She dares not attempt to use this woman’s ID and password while the woman is logged on, so Grace reconnects with the live security camera repeatedly. Forty minutes later, the bank officer logs off and leaves her desk. Grace pounces.
She meets Dulwich on the upper level of an eastbound double-decker tram twenty minutes later and details the encounter with the man in the cafeteria.
“Mashe Okle, our POI,” she says — person of interest—“is indeed paying the medical bills for one Delbar Melemet — female, seventy-three — in care at Istanbul’s Florence Nightingale Hospital. Mashe Okle’s income is bifurcated. His deposits from state-generated Iranian paychecks put him at the mid-to-high end for research academicians. Additional phantom income, the result of pension funds that don’t appear to come with any restrictions, bumps that to six figures in U.S. dollars. He appears to have no mortgage, no housing costs. Utilities, even a wireless bill, all these are a no-show.”
Dulwich’s head pivots back to front, watching the passengers come and go. Experience tells her that even when Dulwich appears distracted, as now, he’s listening closely.
Beside him Grace also admires the well-heeled mix of Europeans and Asians crowding the sidewalk, reveling in the cleanliness of the streets and the elegance of the architecture. Nonetheless, despite its reputation as the “London of Asia,” Hong Kong carries a whiff of malfeasance beneath its white-collar façade—probably, Grace thinks, due to its pirate heritage. She waits until the tram is moving again, no new passengers having sat down within hearing distance.
“There was a cash withdrawal from the account on the day following the woman’s hospitalization. Fifty million rials. That computes to the cost of a round-trip, first-class ticket, Tehran to Istanbul, with enough left over for living expenses for several days.”
“Good work.”
“An hour later, a first-class ticket is purchased with cash at an Emirates branch office in downtown Tehran under the name of Mashe Melemet.”
“Spell it.” Dulwich scribbles onto a busy piece of notepaper.
“Mashe Melemet, aka Mashe Okle, departs Monday,” she continues, glowing now like the star pupil in the first row. “With a two-hour layover in Dubai.”
“I may be able to pull a passport photo for the Melemet ID.” He tries to cover his excitement. She interprets, deciding he doesn’t have a photo of their mark; realizes she’s given him something he and, by inference, their client, need.
“Book yourself a flight arriving in Istanbul just ahead of his,” Dulwich says. “Arrange a driver and surveil Okle. Nothing stupid. You can pick him up again at the hospital, so you don’t need to stick to him.”
“Yes, sir.” Questions hang in the air. Grace wasn’t aware this would involve field ops. She’s thrilled. She’d love to get out of the office for good. Is she to work directly with Dulwich — no John Knox? She would view this as a promotion of sorts. She’s about to ask the obvious question when he subverts her.
“You’re Knox’s accountant, same as Shanghai,” he says. “Use your EU creds where necessary. They’ll hold up. But in terms of the mark, you’re there in the room to protect Knox from any kind of sting. You and I will need to know the players. You may not hear from me, but I want to hear from you.”
His mention of Knox is bittersweet. “Understood. If I may?”
“Go ahead.”
“Who protects John Knox from himself?”
Dulwich smiles, which doesn’t suit his face. Two of his front teeth are chipped.
“If the POI’s cover is broken,” Dulwich says, “it will be bad for him and everyone around him.”
“Do we extract at that point?”
“You’d have to get in line. A long line, I expect.”
“Behind whom?”
Dulwich smirks. “You and Knox make quite the pair. The point is… your takeaway is this: we need to know as much as we can about all the players. That’s how we protect the POI. It’s fluid. White water.”
He’s telling her that the events in Istanbul are moving dangerously fast. The mark, along with her and Knox, are all at risk. The information hit her as a welcome jolt. For the last few years, she has lived for such rushes.
“Look: you two are only there to make Knox’s deal. Anything and everything you do, Chu, has to make sense when viewed through that lens. Copy? You are Knox’s accountant, working to keep him clean in the deal. Nothing more. There’s no backstop. I don’t exist.”
She wants badly to ask about the deal. But Dulwich made it clear when he briefed her in the Red Room that this is a Need To Know op. She has never operated under such restrictions. She doesn’t know if Knox has or not, but she can guess he will not respond well to them.
In contrast, Grace can and does follow orders. She’s all about team play. A dozen questions crowd her thoughts. She says nothing.
6
Amman, Jordan, is the color of bleached sand. The buildings, the roads, the clothing. The palm trees that attempt to interrupt the sameness of the bigger avenues look like candles on a sand-colored birthday cake.
Knox wears a sand-colored suit with a white shirt and no tie. Loafers without socks. His hair is moussed back. He wears wraparound Ray-Bans. A gold chain bracelet adorns his right wrist. None of this costume feels natural to him.
People who can take photos of a person over an eighteen-month period are people to steer clear of. Their employers are often identified by acronyms. If they can aim a camera, they can aim a rifle. And if they’re keeping an eye on Akram, on Saffron, his restaurant — and there’s no reason to think they are not — Knox will never know. The casual pedestrian won’t spot them; they won’t be holed up in a utility van across the street.
They will see him. He will not see them.
The loose disguise is an attempt to separate himself from his former self, to prevent an instant connect-the-dots moment on the part of the surveillance team. The computers may make the face recognition for them later, but for now he’s just another patron of an Indian restaurant. That the surveillance team may have an asset or audio/video on the inside must be considered. But Knox embraces such moments. He’s as comfortable in his skin as he ever gets.
He fingers the twenty-dinar note in his pocket. On it, written in Arabic, is Akram’s name followed by Knox’s phone number.
Knox has memorized a line of Arabic. He practices it in a head chaotic with thought.
He orders palak paneer, dahi gosht and a beer from a subdued young woman with amazing skin and eyes like black olives.
He finds it impossible to immediately spot the plant, if he or she exists. Is troubled by the feeling of being watched, photographed, accounted for; he’d rather be the one doing the surveillance.
Dulwich had not confirmed or denied Mashe Okle’s connection to the weapons trade. Knox’s subsequent Internet searches returned only a holistic physician in Oceanside, New York. A Middle Eastern Mashe Okle does not exist. Knox is attempting to spend five minutes in a room with a nonentity, which has him wondering if Mashe is in fact real, or if Akram is the proxy for some other dark lord whom Dulwich cannot or will not divulge.
There’s a reason people on this side of the profession are called spooks. Knox prefers things clean and tidy. He already regrets taking this job. Spooks operate in Spookdom with their own rules, their own stakes. They are flag-wavers who can make toxic decisions because they’re weighing the good of an entire nation against an individual deed. They’re comfortable justifying anything.
Knox doesn’t want to be locked on that playground. But he gladly indulges in the adrenaline rush of sitting in an Indian restaurant, dressed as somebody else, waiting to make contact with a man he knows is likely out of the country. It’s Spooky behavior, and he enjoys it — it’s this stab of hypocrisy that troubles him. Waffling between a sense of displacement and yet enjoying the party… it doesn’t sit well.