‘People of Islam, do not let yourselves be deceived. Do not let the feet of the unbelievers trample on the sacred Koran. Do not let men of depravity violate your women. Do not let Satan and his minions ridicule God’s laws in order to steal your property.’
The voice boomed from every side, the words clear and precise.
‘The moment has come to strike back. The moment has come to declare holy war on the forces of evil. The moment has come to send the Chinese back to the land of unbelief. Let them hear your voices in the street. Let them tremble as you march to victory.’
The preacher continued to incite his listeners. His words were not veiled in the least. He was calling on them to rise up against the Chinese, to cast the unbelievers out from their midst, to create an Islamic state.
‘I think it’s time we got away from here,’ said Nabila. 'There’s going to be trouble.’
She had hardly spoken than they became aware of the sound of heavy engines on every side. In less than half a minute, the shouting of the loudspeaker was drowned by the rumble of approaching vehicles. A lorry appeared in the mouth of one of the streets leading into the square. Moments later, a second appeared just north of it.
‘They can’t attack the mosque,’ said Nabila. ‘Not even they would dare.’
But as they watched, masses of green-uniformed soldiers started moving into the square. They were all Han Chinese, possibly shipped in from other provinces. David strained to see their uniforms more clearly.
‘They’re from a special force regiment. Lingdao ba or Yingshiang chi. The bastards mean business.’
Every exit was blocked. They ran along a row of closed shops, in the hope of finding somewhere to hide. But every door and every window had been locked or shuttered. David remembered that his passport was still in the possession of the hotel reception. He didn’t think any of the soldiers moving into the square would have the patience to listen to protestations of innocence.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We should have stayed in the cafe.’
‘We don’t know what’s happening back there. Can’t we break one of these doors?’
Suddenly, there was a hissing sound on their right. They turned to see an old man holding the door of his shop open and waving urgently at them.
‘Kirinlar!’ he urged. ‘Kirinlar!’ all the while beckoning them frantically inside. They didn’t ask any questions, but tumbled gratefully through the shabby wooden door. The old man slammed a heavy metal bar back over its stanchions, then turned a key in a large old-fashioned lock.
David glanced round. The shop belonged to a Chinese apothecary. Even on a day of bright sunshine, it exuded darkness from every crevice. The smell was overpowering: a mixture of senna, liquorice, and moss, mixed with the peculiar aromas of one thousand and one other herbs, plants, toadstools, roots, berries, and dried fruits. Everywhere, large wooden boxes bulged with specimens of what looked like every herb known to man. A long glass counter ran the length of the room at the rear. Behind it, rows of dusty wooden shelves rose to the ceiling, crammed with glass jars containing an extraordinary variety of substances. David could make out snake skins, whole snakes wound up like firecrackers, dried monkeys, toads, centipedes, grasshoppers, rhinoceros horns, elephants’ penises, shrivelled tortoises. From the ceiling hung bundles of dried plants, a baby crocodile, a bag of scorpions, another bag of roasted silkworms, and a dozen buffalo horns.
The old man introduced himself as Lao Wu - Old Wu -and tried to draw them to the rear of the shop, out of sight of the troops now flooding into the square. David shook his head.
'I want to see what’s happening out there.’
Nabila came towards him.
‘David, you don’t need to watch. It’s much too dangerous. This old man is risking his life to get us out of here.’
‘You go with him. Please. I’ve got to stay here. It’s my job.’
He knew that wasn’t exactly true: if he stayed, he would endanger his mission, and that was what counted most. But he couldn’t tear himself away. He was an eyewitness of whatever was about to happen. He crept to the window and crouched down low, out of sight behind a box of dried marigolds.
The square was swollen now with green uniforms. The troops were heavily armed. David felt his heart beat unpleasantly fast: he was certain they were planning to make an assault on the mosque itself.
