13

The Dubai restaurant faced the harbor and had floor-to-ceiling casement windows, open now to catch the morning breeze off the gulf. There were white linen tablecloths that were pristine, as were the white leather banquettes on which the guests were sitting. It was part of a hotel with a marina. The buffet of pastries and cheeses and exotic fruits and vegetables was presented on white serving plates on white marble counters that were streaked and dotted with black: they looked to Elena like giant squares of stracciatella gelato. She and Viktor had shared a yogurt and purslane salad, but now he was waiting on the fried eggs and Turkish sausage he had ordered in addition. He had insisted they have breakfast before she followed the flight attendant back to America.

“They tell me the flash drive was worthless,” he said to her. “Nothing of value. Nothing NovaSkies can’t already do and nothing to help with a new sort of…payload.”

He wasn’t precisely chastising her, but there was more than mere disappointment in his tone. A thought passed through her mind, but she told herself that she was being paranoid and she should not allow it to take root: Did Viktor suspect that she had tampered with the flash drive Sokolov had been given? Did he believe that she had deleted the information they were expecting? “Really, nothing?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“We expected more.” He looked around and she saw why. The hostess was about to seat a couple of Western businessmen at the table beside them. Instantly he stood and asked the woman in Arabic if she could please seat them a little further away: he was discussing deeply personal family matters with his daughter and would be grateful for the extra privacy. The young woman, Indian or Pakistani, Elena presumed, smiled and obliged. The businessmen didn’t seem to care.

“Now I’m your daughter?” she asked Viktor when he sat back down.

He shrugged. “I would be proud to have you as my daughter.”

She didn’t believe him and rolled her eyes. He and her father had endured each other, little more. She knew, in the end, what Viktor had done to him. “Even after this fiasco?”

“Even after, yes. Even the most successful people in this world make mistakes. Often they’re just better at correcting them and moving on.”

His eggs and sausages arrived and he smiled happily at the waitress. After she had placed them before him and retreated, he continued. “Our job is to anticipate, and in this case you anticipated wrong. Now you are responding accordingly.”

“Yes. Of course.”

He motioned at his plate. “God, this stuff is good. You really should try some.” Despite his apparent enthusiasm for the entrée before him, however, almost delicately he sliced off a thin section of one of the sausages. He brought the piece to his mouth, chewed, and smiled a little too rapturously for Elena’s taste. If breakfast could make him this happy, she shuddered to think of what he might be like in bed. “I spoke to the police,” he said when he had finished chewing. “They interviewed most of us.”

“And?”

“It was fine. None of us are American women. But it could have been awkward. Another reason why you should have told me right away about the flight attendant.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“How much time do I have?” she asked.

“How much time do we have,” he corrected her. “Don’t feel so alone out there.”

“I am so alone out there.”

“The woman is either a wild card or something far worse.”

“A wild card,” she repeated, mulling that over. She considered pressing him about what he meant by something far worse, but she recalled his remark about the worthless flash drive. If he really didn’t trust her—if he actually doubted her—the last thing she wanted to do was inadvertently force him to say such a thing aloud. Verbalizing it would make it too real, the accusation irrevocable.

“Yes. A wild card. She’s a drunk and, I have come to believe, a little self-destructive.”

“You mean in addition to her drinking?”

He put down his fork and looked at her intensely. “I’m not sure what I mean. I just know that I want her gone. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

“Probably not,” Elena said, though she didn’t completely agree. It wouldn’t be difficult operationally, but it sure as hell would piss people off and it sure as hell would exact a high price on her soul. Killing Bowden wouldn’t be like killing Sokolov, an opportunistic fuck who’d agreed to mule American data because he knew he was in deep shit for skimming and had now served his purpose. He clearly couldn’t be trusted. Nor would it be like killing that despicable colonel at Incirlik who was playing both sides and getting rich: that prick had just screwed some poor Yazidi girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old when she shot him. He was a pig. But this flight attendant? Not her usual quarry. It would be like drowning a kitten. But Elena was in survival mode herself, and so she added, “It’s mostly the travel that annoys me.”

“You really don’t like to travel?”

“I was looking forward to spending a little time here. Or going home to Sochi for a bit.”

He seemed to relax a little bit. He picked up his fork and gazed down at his breakfast. “You will. All in good time. This is a speed bump, that’s all. No, it’s a detour. A detour to America. You like America,” he said, the last sentence a small, slight dig. “But then you’ll come back. Or go home. Whichever you want.”

“Okay.”

He looked over her shoulder and pointed. She turned and saw a pair of myna birds on an outside railing just behind her, their yellow beaks phosphorescent in the sun. “Even the birds here eavesdrop,” he said, smiling. But then his tone grew serious. “You asked me how much time you have,” he said. “The fact the flash drive was of no value—no use—doesn’t reflect well on you. You should know that no one is happy about that. I am just being honest. So, I think you should move quickly. For your own sake, Elena. For your own good. Soon would be best—for everyone.”