by Marc Cameron
Fu had not even opened his blade, let alone cut the other CIA officer, before he started blubbering. Joey was his name. He didn’t know much anyway, which had proven fortunate for him. A quick death was in his cards, not torture and questioning. According to the information Fu had received through the admiral from SURVEYOR, the girl was the one with the answers. Joey had simply presented himself as an opportunity. He’d been following Murphy, which put him in the right spot for Fu to take advantage of his presence. As the proverb said, sometimes it was necessary to kill a chicken to scare the monkey and make him dance.
The sight of her dead coworker had added an air of gravity to the situation that no threat could have. From that moment, Leigh Murphy had no doubt that Fu was serious. Even so, she’d held her secrets for almost four hours. Finally, the well-tested combination of drugs and anticipation of pain had broken her, as Fu had known it would.
Urkesh Beg, the Uyghur Murphy had spoken with, was wise enough to disappear into the shadows soon after her visit. Fu and his men could have located him, given time, but it no longer mattered. They had enough. Murphy admitted that she’d talked to another intelligence officer who was also after Medina Tohti. This other officer had some sort of ticket for a boat tour that mentioned a monster fish. The CIA officers believed the ticket to be for a tour operation on Kanas Lake, so Fu believed that as well. He’d never been to that part of China—almost to Russia, but the proximity to Urumqi, the prevalence of friendly Uyghurs, and the many places to melt away made it a likely spot for vermin like the Wuming—and Medina Tohti—to hide.
Interestingly, Murphy had never given up the other intelligence officer’s name. Perhaps he was her boyfriend, or even her husband, working in a different office. Fu had heard the Americans were foolish enough that spies sometimes married spies. Whatever her relationship, it did not matter where Fu cut or which drugs he shot into her veins, Murphy steadfastly refused to utter the man’s name.
Fu was certain of one thing. Whatever his name, he was either at Kanas Lake or on his way—and he was likely not alone.
45
Major Ren Shuren tick-tocked back and forth in his chair behind a gray metal desk in his shabby little office at Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps’ regional military headquarters on the outskirts of Kashgar while he poked through each page of Midas Jankowski’s Canadian passport with the eraser of a yellow pencil. His hair was neatly parted and just long enough to comb up in front with a bit of pomade. A pair of black glasses perched on the end of a smallish nose. He wore civilian clothes—white shirt, loose polyester tie. He’d hung his suit jacket over the peg behind him to reveal a holstered pistol on his hip.
Midas had been handcuffed at the scene, and then frog-marched to a waiting van while everyone seemed to try and decide what to do with him. For a short time, he thought they might let him go at the market, then the major got a call on his cell and they’d all ended up here. Instead of putting him in a holding cell, they’d brought Midas straight into Ren’s office and stood him at attention in front of the desk.
The three other soldiers wedged in beside Midas wore black SWAT uniforms, complete with helmets and exterior body armor. They’d kept their submachine guns—Chinese-made QCW-05s, from the looks of them, as well as their SIG Sauer pistols. The gas heater on the wall turned the cramped space into a sauna, but none of them had made any move to take off their gear when they’d come in, leading Midas to conclude that they didn’t intend to be there long.
He turned out to be very wrong.
Ren went over every page of the passport, even the blank ones, using the eraser to push the paper. He turned the passport upside down, smacked it against his desk, and even tried to erase some of the printing with his page-turning pencil.
After at least ten excruciating minutes, he pitched the passport to the side and then leaned back in his chair, bouncing a fist on his thigh, swiveling his chair back and forth as if unable to sit still.
“My brother was murdered last night,” he said, staring at Midas’s eyes. His English was perfect, with the hint of a British accent, like the devil in an old movie.
Midas frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
Ren continued to stare at him, swiveling, saying nothing.
“Wait,” Midas said. “You . . . you’re not suggesting I had anything to do with it?”
“Did you?” Ren said, unwavering.
Midas gasped. It was an honest reaction. “Of course not! I’m here on vacation.”
Ren reached for the passport again. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Vacation. You travel the world alone?”
“Look,” Midas said. “Sir . . . I don’t want any trouble. I’ll pay for whatever damage I did when I fell. It was an accident.”
“Perhaps you were looking for a Chinese prostitute,” Ren said, peering over his glasses. “American minds are always in the gutter.”
“I’m Canadian,” Midas said. “But you have it all wrong, sir. My girlfriend was supposed to come with me on this trip. China was her idea.”
“But she conveniently did not,” Ren said. “Leaving you free to roam the streets in search of prostitutes—”
This guy had a one-track mind. “No, no, no,” Midas said. “That’s not it at all. She got called in to do an emergency surgery. Since we had the tickets bought, I thought I might as well not waste the chance to see your beautiful country.”
Ren snorted, swiveling his chair so he could peck away at his computer and open Facebook. Apparently, the network used by the XPCC did not have to worry about the Great Firewall of China and the preemptions against most Western forms of social media. His fingers hovered, twitching above the keyboard.
“Your girlfriend’s name.”
Midas paused.