Two soldiers appeared carrying a long ladder, which they laid against the wall of the building. The loudspeakers still blared out their message of resistance, the ahun’s voice mingling with the rumbling of the motors. As David watched, a young officer shinned up the ladder with a pair of wirecutters in one hand, found the wire powering the loudspeakers, and sheared through it with a single motion. A shower of sparks signalled the death of the speakers.
An older man in a neat blue Mao suit stepped to the centre of the square. David thought there was something familiar about him. He carried an electronic megaphone casually in his right hand. As he reached the centre of the square, he turned to signal to someone behind him, and David caught sight of his face. It was Chang Zhangyi. They were old enemies, bonded by indifference and pain. David did not like to see him here.
Chang Zhangyi raised the loudspeaker to his lips and spoke sharply into it. His voice lifted above the lorries’ gentle roar, penetrating the wood and brick of the mosque.
‘Come out quietly and you will not be harmed. We are here to help you. Don’t be afraid. You can only come out through the doors to the square. Put your hands on top of your heads and come out peacefully.’
David turned round. Nabila and the pharmacist were still waiting at the back of the shop.
‘Why haven’t you gone? I told you to go.’
‘If you’re caught without us you’ll be in serious danger,’ Nabila said. ‘I’m waiting for you, and Old Wu says he won’t go without me.’
‘I have to stay.’ He paused. ‘How many people does the mosque hold?’
‘I don’t know.’ She turned to Old Wu.
‘Five hundred,’ the old man said. ‘Maybe more than that today.’
‘Is it full?’
‘I saw them going in. It’s packed. All men today. No women.’
‘Are they armed, do you think?’
Old Wu shrugged. ‘Keneng’ he said, ‘keneng bu.’ Perhaps. Perhaps not.
David looked out again. The cordon of military had tightened round the square. Only a very thin mouse could have squeezed past. So far no one had appeared from the mosque. Chang Zhangyi continued to bellow his instructions through the loudhailer.
‘It will go much harder for you if we are forced to enter the mosque. Use your sense and come out now. Come out and disperse. That is all we ask.’
A figure appeared in the central door, a young man in T-shirt and jeans, his hands clasped nervously behind the back of his head. He came out into the square and started walking forward slowly. Behind him, others came out, and in moments worshippers were spilling from every doorway. David guessed that the soldiers had breached the doors on the other side, and were pushing those inside out into the square.
Without warning, the cordon moved in on the Uighurs as they struggled through the narrow doorways. People had started to panic at the sight of the soldiers. David saw youths and boys as young as five or six desperately looking round for an exit. Once out, there was no going back inside.
And now the soldiers struck. Two at a time, they advanced on anyone in the open, dragging or frogmarching him to the waiting lorries. Some tripped and fell to the ground, whereupon the soldiers started kicking them. The kicking was systematic and designed to cause internal injury.
Some of the younger men tried to fight back. One tried to punch a soldier who was pulling him by the hair. Chang Zhangyi walked up to him and shot him through the head at point-blank range. With the first shot, panic grew. Shouts and cries came from every direction.
A man of about twenty tried to run, hoping perhaps to break through the cordon and squeeze out past
the lorries. He’d gone twenty yards or so when a short burst of submachine-gun fire stopped him in his tracks. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his riddled chest, then tried to steady himself on one arm. David saw Chang Zhangyi stroll across to him, raise his pistol, and shoot him in the back of the head.
David looked round. Nabila had joined him, watching in terror as the square, so peaceful fifteen minutes earlier, was overtaken by a mass of screaming, beaten humanity. They saw legs broken, arms wrenched from their sockets, heads smashed with truncheons, collarbones fractured, flesh kicked and pounded and torn.
An old man was seized by the beard and hurled backwards on to a waiting bayonet. The ahun came out in his traditional green cloak, a frail old creature supported by two younger men. He was knocked to his knees and punched repeatedly in the face. Someone snatched the Koran from his hands and shredded it into small pieces. One of the young men tried to intervene and was knocked unconscious with a rifle butt. The old man tried to retrieve the holy book: a soldier knocked him back down and stamped hard on his hands again and again.
