The Flight Attendant

  “Okay. He said he was a money manager. What else?”

  “He said he ran a hedge fund.”

  “Good. Go on.”

  “That’s all. I don’t even know what a hedge fund is precisely,” she admitted.

  “What meetings did he mention?”

  “I know he had a meeting, but we didn’t discuss it.”

  “It was supposed to be the next day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was going to be in it?”

  “Investors, I suppose.”

  “So these were investors in Dubai?” he asked.

  “I’m just speculating.”

  “Any names?”

  Instantly she recalled Miranda and almost offered that name, but as far as the FBI knew, she hadn’t seen Alex once he exited the jet bridge in Dubai. She considered telling Hammond that he brought the woman up on the plane, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to manage the questions—the fallout—that would emerge from the revelation. And so she answered, “Not that he told me on the plane.”

  “Okay. What about friends? Did he say anything about any acquaintances or buddies or women he might have been planning to see while he was in the Emirates?”

  “No. He didn’t mention anyone.”

  “I don’t think we asked this when you landed. I’m so sorry. Did you see Sokolov in Dubai?”

  She thought of how Ani had warned her that she might not feel the knife going in, but she knew she would. Here it was. The question, the third in a string of short sentences, was the blade at the edge of her skin. Did you see Sokolov in Dubai? She also recalled how Ani had said that under no circumstances should she lie. It was better to take the Fifth. And so she took a deep breath and she did.

  “On my counsel’s advice, I am invoking my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer.” It took courage to say those words—not Fearless Girl bravery, not a righteous refusal to be bullied—but it was still a kind of valor she wasn’t sure she had. She wanted to lie. It was just easier to lie. So much of her life was lying. Oh, she would have moments of candor, especially when she was forced to face who she was after a particularly deep drunk or when the postcoital revulsion was stifling after a romp with a stranger. But usually she lied. Now she watched Hammond look quickly at Ani, who was absolutely stone-faced, and then back at her. He smiled.

  “Really?” he said, his tone almost light. “How could that question possibly incriminate you?”

  She said nothing.

  “So the last time you ever saw Alex Sokolov was as he was leaving the airplane after you touched down in the Emirates?” he pressed.

  “On my counsel’s advice, I am taking the Fifth.”

  Hammond said to Ani, “I’m not sure what you think we’re looking for here, Ms. Mouradian, or why in the world you would give Ms. Bowden that advice.”

  Ani glanced down at her nails and then up at Hammond. Her legs were crossed, and her skirt had ridden up a few inches on her thighs. Her pantyhose were black and sheer, and Cassie recognized the color as one of the shades the airline approved with the uniform. “What are you looking for, Agent Hammond?” she asked him.

  “We’re just trying to learn all we can about the death of an American citizen in Dubai. We’re trying to see what he did there the night before he was killed. A courtesy for another country. A courtesy for a grieving American family in this one. Maybe Alex Sokolov said something to your client that will help us find out who murdered him.”

  “Why not ask her that?”

  He nodded. “Okay.” Then he turned back to Cassie: “Did Alex Sokolov say anything to you that might help us find out who murdered him?”

  “No,” Cassie answered.

  “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?” Ani asked the agent. He ignored her.

  “Did Sokolov tell you where he was going when he landed?”

  Ani jumped in: “Agent Hammond, surely you have already asked Unisphere Asset Management that question and they have told you. For the life of me, I can’t see why you keep coming back to this line of questioning with my client. I’m sure you know exactly who Alex Sokolov was meeting with in Dubai. I’m sure you know exactly why he was in the city.”

  “And do you know, Ms. Mouradian?”

  “No. Do you care to tell us?”

  He looked irked, but he said nothing to the lawyer. Instead he turned back to Cassie and said, “Let’s make it easier: did he tell you the name of the hotel where he was staying?”

  Ani jumped in again. “We all know that, Agent Hammond. It’s been in the newspapers, for God’s sake.”

