In case anyone happened to be watching, he’d used his phone to take the obligatory YouTube video of his Chinese vacation, getting a 360 of his room. Pinhole cameras in the walls would show up as shiny dots. Lenses in other objects — smoke alarms, wall hangings — might or might not give themselves away.
Even so, covert phone conversations from a hotel room in Communist China were too big a risk, so Midas waited until he got to the market — Rally Point Bravo, where Clark’s message had said to meet.
He’d just begun to bring Hendley up to speed on the new turn of events when the goatherd bosh-boshed his way past.
“We’ve got an emergency bugout plan,” Midas said. “But it didn’t take the package into account. We should be meeting up soon.”
“Very well,” Hendley said, obviously not wanting to end the connection and be left in the dark. “Three dead, you say?”
“As far as I know,” Midas said. “We passed a bunch of XPCC armored personnel carriers and troop trucks rolling into the neighborhoods behind Jiafang market this morning on the way in from the airport. My driver said he heard through the cabbie network that three officials were murdered with knives. XPCC and cops are saying it was Uyghur terrorists. I guess they’re already rounding up the usual suspects, at least the ones who aren’t already in detention camps.”
“Any word that a foreigner might be involved?”
“None so far,” Midas said, sidestepping a fresh pile of what he believed to be camel shit. “You need to cut back on the fruit, Mister,” he said under his breath.
“Pardon?”
“Sorry. Nothing,” Midas said. “The most important point is, our friend says he’s intact. Knowing him, I’m sure he has some kind of plan worked…”
Midas’s voice trailed off as he watched a half-dozen SWAT officers in black BDUs and helmets swagger through the crowd. Each had a small rifle Midas recognized as a QCW-05, a Chinese-made SMG, slung diagonally across his chest. Long wooden riot clubs hung from rings on their Sam Browne belts. The mass of marketgoers parted in front of them. Midas glanced to his left, and saw another group of officers, this one moving down the next aisle where food vendors sold grilled versions of the same animals that were still on the hoof just a few feet away.
It was clear from the way they scrutinized the crowds that these officers weren’t just out on patrol. They were looking for someone in particular.
At the other end of the line, Hendley grew agitated at the long silence. “What is it?”
“Have to go, Boss,” Midas said. “I got officers in hats and bats strolling around hunting for somebody. I need to make sure it’s not our mutual friend.”
Midas promised to check in soon and ended the connection, stuffing the phone into his coat pocket. Strolling slowly, he checked out the different livestock and food vendors, keeping tabs on the nearest group of XPCC troops out of the corner of his eye. A grizzled little man in a dark suit coat and four-cornered doppa hat stroked a wispy beard with one hand and held up a straight razor with the other, offering to give Midas a shave. Midas smiled and shook his head. Yeah, sitting down in these crowds and letting a stranger put a blade to his throat didn’t seem very tactical at the moment. A woman selling hot soup called him over with a flick of her wrist and held out a steaming cardboard cup. He figured soup from a boiling cauldron was about the best chance he had not to catch street-meat two-step. It was good, salty, with a few more globules of fat floating on the surface than he was used to, but it warmed his hands, and carrying it made him look like a tourist. Just yards from the soup lady, a man in a ratty military-surplus coat butchered a black goat. A pool of fresh blood in the dust said he’d just killed the thing. When Midas drew closer, he realized the hatchet that the man used to cut the animal was connected to a concrete block with a length of chain — one of the Bingtuan’s prohibitions about Uyghurs possessing weapons.
He checked his watch. Almost 0900.
While the bulk of the livestock market visitors were Uyghurs, there were plenty of tourists, Han Chinese and European alike, oohing and aahing and snapping photos at every camel and sheep. The guy with the chained hatchet got a lot of attention. Midas took a photo there, too, more to get a pic of the officers behind the man than the bloody carnage.
At first Midas thought the troops were singling out European tourists specifically, but further study made him realize they weren’t zeroed in on any particular ethnicity at all. Their focus appeared to be on taller men who happened to be with children. It made sense. Clark would have worn a hat that covered his face, but they must have security camera footage that showed a big guy in the company of Hala Tohti.
One of the policemen caught Midas looking in his direction and glared, a challenge to come closer. Midas smiled, ducked his head subserviently like a nervous tourist would — all the while thinking he could surely take this skinny dude, body armor and all. The real problem was Rally Point Bravo, where he was supposed to meet Clark, was on the other side of this officer and his heavily armed friends. With any luck, Clark had seen the patrols and was staying away.
Midas made a right, nearly running into a different patrol. He smiled again, stifling the urge to speed up. That would look like he was trying to avoid them. Instead, he worked his way in the opposite direction from the rally point, taking the long way around. Clark would wait fifteen minutes before he left the area. Midas would stand off and watch, approaching only if they were in the clear — which wasn’t looking very likely, since the place was crawling with XPCC cops.
Midas stopped to look at a rack of colorful pashmina scarves as two more officers sauntered by, chatting with each other like they were at the beach instead of an occupying force. Their wooden batons rattled against black riot armor.
The Uyghur woman behind the scarves smiled at him, covering her sales bases. “Three for five euro. Two for five dollar.”
Midas bought three. “A lot of police,” he said, giving the lady a smiling grimace as he gave her a U.S. five-dollar bill. “Did something happen?”
She folded the scarves neatly and put them in a flimsy plastic bag. “Nothing happen,” she said. “Always police. They here every day.”
Midas thanked the woman and walked on, swinging the sack full of scarves in one hand while he sipped the fatty soup with the other — the perfect tourist cover.
“Mr. C.,” Midas said, blowing a blossom of vapor into the cold, musty-smelling air. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
Clark tapped Hala on the shoulder so she’d follow when he left the rally point. Midas was twenty minutes late, which meant they’d have to try again at 1400. There was too much law enforcement roaming the livestock market to tarry in one spot for long. They needed to get somewhere out of sight — away from the dead man at the dilapidated caravanserai.
With his phone battery near zero, he had no way of knowing if Midas was free to move around the city or if he’d picked up a tail. There was always a chance he’d been compromised. Clark would cross that bridge when he came to it, but in the meantime, he decided to pay a visit to Adam Yao’s contact, a woman named Cai, who sold handwoven carpets. Her presence at the market was the reason Clark had picked it as one of the meeting points in the first place.