‘Oh, no, David!’ Nabila’s hand grabbed his tightly. He tried to follow her line of sight. ‘There,’ she said, ‘near that lorry.’
He caught sight of a small child, separated from its father or brother, crying loudly and staggering in a daze of fright among the fighting and bewildered crowd. Ghang Zhangyi appeared from the side, grabbed the boy with one hand, and threw him head first against the back of the lorry. A dark stain appeared on the tailgate as the child slumped to the ground. He did not move again.
Old Wu grabbed David’s jacket from behind and pulled it hard.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘if we don’t leave now there will be a curfew. They’ll cut off all the streets round here until this is tidied up. If you don’t come with me now you’ll end up in the same state as those people out there.’
David turned to Nabila. She was still clutching his hand, and all the while tears were pouring down her cheeks.
‘They’re not human,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ said a voice behind her, ‘but they are human. That is why they do what they do.’
She stood up and looked at Old Wu. His frightened, tired face brought her to herself.
‘Take us out of here,’ she said. ‘We’ve seen all we need to see.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Rose Clinic, Esher
When Elizabeth turned up on the arm of a tall, grey-haired man, Maurice Rose’s stomach performed a speeded-up version of the hokey-cokey. He knew the Laings had separated, of course. After all, that’s what had driven the unfortunate Maddie back to him in the first place. He looked them both up and down, and decided that "unfortunate" was not an epithet that would sit easily on either pair of shoulders.
‘Dr Rose, this is my partner,’ she began, broadening her smile beyond what was strictly human. He watched her, wondering when she would crack. ‘Anthony Farrar. I brought him along for moral support.’
Farrar stretched out a lovingly manicured hand. Outside, the light dwindled from the sky as hope from a bereft heart. In the corridor, a trolley shuddered past.
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Rose said, though he was not.
‘Likewise.’ Farrar seemed to carry the Mandate of Heaven on his person. Rose was used to dealing with powerful men, from politicians to gangsters, but he’d never felt vulnerable until now.
‘I take it you’ve come to see your daughter, Mrs Laing.’
‘Quite right. And Sir Anthony ...‘
‘Goes nowhere near her.’
She started and looked round her, as though a suitable retort lay near to hand. She’d been here before, she’d been here many times; but the room had frozen solid around her, there was nothing she could get a grip on. What she found was lame enough; but she’d never been particular or wise.
‘I don’t think I like your tone, Doctor.’
‘It’s the only one I have. Your daughter is my patient, which means I’m one hundred per cent responsible for her.’
‘Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but Anthony ...’
‘Is part of the reason Maddie’s in here. I think we should talk about that. Let’s start with the evening she arrived here.’
He talked at her until she tired. Elizabeth had no powers of endurance. She wilted at every mention of the problems Maddie was facing, and refused to accept any responsibility for her condition. Anthony watched the proceedings with an air of resigned remoteness.
‘Have you quite finished, Doctor?’ she said when Rose came to an end.
The light slipped and slipped. All things were leaching into an uncertain darkness. In the clinic, no one sang or screamed or cried out of love. But behind closed doors they contemplated suicide and the imperfection of their lives.
‘For the moment, yes,’ he said.
She looked at him steadily. ‘Then I insist on seeing my daughter now.’
‘That’s out of the question,’ Rose replied, shaking his head sadly. ‘You do not insist here. This is my clinic. Only I can insist here.’
‘Well, if that’s how you want to play it, I’m off. But you can be the one to tell Maddie that she’s out of here tomorrow, because that’s when I stop paying your bills.’
‘That’s your privilege. But Maddie’s father has insisted she be treated here, and I rather think ...'
Farrar broke in, as though this was no more than a fractious meeting of desk heads he’d been asked to chair.
