Darkness Under Heaven

by F. J. Chase

  “Did you see the green truck back on the highway? Abandoned?”

  The Mongol gave a negative shrug.

  “Papers,” said Commissioner Zhou.

  Two Mongolian passports were handed over. They seemed to be in order. “What can you tell me about the people in the truck?”

  “Nothing, sir. We saw nothing.”

  The other trick was to know when you were being lied to. “Maybe you remember something at the station,” Commissioner Zhou said. “Get in the car.”

  “What of our bikes, sir?”

  “We have no room for bikes. Leave them here. Unless you remember seeing something.” Their bicycles and goods would most certainly be gone when they returned.

  A brief conversation in guttural Mongol. “We saw two people with the truck, sir. A man and a woman.”

  Despite his swelling excitement, Commissioner Zhou was careful not to react to that. “What did they look like?”

  “Foreigners, sir.”

  “Mongols?”

  “No, sir. White foreigners. Both of them. The woman was blond. The man limping.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Into the back of a red truck, sir. Filled with hay.”

  “License number?”

  “We did not see it, sir.”

  “The driver?”

  “Just a truck driver, sir.”

  “Which way did the truck go?”

  “North.”

  Commissioner Zhou threw the passports at them and frantically dialed the number of the border post. As it rang he shouted to his driver. “The border crossing. Use the siren.”

  Knuckles rapped on the back of the cab.

  Avakian put his arm around Judy. “We’re at the crossing. Not a sound.”

  Right after he said that Judy was seized with an irresistible impulse to start drumming her feet on the floor. She actually felt like she had to grab ahold of her knees to stop herself.

  The truck stopped, and those brakes really squealed. The hay shifted, rocking back and forth around them as if threatening to come crashing down. Avakian had always loved the smell of hay, but couldn’t help wondering if Judy had allergies.

  He could hear the driver speaking Chinese to someone. It sounded cordial. He only caught the word Zhangjiakou.

  The engine started up, and they were moving again. The truck seemed to make a bit of a turn. Shit, they weren’t getting sent over for inspection, were they?

  The truck stopped again. More talking. He couldn’t make out anything on either side this time.

  Moving again. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. A siren behind them, getting louder. They came to a sudden stop. Both cab doors slammed. Son of a bitch! Getting out of the line of fire.

  Feet clomping on the ladder and the tarp being pulled back.

  Avakian turned Judy toward him so he could kiss her in the darkness. And took his arm from her so he could draw the pistol. Time for that last stand around the flag. The hay above them began to move.

  Commissioner Zhou’s driver came up the emergency lane of the four-lane border highway. When he jammed on the brake they went off the pavement and skidded into the soft sand, nearly knocking down a lamp pole.

  An arch stretched across the width of the highway. It was painted like a rainbow. There was a white guardhouse with a red roof, and a metal accordion fence that could be pulled all the way across the highway if necessary. Two army light tanks were posted on either side.

  He ran up to the guard on the northbound side. “Commissioner Zhou.”

  A salute. “Yes, Commissioner, we are expecting you.”

  “Have you seen the red truck?”

  “Was it not a green truck, Comrade Commissioner?”

  “Red. Red, I say. Filled with hay. You were not told?”

  “No, Comrade Commissioner.”

  At that precise moment an officer stuck his head out from the guardhouse and shouted, “Alert for any red truck filled with hay, trying to leave. Must be stopped.”

  The guard turned to Commissioner Zhou with his mouth open. “Comrade Commissioner, one just went across.”

  Commissioner Zhou gave no sign that he had heard. He was standing before his countrymen, his subordinates. He could not lose face.

  They would not let him resign. No, they would send him to Tibet. The freezing cold. The altitude sickness. Not Lhasa, but some forsaken town with yak butter tea and yokels who did not wash. They would not let him keep his rank. It would be years of standing in the snow on anti-riot duty. Beating up locals for having pictures of the Dalai Lama. That would be his fate.

  28

  As the hay bale was pulled up over their heads and the sunlight washed in Avakian’s arms were extended and his finger on the trigger. Just waiting for a target. Even though they’d probably toss a grenade in first.

  The Mongol’s smiling face appeared in the opening. He gave the thumbs-up. “Okay.”

  Avakian blinked. What?

