“Three hundred seventy-one.” It’s Xin from the video window in the corner of her screen.
“Within fifty meters?”
“Affirmative.”
“Of those, how many have called or been called by known law enforcement, domestic or foreign, in the past ten days?”
“Published, or known to us?”
“Known to us,” she says.
“Back at you.” His line mutes. Xin loves this stuff as much as she does.
She pours herself another drink, this one on the rocks. Warns herself to take it easy. She likes vodka a little too much. Has no remorse about drinking alone. She’s always alone. Even in a mixed group she feels isolated, believing her mind more facile than most, her personal history more complicated. The truth is, most people bore her.
“No joy,” says Xin.
The trouble with vodka: it skews her sense of time. Ten minutes have passed. She’s been surfing Mashe Okle’s investment files offline. The vodka level is halfway down the ice.
“Calls and texts placed outside Turkey in past ten days,” she states.
“Hang on. That shouldn’t take but a moment.”
She finds the British accent on her fellow Chinese appealing. It’s either Xin or the vodka warming her.
“Fifteen.”
“Better,” she says. “We can work with that. You’ll need a phantom caller ID. Untraceable. Australia. UAE. Israel. UK. Washington. Maybe a rotation.”
“Copy.”
“I want you to ring each of the fifteen numbers in thirty-second intervals. Wrong number, but sell it. Maybe a child’s voice asking for mother.”
“Copy.”
“Let me know when you’re ready. I’m here.” She mutes the video window. Considers another three fingers of vodka. Convinces herself it doesn’t negatively affect her thought process — if anything, it enhances it. Knows damn well it’s a lie. Pours more anyway.
Yum.
She calls Besim. “Can you see him?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He can see you?”
“Not probably. My seat low whole time. Resting. Who knows?”
“I’m going to keep you on the phone. You need to tell me if he answers his phone. The moment he answers his phone. You un… derstand?” She slurs. Thinks nothing of it. Checks the glass. Half of what she poured is gone. She obviously shorted herself. Wouldn’t mind topping it off.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Stay on the line please.”
Feeling incredibly good, she closes her eyes, celebrating the vodka’s ability to cleanse her fatigue, settle her racing mind and warm her limbs. What’s not to love? Opens her eyes again when Xin speaks.
“You napping on me?”
“Ready?”
“Will call all fifteen, thirty seconds apart.”
“Correct.”
“Here we go.” Her head clears; she is instantly sober despite her efforts otherwise. This is not the first time this has happened; where the alcohol haze goes, she has no idea, but it’s undetectable. She has the cell phone to her ear. She watches Xin. He’s gotten a young woman in her early twenties to make the calls. The woman’s face glistens with a sheen of nervousness. Grace wants to caution her to do it right, but knows it would only add to the woman’s anxiety. She has to trust Xin. She chuckles to herself — his name, a common one, means “trust.”
“Something amusing?” Xin asks.
“You had to be there,” she says. She drains the remaining vodka. Trust is not found in her personal lexicon. She knows its absence is the source of much of her inner struggle.
The calls go out. The young woman does an excellent voice, sounding about thirteen and troubled. Three calls. Five. Grace keeps eyeing the vodka bottle, knowing she’s over her efficacious limit but wanting more.
“He’s on phone,” Besim says in her left ear.
“Joy!” Grace says to Xin, whose typically quiet face registers a thrill. “That’s the one we want.”
“Got it.”
“Off phone.”
She mutes the video. “Thank you, Besim. That’s all for the night. But please, don’t leave for at least another thirty minutes. I will tell you when.”
“As you wish.”
She will turn off the apartment light before allowing Besim to drive off. She wants as little connection to the wrong number as possible.
Back with Xin, she says, “I need all calls, text messages and web access to and from that number over the past ten days to two weeks.”
“It will take a few hours. Likely a lot of data. I will post here. You can access it once I post. I will let you know.”
“Give me the GPS data as well.”
“Copy.” Xin ends the video call.
Grace is left with nothing on her computer screen but her wallpaper photo of a dog and cat curled together at the foot of a wingback chair. They’re not hers. She has no pets. No wingback chairs.
She isn’t who she pretends to be. She isn’t who she is.
As bad as that makes her feel, she feels damn good.
14
“Nee-hao.” Knox speaks over the phone’s earbud wire to retain his peripheral vision. His feet are tired, his belly empty; he’s back down the hill in Jabal, the nearest thing Amman has to a historic district. With each conquering army, one civilization has replaced the next, going back millennia. While the Jabal neighborhood is arguably also the most modern, these contemporary edifices are built cheek-to-jowl alongside ancient ruins. It’s a human stew of body odor, food scents and fossil fuel. Livelihoods are made on the streets, other lives are lost on the streets, and still others repair the streets.
Now they are teeming in the evening hour.
“Nee-hao,” Grace answers.
“Can you change a FedEx delivery address for me?” He speaks Shanghainese, a specific dialect of Mandarin. Of all the words, only “FedEx” is in English. It stands out like a black sheep.
“Are you sender or recipient?”
“Recipient.”
“Must be sender.” Grace’s tone is deliberate, professional.
“Electronically? Can you hack it?”
“I could check with Data Services, see if we have that capability. I would guess it would come down to timing.”
“Immediately.”
“No. I would think not.”
He hesitates. Victoria turned him in to the police, who will have located the shipment using her address as the point of origin. He’s counting on FedEx being so fast that the Harmodius is already in the air, or perhaps landed in Istanbul. The trick is to move it while the Jordanians debate how much to share with the Turks, and if they come to terms, the Turks set up surveillance to trap the recipient — Knox. Given the bureaucratic tangle likely to ensue, he can’t see either side anticipating the delivery location changing; it’s his one chance to steal the piece back before they seize it. And him.
Grace informs him that the sender can change the delivery address for a small fee.
“Can you impersonate the sender?”
“I am no expert on this. I would imagine there are safeguards. The sender must call from the phone number listed on the air bill. Something like this.”
“Shit.” Knox put Victoria Momani’s number on the air bill.
No names. No small talk. No locations. He and Grace haven’t spoken in several months. He likes hearing her voice. It’s an unexpected reaction.
He ends the call, knowing no offense will be taken.
From a second-story stairwell window across the street, Knox keeps watch on the cars — mostly European subcompacts — and pedestrians outside the apartment building across the street. It’s a residential area with no cafés or coffeehouses or galleries to hide in. It’s going on one A.M., yet swarms of youth and pairs of both men and women fill the sidewalks. Oddly, there are few couples over thirty seen together; the Jordanians in this neighborhood separate by gender when out for the evening.