The Red Room

43

The city bus smells of human sweat and greasy food. Grace had to help Knox climb up into it. Now that they’re seated, Knox has no intention of ever getting up again.

Neither he nor Grace was willing to risk a taxi. Walking any sort of distance was out of the question. The Alzer Hotel is off limits. They ride the bus to have somewhere to be, like the homeless, and receive their share of stares from the predominantly Turkish passengers. The driver has taken to watching them in his oversized mirror.

“So, we wait,” Grace says. As if they’ve done something else in the past ninety minutes. Knox dozes in and out, grateful for her presence and for the drugs running through his system.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, coming awake.

She dismisses this as delirium.

“Given the circumstances, the complexities, there’s no reason for two of us—”

“You are delirious. Go back to sleep.”

“Plans change based on the conditions. These are unusual conditions.”

“I know where you are going with this. No chance, John. None. We wait for the text or the call. We do this together.”

“As what, martyrs? Why?”

“The plan has not changed. Two of us in the room with him for five minutes. We hand over the Harmodius. We go home.”

“I don’t like going home. Home is what got me into this.” She can see he regrets his words, but his tongue is loose. “Sarge pushes whatever buttons are required to get what he wants. Same as anyone else.”

“Tommy?”

“A new medication. Did I tell you?” He looks delirious. She should have let him go back to sleep. But she can’t control her curiosity. Wonders if it’s an asset or a liability.

“Expensive,” she says.

“Insanely so. Yeah. I must have told you.”

“You are a good man. A good brother. You must not equate Tommy with—”

“I’m a fraud. I’m the Harmodius. I look like the real thing, test like the real thing, but I’m a copy. An old copy.”

“You should sleep.”

“Do I do this work out of benevolence? Brotherliness? No. I do this because it takes me away from all of the shit back there. I live for this.” He touches his cap and the wound beneath it. “I don’t want to die. Far from it. But this shit matters. You know? You realize that, right, Grace? This shit matters.”

He’s drunk on the medication. Adorable, in an oversized, testosterone-laced kind of way. “She sure as shit better deliver it as promised,” he mutters, and appears to doze off.

Besim is tasked with watching Victoria, who controls the Harmodius. Grace is unconcerned. She studies him, feeling honored he would share such things with her, whether the drugs or not. His relationship with his brother is as complex as hers with her father. She feels close to Knox and knows that it’s unhealthy; but so is vodka, and that never stops her.

Twenty minutes pass. She has no idea where they are. It’s late afternoon, the sidewalks crowded once more. She catches a glimpse of the Bosphorus and reorients herself.

“We’re traveling northeast toward the university,” Knox says, his eyes still closed.

She doesn’t understand how he does these things, worries it’s what separates successful field agents from wannabes like herself. Admires and resents him at the same time.

“It’s bus 61-B,” he says, as if reading her mind. “Did you think the choice was random?”

She did, in fact, but she’s loath to admit it.

“Tepebasi to Taksim,” he quotes. “Gets us close to the river. The meet will take place on the Asian side in an area where Westerners like me can be more easily spotted.”

If Knox is the target of a kill order, this is risky territory.

Under Besim’s watchful eye, Victoria has returned the Harmodius to the Alzer Hotel’s bellman storage. When the remainder of the payment is deposited into escrow, Grace will be with Knox to vet the sourcing — requiring at least five minutes while in his company.

Given the okay, Victoria will meet one of the Iranian guards and pass along the claim tag. The moment the Harmodius is in the guard’s possession, she and Knox are nothing but witnesses. Dulwich has made no allowance for an exit strategy, a fact his conversation with Grace did nothing to change. Knox’s safety relies on no one being followed to the meet and on no connection existing between Mashe and whoever killed Ali.

“Makes things interesting, doesn’t it?”

He’s been reading her mind. Again.

“Don’t worry so much,” he says.

“You can barely walk, certainly not run.”

“Never discount the miracles of modern medicine. Believe me, I feel very good right now.”

“You are doped.”

“Umm.” He closes his eyes again.

Grace wants to doubt him, to question him, but entreats herself to listen and learn. Dulwich has a dozen men and three women at his disposal, all contractors for Rutherford Risk. He subcontracts Knox for the intangibles. If she’s smart, she can learn from Knox’s arrogance. His relentless efforts to set himself apart from the status quo run contrary to her Chinese heritage and training. If she’s to become like him, it will require a personality change, a psychic shift that’s well out of reach. She sags back into the uncomfortable, slippery plastic bench, discouraged.