Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Sixteen

Maggie can’t stop thinking about what Porkchop said about Nadia.

Nadia is the reason she ended up at Oleg Ragoravich’s palace.

Nadia is why Maggie nearly got killed.

Nadia is the reason she is here right now in Dubai.

Why? How?

Lots of questions. No answers. Which makes the “plan” even more relevant.

Maggie has to visit Etoile Adiona tonight and find Nadia.

Back in her room, Maggie sits on the king-size bed and opens the first patient medical record. The bed, of course, faces the floor-to-ceiling windows. Night has fallen. The city is still a mirage, but now it’s one of glitz and shadows. The Burj Khalifa, the famed tower, pierces the night like a silent sentinel. The Dubai Fountain shimmers and glistens. Dubai feels remote and endless from up this high. It sparkles like polished diamonds against a jeweler’s black velvet. It dazzles and explodes. It beckons and holds you at bay with a firm hand.

She goes through the medical files. Two patients. One is a five-year-old girl who needs otoplasty — ear pinning surgery. Prominent ears are often an aesthetic concern, particularly so in this world. The human ear is about 80 percent of its adult size by the age of five, so that’s often when this is done — before the age when a kid will be made fun of in school.

The second surgery... Oh man, this is so in her wheelhouse.

Maggie can’t help but feel a huge adrenaline kick when she sees it: a four-year-old boy in need of cleft lip and palate repair — the quintessential reconstructive procedure for a plastic surgeon. As she reads through the file, Maggie starts rehearsing the palatoplasty in her head, her fingers subconsciously moving in sync with her thoughts — separating the palatine muscles, isolating them, creating the flaps along the roof of the mouth to reconstruct the soft and hard palate.

Damn. How she missed all this.

Half an hour later, she puts the files away and turns her attention back to the Nadia situation. She wishes she could ask the Marc griefbot about her, but then again, Maggie’s strong guess is that Sharon probably had and learned nothing important. Porkchop had used the “we” several times during their conversation. That hadn’t been an accident. That had been his way of warning her in case someone was listening in.

She’d figured that Porkchop would be ready for her call — and he was. Porkchop had answered the payphone himself, on the very first ring, which was not how it usually worked. That told her that things had gone pretty much thusly: When Oleg Ragoravich’s people tried to delete the griefbot from Maggie’s phone, Sharon got sent an alarm. Sharon realized that something was very wrong and went to the only person she knew Maggie trusted one hundred percent.

Porkchop.

From what Maggie now put together from the brief phone call, Porkchop had paid Dr. Evan Barlow a visit, probably demanding reassurances that Maggie was okay. Barlow told Porkchop about the concierge surgical work — and more importantly, about Nadia.

Again the key question: What is Nadia’s deal? What is her goal?

It has to be connected to WorldCures.

That much is clear to her now — and something about that keeps niggling at the base of Maggie’s skull. She’s missing something. It’s right there, right in the sweet spot (sour spot?) where she can’t stop thinking about Theory Three, the one where Marc is somehow still alive, and while she knows that theory is utter bullshit, knows that Marc is dead, knows that his beautiful body was hacked up into pieces by a machete in that refugee camp...

But now she wonders: Why did they hack him up?

It’s something she couldn’t really face before for obvious reasons, and true, Marc wasn’t the only corpse left in that state. There had been others. But not a lot of others. And of course, if you wanted to pull this off, if you planned to fake your death — and yes, she knows knows that he didn’t — you’d make sure your “corpse” wasn’t the only one mutilated beyond recognition, right? If it was only you, that would look suspicious. So you’d make sure that other dead bodies were also left in a similar, awful, gruesome state.

Stop.

But she can’t because something isn’t adding up. She knows that now.

Nadia.

There is a laptop in the room. Maggie figures it’s being monitored, but she doesn’t care. Not for this. It’s a long shot, a tremendous one, and yet...