  Judy was already climbing up. She stuck her head out, looked around, and said, “Hand me up the bags.”

  Shaking from the adrenaline dump, Avakian reholstered the pistol. He tossed her bag up and started climbing.

  “What about yours?” she said.

  “Present for the boys.” He did not want to be toting an automatic rifle around Mongolia. Reaching the top, he sat down on the hay and looked around. It was the most beautiful ratty border town he’d ever seen in his life.

  The Mongol said, “Zamen Uud.”

  “Zamen Uud,” Avakian repeated.

  The Mongol pointed down at his bag.

  Avakian pointed to the Mongol.

  The Mongol nodded and grinned again.

  While Judy climbed down he had a few words with the driver, passing him some money. Borrowing a pencil, he wrote some numbers on one bill. The driver handed the cash to his assistant, who jumped from the back and ran off.

  His leg kept zapping him all the way down the ladder. The pain was becoming as familiar as a toothache. Two more zaps as he took the bag from Judy and climbed into the cab to settle up.

  The bank had given them a lot of small bills, which was just fine with the Mongol. Avakian carefully counted out 150,000 and the Mongol just as carefully recounted that.

  “Okay?” Avakian asked.

  “Okay.” The Mongol said something in his language that sounded like a blessing. They solemnly shook hands.

  The reckoning had taken a while. The assistant driver was already back with a bag. Avakian gestured for him to give it to Judy. He tried to hand Avakian the change. Avakian gestured again for him to keep it. The assistant insisted on shaking hands, too.

  The truck drove off with hands waving out the windows.

  They’d been dropped right in front of the Zamen Uud railroad station. Now that was service.

  “There go two honest thieves,” Avakian said admiringly.

  They were both looking around as if checking for new threats. Both realized it at the same time, looked at each other, laughed, and embraced.

  They held each other for a good long time.

  “Thank you, Pete.”

  “Thank you, Judy.”

  She wiped her eyes. “If there was ever a situation where thanks weren’t enough. Don’t worry, I’ll show you the full extent of my appreciation later.”

  “Believe me when I tell you I’ve never looked forward to anything more.”

  He was white from the stress and the pain. She held his face in both hands, part affection and part checking for fever again.

  “I feel like I should steal something and keep running,” said Avakian, laughing. “We don’t need to, but it’s like eating potato chips. Once you get started it’s hard to stop.”

  “We’ll try to break you of that,” Judy said. “Maybe there’s a twelve-step program.” She realized she’d been holding the Mongol’s bag and peered into it. “What’s in here?”

  Avakian grinned. Feminine curiosity overruled everything. “Should
be a pair of pants for me. Soap, towels and a comb. Though based on the speed I’m not holding out much hope. I thought if we went in a store in our present condition people would be diving out the windows. Shall we repair to the station lavatories?”

  “Why, are they broken?”

  “Oh, that was just wrong.”

  Twenty minutes later Avakian was sitting on a station bench, watching the world go by. The Mongol kid had actually gone a little crazy. He was wearing a new white shirt and black trousers. With the sleeves and legs rolled up they even halfway fit. Anyway, he didn’t smell completely like shit anymore. But it was going to take a lot more scrubbing later.

  He was still all keyed up, and knew he would be that way for a while. But it was not only an utter pleasure to be alive, it was a pleasure to be sitting around waiting for a woman to get out of the bathroom.

  When Judy turned up he about fell off the bench laughing. She was wearing the same white shirt and black slacks. “This is great,” he said. “Promise me we’ll always dress alike from now on.”

  She was giggling uncontrollably. “We look like Mormon missionaries, don’t we?”

  “I love it.”

  “The underwear wasn’t working. I had to go commando.”

  “I don’t know if that information is important now, but it may be in the future.”

  “What’s going on in the world? I assume you found out while I was in the ladies’ room.”

  “Unfortunately the newspapers are all in Mongolian Cyrillic, and international TV news has yet to reach the Zamen Uud railway station. But I talked to a few people who spoke some English and German.” He laughed. “They wanted to know where I’d been.”

  “Really,” said Judy.

