The Flight Attendant

  “I’m sure he would come out if he knew he was inconveniencing people,” said a mother Elena speculated was a decade older than she was and had a son seven or eight years old sitting beside her.

  “It’s probably just all that Middle Eastern food,” said the gentleman across the aisle. She guessed he was the woman’s husband given the way that he reached over and patted her arm.

  Even the casually dressed dude who Elena was sure was an air marshal had grown sufficiently alarmed that he had unbuckled and was leaning into the aisle, staring, poised to assist the flight attendants if it came to that.

  But Elena suspected it wouldn’t. Terrorists weren’t seventy-year-old Sikhs.

  Finally, when she counted five people clogging the front of the cabin, one of the flight attendants knocked on the door and asked the fellow inside if he was all right. When he didn’t immediately respond, she watched the heads pop up over the wider, cushier seats in business. Some of those passengers very likely were imagining the explosion that would take out a part of the port-side fuselage and the flight deck, sending them all plummeting to their deaths somewhere over Hungary or Romania. The flight attendant began knocking a little more determinedly, but his voice was still cool. The last thing he wanted was to overreact.

  It made her wonder what Cassandra Bowden would do. Had she ever been in a situation like this? No doubt, she had. The woman clearly had a fight-or-flight mechanism that was either uncannily precise or badly off kilter. If Elena had to choose, she would bet on the latter: A broken magnet. A shattered gyroscope.

  It was just then that the Sikh emerged, and he looked a little irate that his personal space had been, in his opinion, seriously violated. The air marshal sat back, and one of the flight attendants said to the passengers in first who were watching, “He had something disagreeable for breakfast.” The Sikh glared back at him and took his seat.

  Elena recalled what Viktor had said about Cassandra Bowden: She’s a drunk and a little self-destructive. When her father had formed the Cossacks a quarter century ago, choosing the most patriotic (translation: old-school Russian) officers he knew in the KGB, Viktor had been about her age right now. It was Yeltsin who’d seen the iconic power in Cossack culture and first allowed for the rehabilitation of one of the Bolshevik party’s fiercest opponents during the early days of the revolution. Now the Cossacks were among the darkest arms in the FSB, the successor to the KGB. They worked often with Russian military intelligence, the GRU, as they were on this project. And, yes, they were among the most corrupt. Elena knew that. Her father had known that. And clearly the Americans knew it. The Cossacks were ruthless and they were rich.

  Viktor was smart. He’d probably moved all of his money from Sokolov’s fund already. They all had. It had probably disappeared before she had even been dispatched to room 511 at the Royal Phoenician. Oh, the investigators would try and follow the money, but eventually they’d hit a wall, an impenetrable coral reef somewhere in the Caribbean. They might find Sokolov’s: she’d left plenty of breadcrumbs on his computer. But not Viktor’s.

  Elena had a pretty good idea what would happen to her if she didn’t kill the flight attendant: Viktor had been eminently clear. But she knew there would also be violent aftershocks even if she did take care of this loose end. She guessed it depended on what—if anything—Sokolov had told Bowden, and what the woman remembered. What she was telling everyone.

  But Elena would never forget the rage she had felt when she’d finally understood what the Cossacks had done to her father. Methyl iodide. For years she had thought it was a stroke.

  Elena tried to analyze precisely what it was that she herself didn’t know, which was a lot. It was all a bit like the wooden nesting doll she’d had as a child. The figure sat on her dresser, first in Moscow but then in Sochi, a smiling peasant in a colorful sarafan. She would separate the top from the bottom, and inside there was a smaller doll, a smaller figure. And inside that doll was a third, more petite peasant still. Altogether, there were four dolls nestled inside Matryona, the tiniest one the only one that wasn’t hollow.

  She sighed. Viktor would have someone looking over her shoulder in America. She was positive.

  Now she gazed down at the in-flight magazine that was open in her lap. Her eyes rested on a photograph of Sylvia Plath and an idea came to her. Bowden’s death shouldn’t look like an accident. It should look like a suicide. This way everyone on both sides of the Atlantic would have plausible deniability. She should wait for the newspapers and the news channels to out the flight attendant as a drunk and a murderer who wouldn’t (at least right away) be extradited to face trial.

  Then, publicly shamed, Cassandra Bowden would kill herself.

  Part Three

  ACT LIKE A GROWN-UP

  «

  16

  Ani waited to rip into Cassie until they were outside Federal Plaza and walking west toward Church Street, where they could find a cab heading north.

  “What’s the plan, Cassie? To go to prison here or in Dubai? What in the name of God were you thinking?” She was walking so quickly that Cassie was almost jogging to keep up, and she was doing it in high heels.

  “It just seemed…easier,” Cassie said. “Can we get a drink and talk about this?”

  “We can talk about it in my office. Not in the cab.”

  “I could really use a drink.”

  “You could really use some common sense. It almost doesn’t matter if you are innocent: every single thing you’ve done has suggested you’re guilty. You fled the scene. You told no one you were in his hotel room. You lied by omission when you landed—”

  “Not really. No one asked me anything.”

  “Okay, fine. You lied by commission just now.”