Using Google, Maggie finds Ray Levine’s website. The top title reads:

Maggie met Ray Levine when he’d been embedded with her unit during four combat missions. That’s where he’d taken the famous photograph of her and Trace on that copter over Kamdesh. Ray Levine had battled some strange demons in his life, and perhaps that made him so able to capture the “beautiful awful” — to use Ray’s term — in conflict, suffering, and heroism. You took your time with Ray Levine’s photographs. You felt the color and the texture. They made you slow down.

Maggie skims down the left sidebar menu: Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, India, Gaza, Kosovo, Pakistan, Israel, Chechnya, Indonesia, Sudan, Ukraine. Ray has ones closer to home — his home — like Asbury Park and Atlantic City. Then he lists topics too, like Famine, War, Crime and Punishment, Refugee Care.

She braces herself and clicks on the Refugee Care link. There, in black and white, is a photograph of Marc and Trace, taken the day before Marc died. Marc sits in front of a makeshift tent, his head back, his eyes open, his surgical mask half untied and dangling from his neck.

Damn.

Marc. On his last full day of life. And Ray had captured him. The fatigue, the fire, the passion, the exhaustion, the commitment — it’s all etched on Marc’s craggy, beautiful, worn, tormented, celestial face.

How can such a life force be extinguished?

Easily, she knows. She had seen it in the men — boys, really — she’d served with, some not even twenty years old. They were all strong, funny, smart, bright-eyed, with smiles that could cleave your heart in two — colorful, powerful life forces that were vibrant one moment, and dust the next. It isn’t hard to die. It doesn’t take much. That’s the worst part of it. There is a saying: “When one man dies, a whole universe dies,” and while the implications are obvious — the death of even a single soul is like destroying a world, that human life has profound value — dying is also routine, mundane, almost tedious.

Marc, the gorgeous soul in this photograph, is dead.

Happens every day.

She looks now at Trace standing next to Marc, hands on his hips, squinting into the sun. The stages of grief, she thinks. The anger one. She never admitted this to anyone, barely to herself even, but a small part of her had been bitter at Trace for, well, surviving. Trace breathes, Marc doesn’t. Simple and as awful as that. Trace had done the right thing on that day, according to everyone who was there. He listened to Marc. He saved lives doing so.

Maggie understood all that, but the anger stage of grief didn’t.

She clicks the right arrow. A seemingly blank page comes up. Maggie scrolls down to the bottom. There are two text input fields — one for a username, one for a password. After Marc’s murder, Ray had sent her an email offering his condolences and the one thing he could offer that no one else could: his art. He had taken hundreds of photos at the refugee camp that day and stored them online. “When you’re ready,” Ray had written, “you can access them with the username Thalalatha and the password Hududu.” Maggie understood. Thalalatha Hududu is an Arabic phrase that roughly translates to “Three Boundaries.”

That’s the Arabic name of the TriPoint refugee camp where Marc had been murdered.

She clicks into the username text box and types in Thalalatha. She tabs over to the password and types in Hududu. Her hands, she realizes, are shaking. Ray had written “when you’re ready” because he knew she wasn’t. She isn’t sure she is now. The pain is still so deep and raw. She doesn’t need to probe that wound.

But now there is a reason.

So with a deep breath, Maggie clicks the blue Sign In button.

Photo thumbnails quickly populate the screen, dozens of them, at least a hundred on the first page. On the bottom is one of those page count things. It reads:

Ray’s raw footage. This could take a while.

But it doesn’t.

Maggie doesn’t know exactly what she was looking for — but she finds it anyway.

Right there. On the bottom of the first page. She spends the next hour going through the rest of the thumbnails. Twelve photographs in total tell the story. When she finishes, she realizes that there are tears on her cheeks. She sits back. She has answered one question, but it just leads to deeper ones.

There’s a knock on her door.

Maggie closes her laptop, gives her tears a quick sleeve wipe, and says, “Come in.”

Bob opens the door and steps inside. “Hell of a view, right?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to see me?”

“I’m meeting a friend tonight at a club in the Burj Binghatti.”

