Finally, she gives in, allows him to drag her along. Her capitulation is based on one thing: she has no plan whatsoever. His plan, regardless how reckless, is better than none. Ahead of her, Knox lumbers down the stairs, stiff-legged but surprisingly fast. She’s angry that she has to work to keep up with him, furious that she’s gone along at all.
The bang of the door upstairs promises a fight. Knox is not going to turn himself in.
“Two to one,” she says.
“Yep.” As they exit the stairwell into a musty hallway that smells of cigarettes, Knox says, “Nothing permanent.”
He’s studying a highway of wrapped pipes overhead. Ethernet, telephone, power and bell wire. Tube lighting. Green skin.
“Twelve o’clock,” she says.
Two men wait at the long end of the dim hallway. Knox and Grace move slowly toward them. The idea is for these two to block egress — shield the only apparent choice of exit besides the door she and Knox have just come through.
That implies others coming from behind.
Knox is in bobble head mode. She feeds off his intensity. He appears to be assaying the building’s structural components. “Ha!” he says, steering her through the first door to their left. It looks like a backstage dressing room in a seedy rock club.
“Block it,” he says calmly.
She drags a file cabinet across the cluttered floor, knocking a coffeemaker to the ground. Wedges a chair beneath the doorknob. All combined, it might buy them a few seconds.
Behind her, Knox is rifling through a hanging rack of black sport jackets. She joins him, starting from the far end.
“Name tag: Furkan,” he reminds her.
“Right pocket,” she says, letting him know she pays attention to what he says.
He bounces awkwardly to her side and slaps the far wall. He’s back in the line of jackets before she manages to speak. His slap has called the dumbwaiter.
“A lift?”
“For laundry carts. But it’ll do.”
The first charge at the door rings out. She was wrong: ten seconds, at best.
“You knew.” She fails to contain her astonishment. “About the lift…”
“Old building. Low-gauge, high-voltage power line.” He points up to a thick black cable overhead. He followed it into this room.
They are nearing each other at the center of the rack when Knox stops abruptly.
“Go,” he says, eerily unemotional.
She moves to the specialized lift. Hauls out the empty laundry cart; it pirouettes on its wheels.
Knox searches the black jackets.
The door blows open behind a determined kick. A man enters. Caucasian. Perhaps not ex-military, but conditioned. Trained. If there was a chance for talking this out, it has passed. The look in his eye is all attack.
Knox spins and pulls down the manually operated door. Something flutters across her vision as Grace is trapped in darkness. A clunk; the groan of electricity. The lift ascends.
It takes her a moment to register the image seared onto her blindness — the flashes of white lingering in her vision like the pop of a camera’s flash.
A business card. The business card.
56
Knox unbraids the top of a metal hanger in three quick rotations. He straightens it with two sharp bends and is already swinging the wire whip as he steps around the rolling rack of employee uniforms. It extends three feet from his hands, catching the unsuspecting man across the face, first from Knox’s right and then again on the return blow from the left. It raises welts on the man’s right cheek, draws blood on the left. By the time his opponent reacts, all the man can do is offer up his hands for a lashing. The whip nearly takes his pinky off. Backs him up a staggering step.
Forehand, backhand. Knox, the matador, marching forward relentlessly. The man cowering now, bent at the waist, bloodied hands clasped over his head, charges Knox like a bull. Hits Knox in the belly hard, reversing their fortunes. Knox drops the whip, gets his hands on the man’s shoulders, but it’s too late. Two hundred lean pounds drive Knox back and off his weak legs.
The two men wrestle on the concrete floor. Roll into the clothes rack. Knox pulls it over onto them, drowning them in polyester. He breaks loose and crab-walks away, understanding he’s no match for this man’s coordinated power. A good pair of legs are vital for defending against a man of his opponent’s strength.
By the time Knox scrambles out from beneath the pile of black jackets, he’s facing two men. One standing; he has a stitched-up ear. One kneeling and not looking good.
All three are winded. Briefly, no one moves — Knox is still inverted on hands and feet like he’s in a camp contest. The message is simple: outnumbered, Knox has lost.
Knox speaks first. “You speak English,” he tells them. “We’re all following orders. I don’t have what you want. I passed it off at the hospital. Check on that.”
The one who’s standing produces a Taser from a side pocket.
“Oh, come on,” Knox says.
The man fires.
As he regains consciousness, Knox registers that his hands have been plastic-tied behind his back. His legs are weak but moving, his head pounding, his heart racing.
“Motherfucker,” Knox groans behind the electronic hangover.
They’re in the hotel basement corridor.
“I like the jacket,” the man who didn’t suffer the face lashing says. “Could use one of those myself.” So they’ve searched him.
“I passed it off,” Knox complains, repeating himself, directing attention back to the card.
“You’ll be fine.”
Knox doesn’t say, “Oh, sure.” He doesn’t say, “Tell that to my head.” He feels something foreign in that moment: hopelessness. Doesn’t know how people can live with such a feeling. His head swims but begins to level out, and he’s already looking for options, has already left the black hole of despair behind.
The man Knox whipped grips Knox’s arm like a tourniquet. Knox won’t give him the pleasure of knowing how much it hurts.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Knox says in a steady voice.
“No one’s shooting anyone.”
The wounded man trips Knox across the shins, hits hard against the bloodstains.
Knox chokes out, “Your boss should make a call. I can give you a number.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.” The wounded one swats the back of Knox’s head. It hurts worse than a cop’s nightstick. “Shut up, do not lie, and you are to be released. This is over.”
Spooks — Israeli spooks? — get away with murder, Knox thinks, knowing he’ll never be released because the business card he handed Dulwich contains nothing more than hospital contact information.
“We’re all on the same side here,” Knox says, not believing a word of it.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about.”
Knox is searching for Grace as he’s led into the lobby. It’s a bad sign that these two don’t care about being seen by hotel employees.
They reach the outside. It’s raining again. The Istanbul traffic is bumper to bumper. Pedestrians slosh along the sidewalk, colorful umbrellas held high overhead. It’s the parade of a dozen cultures. A place for lovers, enemies, allies. Spooks. He feels himself spiraling down the drain; blames the meds for his lack of inspiration. He’s out of ideas — a first. Hopes this isn’t his last glimpse of Istanbul. Wouldn’t mind staying a while longer.
“Hatichat harah!” the talkative agent says, speaking Hebrew. He wins a flash of scorn from his nearest colleague.
Knox considers himself something of a linguist in that he knows how to swear in a multitude of languages. The agent is not happy with tires of the Audi Quattro 7, parked at an angle to the curb. Two flats.