Maybe the $9 Scotch was getting to him. Watered or not, it was his fifth drink of the night. Only his continuing concern for his wallet tethered him to reality. The tourist guidebooks had warned severely about pickpockets in joints like this, and Sam’s job had trained him to never ignore sensible advice.
Frankly, he was also beginning to worry about the whereabouts of his traveling companion, Charlie Hatcher. Twenty minutes earlier, raffish old Charlie had flashed a lurid grin and vanished down a corridor, hand in hand with a husky-voiced Slav. Charlie was in his forties, and Sam guessed the woman was, too. Up close she had looked far older than her hairstyle and makeup, although the swaying of her sequined rump had produced the one flash of genuine eroticism Sam had experienced since arriving.
He brushed aside yet another arm hold and checked his watch—a real Rolex, to the best of his knowledge. It had now been twenty-seven minutes since Charlie disappeared. Did you really get that much time for your money in a place like this? And where had they gone? The way Charlie explained it in the cab, these women took you to a nearby apartment, or upstairs to a room in the dreary old York International Hotel. Charlie’s had led him straight down a hallway toward what looked like a bank of offices. Were they humping on a fax machine? Squirming atop a pile of interoffice memos that rustled like autumn leaves? Did that cost extra?
The day had been building toward this so-called climax for twenty-one wearying hours, ever since Sam had risen at dawn for a walk on the beach in Jumeirah, a short drive from his hotel. Dazed and blinking, he had stared at the shimmer of the dredge boats as they labored in the sunrise, throwing high jets of sand. They were creating new waterfront real estate for resort islands being built offshore.
He had seen these grandiose projects from the jet on the approach the day before. One was a massive archipelago in the shape of a palm tree, miles across, each frond bearing the spiky fruit of luxury villas and posh hotels. Another mass of islands resembled a map of the world, spanning four miles from pole to pole. The in-flight magazine said it would be reachable only by boat—unless your house came with a helipad. Some rock star had purchased all of Great Britain, and Trump was building a nearby hotel—partially underwater, like the lost city of Atlantis. In fact, that was its name.
It all sounded pretty exciting. Could you really build paradise from scratch? Or was it all a mirage, an elaborate sand castle?
Sam then waded into the surf, only to find that even at 6 a.m. in mid-April the water was bathtub warm. Charlie later told him that by July, when air temperatures reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the sea would feel like a lobster boil. No wonder the wealthier visitors came by private jet. Only the possibility of a quick getaway could make such a place bearable.
Maybe Sam was just road-weary. Pfluger Klaxon had now sent him to twenty countries, nineteen more than his parents had ever visited (their lone foreign adventure: a one-hour crossing to Canada at Niagara Falls).
In the early going, he had exulted in his travels, using off days for treks and exploration. But things began to go wrong during a visit to the company’s most important Asian supplier. Clueless about local customs, he alarmed his guides on a day-long kayaking trip, first by indiscriminately using the unlucky number four and then by scribbling in his travel diary in red ink, a signifier that the writer was on his last legs. The guides became convinced he was either suicidal or terminally ill, a conclusion they dutifully passed along to his local business host, who in turn asked Pfluger Klaxon why a walking dead man had been dispatched to do business with them.
Sam’s boss, Gary Grimshaw, fired off an e-mail reminding him that an auditor “was supposed to clean up messes, not make them.” But the whole thing would have blown over if Sam hadn’t then proceeded to lose a company laptop, stolen while he sipped coffee in one of the city’s dicier cafes. The rattled hosts nearly canceled their contract, and Sam’s next scolding came from a far higher floor in Manhattan.
Since then, he had traveled only by taxi. He often ordered room service, and he did his drinking at the hotel bar. Forever arriving on the scene in suit and tie, he was now resigned to envying those adventuresome types he always saw at the baggage carousels—tanned fellows in bandannas and cargo shorts who would soon be bashing dunes, diving reefs, and breaking bread with the locals. Their dusty backpacks and bundled skis made his own gray garment bag loom like a sooty iceberg.
That was why Charlie’s plans for the layover had appealed to him—finally, a fleeting chance to rebuild his more dashing persona, a fresh start on old aspirations.
“We’ll cross you over to the wild side,” Charlie promised. “Forty hours of Business Class hedonism.” Although this latest stop at the York felt like a downgrade to Economy.
The fundamental flaw with this plan was that accompanying Charlie hadn’t actually been Sam’s idea. Nor even Charlie’s. Their pairing had originated in a meeting the week before, when Gary Grimshaw had called him in for a chat.
Gary was the type of boss who lived for meetings, even if they were one-on-one. Sam stepped into his office to find Gary poring over a proposed itinerary, which must have just arrived from the corporate travel office. Gary motioned for him to take a seat.
“This trip of yours to Hong Kong. I see you’ve got a short layover in Dubai.”
“I wouldn’t call six hours short.”
“Then stay overnight. Some of our eastbound guys do that, you know. Fun place.”
“If you like duty-free shopping.”
“Or beaches and good restaurants. Not to mention a little sunshine after this sack-of-shit weather we’re having.” It was snowing out Gary’s window—big, grim flakes on the fifth day of spring, looking gray even before they reached the street, forty-seven stories below. “Nice club scene, too.”
“What are you getting at, Gary?”
“Arnie Bettman’s in Dubai, setting up our new regional office for Africa and the Middle East. He won’t have it up and running until May, but in the meantime you could pay him a courtesy call for the department.”
“I can handle that. I’ll just leave a day earlier.”
“Make it two. That way you can rest up and hit the ground running in Hong Kong. And stay somewhere nice. You’ve earned it. You’re our top man in redlining stuff that saves bucks. And, frankly …” Gary cleared his throat and looked down at his papers. “It’s not exactly news that you’re always low man for travel per diem. By a lot.”
