The Red Room Read online

  Because this is bigger than stink.

  “The Brits’ stolen-art database is fifty thousand pieces,” Knox says. “Yet their total annual budget to investigate stolen art is less than four hundred grand. Italy loses thirty thousand pieces a year. Russia, seven. Stolen art is the most lucrative market out there. And the most underfunded on the investigative side. I like nice things, I deal in nice things, but I’ve never knowingly participated in the sale of stolen art. I need protection. I don’t think I’d like Turkish jail.”

  “It’s not in my interests to see you in jail.”

  “Well, that’s a huge relief.”

  “Scheduling is critical. Clock is ticking. Lean on Grace. If she does her homework, and we both know that’s not an ‘if,’ we’ll know whether or not it’s safe for you two to take that meet.”

  “The clock is always ticking.”

  Dulwich shrugs.

  How much does Grace know? How much will she be willing to share? She can be a real Girl Scout. How much can Knox deduce by understanding what Grace is up to? The stop Knox had planned in Shanghai is worth a fifth of just the down payment Sarge and Primer are offering.

  Knox flashes back to the pile of money Tommy lost to the embezzling bookkeeper, money intended for Tommy’s care. Recovering that money is a work in progress, one that currently involves the voluntary help of Dulwich and Grace. In the interim, Knox is trying to cover in-home health care that costs the same as buying a new car every month. Adding drug therapy will kill the goose.

  Dulwich’s expertise is manipulation, but in affairs of business only. His personal life is a minefield littered with craters behind him and tall weeds ahead. This job offer feels different, as if he’s dragging Knox into that field with him.

  Knox tries for the jugular. “What makes this personal for you?”

  Dulwich doesn’t so much as blink. “He’s important to the client.”

  “The brother.”

  “Correct.” He repeats, “I’ll backfill as much as possible, whenever possible, assuming the client okay’s it. It’ll go through Grace. You and I can’t connect. Period.”

  “I’ll be watched.” Knox looks down at the photographs. Feels a chill. Maybe he’s been under surveillance for some time.

  “We play the odds.”

  “What makes a buyer of art special?” Knox asks, thinking aloud. “The dollar value of the art is what’s significant. Right?”

  Dulwich doesn’t want him going there. He says so with his eyes.

  “Let’s say I’m a black ops agency trying to buy some RPGs or a few million rounds of ammo. I’m trying to back the Syrian rebels or some other Arab Spring do-gooders. My seller is unwilling to take currency of any kind. Currency can be traced. He can’t allow himself to be found out.”

  Dulwich doesn’t stop him, but Knox can tell he’d like to.

  “So the cash buys a piece of art. It’s a value market—a relatively small amount of cash buys a very valuable trade. The art is exchanged for the weapons. Untraceable. The guy who sells the weapons hangs the art in his dacha; the other guy reloads. Everyone’s happy.” Knox looks for the fallacies. It holds up. “Mashe’s facilitating war, insurrections, bloodshed.”

  He’s a monster.

  Dulwich can’t help himself: a small shrug says close enough.

  “So the client—your client—is someone on the other side of the potential bloodshed. He doesn’t want the weapons sold. He’s looking to limit or shut down his enemy’s arsenal.”

  “I need a go, no-go from you, John. You know how this shit works.”

  “But the Red Room.”

  “Don’t read too much into that.”

  “Seriously?” Knox looks around the bunker. “The client can’t be seen using private contractors like Rutherford. He doesn’t trust his own people—good guys, bad guys. You said so yourself. I find that interesting.”

  “Don’t find it anything. Just give me the go, no-go.”

  “Stop pressuring me, Sarge. You need me. I’m the one in the photos. How long did it take your client to figure out who I was? To connect you and me? That can’t have been easy. Shit. Months? A year? Are these our guys? Homeland Security? The FBI? You can imagine why that would make me just a little nervous.”

  Dulwich fails to react.

  “Don’t make like if I pass on this you’re going to move down the list. There is no list. It’s one name. One guy. Me.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Flip the payments. The hundred now. Fifty if I get the five minutes with him.”

  “Deal.”

  Knox shakes his head, disgusted with himself. That came far too easily. He could have gotten more. “I need an agent,” he says.

  Dulwich smirks.

  “I’m no expert on Istanbul. There’s a brass worker I do some business with in Merkez. The Grand Bazaar is overpriced. Can I parachute in? Sure. But don’t ask for anything ninja.”

  “Understood.”

  “If Akram is playing middleman for his brother, I don’t see how I ask to meet the guy without raising flags.”

  “You leave that to Chu,” he says, referring to Grace. “She can make that happen. I’m serious about it being an in-and-out for you. Show up. Watch movies in your hotel room. Chu does what she does. You do what you do. She will bring Mashe to you. You set up the deal with Akram. Take the meet. You and Grace hop a plane home.”

  “How do I get a piece like that in-country? If I’m busted at Customs and spend twenty years in a Turkish prison, I’m going to come out very mad.”

  “I’m counting on you.”

  “I won’t take a hand-off. Not in a place like Istanbul. Couriers are bought and sold more than the artwork they transport. We need to get it in there ourselves. No middlemen.”

