The meal is excellent. As Dulwich said, and Knox planned for, Akram is nowhere to be seen; he’s in Istanbul at his mother’s hospital bedside. The stop in Amman is what’s known as a back door. For Knox to arrive in Istanbul without suspicion, he must arrange for Akram to invite him, to allow the man to think their meeting is his idea, not Knox’s.
Knox gives himself time to finish the beer. Orders another. He’s a man in no hurry.
He asks after the toilet, despite the sign, despite being aware of the floor plan. He’s directed to the back.
He approaches the counter where the waitstaff drop off dishes. His hand finds the bill in his pocket. As he reaches the dish drop, he peers inside at a gaunt, forty-something male wearing a head wrap and a heavily stained apron.
“Do this for me, it is yours,” he tells the man, handing him a day’s wages.
The dishwasher takes the note, mutters something. Knox translates only: “is mine.”
Knox lingers long enough to make sure the man sees the writing on the note. The dishwasher’s expression turns more severe as his eyes bore into Knox.
“Go,” the man says sharply in English.
The twenty-dinar note disappears beneath the apron.
As Knox urinates into a porcelain hole in the floor, he wonders about the severity of the dishwasher’s expression. Was it the result of his attempting to reach the owner? Was it that Knox is a Westerner trying to reach the owner? Will the clandestine nature of his effort cause him to be followed as he leaves?
He hopes so. The beer is tingling his head. He’s sorely missed this part of the game.
The sandstorm arrives at dusk. Knox witnesses the diminished light from his second-story room at the Canyon Boutique Hotel. The sky darkens dramatically in little time. Parting the privacy curtains, he’s presented with a golden shimmer in the air, like a wand has been waved over the city, covering it in pixie dust. It is too beautiful to turn away, yet the color is foreboding. At first Knox mistakes it for toxic smog, an inversion or other weather phenomenon having nothing to do with the desert discharging a hairball.
But over the next five minutes, the sky changes from gold to bronze, from bronze to copper. Strong wind whips rooftop Jordanian flags. Fine, powdery grit infiltrates the louvered window frame, enticing Knox to test the iron lever. Finding it not quite sealed, he lowers it fully into a locked position.
The grit continues to invade.
In the reflection off the glass, the door’s security peephole blinks, going dark. Someone is out there. Knox is already moving toward the door, thinking that without the sandstorm, without being drawn to the window, without the contrast between the dark sky and the well-lit space, he wouldn’t have seen the flicker suggesting someone is there, in the hallway. Knox doesn’t consider himself a fatalist, more an agnostic with inclinations that allow for a force or presence behind creation. Yet he acknowledges internally that he’s the beneficiary of a string of events — that he’s been offered an opportunity.
He doesn’t question Dulwich’s ability to place a handgun in his hotel room safe. The man has his end of the bargain to uphold, whether it’s documents, background cover stories or small arms. Knox keys in the four-digit combination. Inside is a Jordanian-made 9mm Viper in a SERPA CQC holster. Along with a hundred rounds of ammo is a CRKT folding tactical knife and a pick gun capable of picking 98 percent of all locks, dead bolts and nondigital car locks. Two prescription bottles containing antibiotics and pain medicine. Nine hundred dinars in small bills left in a brown A4 envelope.
Knox pockets the knife and cups the Viper, kneels as he trains the barrel into the wood of the door so he can shoot through it if required.
The glass peephole is now unblocked, but Knox is not about to put an eye to it, not about to announce himself or take a round in the head. Knox cannot be made small, but he can be made less big and lower. The door’s interior lever automatically unlocks the dead bolt. Crouching now, he yanks open the door.
The man on the other side is looking for someone at head height, lending Knox a split-second advantage. Knox comes to his feet spreading the man’s arms wide. He spins his visitor so the man’s throat slides into the crook of his own left elbow, grabs the right arm, wrenching it behind the man’s back with the barrel of the gun aimed into the base of the man’s skull. One twitch and they’ll be scraping gray matter off the ceiling.
He drags the choked man into his room and kicks the door shut. Total time in the hallway: four seconds. His victim has yet to register what’s happened. The man tries to speak, but can’t in the chokehold.
After thirty seconds without blood to his brain, the man slumps to the floor. Knox has already ID’ed him by holding him up to the room’s mirror: it’s the dishwasher from Saffron.
He ties the man’s ankles together with a terry-cloth robe belt. Secures his wrists with the laces from the man’s running shoes. Gags him with a washcloth. Slips the Viper into the small of his back — no need to advertise. Unfolds the knife, using its tip to coax open the man’s thin wallet and clamshell cell phone. He memorizes the last four numbers called. He’ll need to write them down in the next few minutes; his memory isn’t what it once was.
The dishwasher regains consciousness with a kind of terror in his eyes that serves a purpose for Knox: the man is not used to this kind of treatment. He’s new at this. An amateur.
Things just keep getting better and better.
Knox can taste the sandstorm; feel the grit between his teeth. A look out the window confirms a premature nightfall; the city’s in the heart of a violent dust cloud. The condition can last for days. It can ground aircraft, stop taxis and buses from running. Be a real pain in the ass.
Knox speaks kindergartner Arabic, hoping his message gets through.
“You were sent?” Knox says. He moves his own head first in a nod, then shaking to indicate “no.” He repeats his question.
The man nods.
Knox has found no weapons on the man.
“To hurt me,” he states.
The man panics.
“To watch me.”
Another violent shake of the head.
“To warn me.”
Again.
“To tell me.”
The man nods.
Knox plucks the towel from the man’s mouth. The dishwasher speaks far too fast. Knox picks out: “Akram,” “speak,” but loses the rest. He allows the man time to calm down.
“Again,” Knox says.
This time he gets: “Akram speak you.”
Knox toys with the man’s phone with the knife.
“I call?”
The dishwasher shakes his head.
“Not here.”
“Where?”
“Machine café.” It takes Knox a moment to process “machine” as “computer.”
He glances back at the window, moving like the skin of a timpani drum as it’s buffeted by the wind.
“Shit,” Knox says.
7
Arriving at Atatürk International, Istanbul’s primary airport, Grace is both tired and hungry. She doesn’t want to do the math to determine how tired, but doesn’t require calculations to know how hungry. She has an hour and seven minutes before Mashe Okle, traveling as Mashe Melemet, is scheduled to land. She sits down with a salad at Greenfields, carrying a soy mocha from Starbucks. She calls her driver, tells him to wait. Kills forty-five minutes eating slowly while catching up on iPhone e-mails.
Grace does not do well with free time. Her brain gets ahead of itself and starts tripping over discarded thoughts like a lost hiker stumbling over fallen limbs in the forest. Even at a meal, as tired as she is, she can’t help herself.