  “I know. I get it. It’s just…”

  Ani stopped and turned to face her. Her eyes were wide with rage. “It’s just what?” she asked, her tone accusatory.

  “It’s just that it was so clearly me in the photographs. It’s just that they probably have my lipstick already. And now it doesn’t matter, because I’ve admitted I was there.”

  “So what? You take the Fifth. Besides, it isn’t clearly you. It’s likely you. Big difference. Very big difference. And your damn lipstick could be anywhere. Do you know what’s going to happen now?”

  Cassie shook her head. She waited.

  “They are going to confirm the approximate time of death with the coroner in Dubai. They won’t know the definitive time, but if they can show it was before ten forty-five in the morning, you are fucked. Pardon my French, Cassie, but you are fucked.”

  Then they stood in silence for a moment, and Cassie thought she might get sick right there on the street. She looked down at the sidewalk and took a few slow, deep breaths to compose herself. Maybe she was self-destructing because she knew on some level that she had in fact killed him, and she was craving punishment. Justice. Across the street was a bar with a neon sign with a four-leaf clover. “Please,” she said, her voice quavering as she pointed at it. “I’ve got to have a drink. I really, really do.”

  * * *

  « «

  In a voice that was quiet but intense, a fioritura of frustration and fury only barely mollified by the gin and tonic she was finishing in great gulps, Ani explained to Cassie what she believed was likely to happen next, all of it contingent only on the time it would take for three people to connect as midnight neared on the Arabian Peninsula: the FBI’s legal attaché in the United Emirates, his connection at the Dubai police, and the coroner in that massive city by the sea. Last week, Ani said, after Alex Sokolov was found, the medical examiner had autopsied the body. He—and in Dubai, Ani supposed, it was more likely a male than a female coroner—had seen how much (if any) of the veal from dinner remained in Alex Sokolov’s stomach, taken the body’s temperature, and checked to see how far rigor mortis had progressed.

&nbs
p; “I don’t know a hell of a lot about forensic entomology, but I can also see them examining the bugs that are starting to eat at the guy’s corpse. There probably weren’t beetles and there certainly weren’t maggots yet, but there may have been houseflies,” Ani said. “In any case, the coroner will have offered an approximate time of death.”

  Cassie had downed a shot of tequila as soon as they arrived, and the warmth had helped. It was pretty good tequila. Smooth. She was calmer now, at least a little bit. The tequila reminded her of Buckley and dancing barefoot in the bar, a memory that was growing sweeter and fuzzier with time. She was almost done with the margarita she had ordered immediately upon finishing the shot. “You said it would be an approximate time of death. That means there’s a window. Do you know how big that window is? Are we talking an hour? Three hours? Five, maybe?” she asked. She sat back in her stool and swiveled so she was facing Ani. Sometimes she really enjoyed a place like this: dark paneling and little light, not quite a dive, but a far cry from Bemelmans at the Carlyle. There was a pair of older men in drab brown suits at the far end of the bar, but they were the only other customers here this time of the afternoon.

  “Probably in the neighborhood of two or three,” Ani replied. “But decomposition isn’t really in my wheelhouse. It could be more. It could be less.”

  “They found the body late in the afternoon, right?”

  “Yes.”

  A notion was floating just beyond Cassie’s reach. She thought she might be able to reel it in if she could talk the idea through. “So let’s say Alex was found at five p.m. You and I know he was killed before I woke up, and that was around nine forty-five in the morning. If the window is three hours, let’s hope he was killed an hour or so before I first opened my eyes.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. By eight forty-five in the morning, there were people in the hallways: Housekeeping. Guests checking out. Guests going to breakfast. No one commits a murder in a hotel room if they have to run a gauntlet of guests and maids.”

  “There was no one around when I left the room about ten forty-five. And even if there were people in the hallways earlier in the day, doesn’t that help my case? People coming and going? A crowd? Maybe whoever did it counted on the crowds.”

  Ani folded her arms across her chest: “I said there would be people. I didn’t say there would be crowds. I seriously doubt that the fifth floor of the Royal Phoenician is ever Penn Station.”

  “Still. All we need is the window to work in our favor.”

  “And to be big. Really big. Think picture-window big, Cassie.”

  She nodded hopefully. “And they’re going to try and find Miranda now, right?”

  “Yes. They will.”

  Cassie was disturbed by the cadence of Ani’s words. “You make it sound like there’s a but coming.”

  “There is. We already know there’s no woman named Miranda who worked with Sokolov. There’s no Miranda at Unisphere Asset Management.”

  “So?”

  “What if there’s no Miranda anywhere in his life?”

  “Look, I didn’t make her up. I’ll admit, Alex barely knew her—if at all. I told you, maybe she’s just a friend or relative of an investor.”

  The bartender glanced at the two of them, and Ani grew alert. Cassie understood that her lawyer wanted her to lower her voice.

  “Another round?” he asked the two of them.

  “No, thank you,” Ani told him, and Cassie felt a pang of disappointment. Then her lawyer took a deep breath and said to her, “You drink too much. You pass out. You black out. And you are, by your own admission, a liar. You lie all the time.”

