“Cleaner than this. We don’t know who we’re working for. We don’t know who we’re working against.”
“I… in the airport. It’s government, or someone who can buy his way into the Turkish equivalent of your TSA.”
“Well, that certainly clarifies things.”
“Have you made the call?” she asks.
“Tomorrow. I don’t want to appear overeager.”
“You are flirting. No wonder Mr. Dulwich selected you for this job.”
He almost finds it in himself to smile at her.
Checking her watch, she says, “Would you help me with something?”
“Shopping for a new watch, I hope.” She wears a Michael Kors aviator, platinum ringed, hinge-snap clasp. Its masculinity has no place on her delicate wrist.
She leads the way outside. Within minutes, they’ve joined the hordes of tourists that are forced to divide themselves between wonders-of-the-world mosques and exquisite Roman ruins. Soon they break away into Gülhane Park, inside which the city disappears.
“Have you been in?” Knox asks Grace, pointing out the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.
“Never.”
“You must.”
She checks her masculine watch again. “Not today.”
“Are we meeting someone?”
“I am not sure.”
They continue toward Topkapi Palace. “It once housed four thousand people. Was a miniature city for the sultan. Included a hospital, bakeries, nearly independent of the outside world. And now, tourists.”
“Like the Forbidden City,” she says. She turns them around. Knox can’t keep from surveying their surroundings.
“Anything?” she asks.
“No. But if they’re government…”
“I was able to track one. Xin was, actually. Data Services.”
“One what?”
“A man following me.”
“Track, as in…?”
“I have his texts for the past several days. His locations. GPS fixes.”
“And you were going to tell me, when?”
“I just did.”
“Jesus.”
“He revisited Sisli Square four times in three days. Always between four and five.” She pauses. “Sent what could be a coded text at the end of his last visit.”
He now understands her double-checking the time.
“There will be taxis at the museum,” she says.
“And crowds.”
“Just so.”
“It’s good to see you again,” he says.
She hooks her arm in his and they walk. It’s an uncommonly familiar gesture for someone as distant as she. It feels awkward until she speaks.
“In case we missed someone out there.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Of course.”
She holds him closer, or does he imagine it? In profile, she appears to be smiling. Or not. He feels off balance. First Dulwich, now Grace Chu. The leaves rustle overhead, sounding dry in the fall breeze. A boat horn haunts the sky. A Turkish kid skateboards past them wearing a Who T-shirt and Air Jordans.
Knox ditches the anxiety. He feels right at home.
They sit together in Sisli Square as afternoon prayers are called. Grace is enchanted by the nasally, electronic summons pealing from the minarets.
“Do you feel it? It is as if the city takes a breath,” she says.
“If they take too deep a breath, they’ll gag.” Car exhaust chokes the city when the breezes off the Bosphorus pause for even minutes. The smog residue crusts the older buildings in a black smudge and, on bad days, causes one’s nose and eyes to run — the scourge of the third world.
They both wear sunglasses; Grace, a head scarf. She explains what the GPS data has told her about the man seen watching her apartment.
“The mosque makes the most sense,” Knox says. “Afternoon prayers. He didn’t have to be attending. He could be surveilling someone.”
“By your own admission, there are any number of agencies who would want the mark. Yes? More important to me is not the who, but the why. This man entered the country six days ago. This we can assume. Four different times he spends at least an hour on this bench. Why? How does that relate to us? To say it does not is absurd,” she says, cutting off his objection. “A shipment? A middleman? Our safety relies upon—”
“—knowledge of the exigent circumstances. You take this stuff too literally. Chinese violinists are technically the most accomplished in the world, you know, but they lack soul. You need to loosen up.” He’s thinking: The frog and the scorpion. This is the Middle East. Anybody could be interested in Mashe Okle. Get in line.
“You need to consider what you say before you say it.”
“You realize we’re recording all this?” he says.
They laugh together. He never would have imagined such a moment a year ago.
“What I said,” Grace says, “my mother used to say to me. You would be surprised. I was once more like you than you imagine.”
“Are you implying I never matured?”
“You are impossible.”
“But consistent.”
Knox’s phone is still recording when a low-battery alert chimes. They end their recordings at thirty-two minutes.
“I’ll call Akram tomorrow morning and ask for the down payment. Get things going.”
“To be wired. The funds must be wired into the account.”
“Impossible. These things are always cash.”
“The data will enable me to hack his bank account and determine the source of the deposits.”
“Sarge didn’t explain any of this to me.”
“It is how we win the face-to-face.” Grace is unsure how much to share. If David Dulwich did not include Knox, there must be a reason, the most obvious of which is that should one of them be captured, he or she must not have the full picture. That leads her to wonder why the possibility they might be surveilled and captured was never mentioned.
“He’s compartmentalized us,” Knox says. “That can’t be good.”
“I was thinking same thing.” Grace hears herself drop the article as dictated in her native Mandarin. Knows it signals her anxiety. Sees Knox react to the red flag. They know each other too well; it’s a worrisome thought. The op in Amsterdam brought them closer. Not only are they more aware of each other’s idiosyncrasies, but also a shared hour in a brothel stripped them of the secrets typically kept between co-workers. They have information only lovers possess, and yet they are far from lovers.
“It’s got to be cash. He’ll smell it a mile away.”
Grace ruminates. “Yes. I understand.”
“You don’t have to look so glum.”
“It is a complication.”
“Maybe if it was explained to me, it wouldn’t be.”
Grace makes a point of weighing her response. A year ago, she would have stuck to David Dulwich’s instructions without question. Now, she wonders at the forces responsible for testing her this way.
After a moment or two of silence, she speaks quietly. She is afraid he will tease her. Sometimes this cuts her to her core. “‘When the wind of change blows, some build walls while others build windmills.’”
She sees Knox winding up to lash out, but he swallows it away. Perhaps they are both different from a year ago, she thinks. Condensing the plan she and Dulwich worked out, she offers it to Knox in its most simplistic form.
“Isn’t there some way around the wiring of the cash?” Knox asks.
Knox’s sense of what she does amuses her at such times.
He says, “It’s a boatload of money.”
“Understood.”
“Maybe not if you’re an arms dealer, but—”
“He is not an arms dealer.” She blurts this out. “Or if he is, he is not so very good at it.” She explains the relatively small investment portfolio as well as her inability to follow the deposits. “The point is, the deposits are made directly from other bank accounts. If this was questionable income… I deal with questionable income. It is what I do for the company. This is not. You see?”