‘For God’s sake, why don’t you two stop bickering? Doctor, if you would kindly allow Elizabeth to have a word or two with the troubled soul upstairs, perhaps you and I could have a little chat about how to get on. Like yourself, I’d like to make sure the bills for Maddie’s stay get paid regularly.’
With a few well-modulated sentences, Rose was pacified. Strong in his own sphere, the doctor lacked the finesse to resist a man like Farrar. A quick phone call brought a nurse, a small Japanese girl with frightened eyes. Her name was on a blue badge above her small right breast, Keiko. She bowed ingratiatingly.
‘Nurse, will you please take Mrs Laing upstairs? She’s Maddie Laing’s mother. Let her have five minutes with her daughter. Then bring her down again. Five minutes, remember. Tell Maddie I’ll be up with her soon.’
Elizabeth got to her feet like a snake shedding its skin.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later, Anthony.’
At the door, Rose called to her.
‘Mrs Laing, be sure you say nothing about your son. Be very sure of that. I consider it important.’
She turned and gave a smile, as if to say, ‘Don’t take me for an imbecile,’ and proceeded through the door. The nurse followed her, and they went upstairs.
Maddie was sleeping, her face turned from the soft light that burned on the bedside table. The nurse made to wake her, but Elizabeth prevented her.
‘Just leave me with her,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to wake her.’
The nurse did not really understand, but she took the sense of Elizabeth’s directions and went out to wait in the corridor.
Elizabeth went across to Maddie and knelt beside her. With one hand, she reached up and moved a long tress of auburn hair out of Maddie’s face. She was desperate for Maddie’s love, but frightened of the intensity of the younger woman’s rejection of her. For her five minutes, she sat with the back of her hand against Maddie’s cheek. When the nurse returned, nothing had been said, nothing had been changed. Elizabeth went back downstairs and left as she had come, on Anthony’s arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Urumchi, Sinkiang Province
He woke abruptly, already struggling to fight off whatever was pushing his head back against the pillow. It was pitch dark; he could see nothing, but he could feel a hand pressing against his mouth. Fully awake now, he swung with one hand, grabbing his attacker’s wrist and pulling down hard. He came up and round, grateful that the stifling heat had forced him to sleep without
covers. A second quick movement brought his arm round to catch beneath his assailant’s chin.
‘Bie nuol’ he snapped. As he did so, he reached behind his back, scrabbling beneath the pillow to find the gun he’d placed there before going to sleep. ‘I said, don’t move,’ he repeated, bringing the gun up and holding it hard against the stranger’s temple.
‘David? Please let me go. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
He took a deep breath and released it, fighting back the adrenaline that was flooding his system.
‘Nabila?’
‘You’re still choking me. Please.’
He took his arm away, and she moved back into the room. A moment later, the light went on. David’s heart was still slamming against the wall of his chest as if intent on killing him. He looked down at the gun in his hand, and dropped it back on the bed.
‘I think you’d better put on some clothes’ she said. Only then did it sink in that he was stark naked.
‘Keep your eyes closed,’ he ordered as he leapt off the bed, trying to find his trousers. When he’d put them on, along with the shirt he’d tossed over the chair a few hours earlier, he went back to the bed and sat down.
‘Perhaps you’d better explain to me what all this is about,’ he said, nodding to the chair as though they were about to have a friendly chat at two in the morning.
She didn’t move. He noticed that her hair was a mess, that her clothes weren’t half as neat as they’d been earlier.
‘I need your help,’ she said.
‘Look, I’ve already explained
She shook her head vigorously.
‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean that. Something has happened at my hotel, something that could put me in great danger. I want you to come there with me.’
He sensed a trap. This was a woman he hardly knew, and here she was in his hotel room, inviting him back to hers. There was nothing overtly sexual about the invitation, but in China there didn’t need to be. Even as things stood, they could both be arrested for flagrant immorality.
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