The soldier nearest him cuffed him in the back of the head. Hard. Midas envisioned snatching the asshole’s pistol away and killing everyone in the room, but gave up his fake girlfriend’s name instead.
“Angela,” he said. “Dr. Angela Garner.”
Ren opened the page and scrolled through the posts. Gavin Biery had done a yeoman’s job backstopping the legend, providing a dozen or so recent posts with a blond woman and Midas at restaurants, on a beach, in a boat. He’d never even met the woman, but the editing software Gavin used would hold up to all but the most sophisticated forensic examination.
“She has an account, but like I said, she’s a doctor. Not a lot of time for social media.”
“What do you do, Mr. . . .” Ren looked at the passport, but waited for Midas to answer.
“Stevens,” he said. “Bart Stevens. I was in the Canadian Forces, but I’m between jobs now.”
“The military?” Ren mused.
“I was,” Midas said. “PPCLI, 1st Battalion out of Edmonton, Alberta.” It was hopeless to try and hide his military bearing, so he thought it better not to try. Better to make it part of his legend.
“What is PPCLI?”
“Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry,” Midas said. He’d worked with a couple troops from PPCLI in Afghanistan, back in the day, before he moved to the Unit. Solid guys.
Major Ren turned up his nose. “How intimidating,” he said, dripping with sarcasm. “Sounds very . . . tough.”
“As a boot, sir,” Midas said. “The Vicious Patricias, they call us.”
“And you say your wealthy girlfriend paid for your trip to China?” Ren looked over the top of his glasses and shook his head. “You have a word for that. What is it . . . ? A sugar mama?”
“I guess so,” Midas said. “I just didn’t see any reason to waste the ticket.”
“And you would take a polygraph to that effect?”
Midas shrugged, hoping it was a bluff. He hated polygraphs. The best ones made you feel like shit, and he imagined this one came with its own set of thumbscrews.
“Sure.”
Major Ren drummed his fingers on his desk for a time, thinking, and then picked up his phone. He spoke rapid Mandarin and then hung up the receiver, herky-jerky, like everything else he did. A moment later, a young man in a suit came and entered the office, turning sideways to work his way around the uniformed soldiers and take a place beside Ren.
The major gave a curt nod, and the same soldier who’d smacked him stepped behind him to unlock the handcuffs.
Midas rubbed his wrists to get the circulation back while Ren took one last look at the passport and then slid it across the desk.
“China is a very large country,” Ren said. “I suggest you go and see some other part of it. Xinjiang is not safe for you.”
“But why am I—”
Ren held out an open hand and frowned. “In this country, there are no whys. Now go, Mr. Bart Stevens. I want you on the next flight out of Kashi.”
“Yeah, um, okay,” Midas said. “I’m really sorry to hear about your brother.” He started to leave, but turned. “There aren’t any flights out until later tonight. Can I at least look around a little bit? I’d really like to see your Sunday Market.”
Ren considered it for a moment, then waved him away. “See that you are on the next plane out. Other than that, I do not care.”
* * *
—
Ren Shuren closed his eyes, wracking his brain for what to do next. Kashi—what the Chinese called Kashgar—was a long way from his ultimate bosses in Beijing. His immediate superior was busy juggling his wife and two mistresses, so he had little time to supervise, and his boss was in Urumqi, fifteen hundred kilometers away. Ren was accustomed to handling things his way on his own terms in his own time. There had been balance in his life. Harmony. They’d been watching Hala Tohti for some time with no problem, something to do with her missing mother that was above Ren’s need to know. Then, out of nowhere, Admiral Zheng of PLA-Navy intelligence had called and ordered him to pick up the girl, on the day after his idiot brother had overstepped his bounds and scared her away—not to mention getting himself killed. Ren saw no need to trouble the admiral with trivial details. The girl would be found soon. There was nowhere for her to go. Security cameras had captured several images of her and the man who had taken her. His face had been covered, but he was tall, and carried himself with the swagger of an American—
His aide drew him out of his thoughts. “Pardon me for saying so, Major,” the young man said. “But you would let the Canadian wander about, with all that is happening at the moment?”
“He is a kept man, dependent on the good graces of a woman like some child, still dragging on the teat. He’s too much of a buffoon to be involved in our matter,” Ren said. “He tripped over his own feet. Not exactly foreign operative material.”
“He admitted to being in the military,” the soldier said.
“He did,” Ren said. “And he is obviously in good physical condition, but I doubt his fitness is because of his job. Note the CrossFit logo on his shirt. Americans and Canadians alike treat their gymnasiums like churches. He may have been in the military, but I guarantee you that all his action was behind a desk, not a rifle.”
Ren dismissed the aide and turned to his computer.
“Wait,” he said, before the aide reached the door. “Follow the Canadian soldier and see that he boards the plane as instructed.”
The young aide braced. “Of course, sir. May I take Corporal Len? Two men would be better if we are to follow him discreetly.”
“Nonsense,” Ren said, swiveling back to his keyboard. “Did I tell you to follow him discreetly? I need all available personnel to find the Tohti child and the man who murdered my brother. If this Vicious Patricia attempts to evade you, shoot him.”
