by Marc Cameron
At length, Usenov gave a satisfied grunt and let go, welcoming Yao into his home as if he was a long-lost relative. Mrs. Usenov set a third plate at the low table situated on the colorful Asian rug in the middle of the Usenovs’ main room. She was a quiet Kazakh woman with flour on her dress and a light blue scarf tied above a handsome oval face. She wore little makeup, but a thin black pencil line connected her dark eyebrows. Yao had seen it many times before on women in Central Asia.
Mrs. Usenov shuffled back and forth from the kitchen, bringing tray after tray of noodles, boiled meat, and fried bread, as if they’d been expecting company.
Kambar put Yao where he normally sat, at the head of the table—a place of honor for the guest. He waved a wind-chapped hand over the top of the feast his wife was busy bringing in.
“We went to a cousin’s wedding,” he said in Mandarin. “My cousin’s wife, she makes the best beshbarmak I have ever tasted.” He smiled, high cheekbones squinting his eyes. “Except for my wife, Aisulu, of course. She is a most excellent cook.”
CIA case officers received language and culture training before heading off to any long-term posting, but most colloquialism and nuance could be learned only firsthand. After ten minutes at the Usenovs’ table, stuffing himself with beshbarmak—literally “five fingers,” because that’s the way the mixture of noodles, boiled horse, and onion was eaten—Yao realized no instructor had ever covered the dangers of too much hospitality.
He took a drink of kumis—fermented mare’s milk—and got down to business.
“Forgive me for being forward,” he said. “But I understand you and your wife were in a Chinese detention center in Baijiantan.”
Aisulu leaned forward, grease dripping off her fingers from the beshbarmak. “Someone reported that Kambar was studying Russian. The authorities said that meant we were thinking about leaving China, so they put us in a camp to remind us that the grass is not greener in Kazakhstan.”
Kambar shrugged. “If I am being honest, we were studying Russian so we could leave. Kazakhstan is the best country in the world. No offense meant to Taiwan.”
“What business is that of theirs if we leave China?” his wife snapped. “We are Kazakh. We should be able to come home if we wish.”
“I agree with you,” Yao said. “If I may ask, were you treated harshly in Baijiantan?”
“We were fed,” Kambar said. “Our heads were shaved and I was separated from my wife. We attended many classes, sang songs about the Motherland, told we should love and respect President Zhao, things of that nature. I was not beaten, if that is what you mean, but I saw it happen many times.”
Mrs. Usenov covered her mouth with an open hand as she chewed a large bite of fried dough. She swallowed. “Same for me. But you do not have to be beaten to be mistreated . . .”
“I am sure,” Yao said. “I would like to return to the conditions inside at another time, perhaps when we are not in the middle of such a delicious meal.”
Kambar looked heavenward while he chewed, remembering. “Though they never beat me, it was the worst time of my life. One day, after two months, they let us go. It took two days, but I was eventually reunited with Aisulu. She was so frail and gaunt, and both of us had terrible coughs—everyone in the camps did.”
“But they came back,” Yao prompted. “The Chinese authorities, and arrested you again?”
Usenov nodded, heaving a great sigh. “I have no idea why. Maybe they needed more numbers for their quota. Maybe they felt they were in error letting us go the first time.”
“But you escaped?”
Mrs. Usenov rocked back and forth on her cushion, excited at the memory. “Kambar and I were in the back of the same van. The van stopped so quickly it threw us all forward. We heard shouting, then gunfire—and then the van began to move again. We drove for a long time, hours maybe. I fell asleep so I do not know.”
“I, too, slept,” Mr. Usenov said, nodding for his wife to continue the story.
“I felt my ears begin to pop, so I knew we were going up into the mountains. I thought maybe they were taking us far away to kill us, but one of the other men said that the Chinese were in charge. If they wanted to kill us, they would not have to drive out of their way to do it. Finally, the van stopped and the doors opened. A man in dark clothing motioned us out, unlocked our shackles, and pointed us toward the Kazakh border.”
“Who rescued you?”
“They wore hoods,” Usenov said. “They did not say it, but I believe they were Wuming.”
“Wuming.” Yao took another drink of fermented mare’s milk.
“You have heard of them?” Mrs. Usenov asked. “They are angels, I think. Allah’s helpers here on earth. Most in the van had thought to grab a blanket or put on a coat. Kambar made sure I had a jacket, but the policeman dragged him out before he could retrieve his own. It was bitter cold, snowing, and Kambar was in his shirtsleeves. One of the Wuming saw this and gave my husband his coat.”
“I would love to interview a member of the Wuming,” Yao said.
Mrs. Usenov exhaled softly. “I do not know how that would happen. Surely that would be much too dangerous for them. The Chinese government would kill them all if they could.”
“That’s true.” Yao shrugged. “They sound like incredibly good people, giving you their own coat.”
“I still have it,” Usenov said proudly. “It is the best coat I have ever owned.” He scrambled to his feet, belying his age. “I will show you.”
Yao wiped his hands with a towel Mrs. Usenov gave him and stood, stepping back from the low table to look at the puffy down ski jacket Kambar Usenov brought out from the bedroom.
