Barely checking her stride, she enters room 431. Seeing only the far bed occupied, she walks steadily toward the chart that waits for her like a raised finger.
Beyond the partially pulled curtain sits a man; he’s facing away from her and toward the older woman in the bed. Occupying a stool on the window side is a man in his sixties with a thick white mustache and thin white hair.
Grace’s throat is dry as she slips the clipboard from the clear plastic pocket.
She has already asked Xin and the Hong Kong office to work backward from the woman’s hospital charges to determine her likely illness. It’s ongoing. Grace’s mission here is to look for scheduled surgery prep or the mention of a medical device that could be one of the many BioLectrics products. She scans the first page. Nothing. She senses all eyes on her as she flips to the second. Scans this. Nothing. The third.
“Everything is good?” In Turkish.
Grace is confident in her execution of a limited vocabulary. “Yes,” comes easily. “Routine,” follows, also spoken well. She keeps her eyes low out of deference and respect, lowers her head, takes four steps and encounters a leather jacket.
“Excuse me,” she says, head still down.
“You are?” English, with a thickly Arabic accent.
“In a hurry, if you do not mind?”
The younger man behind the curtain, Akram or Mashe, she assumes, laughs.
“Easy!” this man says, instructing the one in front of Grace. “Let them do their work.”
“This one is new to us,” the bodyguard says.
The sitting man is standing now. He rakes back the privacy curtain angrily. “You have interviewed the entire hospital staff, I suppose?” Persian. Iranian. His irritation with his guards intrigues her; she compartmentalizes it for later analysis. This one, she is sure, is Mashe. “Let them do their jobs! The sooner my mother is well, the better for all of us. Do you hear me?”
The jacket steps aside. Grace has yet to look higher than the guard’s belt.
“I am sorry, nurse,” Mashe says.
Grace nods and passes into the corridor. She hears rapid footsteps approaching from behind.
An orderly runs past.
Grace bites back a smile. She eyes the chaotic nurse’s station, checks down the hall and spots one of Mashe’s guards. He is watching her, compounding his earlier distrust.
The guard sidles toward the nurse’s station. He’s calm and introspective, exceptionally smooth and practiced at appearing that way. In a few short steps he tells her more about Mashe Okle’s importance than she knew even following all her research.
Grace must not overreact. She and this man are testing one another. The crush of bodies is claustrophobic, preventing her from a quick escape. She eyes the elevators. The stairs are her second option. Men like him are deceptively fast in spite of their size. She’d rather not test him.
Grace doesn’t want a close quarters confrontation. She’s capable of self-defense, is as well trained as he. But the man has eighty pounds on her and a longer reach. It will be possible to postpone the damage, but only that. Instead, her best bet is to get out front and then keep it a race, all the while not allowing him to realize what’s going on. It’s time for smoke and mirrors.
The best way to accomplish this reality break is to instill doubt, to reaffirm her cover. Rather than separate herself from the nurse’s station, she turns and briefly joins three nurses studying paperwork. The guard can’t force his way into the nurse’s station. Instead, he comes around the front, eyes boring into Grace’s back.
Grace manages to block the background noise like noise-canceling headphones. She hears the guard ask someone if he could please speak “with her.” She feels the heat run up her spine. He explains he’s unfamiliar “with her” and that he wishes to discuss why she was just examining the chart in 431.
As this mostly one-way conversation carries on behind her, Grace quietly introduces herself to the two nurses as an employee of the Ministry of Health, an introduction that runs shivers up their spines. Her Turkish is passable, but since the ministry might easily employ doctors and scientists from around the globe, Grace is not overly concerned. She allows them to hear that she’s checking standards and practices and that the annoying man at the counter behind them is about to unintentionally expose her, which will defeat her purpose here and might reflect poorly on the hospital.
She leaves it at that. No direct request, no suggestion as to how they conduct themselves.
When the woman at the counter tries to gain Grace’s attention, the older of the two nurses turns and chides her. They are not to be disturbed. If a patient’s guest needs something, they should apply to the attending nurse.
Grace keeps her attention on the paperwork.
A minute later, she overhears the receptionist asking the man to move on, pointing out the posted signs requesting that guests occupy either the waiting area or a patient’s room, but leave the corridors clear. Grace wishes she’d had the time and foresight to print bogus business cards — so useful at a time like this. The bodyguard has chosen the small waiting area, more of an alcove with airport seats, enabling him to keep an eye on the elevators and stairs.
Grace studies the metal engraved fire diagram mounted in the nurse’s station. There’s an exit at the end of each of the three corridors. Physical therapy takes place in the east corridor; she spots several patients walking slowly, holding on to the rolling stands carrying their IVs. It’s the busier of the two corridors available to her.
She leaves the station without so much as a glance toward the waiting area. She has at least a thirty-foot lead. She must pull this off without arousing suspicion, without compromising the op.
It’s a magic trick she has planned. She notes the location of a mobile laundry bin well down the corridor. She can use the knot of the slow-moving patients and their nurses to her advantage. Assumes but does not confirm that the guard is following her.
She can imagine that from his vantage point, he will briefly lose sight of her among the addled parade of staggering patients when she enters a patient’s room. He will slow, maintaining a position that provides him with a line of sight to the doorway. But his view will be obscured for at least several long seconds.
He will try to see around the patients walking the corridor blocking his view.
When and if he dares to enter the hospital room, he will find its privacy curtains pulled back, exposing occupied beds. There will be no attendant in sight. No nurse. Nothing to suggest the woman he was following. She has vaporized.
He may try several more rooms. Eventually he will return to the nurse’s station.
“The woman? Brown head scarf? Short?”
The nurse stares at him as if he’s daft. “No idea.”
“The woman you were talking to.”
“Who are you?” she asks. “Why do you ask this?” The nurse knows that the Ministry of Health can make a world of problems if it so chooses.
He will not think to look into the laundry bin parked in the hallway, would have to dig to see a white nurse’s uniform and brown head scarf buried two layers down. Has only a vague recollection of a woman slipping into the stairway. Was she wearing yoga pants and an Under Armour top? He gives it no weight whatsoever, his full attention on finding the missing nurse who paid an unexpected visit to 431, who glimpsed the man there he’s sworn to protect.
Grace’s descent of the stairs is controlled but hurried. She moves quietly and stays close to the wall; she will not be seen nor heard by someone peering down into the narrow slit separating railings. She moves landing to landing like a wraith. Arrives at the street level and walks out into the cool air.