Free The Red Room by Ridley Pearson

asks.

11
    M ashe Melemet and his two bodyguards take an additional two hours before arriving at the residential address that Besim, Grace’s driver, uncovered. It was likely time spent at the hospital, given that one of his guards is carrying takeaway food; dinner was an afterthought.
    Grace has failed to spot anyone else interested in the apartment building, though she assumes that Dulwich could be watching. She expected to see the men from the airport, including the agent who descended the escalator, but she has not.
    They interest her, and they will certainly interest Dulwich. The more information she can put together on them, the more thorough her work into who’s tailing Mashe Okle is, the more she’ll impress Dulwich. She has the men pegged as police, immigration officers or possibly Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization. Getting it right will earn her bonus points.
    Is the takeaway dinner the result of a long day of travel or Mashe Okle’s—aka Mashe Melemet’s—avoidance of public places? If he’s afraid of restaurants, of being seen in public, it explains whyDulwich needed a plan—needed her—to put herself and Knox in a room with him.
    To that end, she has to black-hat an investment server before she sleeps. Staying with Melemet is a guilty pleasure from which she finds it difficult to pull away. She left Besim and the black Mercedes four blocks back, going on foot, a scarf pulled tight over her head to hide her Asian features. She enjoyed walking the busy Turkish neighborhood for the past two hours. An operative. She continues walking past as the mark arrives. Takes no interest in him at all.
    Comes around the block to the north—for the third or fourth time—and spots two men, one wearing the Euro-ubiquitous black leather jacket. Her suspect in the airport wore a jacket just like it. She’s unable to get close enough to see them clearly. They smoke cigarettes while talking, like a million other men in Istanbul.
    Their location is significant. From where they stand, they have a view of Okle’s apartment building.
His safe house?
she wonders. A family residence? A rental? Are they protecting him, or pursuing him?
    At this moment, she can’t be sure of anything.

12
    S ipping from an eight-dollar minibar beer for which Dulwich will eventually pay, Knox finds going through e-mails tedious. He can’t keep his mind off the men following him in Amman, or Victoria Momani’s implication that the fallout between her and Akram was related to a team surveilling Mashe. Is there a connection?
    He can’t believe it, but he misses having Grace Chu around. Her mathematical mind has ways of cutting through the clutter. More than anything, he trusts her. He tries to never lose sight of the economic leash connecting Dulwich to Brian Primer.
    Knox has decided the requirement of spending five minutes with Mashe has something do with tracking. He assumes there must be a device within either the plastic outer mold or the Harmodius Obama covers; a tagging device but, according to Dulwich, not for assassination. Maybe Grace could make sense of it. He can’t. He pushes right to the edge of drawing a conclusion, only to be knocked back by a screwball piece of evidence: Dulwich’s promise of no assassination; the attacker in Amman retreating at the moment of superiority; Akram’s level of secrecy.
    Knox doesn’t feel safe. But he doesn’t jump at the sound of knocking. He shuts the laptop and eyeballs the peephole to the hall.
    “One second, please,” he says.
    He keys open the safe and leaves it ajar. He can have the gun in hand in a second, or less.
    He opens the room door, his foot blocking it from the inside. She appears to be alone. He admits her and locks the door, security bar and dead bolt.
    “I’m sorry,” he says, taking her by the forearm. “I’m going to need to search you and your purse.”
    Victoria Momani’s eyes blink slowly, giving her consent. Knox is gentle but thorough, sparing no