“Okay,” Clark said, his hand gripping the pistol in his coat pocket. “Ask him what he plans to do.”
The old man hunched over his cane and listened. When Hala finished, he launched into a lengthy dissertation, one hand remaining on the stick, the other waving around the warehouse to illustrate his story.
Hala whispered the translation as he spoke.
“He says we are none of his business … He does not need the Bingtuan reward money. His name is Wang Niu, but everyone calls him Xiao Niu—”
The man smiled broadly, looking directly at Clark.
“He says to tell you Xiao Niu means little ox.”
Clark dipped his head, introducing himself as John.
Little Ox waved a hand at the hen and then peered into the darkness at the back of the warehouse.
Hala listened for a moment, then answered back before translating. “He says there is a dry well behind this building. We should hide the dead man in there so his cousin does not see him.”
“His cousin?”
Little Ox nodded as if he understood. Hala translated his answer.
“Timur Samedi and Yunus Samedi both drive this truck,” she said. “Timur is a pretty good man. Yunus is not so good man … Yunus always thinks there is more to … I do not know the word … get more money for a business deal.”
“Negotiation,” Clark said.
Hala nodded enthusiastically.
“I see there is another truck out front,” Clark said. “Is he a driver, too?”
Little Ox squinted, listening intently to the question, and then turned to Clark and said something that made Hala laugh. “He says he came here to visit his chickens.”
The old man kept talking.
“He says we should not worry,” Hala said. “He was once Bingtuan, when he was young and foolish, but not now. He … He has many Uyghur friends. He believes Timur Samedi will help us, but not if he finds out we killed his cousin.”
Hala spoke directly to the old man for a moment, and then turned to Clark. “I asked him how we can know Timur is good when Yunus was also Uyghur, also Muslim, and he tried to rob us.”
Little Ox leaned against his stick and gave a sad chuckle before he began to speak in accented English. “Yunus Samedi was watermelon—green on outside—good Muslim, but red on inside—like Communist Chinese. Muslim, Christian, it does not matter. Religion only teach people what is right, child. Maybe they do it, maybe not …”
The old man looked at Clark with narrowed eyes. “We must hurry and hide the body. Timur Samedi will take you to cross at Wakhjir Pass. Long drive down Karakoram Highway, then you walk in Afghanistan. Very high. Very hard. Many checkpoints on highway, but not so much after you start to walk—”
Clark drew Hala closer, surprised the old man knew their route. “Who told you this?”
The old man smiled, showing his teeth, or what was left of them. He took a cell phone out of his coat and waved it around the interior of the warehouse. “These my chickens. Samedi work for me. I truck carpet and cloth for woman you speak to at the market. She call and let me know you need help. My trucks go across borders all the time, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan … all over. Bingtuan and border guards know all my drivers, even Uyghurs hardly ever searched.”
Clark rubbed his face, frowning. “‘Hardly ever’ doesn’t sound good,” he said. “And it seems like the entire world knows we’re trying to get out of Kashgar.”
Hala translated and the old man shrugged.
“Only peoples who can help you know,” he said in English. “Like I say, police know my trucks. We pay them good baksheesh to … how do you say, oil the gears, wave us through checkpoint. Probably nobody suspect you get out that way.”
Hardly ever. Probably. Not odds on which Clark would have normally based a plan. He considered his options—which were damned few—then asked, “You say your trucks get waved through checkpoints? That gets us down the Karakoram Highway, through Tashkurgan, but the Wakhjir isn’t a border crossing, it’s a rural pass, likely guarded by foot patrols.”
“Truth.” Little Ox nodded, pursing his lips in thought. “Much opium come over that pass. Smugglers, they pay big baksheesh to keep border guards away.” The old man gave an emphatic shake of his head. “Probably not many patrols.”
There was that word again. Probably.
Clark pressed the issue. “What are our chances of getting across the Wakhjir? Be honest.”
Hala translated again.