46
Timur Samedi was an hour early—and Clark didn’t like it.
Showing up unexpectedly allowed one to get the lay of the land, take the high ground, spot bad actors who weren’t supposed to be there. But arriving early and making contact early were two different things. You stood off and watched until the appointed time, not an hour early. There were too many unknowns. Early meant either this guy didn’t know what he was doing or something had happened to rush the timetable.
Neither was good.
A constant wind rattled and shook the metal warehouse, muffling the sound of the truck until it was almost on top of them. Clark heard the rumbling engine, the pop of gravel as tires rolled to a stop out front, to the left of the yawning double doors—where trucks came to load their cargo. The old warehouse was empty but for a stack of bolted cotton cloth as high as Clark’s shoulders. Covered with canvas tarps, the bolts were presumably waiting for Samedi to pick up when he came for his passengers—Clark and Hala.
Clark waited in the shadows. The girl squatted a few feet away, weight on her heels, elbows on her knees, the way children all over Asia learn to squat when they are still toddlers and carry it with them to adulthood. She smiled quietly at a speckled hen and five peeping chicks that scratched at the dirt in front of her, inside the barn and out of the wind. After all they’d seen together, it was easy to forget she was only a ten-year-old child.
Clark gave a low whistle, waving Hala over at the sound of a slamming vehicle door. She heard it, too, and scampered over to stand behind his leg.
A Uyghur man appeared at the door, backlit by the dazzling yellow landscape.
Hala tensed and stuffed a hand in the pocket of her blue coat, no doubt touching the Snake Slayer. Good instincts, Clark thought. He patted her on the shoulder to let her know everything was fine—though he was far from sure himself.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We are expecting him.”
She began to chew on her collar again, leaning against Clark’s knee.
They’d already discussed how to use the Bond Arms derringer. Unloaded, she’d demonstrated she could cock the hammer with the meat of her thumb and rearrange her grip and press the trigger. She wasn’t going to be doing any quick-drawing, but that was fine. In her case, the little derringer was more of a get-off-me gun. The whole thing exhausted Clark to his core. He believed in starting children early, but if he’d given a ten-year-old kid a pocket pistol in Virginia, society would have sentenced him to five days in the electric chair.
He wanted to calm Hala, but he kept his own hands in his coat pockets, his right curled around the butt of the Norinco pistol.
The Uyghur remained in the doorway unaware, or at least unsure, that they were there. He scanned the interior of the warehouse—apparently unconcerned that he’d made himself a target in the fatal funnel. This didn’t make him harmless, just ignorant. Clark knew from experience that there were plenty of idiot bad guys out there.
The Uyghur craned his neck but made no move to come inside.
“Helloooo?”
Clark motioned for Hala to stay back, and then took a deep breath, stepping out of the shadows. His hand remained in his pocket and on the pistol while he gave the initial passphrase. His words echoed in the hollow confines of the empty warehouse.
“It is dangerous to travel the roof of the world.”
The Uyghur’s head snapped toward the sound, seeing Clark for the first time. He shuffled from side to side, clenching and unclenching his fists, nodding excitedly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. There are many devils there.”
The word many wasn’t in the passphrase, but the man was obviously nervous, so Clark cut him some slack.
“And angels,” Clark said.
“And angels, too,” the man said, confirming.
Clark made his way across the warehouse. “Samedi?” He shook the man’s hand, wanting to get a read on him.
“Yes,” the man said. His grip was firm, but he withdrew his hand quickly. “Yes, yes. I am Samedi. I get you out . . .”
It was almost a question.
Samedi was about Clark’s height, thin, with gaunt chee
ks and dark BB eyes that darted constantly from point to point. He wore fingerless rag-wool gloves and a ratty karakul hat of curly black wool that looked as though it had been dragged behind a truck. Oddly, he had no overcoat against the bracing wind. His dark sport coat hung open. Beads of sweat dotted sunburned skin over bushy caterpillar brows.
The Uyghur grinned, showing several gaps where there should have been teeth. “You are ready?” The BB eyes bounced around the shadows. The muscles in his face, unencumbered by fat, tensed and twitched beneath patchy black stubble. “Where is the girl? She is ready to go?”
Clark ignored the questions, but asked one of his own.
“Tell me our route.”
Clark watched carefully as Samedi explained how he planned to stack the bolts of cloth so that a hollow space remained inside, and then drive them to “the border”—though he did not explain which one. It would be “easy,” “no problems,” “for sure.”
Samedi’s nonchalance about crossing the border—the most dangerous portion of the trip—while he continued to sweat his ass off just talking in the cold barn set Clark’s teeth on edge.
Customarily, Clark held to the rule of threes—one hiccup could be an anomaly, even two, but three hiccups, no matter how small, and he’d shut down most ops for a fresh start. Samedi’s arrival ahead of schedule, the almost-correct passphrase, the sweating—all of it could be explained away, but . . .
Hala walked out of the shadows, chewing her shirt.
“Come, come, child,” Samedi said, brightening. “Time to go.” He turned to Clark, less twitchy now, but still sweating. “Will you help me load?”