Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (35 page)

Down the intersecting street to Matt’s right, a conspicuous glass door lay between a small bicycle shop and another eatery of some sort. The door hung slightly ajar beneath a dozen or more exhaust vents, where telltale cords of lint fluttered against streams of hot air.

Matt pivoted right, losing sight of the minivan within a couple steps, and headed down the side street to the door. Beyond the door he found a long, thin hallway that smelled of cooking onions and spicy food. He stopped at the first door on the left, through which hummed the sounds of agitating washers and tumbling dryers. A doorknob-sized hole occupied the space where a doorknob would normally be found, so he pushed the door open.

A row of dissimilar dryers lined the facing wall. He stepped in to find an equally distinct collection of washing machines along the opposite wall, and between them all, an alarmed, hijabed woman his age. She stood frozen by a half-filled washer, hunched over her laundry basket, and staring up at him.

“As-salāmu ʿalayk,”
Matt said with a peaceful smile.

She stood up straight, gave a little nod, and muttered,
“Wa-Alaykum.”

Matt took another step forward, and surveyed the dryers. The second and third to last weren’t spinning, and dry clothes crowded against the glass.

The woman frowned and said in Arabic, “You don’t live here.”

“You are correct,” Matt replied, matching her urban dialect. He motioned to the dryers. “May I?”

He opened one and browsed the selection. Trousers, polo shirts, undershirts … nothing of use.

“Those aren’t yours,” she persisted, now more adamant.

Behind the second dryer door, Matt found what he was looking for. He slid out a long, slate-gray gellabiya, and draped it before him by the shoulders. Perhaps a little short, but it’d make it close to his ankles.

“May I buy this from you?” he asked.

“It isn’t mine,” she snapped. “You should leave. I can’t talk to you, anyway.”

Matt hung the garment over one arm, pulled out his wallet, extracted two $100 bills, and repeated, “May I
buy
this from you?”

Her ire shifted back to puzzlement for an instant, and she began to say again that it wasn’t hers, but stopped short. She stepped forward, and reached for the bills.

He jerked the cash back, just out of reach.

“Would you happen to have a turban for sale, as well?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, groaning, “You don’t have to wear a turban. Men don’t go around like this in the city.”

“Men don’t go around like
this
in the city.” He waved to his wrinkled cargo shorts, and red band T-shirt wrapped from top to bottom with a less-than-muted slogan:
fightoffyourdemonsfightoff…

“Well, I don’t have any turbans. And I don’t know what they have.” She cut her eyes toward the dryers. “I can’t talk to you.”

Matt handed her the cash, then rifled once more through the open dryer.

“Ah-hah!” he said, producing a small white skullcap.

She wasn’t impressed.

“The peace be upon you,” he said as he left the laundry room.

“And upon you,” she growled.

Matt donned his new outfit in the hallway, slid on his sunglasses, and stepped back outside. Rounding the corner back to the main street, he took a mental snapshot of the men’s profiles in the minivan. In front of the first shop, he turned his back to them, and proceeded to browse a spinner rack of women’s necklaces, using the thin mirrors between each of the stand’s sides to spy on the van.

The driver—late twenties, crewcut, short goatee, Slavic features, pale skin—perused a phone in his lap, while glancing periodically toward the adjacent building’s entrance. The passenger was maybe forty, with dark, weathered skin, salt-and-pepper stubble, and a baseball cap worn in a soldier’s low-in-front fashion. His intense gaze panned along the adjacent building, from the nearest corner, to the windows above, and main entrance. Nothing seemed to be able to tear backseat guy away from whatever was in his lap. With his cheek mounted upon one hand, elbow planted on an armrest, he might have even been asleep. Matt couldn’t see his eyes. He too, appeared thoroughly Slavic, with long, curly, heavy metal hair tied back in a loose ponytail.

The passenger suddenly glanced Matt’s way, as if he’d sensed watchful eyes.

Matt held up a string of turquoise beads to the shopkeeper inside, and incorporated the laundry room woman’s accent into his Arabic. “I’ll give you ten pounds!”

“Read the sign,” said the disgruntled owner. “Everything on that rack is seventy-five.”

