The Knightsbridge Institute, in fact, had just given her another raise, her sinful second in eighteen months, and when she finished the Troy story she had planned to head for Elizabeth Arden in New York.
Regretfully, she decided that Liz would have to wait a few days.
The Renaissance Polat was an abstract thrust of aggressively modern glass that looked more than usually phallic, as was the invariable manner of the glass-and-steel structures of nations clawing their way to first-world status. She went inside, consulted the directory, and saw an international nursing conference was currently being held in the public rooms. She found the bathroom, and from a capacious shoulder bag extracted a navy blue blazer with brass buttons, neatly folded and stowed in a gallon-size Ziploc freezer bag. She shook it out and pulled it on over her white T-shirt and chinos, and surveyed herself in the mirror. She fished around in the bag again and produced a pair of reading glasses with clear rainbow frames, which she perched on the end of her nose, over which her green eyes looked out inquiringly. She gave a satisfied nod, closed her bag, and walked out with a stride that somehow managed to hint at orthopedic oxfords worn on long nights on the kidney ward.
The conference was being held in half a dozen rooms with concurrently running programming. It was coming up on the hour. She selected a panel at random, "Shaping Healthy Behaviors," and went in. The speaker was a young woman with a bright red face and a stutter, and most of the audience looked as if it was just about to stop being polite and head for the door, but they weren't Arlene's concern.
At the back of the room stood a woman in the universal uniform of the hotel employee, a maroon vest over a white shirt with a black bowtie, black slacks, and comfortable black shoes. She stood next to a table holding a large stainless steel carafe, cups, pitchers of water, glasses, and trays of sugar cookies, most of which remained. It didn't speak well for the hotel baker.
Arlene busied herself pouring a cup of coffee, which to her surprise was the real thing, dark and aromatic. She sweetened it and poured in a healthy dollop of cream and by then the panel had wound down and the crowd, most of them women of varying ages, shapes, sizes, and nationalities but all of them looking relieved, streamed out of the room. She loitered until the last of them had departed, and smiled conspiratorially at the server.
She didn't smile back, a bad sign, but Arlene didn't give up easily. She sipped her coffee, closed her eyes in exaggerated ecstasy, opened them, and smiled again. This time there was a lightening of the woman's expression.
Encouraged, Arlene nodded at the podium and cast her eyes upward. This time the woman definitely smiled. Arlene grinned in response and shrugged. "At least it's a free trip to Turkey."
"You are a nurse, too?" The woman's English was heavily accented but easily understandable.
"I am," Arlene said mendaciously.
The woman hesitated. Arlene looked sympathetic and encouraging.
"Do you do the-" The woman gestured toward her back.
"Back injuries? Well, it isn't my specialty, but…"
Five minutes later they were ensconced in a dingy little break room over some very nice homemade lamb sandwiches in pita bread, and the woman, whose name was Nawal, was relating the problems she'd been having with lower back pain. Arlene listened attentively, and was even able to offer a few practical suggestions (there were few topics on which an experienced reporter could not offer an educated opinion), and by then of course they were boon companions.
Other hotel employees appeared and were introduced, and shortly thereafter Arlene was running an impromptu clinic, dispensing advice on a variety of ailments in her role as visiting nurse clinician. When an opportune moment presented itself she made a laughing observation on conventions and the typical convention-goer being a cross between the bread and butter and the bane of hotel staff everywhere, and they were fairly launched. It took only a few more judiciously innocuous comments to nudge the conversation into the right path, and a few more exclamations of disbelief and a rueful headshake or two to keep it going until someone caught sight of their watch and there was a general exodus.
Arlene ate lunch in the break room for the next two days. "It's so seldom at these things we get to meet real people," she said to excuse her presence, and they seemed to accept her as just another mad American.
The last day, she took a fond farewell of Nawal and went back to her hotel to pack. She alerted the front desk as to her departure and arranged for an early checkout the following morning.
She went to bed early, woke early, and took a taxi to the airport. After she checked in for her flight she called Hugh Rincon to report in. "There was a rumor in the hotel about the young officer in the Coast Guard uniform."
"How many Coasties were there?"
"They said only the two, Sara and Bayzani. Both American, you'll note."
He was looking at the list of attendees to the IMO conference. There had, in fact, been five Coasties present. If the hotel employees were identifying them by their uniforms, and if the Coasties had not dressed in their uniforms, then it was no wonder they missed them. He resolved to contact the other three, and made a note. This obsessive-compulsive propensity to tie up loose ends was one of the things that made him such a good investigator. "But?"
"But, number one, he didn't tip, which proves he wasn't American. Number two, he spent his last night in the hotel somewhere else. He just walked out the evening before and they never saw him again. He didn't even check his voice mail."
"He stiff them?"
"No. The room was paid for in advance, by credit card."
"You get the account number?"
"Yes, but you and I both know it won't do any good. Isa's way too crafty for that."
"What about his passport?"
"He collected it on his way out. He said he was going out to eat, and he'd return it to the desk when he came back."
"Was he carrying a bag?"
"He had a daypack over his shoulder, enough maybe for a change of clothes, according to the front desk clerk."
"He left everything else behind?"
"He did."
"Where's his stuff?"
She smiled into the phone. "In the hotel's lost and found. Or it was."
Hugh said sharply, "Was?"
She gave the anonymous little roll-on suitcase reposing at her feet a fond look. "I've got it now."
"I want you here on the next available plane," Hugh said.
"I'm calling from the airport. I land at Heathrow at three p.m. British Airways."
"I'll pick you up."
"I never doubted it," Arlene said. "Okay, see you then."
His voice caught her just as she was going to hang up. "If he wasn't American, did anyone have an idea as to where he was from?"
"They thought he might be Afghani. One of the front desk clerks who thought he detected an accent. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, though, he was the only one who felt that strongly."
"So, not Middle Eastern, but definitely Asian," Hugh said thoughtfully. "I was pretty sure he wasn't Jordanian, no matter what Chisum's people were telling us. But one of the Stans? How the hell did he get that high up in al Qaeda?"
"I'm guessing that was a rhetorical question," Arlene said dryly. "Something else, Hugh."
Her tone, sober and maybe even a little frightened, brought him up alert. "What?"
"I reached out to a couple of contacts I have here and there, and-"
"Here and where?"
"Here, in Istanbul. There, in Damascus, and in Peshawar."
"And?" Hugh said with foreboding.
"And I went to see my friend in Istanbul."