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Dawn was not far away, but daylight came slowly in the highlands. He sucked in the crystalline air and rediscovered the strength he’d once acquired in this solitary land. This was a place without moderation—black nights, brilliant days—the air perilously thin, the sun hot, the shadows stabbing the earth like black ice.
A hundred meters away Batang slept. Maybe three thousand lived there, and not much had changed. Whitewashed buildings adorned with red ocher and flat roofs. A market town, busy with pilgrims, sheep, yaks, and traders. One of many that dotted the sporadic green carpets among the gray peaks, scattered like dice on the landscape. Cultural connections here ran far more to the south and west than east. Truly a world unto itself, which was why the Ba had long ago chosen this as its home.
He started to walk across the packed earth, Viktor at his side.
The helicopter lifted off into a salmon-colored sky. Rotors faded and the meadow lapsed into a deep silence.
Yecheng was a mere thirty-minute flight north.
Hopefully, there’d been success there and the chopper would return with Ni Yong and Lev Sokolov. He was dressed in his same filthy clothes. On the flight he’d forced himself to eat a few of the onboard rations. He was prepared. Ready for this day. One he’d been anticipating for two decades.
“What is going to happen?” Viktor asked.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
Viktor stopped. “Doesn’t concern me? I killed a pilot for you. I delivered Malone, Vitt, and Ni Yong for you. I played out your game, exactly as you ordered. And this doesn’t concern me?”
He, too, stopped, but did not turn around. Instead, he allowed his gaze to focus on the distant mountains, west, beyond Batang, and what he knew waited there. “Do not try my patience.”
He did not need to face Viktor to know that a gun was trained on him. He’d allowed him to keep the weapon.
“You plan to shoot me?” he calmly asked.
“Could solve many problems, not the least of which is your ingratitude.”
He kept his back to Viktor. “Is that what the Russians want you to do? Kill me? Would that please them?”
“You pay better.”
“As you keep telling me.” He decided to use diplomacy, at least until all of the threats were eliminated. “Know that I do need your assistance. I ask simply for patience. All will be clear in the coming hours.”
“I should have gone to Yecheng.”
Viktor had asked and he’d said no. “You were not needed there.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because what I seek is here.”
And he started walking.
MALONE SAT WITH CASSIOPEIA ON A FILTHY BRICK FLOOR. THEY were kept separately from Ni and Sokolov, all of them held at the landing field, inside the tiny terminal, locked in some sort of steel-walled storage room lit by a dusty yellow bulb.
“None of that went right,” Cassiopeia said.
He shrugged. “Best I could do on short notice.”
The fetid air carried the scent of a dumpster. He wondered what had been kept inside here recently.
“I doubt Sokolov is in danger,” Malone said. “At least not for now. Tang went to a lot of trouble to get him back. Ni, though, is another matter. I think whatever is going to happen to him will not be good.”
Cassiopeia sat with her arms wrapping bended knees. She looked tired. He definitely was, though they’d both slept some on the flight. They’d been sitting here for more than an hour without a sound from outside.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“Play for a fumble.”
She smiled. “You always so optimistic?”
“Beats the hell out of the alternative.”
“You and I have some issues.”
That he knew. “Later. Okay?”
She nodded. “I agree. Later.”
But what went unspoken hung clear. So long as there is a later.
A new sound invaded their silence.
Helicopter rotors.
NI SAT IN THE LIT ROOM. ITS ONLY WINDOW WAS GUARDED ON the outside by one of the men with automatic rifles. Another surely stood on the other side of the closed door. He wondered what had happened to Malone and Vitt. Clearly, Tang wanted both him and Sokolov alive. Defeat clouded Sokolov’s face, but not the panic he’d expected.
“Why hasn’t anyone else ever considered what you discovered?” he asked the Russian in Mandarin. “Malone says the Russians have known of infinite oil for a long time.”
“It’s not that easy for them. How many samples of two-thousand-year-old oil exist on the planet? Samples verifiable, comparable with modern-day samples extracted from same field?” Sokolov paused, his gaze to the floor. “Only one place on the planet has that. Here, in China. No one else was capable of drilling for oil that long ago. Only the Chinese. The proof is here. Nowhere else.” The voice stayed low, as if Sokolov was actually sorry he’d made the discovery.
“Your son will be okay.”
“How you know that?”
“You’re too valuable. Tang knows the boy is his only real bargaining power with you.”
“At least until he learns what I know.”
“Did you tell him?’
“Some. But not all.”
He remembered the disgust the Russian voiced on the plane and felt compelled to say, “We are not all like Karl Tang.”
Sokolov glanced up for the first time. “No. But you are all Chinese. That’s bad enough.”
TANG WALKED DOWN BATANG’S ONLY STREET, NOTICING THAT it remained a place of drab buildings and shadeless alleys, all swept by dust. Wooden carts dotted the edges, along with a couple of trucks parked at odd angles. Two prayer wheels creaked with each revolution and rang bells. A huge mastiff rocketed from one of the alleys and flipped on his back when he found the end of a rope tied to his collar. The dog stood and pounced again, seemingly determined to either stretch or break the restraint.
Tang faced the barking animal.
A gong hung suspended by beams and leather straps a few meters away. Soon it would announce the start of another day.
A small hotel, half ruined, with doors ajar and walls iced with grit and grim beckoned. That, too, had changed little.
The dog continued to bark.
“Wake the owner,” he ordered Viktor.
He knew that venturing into the mountains without sunlight was foolish. The trails were fragile and subject to rockslides. Increasing daylight, and a diminishing haze, were already bringing the distant peaks into focus.
It would not be long.
NI WAS NOT AFRAID ANYMORE. THE INSIDE OF QIN SHI’S TOMB, underground, in a locale no one knew even existed, had offered Tang the perfect venue to kill him. But doing it here, with all of these witnesses, seemed out of the question. Not even the first vice premier could keep that secret. Instead, he realized they would be taken somewhere private, and the sound of rotors approaching signaled that his conclusion seemed correct.
Sokolov reacted to the sound, too.
“We are going to where your son is,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Tang needs us both alive. Me for just a short while. You, much longer. So he will reunite you and the boy, as a way to placate.”
“You are not afraid?”
“I’m more afraid of failing.”
Sokolov seemed to understand. “What about Malone and Vitt?”
“I’m afraid their situation is much worse.”
SEVENTY
MALONE LISTENED AS THE HELICOPTER ROTORS REVVED, THEN faded. The aircraft had stayed for only a few minutes, long enough, he assumed, to board Ni and Sokolov.
“Our turn,” he said to Cassiopeia.
They both still sat on the floor.
“But we aren’t going to be flown away,” she said.
“We might. We’ll just land a little differently.”
They were foreigners, here illegally, spies that no one would claim or care about. One of those occu
pational hazards of his former job.
He didn’t have to say it. She knew. They would take their chances at the first opportunity. Since they literally had nothing to lose.
The scrape of metal indicated that the steel door was being unlocked. Cassiopeia started to rise, but he placed a hand on her knee and shook his head. She stayed on the floor.
The door swung open and the police commander from earlier entered, carrying a pistol. He didn’t look happy.
“Tough night?” Malone asked.
He wondered if the man understood. But this was not Beijing or eastern China where English was common. This was the middle of frigging nowhere. The man motioned for them to stand and leave. Outside the doorway, two more men waited with automatic rifles.
