The Red Room

59

Grace holds the business card in her left hand, a butane cigarette lighter in her right. She steadily brings the two closer. The two agents are out of the car and pushing their palms at her in a rush of bodies and limbs.

“No… no… no!” they say, nearly in unison.

The taxi driver seizes the moment and backs up the Hyundai, leaving an unsuspecting Grace standing alone. The taxi continues backing up at an alarming rate all the way to the intersection. Then it’s gone.

“The card for him,” Grace says, “or I burn it.”

Besim climbs out from behind the wheel, and Knox watches Grace’s emotions get the better of her. Betrayal burnishes her face angry red.

“Release him!” Grace hollers, the flame now precariously close to the lower corner of the card.

“We do not wish to possess the card, ma’am,” Besim says, “but it must not be burned.” He checks with the man originally on Knox’s left, who nods. “It is truly the only chance for the two of you. We have promised to do everything in our power to get you out alive. The loss of this card will be our failure. Your failure.”

“Get him out of the car, now!” Grace is having none of it.

Besim checks with the agent for a second time. They speak in Hebrew. The three move away from the vehicle. Their hands remain in plain sight.

Grace is unable to keep the confusion from her face.

“The card!” she says again.

Knox comes out of the backseat, grinning appreciatively. He moves around the open door to the front, where he assesses the agents and Besim.

“Grace! Get in,” he says, indicating the passenger door. “And don’t for a moment take that flame away from the card.”

Besim and the others back away slowly.

“In!” Knox says, pulling his own door shut.

Grace climbs in. The flame steadies. Knox glances out his window at the men.

“What the hell?” she says.

Knox shifts into gear. Halfway down the block, he tells her to extinguish the lighter. She doesn’t seem to hear him. He repeats himself and she quiets the flame.

“That took balls,” he says.

“Always so vulgar.”

Knox waits until the car is on Kennedy Avenue, airport bound. He explains his theory that Besim vandalized the SUV and paid off the bellmen to keep their mouths shut, reiterates the likelihood of two Israeli payrolls; one set, Dulwich’s, surprising and replacing his hotel captors. His phone buzzes repeatedly, as does Grace’s. Neither answers.

“The card?” she says.

Knox answers. “In order for things to remain status quo, they need the dead drop to go as planned. If it fails, it will call for internal review by whatever party of whatever government is supposed to get it, and maybe someone figures out what’s really going on.”

“Tracking Dr. Okle.”

“Sarge spit-balled it for us. Did he lie? Of course. But maybe less than we think. More like he omitted facts.”

“You would defend him?”

“Bloodlines. He and I share history.” Again, he wonders if he’s sabotaged Grace. Feels shitty about it.

“The airport.”

“Yeah.”

She speculates, “The Israelis had a plane for you.” Her voice quavers. “I interrupted…”

“Grace… we don’t know anything. Not a damned thing. These guys are all spooks. Sarge should have known better. Out of our league.”

“Railway,” she suggests.

“By now, the Israelis dumped out of the car will have called it in. The hawks are not going to roll over for anyone. They’ll make the charge of cultural theft against me, play anything they can so I don’t get out. The train is too slow. Gives them too long to get their shit together.” He can’t take the time to switch out SIM cards. “The Turks will have to weigh the claim, put out a Be On Lookout for me. The Israelis supporting the thorium research know you and I have a shot at getting through Immigration or they wouldn’t have been aiming for the airport in the first place.”

“Or they paid a bribe.”

“Or that.”

Knox follows the airport signage. They can see it now to their left, and beyond it, the Bosphorus. On the opposite shore starts the Asian half of the city.

“May be a strait, but it certainly looks like a river,” she says. “What is it with us and rivers?”

She watches him smile. With more planning, more knowledge, they might have left by the Bosphorus. Always water. Bloodlines.

“We go through security in separate lines.”

“Of course.”

“If I’m detained…”

“I will notify David.” It’s the best they can hope for. She would gladly make a sacrifice to take this off of him. Has no idea where that thought comes from. Sacrilege. Her career path is entirely singular.

She speaks abruptly. “Everything I do or have done, it is to prove my father wrong.”

Knox glances over at her curiously.

“Deepest apology,” she says, sounding entirely too Chinese. She hangs her head.

“Well, that’s awkward,” Knox says.

She starts to laugh, but it borders on tears and she bottles it up as she has learned to do so well in the time they’ve spent working together.

“My shit’s always been about protecting Tommy,” he says, adding, “at least that’s what I tell myself.”

“We never know if we will see the other again,” she says wistfully.

“True story.”

Her heart races. She’s unsure why. “I have feelings for you, John Knox.”

The car enters the Departures ramp.

“Yeah,” he says.

She waits. The car slows toward the curb. “That is all? ‘Yeah’?”

Knox parks. “Yeah.” His smile conceals a deeper message; concern for her? Attraction? Whether he means it as such, that smile floods her with warmth.

Knox says, “Check your phone. Find us the first flight out of the country.”