She nods vigorously. “Digital Services needed time to clone our data into matching phones already engineered to interfere with BioLectrics pacemakers. Replaced them before we were out of the Red Room.”
“Are we just guinea pigs? We field-test a new technology for them? If successful, they use it on some dictator? If we fail, it’s not blamed on them!”
She prattles on about how iPhone batteries cannot be removed, how the trigger had to be the phone being switched off and the SIM card removed in combination. She talks about exciting lithium but it’s not exciting him the way it is her. “The driver’s wristwatch overheated. My captors. Lithium battery! The van malfunctioned, which could have been the failure of computer cards controlling the engine. His pacemaker lost power.”
“Then he should have dropped dead.”
“Depends if his condition was serious. He grew weak, quickly. Resting restored his health. Remember? He was not faking. No matter, it is not our concern, John. You are our concern. You and that card you now carry.”
“I won’t play along. I refuse to play along. I told Sarge: no way.”
“No longer our concern.”
“You think? The plan is to make him weak knowing he’ll head to the hospital.”
“Where he defects. Not our concern.”
“Or they install one of the switched pacemakers into him. This is the Israelis, count on it. This is Iran’s nuclear program, Grace. Sarge can’t make a promise like that. Once the device is in him, then what? They kill him, like in Homeland.” He can tell the reference is lost on her. “We’d never hear about it, and if we did, Sarge would claim the guy had a heart attack.”
“That is a great deal of speculation, John. Too much.”
“Xin’s pal never got back to you about the pacemaker’s innards, correct? Now there’s a surprise.”
She had asked for his analysis of the pacemaker’s circuitry. “True.”
“Listen to me. We cannot afford to have Mashe’s blood on our hands, Grace. You think no one will remember him getting faint during our meeting? Seriously? The Muslim culture can be unforgiving. I have family. I… we… can’t endure a fatwa. I can’t live that way.” He pauses, fixes his eyes blindly on the wooden boats. “We have to stop him. Get him to another hospital where the pacemakers haven’t been switched. We can still make their plans go to shit.”
“That will help us, how?” She pauses. “John, let us say what you propose is accurate? Then we have finite time to leave country. The business card is our exit strategy. Mashe said this.” Knox remains silent. “I like job. I like work.”
Knox shrugs. He leaves her the choice to join him or not. It will be more difficult without her. She has no trouble reading him.
“Text Akram,” she says. “Tell him he must switch hospitals.”
“Get real. What? I send him a two-page text? He won’t believe a word of it.”
“This is his problem, not ours.”
“No. It’s on us. That’s the way this’ll work. Now. Six months from now. This is on us. Sarge fucked us. Maybe not on purpose, but he fucked us.” It’s the Vicodin talking. “There’s a ferry dock behind the next building to the east. Make sure you’re the last to board the ferry, so no one boards after you. We need the definitive word on what’s with the switched pacemakers. Then, the same again, you need to be last onto a return ferry to Karaköy. From there, catch the tram to Tophane, Taksim and the Metro to Sisli. Repeat it.”
She repeats the instructions, but is shaking her head.
“I need your help,” he says. “I can live without it. I won’t beg.”
“We switch SIMs. Remain in contact,” she says.
Knox takes that as a yes. “Tell Besim to meet me here at the museum. Your job is the pacemakers. I will run interference on Mashe Okle.”
“I can do this. But I must remind final time: we lack proper intel to make a reliable assessment.”
“Israelis and Iranians. That’s reliable.”
“If we interrupt a defection, the Israelis will not be pleased.”
“I’m way too stoned for that,” he says.
Her laugh echoes. She rises onto her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. For a moment, neither knows what to do next. “I will go to the ferry,” she says.
“Relax,” he says. “Deep breath. At all times be yourself. At no time—”
“—be who they expect.”
Knox hears something grumble from deep in his throat. He’s grateful no words have come out.
48
Grace finds it difficult to reconcile the beauty and tranquillity of the Bosphorus with her current assignment. A sense of impending dread and impatience feels misplaced among the churning green waters, the bobbing boat traffic, the stillness of both shores. Men have fished these waters since before Christ. The Crusaders crossed this way, as did the Romans and the Greeks before them. Western civilization’s storytelling origins connect to these twin shores, and though thousands of years behind that of her own Chinese culture, she can’t help but respect the history.
Indeed, she’s left with no choice but to appreciate the few minutes for the respite they offer. A lungful of sweet air, a study of the silver beads of rainwater as they plunge from the awning’s edge to the deck and splatter. The murmur of Turkish. A child’s self-conscious laugh.
It ends too quickly with her feet working furiously to fight the crowds. She window-shops, using the glass as a mirror in which to search for predators. As she catches sight of her own reflection, she understands herself, believes in her abilities, defines herself through this work in ways her forensic accounting cannot. The fieldwork strikes a balance that suits her, allowing her to exercise two sides of her being. Yin and yang. Her father would be proud, would understand, while her mother would fear for her and counter any justifications Grace might have with concerns for her safety.
But it is exactly that, her safety or the threat thereto, that thrills, that excites, that boils away the tedious hours of searching spreadsheets for inconsistencies and leaves behind a hard layer of purpose.
She boards the return ferry so late that she has to talk the deckhand into reopening the chain that blocks her way. She has yet to spot a tail but knows she will not if Mossad are involved. Knox has made a decent plan, but it can be easily defeated if there’s a team surveilling her. She heads toward the electronics shop cautiously, still stinging from her last visit and Dulwich’s presence. Xin had obviously betrayed her to the man — something she would have considered impossible. It’s an odd and indifferent world, she thinks, when the only person left to trust is John Knox.
By the time she climbs into a taxi in Tepebasi, she can’t sit still. She itches all over. Her throat and mouth are dry. Her feet are sweating and her eyes sting.
She circles the block on foot twice before entering the shop and confronting the young man behind the counter for a second time. She locks the door behind her.
“What did you discover about this pacemaker? Why have I not heard from you?” she asks. Her underlying confidence and intention cause the kid to lean back from the counter separating them. She was the last person he expected.
She leans across the counter. “What was found inside this device?” The chill resulting from Knox’s suggestion that Mashe Okle’s death, now or later, from his apparent heart condition will result in Knox being a scapegoat, has not left her. Perhaps the pacemaker is to cause a stroke, or permanent disability; for Knox, perhaps for her, the result will be the same.
For her and this kid, it is as if they are picking up an ongoing conversation. But he has no desire to participate. From the looks of him, he’d as soon vaporize than face this fire-breathing woman with her bloodshot eyes and sour expression.