Poplar is the nearest tube station to the Billingsgate Fish Market, but with a quarter million pounds in her backpack, Shada sprang for a cab. The market complex covers thirteen acres, and the driver dropped her as close as he could to the trading hall. Doors opened at four A.M., and as Shada approached the entrance, buyers were already walking out with fish. The surrounding neighborhood wasn’t the Cockney crime scene of Hawthorne’s day-“a dirty, evil-smelling, crowded precinct, thronged with people carrying fish on their heads.” But it was still the East End before dawn, and the shadows were plenty dark. Shada tried not to look paranoid by checking over her shoulder too often as she hurried into the building.
Habib had called it the busiest place in London before sunrise, and once inside, Shada found that was no exaggeration. Billingsgate merchants sell over twenty-five thousand tons of fish and fish products annually, much of it straight out of ice-packed coolers at one of ninety-eight booths in the trading hall. The floors were wet, the noise was constant, and with open warehouse doors inviting January inside, Shada kept her coat on. Porters wore traditional white sailcloth smocks, and salesmen didn’t just sit on their coolers and wait for the fish to go bad. Like the fishmongers of old, they made sales by pulling people in and outshouting one another’s claims of freshness-most with civility, a few with the age-old flair that put the second definition of “Billingsgate” in the dictionary: coarse, vulgar language.
“Best halibut in the world right here, ma’am.”
The porter’s Scottish accent brought Shada to a stop. “I’m looking for the cafe,” she said.
“Straightaway,” he said, pointing.
She looked ahead, then checked over her shoulder. It felt like she was being watched, and she didn’t think she was paranoid.
“Thank you,” she said, moving on toward the cafe.
Jack was trying to keep a safe distance, watching from behind a merchant’s signage for FRESH PRAWNS. A borrowed winter coat and knit cap from Reza made him less recognizable. Shada was wearing a yellow scarf that made her easy to spot in a crowd. She was in his sights, and he could see her conversing with a porter, but Jack wasn’t hearing any of it over the borrowed cell phone. Too much background noise in the hall, perhaps. Jack continued to follow her down a long and crowded row, passing booth after booth, cooler after cooler. Halibut from Scotland. Trout and salmon from Norway. Lobster and eel from New Zealand.
I wonder where they keep the psychopaths from Somalia.
From just beyond a booth offering smoked fish, he watched as Shada entered the cafe, bought a cup of coffee, and took a seat at an open table. She looked around, and Jack tried to remain inconspicuous by moving to another booth and feigning interest in a cooler of tuna steaks. A man entered the cafe and approached Shada, which caught Jack’s attention. Jack put Reza’s phone to his ear, trying again to eavesdrop, but he heard nothing, even though the man was clearly asking a question. Shada answered him-something along the lines of “this seat is taken,” Jack surmised. The man left her alone. A false alarm-but there was still reason for concern. Jack made a quick call to Chuck.
“She’s at the cafe, but I can’t overhear anything with this phone Reza gave me.”
“He should have known better,” said Chuck. “The spyware won’t pick up conversations if she has her cell phone tucked away in her purse or her pocket.”
Great, thought Jack, and then an idea came to him. “Can you make her phone ring without displaying an incoming number?”
“I can make her phone sing ‘God Save the Queen,’ if I want to.”
“Then make it ring.”
“What for?”
“Just make it ring, but hang up and don’t let her know where the call came from.”
Jack ended the call and watched. Thirty seconds later, Shada dug her cell phone out of her coat pocket and answered it. From her reaction, Jack knew it was Chuck’s prank ring. She looked around, a little nervous. Jack crossed his fingers.
Don’t put it away.
She laid the phone on the table in front of her, as if waiting for it to ring again.
That’s it, Shada. Leave it right there.
The crank call left Shada a little jittery. It was odd that no incoming number had flashed on the display. She kept one eye on the phone and one on the active trading hall as she waited for the cell to ring again.
Her feet hurt and she needed sleep, but she wasn’t sure how long she could sit and wait. She was too on edge to stay in one place. The knots in the back of her neck were like golf balls, and if she came through this ordeal without a stomach ulcer, it would be a miracle. No one would ever understand. She had no one to talk to about it anyway. She certainly couldn’t tell Chuck or Jack everything there was to tell about Habib and her.
“Is this seat taken?”
Shada looked up, ready to shoo away another unwanted visitor, but she recognized the pretty face. They’d met once before. It was a hookup that Shada had arranged for Habib over the Internet, but Shada had cut it off because she was too young-just a girl, not a woman.
“What are you doing here?” asked Shada.
The girl stood there, silent, the expression on her face a whirl of angst and confusion. Perhaps there was some fear, too, but Shada didn’t have enough time to read every emotion. Without invitation, the girl took a seat, leaned on the tabletop, and broke her silence.
“What do you think I’m doing here, Maysoon?”
For no apparent reason, the girl dug her cell phone out of her coat pocket and laid it on the table between them. Shada had learned enough about computers from her husband to understand what that meant: Someone was listening to their conversation. The girl had activated the spyware with typical teenage awkwardness, which made Shada wonder about the crank ring right before the girl’s arrival. It hardly seemed like a coincidence that it had prompted Shada to lay her own cell on the table in front of her, where the right spyware could pick up her conversations.
Shada removed her cell phone’s battery and tucked the separated components into her pocket. Then she leaned into the table, choosing her words carefully, speaking not to the girl but to the girl’s phone-and trusting her instinct as to the eavesdropper’s identity.
“Habib,” Shada said, “let’s talk.”