The man runs Knox through the same questions. Knox responds with the same content, worded differently so as not to sound rehearsed. There are so many traps laid for him that it feels more like a minefield. Is Dulwich going to show up and extract him? Is he on his own?
The fucking camera doesn’t so much as blink.
The repetition of the questions grows tedious. Knox expertly extracts the card from his pocket under the pretense of fidgeting. This bastard shows no emotion; he’s the Mount Rushmore of Turkish interrogators. Knox wants one more sign, something to convince him. But it’s not going to happen. This guy is going to run out of questions and leave the room.
Knox slaps his hands down on the table. “I have a plane to catch!” He shifts his eyes to take in his left hand; nothing more than a twitch and impossible for the camera to see, given the angle.
Knox rises from his chair. “You people—”
“Sit down!” The man places his hands atop Knox’s. With his left, he grabs Knox’s wrist. His right hand waits for Knox to move, and covers the card fluidly.
Knox sits back down and apologizes. “I… I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m… I have the plane to catch. I have a ticket, you see? I miss that flight—”
“You will not miss your flight.”
Knox never sees the man pocket the card. He could run the tables in Vegas.
“I have a schedule to keep,” Knox says, pitching his voice to sound disappointed.
“Allow me to conclude some paperwork,” the man says. “Always the paperwork.”
He leaves, replaced by the first man.
Five minutes later, Knox is beginning to worry. Ten minutes in, he’s beginning to sweat. The passing of the card wasn’t enough. Someone is inspecting it. His plane began boarding five minutes ago. Knox has no idea if the card contains anything or not, has no idea how information would be coded on it. Magnetic? Something in the ink? The supposed microdot? How is it he’s allowed his fate to rest in the hands of a man he’s met for all of five minutes?
He’s released unceremoniously. He wants to shout out that he saved the world the equivalent of cold fusion. Decades of research would have gone up in smoke.
Instead, he’s shown to a door and sent back out, bypassing the security lines. The door clunks shut behind him, and for a moment Knox stands, taking in the sounds of the Istanbul international airport. Indians. Africans. Europeans. The crowd swirls around him.
He phones Dulwich from the concourse. Is not worried about revealing his location. Typical of this op, Dulwich doesn’t answer. Voice mail.
Knox speaks carefully, using no names. “No one will ever see the objet d’art again. We both know that. Once again lost to history. Your client traded it to preserve what he wanted to preserve. That’s his business. But this is our business: there’s the matter of the cash, some of which, I suppose, is going to me and my friend. That leaves a bunch left over. There’s a family of a recently deceased cabbie — first name, Ali — that deserves the rest. You hear me? Do your homework. Every dime. I’m going to follow up on this.”
He ends the call. Steps into the melee, battling his way to beneath a sign indicating his concourse, his sore legs straining to pause. Something tugs at him, urges him to look back at that nondescript door he just passed through, but he won’t give in. Aware of the preponderance of CCTV cameras, he doesn’t have to act like a disgusted man in a hurry to make his gate; he is.
They couldn’t arrange seats next to each other, but maybe someone will move to allow it.
Knowing Grace, she’s already arranged it herself.
EPILOGUE
Morning prayers haunt the streets of Amman, echoing, reverberating. A pale but warm sunlight penetrates the small apartment’s neat interior, its walls occupied by contemporary art from a dozen artists.
The smell of coffee blows along with a drape out onto a suicide balcony, only deep enough to hold a chair, turned to allow the occupant to stretch her long legs out of the three-quarter-length terry-cloth bathrobe. She’s taken up smoking again, a horrid habit she’d thought herself free of. But one is never truly free of one’s past.
Victoria sips the coffee, pulls on the cigarette and watches her exhale pinned onto the sky like the vapor trail from a jet. Her laptop is pinched on her waist. She has reread the e-mail six times. Make it seven. Akram’s appeal for unification reads a little too much like a business letter, but rather than trouble or offend her, she warms to it; he tries hard to express himself even though he fails. Connects with her, in spite of himself. The possibility of reconciliation excites her.
This, despite the fact she has found it difficult to stop thinking about the romp with John Knox, the tenderness of a Westerner’s touch; so different from the men of Amman she has known. She thinks about Knox in other ways too: anger, over the lack of payment he promised; intrigue, over the idea of using him to move the occasional art piece she is offered. She shuts the laptop, trying to silence Akram’s voice in her head. Sips more coffee and feels it slide down her long throat. Thinks of Knox again.
She believes she could do business with him. Believes in possibility, like a future with Akram.
The sounding of her apartment’s talk box summons her. She uncoils and crosses back into the apartment, careful not to stub her toes on the lip of the sliding glass doors. Pushes the Talk button and is greeted by an express deliveryman with whom she’s so familiar she recognizes his voice.
“Mailbox or door?” he asks.
“Bring it up, please,” she says, expecting a contract for a show she’s arranging for the gallery.
She pulls the robe shut tightly, checks her face in the mirror by the door. Signs for the delivery and locks the door. The air bill’s return address is Australia, unfamiliar to her.
She opens the express envelope to find another manila envelope inside that’s lined with a metal foil. Not aluminum, something heavier. Something, she thinks, to trick the X-ray machines. She tips the envelope, loosing its contents onto the maple dining table.
The first thing to spill out is a greeting card with an image of the American president, Barack Obama, by Shepard Fairey. She grins. Shakes the envelope to dislodge the rest of its contents.
Stock certificates. Apple. IBM. Microsoft. Each certificate is marked as a thousand shares. On the back of each is a transfer record listing her name over a signature line she can’t read because it’s written in Hebrew. There’s a pile of them.
She licks her finger, pauses, then begins to pull back the corners, allowing her to count. Her finger moves faster and faster. Her grin grows wider.
And she begins to laugh.