The old man leaned on his cane and thought about it. “Fifty-fifty,” he finally said. “Would be better if you had help on other side. Timur be here soon. We should hide the body.” He stuffed the cell into his vest pocket. It was an iPhone, resembling Clark’s.
“I may be able to improve our odds,” he said. “If you have a cell-phone charger in your truck.”
The old man leaned against his cane and gave a single nod. “I do.”
48
“Got him,” Adara said, binoculars to her face. She was angled away from the tour boat, as if looking at the wooded valley beyond the parking lot.
Instead of binoculars, Yao used an SLR camera with a zoom lens. So as not to draw attention with them all looking at the same spot, he and Ryan concentrated on the lake and the handful of crewmen who remained aboard Eternal Peach. He panned sideways, bringing the parking lot into view.
Gray clouds had rolled over the mountains surrounding the lake, and a light snow began to fall with the dusk.
“I see him,” Chavez said. “Tall guy in the blue parka.”
“Yep,” Adara said. “That’s the one. No idea if he’s who we’re looking for, but he’s definitely zigzagging to stay in the black with the cameras.”
“Adam,” Chavez said. “Tell me you don’t think that guy is Han Chinese.”
“He’s not Uyghur,” Yao said after a moment. “You’re right. He is Han. Maybe mixed blood.”
Chavez took a deep breath, let his binoculars hang against his chest, thinking. “The Wuming are separatists,” he said. “I’d assumed anyone associated with them would be Uyghur.”
“That’s two of us,” Yao said. “But this makes a hell of a lot of sense. The authorities rarely even stop Han citizens at checkpoints. When they do, the scrutiny is light. This could explain how they’ve stayed hidden.”
“He’s stopped to talk to another guy at the hotel,” Adara said. “Taking a smoke break …”
“Keep an eye on him,” Chavez said.
Yao swung the camera back toward Eternal Peach, pausing now and then to snap photos. The falling snow, tree-covered mountains rising straight up from the shores of the crystal blue lake and into the clouds—he had no shortage of subjects.
Adara gave a peaceful sigh. “Best surveillance ever …”
Yao’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
It was Foley. A call from the director of national intelligence would have been an anomaly a week ago, but she’d taken the idea of a mole personally. Where everyone else with a corner office in D.C. delegated to the nth degree, Mary Pat Foley rolled up her sleeves and went to work. It was easy to see why the President relied so heavily on her counsel.
“Can you talk?” she asked as soon as he picked up.
“Yes, ma’am,” Yao said, mouthing Foley’s name to Chavez so he’d know the call was important enough to take in the middle of a surveillance op. “Just taking in the sights. May have a line on one of those guys we wanted to talk to.”
The line was secure, but Yao spoke cryptically out of habit.
Foley did not.
“You’re in the black?” she asked. “No one is looking at your face right now?”
“No, ma’am …”
Deep breath on the line. “Adam, Leigh Murphy has been killed.” She waited a beat for him to digest the news, then said, “I read the ops report you sent in yesterday. We have to consider the strong possibility … no, probability, that Leigh’s death is related to what you’re doing.”
Yao rubbed a h
and across his face, felt his pulse throb in his neck.
“A robbery?” he asked, already knowing it was not.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” Foley said. “Another case officer was murdered as well, Joey Shoop. Police found his body in the city, we think in the location where Leigh was abducted. A couple of teenagers stumbled on her in one of those abandoned Soviet artillery bunkers.”
Yao gazed out across the water, dizzy, like he might throw up. “Shit!” He shook his head. “I’m the one who asked her to interview Beg. This is my fault.”
“No,” Foley said, her voice weighed down with the exhaustion that came from knowing heavy things. “It is not. I hate to tell you this on the phone, but you need to know. Leigh was tortured before she died, methodically and extensively. Toxicology screen is still preliminary, but the coroner contracted by the embassy found traces of ketamine, midazolam, and scopolamine in her system.”