He doesn’t like that. “What club?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Burj Binghatti is a residential building. It doesn’t have a club.”

“Not one that’s open to the public,” Maggie says.

“Oh, I see.”

“I need a ride or I can call an Uber or—”

“You’re doing surgery tomorrow.”

“I’m aware.”

“You’re not here to go clubbing, Maggie.”

“And you told me this wasn’t a prison, Bob.”

“You’re being handsomely paid to be here.”

“I’m being paid to perform a service. I’ll perform it.”

Bob shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Don’t care,” she says. “I’m going.”

“And if I say no?”

“Seriously?” Maggie shrugs. She checks her watch. “Fire me then.”

Bob stands there for a moment, looking a little lost.

Maggie makes a shooing motion with both hands, palms down. “I need to shower and get changed. I plan on leaving in an hour.”

Not sure what else to do, Bob reluctantly leaves.

Maggie takes a shower and grabs a simple black dress and sandals out of the essentials Charles has given her. She checks her look in the mirror, trying her best not to be self-judgmental. She isn’t sure she’s ready for an exclusive Dubai nightclub, but then again, she supposes she never would be. She steps out into the main room. Bob is standing there.

“Wow,” he says when he sees her. “You look really nice.”

“Thank you.”

He gestures with his hand to the Bugatti still sitting in the middle of the living room. The rich can be so bizarre. “I’ll drive you,” he says.

“But you won’t follow me in.”

“If you say so,” he says.

“I say so.”

“I’ll wait downstairs.”

“I might be late.”

“I’ll be okay.”

The drive is a short one. Charles Lockwood had given her very specific instructions about how to get into Etoile Adiona. The Burj Binghatti is currently the tallest residential tower in the world. Like every skyscraper in Dubai, it is sleek, space-age, and shiny. The most notable feature is the diamond-like crown on top. Bob drops her off in the elevator below ground on the C level past a facial-recognition security station. Maggie steps into the opulent elevator with some kind of purple quartz, amethyst maybe, lining the walls. There is a burgundy leather love seat in case you feel the need to sit for the ride. Again, no buttons to push, no bouncing lights telling you the floor. Nothing. The doors close, and the elevator shoots you rocket-like into the night sky.

The ride up the Burj Binghatti’s hundred-plus floors takes less than a minute.

Not much time to use the love seat.

The entrance to Etoile Adiona is a shimmering portal, tucked away on the 110th floor. No sign announces the club’s presence — if you need to be told where it is, you don’t belong. Maggie steps out of the elevator and stands in front of a mahogany door. She knows there is a camera. A well-dressed man opens the door. He says nothing. Maggie sighs at the theatrics, but per Charles’s instructions, she whispers the password, “Roman Goddess,” before the well-dressed man steps aside and lets her enter. Silly, Maggie thinks, but it adds to the mystique, and places like this thrive on mystique.

The music assaults when you enter. No other way to put it. Maggie loves music, but she doesn’t understand the need for it to be this hostile. The main room pulses with frenetic energy. It’s a kaleidoscope of lights and mirrors and strobes. Nothing feels real, but that’s probably the point. She sees dancers packed so tight they can only hop up and down rather than actually dance — human pogo sticks with spring necks, sweat glistening on their faces. Everyone is dressed in black and white. Some partiers are wearing capes and those Venetian masquerade masks. The room rumbles from a custom-engineered sound system.

Maggie tries to swim through the sea of revelers. A man with a masquerade mask half grabs her and starts to dance. She pushes past him and looks up. Above her head, a retractable roof reveals the inky expanse of an Arabian night. Neon drones paint the sky via intricate aerial choreography. The spectacle is mesmerizing. The drones fly with marching-band-like precision. It reminds Maggie of the Christmas light shows her parents would take her to as a kid, only raised to the tenth power.

She continues to trudge through the dance floor. The DJ, a woman with a sleeveless top showing toned arms, is on a giant swing above. She’s rocking out loud while her platform sways back and forth, one hand on a turntable, the other pressing a single headphone to her ear. The bass gets into Maggie’s bloodstream, making her chest vibrate like someone had jammed a tuning fork into her heart.