  “Taiwan hasn’t given up yet, but everyone seems to think it’s only a matter of time. It seems that China and the U.S. are kind of like a couple of heavyweight boxers shuffling around each other without throwing a punch. Each one knows they can knock the other out, but they don’t want to get knocked out trying to do it. The U.S. imposed a sea blockade, without calling it that, on the entire region. Which is a major hit to the Chinese economy. Riots popping out around the country, which seems to be what we ran into back in Zhangjiakou. Big buildup in North Korea, but they haven’t come across the border. And the Chinese haven’t let any Americans out of the country since the shooting started. There’s rumors of prison camps.”

  Judy sighed and shook her head, feeling very emotional. “I obviously picked the right guy to travel with,” she said, looking down at him fondly.

  Avakian had no response to that. “That’s all the news I was able to get.”

  “Well, let’s get the hell out of here before the Chinese decide to invade Mongolia.”

  “The next train to Ulan Bator is in two hours, so you can get yourself some better threads. The sleepers were all booked, so we’ll probably have people snoring on our shoulders the whole way.”

  “I don’t care if someone’s sitting on my lap the whole way. Two hours, you say? Give me some money. I’m going shopping.”

  He started to get up.

  “You’re not moving an inch on that leg,” she said. “That’s final.”

  “Judy, this is a border town.”

  “I’ve been to Tijuana. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll worry myself sick.”

  “Well, welcome to that club. I’ll show you the secret handshake later.”

  He’d already changed a bunch of yuan to Mongolian tugruk at the railway station bank. Handing it over, he said, “Stay on the main drags, don’t go down any alleys, don’t listen to any guides, and don’t flash too much of this around.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you say something?”

  He sweated out every minute of the hour she was gone.

  Eyeing the bags she dropped at his feet, he said, “You didn’t engage any servants?”

  Judy handed him a bottle of water. Producing a pill bottle from her new knockoff Prada bag, she shook out two pills. “Are you allergic to any antibiotics?”

  “No.” He looked the tablets in his hand. “What are they?”

  “Antibiotics.”

  “I walked right into that, didn’t I?” He popped them down.

  “These are brutes. So if you start feeling weird, let me know.”

  “Judy, I don’t know what weird is anymore.”

  “Really. There’s a lot of that going around.” She gave him another, larger pill. “Painkiller.”

  “Now we’re talking.” Then it occurred to him. “Are you licensed to prescribe drugs in Mongolia?”

  “No, but I am licensed to bribe pharmacists.”

  “I won’t squeal on you to the AMA.”

  “I’ve got everything I need to dress your wound properly.”

  “Hey, the tampon was great. A real combat medic trick. But I’m sure we can get the bullet out in Ulan Bator.”

  “We are not,” she informed him. “I’m chartering a medevac flight and getting you back to the U.S. Where I will operate on you personally.”

  “Isn’t that some kind of professional conflict of interest?” he inquired.

  “You’re getting concerned about rules now?”

  “It’s not that,” he said. “This is going to be payback for everything I put you through, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not going to put another bullet in your leg, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But I will wake up with hair plugs and a new nose, right?”

  Now she almost fell off the bench laughing. “I like your nose just fine, thank you. And I prefer your head shaved.”

  “I like you better as a brunette,” he said.

  They both smiled at each other lovingly.

  “I’m serious about the flight,” she said. “The lesson I’ve learned from all this is that I don’t want to stay in Asia one minute longer than I have to.”

  “We’ve learned many lessons, Judy,” he said gravely. “But aren’t they all secondary to what we’ve learned about each other, and ourselves, over the course of this journey?”

  Her laughter rang through the terminal. Everyone was looking at them. She laughed so hard she fell over him onto the bench and ended up with her head in his lap. “Oh, I almost threw up,” she said weakly.

  “I assume I’m doing my rehab in Denver,” he said, stroking her hair.

  “Of course,” she said, looking up at him. “But this doesn’t mean we’re dating.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know how this all started.”

  “Yeah. There was an assassination. Which caused a war. And then everything kind of went downhill from there.”

  “This happened,” she said firmly, “when I went out to dinner with you. I’m sorry, but I’ve learned my lesson. I’m never going out to dinner with you again.”

  Avakian thought that one over. “Do you cook?” he asked.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3215-4

  DARKNESS UNDER HEAVEN

  Copyright © 2009 by William Christie.

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  ess Under Heaven