Shadow of the Dragon

21

Clark checked his watch. Two hours. That gave him enough time to catch a cab to his hotel and grab a couple of samsa from a street vendor. He’d let the minders watch him eat dinner while he studied a tourist map of the city he’d picked up in the terminal and waited for Midas to arrive on the next flight.

The two Campus operatives would coordinate but work without direct face-to-face contact with each other. Clark would take the lead, putting eyes on the Uyghur girl, Hala — and hopefully her mother, Medina Tohti, their actual target. Midas would hang back, taking a broader view, acting as backup and overwatch. The point was not so much to provide a safety net for Clark — there was little either one of them could do if the other was somehow compromised and picked up by XPCC authorities. Two sets of eyes, acting in a coordinated fashion, were far more likely to find Medina Tohti if she was anywhere nearby. If something did happen to Clark, Midas could continue the mission.

Though they would not make personal contact, Clark and Midas could communicate via text on a shadowed phone app developed by Gavin Biery, The Campus’s IT genius. The app — Biery called it Walk-to-Me — hid behind a functional pedometer application and wouldn’t show up without the correct code.

Clark’s phone buzzed as he walked to the line of green-and-white VW Santana taxis outside the large glass building. The brrrp and buzz of saws and pneumatic power tools mingled with the sound of traffic outside. He checked his phone. The pedometer app said he’d just reached four thousand steps — meaning he had a message from Midas.

Clark punched in the code with his thumb, then read the message before it disappeared from the screen ten seconds later.

It was short and to the point.

This changed what Clark had planned to do. He was still hungry, and he still planned to do a quick drive-by of the house where Medina Tohti’s daughter was supposed to live. Now he’d just do it without any redundancy or backup. If he fumbled here, screwed up and somehow got himself killed, he’d die alone.

Not exactly a new situation for him. He needed to lose his two minders… Clark chuckled to himself. One thing at a time.

The message from Midas made him forget about the biting wind. A bitter gust hit him full in the face as he rounded a line of waiting city buses, taking away his breath and sandblasting his squinting eyes. He fished a black wool watch cap from the pocket of his navy peacoat. Pulled down over his ears, the wool hat did double duty of keeping him warm and providing natural camouflage on streets where virtually everyone had dark hair and a hat.

Two Uyghur men stood at the head of a line of green-and-white taxis. Backs to the wind, the men spoke in animated voices with a red-faced Uyghur woman in a scarf. Clark didn’t speak Uyghur, but from the frequent exasperated head turning, they were negotiating over the price of a cab ride — and the woman was not having any of it.

The fourth cabbie back in line sat behind the wheel, phone to his ear, nodding gravely to whatever was being said. He wore a ratty black trilby that looked like he might have slept in it. Clark noted that his doughy police minder, also on his phone, ended his call at the same time as the cabbie.

The cabbie pulled forward, out of the queue, stopping to jump out to come around, intent on opening the rear passenger door. Clark ignored him, walking straight for the second cab in line, pretending not to hear.

The driver of this cab was an old Uyghur man who looked to be near Clark’s age — certainly past the point of putting up with any bullshit from line-jumping competitors. He wore a white doppa — the embroidered four-cornered skullcap ubiquitous among Uyghur men. A wisp of a whisker curled sideways forming a silver-gray comma off the point of his chin.

“Qinibagh Hotel?” Clark said, opening his door and sliding across the peach-colored seat in the back.

The old man looked over his shoulder, one silver caterpillar brow arching upward.

“Qiniwake?”

The Qinibagh or Chinibagh Hotel was located on the old British consulate grounds near Old Town Kashgar and the Night Market. The site of a good deal of intrigue during the Great Game between Russia and the UK during the early 1900s, it was also known as the Qiniwake.

“That’s the one,” Clark said, sliding in beside his bag.

