“I’ve read about them,” Clark said. “On one shoulder the rifle, on the other the hoe.”
“Or one boot on the neck of anyone who doesn’t bend to Han Chinese will,” Yao added. “They have a lock on Kashgar, that’s for sure. Still, a mother’s love and all. There’s a good chance Medina Tohti will surface there at some point.”
“You feel like we can get in?” Chavez asked.
“As tourists,” Yao said. “Some professional eyes in case Medina Tohti does show up — or at least poke around and see what you can find out. I have a couple of assets there, but they lack training.”
“Maybe Lisanne and I,” Clark said. “While the rest of you get ready to head for parts yet unknown.”
Robertson perked up.
Ding nodded in agreement. “If you think she’s ready, Boss.”
“I do,” Clark said. “It’ll be the perfect cover — an old man and his—”
“Nurse,” Midas joked.
Clark gave one of his low and slow chuckles, the kind Chavez thought sounded particularly deadly. “I was going to say an old man and his lady friend.”
Midas raised both hands as if in surrender. “You know I’m only kidding, Mr. C.”
Clark’s eyes narrowed. “Is that right…”
Yao’s voice came across the speaker. “I suppose you and Ms. Robertson could be the ones to go. But I’m thinking Kashgar will be the easier place to provide workable cover legends. Yeah, the XPCC goons are everywhere, but Beijing likes to show off how culturally sensitive China can be. Forget that they’ve rounded up over a million Uyghurs for ‘reeducation.’ They’ve got this whole Potemkin village vibe going in Kashgar, demonstrating to the world how China pulls its ethnic minorities out of the squalor they’ve been living in for centuries and provides them with modern housing and better living. They still welcome tourists there. I’ll blend in wherever this mission takes us, but if the rest of you have to go into Urumqi hunting Tohti and the Wuming, two couples would draw less attention than a bunch of dudes.”
“So,” Clark said. “You’re saying I should take one of the guys with me to Kashgar.”
“I believe that dynamic would draw less attention there than in other parts of China,” Yao said. “I could get you set up with Canadian passports and the necessary travel visas.”
“Okay, then,” Clark said. “Midas, you’re with me. You get to be my nurse.”
“Now, Mr. C.,” Midas said. “No hard feelings, right?”
Clark gave him a narrow grin. “Time provides the sweetest revenge. You’ll get old yourself one day, youngster — barring any unforeseen circumstances…”
“Well, shit,” Midas said. “Nice knowing you guys…”
“How will you get us in?” Clark asked.
“I have a contact with Immigration and Visas in Beijing,” Yao said. “A low-level functionary who helps me get visas on short notice. I never ask him for anything sensitive. He’s an unwitting agent — has no idea he’s helping out the evil American. As far as he knows, he’s doing me a favor and acting as a middleman to help rich Canadians who want to tour China without all the red tape. I helped him out of a little jam involving some video of him and his boss’s wife a few years ago, so he feels some amount of indebtedness toward me.”
“Let me guess,” Ryan said. “You’re the one who took the video in the first place?”
“I’ll leave the honey traps to the Chinese,” Yao said. “But I may have taken advantage of a situation that my asset got himself into on his own—”
“Canadian tourists,” Midas said. “So what’s our cover?”
“You’ll go in separately,” Yao said. “John will be retired, out seeing the world. Midas, I’ll set you up as a former Canadian Forces officer, since you have that military bearing anyway. Easier to explain if it’s in the open. Your girlfriend is a doctor.”
“Girlfriend?” Midas said.
“She was supposed to meet you in Kashgar,” Yao said. “But she got called away at the last minute and wasn’t able to make it. I’ll have tickets for her as well, to backstop the story in the unlikely event anyone checks. Your rich girlfriend is paying for the trip anyway, so you figure you’ll just take advantage of the vacay and see the sights.”
“A kept man with a sugar mama,” Clark said, a little smugly. “I can see that.”
Midas groaned. “So this is how it’s gonna go. I make one little joke…”
“Wherever we all end up,” Chavez said, bringing everyone back on track, “we’re likely going in slick. Traveling with a weapon once we’re inside the PRC is one thing, smuggling one in on short notice is almost impossible.”
Yao spoke again. “Depending on where we go, I should be able to outfit us up with some light weapons once we’re in. John, one of my contacts can set you and Midas up as well.”
“There’ll be plenty of weapons lying around Kashgar,” Clark said.
“A lot of Silk Road influence,” Midas noted. “Cleavers and long butcher knives…”
“Pretty sure my contact can do a little better than a meat cleaver,” Yao said. “I’ve seen to it that she has a number of useful items in her arsenal in the event any of my friends happen to stop by with the right introduction.”
“And we’ll have the odd Chinese pistol,” Clark said. “Probably used by old Chiang Kai-shek himself, and maybe a Kalashnikov or two we can commandeer if the need presents itself. The way I hear it, Kashgar is going to be big fun — like Indiana Jones, except with People’s Armed Police and XPCC goons instead of Nazis.”
“That’s on the nose, John,” Adam Yao said. “Remember what I said about the boot on the neck of their people. According to my contacts on the ground, there are a couple of things going on with Medina Tohti’s sister that you should know.”
14
Ten-year-old Hala Tohti chewed on the embroidered collar of her loose cotton shirt while she chopped onions with the oversized cleaver as if her life depended on it. The cleaver was four times as big as her small hand, but she was used to the work and wielded it like an expert. Her uncle had always kept the cleaver razor sharp, before he’d been hauled away by the Bingtuan bastards, and he’d not been gone long enough for it to lose its edge. Everyone knew the Bingtuan. Teachers, police, farm superintendents: Anyone with power was part of the Bingtuan — even the man who ran the petrol station where Hala’s aunt filled up her scooter. Hala was not sure what a bastard was, but her aunt had used it to describe the two men from Kashgar City government who’d visited her home every week for over a month, so it must have meant something ugly.
Hala had chewed on her collar when she was nervous for as long as she could remember. Now, since her father was dead and her mother had run away, the only time she stopped chewing was when her aunt gave her a swat.
Zulfira was only twelve years older, barely twenty-two. To Hala, she felt more like an older sister than an aunt. Zulfira’s husband had been taken away two months earlier, to the same place they’d taken Hala’s father. No one had heard from him since that night. The fat Bingtuan bureaucrat named Mr. Suo told Zulfira that her husband had been detained and sent for reeducation because of something the authorities had found on his phone. One of the Three Evils — terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism — but they never said which one.
Hala’s uncle had been a quiet man who kept to himself. He paid his taxes without complaint, and was not overly religious. Even at ten, Hala knew the only “evil” he’d committed was being married to a pretty woman who fat Suo, the bureaucrat pig, wanted for himself.