  “Ah, but did he tell your client? That’s my question.”

  “I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer.” Cassie noticed that Washburn was writing even that down.

  “Do you honestly believe that we or the police in Dubai think you’ve done something wrong, Ms. Bowden?” He was, Cassie supposed, trying to sound at once astonished and hurt. She might have believed that he actually felt that way if Ani hadn’t warned her.

  “I’m guessing that’s a rhetorical question,” Ani said to the case agent.

  “It’s not. I’m trying to help solve a crime. I’m trying to help a family get justice. And, just maybe, I’m trying to save other lives by catching a killer.”

  “All noble goals. I want you to succeed,” said Ani.

  “And there are flight attendants, passengers, and an air marshal on Alex Sokolov’s last flight who are quite clear about this: your client was talking to him. A lot. And in their extensive conversations, it is at least remotely possible that he may have told Ms. Bowden something that could be useful.”

  “So you don’t believe she has done anything wrong?”

  Cassie was struck by how everyone was suddenly referring to her in the third person, as if she weren’t there. She. Ms. Bowden. She wanted to raise her hand and remind them that she was here, she wasn’t invisible. She recalled a line from an old Beatles song: I know what it’s like to be dead.

  Hammond’s brow grew furrowed. “Why would we? Because she went by Unisphere’s New York office late yesterday afternoon?”

  And then, as if it were only a game of high-stakes poker, no one said anything. She could see that Ani and Hammond were trying to surmise each other’s tell, that almost imperceptible behavioral tic that would allow them to gauge their opponent’s hand and sense their advantage. It was actually Washburn, the scribe, who broke the silence.

  “I just want to confirm,” he began quietly, looking at Cassie, “you said Sokolov didn’t tell you at which hotel he was staying, correct? You only learned where he was staying from the newspapers, well after the fact.” Then he put his head back down and seemed to be staring at the tip of his ballpoint pen as he held it an inch or so above the yellow paper with the thin blue lines.

  “I took the Fifth,” she said, the words timorous and momentarily caught in her throat. She clasped her fingers together in her lap because otherwise they would be visibly shaking.

  “Where were you the night that Alex Sokolov was murdered?” Hammond asked.

  “I am taking the Fifth.”

  “Were you in your room that the airline had booked for you at the Fairmont Hotel? In other words, were you at the same place as the rest of the crew? Or did you spend the night elsewhere?”

  “Again, I am taking the Fifth.”

  “You know the Fifth is not some crazy magical bullet, don’t you?” Hammond told her.

  She said nothing. She tried to breathe slowly. She tried not to think about the drink she would have when she got out of here, but to focus instead on this poker game, this chess match. Did they somehow know—and know categorically—that she had not been in the room the airline had provided her, or were they just presuming she was not there because of the Royal Phoenician security camera photos?

/>   “No,” said Ani, answering for her, “it’s not. But it is her constitutional right.”

  “And I hope you realize,” Hammond went on, “that by invoking the Fifth you are only giving me the impression that you really have done something incriminating—that you really do have something to hide.”

  “I…” Cassie stopped. She didn’t know what she wanted to say.

  “Look,” Hammond began, his voice growing a little more gentle. “Let’s just clear up the little things. The easy things.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “When did you meet Alex Sokolov?”

  For a moment the absurdity of the question confused her, and she had to think about it a second. “On the plane,” she said. “When he boarded.”

  “You never saw him in New York?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a weirdly small city. And, of course, you did go by his office yesterday.”

  She remained silent.

  “Anyone tell you he was going to be on the flight?” he asked.

  “No. Why would someone? That’s…”

  “That’s what?”

  “That’s not how it works. No one tells us who’s on the flight until we get the passenger list before takeoff.”

  The FBI agent looked at her earnestly. “I’m trying to help you, Ms. Bowden. But I can’t help you if you don’t help me.”

  “I think she’s being quite helpful,” said Ani.

