Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

“He said we should eat at separate tables.”

“He also said that I have a new curfew. Nine o’clock. Do you see me rushing home to obey it? I am going to pay dearly for all this, so I might as well get my money’s worth. Meaning we will eat at the same table, side by side if you prefer. I know I do.”

They took the elevator to the main lobby. Sam was surprised to see that it was light outside. A few early birds were already arriving in the parking lot for lonely Saturday shifts. They stepped through glass doors into the coolness of a fine morning. The mist of a nearby sprinkler made a small rainbow in the low sunlight.

“So does this mean we just spent the night together?” he said, trying to keep the tone light.

“I’m sure that’s how my father sees it.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t joke about it.”

“No. It’s funny, actually. Another new thing for him to get used to, poor man. But it’s not like we removed any clothing.”

“Well that’s one thing to be glad for.”

“I suppose.”

She, too, maintained a lighter tone, and as they crossed the parking lot she reached across the gap between them and quickly squeezed his hand. Just as quickly she let go, and she didn’t turn to face him, or slow down, or offer any other opening that he might have exploited for a kiss or even a sidelong hug. Demure and defiant, all at once, and very much in control. It restored his earlier good mood, and left him intrigued and aroused.

But as Sam turned to open the door he saw the stubble of the Marina district on the far horizon. Cranes were already swiveling into action. The blue helmets were too distant to spot, but he knew they were in motion as well, with a long day ahead. It was a reminder of the world he was about to reenter, a hide-and-seek frontier with no margin for error, where those who disappeared were easily forgotten. Sharaf had warned him that from here on they would have to operate like spies, trusting no one. Frowning, he checked their flanks. All clear for the moment. With a sigh, he eased into the front seat of the BMW, back on the job.

Ibn Battuta Mall looked more like a theme park than a place to shop-yet another Dubai monument to slapdash ostentation. Its vast and elaborate courtyards had been built to resemble the fourteenth-century glories of China, India, Persia, Egypt, Tunisia, and Andalusia-the onetime destinations of Ibn Battuta, the Arabic Marco Polo.

Sam pushed through the door and gazed at the painted-on skies, the massive colonnades, and the elaborate fountains. Disney or Vegas? Both, he decided. But the striking facades concealed pretty much the same retail offerings you’d find in Indianapolis-Borders, the Sunglass Hut, a twenty-one-screen multiplex, and so on.

He dialed up Sharaf on Laleh’s phone.

“Look around you,” Sharaf commanded. “Are you alone?”

“Far as I can tell. It’s like you said. Hardly anybody here.”

“Where are you now?”

“Somewhere in Tunisia.”

“I am in China, at the Starbucks. Why don’t you come and meet me. If anyone follows, I will be able to spot him.”

“See you in a minute.”

A Starbucks loomed around the next corner, but it was in Persia, situated beneath a huge dome painted in magnificent colors. It was like those splendid tiled ceilings you saw in the world’s most beautiful mosques, although the aura of holiness was somewhat diminished by a lingerie shop, its window filled with mannequins dressed in gauzy items you never would have seen on the streets of Persia, ancient or modern.

Sam forged onward through India until he finally spied the China Starbucks near a massive replica of a shipwrecked junk with a split hull and red sails. The ship appeared to have run aground by the food court.

Sharaf lurked at a table near the back, watching carefully. Sam almost didn’t recognize him at first because he was wearing gray slacks, a navy sport coat, and a button-down blue shirt, and everything was a few sizes too small. Not that Sam had room to criticize, since he was still wearing the oversized clothes borrowed from Sharaf’s son.

“Interesting place,” he remarked, taking a seat.

“Do not get comfortable. We will be heading straight back to Laleh’s car, but by a different route. I just had to make sure there was no surveillance.”

“Where’d you get the clothes?”

“They are Ali’s.”

“We make quite a pair. Good thing we’re not worried about standing out.”

“Would you have preferred I wore my police uniform?”

“It was a joke. Sorry.”

“Jokes were not what I was hoping for when I agreed to let you help me.”

“Then how about some information?”

“You have some?”

Sam told him first about what he had learned from his coworker Plevy about the phone Nanette had given him, with its GPS tracking device.

“Didn’t you say you turned it off for a while?”

“Then I switched it back on, just before the Russians showed up at the York.”

“No wonder Arzhanov panicked. He must have realized where you’d gone and felt like he had to act immediately. Anything else?”

He told Sharaf about how Nanette’s and Liffey’s careers had crossed paths in Moscow, and the press release that linked them both to RusSiberian Metals and Investment, the company providing cover for Rybakov in Dubai. He mentioned the dates of Nanette’s most recent trips to Moscow and Dubai, and her cooperation with police on the anti-counterfeiting task force.

“Now if we just knew what was going to happen on the fourteenth,” Sharaf said.

“What are Rybakov’s rackets?”

“The usual. Drugs, gambling, money laundering. Through real estate, of course, or this wouldn’t be Dubai. But being a former KGB man, his first love has always been porn and prostitution. The business of choice for ex-Soviet spies, or so I heard from an old hotel man in Bur Dubai. Years ago when there was still a Soviet Union, he did lots of business with Rybakov, renting him conference rooms for visiting Soviet commercial delegations. It was long before anyone had even heard of the words ‘Russian Mafia.’”

“Conference rooms? I thought Rybakov was KGB?”

“There was very little here for those kinds of people to do back then. No one from the West to spy on but a few oilmen, or the occasional banker. So Rybakov would help out the commercial attaché in his spare time. Part of his cover, I suppose. And then, of course, the whole Soviet system collapsed. Poor fellows like the Tsar weren’t even getting their paychecks on time. And that was when my hotel friend first caught him stepping out of bounds. Rybakov rented a suite of rooms, supposedly for some visiting oil and gas engineers. But when my friend happened to drop by to make sure everything was to the customer’s satisfaction, he found a film crew and three naked women, with Rybakov directing.”

“He was making a porn movie?”

“He’d been doing it for weeks, apparently, in hotels all over town. It was the only way he could get paid. So by the time all those construction workers began flying in, the Tsar must have seen them as a ready-made market for the naked women he was procuring.”

“The perfect capitalist, adapting his product to the market.”

Sharaf nodded. Then he slowly stood up from his chair, looking a bit wobbly.

“Where to?” Sam asked. They began walking, easing back through China toward Persia.

“Our first stop is an address in Deira, to see our doorman and bouncer from the Palace Hotel. I know a route that will allow us to elude anyone in pursuit. Next stop, the Beacon of Light women’s center. The director returned my call while I was in prison. I finally reached her an hour ago, but when I asked about this Basma character from your friend’s datebook she refused to say anything over the phone. I decided to take it as a promising sign, if only because nothing else seems very promising right now. In fact, we may run out of time even before we run out of leads.”