But unlike the terrorists and anarchists and jihadists, she could still count on one hand the number of people she had executed (though she did need her thumb). Most of what she did—and what she had been hoping to do in Dubai once Sokolov was dead—was rather bureaucratic. She could never tell Viktor or anyone else, but she lived with a certain amount of self-hatred, even if (so far) the dead on her conscience all needed to die. Even, just maybe, Sokolov. Both sides would have agreed.
But he was the least definite. Speaking objectively, he wasn’t evil. But he also couldn’t be trusted. You didn’t steal from Viktor. Still, he wasn’t like the slime she had executed in Latakia or the cretin she had executed in Donetsk: he’d simply paddled into white water he thought he could navigate. He was rather like her: a pawn. Square D2 or E2 on the chessboard. The pawn moved out to open clean attack lines for the bishop. Against most players, a pawn didn’t last long. He’d done his job and delivered the goods. She had to kill him for one reason and one reason only: because Viktor had asked.
She listened to the soothing hum of the engines in the dark and closed her eyes. She wished she could go back in time. She wished she could go back to the Royal Phoenician that night.
No, she wished she could go back to the moment before she had gone to the hotel. When she had called him.
Alex, hello! Lovely to know we’re going to meet tomorrow. Are you alone?
That last question? It hadn’t crossed her mind to ask it. She should have. Because then he would have answered, Actually, I’m not. I have a new friend with me. But, please, come over anyway.
But this time she wouldn’t have come over. She would have waited. Maybe she would have gone to the Royal Phoenician much later that night instead. Maybe not. Maybe she would have taken care of Sokolov the next day. Or the next night.
Alas, she couldn’t go back in time. She could only go forward. Do her job. Fix the mess she had made and then survey her options.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Re: ALEX SOKOLOV
DATE: August 6, 2018
The Dubai Police alerted our legal attaché in the United Arab Emirates that this morning at 9:15 a.m. UAE time, a woman in housekeeping at the Royal Phoenician Hotel found a possible piece of additional evidence in the investigation into the murder of Alex Sokolov.
ILMA BAQRI, a part of the hotel housekeeping staff, was vacuuming on the northeast corridor of the fifth floor. When she moved the round couch there, she saw on the floor behind it a lipstick tube and a lip balm with the logo for CASSANDRA BOWDEN’S airline. It is the sort that is included in the first-class amenity kits.
Without a DNA sample or fingerprints, we cannot determine if either item belonged to CASSANDRA BOWDEN, but the Dubai Police have retained both items.
22
Cassie wasn’t averse to chaos when she was drunk; even sober, she knew, she was eminently capable of mind-numbingly bad decisions. Exhibit A? Friday afternoon at Federal Plaza with the FBI. But she realized that she couldn’t possibly reach Miranda while the other woman was in the queue at passport control. Crossing back past security wasn’t merely swimming against the tide: it was swimming into a wall of steel and glass cubicles, slender corridors, and armed women and men whose job was to spot (and stop) possible terrorists. Though she wanted—and she wanted desperately—to charge into the throng and then fight and claw her way through the crowd to Miranda, she didn’t dare. She’d be detained, perhaps even arrested, before she had gotten anywhere close to the woman. But she was almost visibly shaking, she was so agitated. And so she kept her eyes on Miranda and said to Makayla, “Can you ask the crew to stop for a minute? Just wait for me? And can you watch my suitcase?”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I know someone in passport control: line six. I have to talk to her.”
She wondered briefly about the eyeglasses she had spotted Miranda putting into her purse, because Miranda hadn’t been wearing them when they had met in Sokolov’s hotel room in Dubai. But perhaps she didn’t wear contact lenses on overnight flights so she could sleep. Or they were reading glasses. Didn’t matter. Cassie speculated that the woman wasn’t wearing eyeglasses in her passport photo, and so she didn’t want to be wearing them now when the security officer looked up at her and did the obligatory compare-and-contrast with the thumbnail image in her navy blue book.
If it was a navy blue book. For all she knew, it was red or black or green. She realized she had presumed the woman was a regular American with a regular passport. Maybe not. Maybe she wasn’t American. Or maybe she was, but she had some sort of diplomatic stature.
“Who?”
It would have taken too long to explain to Makayla specifically who the passenger was, and so Cassie answered simply, “Someone from Dubai. Someone who’s part of the shitstorm that’s my life right now.” All she had to do was say the word Dubai and she guessed that everyone in the flight crew would have a pretty solid inkling of what she was talking about. Adding shitstorm had been a reflex, an uncharacteristic flicker of self-pity. But it was also unnecessary: they all had their theories about what might or might not have occurred in Dubai—what she might or might not have done—and if only out of a gawker’s curiosity they were not about to desert her right now.
She watched the woman stand before the passport officer, watched him stamp her passport (though the color remained a mystery), and then she raced to the end of the funnel where the passengers exited into baggage, frustrated that it meant taking her eyes off Miranda. But she hadn’t a choice: she couldn’t risk allowing her to disappear into the hordes of travelers who weren’t slowed by lines or checked bags. All her postflight exhaustion was gone, her eyes were alert, and she didn’t worry about what she would say or what she would ask. Because she knew. She knew.
While she waited, she sent Ani a text telling her that she understood she was sound asleep in New York, but she was about to confront Miranda at Fiumicino. She was going to ask her who Alex Sokolov really was and who she really was, since the woman sure as hell didn’t work for his hedge fund. A part of Cassie understood well that she was playing with fire: if Miranda had killed Alex, who knows what she might do if she felt cornered. But Cassie was ready. She told herself the woman was likely unarmed because she had just disembarked from a transcontinental flight; even if, somehow, she had snuck a weapon onto the aircraft, how could she possibly attack her amidst the baggage carousels in a crowded—packed—international airport?
But the seconds went by, and she didn’t emerge. The people kept coming, an endless, steady stream, and there was no sign of Miranda. Cassie considered whether she might have missed her while she was texting, but she didn’t believe that. She had only looked down at her phone for milliseconds at a time; she’d always been watching. She craned her neck to see back toward passport control, but there was no sign of her. She scanned the area for a ladies’ room where she might have gone, but there wasn’t one between security and baggage. There was only one behind her.
Then, however, she saw the bag—that beautiful calfskin leather duffel. It was over the shoulder of a woman who had indeed walked right past her, a woman with blond hair and sunglasses and a wide-brimmed straw sun hat who was already beyond the first baggage carousels. Cassie once more scanned the exit from passport control, and when she didn’t see Miranda, she made a decision. She turned and ran after the woman in the sun hat, well aware that she must have looked like a madwoman, but no longer caring.
Cassie reached her well before the passenger had exited. She grabbed her from behind, taking her shoulder and spinning her around to face her. She couldn’t see the woman’s eyes behind her sunglasses and what she could see of her hair beneath her hat was so much lighter than Miranda’s. She couldn’t decide if it really was her or not. She tried to recall whether this was the same blouse—white and a little baggy—that Miranda had been wearing a few minutes ago while in line, but it was so drab and nondescript that Cassie wasn’t sure.