“Hard to bargain with someone who’s being dragged off to the brig. I don’t suppose you could dredge up Garver’s contact info for me?”
51
Mark caught a cab to a shopping mall in downtown Manama where he bought a small suitcase and supplies he might need for the evening. Then he took a cab to the Golden Tulip.
The hotel sat just across from the Sheraton, offering easy access to the newer diplomatic area of Manama. A large hotel that catered to business travelers, its interior was marked by the same white-marble sterility of the Royal Golf Club. A woman with long dark hair only partially covered by a black headscarf trimmed in gold stood behind the reception desk. A small ceiling-mounted security camera was pointed at them.
As he pulled out his wallet, Mark told her he wanted one of the executive suites. He was informed that the whole fifth floor was a first-class section of sorts and that all the executive suites were located there.
“I need one with a king bed. Which rooms are available?”
“Ah…” The woman consulted the laptop computer on the desk. “Well, everything except 508, 516, and 517.”
Mark had suspected that, with the protests on the island heating up, the hotel would have a lot of vacancies.
“One of the corner suites.”
“Well, I can offer you 502, 511, or 523. Five seventeen is a corner suite, but as I said, that’s taken.”
“Five twenty-three will be fine.”
“I take it you’ve stayed with us before?”
Mark ignored her question. Instead, he slid his British passport and accompanying credit card across the reception table. “One night, please.”
Room 523 looked out over Bahrain Bay, which wasn’t a bay at all but a massive patch of reclaimed land that used to be a bay and which, if the country didn’t fall to pieces, the bellhop said, would soon be the site of a Four Seasons Hotel and a big investment bank.
After explaining about the bay, the bellhop tried to show Mark around, pointing out as he did so that a dedicated executive-floor attendant was available, and an exclusive executive-floor lounge, and—
Mark cut the guy off with a thank-you and a tip, then strolled down to room 517—the only other occupied corner suite on the executive floor — wheeling the small suitcase he’d bought behind him. He looked for security cameras in the hall but saw none.
The gun he’d taken from the pimp’s bodyguard was wedged between his gut and his belt. There were seven rounds left in the magazine.
He stood outside the door for a minute. Hearing nothing, he knocked.
Come on, he thought, feeling the butt of the Makarov pistol through his shirt. He’d run through several different scenarios in his head. A direct confrontation was the riskiest, but also the fastest.
He knocked again. No one answered, so he walked back to his room, lay down on the big king bed, propped a few pillows under his head, and pulled out his iPod. After connecting to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, he checked the schedule of commercial flights from Dubai to Bahrain. There were typically fifteen or so; the first left before dawn, the last, well after midnight. It was just an hour-and-fifteen-minute flight, so Bowlan could get here quickly if need be.
Mark closed his eyes for a moment. He was so tired he felt he could fall asleep if he wasn’t careful. Visions of Rad, and Muhammad, and the fallen bodyguard kept looping through his mind.
He placed a call to the front desk. The bathroom in his room was dirty, he explained.
“Dirty, sir?”
“The bathroom. I’m afraid it hasn’t been cleaned.”
“The entire room was cleaned this afternoon, I don’t—”
“Well, the bathroom wasn’t. I’m going out for an hour or so. If the issue could be resolved by the time I return, that would be wonderful.”
After hanging up, Mark walked to the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat up, and then sprinkled some water around the bowl and the floor. He unwrapped the hand soap by the sink, and then did the same with the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. He dribbled some shampoo into the sink, smeared it around before replacing the cap, then wadded up a few pieces of toilet paper and tossed them into the waste bin.
Mark watched, his eye at the peephole in the door, as a young man with a cleaning cart approached.
The cleaner knocked twice, loudly, on the door. When no one answered, he reached into his right front pants pocket and pulled out an electronic key.
Mark stepped back from the door, lay down on his bed, and put one of his cell phones to his ear.
He heard the sound of a key card being inserted into and then removed from the electronic lock, then heard the click as the lock disengaged. The door opened. The cleaner slipped the electronic key in his hand into his left front pants pocket and wheeled his cart into the room.
The cleaner’s key, Mark noted, looked exactly the same as the room-specific keys issued to guests.
“Listen, I’ll call you back later tonight.” Mark said into his phone, as though there were someone else on the other end of the line. Turning to the cleaner, he said, “It’s the bathroom.”
“So sorry to disturb you, sir. I was told you were out. Is now a bad time?”
Mark noted the cleaner was slender, and his black pants were baggy, as though a size too big.
“No, now’s fine.”
“I’ll just be a moment.”
As the cleaner tended to the bathroom, Mark rehearsed in his mind exactly what he planned to do. He thought of the gypsy children in Baku who had such nimble hands. He looked at his own hands. They weren’t large, but they weren’t exactly small either. As he stood listening to the cleaner pad around the bathroom, he practiced slipping his key in and out of his front pocket, using his index and middle finger as pincers.
He considered that some aspects of tradecraft were like riding a bike, in that one never really forgot how to do them. But physical tricks were more difficult — they required regular practice. Though Mark had successfully pickpocketed before, the last time he’d done so had been over ten years ago, when he’d still been in the field. Now, he was rusty. And this would be a dicey operation, because he’d need to both pick and plant at the same time.
He sat down at the foot of the king bed. The TV remote lay on the bed to his left. He’d palmed his room key in his right hand. When he heard the cleaner emerge from the bathroom, he bent down, his back to the cleaner, as if tying his shoe. The television was positioned opposite the bed.
He listened to the nearly silent footsteps traversing the padded carpet. When he sensed the cleaner was right behind him, he grabbed the TV remote, stood up, turned on the television, and took a quick step into the cleaner. Their bodies collided, though with a little more force than Mark had intended.
Mark cried out as his fingers dipped into the cleaner’s front pants pocket. The television was shockingly loud and set to a music video station that was playing Arabic music.
“Whoa!” Mark cried, putting his left hand, which was still clutching the remote, on the cleaner’s right shoulder. The cleaner had dropped his bucket. Mark stepped away from him. “Who listens to television that loud!”
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Mark stepped back, pointed the remote at the television, and turned it off. “Good Lord, whoever was watching that last must have been deaf.” Turning to the cleaner, he said, “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, sir. So sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”
“No doubt, sir.”
Mark helped the cleaner load his bucket back up, then slipped him a ten-dinar note on the way out.
“No sir, that’s not necessary.”