himself to remain alert. Shades, not colors.

  The hand-off comes abruptly. A square-jawed man in a worn brown suit and no tie takes the place of Knox’s interrogator. Musical chairs. This guy could shave every hour and it wouldn’t make any difference. He has the black, infinite stare of a character from a zombie film. He meets eyes with Knox and holds the gaze for a long time.

  So this is the guy, and this is the place, and they are both extremely aware of the camera, given that the guy looks over his shoulder, right into it, to make sure it doesn’t escape Knox.

  Knox’s vitals shift into overdrive. The man represents two doors. Monty Hall. Maybe, just maybe, the Israelis or Dulwich could get him out of Turkish prison, but it’s a hell of a gamble. Maybe, just maybe, this is the moment that Mashe Okle was referencing when he passed Knox his business card. The Turks have learned to get along with most of their neighbors and the West. The only question for Knox is if he’s reading this man correctly.

  The man runs Knox through the same questions. Knox responds with the same content, worded differently so as not to sound rehearsed. There are so many traps laid for him that it feels more like a minefield. Is Dulwich going to show up and extract him? Is he on his own?

  The fucking camera doesn’t so much as blink.

  The repetition of the questions grows tedious. Knox expertly extracts the card from his pocket under the pretense of fidgeting. This bastard shows no emotion; he’s the Mount Rushmore of Turkish interrogators. Knox wants one more sign, something to convince him. But it’s not going to happen. This guy is going to run out of questions and leave the room.

  Knox slaps his hands down on the table. “I have a plane to catch!” He shifts his eyes to take in his left hand; nothing more than a twitch and impossible for the camera to see, given the angle.

  Knox rises from his chair. “You people—”

  “Sit down!” The man places his hands atop Knox’s. With his left, he grabs Knox’s wrist. His right hand waits for Knox to move, and covers the card fluidly.

  Knox sits back down and apologizes. “I . . . I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I’m . . . I have the plane to catch. I have a ticket, you see? I miss that flight—”

  “You will not miss your flight.”

  Knox never sees the man pocket the card. He could run the tables in Vegas.

  “I have a schedule to keep,” Knox says, pitching his voice to sound disappointed.

  “Allow me to conclude some paperwork,” the man says. “Always the paperwork.”

  He leaves, replaced by the first man.

  Five minutes later, Knox is beginning to worry. Ten minutes in, he’s beginning to sweat. The passing of the card wasn’t enough. Someone is inspecting it. His plane began boarding five minutes ago. Knox has no idea if the card contains anything or not, has no idea how information would be coded on it. Magnetic? Something in the ink? The supposed microdot? How is it he’s allowed his fate to rest in the hands of a man he’s met for all of five minutes?

  He’s released unceremoniously. He wants to shout out that he saved the world the equivalent of cold fusion. Decades of research would have gone up in smoke.

  Instead, he’s shown to a door and sent back out, bypassing the security lines. The d
oor clunks shut behind him, and for a moment Knox stands, taking in the sounds of the Istanbul international airport. Indians. Africans. Europeans. The crowd swirls around him.

  He phones Dulwich from the concourse. Is not worried about revealing his location. Typical of this op, Dulwich doesn’t answer. Voice mail.

  Knox speaks carefully, using no names. “No one will ever see the objet d’art again. We both know that. Once again lost to history. Your client traded it to preserve what he wanted to preserve. That’s his business. But this is our business: there’s the matter of the cash, some of which, I suppose, is going to me and my friend. That leaves a bunch left over. There’s a family of a recently deceased cabbie—first name, Ali—that deserves the rest. You hear me? Do your homework. Every dime. I’m going to follow up on this.”

  He ends the call. Steps into the melee, battling his way to beneath a sign indicating his concourse, his sore legs straining to pause. Something tugs at him, urges him to look back at that nondescript door he just passed through, but he won’t give in. Aware of the preponderance of CCTV cameras, he doesn’t have to act like a disgusted man in a hurry to make his gate; he is.

  They couldn’t arrange seats next to each other, but maybe someone will move to allow it.

  Knowing Grace, she’s already arranged it herself.

  EPILOGUE

  Morning prayers haunt the streets of Amman, echoing, reverberating. A pale but warm sunlight penetrates the small apartment’s neat interior, its walls occupied by contemporary art from a dozen artists.

  The smell of coffee blows along with a drape out onto a suicide balcony, only deep enough to hold a chair, turned to allow the occupant to stretch her long legs out of the three-quarter-length terry-cloth bathrobe. She’s taken up smoking again, a horrid habit she’d thought herself free of. But one is never truly free of one’s past.

  Victoria sips the coffee, pulls on the cigarette and watches her exhale pinned onto the sky like the vapor trail from a jet. Her laptop is pinched on her waist. She has reread the e-mail six times. Make it seven. Akram’s appeal for unification reads a little too much like a business letter, but rather than trouble or offend her, she warms to it; he tries hard to express himself even though he fails. Connects with her, in spite of himself. The possibility of reconciliation excites her.

  This, despite the fact she has found it difficult to stop thinking about the romp with John Knox, the tenderness of a Westerner’s touch; so different from the men of Amman she has known. She thinks about Knox in other ways too: anger, over the lack of payment he promised; intrigue, over the idea of using him to move the occasional art piece she is offered. She shuts the laptop, trying to silence Akram’s voice in her head. Sips more coffee and feels it slide down her long throat. Thinks of Knox again.

  She believes she could do business with him. Believes in possibility, like a future with Akram.

  The sounding of her apartment’s talk box summons her. She uncoils and crosses back into the apartment, careful not to stub her toes on the lip of the sliding glass doors. Pushes the Talk button and is greeted by an express deliveryman with whom she’s so familiar she recognizes his voice.

  “Mailbox or door?” he asks.

  “Bring it up, please,” she says, expecting a contract for a show she’s arranging for the gallery.

  She pulls the robe shut tightly, checks her face in the mirror by the door. Signs for the delivery and locks the door. The air bill’s return address is Australia, unfamiliar to her.

  She opens the express envelope to find another manila envelope inside that’s lined with a metal foil. Not aluminum, something heavier. Something, she thinks, to trick the X-ray machines. She tips the envelope, loosing its contents onto the maple dining table.

  The first thing to spill out is a greeting card with an image of the American president, Barack Obama, by Shepard Fairey. She grins. Shakes the envelope to dislodge the rest of its contents.

  Stock certificates. Apple. IBM. Microsoft. Each certificate is marked as a thousand shares. On the back of each is a transfer record listing her name over a signature line she can’t read because it’s written in Hebrew. There’s a pile of them.

  She licks her finger, pauses, then begins to pull back the corners, allowing her to count. Her finger moves faster and faster. Her grin grows wider.

  And she begins to laugh.