“Yes.”
He sighed and she felt a flicker of unease. It grew more pronounced when he said, “Obviously it would have been better if you’d taken that risk, Elena. If he was as drunk as you say he was, who knows what he told her. Who knows what she knows now.”
“I don’t think we need to worry,” she tried to reassure him, but she could feel his disapproval. She knew how much trouble she was in.
“I do worry. And, frankly, I am”—and he paused, allowing the moment to grow ominous as he pretended merely to be searching for the right word—“vexed by the fact that you didn’t tell me there had been someone with him in the first place.”
“I should have,” she admitted. “I know.”
“Yes. You should have.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So what did you find? When you returned to his hotel room?” he asked.
“Alex was already passed out in his bed. He was out like a light. The suite was even worse than it had been when I’d stopped by earlier in the evening. Both rooms. It was squalid, it really was. He or that idiot woman had managed to break the bottle of vodka I’d brought and one of the hotel’s glasses.”
“This was after you left.”
“Correct.”
“But she definitely wasn’t present when you took care of our Mr. Sokolov.”
“I’m positive.”
“So, it would seem that she did indeed return to his room afterward and find him dead,” said Viktor.
“But she didn’t call the front desk or the embassy. She just…what? Found the body and did nothing? Spent the night with a corpse?”
He gave her a dark, lopsided smile, but remained silent.
“The suite was pretty large,” Elena told him, but she knew she was grasping a little desperately for vines around the quicksand. “Maybe she only went back to the living room. Maybe she forgot something in the living room and didn’t even peer into the bedroom.”
Viktor folded his arms across his chest dismissively and rocked back in the chair. “You can’t possibly believe that. The surveillance cameras suggest she was there all night. She knows he was dead. She saw the body.”
“In that case, is it actually possible that she believes she killed him?” Elena asked, thinking aloud.
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious. This flight attendant struck me as a pretty serious party girl. Think ‘Chandelier.’?”
“I suppose that’s a club drug?”
“It’s a pop song. Sia. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has serious memory problems when she drinks.”
He steepled together his fingers. “I guess it’s conceivable.”
“So maybe this works to our favor. It shouldn’t take long for the police to figure out that she was in the room with Alex and pin the murder on her. My impression of the woman is that she’s a disaster, she lacks all common sense.”
“Maybe. But it’s complicated. I spoke with our lawyer here.”
She waited.
“Alex wasn’t a citizen of the United Emirates,” he continued. “He was an American. It would take a lot of work to bring this woman back to Dubai and put her on trial, and the authorities here don’t have an especially vested interest in this case.”
Outside one of the sailors screamed something in frustration about how lost he was and how his phone wasn’t helping. She realized they, too, had been drinking. How was it that Russians had been saddled with the reputation for inebriation? “Is there any chance she might be tried in the U.S.?”
“Only if someone thought Alex’s death was a terrorist act,” he replied, and then he scoffed. “Can you imagine? A terrorist stewardess.”
“Flight attendant,” she corrected him reflexively.
There was a long beat as he raised one eyebrow. “Flight attendant,” he repeated finally.
“No one will view his death as a terrorist act,” she said. “No one will view this flight attendant as a terrorist.”
“I agree. Which is fine. Frankly, a trial does no one any good. Not us. Not them. And speaking frankly, Elena, not you.”
“I understand.” She couldn’t bear the ruckus outside on the street any longer. She vowed that when this meeting was over, she was going to march downstairs and tell the sailors precisely where to go.
“I’m not sure you do. The problem, as you have made very clear from your time with Sokolov, is that he was drunk. Peasant drunk. The toxicology report will confirm that, I’m sure. God knows what he might have shared. I think we all need to move forward on the assumption that he said something—that he told her something. You’ve said yourself that she’s an irresponsible drinker, too.”
She knew this was coming, but still her heart sank. “Does she have any family?” she asked.
“Have you grown a conscience, Elena Orlov?”
“I simply want to understand what we have to contain,” she said.
“No. She has no children and no husband. Not even an ex-husband. It should be very easy for you to fix this. She should have an accident. A terrible, unforeseen, but eminently realistic accident.”
“I just…”
“You just what?”
“I just feel bad. She did nothing wrong. She’s just a pathetic drunk who got in bed with the wrong man on the wrong night.”
“She’s dangerous,” Viktor reminded her.
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps? You should have taken care of them both when you found them together. You know that. I know you do. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
“She saw you, Elena. She saw you. Be realistic: one of you has to die.” He shrugged. “I think it’s your choice.”
10
The cuts looked far worse than they were. She wouldn’t need stitches, Cassie decided. In the end, she stood naked over the bathroom sink, sobered by the photos she had seen of herself on her phone, and pressed a cold, damp washcloth on each gash until the blood slowed. Then she pressed a couple of cotton balls along the wounds and held them in place with Scotch tape she wrapped around her left hand as if she were a mummy. It looked like a kindergartner had attempted the first aid. Tomorrow morning she would have to buy Band-Aids.
She climbed into her sleep shirt and tried to convince herself that the rest of the crew wasn’t searching out stories about Alex Sokolov the way she was, and so they might never see the images of her at the Royal Phoenician in Dubai. But she failed. Of course they were Googling him: He’d been on their flight. He’d been in her and Megan’s and Jada’s cabin. She lay in bed waiting for the lights of the Empire State Building—the tower was the signature white tonight—to blink out. Eventually someone in the crew would spot the photos. By now the grainy stills had no doubt been shared with the FBI here in the United States and it was inevitable that eventually investigators would explore whether the woman beside Sokolov had been on the plane. First they would rule out friends and acquaintances and clients and hotel employees, but then they would work their way back to the flight. Who had he sat with? Who had he seen? They would ask the crew (They would ask her!) if she recognized the person walking beside the dead man. What would finally give her away, the scarf? The sunglasses? The sharp slope of her aquiline nose?
In the morning, she told herself, she would call Derek Mayes and tell him that she did indeed need that lawyer named Ani. She was going to phone her, but it couldn’t hurt if Derek made a call, too. So much for the manicure. She would buy Band-Aids and retain an attorney. It was time.
* * *