An hour later Ch’ao’s phone rang. He picked it up. It was Alston explaining that he’d talked to everyone on the team and the decision was unanimous. They would compete. “We’re here to play. Not to hide.”
He’d no sooner hung up than he got a call from the Russian, saying that his team, too, would be participating on opening day.
Sighing, Ch’ao hung up thinking: No wonder the Cold War lasted so long, if the Kremlin and White House back then were like these two — stubborn and foolish as donkeys.
Around 9 A.M. on the first day of the games a man bicycled up to a low dusty building near Chaoyang Park, which was, coincidentally, a venue for one of the events: the volleyball competition. The man paused, hopped off and leaned the bike against the wall. He looked up the street, filled with many such bicycles, and observed the park, where security officers patrolled.
He kept his face emotionless but, in fact, he was incensed that the Chinese had won the Olympics this year. Furious. The man was a Uyghur, pronounced Wee-gur; these were a Turkic-speaking people from the interior of China, who had long fought for their independence — mostly politically but occasionally through terrorism.
He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and slipped his stubby finger inside. He found the key that had been hidden there when he was palmed the pack and, looking around, undid a padlock on the large door, pulled it open and stepped inside.
There he found the green car, one of the small new ones that were flooding China. He resented the car as much as the Olympics because it represented more money and trade for the country that oppressed his people.
He opened the trunk. There he found several hundred posters, urging independence for the Uyghur people. They were crude but they got the point across. He then opened another box and examined the contents, which excited him much more than the Mao-style rhetoric: thirty kilos of a yellow, clay-like substance, which gave off a pungent aroma. He stared at the plastic explosives for a long moment, then put the lids back on the boxes.
He consulted the map and noted exactly where he was to meet the man who would supply the detonators. He started the car and drove carefully out of the warehouse, not bothering to close and lock the door. He also left behind his bicycle. He felt a bit sad about that — he’d had it for a year — but, considering the direction his life was about to take, he certainly wouldn’t need it any longer.
“Look at you,” said Gregor, eyeing his young protégé’s training jacket and sweatpants, a Russian flag bold and clear on the shoulder. From a young age Yuri had been taught not to pay too much attention to his appearance but today he’d spent considerable time — after warming up, of course — to shaving and combing his hair.
The teenager smiled shyly, as Gregor saluted.
They were outside the stadium, near a security fence, watching the thousands of spectators head in serpentine lines toward the stadium. Near the two men, buses continued to disgorge the athletes as well, who were walking through their own entrance with their gear bags over their shoulders. Some were nervous, some jovial. All were eager.
Gregor consulted his watch. The Russian team would be taking pictures with the heads of the Olympic committee in a half hour, just before the games began. Yuri would, of course, be there, front and center. “You should go. But first…I have something for you.”
“You have, sir?”
“Yes.”
Gregor reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bag. He extracted a gold-colored strip of satin.
“Here, this is for you.”
Yuri exclaimed, “It’s the second ribbon!”
Gregor was not given to soft expressions of face but he allowed himself a faint smile. “It is indeed.” He took it from the boy, tied a knot and slipped it over his neck.
“Now, go make your countrymen proud.”
“I will, sir.”
Gregor turned and stalked off in that distracted way of his, as if you’d slipped from his mind the instant he turned. Though Yuri knew that was never the case.
The Uyghur found the intersection he’d sought and parked the green Chevy. Ahead of him, a mile away, he could see part of the Olympic stadium. It did indeed look like a bird nest.
For vultures, he thought. Pleased with his cleverness.
Ten minutes until the man was to meet him here. He was Chinese and would be wearing black slacks and a yellow Mao jacket. The Uyghur scanned the people walking by on the streets. He hated it in Beijing. The sooner…
His thoughts faded as he saw motion in the rearview mirror.
Police were running toward him, pointing.
These were not your typical Beijing police, nor Olympic guards in their powder-blue jumpsuits. These were military security, in full battle gear, training machine guns his way. Shouting and motioning people off the street.
No! I’ve been betrayed! he thought.
He reached for the ignition.
Which was when he and the car vanished in a fraction of a second, becoming whatever a trunk full of plastic explosives turns you into.
Yuri Umarov cringed, like everyone else around him, when the bang came from somewhere south of the stadium.
The decorative lights around the stadium went out.
A few car alarms began to bleat.
And Yuri began to run.
He hurdled the security fence but the guards were, like everyone else, turning toward the explosion, wondering if a threat would follow from that direction.
Then he hit the ground in the secure zone and began running toward the stadium, sprinting for all he was worth, pounding along the concrete, then the grass.
Thirty seconds.
That was all the time, his mentor Gregor had told him, that he would have to sprint to the service door in the back of the stadium and open it up before the backup generators kicked in and the alarm systems went back online.
Breath coming fast, a machine gun firing, rocks avalanching down a mountain.
His lungs burned.
Counting the seconds: Twenty-two, twenty-one.
Not looking at his watch, not looking at the guards, the spectators.
Looking at only one thing — something he couldn’t even see: the second ribbon.
Eighteen seconds, seventeen.
Faster, faster.
The second ribbon…
Eleven, ten, nine…
Then, sucking in the hot, damp air, sweat streaming, he came to the service door. He ripped a short crowbar from his pocket, jimmied the lock open and leapt into the cold, dim storeroom inside the belly of the stadium.
Six, five, four…
He slammed the door shut and made sure the alarm sensors aligned.
Click.
The lights popped back on. The alarm system glowed red.
He said a brief prayer of thanks.
Yuri crouched, stretching his agonized legs, struggling to breathe in the musty air around him.
After five minutes he rose and stepped to one of the interior doors, which weren’t alarmed, and he entered the brightly lit corridor. He made his way past the shops and stands. He finally stepped outside into the stadium itself, which opened below him.
It was magnificent. He was chilled at the sight.
People were once more streaming into the stadium, apparently reassured by an announcement that the brief power outage was due to a minor technical difficulty.
Laughing to himself at the comment, Yuri oriented himself. He found the place on the stadium grounds, at the foot of the dignitaries’ boxes, where the Russian team was milling about, awaiting their photo session with officials.
Wonderful, he reflected. And there was also a video camera. God willing, it would be a live transmission and would broadcast throughout the world his shout: “Death to the Russian oppressors! Long live the Republic of Chechnya!”