Shadow of the Dragon

40

There’d been no way for Midas to reach the rally point on time. He was nearly run over by police patrols twice. Black uniforms were around each corner, beside every flock of sheep, their boots visible beneath the bellies of standing camels. They were everywhere. Midas resorted to combat breathing — four seconds in, four seconds out — willing himself to remain calm. It made no sense to rush into danger when he could stroll his way out and approach the situation from a more strategic angle. So he walked slowly, taking in the sights, doing his best to play tourist.

At half past nine, he decided to go check out the carpet lady. There didn’t seem to be quite as much law enforcement in this area of the market, and it made sense that Clark might try and link up with Yao’s contact when Midas missed the meet.

A shepherd with a half-dozen sheep bosh boshed him again just as he reached the corner, grabbing his attention for an instant. A cloud of greasy meat smoke hit him in the face as he made the turn. When he stepped out of the smoke, he forgot about his combat breathing entirely.

Forty feet away, John Clark stood by a pile of colorful carpets, chatting with a round lady in a white scarf and heavy coat. A group of very grumpy-looking soldier cops stalked directly toward him.

A man to Midas’s left held up a glass of red juice, grinning broadly. His daughter, a girl of ten or twelve, sat behind a table full of glasses, pressing more juice. Without a second thought, Midas turned toward the man, nodding, reaching for the juice. Up until now, he’d worked hard to make himself insignificant, small, a tourist not worth noticing. Now he straightened up to his full height, making no attempt to hide the hint of belligerence that was usually present in his bearing. Two feet from the man, he dragged his lead foot, stumbling forward in the gravel. He knocked the glass from the man’s hand, spilling the juice and crashing headlong into the table. The array of full glasses flew everywhere, shattering into the ground. The table was a flimsy affair, nothing more than a few wood planks set atop two sawhorses. It gave way quickly, allowing Midas to stumble past the cursing man and into the juice press where the young woman sat, knocking her to the ground.

Midas caught the girl by her hand, mid-fall. She cried out in surprise, covered in bright red pomegranate juice and seeds from the juicer. She hit the ground on her butt, startled but uninjured.

The XPCC authorities were looking for a tall man with a Uyghur girl, and when the man approaching Clark turned at the sound of breaking glass to look at Midas, that is exactly what they saw.

Midas scrambled to his feet, helping the girl. She tried to pull her hand away, but Midas held her for a moment, long enough, he hoped, to give the impression that she was with him.

Her hand locked in his, Midas looked toward the officers. They were all running in his direction. He released his grip, allowing the girl to scramble to the safety of her father. On the far side of the oncoming policemen, John Clark caught Midas’s eye for a fleeting second and gave him a nod of thanks for the distraction.

“I’m sorry,” Midas said to the juice seller, taking out his wallet as he watched Clark hustle Hala Tohti away. He shoved a wad of cash toward the other man. “I can pay. I’m sorry. I’m sor—”

A blur of black body armor bowled him over, cutting his apology short and knocking the wind out of him.

You’re on your own now, Mr. C., he thought, as a knee speared him in the small of his back and a forearm smeared his cheek into the dust.

The commotion with Midas drew every available soldier and policeman at the market, leaving Clark and Hala unimpeded as they left the scene. Clark found a likely vehicle at the far edge of the parking area — an old Toyota flatbed truck with the key still in the ignition. Even the farmers were interested in Midas’s commotion, so the area was all but deserted.

Cai’s contact was a sheep farmer ten kilometers farther out of the city. He knew they were coming, which meant it could be a trap. Clark reasoned that if Cai had wanted to turn him in, she could have done it at the market — unless, of course, she wanted to blame it on someone else so she could keep the arrangement with Adam Yao. Unless… It was all too easy to work yourself into a lather on what might happen. That was one of the greatest stresses of intelligence work. Everyone involved was lying. Some lied to safeguard their own skin, some to protect secrets — or a ten-year-old Uyghur girl. Some lied for money or to settle ancient feuds. Hui and Uyghurs hadn’t always gotten along, each contending the other group were the outsiders. But then, the Uyghur man at the caravanserai had proven that people were people, and he could not trust someone with Hala’s safety simply because they shared a common ethnicity. Conversely, he could not write off Mrs. Cai simply because she did not.

Circumstances often forced an intelligence officer to approach strangers in strange lands. Time and again, these people were no more than the proverbial friend of a friend — or, worse, the enemy of a common enemy. No matter how tenuous the connection, there had to be some trust to move forward in any mission.

And then there was the problem of the mole hiding out somewhere in the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community. Yao’s contacts in and around Kashgar didn’t have to be bad themselves. They could simply be compromised — and that would drop everyone in the grease.

The driver’s-side door of the old pickup creaked and groaned when Clark pulled it open. Too late to quit now, he didn’t even look around to see if anyone had heard. Instead, he waved Hala in ahead of him. She scuttled quickly across the bench seat and ducked down while he shut the door. The inside of the truck smelled like tobacco and lanolin — sheepherder smells. Exploring, Hala opened the glove box and found a loaf of bread and a can of apple juice.

“Lunch,” she said, holding them. A half-moon of saliva dampened the collar of her shirt, but she was smiling now instead of chewing it — breathless and elated at having gotten away.

Clark was relieved, too, but had enough experience to know all of that could change in a heartbeat. Midas would be fine, so long as his cover held.

Clark turned the ignition. The truck started up without a fuss, and he pulled out onto the road, rattling east, out of town, away from the dusty livestock market, and the dead man in the slumping caravanserai — outlaws on the Silk Road.