Moreover, it was certainly possible that she had been careless—though not in the way he was suggesting. The truth was, when she had discovered that Sokolov had company, she simply couldn’t bring herself to execute the pathetic, inebriated flight attendant who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That wasn’t what she did; that wasn’t who she was. Besides, there would have been blowback from that decision, too. “You’re right,” she said contritely. “I know you are.”
“And so Alex had been drinking when you met him. I imagine he did not make a very good first impression.”
“No, not really.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “You don’t approve of sloppy drunks, do you?”
“I don’t,” she replied. “I don’t approve of sloppiness, period.”
3
Cassie bought a bottle of Advil in a pharmacy on the way back to her own hotel and swallowed three pills without water. She didn’t want to wait until she got back to her room to start treatment. She put the washcloth and soap from the hotel into the trash can on the corner. In another one she threw away the towel and the remnants of the Stolichnaya bottle, including the broken shoulder. But then she realized that the bottom of her shoulder bag was still dotted with shards and smaller pieces of glass. The lining, no doubt, had yet more traces of Sokolov’s DNA. The bag itself was evidence. And so she removed her wallet and passport, her apartment keys and her phone. Her hairbrush. She retrieved her foundation and her mascara, and had a moment of panic when she rooted around inside it and couldn’t find her lipstick. But she couldn’t focus on that now, it was too late. She obviously wasn’t returning to the suite to see if she had left it there. Then she dropped everything she had retrieved into the plastic bag from the pharmacy. A block away, she tossed her shoulder bag into yet a third trash can.
As she walked, she wished she were one of the women lost but for their eyes in the dark folds of their abayas. She thought she might puddle in this crazy desert heat; she wondered if she might liquefy like a Popsicle.
She had been back in her own hotel room barely a moment—she had taken off her scarf and sunglasses and lifted her suitcase onto one of the two queen beds to begin packing, but that was all—when there was a knock on her door and her heart stopped. This was it: Hotel security. The Dubai police. Someone from the American embassy. When she peeked through the peephole, however, there was Megan, the flight attendant already in her uniform. Cassie was relieved, but felt a pang: Was this how she would feel for the rest of her life when there was a knock on her door or the phone rang? Once again she considered returning to room 511 at the Royal Phoenician and pushing restart.
But she didn’t. She opened the door and Megan stared at her for a long moment, studying her, before breezing past her into the room. Inside, the woman leaned against the dresser, appraising her yet again. Then she smiled ever so slightly.
“You know, Cassie, I kind of expected you to look worse,” Megan said. “Can I ask where you were? Dare I ask? I was actually getting worried.”
Cassie shrugged, pulling off her scarf and wedging it into a pocket in her suitcase. She kicked off her heels. Lord, what did it say about her that she continued to wear heels, even when she was planning (or, at least, expecting) to get sloshed? How many times had the combination of sangria and slingbacks turned a flight of stairs into Everest’s Hillary Step? “Seriously?” she asked, trying to make light of Megan’s concern. She stepped out of her skirt and began to unbutton her blouse. “Why were you worried?”
Instead of answering, Megan asked, “Were you with that young guy from the flight here?” She noticed Megan’s use of the word young. He was young. At least he had been. Megan was fifty-one, twelve years older than she was and at least a decade and a half—and very likely two—older than Alex Sokolov. “You know who I mean,” she went on. “The guy in two C.”
Cassie couldn’t risk the transparency of eye contact. Instead she rolled her blouse into a tight tube on the bed, folding it in half and pressing the air out, and placed it in the section of her suitcase she reserved for her dirty clothes. “Two C? God, no. Didn’t he say he worked for some kind of hedge fund? Sounds kind of boring. Not exactly my type.”
“Rich isn’t your type?”
“I have no problem with rich. But aren’t those guys crazy alpha?”
“You two were chatting each other up pretty seriously—especially before we started our descent.”
She sat down on the bed she had napped in yesterday afternoon to climb into the airline’s requisite black pantyhose. “Not really,” she said casually.
“So you weren’t with him?”
“I told you: no.”
“You hungover?”
“I’d nod, but it would hurt too much. Yes.”
“You going to be okay?”
“Of course.” She stood, adjusted her pantyhose, and leaned over gingerly, reaching into her suitcase for her return uniform. When she stood up, she stood up slowly, hoping to avoid (or at least minimize) the wave of nausea that tended to accompany moving her head at moments like this.
“Want an aspirin?”
“I’m good. I had some with me.”
“Of course you did. Can I ask you something?”
“Who was I with if it wasn’t that guy from the plane?”
“No. I wasn’t going to ask that.”
She waited.
“Why?” Megan asked. “Why do you always do this to yourself? One of these days you’re going to get yourself killed. I know Dubai is safe. I get it. But we’re still in the Middle East. You’re still a woman. This isn’t Paris and this isn’t New York.” She sat down on the bed, watching as Cassie stepped into the black uniform dress with the slimming blue and red stripes. The word killed echoed inside Cassie in ways that made her shudder. When else, before this morning, had she seen a corpse? At funerals. Not her father’s, because the car crash had necessitated a closed casket. But at her mother’s. And at the pair of funerals for her grandparents who had died and chosen not to be cremated. She recalled Alex Sokolov’s neck. She thought his eyes had been shut, if only because she would have remembered if they had been open, but that did not diminish in her mind the violence of his death.