  The words hung in the air, revealing and hurtful. “I thought you believed me,” Cassie murmured. She could hear the devastation, almost childlike, in her response. It was as if Ani had betrayed her.

  “You’re not even sure you believe you,” Ani said quietly.

  “Sometimes!” she shot back. “Most of the time I am absolutely confident: I did not kill him.”

  “Fine,” said Ani. “Fine. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you did, either. Does that help or make a difference? Not at all. Let’s hope there is evidence in the hotel room that this Miranda person exists.”

  “There will be. Won’t her DNA be there?”

  “It’s a hotel room. There’s DNA from a hundred—a thousand—guests in there.”

  “Of course,” she agreed, but then an idea came to her. “Her DNA might be on the glass she used. So might her fingerprints. I wiped the glasses down, but who knows how thorough I was. I was kind of panicking.”

  “Aside from the reality that wiping down a couple of glasses just screams guilt, how do they compare the DNA to a person they can’t even find? How do they compare the fingerprints? It’s not like there’s a database of DNA and fingerprints of people who say their name is Miranda.”

  “I see…”

  “I just don’t know what you were thinking when you volunteered the information to the FBI that you slept with the guy and spent the night in his suite. I am just…incredulous.”

  “Either I wasn’t thinking, or I was thinking they already knew from the photos that I had spent the night with Alex and they were going to find my DNA or my fingerprints or my stupid lipstick in the room somewhere. I honestly don’t know which.”

  “You are making the assumption that you’re even going to allow them to swab your cheek to get your DNA. Or take your fingerprints. I will still try and stall that for a very long time, but you have made my job that much more difficult.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Ani’s face went a little pensive. “You said the day we met that the cuts on your hands were from a broken glass. Were they?”

  “Yes. What are you suggesting? Do you think I tried to kill myself?”

  “No, of course not. They were on your hands, not your wrists. I was thinking defense wounds. You were trying to protect yourself. You were fighting off a knife or that broken bottle. Tell me honestly: did Sokolov attack you at some point that night? Maybe—forgive me, I have to ask—some sort of creepy sex play that got out of hand?”

  “He never attacked me, Ani, at least that I can recall. But that doesn’t sound like him. He was…”

  “Go on.”

  “He was really good in bed. It was our first time, and he was pretty gentle. Those cuts on my hands? I saw a Dubai news article with the two security camera photos of me, and I dropped the wineglass I was holding. It was in my bathroom the night before we met.”

  “You even drink in the bathroom?”

  “I had brought a glass of wine with me into the tub. Not the worst thing I do,” Cassie said.

  “Okay, so the cuts had nothing to do with an attack,” said Ani. “I get it. You told me about Sokolov’s neck. Did he have any defense wounds on his hands or his arms? As if he were trying to parry the broken bottle?”

  “You mean if I were attacking him?”

  “Or someone.”

  “There was blood everywhere, but I don’t think so.”

  “There was absolutely no evidence of a struggle?”

  “If there was a struggle, don’t you think I would have remembered it?”

  The lawyer replied by raising a single eyebrow.

  “No,” said Cassie. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have remembered. But I don’t think there was a struggle. I don’t recall seeing any cuts on his hands or his arms. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Well, it’s not a good thing. I wish I’d thought to have photographs taken on Monday morning of the cuts on your hands. That’s on me, that’s my bad. If they do decide you killed him, it would have been nice to claim there was a fight and you were desperately defending yourself.”

  Cassie looked at her hands. She hadn’t even bothered with Band-Aids today. The c
uts no longer looked like very much. “I guess it’s too late now.” Nevertheless, Ani took out her phone and used the camera to take a series of pictures, posing Cassie’s fingers and hands on a white paper placemat on the bar.

  “These are probably worthless since the wounds are five days old and I’m using a camera phone, but what the hell?” the lawyer said. “By the time I find a photographer on a Friday afternoon in August, the cuts will be completely healed.”

  “There is one good thing about Alex not having any defense wounds,” Cassie said.

  “Go on.”

  “Maybe it means that he didn’t feel any pain. I’ve been hoping he just never woke up.”

  “That’s sweet. But not helpful.”

  “I know.”

  “Remind me,” Ani asked. “What time did you pass out?”

  “It was a blackout. It seems like I was still up and about. Functioning, sort of. I wish I had just passed out.”

  “Okay. What is the very last thing you remember?”

  Cassie put her face in her hands and thought. Her fingers were moist from the perspiration on her glass. Finally she looked up and answered, “Here’s the chronology. Miranda is there and I’m dressed and we’re drinking. We’re in the suite’s living room. She says she’s going to leave, and I’m going to leave with her.”

  “But you didn’t leave with her, right?” Ani interrupted. “You were there when Alex broke the vodka bottle.”

  “That’s correct. He convinced me to stay, which wasn’t that hard. We drank some more and we had sex again, this time in the bedroom. But then I got dressed.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “No. But almost positive. I’m pretty sure. I really did plan to return to the airline’s hotel. That was my intention, anyway. Miranda had left and now I was going to leave, too.”