The Red Room Read Online Free PDF

wears a sand-colored suit with a white shirt and no tie. Loafers without socks. His hair is moussed back. He wears wraparound Ray-Bans. A gold chain bracelet adorns his right wrist. None of this costume feels natural to him.
    People who can take photos of a person over an eighteen-month period are people to steer clear of. Their employers are often identified by acronyms. If they can aim a camera, they can aim a rifle. And if they’re keeping an eye on Akram, on Saffron, his restaurant—and there’s no reason to think they are not—Knox will never know. The casual pedestrian won’t spot them; they won’t be holed up in a utility van across the street.
    They will see him. He will not see them.
    The loose disguise is an attempt to separate himself from his former self, to prevent an instant connect-the-dots moment on the partof the surveillance team. The computers may make the face recognition for them later, but for now he’s just another patron of an Indian restaurant. That the surveillance team may have an asset or audio/video on the inside must be considered. But Knox embraces such moments. He’s as comfortable in his skin as he ever gets.
    He fingers the twenty-dinar note in his pocket. On it, written in Arabic, is Akram’s name followed by Knox’s phone number.
    Knox has memorized a line of Arabic. He practices it in a head chaotic with thought.
    He orders
palak paneer
,
dahi gosht
and a beer from a subdued young woman with amazing skin and eyes like black olives.
    He finds it impossible to immediately spot the plant, if he or she exists. Is troubled by the feeling of being watched, photographed, accounted for; he’d rather be the one doing the surveillance.
    Dulwich had not confirmed or denied Mashe Okle’s connection to the weapons trade. Knox’s subsequent Internet searches returned only a holistic physician in Oceanside, New York. A Middle Eastern Mashe Okle does not exist. Knox is attempting to spend five minutes in a room with a nonentity, which has him wondering if Mashe is in fact real, or if Akram is the proxy for some other dark lord whom Dulwich cannot or will not divulge.
    There’s a reason people on this side of the profession are called spooks. Knox prefers things clean and tidy. He already regrets taking this job. Spooks operate in Spookdom with their own rules, their own stakes. They are flag-wavers who can make toxic decisions because they’re weighing the good of an entire nation against an individual deed. They’re comfortable justifying anything.
    Knox doesn’t want to be locked on that playground. But he gladly indulges in the adrenaline rush of sitting in an Indian restaurant, dressed as somebody else, waiting to make contact with a man he knows is likely out of the country. It’s Spooky behavior, and heenjoys it—it’s this stab of hypocrisy that troubles him. Waffling between a sense of displacement and yet enjoying the party . . . it doesn’t sit well.
    The meal is excellent. As Dulwich said, and Knox planned for, Akram is nowhere to be seen; he’s in Istanbul at his mother’s hospital bedside. The stop in Amman is what’s known as a back door. For Knox to arrive in Istanbul without suspicion, he must arrange for Akram to invite him, to allow the man to think their meeting is his idea, not Knox’s.
    Knox gives himself time to finish the beer. Orders another. He’s a man in no hurry.
    He asks after the toilet, despite the sign, despite being aware of the floor plan. He’s directed to the back.
    He approaches the counter where the waitstaff drop off dishes. His hand finds the bill in his pocket. As he reaches the dish drop, he peers inside at a gaunt, forty-something male wearing a head wrap and a heavily stained apron.
    “Do this for me, it is yours,” he tells the man, handing him a day’s wages.
    The dishwasher takes the note, mutters something. Knox translates only: “is mine.”
    Knox lingers long enough to make sure the man sees the writing on the note. The