Lately the Uzbek had been buying a lot of beer and he wasn’t happy about it. So he’d taken to insulting his opponents, after which he’d claim he’d just been joking. That wasn’t what bothered Mark, though. It was that he did it during the game.
Mark exchanged a glace with the Russian. The Russian then shot the Uzbek a look that simultaneously managed to convey aggression, boredom, and pitiless disdain. The Kyrgyz almost certainly did have extended relations who still herded sheep, and who likely still believed in at least some aspects of paganism. So the insult, on top of disturbing the game, was also a bit of a low blow.
“Play,” insisted the Kyrgyz.
Suddenly Mark’s cell phone rang. He was supposed to have turned it off before the game started, but he’d forgotten to do so.
His Russian opponent threw his hands up in the air. The implication was clear — first the insufferable Uzbek and now this.
“I’m sorry,” said Mark. “I’ll turn it off.” But when he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he saw the call was from Daria. “Actually, I have to take this.”
“Chert poberi,” said the Russian. The devil take you.
“Hey,” said Mark to Daria.
“I need your help.”
Mark could hear kids crying in the background and a woman talking loudly, about what he couldn’t tell though.
“Now?”
“Yes, now. There’s been—”
The Kyrgyz slapped down a narde piece, clearly frustrated by Mark’s behavior.
Daria asked, “Are you playing narde?”
“I dropped off the paloo.”
“I thought you said you played narde this morning?”
“I did.” He took a sip of his beer. “What’s up?”
“Someone took one of the kids from the orphanage. I think they’re headed your way, and I need you to intercept them.”
“Back up. Who took a kid?”
Mark’s Russian opponent groaned and with both arms gestured to the breach of narde protocol that was taking place in front of him.
“Two guys,” said Daria. “One of them claimed to be the boy’s uncle.”
Mark figured this was just some family custody struggle gone bad. After all, this was the same country where wannabe husbands occasionally just kidnapped their future brides rather than proposing to them. It wouldn’t shock him to learn that someone had circumvented the law to speed up an adoption process. “Well, was he?”
“I don’t know. Either way, he can’t just take a child from an orphanage. That’s kidnapping.”
“OK. But now you want me to…”
“Intercept them. Stop them. I need your help.”
Mark recognized that passionate tone of voice in Daria. He’d heard it before — whenever she believed that some grave injustice had taken place, or was talking about what a morally bankrupt monstrosity the Iranian government was.
He knew that arguing with her would be pointless. “All right.” He paused, but just for a moment. “I’m on it.” As he stood up, he downed what was left of his beer in one long swig, then, cupping his hand over the phone, said, “I lose, beers are on me,” and left a thousand Kyrgyz soms — about twenty dollars — on the table.
The Uzbek shook his head, disgusted. Even the Kyrgyz looked appalled.
Mark walked out of the Shanghai, trying to hear Daria over the angry complaints of his narde partners. “What do we know about this boy?”
“I didn’t know him. Nazira says he’s only been here a day.”
“Who’s Nazira?”
“She’s the director of the orphanage. I’ve told you about her.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“This is all kind of weird. She told me the child only speaks Arabic.”
“What’s a kid who only speaks Arabic doing in Kyrgyzstan?”
“Like I said, it’s kind of weird.”
“This just happened?”
“Well, they showed up two hours ago and tried to give Nazira ten thousand dollars in exchange for her releasing the boy to them.”
“What the hell?” Ten thousand dollars was a small fortune in Kyrgyzstan.
“Yeah, I know. Nazira managed to stall them for a while—”
“She didn’t just take the money?”
“No, she’s honest, and, frankly, I think it was a large enough sum that it scared her. A couple hundred dollars and we might have had a problem. Anyway, she said they needed to wait until I got here with the adoption papers, but they got impatient and just took off with the boy. One of them had a knife and threatened Nazira with it. She said they left here twenty minutes ago, so I probably won’t be able to catch up to them, but they’re headed your way so you might be able to intercept them.”
“How do we know they’re coming my way?”
“Nazira tried to follow them on a bike,” said Daria. “She says she got far enough to see that they turned toward Bishkek. It’s worth a shot.”
One main road led all the way from Balykchy to Bishkek. For the first half of the drive, there were virtually no turnoffs or alternate routes.
“Did you call the cops?” he asked.
“They were pulling up when I got here.”
“And?”
“And what do you think?”
“That bad?”
“They say I need to go down to the station to file an incident report before they can take any action.”
If Daria hadn’t been so damn honest, thought Mark, she would have just handed the cops a couple thousand soms to cut through the red tape. But it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Even with a bribe, the cops’ reaction time would have been too slow.
“All right. I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
By this time, Mark had reached his Mercedes, which he kept parked on the street near his condo. As he climbed into the driver’s seat and inserted his key into the ignition, he asked, “What kind of car am I looking for?”
“Tan Toyota Camry.”
“The two guys inside?”
“I think.”
“Kyrgyz?”
“No. Foreign, but they spoke Turkish well enough for Nazira to understand them. They spoke Arabic to the boy. The younger one claimed to be the boy’s uncle.”
“Guns?”
“Not that I know of, but be careful.”
“Always.”
“Thanks.” Daria sounded relieved. “You’ll call?”
“As soon as I know anything.”
4
Mark’s Mercedes clattered loudly as he hurtled down Route 365 at ninety miles an hour, feeling a little buzzed from the two half-liter beers he’d downed at the Shanghai.
His car, he’d come to realize, was a Potemkin village — nice to look at, especially with the Mercedes hood ornament, but pretty crappy on the inside. He’d bought it used upon arriving in Kyrgyzstan, before he’d started making any serious cash.
Which meant he’d saved a couple thousand dollars, but now had to deal with no power windows, a cheap plastic interior, a fickle heater, and a steering wheel on the wrong side of the car because the used first-world cars that got shipped to places like Central Asia to be driven into the ground included those from Britain.
He passed a turnoff for a border crossing to Kazakhstan, where soldiers were standing in front of a gate that blocked access to a two-lane bridge that spanned the Chu River. He saw no tan Camry, so he kept going.
What had been a wide, newly paved road transitioned abruptly to a much older, narrower one hemmed in by low mountains. Along this stretch, Chinese laborers were building big stone retaining walls to contain landslides, preparing to widen and repave this section of road the way they had the previous one.