“Very nice.” Yao opened it to read the tag, knowing he wouldn’t find a name, but checking nonetheless.
Usenov reached into the pocket and showed him something almost as good.
* * *
—
Yao called Leigh Murphy on his secure mobile.
Excited at the prospect of a lead, he began to speak as soon as she picked up. “Tell me again what Beg said about the woods.”
“Hello to you, too,” Murphy said. “You must have something.”
“Maybe,” Yao said. “So go over Beg’s statement again. The part about the Wuming disappearing.”
“He said they would disappear into the forest, that they could slip over many borders to escape—if they exist at all. Why, what do you have?”
“Not sure,” Yao said. “Maybe nothing. There were some ticket stubs in the pocket of a coat that may have come from a member of the Wuming. They’re only partial stubs, but they’re for a boat tour. It’s something about a monster fish.”
“Lake Kanas?” Murphy said.
“It’s not on the ticket, but I assume the boat tour could be on a lake.”
“The tickets are Chinese, right?” Murphy asked.
“Correct.”
“Then Kanas Lake makes sense,” Murphy said. “They have their own version of the Loch Ness Monster.” She paused.
“You still there?” Yao asked.
“Yup. Just checking a map. This looks promising, Adam. Lake Kanas is north of Urumqi, tucked into a little thumb of land that is surrounded by Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia . . . It’s extremely rural, with many borders over which to escape—and lots of forest—just like Urkesh Beg said.”
“That’s thin,” Yao said. “But it’s a hell of a lot more than I had an hour ago. I appreciate this.”
“No prob,” Murphy said. “When are you coming to Albania so I can show you around? We need somebody with a brain to be our station chief. Rask chewed my ass for interviewing Beg without his blessing. I told him I wasn’t allowed to tell him who asked me, which really pissed him off.”
“Sorry about that,” Yao said. “I’ll make a couple of calls and get you top cover. In the meantime, don’t mention the Lake
Kanas connection to anyone. Okay?”
“You got it, Chief.”
“Don’t,” Adam said and chuckled. “I’m not chief material.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” Murphy said. “It’s hard to find good friends.”
“In this outfit?”
Murphy sighed. “Anywhere, Adam.”
* * *
—
CIA Station Chief Fredrick Rask hunched over his keyboard, fuming, fingers blazing as he typed a cable. No, this could not be allowed to stand. Leigh Murphy was forgetting her place in the food chain.
A mentor had once told him to get up and go to the restroom before sending a cable or e-mail when you were angry. Good advice, to be sure, if you wanted to be civil, but Rask wanted a piece of somebody’s ass. He was either the station chief or he wasn’t. No one had the right to run an op on his turf without at least letting him know. And he’d be damned if he was going to let some secret-squirrel shithead from Langley sneak into his bailiwick and task one of his case officers without asking his permission. Not to mention the task in question was to chat up the former U.S. detainee about his continued association with Uyghur separatists. The guy had already been interrogated for four and a half years. This kind of shit had the propensity to blow up in your face. The media, Congress, his bosses in D.C.—they’d be all over him if they found out one of his people was harassing a guy they’d let go.
Someone at HQ needed to know about this—if only so Rask could cover his own ass from the blowback. He fired off the cable, making his boss aware of the situation, and then leaned back and sent a copy to his buddy on the Central Asia desk. If someone was poking around looking for Uyghur separatists, he’d want to know.
28
An hour into the seven-hour flight on the C-21A, the U.S. military’s version of the Bombardier Learjet 35, Dr. Patti Moon decided this kind of luxury was something she could become used to. They made a short stop to refuel at an FBO in Calgary, Alberta, and then continued direct from there to Washington Reagan. She had the plane to herself—just her and a couple of hotshot pilots who liked to practice near-vertical takeoffs and then explain how the Lear was really a fighter jet in a suit and tie. And anyway, somebody up the chain wanted her in D.C. ASAP, the pilots said, so they were told by their bosses not to spare the horses.
The closer they got to D.C., the more fretful she became. The whole suit-and-tie thing didn’t help. Moon’s mother, an extremely devout and weekly attendee of the Tikigaq Bible Baptist Church in Point Hope, had drummed into her from an early age that the devil would not be dressed in rags when he came to tempt her. He would, in fact, be dressed in fine furs . . . or even a suit and tie.
She’d worked herself into a lather by the time the little jet lined up left of the Potomac River and settled into a grease-smooth landing at Washington Reagan.
To make matters worse, the tall man in Navy khakis who met her in the lobby of Signature Flight Support at the south end of the airport introduced himself as Commander Robbie Forestall, a national security adviser to the President of the United States.
Navy habits abided long, and she very nearly introduced herself as Petty Officer First Class Moon. She caught herself, shook the commander’s hand, and then stepped back and let him lead the way. A meeting with the national security adviser . . . That was going to be weird. Still, Moon supposed she’d asked for it by asking Barker to push the recording up the chain.
The Marine helicopter had picked her up at breakfast, and the entire trip had been relatively short, but the time difference between Alaska and the East Coast meant it was already well into the evening by the time Commander Forestall showed Moon to a black Lincoln Town Car. He gave her a bottle of water and offered to help her with her bag, but she refused and held it on her lap instead.
