The Red Room

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Book: Read The Red Room for Free Online
Authors: Ridley Pearson
Tags: Fiction, thriller, Mystery
one of its agencies—meaning the man can enter the country without being stopped. Atatürk Airport offers Grace an opportunity to identify such players if they exist. She notices a series of mirrored windows angled down toward the busy concourse from the mezzanine level. Despite her fatigue, she smiles at the advantage she has just discovered.
    She assumes Dulwich will follow Okle once he’s out of the terminal, but it’s nothing but an educated guess. She begins plotting.
    An agent or investigator wanting to follow Okle/Melemet out of the terminal would be far wiser to do so from a chair in a security office than with boots on the floor. Every square inch of the airport is monitored. Once the mark reaches Immigration Control and leaves, through a succession of cameras one would be able to follow him to a taxi, bus, passenger vehicle, rental or parked car.
    One agent in the security room, another in a car parked somewhere along the airport exit route. The mark has no way of identifying his surveillance team.
    But she does.
    She’s filled with a sudden burst of energy, defying her fatigue. Her mathematical mind is well suited to strategic planning; she’s capable of linear thinking, of laying down stepping-stones on the fly, rarely having to backtrack and correct a step.
    Abandoning the salad, she pulls her roll-aboard into the concourse and rides an escalator to the mezzanine and its pair of higher-end restaurants, administration offices and the secured entrance leading into the mirrored window area. She phones her car service, is patched through and informs the dispatcher she will be at the curb in twenty minutes—ten for the plane to land; ten, or more, for Okle to get through Customs and Immigration.
    She kneels by a trash can and makes a point of unzipping her bag and rearranging some clothing. She needs the cover.
    In the process, she places her iPhone slightly behind the trash can, lens pointing out, difficult if not impossible to see. The beauty of the device is that it allows still or video photography to be shot without having to unlock the phone. Its contents are Cloud-based; if the phone is confiscated, she will be able to access those via another identical phone in a matter of hours. Apple sells well in both Dubai and Istanbul. For now, it’s recording live video. She repacks, zips up the bag and leaves, returning to the concourse via the escalator.
    Six minutes.
    She repositions herself with a view of International Arrivals. A crowd of weary drivers and enthusiastic relatives has formed on her side of a restraining tape, a gauntlet past which she can’t see. Despite the heels, she’s forced to a stretch as she tries to balance against a spinning rack of tourist pamphlets. As arrivals reach the open end of the roped-off gauntlet, people rush to meet them, further obscuring her view.
    She overhears a woman ask an arriving passenger in English the flight’s origin. Delhi.
    One minute.
    The crowd ebbs and flows, sorting itself out. There’s a lull. She has a chance to secure a place at the tape, but decides against it. Mashe Okle must not see her; she is supporting Knox and may meet the man face-to-face. Her interest is less in Okle than in who’s watching him. That, along with his entourage, if any.
    She’s also monitoring the elevators and escalators for people like her—those who keep their distance and yet imply an interest in new arrivals.
    She sends Dulwich a secure text:
    mark on point
    He made it clear she won’t hear from him over the course of the op, but that only serves to excite her: he’s trusting her, solo. Until she and Knox confab, she’s independent.
    He expects her to fail at following Okle single-handed. Told her she can pick him up again at the hospital. But she has other ideas.
    Dulwich’s penchant for secretiveness has a chilling effect on Grace. His methods, his need-to-know exclusivity, protects the chain of knowledge, secures the intelligence. Her first field op for Dulwich,

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