Any straw or animal bedding had long since turned to dust, leaving nothing but the dirt ground and the blankets they’d brought with them for beds. Clark found a spot in the back corner of an old room.
There was a vacant hole in the thick clay wall a few feet to the left of his bed — a small window, or perhaps even a gun port. He had no firearm, but he could roll out of his bed quickly and the hole gave him a viable vantage point where he could see anyone who tried to approach from the road before they saw him.
This place would do for now.
He took the secure cell phone out of his pocket. The battery was dangerously low, and there was certainly no way to charge it here. Instead of calling, he entered the code to open the encrypted text capability behind his Walk-to-Me pedometer app and thumb-typed a quick message. It would disappear ten seconds after Midas read it.
Have package. All intact. RP Bravo.
Midas would know to try to meet at 0900, 1400, and 2100 local time. Other than that, there was nothing he could do.
Clark was a planner, a strategizer, and even a gambler if the stakes were high enough, but he didn’t waste much time on worry. He’d decide what to do next tomorrow, when a couple hours’ rest had cleared his head.
Hala, obviously accustomed to sleeping on the floor, made a nest for herself at Clark’s feet. She’d spoken only to give directions since they’d left the house, her collar always in her mouth, her arms trembling as she held on to his waist behind him on the scooter.
“Will you be warm enough?” Clark asked. He was unsure of what to say but felt like he needed to check on the poor kid before passing out himself. He wasn’t completely blind to the experience of having a daughter, but was honest enough with himself to know his wife had done the lion’s share of the parenting while he was traveling the world kicking ass for flag and freedom. What could he possibly say to any little girl to comfort her? That was Sandy’s job.
Hala Tohti was what? Ten years old? When Patsy was that age, she had a comfortable home and a warm bedroom full of Barbie dolls and posters of boy bands. Hala’s father was dead, her mother gone. Three hours ago, she’d witnessed her aunt stab one man to death in the neck and then helped her cut another man’s throat with a meat cleaver — and she still had the wherewithal to think of this place to hide.
Maybe this kind of kid deserved more bedtime stories, not less.
“I am fine,” she said. Her voice quivered as the events of the evening caught up with her. Nights were always the worst — for everyone. “Did you know that I am very good on the balance beam? The government even sent me to a special school.”
“You must be good, then,” Clark said. For some reason, her small, fragile voice in the darkness brought on him an immeasurable sadness.
“I was going to compete in the Olympics someday,” she said, “but I do not think that will happen now.”
Clark swallowed, having a little trouble speaking. It was odd the things that got to him lately.
Hala saved him. “May I ask a question?”
Clark rolled up on his side, resting his elbow on the ground as he peered through the dusty darkness at the lump of blankets. He swallowed again, working very hard to smooth the gravel in his voice. Many years of being John Clark had given his personality more jagged edges than he liked to admit.
“Of course,” he said.
“Am I…” Now she sat up, looking back at him. “Am I your prisoner?”
“Oh, no, no,” Clark said. “Not at all. I am going to get you to safety.”
“That is what you told me at my aunt’s house,” the girl said, breathless, like she might get up and run at any moment. “But one can never be sure with men. They give you cake and tell you lies.”
“That is true about many men,” Clark said. “But not me. I am running, too.” He gave a soft chuckle, hoping it would help to calm her. “And I have no cake.”
“And no lies?” Stone sober now.
“No lies,” Clark said. “We’re in this together.”
She sighed and lay back down. “The Bingtuan have eyes everywhere. How will we get away?”
“Truthfully,” Clark said, “I’m not sure. But we’ll meet my friend tomorrow. We can decide what to do then. You should get some rest if you can.”
“Okay,” she said in the darkness. He could tell she was sucking on her shirt collar again. Poor kid.
Clark pulled the blanket up over his shoulder. He was so exhausted he figured he might even get two or three hours’ sleep on the uneven dirt floor before he woke up with his old bones half crippled.
Somewhere in the darkness, the tiny claws of a rat clicked across the dusty floor. The room smelled of a thousand years of camel dung and far more recent rodent urine, leaving Clark to wonder what kind of biblical plagues he might breathe in while he slept. He shrugged away the thought and rested his head on his outstretched arm. It didn’t matter. Considering the present situation, a plague wasn’t what would kill him.
25
CIA case officer Leigh Murphy ended the call from Adam Yao and leaned back in her chair to work out a plan for her getaway. Dunny blond hair hung just above smallish shoulders. There was some curl to it, but not enough to get her noticed. Now, throw on an LBD — little black dress — instead of her usual faded jeans and loose hooded sweatshirt, dab a little makeup around her green eyes, and she could get herself noticed, all right. She’d learned early in life how to, as her mother put it, “turn her wiggle off and on.” A good skill to have as an intelligence officer.
Fredrick Rask, the station chief, slouched in his office. The mini-blinds were up on his window, and he watched the bullpen intently, homing in on her. Rask must have sensed she was up to something. He licked his chops like a male lion waiting for the lioness to go out and hunt because he was too lazy to get off his own fat ass and kill something. That was Fredrick Rask’s specialty — benefitting through the efforts of others.
Murphy scribbled the address Adam Yao had given her on a piece of scratch paper and stuffed it into her pocket while she thought through a couple of possible approaches. It was going to be touchy, talking to this particular guy — but that was her strength. Besides, Albania had been on her dream sheet of posts from the beginning, and Adam Yao had helped her get here. She owed him. A lot.
She’d known Adam since Kenya, her first foreign posting after graduating from CIA’s Career Training Program and Camp Peary, or The Farm — the facility officially referred to as an Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity. Yao had come up with a lead on a Chinese businessman smuggling a shipment of tramadol from Guangzhou to Mombasa via private charter. Dope smugglers, as deplorable as they were, didn’t exactly fall into a CIA case officer’s wheelhouse — except this particular load of dope was being smuggled by the son of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army general in Guangzhou. The PLA, or at least high-ranking members of it, appeared to be behind the operation — and that information could fill in some big puzzle pieces for the analysts at Langley and Liberty Crossing.
Murphy was fresh to the field then, but she’d been identified by her station chief as a rising star — able to read and recruit assets, from the Chinese ambassador’s Kenyan housekeeper to a major in the National Police Service. With the help of Murphy’s contacts, Yao tipped the correct dominos to get them all falling in just the right order. In the end, they seized over a hundred pounds of a fentanyl analogue known as China White — worth almost two million dollars — and five peach crates containing seven hundred and fifty thousand tablets of the synthetic opiate tramadol. The fentanyl would have ended up in relatively affluent cities like Nairobi or Johannesburg, where at least some of the population could afford heroin. Slums along the East Africa coast provided outlets for the tramadol. No one involved was under the mistaken impression that they’d suddenly won a drug war — but they’d won this battle, and maybe, just maybe, the tide was held back for a week or two before some other group filled the void in the marketplace. At the very least, they took several million dollars out of the pockets of evil men — while gaining useful intelligence about the PLA’s activities in East Africa.