“I could use a peach,” Adara mumbled to herself.
“I could use a coffee,” Ryan said.
Chavez stamped his feet to get the circulation going and snugged down the wool watch cap. Not that there was much call for it in Southern Cali, but his aunt had always told him, “Feet cold—put on a hat.” Right now he needed a bigger hat.
There was still snow at the higher elevations. Ice had gone off the lake only in the past couple weeks and tourists were just beginning to migrate from skiing—Xinjiang-style, with a single guide pole—to boat tours in search of the famed Kanas Lake Monster—thought by most to be a giant, landlocked Siberian salmon called a hucho taimen. The Chinese government designated Kanas a Five A park, top of the line. A considerable amount of advertising dollars went toward making people aware of this hidden gem that had much more in common with the Russian taiga than it did with China.
Binoculars and cameras were expected here, making at least the logistics of surveillance straightforward. The problem was, they had no idea what any member of the Wuming might look like. The only photo of Medina Tohti was so old and grainy they could have easily been looking at surveillance footage of Zoe Saldana in a headscarf.
Adara spoke into her fists as she played the binoculars slowly back and forth across the lake. “Let’s talk this through, then,” she said. “We think these people work on Eternal Peach, but they could be on any of the other boats as well … We don’t know what they look like, or how many there are …”
Yao chuckled, blowing out more vapor. “Hence my aforementioned plan.”
Adara ignored him. “I say we watch Eternal Peach and see who looks like a terrorist.”
“Freedom fighter,” Yao said.
“Right,” Ryan said. “So, the Wuming whack some XPCC troops and spring the Uyghurs and Kazakhs to keep them out of the camps. One of them who works on Eternal Peach is a kindhearted fellow and gives one of the poor refugees his coat—forgetting to take the stubs out of the pocket …”
They’d been over this before, but it never hurt to hash out the details a few times.
“It really does make sense,” Ryan continued. “The concessions would make a great cover. From what I’ve seen, there are as many Uyghur working here as there are Han Chinese. It’s like the surveillance state hasn’t quite made it out here yet.”
Adara kept the binos to her eyes, but gave a slight sideways nod toward the light pole on her right and the nearest pier. “Oh, Big Brother still has his eye on everyone,” she said. “Make no mistake about that.”
Lisanne turned a slow 360, taking in the scenery. “Maybe a kind of a Potemkin village when you consider the atrocities going on in other parts of Xinjiang, but it’s still beautiful. It’s like terrorism hasn’t made it here.”
Yao half turned, binoculars still up and trained on the second boat over. “Freedom fighters,” he said again. “Not terrorists.”
“Tomato, tomahto,” Chavez said. “The mujahideen were freedom fighters when we were helping them fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Then they were terrorists when they linked up with al-Qaeda and the Taliban to fight us. Same guys, doing the same thing, just to different people.”
“Preach on, brother,” Yao said. “And right now, we’re dealing with freedom fighters. So far, the Wuming haven’t hit a single civilian target, only military and government targets we would dub as enemy combatants, were we at war with China.”
“But we’re not,” Chavez said.
“Depends on how well we behave ourselves,” Yao said. “Anyway, the fact that there’s no freedom-fighting going on around here is another indicator that our guys could be using this as a home base. Bigwigs from the Central Committee, the XPCC, and even the military love to come here and play. Judging from the people who’ve been on the Wuming hit list, this would be an extremely target-rich environment. Not a single hit has occurred within three hundred miles. That tells me they’re not shitting in their own backyard.”
“It was enough to get us here,” Chavez said. “But it’s still too thin to get my hopes up. We can separate and go for a couple of tours tomorrow. Compare the ticket stubs to the ones you got from your Kazakh friend. That will narrow down the boat. Looks like five or six crew members on each vessel. That gives us a lot of people to follow in a small resort with just a few of us. We’ll get burned in a matter of minutes.”
“Right,” Yao said. “That’s what I’m saying. You guys start to spread the word that my family is big in Beijing politics. Make me out to be a nationalist, anti-Uyghur prick, too big a target for them to pass up—”
“We’re not using you as bait, Adam,” Chavez said. “That. Is. All.”