  “I’m working on it.” Dulwich pauses. “In all likelihood, it’ll be a hand-off in Amman. After that, it’s up to you. You’ll think of something.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so: this doesn’t feel like you,” Knox says.

  “And if I do mind?”

  “You’re up against a tight schedule. I get that. This guy’s only on the ground a short time.” Knox feels the ice cracking beneath his feet and he hasn’t even accepted the job yet. “Since when do we take on a client with bad guys on his team? You’re usually telling me not to ad-lib. You hate that about me. Now you’re telling me I’ll think of something.”

  “This is actionable.”

  “Getting that piece of art from Amman to Istanbul is actionable. You’re not the one making the trip. I’m the one making that mistake.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  5

  By the time Grace reestablishes herself in a Starbucks on Queen’s Road, the sidewalks are quieting down from the lunch rush. She finds a corner table.

  The second of the two four-minute recordings made while she fended off her young thief shows a bank officer returning to work. Taking her seat at one of the unoccupied desks, the woman quickly logs on to the bank’s computer network. The beauty of high-def recordings and retina displays makes itself clear in the ease with which Grace is able to zoom in on the woman’s hands and observe the keystrokes in stop-motion.

  She dares not attempt to use this woman’s ID and password while the woman is logged on, so Grace reconnects with the live security camera repeatedly. Forty minutes later, the bank officer logs off and leaves her desk. Grace pounces.

  —

  SHE MEETS DULWICH on the upper level of an eastbound double-decker tram twenty minutes later and details the encounter with the man in the cafeteria.

  “Mashe Okle, our POI,” she says—person of interest—“is indeed paying the medical bills for one Delbar Melemet—female, seventy-three—in care at Istanbul’s Florence Ni
ghtingale Hospital. Mashe Okle’s income is bifurcated. His deposits from state-generated Iranian paychecks put him at the mid-to-high end for research academicians. Additional phantom income, the result of pension funds that don’t appear to come with any restrictions, bumps that to six figures in U.S. dollars. He appears to have no mortgage, no housing costs. Utilities, even a wireless bill, all these are a no-show.”

  Dulwich’s head pivots back to front, watching the passengers come and go. Experience tells her that even when Dulwich appears distracted, as now, he’s listening closely.

  Beside him Grace also admires the well-heeled mix of Europeans and Asians crowding the sidewalk, reveling in the cleanliness of the streets and the elegance of the architecture. Nonetheless, despite its reputation as the “London of Asia,” Hong Kong carries a whiff of malfeasance beneath its white-collar façade—probably, Grace thinks, due to its pirate heritage. She waits until the tram is moving again, no new passengers having sat down within hearing distance.

  “There was a cash withdrawal from the account on the day following the woman’s hospitalization. Fifty million rials. That computes to the cost of a round-trip, first-class ticket, Tehran to Istanbul, with enough left over for living expenses for several days.”

  “Good work.”

  “An hour later, a first-class ticket is purchased with cash at an Emirates branch office in downtown Tehran under the name of Mashe Melemet.”

  “Spell it.” Dulwich scribbles onto a busy piece of notepaper.

  “Mashe Melemet, aka Mashe Okle, departs Monday,” she continues, glowing now like the star pupil in the first row. “With a two-hour layover in Dubai.”

  “I may be able to pull a passport photo for the Melemet ID.” He tries to cover his excitement. She interprets, deciding he doesn’t have a photo of their mark; realizes she’s given him something he and, by inference, their client, need.

  “Book yourself a flight arriving in Istanbul just ahead of his,” Dulwich says. “Arrange a driver and surveil Okle. Nothing stupid. You can pick him up again at the hospital, so you don’t need to stick to him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Questions hang in the air. Grace wasn’t aware this would involve field ops. She’s thrilled. She’d love to get out of the office for good. Is she to work directly with Dulwich—no John Knox? She would view this as a promotion of sorts. She’s about to ask the obvious question when he subverts her.

  “You’re Knox’s accountant, same as Shanghai,” he says. “Use your EU creds where necessary. They’ll hold up. But in terms of the mark, you’re there in the room to protect Knox from any kind of sting. You and I will need to know the players. You may not hear from me, but I want to hear from you.”

  His mention of Knox is bittersweet. “Understood. If I may?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Who protects John Knox from himself?”

  Dulwich smiles, which doesn’t suit his face. Two of his front teeth are chipped.

  “If the POI’s cover is broken,” Dulwich says, “it will be bad for him and everyone around him.”

  “Do we extract at that point?”

  “You’d have to get in line. A long line, I expect.”

  “Behind whom?”

  Dulwich smirks. “You and Knox make quite the pair. The point is . . . your takeaway is this: we need to know as much as we can about all the players. That’s how we protect the POI. It’s fluid. White water.”

  He’s telling her that the events in Istanbul are moving dangerously fast. The mark, along with her and Knox, are all at risk. The information hit her as a welcome jolt. For the last few years, she has lived for such rushes.

  “Look: you two are only there to make Knox’s deal. Anything and everything you do, Chu, has to make sense when viewed through that lens. Copy? You are Knox’s accountant, working to keep him clean in the deal. Nothing more. There’s no backstop. I don’t exist.”