Traffic on George Washington Memorial was a steady flow of red lights and headlights—a shock to Moon’s system after the high lonesome solitude of the far north where she spent much of her life. The ice floe was dispassionate and could crack loud as a gunshot, but there was silence there, too, and, when the sky was clear, the bowl of stars and aurora brought peace to Moon’s ever-wary soul.
D.C. had the opposite effect. On steroids. Being plunked down here in the middle of a rat race made her chest tight to the point she thought she might be having a heart attack. By the time Forestall took the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac into D.C. proper, Moon resolved that she would attend her little meetings, answer some bureaucrat’s questions, and then haul her ass out of here as fast as she could.
Then Independence Avenue and the National Mall appeared in the windshield and she began to wonder where they were going. Her theory had gone up through Navy channels, so she’d figured they’d put her up somewhere in Crystal City. There were some damned fine hotels there that gave the government rate and were always crawling with service members from all branches that had business at the Pentagon. Must all be full, she thought.
“What hotel am I at?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” the commander said, easy and honest, like they were old friends. “I’m thinking they have you at the Willard. It’s just a block away, but I’ll drive you over. It’s no problem at all.”
Moon had read somewhere about the Willard, but couldn’t place it.
“A block away from what?”
“The White House,” Forestall said. “That’s where your meeting’s at.”
Moon leaned forward, craning her neck over the front seat. “Wait, wait, wait. Commander, are you telling me that the national security adviser wants to meet with me at the White House about the noises I recorded under the ice?”
Forestall gave her a wry smile. “Not exactly.”
“Whew,” Moon said. “Because that would have given me a stroke.”
The commander laughed out loud. “I am so sorry,” he said. “Your meeting isn’t with the national security adviser. I thought you already knew . . .”
* * *
—
Jack Ryan had just walked into the Oval from the colonnade, still wearing his black Orioles baseball jacket against the evening chill, when Commander Forestall entered from the secretaries’ suite. Arnie van Damm, Mary Pat Foley, SecDef Bob Burgess, and Admiral Talbot, chief of naval operations, were already present.
Dr. Moon was not.
Ryan raised his hands, palms up, shooting a glance at Forestall. “Did she escape?”
“I apologize, Mr. President,” the commander said. “I have her signed in and set up with a visitor’s badge, but she insisted on calling her father before coming in. She’s standing outside the entrance by the press briefing room to make the call. Millie from Secret Service Uniform Division has an eye on her, but giving her space.”
Ryan sat down beside his desk.
He’d already been to the Residence and grabbed a quick dinner with Cathy—crab salad with quinoa that was tasty enough but left him craving crab cakes from Chick & Ruth’s in Annapolis. He’d changed out of his suit, thinking that since Dr. Moon was coming straight off a plane, she’d be more relaxed if he were dressed in jeans and an open-collared shirt.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” Forestall said. “She was very insistent.”
“It’s not your fault, Robbie.” Ryan waved off the apology, resting his elbows on the desk, looking glum as a schoolboy benched during a ballgame. “At our level, you get used to people waiting on you instead of the other way around.”
Forestall chuckled. “Our level, Mr. President?”
“You know what I mean,” Ryan said. “In charge of things.”
Van Damm crossed to the door. “I’ll go get her.”
“Give her a second,” Ryan said. “Everyone processes these meetings differently. What we have here before us, as my dad used to say, is the opportunity not to be assholes. He held leaders to a high standard, my old man. You were either a good leader
or a bad one. Good leaders could make mistakes, but the higher up the chain they were, the better my dad expected them to treat their subordinates.” Ryan’s eyes glistened. “Remember that anecdote about the Army private who was late for formation and he ran around the corner and knocked General Eisenhower to the ground. There they were, the bottom rung of the enlisted ladder, and the five-star supreme commander of Allied Forces. Remember what General Eisenhower said to the kid?”
No one answered.
“‘You better be glad I’m not a lieutenant,’” Ryan said. “I don’t even know if it’s true, but it’s a damned good story.”
* * *
—
Dr. Moon arrived two minutes later, giving a decidedly jaundiced eye to everyone in the room. Ryan took her hand and smiled. “I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he said, “except to say that we’re reading you in to some extremely sensitive subjects that shouldn’t be discussed with anyone outside this room unless you clear it with Commander Forestall.”
“Understood, Mr. President,” Moon said, her face a granite wall, impossible to read.
“All right, then.” Ryan took a seat in his customary chair by the fireplace and offered Moon the chair beside him while everyone else took the couches. “A lot of big, giant brains seem to be divided about whether your recordings depict something made by man or fish noises. Certain events have transpired that give weight to the ‘man-made’ argument, but you’re the closest person we have to the source. I’d like you to make your case.”
It took less than two minutes for Moon to recount what she’d heard and where she’d heard it, after which she glanced at Commander Forestall’s tablet. “Are the audio files I sent you on that?”
The room listened to a series of whistles and grunts and buzzing sounds, illustrated by a dancing bar graph on the computer screen that rose and fell with the pitch and volume of the sounds.
