He’d been out front, loitering by a newsstand on the corner. Vlora had seen him, too. Both women were trained observers, and both had noted he was tall, good-looking, and probably Chinese. Neither woman mentioned him to the other, and both promptly forgot about him when they entered the warm bosom of the bar.
Vlora hadn’t eaten, and ordered kebabs. She sat across the small wooden table in a dark corner of the bar and bobbed her head to the live band while she ate, her long black hair piled high on her head with a yellow pencil. Murphy drank her Korca Bjonde and listened to the music.
Wood-planked walls and parquet flooring dampened the chatter and clink of voices and bottles, but conversation was difficult to hear over the music, so both women were content to sit and take in the vibe of the place for the first hour, unwinding from a long, and in Murphy’s case, excruciating, day. It took a couple of drinks for them to become lubricated enough that they didn’t mind that they’d be stricken with bar-voice the next day from shouting over the din at each other all night just to carry on a conversation.
The band tonight was playing a damn good cover of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” by Metallica, and the guy on lead guitar looked the part of an ancient warrior with his massive, coal-black beard that reached the middle of his chest and a crested bronze helmet that should have been guarding the hot gates of Thermopylae. The waitress, who was always giving patrons some little tidbit of Albanian history, had pointed out when she brought Leigh Murphy’s fourth bottle of Korca that the Illyrian tribe of Albani had been mentioned in the works of Ptolemy. Albanians took great pride in their Illyrian warrior heritage, as did many Balkan peoples—and the walls of the saloon showed it. Murphy had been here so many times she knew all the trivia by heart. She liked the bellicose motif—bronze helmets, short swords, broad-chested men with spears. When she was growing up in Boston, her middle school PE teacher had called her pugnacious. She’d gone home and looked the word up on Encarta on her dad’s new home computer, and decided that, yes, she was indeed pugnacious, and happy to be so. Maybe that was why she liked Albania so much—and why she put up with an asshole chief of station like Fredrick Rask.
Vlora finished her kebabs and twirled her glass of plum rakia while she stared transfixed at the band.
“He’s cute,” Leigh said, toasting the swarthy drummer with her bottle of Korca.
Vlora bobbed to the music. “You know what they call a drummer in a suit?”
Murphy shook her head.
“The defendant,” Vlora said, buzzed, chuckling at her own joke. She turned to face Murphy. “Anyway, I’m not looking to start a romance—too much paperwork. I’d have to file an Outside Activity report with Rask, and I don’t want that son of a bitch knowing any more about me than he has to—especially when it comes to my love life.”
Murphy tipped her beer and toasted in Albanian. “Gezuar to that.” She looked at the bottle and groaned, feeling exhausted and more than a little buzzed.
“Speaking of Freddie Rask,” Vlora said. “You okay? It looked like he was ripping you a new one today.”
“Yeah, well,” Murphy said. “I probably deserved it. I should have told him what my friend wanted me to do. I was just afraid he’d say no.”
“That’s exactly what he would have done,” Vlora said. “No is the default answer for a boss like Rask. Makes life easier on them.” She took a drink of her rakia and then leaned across the table, licking her lips. “So, tell me about this mystery guy. He’s one of us. Would I know him?”
“How’d you know my friend was a guy?” Murphy said.
“Leigh …” Vlora said. “What is it again that you think I do for a living?”
“Whatever,” Murphy said. “Anyway, we’re just friends. Life’s too complicated to have it any other way. For now.” She drank the last of her Korca, thought about another, but then decided against it. Her apartment was only five blocks away, but she wanted to go running in the morning. She looked at her watch. “Shit! It’s almost two a.m.”
Vlora shrugged. “Let me get this straight, this mystery guy, whatever his name is, sends you on a secret mission to interview a Uyghur guerilla fighter and gets your ass on the chopping block. Sounds like a real peach sending you out on something that radioactive without telling your boss.”
