Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

Below, in a sloppier hand, was “Monday, 4/14!” underlined twice, along with a two-line mishmash of letters and numbers: “50! IMO9016742, JA T2-G6, L17-R4.”

None of it made sense. Probably a bunch of abbreviations, some personal shorthand that only Charlie could decipher. Sam remembered their conversation at the Alpine bar, and Charlie’s promise of big doings on Monday the 14th. It was now Sunday the 6th. Charlie would never make it to his avowed day of reckoning, and his black book offered few clues as to what might have been in the works. Was this all or part of what Charlie had scribbled with such urgency during his rendezvous at the Palace Hotel?

Sam flipped through the rest of the book. Nothing. Maybe Charlie had been talking big only to toy with him, trying to goad him into reporting something back to Nanette.

A knock at the door made him flinch. He slid the datebook into a drawer.

“It’s Liffey. We’re done out here, so whenever you’re ready.”

Sam opened the door to find Liffey with forms in hand, pen at the ready. Whoever had been helping was gone, and the door to Charlie’s room was shut.

Sam ordered a room service breakfast, then spent most of the next few hours pacing, first in his room and then in the lobby, while nervously wondering if and when Assad would make good on his threatened visit. At 3:30 he tried calming himself with a swim in the hotel pool, but it felt wrong to be among squealing children and luxuriating couples, people without a single care, so he returned to his room.

Shortly after 4:00 his curiosity about matters of consular policy got the best of him, so he fired up his laptop and poked around a State Department Web site long enough to discover that when an American died abroad, it was indeed a consular duty to “take possession of personal effects, such as: convertible assets, jewelry, apparel, and personal documents and papers.” Although this was supposed to occur only “if the deceased has no legal representative in the country where the death occurred.” Presumably Nanette had set the process in motion.

He had another hour to kill before going to the airport, so he sat on the end of the bed watching CNN International. There was nothing about a murdered American businessman in Dubai.

By 6 p.m. he was waiting outside the arrivals gate next to the limo drivers holding signs with their clients’ names. Nanette spotted him right away as she burst through the door from customs, and she nodded in recognition. For someone who had just flown through an entire night from halfway around the world, she was crackling with energy. She rolled an overnight bag with a laptop strapped smartly to the top. Not a wrinkle on her suit, which featured a skirt cut well below the knee. She was dressed for the locals, although her lipstick and makeup were flawless. So was her hair. She might have just hopped out of a cab after a four-block ride through Manhattan. It was mildly unnerving.

To his relief, she smiled in greeting.

“We took the corporate jet,” she said, as if to explain her polished appearance.

“We?”

“My assistant is back there somewhere. Stanley Woodard. He’s along to help pick up the pieces.”

“Am I one of the pieces?”

Sam hadn’t meant to say anything so self-pitying. He realized he was still off balance from jet lag and a lack of sleep.

“I guess that depends on what happened after we talked. How’d it go with the police?”

He gave her a quick rundown, ending with Lieutenant Assad’s threats.

“I doubt the lieutenant will be a problem. I phoned him while we were on the taxiway. Have the consular people been in touch?”

“They came by to clear out Charlie’s room. It was kind of weird.”

“It’s routine. In fact, they’re our first order of business. They’re staying open after hours on our behalf, so we’ll go straight there if it’s all right with you.”

“Sure. I’ll hail a cab.”

“No need. There should be a car waiting.”

As if on cue, Stanley Woodard bustled through the doors with a cell phone tucked to his ear. He was younger than Sam, fresh out of college. He looked like he had slept in his clothes, and he seemed to be in a great hurry.

“Driver’s on the line,” he said. “Car’s out front.”

“Maybe you should follow in a taxi. Sam and I have some delicate business to discuss.”

Woodard looked crestfallen but didn’t protest. He pocketed the phone and nodded gamely at Sam. Nanette didn’t seem inclined to introduce them, so Sam nodded back. He wondered what “delicate business” she was referring to.

The black Mercedes limo, technically a stretch, was far shorter than its huge American counterparts, which made it seem modest by comparison. The interior nonetheless had the feel of a swank private chamber, and when Sam sank deeply into the black leather upholstery he again realized how exhausted he was. Nanette slid toward him from the other door, coming closer than he would have expected on such a roomy seat. With the windows up, her perfume was noticeable. It seemed like ages since their previous meeting back in Gary’s office. He wondered where he would have been right now if he had said no to her plan. Or had that really been an option?

She turned to face him from only a foot away. He noticed a small black dot in her left eye, against the green of her iris.

“So how are you holding up, Sam? It must have been terrible for you.”

“All right, I guess. I keep thinking of Charlie. I go back and forth over everything that happened, wishing I’d done things differently. I’m sorry. I really did drop the ball, like you said. Although I guess it’s Charlie’s family I should apologize to.”

“No, no, Sam. The whole thing is my fault. You’re an auditor, a good one. But you’re not a security operative, and I shouldn’t have expected you to be one. I was only trying to make it a little easier for Charlie. A little less awkward, if that makes sense. Obviously I miscalculated. And, not to speak poorly of the dead, but Charlie didn’t exactly help himself. He made his own bed, Sam.”

“But I-”

“No. Not another word. Stop blaming yourself.”

The car slowed, easing into what appeared to be a horrendous traffic jam. The driver gestured in exasperation toward a cordon of orange cones, where a backhoe was hefting a slab of broken pavement.

“They make new roundabout,” he complained. “For only two days I not come here, and already they make new roundabout.”

Without replying, Nanette reached forward to press a button. A smoked-glass window slid shut between them and the driver. Incredibly rude, but mildly thrilling. They were secluded in boudoir comfort. In Sam’s sleep-deprived mind, aching for solace, almost anything seemed possible.

“I hope you’ll have time for dinner later,” she said.

“Sure. Absolutely.”

He was too tongue-tied to say more.

To Sam’s surprise, the U.S. Consulate was a Dubai anomaly-plain and unremarkable. He had once seen it portrayed in a movie as a palatial spread of marble and glass, with a luxurious courtyard of bubbling fountains and towering palms. Instead, it was a dreary block of offices on the twenty-first floor of the Dubai World Trade Centre, which was itself an uninspiring slab of concrete at the east end of Sheikh Zayed Road. The ambassador, the round-the-clock U.S. Marine guards, and the bulk of the diplomatic workforce for the Emirates were all based at the big embassy over in Abu Dhabi.

A green military truck from the Dubai Police was parked outside the building’s ground-floor entrance, with a drowsy sentry at the wheel. Visitors had to pass through metal detectors in the downstairs lobby, and the elevator wouldn’t stop on the twenty-first floor unless you punched in a numeric code, which Nanette seemed to know by heart. Sam watched out of the corner of his eye, unable to prevent himself from registering the sequence. Part of the auditor’s curse, he supposed, forever filing away extraneous data, like a Web crawler that never slept. Stanley Woodard, whose taxi had fallen behind in traffic, barely made it aboard before the doors shut, and seemed none too pleased about it.