Grace spins. Akram stops short. “It is the very definition of reason, Mr. Okle,” she says sotto voce. “Nothing more.” Now, so quietly it sounds more like a sigh, “There is no shortage of buyers, I assure you. Each with its own uncertainties and possible consequences. Mr.… my client,” she says, judging the space around her, “favored you because of your personal history and your industry.”
Knox says, “I’m sorry, Akram.”
The man’s feet are cemented to the wood floor. He has no choice but to interpret this as gamesmanship. A ploy. A day will pass. Two. Knox will be back, for certain.
“Out of the question!” Akram repeats loudly.
Knox tips the proprietor, asks him to call them a cab. He and Grace wait on the sidewalk, not a word spoken between them.
“Nine o’clock,” Grace says without looking at Knox. She isn’t referring to the time.
“Yes.” Knox is impressed she picked up on a man who has been surveilling the meet. A wink from the rooftop of a building up the hill. Grace continues to surprise him.
The taxi arrives, finally. Knox provides a destination he will change in a minute, but his true motive is to compare the face of the driver against that of the face on the driver’s ID and to evaluate the ID itself, making sure it does not look as if it’s been printed in the past ten minutes. It passes muster. Ali is their driver. Knox and Grace climb in.
Grace has a compact out and is about to touch up her lips when she says, “Damn!” and pulls Knox forward with her as she lurches into a crouch, bending from the waist.
Knox feels heat on the back of his head. It coincides with the thwap of what turns out to be a hole in the taxi’s rear window. For Knox, it’s the bee sting on his skull, the warmth on his neck and the dizziness that wins his attention. The dizziness turns out to be external, not internal. The taxi, aimed downhill, careens off a parked car and ricochets to the opposite side of the street, gaining speed all the while.
It’s only as Knox notices the bullet hole through the Plexiglas barrier and another hole in the driver’s headrest that the red spray across the dash makes sense. This, because the bridge and right nostril of the driver’s nose is lying across the defroster vent. Ali is slumped against the wheel, his body shifting as the car jerks with each new collision. It’s a pinball ride. As if gravity isn’t enough to contend with, Ali’s dead right foot is leaden against the accelerator.
Knox has it in an instant: Grace saved his life by yanking him down with her; a bullet grazed his scalp and took out the driver; the taxi is heading downhill at an ever-increasing pace, checked only by repeated collisions with other cars parked on opposite sides of the narrow street; Grace is white-knuckled, still hunched over. Each time Knox is about to clear his head, the car crashes again. Neither he nor Grace are seat-belted, and the Plexiglas barrier meant to secure the driver from his passengers proves effective. Knox tries to force his hand into the swiveling pass-through intended for payments. No way.
“Shit,” he says.
Heads are bleeders. His inch-long gash has soaked his hair and spread rivulets of red down his face and neck. Grace gets a fleeting look at him in the strobe light from the streetlamps, and her training fails her. She screams.
Knox pounds on the barrier. The taxi is tearing down the hill at breakneck speed. Their necks. Their breaks. It flies through an intersection. The front wheels get air and Knox’s raw scalp impacts against the ceiling. He swears, loudly.
Grace screams again. She reverses herself, turning so her back is to the floor. She kicks out at the rear window. The safety glass cracks and cubes with each hit but does not yield. Knox tries the same on the Plexiglas barrier, with the same results.
He’s braced for one of the collisions to stop the taxi cold and smash them both into the barrier, but it’s as if the vehicle’s on a track at an amusement park ride. The collisions propel it forward in a rain of metal, which pries loose with a shrieking cry amid the clash of broken glass.
The taxi bumps into a second intersection. A severe collision spins it like a top; they’ve been hit by another car. Grace is thrown into Knox; the two are pressed into the rear door — which pops open. Knox grabs for the unused seat belt and it plays out from its geared mechanism. He falls out of the car, Grace atop him, caught at last as the belt’s speed triggers it to latch. He’s a crewman for the America’s Cup, hiking out over the leeward hull. The taxi’s spinning slows almost gracefully. It skids to the precipice of the continuing hill, teetering there. Seconds before it stops completely, before Knox’s blurred vision can make sense of what the hell’s happening, the taxi dips over the edge and picks up speed.
Backward.
“Fuck!”
Knox rocks forward, carrying Grace with him, driving them both into the backseat as the vehicle’s rear door collides and bends against the frame.
Crying out at a fever pitch, she pulls away from him and returns to kicking at the rear window, this time with twice the power of her initial attempt.
Knox feeds off the adrenaline, his mind clearing quickly. Her efforts are admirable, but it won’t do them any good to climb out of what is now the front of the moving vehicle. The taxi crashes left, right, left in quick succession. The hill is steeper on this stretch, and though the front-wheel drive is still active and sending out plumes of burning rubber, and Ali’s body has shifted and his weight is off the accelerator, it’s not enough to counter gravity — they are once again gaining speed in their descent.
Knox reaches out and pulls mightily against the snapped door. He’s making progress when Grace grabs his shoulder: the taxi sideswipes a parked car, a collision that would have pancaked him. It removes the door completely.
Survival is about timing now. Knox’s bloodied head is on a swivel. The back window is so destroyed he can’t see out of it. He has to judge the taxi’s erratic movement from one side of the street to the other.
“You are not!” Grace hollers, seeing his intention in his eyes.
“I am,” he says, making his move. He lurches out the open cavity, grabs the driver’s door handle, and pulls. The awkward angle allows it to open only inches. He dives back in with Grace as she shouts words he can’t make out. The taxi smashes into another parked car, accordioning the driver’s door. The jolt destabilizes Knox, but he kicks out and opens the crippled door; taking a two-handed hold on the frame, he swings out and around and feetfirst into the driver’s area, kicking Ali’s corpse over. The driver is seat-belted, so the faceless body only leans away.
Knox throws himself into Ali’s lap, digs down between the dead man’s arm and rib cage, and sets the emergency brake. The taxi skids to a stop.
For a moment: silence, intermingled with the mechanical sounds of the car settling and Knox’s heavy breathing. For a moment he expects the vehicle to come to life again, like Stephen King’s Christine. For a moment, his and Grace’s defense mechanisms are held in stasis as they inventory their injuries, seek to determine major from minor, life-threatening from unimportant.
“I’m good,” Knox announces, looking like death warmed over.
Grace slaps the barrier and nods, her eyes like those of a scared horse.
Knox backs out and off the driver, having picked up some of the man’s blood to add to his own wounds. He’s testing his legs and joints as he stands. His wounded thigh hinders him. Grace slides out.
Curious bystanders emerge from the doorways of the four-story apartment buildings on either side of the hill. Knox is less worried about his face being remembered than he is about being surrounded and contained. Crowds form fast in Istanbul. Thick crowds. Deep crowds. He and Grace can ill afford questioning by the police.