The Red Room

51

Dulwich grabs Knox by the back of the head and presses his lips to his ears. “Thorium,” he manages to say before Knox bats his arm away, bruising him. Knox intentionally flares his eyes.

“Can I hel—”

Working from Knox’s signal, Dulwich rotates and hits the orderly in the jaw. Grace moves like they’ve rehearsed for it, catching the man as he sags, unconscious, while driving her fist into his chest and stunning his diaphragm. Dulwich drags the man from behind, Grace catching the door and toeing it open.

Knox watches it all as his thumb directs the phone away from his search for Brian Primer’s direct line to its search engine.

Google.

Dulwich makes excuses to someone who’s complaining from within the room. He says the man fainted. He and Grace drag the man into the bathroom, where a soft thud confirms the man won’t be interfering further.

Knox has it worked out before Dulwich returns. He recalls Rutherford Risk telling him his ID had come up as “on leave.” Dulwich is rogue, as Knox suspected, but maybe not the villain he thought.

“We caused the heart problems. Our phones. Forced him here, where your client and his guys put his mother—”

“I know only the client. No part of any government agen—”

“Save it for the congressional hearing. They replace the failed pacemaker with one containing a GPS chip. The Israelis track him back to his bunker lab in the Iranian desert—”

“And we ensure that no one mistakenly bombs it,” Dulwich says, staring Knox down defiantly. “You two got it backward, pal. Had it backward from the start. It was never in the plan to harm this guy. His thorium research would be spared. We save him from the firestorm. And, mark my words, the firestorm is coming. Neither he nor anyone else was going to tell us which bunker not to bomb.”

“No way Primer sanctioned this,” Knox says. A combination of anger and resentment floods him, makes him want to throw a punch. Dulwich put him in the path of an unforeseen dead drop that has put Knox and Tommy at permanent risk. “Unintended consequences,” it’s called in the business. Knox never wanted to be on the wrong end of it, but he is now, and there’s no sense complaining. Not even Dulwich can change an unintended consequence.

“We must move,” Grace, ever the practical one, announces. “Now.”

Knox bumps Dulwich back a step. He and Grace walk side by side as he shoves him a second and third time, closing the distance to the exam room housing Mashe Okle.

To his credit, Dulwich doesn’t fight back. The man’s nervous eyes reveal his search for a solution. If Knox exposes the pacemaker’s true purpose, the Israelis lose their op. But more important to Knox right now is distancing himself from any dead drop. If he’s believed to be the courier, he’ll be followed, hunted and squeezed dry. The Mossad won’t rest until they get what they want.

Grace tugs on his sleeve, points out two men at the end of the corridor. They’re not hospital employees.

If Dulwich abandons him now, Knox is in the kind of trouble you don’t get out of. The magician’s trick is sleight of hand.

Knox fishes the business card he stole from the nurse’s station out of his pocket. Angles slightly to the right, turning Dulwich with him as he does. He wants both the security camera and these two men to get a good look at what he’s doing as he carefully hands Dulwich the card, doing an intentionally poor surreptitious pass.

Knowing no better, Dulwich accepts the card.

Seeing the exchange, Grace covers her teeth — her automatic response to an unwanted smile. Another op, another time, she might have warned Dulwich.

Knox backs up a step. Under no circumstances does he want the business card passed back to him. He amuses himself by thinking: It’s radioactive.

“Good luck with that,” he says.

Dulwich studies the card thoroughly, flipping it over twice. He couldn’t play act it any better if Knox had coached him. Then comes the moment Knox hoped for.

Dulwich pockets the card.

Grace tugs Knox away. “Come on, John. We were wrong.”

As they walk past Dulwich, the man nods and grins, appreciating her humility.

The door to the exam room in question clicks open. Knox ducks his chin. Grace has the wherewithal to snuggle into him and bury her face in his pajama top as they walk; she partially screens Knox.

Akram Okle comes out of the exam room, passing within feet of Knox and Grace. He doesn’t look up.

Knox risks a final glance over his shoulder.

The two agents have converged on Dulwich.