“I will try for one. I may be a few minutes late. See you there.” He hangs up.
He calls FedEx and supplies Victoria Momani’s address and a pickup time of one-thirty P.M. He can’t count on her being perfectly on time. He asks the hotel concierge to help with the air bill so his handwriting can’t be traced. Lugs the crate into the taxi at twelve-forty-five; arrives at her apartment building at the top of the hour. The teahouse is a twenty-minute walk, a five-minute cab. He waits outside for five minutes and, seeing no woman leave the building, decides she’s a walker. He takes a chance, his system charged with the elixir of adrenaline.
He carries the boxed bust up two flights of stairs rather than risk being seen in the elevator. It’s like lugging a small car in his arms. He puts it down outside apartment 222 with the air bill on top. He hurries down the stairs, leaving an unguarded fortune in the hallway. Arrives back to the waiting taxi and is off.
He’s only minutes late to the Turtle Green Teahouse.
Jordanian women don’t need the cosmetics they use. Knox finds most of the over-forty faces severe. Like the Italians, it’s the skin of the younger women he finds attractive.
The only woman willing to meet his eyes is sitting alone. Victoria Momani does not cover her hair. Her shoulders are square, her posture perfect. There’s no indication of smile lines.
They shake hands. Knox sits across from her and asks for recommendations, then requests she order for the two of them. He wants her to feel in control, to lessen any defenses she may have in place. His primary concern is to keep her here long enough to ensure the package is picked up with her name on the air bill. If he can stretch this to forty minutes, he’s in the clear. FedEx is reliable.
Knox orders an espresso for himself. She asks for hot tea.
“Here on business?” she asks. Her English is tinged with a delightful lilt that makes it poetic.
“What else? I’m a slave to it, I’m afraid.”
“Trade.”
He shrugs. “Too kind a word. You might say I’m an arbitrageur. Move a piece of art or craftwork from one country to another where it’s more valued, or where the currency conversion is favorable. Sell it; convert. Purchase. Resale. It’s less supply and demand than catching the idiosyncrasies of artistic taste.”
“You take advantage of people.”
He mugs.
“And me? Do you plan to take advantage of me?”
He might think she’s flirting, but her tone is accusatory bordering on angry.
“I beg your pardon.” He has already taken advantage of her. He wishes he could feel remorse over it, but does not.
“Why do you lie to me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Akram would never recommend a drink with me. This is your mistake. So you are testing me, yes? A Westerner, no less. Bravo! An interesting twist, to be sure. But I still know nothing. You are wasting your time.”
To the contrary, Knox thinks, suddenly interested in how Akram might be testing her.
“You may have me mistaken for—” he says.
“I think not, Mr. Knox, if that is in fact your name.”
“Why meet me if you consider me such a liar?”
“To tell you, as I have told all of you before, to back off. What goes on between a man and a woman, it stays between the man and the woman.”
“Rarely,” Knox says. The word he hears is “before.”
“In this case, then.”
He’s caught between wanting to distance himself from whoever she thinks he is and playing the role in order to work the conflict for “incidental findings,” the unintended information she may yet divulge. Judging by her tone, she and Akram were once an item. Were—past tense. Akram or his people have tested her since the collapse of the relationship. She believes these people have now gone to the trouble of hiring a Westerner to do their bidding. Boxes inside boxes — he’s intrigued.
Their drinks arrive. He adds sugar to the espresso, but it’s unnecessary: the bean makes for a smooth and slippery liquor in his throat.
“You like it,” she says.
“I do, very much.”
“You will please pass my message along.”
“I would if I could. Sadly, you mistake me.”
“I think not.”
“Your prerogative.” He pauses. “You recognized my name when I called. Akram has spoken of me.”
“You people… people like you… you can know any of that far too easily. Did you listen to us at the end? Did you enjoy it?” She can’t look at him, only the reflection in her teacup.
People like you, Knox hears the echo in his ears. People who eavesdrop. She’s talking about surveillance. She fears she’s been listened in on. Better with every bite. He says, “You mistake me for someone else. No one is keeping you here.”
Her eyes flash darkly.
They share olives, hummus and falafel. Knox could eat all afternoon, the coffee boring a bottomless pit in his stomach. Shredded onions deep-fried in garbanzo flour. The dishes keep coming. The act of sharing food lowers the wall between them; the connection is primitive but palpable. He orders a beer.
“So it was a bad breakup,” he says.
She shakes her head as if to tell him he knows this already.
“I’ve only met him a couple of times, but I like Akram.” He thinks he may be getting through to her, judging by a softening of her dark eyes. But she doesn’t take the bait.
“Leave me alone, please. You tell them: leave me alone.”
“I don’t know who they are.”
“If this is the truth, then there is no harm done, and I apologize for any inconvenience. But I know you are lying, Mr. Knox, and I wish to make the point that I must be left alone.”
“Point taken.” He capitulates for no other reason than laziness and the meal’s imminent end. He signals for the check, pulling receipts, his hotel key card and his thin wallet from his front pocket. He doesn’t want her to see the name on any of the cards. He removes some bills and stuffs everything back.
“These men. Police? Government? Criminals?”
She eyes him warily. Spitefully. Shakes her head in defeat. You people won’t stop, her eyes shout. “Is there so much difference?” she asks.
11
Mashe Melemet and his two bodyguards take an additional two hours before arriving at the residential address that Besim, Grace’s driver, uncovered. It was likely time spent at the hospital, given that one of his guards is carrying takeaway food; dinner was an afterthought.
Grace has failed to spot anyone else interested in the apartment building, though she assumes that Dulwich could be watching. She expected to see the men from the airport, including the agent who descended the escalator, but she has not.
They interest her, and they will certainly interest Dulwich. The more information she can put together on them, the more thorough her work into who’s tailing Mashe Okle is, the more she’ll impress Dulwich. She has the men pegged as police, immigration officers or possibly Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization. Getting it right will earn her bonus points.
Is the takeaway dinner the result of a long day of travel or Mashe Okle’s — aka Mashe Melemet’s — avoidance of public places? If he’s afraid of restaurants, of being seen in public, it explains why Dulwich needed a plan — needed her — to put herself and Knox in a room with him.
To that end, she has to black-hat an investment server before she sleeps. Staying with Melemet is a guilty pleasure from which she finds it difficult to pull away. She left Besim and the black Mercedes four blocks back, going on foot, a scarf pulled tight over her head to hide her Asian features. She enjoyed walking the busy Turkish neighborhood for the past two hours. An operative. She continues walking past as the mark arrives. Takes no interest in him at all.