Grace has the urge to reach across the cigarette-scarred table and take his rough face in her hands and plant a kiss on his lips. But Knox would take that as her handing him her hotel keycard. All she can do is let a ripple of excitement surge through her, sit back and sip the tea.
“You’re the computer tech,” he says. “Find him.”
“You think I have not tried? Mashe Okle’s past has been expunged.”
Knox says sarcastically, “Try harder. His university records. Scour the West for immigration records, trips abroad.”
Why is he able to conceive of a strategy she’s missed? She has asked Dulwich for Okle’s immigration records, but looking at that request through Knox’s suspicious eyes, she wonders if Dulwich has been honest with her, if there really is no significant travel out of country as Dulwich earlier reported.
“There are more than two hundred universities in Iran,” Grace says. “Do you know how long it would take to hack each of the admission servers? Years. Do you think you can throw a switch and hack a national immigration database? You think the terrorists wouldn’t love to control such information? It is impossible, John. Firewalls as thick as the Great Wall.”
“He’s an agent,” Knox says.
“No. He is an unknown.”
“The device is a package. The mother, an unknowing courier.”
“The first step,” Grace says, “is for me to get in there and see her chart. To determine the extent of her illness. The office is working on this, too, but I can speed it up. Determine what device might have been shipped. Slip a piggyback onto the hospital’s network as I did in Amsterdam.”
Knox drags his hand down his face in frustration. “We’re off-mission,” he says. “Way off.”
She imagines Dulwich’s appreciation for her delivery of the information — her insight into Mashe’s true role and her discovery of the agent working behind the scenes. She doesn’t want to seem too eager, conceals her excitement from Knox. “You are right. We should perhaps go back to our respective rooms. Await contact from Akram. Proceed as intended.”
“Says the woman in the nurse’s uniform.”
Grace hangs her head demurely. Caught. These acts of contrition seem to be in her DNA, passed down a hundred generations. There is no place for such reactions in her professional life; she wishes she could rid herself of them. She strains to lift her head, but her neck muscles resist. Rigor mortis.
“We need Sarge to come clean.”
“David has been consistent, John. He has emphasized Need To Know protocol and demanded we protect the wishes of the client. You are correct, we are off-mission.” Knox reacts best to reverse psychology.
“Drastically.”
“We should return to our lodgings. Regroup.”
“Of course we should,” Knox says.
“If you go in the hospital, you are impossible to miss,” Grace says. “Whereas I am far more invisible.”
“You sell yourself short.”
She wonders if she was fishing for the compliment. Worries she was.
“How do you expect to find her room? It’s a big hospital.”
“Taken care of,” she says. Answers his inquisitive look. “I was forced to pull her account financials to get the lead on Mashe. Her room number is four-three-one.”
“Four-thirty-one,” he says correcting her. “You can be so Chinese.”
“Just imagine.”
“I’ll flag a taxi,” Knox says. “I’ll find an alternative exit — something other than the front lobby — and text you my location. You will call me now, leave the line open. I want to hear everything you’re up to.”
“Agreed,” she says. It’s standard operating procedure, at least for the two of them.
“Nothing absurd,” he cautions. “You may meet some of these people later.”
“Understood.”
“An in-and-out.” A look overcomes him.
“What?”
“That’s what Sarge called it. Made it sound so—”
“Simple.”
“Yes.”
“That is his job,” Grace reminds him.
Grace slips into the nurse’s role as effortlessly as she donned the uniform. She crosses the hospital lobby head bent, shoulders slumped and the head scarf worn down her forehead as a brim to screen her face. She rides the elevator aware of the likelihood of security cameras.
She walks out onto the fourth floor wanting to impart a sense of familiarity with the floor plan when in fact it’s foreign to her. Many of the men in the waiting area wear the ubiquitous black leather jacket and she wonders if any of Mashe Okle’s bodyguards are among them. She angles her head away.
She marvels at how small the op’s boundaries have become. They are shrink-wrapped by a need for secrecy, by the clandestine nature of the work. Everyone wants the same thing while no one knows exactly what they want.
Three hallways extend like spokes off the hub of a semicircular nurse’s desk that roils with activity. It’s like an airline check-in counter twenty minutes before the flight. Doctors, nurses and orderlies swarm together with a clear delineation of power visible in who concedes to whom for countertop space.
Spotting an incorrect room number, she pivots in a course change and bumps into a doctor. Recovering, she moves toward the Melemet mother’s room. She didn’t need the tea; she’s riding an unhappy marriage of caffeine and adrenaline. Visitors crowd the rooms into which she peers. Some emit laughter. Some stifle sniffles or tears. Grace processes it in her gut rather than her head, suddenly weighed down by loss and shattered hopes. She harbors a fear of illness. Is worried that someday one of these beds will hold her mother or father; recognizes that her mother would welcome her company, but would her father allow her in? Worries she has waited too long to repair the damage between her and her father — heritage, generational tradition, familial honor. She allowed the love of a boy — a mere boy! — to separate them. Her father has not reached out to her since; but neither has she.
She must focus. The trick — the skill in such situations — is invisibility, to move among others in such an obnoxiously mundane manner as to not exist. The scarf and glasses create a decent enough disguise. What she must prevent is anyone addressing her or paying her any attention. She will, with any luck, meet Akram Okle in the near future.
Grace counts on a degree of racial prejudice as well as the white dress to help her blend in. Having already determined that the patient charts are stored at the foot of the bed, not in wall racks in the hallways, she knows she must infiltrate. She clears her throat; if required to speak, she will affect a moderately high, annoying voice with a Chinese accent, much like her mother’s. She can adopt the identity without thought, so accustomed was she to mocking her mother when with her brother.