“It could take weeks,” Yao said. “And I don’t feel like getting to be buds with those two cops from the hotel.”
Lisanne Robertson cleared her throat. She was humble, polite, and generally soft-spoken, but as a former Marine and police officer, she had no problem with speaking up.
“Can the newbie make a suggestion?”
“Go for it,” Chavez said.
“Okay,” she said. “There are cameras at the end of the docks and at various points in the parking lot and lakeshore. I’ve counted and, like you said, Jack, surveillance is spotty here. There are quite a few blind spots.”
Chavez made a nonchalant pass along the shoreline with his binoculars. “And that benefits us how?”
“I’m willing to bet,” Lisanne said, “that members of any organization as secretive as the Wuming will have each and every camera mapped and tagged. They will want to avoid as much notoriety as possible.”
She nodded to the last gaggle of tourists that were, at that moment, stepping off the wooden piers and returning to hotels and tour buses. “See how they walk in straight lines? They couldn’t care less about security cameras. The boat crews will get off work in the next few minutes. All we have to do is figure out where the lapses in security coverage are, and then wait and see who takes a more varied route in order to avoid cameras.” She shrugged, looking at Adara. “I mean, I do the same thing at work. Don’t you?”
Ryan dabbed away a mock tear. “Look at how she’s all grown up.”
“That might actually work,” Chavez said. He checked his watch. It had taken them just under twenty minutes to get there from the hotel in Jiadengyu. They’d grabbed a bite and scouted the area, burning another two hours. “Let’s spread out a little and focus on the people getting off Eternal Peach for the time being. We should start seeing movement off the boats anytime.”
Lisanne tucked her chin deeper into her jacket, shivering. She nodded to a line of taxis, waiting to pick up the last few tourists. “Somebody has to go get our passports from the Keystone Kops. Gonna be harder to get a cab all the way out here by the lake after all the boats are empty. Should be easy to find one in town, though. I can be back in less than an hour.”
“We can all go back in the van,” Chavez said. “When it’s time.”
“He’s right,” Jack said. “Not a good idea for any of us to go off on our own.”
Lisanne laughed out loud. “That is the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all day, coming from you, Mr. Lone Wolf. Seriously, have you guys forgotten what my primary title is? Director of transportation. This is literally what I do.” She looked accusingly at Chavez. “Tell me you wouldn’t assign me exactly this task if John hadn’t been brought into ops.”
“The kid’s right,” Adara said. “Somebody has to do the grunt work. We can’t all have the exhilarating task of shivering our asses off in the cold and staring at the end of a pier for two hours.”
“I still don’t like it,” Ryan said. He treated Lisanne like she was his kid sister most of the time. It had been clear to everyone on the team for some time that he harbored some unresolved feelings.
Chavez hooked a thumb toward the taxis. “Go,” he said. “But be back in an hour. And keep your phone on.”
“I should go with her,” Ryan said.
Adara put an arm a
round his shoulders. “You’re with me, Jackie boy. Let’s go check out the other end of the pier before you embarrass yourself.”
Lisanne mouthed Thanks to Adara after Ryan’s back was turned, and then started for the cabs. “Just a quick trip to town,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”
44
Fu Bohai took five men on Admiral Zheng’s “company” Cessna Citation CJ3 from Tirana, Albania, to Burqin/Kanas Airport. With a maximum cruise speed of over seven hundred kilometers per hour, the pilots made the trip in just over eight hours, including a lightning-fast fuel stop in Baku, Azerbaijan, that would have put a Le Mans pit crew to shame. It did not hurt that everyone on board had seen Fu Bohai at work and endeavored to do everything in their power to be certain they never had cause to see him take out his knife with them in mind.
Pretty Leigh Murphy, the CIA officer with the fierce eyes, had proven more difficult to break than he’d imagined. Oh, he knew from the outset that she would be tough. Women customarily held out much longer than their male counterparts. One of his men once suggested that their resilience under torture was because of their threshold for pain. Fu suspected it had more to do with the sheer stubbornness it took to push a child from one’s body. Pain had little to do with the process, in any case. Anticipation of pain was what turned the tide, caused people to give him the information he needed to know.
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 Canadia
n 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—”
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