“Dissociatives,” Yao whispered. “Interrogation drugs. This is absolutely my fault. They wanted to know what she learned from Urkesh Beg … Someone should check on him—”
“He’s disappeared,” Foley said. “Could he have had something to do with this?”
“Not from the way Leigh talked when I spoke with her,” Yao said, thinking how that had been just the day before.
“Listen to me carefully,” Foley said. “Whoever killed her wanted information, and we have to assume that they got what they were after.”
Yao chewed on his bottom lip, trying to steel himself against the sudden flood of emotion. Everyone eventually broke under interrogation. Resistance training was about holding out long enough that your handlers could change codes or get assets to safety. No one was expected to hold out forever, not when drugs were involved.
“The mole got her killed,” Yao said, clenching his teeth. “SURVEYOR must be someone who has access to my field reports.”
“You’re partially right,” Foley said. “We’re doing our best to wall you and what you’re doing off from the rest of the intelligence community—for obvious reasons, including the team you happen to be working with.”
“But?”
“But there’s another way SURVEYOR could have found out.”
“How?”
“We’re working on that now,” Foley said. “I’ll be able to let you know next time we talk.”
“Don’t shut me out,” Yao said, knowing he was overstepping his bounds, making demands of a member of President Ryan’s cabinet, not to mention his closest adviser. “Please.”
“You’ll be in the loop the whole way,” she said. “Now we don’t have much to go on. According to my contact at RENEA”—Albania’s counterterrorism squad—“a woman in an apartment overlooking the alley where police found Joey Shoop’s body saw a tall Chinese man in a long coat wearing what she called a ‘gangster hat.’”
“That’s the same general description we got from the Russian woman who escaped the bakery massacre in Huludao,” Yao said.
“Looks that way.” Foley paused again to let him process. She was good that way. A beat later, she said, “We have to assume this guy with the hat is extremely dangerous, and that he’s looking for Medina Tohti. If he knows you went there looking, he may already be there as well.”
Yao agreed to call Foley back with a situation report as soon as was practical, and she agreed to let him know if any new information popped up about Leigh Murphy’s murder.
“Listen up,” he said over the net as soon as he ended the call. “We have a situation.”
“I don’t like this,” Jack Ryan, Jr., said after Yao gave them the news. “Lisanne’s out there on her own.”
“Keep trying her phone,” Chavez said. “She’s probably just in a spot with no service.”
“I really want to meet this tall guy with a hat,” Adara mused, still on her binoculars. “He’s—”
She stopped short, watching the hotel. “Smoke break’s over. Our guy is taking a trail off the back lot, heading for the tree line.”
Chavez let the binoculars hang around his neck, thinking, rubbing his hands. The temperature was falling fast as darkness settled in. The Uyghur in question wasn’t that far away, maybe two hundred yards, but the shadows along the edge of the forest rendered him almost invisible to the naked eye.
Yao was clearly preoccupied with the information about his friend’s death. Chavez understood. It was natural to want retribution. Justice. That would come later. Yao was professional enough to know that. He just needed time to process, time they didn’t have.
“What’s back there?” Chavez asked, giving him something to focus on.
Yao snapped out of his stupor for the moment. “Hemu Village. Beyond the hotel to the east. Cattle farms, log houses, very rural, smack in the middle of a nature preserve. The village itself is ten miles away or so, but the map shows several cabins scattered throughout the forest.”
“Lots of chimney smoke hanging out above the treetops,” Adara said. “Good place to hunker down and hide if you were an anonymous freedom fighter.”
Ryan looked up from his binoculars long enough to catch Ding’s eye. “Still four people on the Eternal Peach. How do you want to play this? It’ll be too dark to see soon. Those guys could be spending the night on there, as far as we know.”
“Let’s keep an eye on the boat as long as we can,” Chavez said. “Just in case this Han guy doesn’t pan out as Wuming.” He looked around the parking lot, the plank viewing platform, and surrounding shoreline. Snow fell harder now, huge popcorn flakes, giving the entire valley the feeling of a snow globe. As tourists, the group had made no attempt to hide their curiosity at the sights. As soon as it got dark, people would start to wonder why they were still hanging around with binoculars and cameras. “You and Adara keep trying to reach Lisanne.”