The old man shoulder-checked and then pulled away from the curb. “Twenty yuan,” he said, once they were rolling. It was twice the normal price for a cab ride into the city — but still about three U.S. dollars. Hardly worth the trouble to haggle over. Clark hadn’t exactly been eating caviar off a mother-of-pearl spoon all his life, but his GMC pickup at home in Virginia was likely worth more than this guy would make in his lifetime.

The cabbie turned right out of airport parking onto Yingbin Avenue, following signs above the roadway that read TO KASHGAR/KASHI CITY in English, Chinese characters, and Arabic script. Traffic was moderate, mostly taxis and Chinese-made pickups, small by American standards, but large enough to handle the farm chores of this decidedly rural city. They passed a small field on the right on the far side of a wide irrigation canal. It had long since been picked over, but the telltale white tufts dotted the dry stubble and brown earth.

“Cotton,” the cabbie said. He patted his chest and smiled in the mirror. “Very good cotton from here. Your Gucci, Prada, big names, they all use Xinjiang cotton.”

“Interesting,” Clark said.

“That land,” the cabbie said, patting his chest again. “My family once raised cotton there.”

“Now?”

“Bingtuan — Han government soldier farmers plant cotton on the land now.” He shook his finger back and forth in the mirror. “I no more drive tractor. Now I drive taxi.”

“Who owns the land?” Clark asked, knowing the answer, but playing along so the cabbie could tell the story he obviously wanted to tell.

The old man nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his sparse beard. “I think the land is owned by the ones who have the most soldiers…”

“I suppose,” Clark said.

The light ahead of them turned red and the taxi rolled to a squeaky stop right beside a commuter bus. Clark tipped his head toward a sign beside the entry doors. “What does that say?”

The cabbie eyed him hard in the mirror until they started rolling again. Finally, he said, “Explosives and bearded men are forbidden on public buses.”

“You have a beard.”

“No beards,” the cabbie said. “Unless you are old like me…”

“And me,” Clark said.

“Ha,” the cabbie said, smiling beneath sad eyes. He shook his finger in the mirror again. “No beard for you, young man. You are young and fit, not bent and old like me.”

“I wish, my friend,” Clark said. He leaned forward in the seat. The streets had suddenly grown crowded with pedestrians. Smoke from myriad wood grills and ovens rose in the cold air and swirled among colorful lights strung back and forth across the side alleys off the main road. “Change of plans, uncle,” Clark said. “Drop me off up here at Jiefang Night Market. I’d like to walk a bit. My hotel is not far.”

The old cabbie’s face filled the rearview mirror as he looked at Clark like he’d gone crazy. “You know the way? It is dark and the wind is cold.”

“I’m fine,” Clark said. “I have read about your Night Market. It looks interesting.”

“And your bag?”

Clark patted the duffel. “It’s small.”

“Okay,” the cabbie said, still unconvinced. “You are the boss. But there will be checkpoints. You are tourist so perhaps they will not stop you all the time, but your bag will be searched if they do.”

“No worries. I have nothing to hide.”

The cabbie pulled to the curb a half block away from the lights of the Night Market, before a set of yellow metal barricades in front of a checkpoint. Camouflaged police and black-clad SWAT officers checked Uyghur pedestrians’ identity cards. A speaker blared a recording of a woman’s voice in Uyghur. Clark leaned across the seat to grab his bag.

“What is she saying?” Clark asked as he handed over a stack of bills.

“‘Report terrorism or separatism immediately. Speaking to others on the Internet about separatism is forbidden… Speaking on the Internet about terrorism is forbidden…’” The old cabbie gave Clark a mischievous wink as he took the money. “‘And no beards…’”

Clark shouldered his bag and approached the nearest policeman, pointing at the lights of the street market ahead and pantomiming eating. Unwilling to bother with a tourist who probably didn’t speak Mandarin, the officer waved him through before turning his attention to the line of docile Uyghur men and women behind the yellow barriers. A group of Han Chinese tourists in fashionable coats and faux-fur mittens and hats were waved through with no more than a cursory we’re-on-the-same-team nod from the officers at the checkpoint.