“I’m fine,” she lied. “I’m fine.” She hoped saying it twice might make it true. Walk the talk.
“You’re not fine,” Megan said, her eyes skeptical. “People who are fine don’t do—”
“Don’t do what?” she snapped, the three syllables lash-like and defensive. Her pique surprised her. “What precisely have I done wrong?”
Megan leaned forward, her hands on her knees, wondering what to say. Cassie couldn’t decide whether her friend—no, she was a work acquaintance really, friend would suggest they were much closer than they actually were—would begin with the drinking or the sex. When she remained silent, Cassie told her, “Don’t judge me. I mean that. You have a great husband and two sweet kids—”
“They’re sixteen and thirteen. They stopped being sweet years ago,” Megan said, a peace offering of sorts.
“But my life isn’t your life. My choices aren’t yours.”
“I know. I get it. Just reassure me: you’re completely sober?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay, then, I’ll bite. Who was it? Who were you with?”
“Just a guy I met at the bar.”
“I didn’t see you downstairs.”
Though Megan’s room was next to hers, Cassie was confident that the other flight attendant had still been dozing when she had left their hotel the previous evening. The slightest subterfuge would do. “We met quickly and we left quickly. We went back to his hotel. What did you do?” She reached into the suitcase for the airline’s neck scarf and belt.
“I had dinner with Shane and Victoria and Jada. We went to a Japanese restaurant Shane knows. It was
nice. Then we all went back to our rooms and we slept. We rested,” Megan said.
Cassie had the sense that the woman hadn’t meant to sound sanctimonious, but that last, two-word sentence had rubbed her the wrong way. “Good,” she said simply. As she started to tie the scarf around her neck, she stopped. She couldn’t help but recall the horrific gash across Alex Sokolov’s throat. She shivered ever so slightly at the neck’s sheer vulnerability.
Megan saw the involuntary quiver and misread its meaning. She stood up and took both of Cassie’s hands in hers. “Do yourself a favor,” she began.
Cassie said nothing, but felt herself starting to coil inside, prepared to bite back if Megan said something—anything—judgmental.
“Start again,” the other flight attendant said simply, her tone motherly and kind. “Getting dressed, I mean. Put on clean underwear this time. I’ll make sure they hold the van.” Then she released Cassie’s fingers and left her alone in her hotel room.
* * *
« «
Stewart, their first officer, was chattering away in the first row of the van as they worked their way through Dubai traffic to the airport. Cassie would have preferred to have the air conditioning on a little higher to help combat her queasiness, but she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than necessary. Their flight didn’t leave for a couple of hours, but just in case she thought she better make sure that she had Dramamine in her kit before they boarded.
“Remember, this is Hamburg, and we all know that ground control there is, well, German,” the first officer was saying. He had turned around so he could speak to all of them. The van had fourteen seats, including the driver’s, and every seat but his was taken with the flight crew. She was in the very back row with Megan and Shane, burrowing as best she could against the window in the corner.
The captain, though he and his family had lived in the Midwest forever, was descended from Germans, and Cassie wondered whether the first officer was having fun at his expense or German would somehow be relevant to this story. This was the first time she had flown with Stewart, so she had no idea. She knew only that he was a very big talker.
“And that means what, precisely?” the captain asked, his tone good-natured. He was in his midfifties, balding, but still lean and handsome in a classic, right stuff sort of way. She’d flown with him perhaps half a dozen times over the last five years, since she had begun flying internationally, and enjoyed watching the passengers nod approvingly when they peered into the flight deck and spotted pilots like him as they boarded.
“All business,” Stewart answered. “You don’t screw around. And the plane’s on the ground now. We’re talking British Airways, so the call sign is Speedbird. Ground control tells Speedbird to taxi to gate alpha two-seven. But the plane? Stops. Stops completely. So ground says, ‘Speedbird, are you having a problem finding the gate?’ And Speedbird replies, ‘Looking it up now.’ ”
“God, I see where this is going,” the captain said, chuckling.
“Yup. Ground is seriously bent out of shape, seriously impatient. They ask, ‘Speedbird, have you really never been to Hamburg before?’ And the Speedbird captain replies, his voice this icy British, ‘I have. Twice. But it was 1943, so I didn’t land.’ ”
Megan and Shane both laughed politely. Megan even nodded a little knowingly. But the captain, who had been Air Force, shook his head and asked, “On what canceled sitcom did you hear that ancient joke?”
“You think it’s apocryphal?”
“Yes. I think it’s…apocryphal. And older than sand. Usually the joke is set in Frankfurt.”