“Most of the shit we do is radioactive,” Leigh said. “Besides, he needed help.”
“All men need help, sweetie.” Vlora polished off her drink and waved at the waitress, asking for another. The waitress shook her head, which in Albania meant “yes.”
“I’ve gotta call it a night,” Murphy said. “You’re staying?”
“For a minute.” Vlora gave a long sigh, staring at the drummer again. “I’m rethinking my aversion to writing that Outside Activity report.” She looked up suddenly, bending to her philosophical side now that she had a few glasses of rakia in her. “Don’t get too mad at Rask. I mean, yeah, he’s a dick, but don’t you carry that burden of him being what he is. No matter where you go or what you do, there will always be a Freddie Rask—they just have different faces and names.”
“I know,” Murphy said. “I just didn’t appreciate him keeping the blinds to his office open so everyone could witness my beheading. I mean, I’m not some junior case officer straight out of training. He knows that.”
“Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time”—Vlora tapped her empty glass on the table, making sure the waitress didn’t forget her—“for the encouragement of others.”
The street was dark and cold and quiet when Murphy stepped out of the Illyrian Saloon. A young couple came out of the bar behind her, giggling and cooing at each other and making her feel more alone than she already did. Vlora was a good drinking bud, but not someone Murphy would have hung out with had they not been in the same office and shared a mutual hatred of Rask.
A scooter putted by, heading east toward the stadium. A dog barked somewhere down the street. She was thinking about how you didn’t hear many dogs in the city during the day, when the unmistakable sound of a boot scraped the pavement behind her. Continuing down the sidewalk, she shot a nonchalant glance over her shoulder. An Asian man in a skintight leather jacket, going the same direction she was. He was short, maybe not even as tall as Murphy, but looked broad in the shoulders, a weightlifter, maybe. His short stature and sudden appearance made her think of a Pukwudgie—the creepy little swamp goblins her dad used to tell her about to keep her from venturing away too far in the dark.
She’d been too tipsy to notice him. Amateur. Not that the guy was a threat, but Murphy shouldn’t have let anyone get that close without noticing him. Then she remembered the Asian man in the hat who had been loitering on the corner. A coincidence? Not likely. Adam had just sent her to have a heart-to-heart with a Uyghur separatist who might have information on the whereabouts of the Wuming.
Murphy quickened her pace, suddenly grateful for the weight of the little Glock 43 resting under her jacket in the small of her back. Normally, she would have continued west, to the T, before turning left on Sami Frasheri. Her apartment was two long blocks down, with a view of the Tirana Grand Park. If Pukwudgie was a state actor, the last thing she wanted to do was let him know where she lived. Protocol said she should have gone straight back to the bar where Vlora was, but this was probably nothing.
Murphy looked behind her again. He was still there, smoking a cigarette now, making no effort to hide, but was slowly closing the distance between them. She cut left down Janos Hunyadi, behind University of Tirana. It was a wider street and didn’t lead directly to where she lived.
She fished her phone out of her pocket and voice-dialed Vlora. It rang three times and then went to voicemail.
Shit!
Behind her, she heard footfalls on the pavement as Pukwudgie made the turn as well.
She thought of dialing 112—Albania’s 911 equivalent—but if something was about to
go down, it would all be over before the police could get here. She stuffed the phone back into her jacket, wanting to keep her hands free.
Twenty, maybe just fifteen, steps back, Pukwudgie coughed. Loud, fake, the way you cough when you want someone to know the toilet stall is occupied. She didn’t even have time to check before a second man, also Asian, stepped around the corner at the intersection ahead and started walking toward her. This one was taller, with glasses and a puffy gray ski jacket. There was a street to her left, an alley, really, flanked by a scabby vacant lot and a run-down four-story apartment building. There were no streetlights, but she figured she could use that to her advantage. Tirana was her turf. Pukwudgie and his friend were trying to pinch her on her streets, the very route where she ran virtually every morning. She could cut down the alley, and then squirt out the end by the market, and then hang a left and run straight back north to the Illyrian, where Vlora was probably still making time with the drummer.
