Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

“This morning? It’s what, two in the afternoon there now?”

“Well, I had to clear everything with my division head. And by the time he was back in pocket I was chairing a lunch meeting, so-”

“So I’ve already lost nearly six hours. And I’m betting from the timing of Plevy’s report that he took the call at home the night before. Correct?”

“Well, yeah. But-”

“Didn’t you give your department instructions for immediate notification?”

“I told you, he reported it first thing in the morning. How much more immediate do you want?”

Idiots. Like half the people she was working with here in Dubai. In Nanette’s experience, both in government and in the corporate world, you could easily fire about half the workforce and maintain the same level of productivity. If it wasn’t laziness, it was sheer stupidity, and Gary Grimshaw was amply supplied with both.

“Never mind. What time did Plevy take the call?”

“Uh, let’s see…” Nanette bit her lower lip as Gary shuffled papers. “Around two in the morning.”

“So 10 a.m. my time, meaning twelve hours ago. Christ, Gary, that’s half a day!”

“Sorry.”

“Did he leave a number, or any hint of a location?”

“No.”

Of course not. All the stupid ones were on her side.

“What did Plevy tell him?”

“Nothing. Just that everyone had heard he’d fucked up. He said Keller asked for help, but Plevy didn’t give him any.”

“Keller was probably angling for a way to access the system. Did Plevy say anything about a password?”

“He said Keller hung up as soon as it was clear Plevy wasn’t going to help. Like I said, he played it by the book. I was very clear on that with all my people.”

“Here’s what I want you to do.”

She thought fast, already assembling a checklist in her head. Fortunately she hadn’t swallowed a drop of alcohol since the moment she’d heard Keller was missing, and this was the very reason why-so her head would be clear when it was time to act. Two hours ago she had worked out on the treadmill in the Shangri-La’s fitness center, and now she was at peak energy following a shower and a room service salad with iced herbal tea. Add a fresh pot of coffee and she would be energized until 3 a.m. if necessary. By then all the pieces would be in place for what she wanted to accomplish next. She had no doubt that Keller would eventually be run to ground. Preferably sooner rather than later.

“First, change all of our system access codes and passwords. Company-wide, all branches and regions. Nelson in tech support will know what to do. Just tell him the order came directly from me. Do it as soon as we hang up, understand?”

“Sure.”

“Scratch that. I’ll call him myself.”

“It’s okay. I can-”

“Second, cut off all access for this Plevy fellow, effective immediately.”

“But he blew the whistle.”

“You said yourself he’s a bit of a weasel. We have no idea what actually passed between them. It’s the one door Keller has tried, so we may as well nail it shut.”

“Plevy won’t be able to do his job without access.”

“Then suspend him until this matter is concluded.”

“Without pay?”

“It’s your budget, Gary. Make an executive decision. Or do you need a meeting first?”

Another whistle-blower dumped on, which was regrettable. But she’d certainly experienced that kind of backlash herself more than a few times. It was a vital part of her education on the way up the food chain. No good deed went unpunished, so why keep doing them?

She telephoned Nelson in tech support, reaching him immediately, as she had known she would. His two predecessors had discovered that you made yourself available to Nanette Weaver at all hours or you wound up in the unemployment line.

First she explained the immediate need for everyone to be issued new passwords, except, of course, Plevy.

“Consider it done,” Nelson replied, his mouth full of something wet and sloppy.

She appreciated Nelson, even though he never washed his hair and always stared at her legs. Not only did he do as he was told, but he also occasionally suggested tweaks and improvements, and he never second-guessed.

“Then I want some sort of lock or trap set up to capture the particulars of any attempt to log on to our internal system via any server in the UAE, even if the attempt is made with an incorrect password. Can you arrange that?”

“No problem.”

“How soon?”

“One hour, two at the most.”

Meaning that by midnight, Sam Keller would have no way in, yet would still snag his trousers in the doorway. And once that happened, they would have a fix on his approximate location within a few hours, solving the last of her potential problems now that the renegade policeman Sharaf had been neutralized. Assad, like Gary, had his faults, but he had finally bought her idea that they were badly underestimating the frumpy Sharaf.

Nanette sighed in relief after hanging up. She wouldn’t need coffee, after all, and could instead focus on getting a full night’s rest. The idea of a nightcap was tempting, but she decided against it, knowing she would regret it if the phone rang a few hours later with news of a fresh emergency, or another signal from Keller.

In the morning she would send her assistant, Stanley Woodard, home on the first available flight. Time to clear the decks for action, and he would only be in the way. Because soon enough it would be time for battle, and to judge from all the recent complications, she was now certain that victory would be possible only by leaving no survivors. By the close of business on Monday the 14th, no opponents would remain standing.

Now that was a good thought to sleep on, even without a drink to celebrate.

By his second day on the job, Sam Keller could finally step to the edge of the thirty-first floor-no guardrail, no safety harness-without going weak in the knees, although his blood still rushed to his fingertips. Toward midmorning he even dared a glance at the ground. Blue helmets moved to and fro like jittery pixels on a video display. It made him dizzy, so he quickly looked away.

Sam hadn’t experienced these sensations since he was eleven, when he got stuck on the Swamp Fox roller coaster in Myrtle Beach, S.C., during a power failure that stranded him at the top for four hours. Rising fumes of corn dogs and cotton candy had turned a mild case of vertigo into a queasy ordeal that lasted past midnight. He remembered the rapt upward stares of the people below, openmouthed with anticipation, as if awaiting the next Hindenburg disaster. Here, at least, everyone was too busy to pay attention to his misery, so he went about his duties in silence, still drained and disoriented from the chain of events that had led him to this edge of existence.

The job site was in the Marina district, an entire cityscape rising from nothing. From his lofty vantage point Sam counted nearly two hundred high-rises under construction, laid out along canals and channels that snaked from a huge man-made inlet of the Persian Gulf. Cranes clung parasitically to the sides of buildings and were perched atop others. The newly paved streets were quiet, except for the occasional truck hauling in more supplies.

Out along the beach, a recently opened hotel held the area’s only current overnight inhabitants, tourists who seemed bemused to be vacationing at a construction site. One had gaped at Sam’s white face when he stepped off the bus with the other workers, pointing in amazement as if he’d spotted an albino in a stampede of wildebeests. But none of the man’s friends had seemed to notice. It was just like Ali had said. To the rest of Dubai, Sam was now invisible.