“Seventy-five?” Matt scoffed. He stepped forward beneath the shop’s awning. “You think I’m an idiot? Give me the real price, please.”

The man stood up from his stool and stomped out from behind the glass display counter. “Seventy-five, you shameless thief! Now put down my jewelry and go shit in someone else’s ears!”

“Okay, okay …” Matt grinned sheepishly and raised his hands in surrender. He sidestepped to another rack, watching the ornately framed mirror on the back wall. “How about these chess sets? Let’s make a deal!” Another step, and now the minivan passenger was back in his sights. The man had zero interest in the nearby argument. “I give you fifty pounds for this chess set and the necklace. My final offer!”

“Fifty pounds?” The owner’s face was about to explode. The temporal artery swelled from his temple. “The cheapest chess set is two hundred and fifty pounds! Get out of my store, you son of a donkey!” He pulled something from behind a stack of cartons, and rushed at Matt. “Screw you, and those who gave birth to you!”

Matt stumbled backward out of the store, hands up for defense. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just want a good deal!”

The owner’s rage wasn’t going away any time soon, and he followed Matt outside without hesitation, his fist wrapped tight around a short, black club.

Matt continued shuffling backward until he slammed into the parked minivan’s front passenger door. With one hand in front of him and the other braced against the van’s window, he yelled, “Okay, fine! Two thousand! Two thousand pounds for the chess set and necklace!”

The owner froze with the club cocked behind his shoulder.

Guess that was a little too much. He was actually going to beat the crap out of me!

Stunned, the man said, “Two packs?”

A fist pounded against the window behind Matt. Muffled yelling to get the hell off the vehicle.

“Yes, sir. Two thousand Egyptian Pounds.” He opened his hand, revealing the stack of crumpled E£200 bills. “My final offer.”

The shopkeeper would’ve been as crazy to refuse the offer as Matt was to offer it. It amounted to $260 for forty bucks in merchandise. Outrage—doused. He clamped the club in his armpit, gingerly took the money from Matt’s hand, and beckoned him to follow.

“Come, I’ll wrap them up for you.”

Matt pushed himself off the minivan window and trailed the owner back inside the store, allowing the van’s occupants—the Russian driver, Padla, and Ukrainians Vanko and Max—to resume their stakeout.

* * *

Grandma Bubsy’s office was on the second floor of the Gaston Maspero Egyptology Research Center, or MERC. As she explained to Joss on the elevator ride up, an ever-rotating assortment of small teams and individual foreign researchers shared the space, along with a few bigger outfits with longer-term projects. A scuba diving archaeology org, for example, currently occupied a quarter of the suites.

“But I don’t deal much with them,” Grandma said, “outside of the occasional ‘how do you do’ in the restroom.”

Once they’d parked, Grandma seemed to feel safe, and Joss had no desire to change that just yet, even though she felt no such confidence. Matt had to have seen something seriously troubling to ditch them like that. She felt she now had a pretty good handle on how he thought in dangerous circumstances. It was like every situation was part of some greater war, and he was the general in charge. Assessing risk, calculations, options, strategy. He often mentioned books like
The Art of War
, and
Something about Five Rings
, and
History of the Something-or-other War
. And he liked to throw out these sayings from Plutarch, Musashi, and a bunch more names she’d never heard of.

She liked to screw with him whenever he was getting a tad too deep and philosophical on her.

The other day, he’d said to her, “Strength of character doesn’t consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them.”

To which she nodded astutely, saying, “Mmm, yes …
Isosceles
. His sagest advice, if you ask me.”

And Matt had returned a lighthearted glare (he’d given up correcting her).

Hopefully, he’d get there soon, letting them know there really was nothing to worry about.

Joss followed Grandma Bubsy down a carpeted hallway lined with framed, poster-sized photos of old Egyptian sites and artifacts.

Grandma pulled a jangly key ring from her backpack. “Hm, not locked.” She dropped her keys back in the bag. “Some workaholic must already be here.”

Stepping into the sun-lit suite, Joss strove for calm. To have faith. Why was it so difficult? Was it some sort of daddy thing? A shrink would answer that by raising their bushy eyebrows, gazing shrewdly over their glasses,
“Is it?”

