“We didn’t need to know,” she says. “What did you mean by ‘faction’?”
Knox ignores the question, instead informing her there’s been a shift change at the hotel. “When your luck turns, it’s hell turning it back. More like a supertanker.”
“If I had any idea what you were talking about, it would help.” Between the medications and the beating he’s taken, it’s a miracle he’s conscious.
He sips from her coffee. “Shift change. The bellmen, too, I imagine.” He drinks more and sets down the mug.
There’s an American woman complaining to her husband at the salad bar. Looks like it might be her first time at one. The husband has little tolerance; he moves toward the cherry tomatoes, putting the cough screen between them.
“Another inconvenience,” Knox says, then adds, “‘If it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all.’ I prefer the Cream cover, in case you were wondering.”
A waiter delivers a lamb shank. Knox has half of it gone before Grace can wave the waiter back and order the salad bar. His mouth full of food, Knox shakes his head vigorously at her choice. Orders fish for her. The man writes down the order as he walks away.
Grace knows this particular John Knox personality. He has not shown it in a while, but he can be a confounding, frustrating and sarcastic man — and then there’s the John Knox that goes beyond even that.
This is the man she now faces.
“What I meant by faction was hawks and doves. Think about it: what are we doing here, Grace? You and me? Why us?”
“You explained this yourself: if it carried any Israeli fingerprints, Mashe Okle would have run back to Iran.”
“I was wrong.”
“You are definitely high.”
“Extremely.”
“Okay. Wrong, how?”
“All these guys we’ve been fighting, even the ones trying to kill us: they’re the same, but different. Two sides of the same coin. Hawks and doves. The hawks, the ones in charge, want every reactor, everything and anything to do with enrichment bombed back into the Stone Age. But there’s a catch — they would love to get their hands on any shopping list being couriered by top nuclear scientists in the hopes it gives them all the more evidence to start bombing tomorrow instead of being made to wait. That desire includes taking out possible couriers in hopes of recovering the list.
“The doves,” he continues, “seek the higher ground, but lack the political capital to convince others, so they hire — my guess — David Dulwich, not Rutherford Risk, because they know him. Someone who knows of him, or knows him personally. Let’s call him the client.” Knox meets eyes with her. His are so glassy they look ready to run, so bloodshot it’s amazing he can keep them open. “The client finances the op. No connection back to the doves. Not ever. Two different sets of players on two opposite sides of the ball, and all on the same team. And us, you and me, in the middle.”
He returns to eating ravenously.
“Explain your reference to bad luck, please.” She has grown weary.
“The Chinese put way too much faith in luck,” Knox notes through a mouthful of food. “You should learn to care less about luck.”
She waits him out.
“An errand,” he says. “We need to run an errand.”
He wants to tease her into anger, or worse, begging. But he forgets how well she knows him.
“Can I do it for you? I would be happy to.”
He stops chewing. She wishes she had her phone’s camera at the ready.
“We should do it together. I don’t want to get separated.”
Grace relaxes. Hoping it doesn’t show. Knox has finished the lamb by the time her fish arrives. It’s the head and all — looks straight out of the Bosphorus. She doesn’t think she wants to deal with it until Knox fillets it for her. She tries a bite, and then consumes the remainder too quickly. Looks up to see him smiling. He has food in his teeth. He’s traded the coffee for a beer. This is the dangerous John Knox.
“He should have told us,” Knox says.
She’s the one with the mouthful. She tries to answer with her eyes.
“The Need To Know makes sense.” He’s talking to himself. “Here’s what I think: I think our friends to the south of here were divided on this issue. I would bet their faction in Istanbul is completely off the books — resources back home, but not on the clock. I think some higher thinker saw a way to contract a third party — us — to do their bidding. No official involvement if it goes south, because official involvement could expose the bigger… fish.” He looks at her plate. “The fact that these bombs are indeed about to fall. The higher thinker doesn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater — the thorium project. This guy knows Dulwich somehow. Everyone knows Sarge. Appeals to his sense of patriotism, of higher good. Deep down, Sarge is a pussycat. Plus, he waves some serious change in his face. Sarge takes the bait. Uses the Red Room to sell it to both of us and to switch our phones. We buy into Rutherford’s involvement. And here we are.”
“If we had done as he—”
“Don’t go there.” He sips the beer. Then gulps. “We went where we went.”
“It’s my fault.”
“Nonsense.”
“I put us on that plaza.” She has to raise the question if he won’t. “Now that we know?”
“Sarge has his work cut out for him. First, he’ll have to explain why there’s no microdot on the hospital business card I gave him. Then he’ll have to talk them into letting us walk. We’ll likely be watched until whatever it is they have planned happens. After that, they can let us be.”
“You talk as if we’ll be allowed to board a plane and leave.”
“A train,” he says, correcting her. “But yeah, I get it. That’s where the errand comes in.” He signals for the check.
His overconfidence makes her uneasy, despite that she finds his courage under fire seductive and alluring. Her defenses lowered, she feels prepared to cross an unthinkable line. If they get out of here, she’s going to ask Dulwich for reassignment.
The bill paid, Knox moves surprisingly well on his injured legs as he leads her into the busy hotel lobby. “In case… in the event we’re separated,” he says, “Besim didn’t get the business card. As I was going down, I slipped it into the right coat pocket of a bellman named Furkan.”
She lowers her voice to a whisper. “What might be Iran’s nuclear shopping list? In a bellman’s jacket pocket? What if he finds it? Discards it?”
Knox shrugs. “I’m more concerned that he may have worn his jacket home. But I doubt it. It’ll be on a rack in the basement.”
“The errand.”
“Yes.”
“Furkan.”
“Pinned to the jacket. A name tag.”
“Our free pass.”
“Nothing is ever lost, only misplaced,” he says. “We’ll find — fuck, fuck. And double fuck.”
She follows his line of sight.
“The receptionist?”
Knox has already swung his head in the direction of the street. A cab pulls to the curb. The driver climbs out at the same time as three others, all Caucasian — including the driver.
“She may have made me. An American hotel! The nerve!”
Grace pulls him away from the front doors. “Quickly!”
He tugs back. “This way.”
“We cannot stay.” They walk briskly, a pace just short of jogging.
“We won’t get another shot at the card. Our only plan, Mashe’s only plan is for us to use that card, to play that card.” She wants to argue, but he calls her. “You got anything?”
They’re engaged in a tug-of-war; she toward the hallway of boutique shops that likely leads to another outside exit; he to the right of the elevators and a green exit sign that depicts a little man running. It strikes her as absurdly symbolic. Stairs.