  She wants badly to ask about the deal. But Dulwich made it clear when he briefed her in the Red Room that this is a Need To Know op. She has never operated under such restrictions. She doesn’t know if Knox has or not, but she can guess he will not respond well to them.

  In contrast, Grace can and does follow orders. She’s all about team play. A dozen questions crowd her thoughts. She says nothing.

  6

  Amman, Jordan, is the color of bleached sand. The buildings, the roads, the clothing. The palm trees that attempt to interrupt the sameness of the bigger avenues look like candles on a sand-colored birthday cake.

  Knox wears a sand-colored suit with a white shirt and no tie. Loafers without socks. His hair is moussed back. He wears wraparound Ray-Bans. A gold chain bracelet adorns his right wrist. None of this costume feels natural to him.

  People who can take photos of a person over an eighteen-month period are people to steer clear of. Their employers are often identified by acronyms. If they can aim a camera, they can aim a rifle. And if they’re keeping an eye on Akram, on Saffron, his restaurant—and there’s no reason to think they are not—Knox will never know. The casual pedestrian won’t spot them; they won’t be holed up in a utility van across the street.

  They will see him. He will not see them.

  The loose disguise is an attempt to separate himself from his former self, to prevent an instant connect-the-dots moment on the part of the surveillance team. The computers may make the face recognition for them later, but for now he’s just another patron of an Indian restaurant. That the surveillance team may have an asset or audio/video on the inside must be considered. But Knox embraces such moments. He’s as comfortable in his skin as he ever gets.

  He fingers the twenty-dinar note in his pocket. On it, written in Arabic, is Akram’s name followed by Knox’s phone number.

  Knox has memorized a line of Arabic. He practices it in a head chaotic with thought.

  He orders palak paneer, dahi gosht and a beer from a subdued young woman with amazing skin and eyes like black olives.

  He finds it impossible to immediately spot the plant, if he or she exists. Is troubled by the feeling of being watched, photographed, accounted for; he’d rather be the one doing the surveillance.

  Dulwich had not confirmed or denied Mashe Okle’s connection to the weapons trade. Knox’s subsequent Internet searches returned only a holistic physician in Oceanside, New York. A Middle Eastern Mashe Okle does not exist. Knox is attempting to spend five minutes in a room with a nonentity, which has him wondering if Mashe is in fact real, or if Akram is the proxy for some other dark lord whom Dulwich cannot or will not divulge.

  There’s a reason people on this side of the profession are called spooks. Knox prefers things clean and tidy. He already regrets taking this job. Spooks operate in Spookdom with their own rules, their own stakes. They are flag-wavers who can make toxic decisions because they’re weighing the good of an entire nation against an individual deed. They’re comfortable justifying anything.

  Knox doesn’t want to be locked on that playground. But he gladly indulges in the adrenaline rush of sitting in an Indian restaurant, dressed as somebody else, waiting to make contact with a man he knows is likely out of the country. It’s Spooky behavior, and he enjoys it—it’s this stab of hypocrisy that troubles him. Waffling between a sense of displacement and yet enjoying the party . . . it doesn’t sit well.

  The meal is excellent. As Dulwich said, and Knox planned for, Akram is nowhere to be seen; he’s in Istanbul at his mother’s hospital bedside. The stop in Amman is what’s known as a back door. For Knox to arrive in Istanbul without suspicion, he must arrange for Akram to invite him, to allow the man to think their meeting is his idea, not Knox’s.

  Knox gives himself time to finish the beer. Orders another. He’s a man in no hurry.

  He asks after the toilet, despite the sign, despite being aware of the floor plan. He’s directed to the back.

  He approaches t
he counter where the waitstaff drop off dishes. His hand finds the bill in his pocket. As he reaches the dish drop, he peers inside at a gaunt, forty-something male wearing a head wrap and a heavily stained apron.

  “Do this for me, it is yours,” he tells the man, handing him a day’s wages.

  The dishwasher takes the note, mutters something. Knox translates only: “is mine.”

  Knox lingers long enough to make sure the man sees the writing on the note. The dishwasher’s expression turns more severe as his eyes bore into Knox.

  “Go,” the man says sharply in English.

  The twenty-dinar note disappears beneath the apron.

  As Knox urinates into a porcelain hole in the floor, he wonders about the severity of the dishwasher’s expression. Was it the result of his attempting to reach the owner? Was it that Knox is a Westerner trying to reach the owner? Will the clandestine nature of his effort cause him to be followed as he leaves?

  He hopes so. The beer is tingling his head. He’s sorely missed this part of the game.

  —

  THE SANDSTORM ARRIVES AT DUSK. Knox witnesses the diminished light from his second-story room at the Canyon Boutique Hotel. The sky darkens dramatically in little time. Parting the privacy curtains, he’s presented with a golden shimmer in the air, like a wand has been waved over the city, covering it in pixie dust. It is too beautiful to turn away, yet the color is foreboding. At first Knox mistakes it for toxic smog, an inversion or other weather phenomenon having nothing to do with the desert discharging a hairball.