The basic VIP area is always easy to spot because, well, what’s the point in being a VIP if you can’t let others know they’re excluded? They sit in balconies so they can look down at you Roman Colosseum — style. It’s dark up there, but from Maggie’s vantage point, she can see a lot of men dressed in the more traditional dishdasha, big in the United Arab Emirates, a robe-like, single-piece, long-sleeved, ankle-length garment, which is white, simple, practical, comfortable, and — especially in the desert heat — cooling. A ghutra headdress with a classic black-corded agal. Marc often sported one when he came to this area, once the locals insisted that it was considered respectful and not any sort of appropriation.

Damn. Marc again. The constant stream of Marc-related pangs.

Up ahead she sees two beefy security guards with dark sunglasses standing behind, in a hackneyed move on the club’s part, an actual red velvet rope. Maggie steps up to one of the security guards. The music is still loud — don’t people just want to talk without screaming sometimes? — so she has to shout: “I’m looking for Nadia.”

She expects him to come back at her with some stupid rejoinder like “I don’t know any Nadia” or “Who’s asking?” — a line like that. But instead, the guard nods and says, “We know.”

“You do?”

He nods and unclasps one side of the velvet rope to allow her to pass. “Take the elevator to the Ecstasy Level.”

Maggie gives him flat eyes. “Ecstasy Level?”

The guard shrugs as though to say, “Yeah, what can you do?”

Maggie moves toward the elevator. Ecstasy Level? Why not just call it something more subtle like Orgasm Floor or something? She gets in the elevator. Again no buttons, nothing saying Ecstasy or any of that. The doors close. The elevator heads up. The ride takes seconds, but to Maggie, it feels longer.

Because she’s about to come face-to-face with Nadia.

Her hands flex into fists. She rocks back and forth on her heels, feeling a bit like what a boxer must feel when he’s in his corner and waiting for the bell to ring for the first round. When the elevator door opens, the first thing Maggie sees are the stunning crystal chandeliers, a lot of them. They give off a soft, warm glow over a marble floor and plush seating. There are twenty, maybe thirty people — a celebrity or two Maggie thinks she may recognize — and while there is a perfume in the air that reeks of opulence and luxury, the main difference between the regular section of Etoile Adiona and the VIP section is that most people aren’t allowed into the VIP section. That’s it, really. Same music. Same dance floor. Same beverages. Slightly more attentive staff. Sure, it’s less crowded, but if you don’t want a crowd, why go to a nightclub?

The appeal is entirely about who is allowed in — and who isn’t.

Life is always a high school cafeteria.

This has never been Maggie’s world. The only time she’d go to clubs like this was when Trace would drag her as a wingman (wingwoman?) of sorts. “Stand near me,” Trace would tell her.

“Uh, why?”

“Nothing appeals to a hot woman more than a man who is already with a hot woman.”

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted on behalf of the sisterhood.”

“Maybe both? But it’s true. If I’m normally, let’s say a seven—”

“A seven, Trace? Oh, look at you being all modest.”

“—when they see me with you, it ups me to a nine, maybe a ten, in their eyes.”

“Aren’t you worried they’ll think you’re taken?”

“Even better. Forbidden fruit. It’s a tremendous turn-on for women.”

“It’s not, Trace.”

“It’s not to you,” he says. “But I’m not after a woman like you.”

“More flattery.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sadly, I do.” Then, watching Trace obviously scope out a nearby woman: “You’re a pig, Trace. You know that, right?”

Trace would spread his arms and smile. “Love me for all my faults.”

She shakes away the memory. A waitress in what looks like tuxedo lingerie hands Maggie a smoky beverage, like something out of an old horror film, covered in glitter. The music is still too loud.

“What is this?” Maggie shouts.

“Our signature drink. Starry, Starry Night.”

“What’s in it?”

“Mango, yuzu, coconut, Dom Perignon — and our secret sauce.”

