“We go to our final stop, just around the corner. Then you can make your phone call.”
That was a relief to hear, although Sam was shaken by what he’d just seen. What he really wanted was a stiff drink, but Sharaf was already bustling toward the exit. A few minutes later they emerged on the street and strolled past the Burjuman’s ground-level shops. Road workers were tearing up the median at 9 p.m. to add an extra lane. Across the way a construction crew was building a high-rise. This place never rested.
Sharaf pushed through a revolving door into a sushi bar, where a long conveyor belt carried food past diners along a three-sided counter. The policeman led them to a pair of seats away from the window.
“Who are we meeting?” Sam whispered.
“No one. I’m hungry. Rybakov’s little rendezvous made me miss dinner.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite.”
“Then don’t eat. Any policeman who went off his feed after an episode like that wouldn’t live very long.”
Sharaf plucked a purple plate from the conveyor belt. A colorful menu card told Sam it was a dragon roll, with eel, crab, avocado, and spicy rice.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you for sushi.”
“You also wouldn’t have guessed a CEO would have a curfew. Yet she does.”
Sam said nothing.
“She lives in our house by choice, you know. It’s not me or her mother making her do it, even though she likes to say so. The reality is, a single Emirati woman can’t rent her own apartment, even if her parents let her.”
“It’s illegal?”
“No. But there isn’t a landlord in Dubai who would do it. And as long as she lives in my house, she lives by my rules. One rule is that she doesn’t talk to unfamiliar men who happen to be there on her father’s business.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven. She knew better. And if, while my back was turned, she gave you one of her business cards, I would like you to please return it now.”
Sharaf held out a hand.
“She didn’t,” Sam lied. “We never made it that far.”
The wording made it sound like they had been caught making out on the couch, and Sam blushed. His reaction drew a fleeting grin. It was the first time he had seen Sharaf smile, and Sam was surprised by how much it pleased him. In spite of everything, he was beginning to like the man. Maybe it was the fatherly gruffness, which for all its testiness was sort of comforting. He did still wonder what Sharaf’s real motives were, but he sensed a basic honesty. Or maybe he had been swayed by Laleh.
Sharaf made quick work of the first plate and reached for a tuna roll on an orange saucer. He spritzed soy sauce into a bowl, stirred in a lump of wasabi, then swaddled a piece of the roll with a slice of pickled ginger before dipping it in the sauce. He downed it in a single bite, wincing as the wasabi exploded in his sinuses. Then he flagged down a waitress and ordered tea.
“And you, sir?” she asked Sam. “Something from the hot menu, maybe?”
In spite of himself, he was now hungry.
“Shrimp tempura. And I’ll have a tuna roll from the belt.”
“To drink?”
“Do you have beer?”
She frowned. So did Sharaf. Sam then remembered that alcohol was nonexistent once you strayed beyond a hotel. Even the bar at the ski slope had been affiliated with an adjoining hotel. So had all the discos he and Charlie visited.
“Mineral water, then.”
“Tell me,” Sharaf said after the waitress departed. “And this is not out of piety, I am only curious. Why do you Americans need to consume alcohol with every meal? Is it for digestion? Or is it from some compulsion to chemically relax?”
“With beer I like the taste. Especially with the wasabi. The tang of the hops. The yeastiness.”
“Tell me about beer. Gin I can smell from across the room. Whiskey, too. Vodka, as far as I can determine, might as well be odorless rocket fuel, mined straight from an iceberg. I suppose that is why the Russians like it. But with beer you mentioned the yeastiness. Does it taste at all like kvass? Because a Russian I once knew told me that kvass tasted like liquid bread. I tried some once—it has no alcohol, you see—and he was right. Is beer the same?”
“Liquid bread? Maybe a little. But I’ve never had kvass, so I can’t really compare.”
He had seen it, though, served by street vendors in Kiev. On a summer day it had looked refreshing enough to make him curious. But he hadn’t tried it, mostly because the vendor was using the same glass for every customer, wiping it between swallows with a soggy towel. Such worries seemed foolish after what he had been through in Dubai. And now here he was in a sushi bar, of all places, seated next to an Arab cop while hiding in plain view from mobsters and, for all he knew, the rest of the police force.
But now he could comfort himself with the thought that in a few minutes he would be speaking to Nanette—a familiar voice from saner times, calm and efficient. She would arrange for his safe passage to New York. He heaved a great sigh of relief.
“What’s wrong?” Sharaf asked.
“I’d like to make that phone call now, if you don’t mind.”