Clark bought a hot samsa at the first stand he came to. The Central Asian meat pie was similar to an Argentine empanada, this one plucked straight out of the tandoori-style oven. Filled with chopped carrot, garlic, onion, and fatty pieces of lamb, it warmed him as he made his way through the market, working east, where he hoped to avoid most of the cameras long enough to check out the house where Hala Tohti was supposed to be staying with her aunt.

A slender man with thick, pink lips like a carp shouldered his way past, cursing at Clark in Mandarin as he went by. He was going in the same direction, obviously in a big hurry to get somewhere.

Hala lay under a quilt in front of the oil stove, fully clothed, chewing on the sodden collar of her shirt. She covered her ears with both hands, trying to block out the noises coming from her aunt’s room. Soon it was quiet, but she did not move until the fat baboon Suo yelled for her to get him some tea.

Ren flung open the door before she’d made it to the kitchen. Cold air swirled in around him, and Hala imagined he was a devil, come to curse their house. Then Suo came out with nothing but his sagging undershorts and she did not have to imagine devils any longer.

Zulfira followed him out of the bedroom. Her hair mussed, she clutched the throat of her simple cotton robe with one hand. The other hand she kept in her pocket.

Zulfira stopped cold when Ren shut the door behind him.

“We agreed,” she said. “Hala is not to be touched.”

“We did agree,” Suo said, fat chin to soap-white chest. “That is the truth. But it is also true that I made an agreement with my assistant — and that agreement was made before yours.”

Hala glanced at the door, but Ren grabbed her by the arm.

Zulfira set her jaw. “No…” she whispered. “You… cannot do this…”

Fat Suo breathed deeply, as if taking in her smell, and gave her a smug smile. “I have decided that I am hungry after all.”

Zulfira’s voice rose in pitch and timbre. “This is my home. I will not allow—”

Suo struck her hard across the face with the back of his hand. “My dear, you will allow—”

Her hand came out of her pocket with an ornate Uyghur blade that Hala recognized as one of her uncle’s. Zulfira struck like a scorpion, hitting hard and fast, pounding over and over at the spot where Suo’s neck attached to his shoulder. The knife was more decorative than practical, with an eagle pommel and rosewood grips inlaid with jade and mother-of-pearl — but Zulfira’s husband believed that all knives, even those meant for decoration, should be kept sharp enough to shave the hairs on one’s arm. The blade was no longer than five inches, but the wicked upturned point did an incredible amount of damage as Zulfira drove it home again and again. A great arc of blood spouted across the room at the first blow, deflecting off her hand and spattering her face and chest each time she struck.

Suo slapped a hand to his neck, eyes wide, collapsing to his knees. Blood poured between fat fingers and ran down his arm in a red curtain to the floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but managed no more than a horrible croak.

Ren relaxed his grip in shock, allowing Hala to pull away and run to her aunt. She floundered midway, slipping and almost falling in the growing pool of blood. Suo’s hand that had been holding his neck fell to his side, noodlelike. His eyes fluttered and he pitched forward, smashing his face against the linoleum floor with a horrific thud.

Zulfira brandished the Uyghur knife at Ren. Her attack had been so furious she’d not noticed that she’d cut her own hand each time she’d plunged the knife into Suo’s fat neck. At some point in the process the blade had snapped at the tang, leaving her with nothing but the handle in her blood-drenched hand. She dropped it and grabbed Hala, yanking her out of the way just in time.

Dumbfounded, Ren cried out in rage. His eyes shifted to the cleaver on the table, and he snatched it up. Zulfira blocked his exit, screaming for Hala to go in the bedroom and lock the door.

Ren brandished the gleaming cleaver. His voice was high and pinched. His chest heaved. “I promise you this,” he hissed. “I will not be so easy to kill.”

And he was right.