  He ignored the lawyer and continued. “The newspapers. I’m sure you’ve seen them. Is that you in the pictures, Ms. Bowden?”

  “What newspapers? What pictures?” she asked. She was stalling and the two FBI agents had to know it—how could she not have seen the newspapers by now?—but her reflex when she couldn’t answer with a grandiose lie was to answer with a modest one.

  Hammond was clearly going to play along. “Well, let me tell you. Some of the newspapers have published security camera photos from the hotel where Alex Sokolov’s body was found. Most have published two. One shows a woman on Sokolov’s arm the night before he was killed. The other shows that same woman leaving the hotel the next morning. Alone. She’s wearing the same clothes.”

  Washburn opened a manila folder beside his pad and placed the two photos on the table in front of Cassie. “Here they are,” he said.

  Ani smiled but didn’t glance at the pictures. “A walk of shame? Seriously? Why are we even discussing this?”

  Hammond ignored her and elaborated: “The legal attaché in the Emirates says that the woman in these pictures matches the description of the woman—an American—who three different hotel employees say they saw with Sokolov the night before he was murdered. Apparently, she matches the woman with whom he dined at a French restaurant that evening.”

  The photos were eight by tens. They were crisper than the reproductions in the newspaper or the images she had seen on her phone, but certainly not crystal clear. Was the woman indisputably her? Not indisputably. The first was a grainy, long-range profile. In the second, the woman was wearing sunglasses. In both she was wearing the scarf. But a reasonable person could reasonably suppose it was her.

  “Recognize the scarf?” Hammond was asking.

  She shrugged. She gazed for a moment at the arabesque, at the almost hypnotic array of tendrils and swirls.

  “One of the flight attendants on the plane with you from Paris to Dubai recalls you buying one just like that when you landed,” Hammond said. “It was near the duty-free shop at the airport. Maybe even next to it.”

  She wondered: Was this Megan? Jada? Shane? It could have been any of them or someone else. There were nine other flight attendants. “I may have,” she answered simply.

  “So: is that you?”

  She looked up at him and she looked at Ani. She glanced at Washburn. She held her hands tightly together, but she couldn’t stop her legs from shaking under the table. She knew she was supposed to take the Fifth. But, suddenly, she knew also that she wasn’t going to. She knew it. She thought once again of that old Beatles lyric, I know what it’s like to be dead, and understood with certainty that she was going to lie, because that was who she was, and you can no more escape your DNA than you can an Airbus that is pinwheeling into the ocean after (pick one, she thought to herself, just pick one) a cataclysmic mechanical failure, a suicidal pilot, or a bomb in the cargo hold. She was the lightning that brings down the plane, the pilot who panics on the final approach in the blizzard.

  They’d probably found her lipstick in Alex’s hotel suite already. Or, perhaps, that lip balm. They’d found it where she had left it or where it had fallen out of her purse. They’d found it beside a mirror in the bedroom or the bathroom or on the carpet near the chair where she had tossed her purse. They’d found the incontrovertible evidence that she had been with Alex the night he was killed.

  “Well?” Hammond pressed. Ani was mouthing the three syllables Take the Fifth, her eyes wide and intense.

  Instead, however, Cassie gazed for one long, last moment at the images on the table, savoring these final seconds before the plane hits the earth, unsure whether the next few words would result in a successful crash landing or the aircraft would break apart and explode upon impact. She took a deep breath through her nose, exhaled, and then said, “Of course, it’s me. Alex and I met on the plane, we had dinner in Dubai, and then we went back to his hotel room. We made love in the bedroom and in the bathroom—in the shower. And in the morning, when I left, he was still very, very much alive. I can assure you of that. He kissed me once on the forehead before I said good-bye, and then said he was about to get up himself. But I swear to you on my life: when I left the hotel, he was perfectly, totally fine.”

