Shadow of the Dragon

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.”