She made the turn, skirting a parked sedan, picking up her pace, running through the darkness.
She felt the man in the hat before she saw him, her gut registering some clue nanoseconds before the conscious part of her brain picked up on it. He stepped out of a little alcove to her right, midway down the block, less than ten yards away. She slowed, trying to make sense of the situation. Her hand flew to the gun at the same instant the man lit a cigarette. His motions were slow, methodical. The match lit his face under the low brim of the fedora. Then he held the flame sideways, so it illuminated the alcove beside him—and the lifeless body of Joey Shoop.
Murphy’s breath caught like a stone in her throat. She stutter-stepped, slowing her draw of the pistol when she should have sped up. These men had known she would take an alternate route if pressed when she left the bar. They had driven her to this exact spot.
Something heavy impacted her right knee at the same moment her hand touched the Glock. White lights of pain exploded through her body. Instinctively, her left leg propelled her away from the impact. She hopped sideways, trying to regain her balance as she brought the weapon up toward the man who’d hit her. He hit her again, with a metal bar—probably a collapsible baton, but it was too dark to see for sure. The second blow caught her across the top of the arm, impacting her radial nerves. The gun flew from her hand. At the same moment, a powerful hand struck her hard between the shoulder blades. Her right knee destroyed, her arm still aching from the blow, she threw her left hand out front to arrest her fall. Her wrist snapped on impact.
She choked out a scream, her senses flooded with nausea from the pain. Scrambling onto her back, she chambered her good leg, ready to kick any son of a bitch who came near her again. She screamed again, ragged, torn, her voice already hoarse from the bar.
The tall man in the hat stood there looking down at her, almost bored, while the other two approached from her head and her feet. It was impossible to fight them both at once, injured like she was. She felt someone move and turned in time to see the syringe the moment before Pukwudgie jabbed her in the neck.
She felt herself detaching, floating away. This was bad.
The pain in her knee and wrist faded away … No, that wasn’t right. It was still there. She just didn’t care. The men stood back, waiting for the drug to take effect. The syringe was huge. Whatever they’d given her, it had been a big dose.
Then she saw the spiders. Hairy. Black eyes. Obsidian fangs, dripping with venom. Dozens of them pouring out cracks in the ground. She tried to run, but floundered, falling again—into the path of the spiders.
A light came on in one of the apartments above. Someone shouted in Albanian—muffled, distorted. In her stupor, Murphy couldn’t make it out.
“It’s okay!” the man in the hat yelled in English. “My friend has had too much rakia!”
A dark panel van screeched down the alley and they shoved her inside facedown on the metal floor, leaving poor Joey where he lay.
Her face pressed against the cold floor, she tasted blood, smelled puke and urine. So dizzy … Her lungs were heavy.
This was where they’d killed Joey …
She came to slowly at first, willing her eyes to open, then jerking, jolted by the cold chill of the van’s metal floor against her bare skin. She was naked, hog-tied, hands and ankles zip-tied behind and then tied together. Arched backward by the bonds, it put excruciating pressure on her injured knee and shattered wrist.
Whatever they’d given her, Murphy metabolized it quickly. Probably a ketamine dart—straight into her muscle. That would explain why she hadn’t dropped immediately. Her memory of the attack was fraught with gaping holes. She remembered the spiders, though. She’d never forget those. Yeah, it was ketamine, all right.
The van was moving, bouncing over a rough road. That told her nothing. Many of the streets around Tirana were in a constant state of repair. The men spoke among themselves in hushed Mandarin, ignoring her for the time being.
Murphy shut her eyes, struggling not to let her breathing get away from her. She needed to calm her thoughts, no easy task naked and bound in the back of a van with three dudes.
