The Flight Attendant(90)
“Let me think about it,” she said. “Let’s go have a drink.”
27
Elena stood before the hotel room mirror, appraising herself with her new black hair. She liked the look, she really did. Then she glanced down at her phone on the dresser and watched the blue dot on the app that was Cassandra Bowden. The flight attendant was strolling past the Temple of Asclepius in the Villa Borghese. Either she didn’t believe she was in danger or she didn’t give a damn. Knowing Bowden, it could be either. Elena doubted the woman was alone.
She drizzled a little honey onto the pecorino cheese she had ordered from room service, savored the sweet-and-saltiness of the combination, and then dabbed at her mouth with the napkin. She already had a room at the flight attendant’s hotel. She would, exactly as she had in Dubai, be upstairs well before her prey returned. This time, however, she would be waiting for Bowden—and the bartender or whomever—in the woman’s own room. If it looked like Bowden was spending the night elsewhere? Well, Elena would simply go there, too.
Unless she heard back from her handler, instructing her otherwise.
After she had climbed into the black dress, she brushed her teeth and filled her purse. They had sent her a package at the hotel with the tools she had requested: Two dozen pentobarbital tabs. One bottle of Stoli. A Beretta with a silencer and a clip. A dry-erase marker with an Arduino circuit board in the barrel to trip the hotel-room door lock. Wrist restraints that were lined with faux fur—a sex toy, but they wouldn’t leave marks on the woman’s skin the way handcuffs or even duct tape would. A stun gun built into a flashlight. And—just in case—a knife with a four-inch titanium blade that folded like a Boy Scout jackknife into the handle. It was, she thought, very similar to the one she had used on Alex Sokolov. She hoped this wouldn’t actually be one of those just-in-case moments when she’d need it.
Everything fit snugly into her shoulder bag, along with her wallet, her compact, her lipstick, her sunglasses, and her phone.
She checked the app and saw the blue dot had stopped in a structure on a side street near the British School. She checked the building’s address. It was—and this surprised Elena not at all—a bar.
28
Cassie was warm from her walk through the park, and she craved a Bellini. She thought of the tray of them she had seen at the bar in Enrico’s hotel. But she didn’t order one. She took a breath and ordered sparkling water instead. And then, because this was Rome, she asked for a cappuccino, too. She expected withdrawal—not physical, emotional—but she knew if there had ever been a moment in her life when she needed her wits about her, it was probably today. Tonight. Enrico, however, as if he had been put on the earth for no other reason than to tempt her, did order a Bellini. The two of them had a table in the bar’s courtyard that an hour earlier would have been in the sun, but now it was shade and the air felt about as perfect as the air ever could feel in August in Rome. When their drinks arrived, she watched Enrico sample it.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He seemed to take the question more seriously than she had meant it. “I make a better one, but it’s hard to screw up Prosecco and peach juice. But they should have pureed fresh peaches, not just opened a bottle of juice. It makes a world of difference.” Then he leaned across the small, round table, his elbows on the wrought iron: “What kind of trouble are you in, mio amore? If you tell me, it might be easier for me to get you that gun.”
She reached into her purse for her phone, planning to show him the article from the New York Post. She wasn’t sure how much she would share after that. But before she had done anything, she saw that she had a text from Buckley. He wanted to know the difference between a Cart Tart and a Pop Tart, but admitted that he clearly had a fondness for both. The text was playful and perfect, and she found herself smiling. It was a relief to hear from him; she was a little undone by how happy his brief text had made her.
“Good news?” he asked.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, it is.”
“So you no longer need that gun?”
She looked across the table at his Bellini for a long moment. It was so beautiful. Alcohol was so beautiful. The colors, the bottles, the labels, the glasses. The rituals. This bar served the Bellini in a highball glass with a red and green swirl at the lip. It was still almost full. She imagined Buckley reading the newspaper—the inky paper itself, a surviving dinosaur from the days before the digital asteroid had obliterated so many of its genetic cousins—at a coffee shop in the West Village.
Was it only ninety minutes ago, at the bar in her hotel, that she was fantasizing taking this young man back to her room? It was.
She opened the app on her phone for the web and found the story about her in the newspaper. Then she handed him the phone. “Happy reading,” she said.
* * *
? ?
When he was done, he placed the phone on the table and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “So they think you killed this man?” he asked, his tone almost prosecutorial.
“They do,” she answered, though she wasn’t completely sure whom she meant by they. The media? The FBI? The Dubai police? Really, it could be any of them or all of them.
“But you didn’t.”