Sounds gross, Maggie thinks, but she takes a sip. Not bad. “I’m looking for—”

“Nadia is behind the curtain.”

Everyone here is prepared. “Like the Wizard of Oz.”

“Pardon?”

“Which curtain?”

She points. Maggie has had enough. She hands the drink back to the waitress and storms toward the curtain. A man gets in her way, says “Hey, babe,” and starts dancing for her. He’s doing the middle-age Dancing Douchebag move of biting down on his lower lip. Maggie is about to maneuver past him, but she stops a second.

How does she want to come into this?

Would it be smarter not to show Nadia all her cards right away? Slow down and think a sec. Nadia has been playing her. Would it be wiser to let Nadia think she’s still in control, not letting on that Maggie is on to her?

Should Maggie play it coy?

Before she gets to the curtain, it flings open.

Nadia steps out of some back room. The two women lock eyes for the briefest of moments. Nadia moves with the grace of a trained Bolshoi ballerina — her head high, shoulders back, clothes draped perfectly on her petite frame. She knows how to draw the eye and yet it’s all organic. There is an intensity to Nadia, a focus, a fiery intelligence, a magnetism that you can’t quite escape.

Nadia breaks into a run and when she reaches Maggie, she throws her arms around her and pulls her close.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispers in Maggie’s ear.

Maggie surprises Nadia by pulling her even closer. Aggressively. Oddly enough, Maggie can feel the new breasts press against her own. She had forgotten about that for a second, that Nadia was a patient, that she’d recently had surgery. She must still be tender to the touch, but Nadia doesn’t wince from Maggie’s grip or back off. Still in an embrace, Maggie push-walks Nadia back toward the curtain. Nadia’s lips remain near her ear. She can hear Nadia’s breath catch. Maggie keeps Nadia’s body pressed against her with one arm. Her other hand now slowly travels down Nadia’s back. Anyone watching from a distance — or heck, even close up — would see something on the sensual side.

When Maggie’s hand reaches her waist, Nadia stiffens, and then her body seems to totally surrender into Maggie.

“Doctor...?”

Maggie’s hand slides to Nadia’s hip bone, then down the side of her leg, and — should Maggie do it? — up her thigh. Nadia’s breath quickens. Maggie is leading them back through the curtain, moving them away from prying eyes. The back room is empty and lined with plush sofas.

Maggie changes up now, pulling up on the fringe of Nadia’s dress so that it’s over her waist.

“Doctor,” Nadia says again.

And that’s when Maggie pushes Nadia back onto the couch. Nadia’s face is flushed. Maggie is about to follow her down, but there’s no need. Nadia’s dress is still up over her waist. As was Maggie’s wont, Nadia’s thighs are exposed.

And unblemished.

Maggie looks back and makes sure no one is coming toward them. No one is. Anyone who saw them vanish back in here probably thinks they want to be alone, private, undisturbed. Good. That’s what Maggie wanted.

Nadia’s eyes flare for a moment, and Maggie can see she realizes what’s going on.

Nadia pulls her skirt back down.

“Too late,” Maggie says.

Nadia stays still. Maggie reaches out and grabs the hem of the dress and pulls it back up, once again baring her upper thigh.

“No tattoo,” Maggie says, before letting go.

Yep, screw playing it coy.

“Time to cut the shit, Nadia, and tell me what’s going on.”

Nadia opens her mouth, a lie undoubtedly coming to her lips automatically, but Maggie cuts her off by holding up the phone Charles Lockwood had given her. She took screenshots from Ray Levine’s website and has the photos lined up and ready to go. She only needs one, the first one, to make Nadia go still. Using her index finger, Maggie swipes through them, just to emphasize the point. The photographs are black-and-white, taken by Ray the day before the incursion that killed Maggie’s beloved.

Marc is in many. Trace is in many.

And in the background, trying hard it seems not to be the object of attention, is Nadia.

“You’re Salima,” Maggie says. “You’re the guide who led Marc and Trace to the TriPoint refugee camp.”