It was like there was this
promise
of Matt—of the reliable, superhuman, handle-anything, always-in-control hero, but, in the back of her mind, she was always waiting to be let down.

That had to be a dad thing. She’d always held her father in such high regard. He was very much the superhero, until Mom could no longer hide his bipolar condition. Those ups and downs … The illusion of everything being all right this time … No more need to study Daddy’s expressions when he’d gone quiet for a bit longer than usual. She learned to not wonder
if
he’d go dark again, but to live uneasily, waiting for the
when
. You know what they say,
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 3,722 times, shame on me.”

So that must have been it. She’d put Matt up on a pedestal, and was now waiting for him to fail her.

No, that wasn’t fair. Not even accurate. She reminded herself that Matt was far from perfect. He failed left and right. The difference, though, was that when he was wrong about something, or plans didn’t work out as he’d anticipated, he always knew how to correct the mistake, change course, or find a quick solution.

Following his sage advice on powerful feelings, she resolved to remain vigilant. To shove aside all of her ineffectual anxieties and nonstop
“but what if …”
doubts. And no more Dad comparisons for Matt.

Ugh.

Grandma pointed to an open doorway off the reception area. “We have our own kitchen through there. Free drinks and snacks up the wazoo, though most of the folks here are crunchy granola types who stock the cupboards with literal crunchy granola.”

The common area ended at a floor-to-ceiling glass wall through which a conference room could be seen, with a broad window boasting a sweeping view of rundown apartments. A central hallway stretched out from the conference room in both directions.

Continuing Joss’s tour, Grandma Bubsy pointed as she led them down the hallway’s right branch. “Meeting room …
big
meeting room … a locked closet I’ve never seen inside of … and these three offices are my good buddies setting up the Heracleion Museum, one of whom also happens to be your bossman’s good buddy.”

They reached the third street-facing office and Grandma halted with a start.

“And here he is, in the flesh!”

Joss leaned to see inside, spotting an excited Pete Sharma seated behind a precisely organized, mahogany desk.

“Always lovely to see you, Mr. Pete, but what’re you doing here on a weekend?”

Pete stood and came to the door, noticing Joss along the way. “Meeting with the Thonis team earlier,” he replied in an elegant British accent she hadn’t noticed that morning, though his energy had tensed upon recognizing her. His attention fixed squarely on Joss, he continued, “Now I’m doing final script revisions for an
event
tomorrow. Is it just the two of you here?” He peered down the hall.

“Er … at the moment,” Joss said.

“I’m sorry …” Pete said, and sharply stuck out his hand, “… I don’t believe we were formally introduced this morning. I’m Peter Sharma. Are you an associate of Matt Turner?”

Grandma Bubsy answered first. “Indeed she is. She’s his executive assistant, occasional driver, and certified apology conveyer. Ms. Joss Lynn Leland.”

Joss offered an awkward smile and shook his hand. “Yeah … sorry.”

“Not at all,” Pete said. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Leland. Matt and I have been close mates since he was a teenager. I wonder, when Iris Turner tells me she’s left a message with his assistant, is she referring to you?”

Oh, great.

“Yeah. Sorry again. I’ve felt really bad about that. But I swear he’s been avoiding you for a good reason! I don’t know
precisely
what that reason is, but I know for sure he’ll tell you the moment it’s safe to, and you two’ll have just the greatest laugh together. And beers … or whatever.”

Pete gave her a part-amused, part-skeptical, part-intrigued look. “Brilliant.” He turned to Grandma Bubsy. “So, Gram, are you staying long … the two of you?”

“Just giving her the nickel tour until Mr. Matt shows up. He’s outside somewhere doing who-knows-what.”

“Outside here?” Pete said, turning. “Downstairs?”

He went to his window and scanned the street below.

“Yes, sir. Dropped him off by the shawarma café down the block.”

Joss wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for Pete to be gawking at the window. “I’m sure he’ll be right up any second.”

“Speaking of people who should be up,” Grandma said with a peek at her watch, “I’m going to go call Glenn and tell him all about today’s adventure in the ancient tunnel of human fecal matter.” She marched off down the hall, leaving Joss in Pete’s doorway.

A curious glance from Pete, before surveilling the street once more.