Pain and the drugs had turned her brain to mush. Her thoughts were fuzzy, unhinged and without defined edges. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt.
Was this random? Did they plan to take her somewhere and rape her? Panic bore down, crushing her chest. No. Rapists didn’t tie your feet together. Did they?
Come on, Leigh. Think. They trained you for this at The Farm.
No, they didn’t. Not really. There was no way to train for something this horrific, this futile.
They wanted her awake. That meant they wanted to question her. She blinked, trying to remember. Adam. They would want to know about Adam.
The man in the gray hat sat on an overturned bucket behind the driver. He reached down to pat her cheek, gently at first. Hard enough to rattle her teeth when she clenched her eyes.
He’d cocked his felt hat back, revealing a high forehead and passive eyes, accustomed to hiding their cruelty. “We are going for a drive in the countryside.” He smiled benignly. “How long we drive is up to you.”
She licked her lips, then craned her neck to get a better look at him, trying to speak. He raised a hand to shush her. “I do not want to kill you,” he said. “But it is important that you know I will.”
“Just get to—”
The man in the hat nodded to his companions. The short one, Pukwudgie, flipped her on her side, and then pressed his boot to her injured knee, bearing down hard, slowly, like grinding out a cigarette.
She screamed and kept screaming until the one in the hat kicked her in the face.
He took a folding knife from his pocket. It was small, with a turned-down Wharncliffe blade. The needle-sharp point and scalpel edge allowed him to perform extremely intricate work. “Listen to me carefully. I will now ask you a few questions about your conversation with Urkesh Beg, the Uyghur man you spoke with today. If you lie, I will make a small cut, somewhere on your body. I have not decided where yet. If you refuse to talk, I will do the same.” He gave a long, sad sigh and then leaned back on the bucket, crossing his knees, bouncing the butt of the knife against his thigh, almost as an afterthought. “In my experience, the process works better if it is done slowly, so you have more time to consider your answers between each incision. Unfortunately, I do not have much time. How did you learn of Urkesh Beg?”
Murphy began to sob. “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man’s hand flashed, like a viper, his blade neatly bisecting the brow over her left eye. It stung, but the pain wasn’t as horrible as she’d anticipated. Blood poured from the wound, burning her eye, a constant reminder that she’d been cut.
He prodded her with the toe of his boot. “I have many questions and little time.” He waved the blade over the top of her body. “It is a shame to ruin such beautiful skin.”
Head lolling, cheek against the cold steel of the floor, Leigh Murphy clenched
her eyes shut. Tears pressed from her lashes, mingling with the blood.
Pukwudgie readied another syringe.
Leigh Murphy began to tremble, her entire body wracked with sobs. Oh, Adam. You told me too much.
“I may have a location,” Fu Bohai said when he telephoned Admiral Zheng four hours later.
The American CIA officer had been incredibly resilient. She’d borne much of the pain in silence, passing out much later than others to whom he’d given the same treatment. In the end, no one could hold up to drugs and pain. The mind simply let go.
The admiral grew animated on the other end of the line as Fu repeated the details of what she’d given up.
“You must go at once,” the admiral said, breathless. “Take as many men as you need. Kill the Wuming filth, kill the Americans, or do not. I do not care. But you must bring me Medina Tohti alive and intact. I cannot stress that enough. I need her coherent and talking. Now go, take the company plane. I want you at this mysterious lake as soon as humanly possible. Before that would be even better.”
“I understand,” Fu said. “But …”
“What is it?”
“Forgive me,” Fu said. “But please trust my expertise in this area. Even the most determined person will eventually talk, but the more determined one is, they are often far from coherent when they do finally break.”
Admiral Zheng scoffed. “Do not concern yourself with that. Just bring Medina Tohti to me. Your expertise is not required beyond finding her and getting her to my office. Harsh methods will not be necessary. Her daughter and sister are in Kashgar. Their safety will be all the incentive she needs to assist us.”
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