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  FD-302—EXTRACT: CASSANDRA BOWDEN, FLIGHT ATTENDANT

  DATE: August 3, 2018

  Although BOWDEN had pled the Fifth multiple times in the interview, including one time when asked if SOKOLOV had told her the name of the hotel where he was staying, when shown the hotel security camera photos, she admitted that she was the woman in both of them.

  She said that she and SOKOLOV had dined at LA PETITE FERME before returning to his hotel room at the ROYAL PHOENICIAN HOTEL. There they had consensual intercourse two times before going to sleep. She says that when she left his room on the morning of July 27, he was alive. He was awake and kissed her.

  She acknowledged leaving about 10:45 a.m. She didn’t believe he had any meetings that day until lunchtime, which was why he had suggested she shower and get dressed first, while he “lolled” in bed a few more minutes. He had even joked, “After all, you have a plane to catch. I don’t.”

  Finally, she said that a woman came to SOKOLOV’s hotel suite the night before. SOKOLOV introduced her as MIRANDA (LAST NAME UNKNOWN). She seemed to be American, roughly thirty years old, brown eyes, auburn hair, medium height for a woman. No eyeglasses. Baggy black slacks, red and black tunic top. The woman brought a bottle of vodka with her, and the three of them shared it.

  At the time, BOWDEN thought MIRANDA had something to do with UNISPHERE ASSET MANAGEMENT. She presumed she was either an employee or she had money invested in a fund. (BOWDEN insisted that she visited UNISPHERE on August 2 hoping to learn more about the woman or about SOKOLOV.) BOWDEN thought that MIRANDA may also have been involved with real estate in Dubai. She said she had a sense that MIRANDA was going to be in the same meeting (or meetings) as SOKOLOV the next day.

  She did not believe that SOKOLOV and MIRANDA were close friends or had known each other very long. It was even possible that they were meeting for the first time that evening.

  BOWDEN believes that MIRANDA probably stayed less than an hour, but she was intoxicated by then and unsure. She recalled they talked a little about her work as a flight attendant (SOKOLOV and MIRANDA were interested), but not their own work. The conversation was difficult for BOWDEN to recall
in any detail because she was drinking.

  * * *

  = = = = = =

  FOLLOW-UP: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has informed us that Alex Sokolov’s computer showed seven Russian investors in the Unisphere Stalwarts Fund who have been singled out by OFAC, including Viktor Olenin. Withdrawal and transfer records suggest Sokolov’s theft from the fund may have exceeded two million dollars.

  ODNI said there were two e-mails with Russian operatives we believe were affiliated with the Syrian chemical weapons program, one of whom is believed to be a COSSACK, but the content was routine business about the fund’s returns. There were no specific mentions of sarin, VX, or the compounds at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky in the e-mails, nor was there any reference to chemical weapons defense tools.

  There was no reference to the stealth drone or jet drone projects.

  But there was information on the flash drive that seems to have come from the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (though we cannot yet rule out a source at Blue Grass).

  Finally, there were no e-mails or documents or references anywhere on the computer to the flight attendant.

  15

  Elena really wasn’t afraid that the passenger in the lavatory was a terrorist. He was a Sikh in an orange turban. He had to have been close to seventy. But this was a U.S. carrier flying from Dubai to Amsterdam, and a fellow with a beard and cloth on his head had been in the bathroom nearly ten minutes now. The Americans on board were starting to fret. “I am really not going to be happy until that guy gets the heck out of there,” she heard one woman saying. A man joked to the passenger beside him, “Yeah, it’s a long drive, but right now we’re at thirty-five thousand feet and I kind of wish I’d rented a car.” Even the flight attendants—a pair of middle-aged guys who were still pretty buff and clearly knew what they were doing—were conferring. Elena was in the bulkhead seat in coach, which was about as good as it got in that cabin, and so she could see and hear the business class passengers trying to encourage the flight attendants to do something, but parsing their words to dial down their racism and paranoia: