by Dan Mayland
“Play,” insisted the Kyrgyz.
Suddenly Mark’s cell phone rang. He was supposed to have turned it off before the game started, but he’d forgotten to do so.
His Russian opponent threw his hands up in the air. The implication was clear—first the insufferable Uzbek and now this.
“I’m sorry,” said Mark. “I’ll turn it off.” But when he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he saw the call was from Daria. “Actually, I have to take this.”
“Chert poberi,” said the Russian. The devil take you.
“Hey,” said Mark to Daria.
“I need your help.”
Mark could hear kids crying in the background and a woman talking loudly, about what he couldn’t tell though.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. There’s been—”
The Kyrgyz slapped down a narde piece, clearly frustrated by Mark’s behavior.
Daria asked, “Are you playing narde?”
“I dropped off the paloo.”
“I thought you said you played narde this morning?”
“I did.” He took a sip of his beer. “What’s up?”
“Someone took one of the kids from the orphanage. I think they’re headed your way, and I need you to intercept them.”
“Back up. Who took a kid?”
Mark’s Russian opponent groaned and with both arms gestured to the breach of narde protocol that was taking place in front of him.
“Two guys,” said Daria. “One of them claimed to be the boy’s uncle.”
Mark figured this was just some family custody struggle gone bad. After all, this was the same country where wannabe husbands occasionally just kidnapped their future brides rather than proposing to them. It wouldn’t shock him to learn that someone had circumvented the law to speed up an adoption process. “Well, was he?”
“I don’t know. Either way, he can’t just take a child from an orphanage. That’s kidnapping.”
“OK. But now you want me to…”
“Intercept them. Stop them. I need your help.”
Mark recognized that passionate tone of voice in Daria. He’d heard it before—whenever she believed that some grave injustice had taken place, or was talking about what a morally bankrupt monstrosity the Iranian government was.
He knew that arguing with her would be pointless. “All right.” He paused, but just for a moment. “I’m on it.” As he stood up, he downed what was left of his beer in one long swig, then, cupping his hand over the phone, said, “I lose, beers are on me,” and left a thousand Kyrgyz soms—about twenty dollars—on the table.
The Uzbek shook his head, disgusted. Even the Kyrgyz looked appalled.
Mark walked out of the Shanghai, trying to hear Daria over the angry complaints of his narde partners. “What do we know about this boy?”
“I didn’t know him. Nazira says he’s only been here a day.”
“Who’s Nazira?”
“She’s the director of the orphanage. I’ve told you about her.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“This is all kind of weird. She told me the child only speaks Arabic.”
“What’s a kid who only speaks Arabic doing in Kyrgyzstan?”
“Like I said, it’s kind of weird.”
“This just happened?”
“Well, they showed up two hours ago and tried to give Nazira ten thousand dollars in exchange for her releasing the boy to them.”
“What the hell?” Ten thousand dollars was a small fortune in Kyrgyzstan.
“Yeah, I know. Nazira managed to stall them for a while—”
“She didn’t just take the money?”
“No, she’s honest, and, frankly, I think it was a large enough sum that it scared her. A couple hundred dollars and we might have had a problem. Anyway, she said they needed to wait until I got here with the adoption papers, but they got impatient and just took off with the boy. One of them had a knife and threatened Nazira with it. She said they left here twenty minutes ago, so I probably won’t be able to catch up to them, but they’re headed your way so you might be able to intercept them.”
“How do we know they’re coming my way?”
“Nazira tried to follow them on a bike,” said Daria. “She says she got far enough to see that they turned toward Bishkek. It’s worth a shot.”
One main road led all the way from Balykchy to Bishkek. For the first half of the drive, there were virtually no turnoffs or alternate routes.
“Did you call the cops?” he asked.
“They were pulling up when I got here.”
“And?”
“And what do you think?”
“That bad?”
“They say I need to go down to the station to file an incident report before they can take any action.”
If Daria hadn’t been so damn honest, thought Mark, she would have just handed the cops a couple thousand soms to cut through the red tape. But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Even with a bribe, the cops’ reaction time would have been too slow.
“All right. I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
By this time, Mark had reached his Mercedes, which he kept parked on the street near his condo. As he climbed into the driver’s seat and inserted his key into the ignition, he asked, “What kind of car am I looking for?”
“Tan Toyota Camry.”
“The two guys inside?”
“I think.”
“Kyrgyz?”
“No. Foreign, but they spoke Turkish well enough for Nazira to understand them. They spoke Arabic to the boy. The younger one claimed to be the boy’s uncle.”
“Guns?”
“Not that I know of, but be careful.”
“Always.”
“Thanks.” Daria sounded relieved. “You’ll call?”
“As soon as I know anything.”
4
Mark’s Mercedes clattered loudly as he hurtled down Route 365 at ninety miles an hour, feeling a little buzzed from the two half-liter beers he’d downed at the Shanghai.
His car, he’d come to realize, was a Potemkin village—nice to look at, especially with the Mercedes hood ornament, but pretty crappy on the inside. He’d bought it used upon arriving in Kyrgyzstan, before he’d started making any serious cash.
Which meant he’d saved a couple thousand dollars, but now had to deal with no power windows, a cheap plastic interior, a fickle heater, and a steering wheel on the wrong side of the car because the used first-world cars that got shipped to places like Central Asia to be driven into the ground included those from Britain.
He passed a turnoff for a border crossing to Kazakhstan, where soldiers were standing in front of a gate that blocked access to a two-lane bridge that spanned the Chu River. He saw no tan Camry, so he kept going.
What had been a wide, newly paved road transitioned abruptly to a much older, narrower one hemmed in by low mountains. Along this stretch, Chinese laborers were building big stone retaining walls to contain landslides, preparing to widen and repave this section of road the way they had the previous one.
The damn Chinese were everywhere, thought Mark as he drove. He knew that they were building this road, which would run from Bishkek to the border with China, at no cost to Kyrgyzstan, in an effort to help pry open the Kyrgyz market. He didn’t blame them; the Americans were also trying, with limited success, to get good transit routes running from Central Asia to Afghanistan. But he found it unsettling to see just how much faster the Chinese were getting the job done.
A minute later, he came to a bumpy transition between the old asphalt road and a patch of dirt road, which caused the Mercedes to bottom out.
No Chinese workers were in sight, so he parked behind a huge pile of gravel and grabbed the Russian-made sport version of a Dragunov rifle—he’d bribed the appropriate bureaucrats to qualify for a rare hunter’s license—from where he’d hidden it underneath the trunk of the Mercedes. He took ten cartridges from a box of ammo that he’d wedged in next
to the rifle, loaded them into the magazine, then jogged over to a half-built stone retaining wall. Standing on a little rockslide that had accumulated behind the wall, he practiced aiming his rifle at the point where the road switched from old asphalt to dirt.
As he was waiting, he thought of the narde game he’d been forced to forfeit. That would cost him with the guys. Thanks to his abrupt exit, his moral position was now even worse than the Uzbek’s. What really bugged him, though, was that he’d been beating the Russian when Daria’s call had come through.
A cold breeze started to blow and he shivered. He’d been too rushed to think about grabbing a coat, but he wished he had one now. It was only November, but out here in the country, way above sea level, winter had already long since arrived. Though the mountains were too dry, treeless, and windswept to hold much snow, their tops were covered with a light dusting of white. All the roadside yurts that had been stocked with fresh apricots, blackthorn berries, and smoked trout during the summer had been taken down for the season. The tourists from Russia and Kazakhstan, crammed into cars overstuffed with beach umbrellas, towels, and inflatable rafts, had stopped coming through months ago. No fishermen stood on the banks of the Chu River.
Now the Chinese were the only ones in the area. And crazy people, like his do-gooder girlfriend. And himself.
What the hell are you doing out here, Daria? What the hell am I doing out here?
Kyrgyzstan wasn’t his home. Baku was. His buzz had worn off, leaving him just tired.
In truth, though, he knew perfectly well why he was here—because of Daria. Things had actually been going pretty well between them, mostly thanks to her. She put up with his narde games; she was rarely in a bad mood; she’d hooked him up with a LASIK doctor in Almaty so he could finally see without glasses; she’d made him get a physical so he was now taking Lipitor to control his cholesterol; and despite working as hard as she did, she often came home with a healthy libido. She did all that and more—Mark sometimes wondered where she got the energy—without expecting much in return.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t expect anything in return.
They’d never talked about it, but he knew that she needed for him not to cheat on her. Which he didn’t. She needed for him to love her. Which he did, even if he didn’t always express that love particularly well. And when the shit hit the fan, like it had this afternoon, she needed for him to be there for her.
Which, Mark noted, he was. But he still wished he’d brought a jacket.
A tan Camry appeared. One man was driving. Another sat in the back, next to what appeared to be a small boy.
Mark sighed, brought his cheek down to the worn leather riser that was clipped to the stock, and stared down the iron sights. He wasn’t a fantastic shot without a scope, but at this range—less than a hundred feet—he figured he didn’t need to be. As the Camry hit a big bump where the road transitioned, bottoming out with a loud smack, he fired two quick shots.
The rear tire didn’t immediately deflate, but by the time the car was almost out of sight, it was riding on its metal rim. The driver would almost certainly believe that he had suffered a flat as a result of lousy road conditions.
Mark jogged back to his Mercedes, reloaded the Dragunov, laid the rifle across the passenger seat, and threw the car into drive. A minute later, he was pulling up behind the Camry.
Two men stood outside the car, looking wary and frustrated as they stared at their flat rear tire. The older of the two—Mark guessed he was in his fifties—was bearded and wore a dark blue suit, shiny black dress shoes, and a bright red tie; the younger twentysomething had just a hint of a mustache and wore dark gray slacks and a white dress shirt. Both men glared at Mark as he pulled up behind them. The one in the suit gestured to the road, indicating that Mark should continue on his way.
Mark rolled down the window of his Mercedes, leaned out, smiled, and with great enthusiasm, yelled out to them in Kyrgyz, “You have a flat tire! I will help you!”
The man in the suit said something that Mark recognized as Arabic but couldn’t understand.
The younger man replied in Turkish, “We are not in need of assistance.”