“We could try the sat phone,” Adara said.
“No good,” Jack said. “I’m getting her voicemail, so I have a signal. Either she doesn’t have a signal or she’s not able to pick up.”
“Okay,” Chavez said, thinking over his options. “Maybe they’re giving her the runaround at the police station.” He pitched the extra set of van keys to Ryan. “Give her an hour. If you don’t hear something by then, go get her. Adam and I will head toward the hotel like we’re going to get a tea or something, and then cut into the woods, see where this Han character leads us.”
“Roger that,” Ryan said. “We—”
Adara cut him off. “Hey, guys,” she said, all business, a tense edge to her voice. “Uyghur female at the edge of the tree line. My two o’clock. White ski jacket. Fur ruff around her hood.” Adara paused, took her eyes off the binoculars, blinked to refocus, and then looked through them again, speaking into her hands. “I’m thinking this could be Medina.”
Chavez took a quick look. “Same nose. Dark brow … Only one way to find out.” He tucked the binoculars inside his jacket so they wouldn’t swing and started walking. “Adam,” he said. “You’re with me.” He shot a quick glance at Ryan and Adara as he passed them. “Belay that order about picking up Lisanne. Medina Tohti is the mission. Give us five minutes for spacing, then follow at a distance.” He tapped his cheek over the Molar Mic. “Keep trying Lisanne, though. Tell her to get her ass back here ASAP.”
49
Fu Bohai was seated in the back office of the Jiadengyu police station when his man Qiu told him about the woman.
The local police sergeant, a cadaverous fellow with eyes that sank deep in his skull, clicked a few buttons on his keyboard and brought up the lobby camera.
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. One of four Finnish tourists. She came to retrieve the passports for her group. I spoke to them earlier at their hotel. I believe their Chinese guide has taken the others to view the lake.”
“You say they are Finnish?” Fu watched the monitor as the woman exited the front door. He flicked his fingers at the sergeant, getting him to switch to an exterior camera. “Do you get many European visitors?”
“Oh, y
es!” the sergeant said, brimming with pride. “Tourists from all over the world to view our magnificent park. Russians, Japanese, even Americans. Our scenery is quite pop—”
Fu held up his hand to shush the babbling fool and then leaned forward to get a better look at the woman. The sergeant switched from camera to camera, staying with her as she walked down the street, moving in and out of other tour groups, who were out for evening strolls. The footage was remarkably clear considering how dark it was, allowing Fu to see the flashing shift of the woman’s eyes as she studied her surroundings. Periodically, a flake of snow loomed large, almost obscuring the view as it fell inches from the lens.
Fu ignored the local sergeant and spoke directly to his man. “Notice how she stops periodically,” he said. “Turning to face a shop or café window as if to look inside, but … there, she casually steps into a shop, and then almost immediately back out again to see if she is being followed. What sort of tourist runs countersurveillance in a scenic park?”
Fu stood, retrieving his hat from the sergeant’s desk. “Follow her,” he said. “The rest of us will go check the tour boats.”
“Yes, Boss!” Qiu pulled down sharply on the hem of his skintight leather coat, making it pop—as he always did after he received an order. Fu had begun to think of it as a sort of salute—and liked it.
50
Hollywood depictions of military vs. CIA bad blood notwithstanding, Captain Alan Brock, team leader ODA-0312, actually got along well with Roy Grant, his counterpart from that Other Governmental Agency.
Stationed at Camp Vance, a stone’s throw from Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan, Brock and his men made up a U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, commonly called an A-team. The four-numeral ODA designator, 0312, signified Brock’s team was 0–10th Special Forces Group, 3–3rd Battalion, 1—first company in 3rd Battalion (A Company), 2—second team in the company, in this case, mountaineers and horse soldiers.
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