He reaches for her hand. Grace places hers in his sticky palm; for a brief moment, she can’t take her eyes off the blood. They’re in shock, but Knox has been here more often than she and so he navigates his way to the sidewalk and starts them off downhill.
At the first intersection, he turns them right. Several daring males follow, a matter of yards behind. Knox can’t find the translation. “What’s Turkish for ‘back’ and ‘off’?”
Grace looks up at him, too disoriented to reply.
Knox releases her hand, spins around and shouts a growl at their followers that so surprises Grace her knees give out.
The men turn and run.
Knox supports her by the elbow, dragging her with him. His mind is beginning to return: he needs to clean up before they go much further. The wound will have to wait, but he’s losing blood, so at the least, compression is urgent. Grace needs a strong drink and a toilet. Transportation. A new location. Time to think.
Something about the way she looks at him; he knows exactly what she’s thinking.
“No,” he moans.
She nods. “He’s our only chance.”
“I don’t trust him.”
Sirens punctuate the night.
“Very well.”
Ever the geek, Grace snaps a screen shot of the phone’s map app that shows the blue dot representing their GPS location on the streets of Istanbul. She texts the image along with what could easily be mistaken for a failed attempt at a social media hashtag but is something else altogether, something worked out days ago.
#+#
Knox assumes there will be an attempt made to confirm the kill. When only poor Ali is found in the vehicle, the shooter will try to complete the assignment. Given the distance the taxi traveled down the hill and depending on whether or not the shooter is on foot, they have anywhere from a few minutes’ head start to ten or more. But Grace is in no condition to outrun an executioner, and Knox cannot find a single spot on his body that is not throbbing with pain or bleeding.
The sirens draw closer.
“Damn.”
She tells him, “We need to get you cleaned up if we are to have any chance of running under the radar.”
Her use of the expression “under the radar” amuses him. It’s a non sequitur coming from her mouth. He cracks a smile and winces.
Grace works her phone. “There is a hamam three blocks”—she looks in both directions to determine their orientation—“this way.” She points to the right. East, away from the wrecked taxi.
“No thanks. No appetite,” he says.
“Turkish bath,” she tells him. “Neighborhood bath.” She adds, “It could have been a solo back there, or there could be a dozen of them after us.”
Knox hadn’t considered a team effort. He nods. They help each other along, arms locked, both hobbled. Sitting ducks if they stay out on the streets.
The Turkish bath dates back to the fifteenth century, when a lack of running water in homes inspired public works. The numbers of such baths mushroomed in the eighteenth century and then dwindled again; only twenty survive. Some served other functions in the interim, like cheese storage, until the tourist industry discovered them. Grace describes this one well as a neighborhood bath, more a spa for affluent Turks in the hills above downtown. It’s one of the few segregated spas, offering a man’s and a woman’s side, though men attend the women.
“I hit my head,” Knox tells the attendant, a surly man who gives him a curious look.
Grace translates, adding that her friend found himself in a romantic tangle with a woman belonging to a powerful man. She’s trying to cover in case their pursuers should inquire. The Turks are romantics at heart. She nudges Knox, causing him to wince.
“Tip,” she whispers hotly. “Big tip!”
Knox puts out a hundred dollars on top of the seventy for the bath.
“We do not wish any trouble,” Grace says.
The man smiles, displaying two gold teeth. “Nor shall you have any,” he says in English. “No blood in baths.” He points to a sign: NO BODILY FLUIDS is listed as one of twelve bathhouse rules. “You need help, my friend,” he tells Knox, pointing to his own head.
“Tape,” Knox says.
“Takes more than tape.”
“For now,” Knox says, testing. “She will help me.” He has the Super Glue in the Scottevest.
“Scissors,” Grace says. “A razor?” She pushes the hundred dollars closer to the attendant. “We can help you.”
The entrance opens into the camekan and a number of changing stations. Fountains. They are given pestemâls, checkered cloths they are told to wear. Knox keeps the Scottevest with him, which draws the receptionist’s attention as the man shows them into the women’s restroom, dragging an orange traffic cone to ensure their privacy.
Wearing the pestemâl like a toga and carrying her phone, Grace clips, cleans and shaves the area around Knox’s scalp wound. Cleans it again using hand sanitizer. The burn makes Knox curse. Cleaning it the second time is a mistake; the partial clot comes free and it’s bleeding again, badly. Grace glues it, tapes it and glues it again, but it’s a mess by the time it stops bleeding, and there’s a 4x2-inch strip of missing hair on the dome of Knox’s head. He jokes about needing a comb-over, but she doesn’t understand the reference.
Both are troubled by the fifteen minutes that have passed. If it’s Turks after them, it won’t take long to search the neighborhood. Grace has texted their new GPS icon. Their nerves, on top of their physical exhaustion, leaves them spent. Grace cleans up the small space.
“So?” she says.
“Into the baths,” Knox says. “Women’s is over there.”
“Where we will be naked and defenseless should they find us.”
“The steam room is first. The hararet. Hard to see in, which gives us the advantage. Be near the door to get the jump on them. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that. We’ll each be led into the bath and the warm stone area, where we’ll be scrubbed and cleaned before bathing. Tip your man before the rubdown.”
“Man?”
“Most places, yes. Now focus. These places have to have exits, so there will be a way out. You hear a shout, that’s me. I’ll head east, toward the river. We both text him again. With any luck—”
“Agreed. The plan is a good one,” Grace says, uncharacteristically complimentary.
Still, Knox can’t relax. The steam soaks into his joints and removes some of the pain but his head wound is screaming, and the accompanying headache makes it nearly impossible to think.
He gets through the steam room without incident, though he’s naked and a Westerner and this attracts envious attention from the other men. It’s been this way since middle school, through the sports locker rooms of high school and dorm showers in college: John Rocks. Knox Johnson. Long John Knox. He’s not sure why women don’t appreciate being objectified, at least a little; for himself, he loves it. If he attempts to cover himself, it only draws more attention because it requires a two-handed effort, so he carries himself with an upright posture and lets them marvel. What the hell?
His attendant, a potbellied forty-something with so much hair it grows from his shoulders, draws closer and winces audibly at the ripe bruises covering Knox. Knox wishes he knew the word for “gently.” But the man gets the point. He scrubs Knox tentatively, like he’s bathing his own grandchild.
Thirty minutes have passed since they abandoned the taxi.
Knox’s attendant looks up, as do several others surrounding the water, their clients prostrate on the hot stone. They’re looking at the receptionist, who quickly crosses the room, moving toward Knox.