Mark understood Turkish perfectly well. Indeed, most Central Asian languages were Turkic-based, including Azeri, a language he’d learned to speak fluently years before. But there were big differences between all the regional dialects, just as there were big differences between Latin-based languages like Spanish and French and Italian. So he knew he was on safe ground pretending not to understand Turkish.
Mark repeated in Kyrgyz, “I will help you!”
He saw the tousled black hair of a child poking up above the rear seat of the Camry.
In Turkish, the younger man said, “Leave us, sir. I tell you, we are not in need of assistance.”
Mark climbed out of his car. “Do you have a spare tire?” He eyed both men, looking for odd bulges that might indicate one of them was carrying a concealed firearm. He saw none, but something about the way the older man in the suit carried himself—a hint of arrogance that Mark had found to be common in people who were confident in their ability to defend themselves—raised his hackles.
“Sir,” said the older man in Turkish. “I must insist that you leave us.”
Mark glanced up and down the road. No cars were visible in either direction. He stuck his hand through the open driver’s side window of his Mercedes, grabbed his rifle, and pointed it at the older man.
“Both of you on the ground, hands clasped behind your necks.” He spoke in Turkish now too. His tone and expression had changed from that of village idiot to one of bored, steely competence.
“We are guests in your country, sir. This is no way to treat guests.”
Muslims were known for showing deference to guests. Given that Kyrgyzstan was a Muslim country, it wasn’t a bad angle to work, Mark thought. In theory, that is. If a random act of highway robbery was what you were trying to avoid.
Mark pointed to the shoulder of the road. “This isn’t my country, neither of you are my guests, and I’m not here to rob you. Both of you, on the ground. You can use your hands to lower yourselves but keep them in sight at all times and once you’re down I want them clasped behind your necks.”
The two men glanced at each other, then at Mark. Inside the car, the child was quiet.
“What is it you want?” said the younger man. “If it is money—”
“I just told you what I want,” said Mark.
“There is a child in the car.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I cannot leave him alone in the car while you—”
Mark was getting tired of this conversation. “You’re not in a position to make demands.”
The older man in the suit glared at Mark with an unyielding stare as the younger man rushed forward. Mark backed up, aimed quickly, and shot the younger man in the foot. It all happened in less than a second.
The older man didn’t even so much as flinch, or show any concern whatsoever, as his colleague began hopping on one leg, howling in pain.
“Both of you on the ground.” Mark watched as they awkwardly lowered themselves into the dirt. He hadn’t wanted to use the gun. Not with the kid in the car. Not without knowing the full extent of what was really going on. “Spread your legs wide.”
“I have a wallet,” said the older man. “Inside is over three thousand dollars, US bills. Take it, and leave us.”
“Hand it over.” Mark noted that the older man wore a watch on his right wrist, which meant he was likely a lefty. “Reach for it, slowly, with your right hand. No sudden moves.”
The man did so, then began to open his wallet and extract the money.
“Hand the whole thing over.”
Mark grabbed the wallet when it was offered up and flipped it open. It was stuffed with cash—US hundred-dollar bills.
But what Mark really found interesting was the driver’s license. It was green and white, with a photo of the man in
the lower left-hand corner, and was covered with Arabic script—except in the top right section, where, in English, it read KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA, MINISTRY OF INTERIOR, DRIVING LICENSE.
“Huh,” said Mark, eyeing both men. “You both Saudis?”
Neither man answered.
“Is the kid a Saudi?”
Still no response.
Mark used his phone to snap a photo of the driver’s license, and then tossed the wallet, and the cash inside it, back to the older Saudi.
He pointed to the younger man. “Hand yours over.”
After confirming that the younger man was also a Saudi, and taking a photo of his driver’s license, Mark walked back to the Camry and pulled open the rear door. Sitting behind the passenger seat was a boy Mark guessed was about two years old. His black curly hair was in need of a trim, and his dark brown eyes were wide with fear. A seat belt was tight around his waist.
The boy wouldn’t look at him.
Mark searched his limited knowledge of Arabic. He settled on sadiq, which meant friend. He pointed at himself as he said it.
“Don’t you dare touch that boy!” called out the Saudi that Mark had shot. “You know not what you do.”
Mark had a bad feeling about this. But he’d promised Daria. “Who is he? Why did you take him?”
“He is my nephew. He comes from a powerful family. He was kidnapped.”
“From Saudi Arabia?”
“That is not your business.”
“What family?”
“That is not your business either. But I can tell you I am here on behalf of the boy’s family.”
Mark sighed. “You can’t just steal a child from an orphanage.”
“We only stole what was stolen from us.”
“If he really is your nephew, and he really has been kidnapped, then you need to go back to the orphanage, apologize, file the appropriate paperwork, and wait for things to get sorted out. That’s the way it’s done, even in Kyrgyzstan.”
Mark turned back to the car and unlocked the boy’s seat belt, causing the boy to flinch. Mark extended his hand. When the child didn’t respond, Mark leaned inside, wrapped his left arm—the one that wasn’t occupied with the rifle—underneath the boy’s armpits, and gently lifted the child to his chest.
