“The only chance you have of profiting from this is to trust me. To find a new hotel and take great care in doing so. Wait to hear from me. End of story.”
“It is not the end of the story.”
They kiss. More is said in the kiss than in all the conversation that has gone before. There is trust, longing, hope. Surprise, as he pulls away, because he doesn’t want to. Enchantment.
Victoria wears a mask of indifference. Knox knows better, or hopes he does.
The Roman numeral “II” appears on Knox’s phone. He switches to the second of his three SIM chips as he packs the interior pockets of his vest. As the phone registers cell service, a new text appears: a single period followed by “11:00.” Sent by Grace, it tells him that a lone wolf is watching the hotel from eleven o’clock, a spot to the left of the hotel’s front door.
He is the model of physical efficiency; there’s not a wasted motion as he downs three extra-strength Tylenol, double-checks the contents of his windbreaker using gentle squeezes and pulls it on. Uses a toenail clipper to notch two tears in the bedsheet. He knots three six-inch-wide strips, inspects and tests his knots, and then heaves the bed against the exterior wall, ties one end of his improvised fire rope to the frame and tosses the remaining length of it out the window. Lowers himself to a connecting rooftop. Is crossing another roof when he unexpectedly disturbs a pair of lovers who have made a privacy lean-to out of drying beach towels. The woman is topless, her skirt around one ankle; her screaming boyfriend more terrifying than the presumed assassins Knox is fleeing. The young man hollers at Knox in Turkish at the top of his lungs. The damage is done before Knox finds the propped-open doorway leading down. The kid has announced him to the world.
Knox is out on the street and hoping for a cab, listening for his phone to chime, signaling another text message from Grace. He expects to be told his surveillants are on the move.
The cab activity is two streets away, serving the hotel and café guests. As the only Westerner standing alone on the busy sidewalk, Knox might as well be wearing neon.
Grace has gone silent, likely having had to move away from her observation point. He won’t be suckered into returning to the hotel.
An explosion to his left. Knox dives and rolls only to realize it’s a flowerpot dropped from the rooftop by the young man, who is attempting to avenge his lover’s modesty. The blow would have killed him. Love complicates everything, he thinks. He’s up and moving away from the Alzer when his peripheral vision picks up a man moving in concert and slightly behind across the street. Knox grits his teeth, clenches his fist. He can imagine such a man squeezing off a shot at the back of the taxi. Can see Ali slump forward, lifeless. Feels responsible. Feels like crossing the street to return the favor but knows he’s outnumbered, outgunned and likely weaker than his opponent.
This last thought is the most difficult to embrace, but he’s been repeatedly wounded and is physically and emotionally exhausted. The more troubling thought is that assassins who take potshots at the backs of taxis and openly pursue you from a sidewalk across the street are not in the business of taking prisoners. Abduction is a team effort. Killing is a solo enterprise. This guy’s brass has Knox worried. He doesn’t care if Knox sees his face because in his dim view of the task at hand, Knox won’t be telling anyone who he was.
The next time Knox steals a sideways glance in his surveillant’s direction, his bowels threaten: the man’s right arm has ceased its pendulum motion at his side. Only his left swings. He’s holding something at his side, something he wants concealed.
Knox is about to be shot at by a marksman who only fractionally missed his target through a back windshield at sixty yards. He’s unlikely to miss from across the street.
He turns left at the intersection and crosses the street, running along the wide pedestrian boulevard in front of the majestic Fatih Cami, a white-stone mosque that rises in domes and towers seven stories high alongside an even higher minaret. Tourists are gathered around it, admiring the artistic geometry of the mosque’s spotlighted walls. Knox aims in a jagged dance for the queue of taxis, where drivers hawk for customers.
He’s gambled correctly: his assassin won’t risk killing a tourist. Knox waves a cabdriver into the driver seat as he approaches, shouting one of the few Turkish words he can properly pronounce: “Fast!”
He’s in the back of a taxi stitching through traffic like a rabbit through underbrush. Head low, he checks out the back and watches the assassin take the next cab in line.
“Airport.” Drops liras onto the passenger seat. “Fast.”
The ride is marked by bone-numbing, axle-bending collisions with potholes and poor surfaces. The contest with the trailing cab never reaches the level of NASCAR; his tail maintains a manageable distance, looming back like a hungry wolf waiting for his prey to tire. Knox is beyond tired. He’s exhausted. It’s everything he can do to fight the movement of the cab, keep it from lulling him to sleep. The dissonant Turkish folk music from the radio doesn’t help. Knox asks the driver to silence it. Earns a scowl in the mirror. Feels friendless.
Maybe he has it wrong. Maybe this tail is nothing more than what he wants: Mashe’s Iranian guards following Knox to the airport, realizing he’s serious about leaving the country if the meet doesn’t go his way. Maybe the device held at his tail’s side was nothing more than a cell phone. Maybe his fatigue isn’t helping anything.
The order of the taxis holds, keeping Knox in the lead for the remainder of the trip to the airport.
As Knox arrives at the curb, the trailing cab pulls over well behind him and… nothing. The rear door does not open. Knox sees no motion on the other driver’s part, no attempt to stop the meter. The two cabs sit curbside, twenty meters apart. A few moments later, the space between is filled by other vehicles. Knox no longer has a clean view; he angles to pick up the curbside in his own taxi’s passenger mirror. His driver repeats several times, “Please,” in English. He motions to Knox’s door.
Knox ignores him, watching the side mirror, waiting for the timing to be right. His moment comes when a minivan disgorges a three-generational family whose numbers could challenge the Guinness World Records book. Knox uses the cover to make it safely into the terminal. Once inside, he looks back. His taxi is gone. The other sits, unmoving, reminding him he remains the prey. The occupant could be calling in his status or awaiting an order.
More likely, he is painfully aware of the inescapable security cameras covering every square inch of the airport from multiple angles.
The absentee Dulwich is on Knox’s mind as he waits overnight in the airport terminal. The waiting taxi was shooed away hours ago by a police officer, and Knox has not seen it again.
International airport terminals are among the safest places on earth. The only real threat would come from people posing as police or security officers, and if Knox makes enough noise, others will come to verify his attacker’s credentials.
Knox wonders fuzzily why he’s still alive. The man trailing him could have had him at any number of red lights. He wonders if his going to an airport didn’t save him in more ways than he’d intended. What if whoever shot at him simply wants Knox out of the equation? What if trying to reason him into leaving the country was too risky, beyond the scope of his pursuer’s mission? By arriving at the international terminal, Knox has signaled surrender. Perhaps that’s enough to buy him a pass.
The Israelis again? Mashe’s assassination appears less important to the Israelis than the status of Iran’s nuclear program. Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been covertly assassinated in the past seven years, four while inside Iran. Yet Mashe Okle lives.