Yaqub Feng sat in the rearmost seat of the windowless Chevrolet van at once terrified and thrilled by the proximity of the young woman crammed in beside him. Surely still in her teens, she wore a great deal of green eye makeup. She sucked on a mint that did little to hide the horrible breath that came with being dragged from her bed and put to work in the van. Forcing a pained smile, she shifted back and forth as if she had a stomachache.
A commercial flight from Kashgar to Dubrovnik took nearly twenty-four hours, but Jiàn Zŏu had used his connections to get them aboard a direct cargo flight taking just over seven hours. They’d arrived in the wee hours of the morning, likely about the time the girls had fallen asleep from their duties the night before.
Ehmet sat at the far end of the seat, talking on a mobile phone while he terrorized the girl who was crammed between him and Yaqub’s redhead. He wore a hooked, claw-like blade fitted to a leather cuff that laced around his palm. Ehmet had a sense for all things deadly, and noticed it in the center console when they’d been picked up at the airport. He began to toy with it immediately, dropping veiled hints until Scuric, the Croatian driver, had gifted it to him. Called a Srbosjek or “Serb cutter,” the hooked blade was designed to harvest wheat, but during World War II it had earned a reputation as a weapon for cutting thousands of Serbian throats.
The bony child next to Ehmet knew exactly what it was and shrank from the evil blade as if it was on fire. Ehmet moved his eyebrows up and down, mocking her fear as he drew the dull backside of the tip across the pale flesh of her trembling shoulder. The pitiful redhead next to Yaqub watched in a sort of blank stupor, as if she could not comprehend where exactly she was or why she was there. Jiàn Zŏu sat in the next seat forward, eyes watching the road. He’d declined the offer of a woman, earning him a string of derisive curses from Ehmet. Yaqub watched the sick thing rocking in pain beside him and wished he would have declined as well.
Anton Scuric, the Croat behind the wheel, glanced in the rearview mirror as he turned the van up a winding single-track into the scrubby limestone hills an hour northwest of Dubrovnik. A bald man with a crooked smile, he had a long and oddly misshapen skull — as if his head had been run sideways through the wringer on an old-time washing machine. A red-and-white checkerboard tattoo of the Croat flag covered the side of his neck, but he seemed far more gangster businessman than ardent nationalist. Scuric had made a small fortune during the Homeland War, smuggling the guns and drugs that were so plentiful when staples like food and heating fuel were in such short supply. He traded with fellow Croats, Serbians, and even Bosniak Muslims, but drew the line at working with Gypsies. Still, Jiàn Zŏu had thought it best to keep secret the fact that the Fengs were Muslim, just to be on the safe side.
According to the snakehead, Scuric was the best in the business when it came to fraudulent passports — equal parts scientist and artist. Apparently, the two men had a long history and Scuric was more than happy to work on credit providing them with passports made from stolen Hong Kong SAR blank documents — for double his usual fee. Apparently, the Croat had found it lucrative to use his established smuggling routes to traffic in humans as well as drugs. The Serbian girls he’d thrown in out of the goodness of his heart. Yaqub did not see much added value.
It had been over a year since Yaqub had been so near a woman. It was hot outside the swaying van and though the air-conditioning was blowing at full force, the young Uyghur felt himself sweating through his shirt. He wasn’t sure if it was the cloud of dust that sifted up through the floor or the smell of cheap alcohol and perfume drifting up from the child beside him, but if they had to travel much longer, he knew he would be sick.
He patted the trembling young woman on the thigh, below the hem of her tight shorts where it dug into her pale skin. He’d hoped that the touch might convey some sort of understanding between them, perhaps let her know that he was not an animal, that he did not intend to hurt her. Maybe she might even enjoy her time with him. She winced at his touch, but turned her head to look at him, as if she’d been warned to be cooperative. Her green eyes were wide, overflowing with tears and terror. Saliva dried at the pinched corners of her heavily rouged lips.
“Where are you from?” Yaqub asked in halting English.
“Bosnia,” she whispered. “I find work… Italia.”
“Shut up, Amna,” Scuric barked from the behind the wheel. “You have found work here.” He launched into a stream of invective Yaqub did not understand. It did not matter. Her name alone put a pit in his stomach. Amna meant “safety” in Arabic. From Bosnia with an Arabic name, she was not Serbian after all but a Bosniak Muslim. Still, Yaqub thought, struggling for a way to console his nagging conscience, she must have done something very sinful to end up working as a prostitute in another country.
He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at her, and focused on his brother’s conversation.
“… Is that so?… Well, someone will have to kill them then.” Ehmet laughed maniacally as if he’d just made the world’s funniest joke. “It may as well be us. I am telling you it would be good practice…. Of course, I understand.” He handed the phone up to Jiàn Zŏu. “Here,” Ehmet said. “He wants to discuss the details.”
Ehmet pulled the girl closer and nibbled on her cheek, biting hard enough to make her yelp. He shoved her away, brandishing the Serb cutter before leaning over the seat to look out the windshield for a moment and then falling back into the seat. He let his head fall sideways to peer at Yaqub. It was Ehmet’s way, always moving, unable to sit still for very long.
“Why so glum, my brother?” he said in English so the girls would be able to understand him. “We have our mission before us and a night with these acceptable if not overly beautiful whores.” He elbowed his girl in the ribs. “You are much too skinny, but at least you have good teeth. Smile a little more and maybe I can forget the rest of you.” He looked up at Yaqub. “Ranjhani tells me that a private aircraft filed a flight plan to Dubrovnik a few hours after we left Kashgar. It seems that the people following us are a determined lot.”
“Do we know who they are?” Yaqub said, wondering who could be after them so fast — surely not the Pakistanis.
“He gave me some name,” Ehmet said, “but it meant nothing to me. I told him to let us kill them but he assured me that he will take care of it. Evidently, he has some Albanians who owe him a favor.”
Ehmet turned to look directly at Yaqub, suddenly very serious. He switched to Chinese. “Why is your countenance so dark, my brother?”
Yaqub shot a glance at the quivering girl beside him. “You know that I am fully committed to our jihad. Our cause is just… but this… We are good Muslims. To lay with a woman when we would die as martyrs seems to me a grave sin.”
Ehmet leaned forward, nodding toward Scuric, the Croatian driver. “Many here hate Islam,” he said, still in Chinese. “Mohammed himself, peace be unto him, has said that it is better to play the sinner than to be discovered.”
Yaqub nodded. Taqiyya, or lying to deceive a nonbeliever like Scuric, was not only acceptable but just and honorable as well.
“Besides,” Ehmet said, as he pushed up his girl’s short skirt and gave her thigh a pinch. “As far as lies go, this is most pleasant.”
Jiàn Zŏu ended the call and turned to pass the phone back to Ehmet. He opened his mouth to speak, but turned back around without a word.
“Go ahead and act like our eunuch friend if you want, brother.” Ehmet laughed, smiling at both girls. “But these whores have chosen their sinful lives. Allah will certainly punish them, so why not be the instrument of that punishment?”