“I don’t know,” Megan chimed in, and she started to say something about a German friend who flew with Lufthansa, but all Cassie could feel now was the impatience of that German controller, real or imagined, in the tower. The van was hardly moving. No one around her seemed all that alarmed since the plane wasn’t going to leave without them, and in the end they would probably get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. But the longer they were here in traffic, the more likely it was that she would still be in Dubai when Sokolov’s body was found. That “Do Not Disturb” sign had bought her a couple of hours, no more. For all she knew, people—including Miranda—had been texting the fellow for ninety minutes, wondering why he wasn’t at some meeting. Any moment now, they might send hotel security upstairs to open the door.
She gazed out the window and saw a police car—one of the force’s new Lamborghinis—stuck in traffic right beside them. The cops here wore dark-green berets and short-sleeved olive shirts. The driver looked up and saw her. He was a young guy with a thick mustache. He tipped his beret and smiled in a way that struck Cassie as more chivalrous than flirtatious. She gave him a small wave in return but was glad she was wearing her sunglasses and scarf. She told herself that perhaps she could still go back to the hotel. Even now. Maybe it wasn’t too late, and in her head she heard herself shouting to the driver to stop here, please, just let her out.
Though that assumed that she really hadn’t killed Sokolov. She didn’t believe that she had—that just wasn’t who she was—but who else could have done it? The self-doubt had been inflating like a balloon for nearly two hours.
And so she said nothing, and the van inched forward and the police car inched forward, and Stewart continued to prattle on, and other small conversations began to bubble up among the crew.
“Do we even need pilots in bombers anymore? I guess we use them, right? But don’t we do most of our damage with drones?” wondered Shane.
“Ask Cassie,” murmured Megan. “Her brother-in-law is in the military.”
“Really? Air Force? Drones? I love drones. I think it’s so cool when there’s a drone at a wedding.”
“He has nothing to do with drones, at least as far as I know,” she answered. “He’s in the Army, not the Air Force.”
“Oh? Where’s he stationed? America or overseas?”
“These days he’s right where my sister and I grew up: Kentucky. That’s how they met. He’s a major at the Blue Grass Army Depot.”
“Sounds almost pastoral,” said Jada.
“Hah! It’s an old chemical weapons facility,” Cassie corrected her.
“An engineer at a chemical weapons plant? That sounds scary,” Shane murmured.
“I think he helps supervise the elimination of things that are scary. Our stockpile,” she answered, but she honestly had no idea. They didn’t talk about it. For all she knew, he supervised the production of sarin gas. Then, just as the traffic was finally starting to move, she heard the sirens. They all did.
“That can’t be good,” Stewart said.
“Fire trucks?” asked one of the other flight attendants, a fellow her age with whom she was flying for the first time. She hadn’t gotten to know him at all on the two flights here because he was working the economy cabin while she was in first.
“No,” the driver said. “Those are police sirens.” Almost on cue, the police car beside the van turned on its lights and started trying to extricate itself from the quagmire and perform a U-turn. “They’re south of us. They’re on Jumeirah.”
She felt herself growing flushed because the Royal Phoenician was on Jumeirah, and she had to reassure herself that Jumeirah was a main thoroughfare in the city and the driver was only speculating. All they really knew was that the sirens were heading for a destination behind them.
“I guess I shouldn’t have left a box with a little ISIS flag and a ticking clock in the lobby,” Stewart said.
“I really wouldn’t make jokes like that, Stewart,” Jada told him, reproachful and a little appalled. The flight attendant had a beautiful heart for a face, but now it registered only displeasure. “Certainly not these days and certainly not here—and certainly not if you want any of us to be your friend.”
“Too soon?” Stewart asked.
“Too tasteless. Too offensive. Too stupid.”
Megan turned toward her and whispered, “Did you forget your purse?”
Cassie rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t say that she lost it: she still had her passport and wallet and phone. “It’s a long story.”
“Tell me.”
“I spilled a glass of red wine on it. So I pitched it.”
“You threw it away?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter? Let it go.”
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Of course. Why?”
“You snapped at me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And you look a little clammy.”
“I’m fine.”
Nevertheless, she was relieved when Megan called to the front of the van and asked the driver if he could please get them a little more air here in the back.
* * *
« «
The traffic wasn’t much better on the Sheikh Zayed, the highway, even when the loudspeakers on the minarets started to broadcast the muezzin’s midday call to worship. By the time they arrived at the airport, they had to rush straight to the plane. It was ready and, almost miraculously, they still had a shot at an on-time departure. Megan was the cabin service director on this flight and Shane was the purser. Once more, Cassie would be in first class. Her July bid included both the route (Paris, Dubai) and the cabin (first). The sky marshal, a heavyset American in a nondescript windbreaker with an aisle seat in the last row of the first-class cabin, seemed to be watching her as he settled in for the flight, but she took a breath and told herself that she was being paranoid.
The safety briefing was a video, but she was still expected to remain alert in the front of the aisle to encourage the passengers to actually pay attention. In this cabin, none ever did. Some wouldn’t even take off their headphones or look up from their tablets or newspapers. It wasn’t merely that they were all frequent flyers and knew the drill, it was that there was a certain machismo to not watching: to look up and listen suggested you were either afraid of flying or an outsider at thirty-five thousand feet. You were a newbie.