“Dammit!” Drake dropped his gym bag in his desk chair.
“Do you want me in there?” McKeon smiled inside. “Or would you like me to let you handle this without me, Mr. President?” he said.
“Shut up,” Drake said, grabbing his jacket but dispensing with the bow tie. “Of course, I want you in there.”
Chapter 11
“I watch the news,” Gabrielle said as her sure hands I worked methodically to stitch the gash under Belvan Virk’s left eye. She was noticeably more tender than she had been with the nubbin of skin left behind from Grigor’s ear. “Ehmet Feng is a vile human being. I felt certain your government would dispatch someone like you to hunt down a man like him.”
“Well, I am glad they sent you, little brother,” Virk roared. He tried a smile but the swelling on his face was getting worse by the moment and he only managed a muffled wince through split lips.
“The Fengs have family in Kashgar,” Quinn said, failing to mention that he was there without the backing of his government.
“Of course.” Virk nodded, receiving a scolding cluck from Deuben as she pulled a suture tight. He closed his eyes and grimaced but kept going with his thought. “It stands to reason that they would come to roost among their Uyghur brethren.”
“The Fengs are bad men,” Deuben said, her voice humming with tension. “And your country had the little shits safely ensconced in an American prison. Who had the bright idea to hand them over to Pakistan?”
“Our very own President,” Thibodaux said, teetering a little from watching the operation. He’d been fine smashing the faces that needed smashing during the fight, and hadn’t flinched when Quinn had cut off Grigor’s ear — but seeing anyone other than the enemy in pain had a tendency to give the big Cajun a serious case of the wobbles.
Quinn brought Virk and the doctor up to speed on the moles hiding within the highest levels of the US administration — including the President and VP. “It’s all connected to that orphanage you told us about in the Wakhan Corridor when Ronnie Garcia and I were here,” he said.
“Scheisse,” Deuben cursed, as much about Virk’s battered face as the situation. Starting on a second wound, she pressed the Sikh’s beard to one side with her forearm as she closed a second gash, this one over the bridge of his nose. “Raising children up to hate America… That is actually pretty brilliant when you think of it. Though I suppose ISIS and others are doing the same thing now — just more overtly.”
“You talk to a lot of working girls as part of your practice,” Quinn said. “Can you think of any who might be connected to the Fengs — or anyone who might be a fugitive?”
“A fugitive around here?” Deuben chuckled. “We have no shortage of people wanted by the law in Western China. There have been killings in Kunming, bombings in Urumqi… A local imam was recently hacked to death on the steps of Id Kah Mosque — for the offense of being too moderate. Things are worse than I’ve ever seen them — and that only gives the Chinese government all the more reason to march in lockstep over the old city and crush what is left of the culture.” She sighed. “It makes me… how do you say? Lebensmüde… fatigued. Soon there will be no more Western China — only China — one great block of concrete, each corner patrolled and kept in check by a gang of uniformed soldiers.”
Virk looked at Quinn and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
“ ‘Four things greater than all things are,’ ” the Sikh said, again using Kipling to make his point. “ ‘… Women and Horses and Power and War.’ ” He closed his eye as Deuben pierced the apple of his cheek, just above his beard, with her curved needle. “Our Gabrielle is no shrinking violet when it comes to espousing her passions.”
“Violets know nothing but the heels of wicked men,” Deuben scoffed.
Quinn had seen firsthand on his last visit how deeply entrenched the doctor was with the Uyghur cause. She generally sided with them over the ethnic Han Chinese, whom she saw as interlopers. She wanted no part in any violent cause or revolution, but if Western China had been a democracy, she’d surely have put out yard signs touting the benefits of a free and separate Uyghur state.
“If anyone knows the whereabouts of the Feng brothers it would be Hajip,” Virk said.
Thibodaux brightened at the sound of a name that would move them forward. “You think this Hajip guy will talk to us?”
“He’ll try and kill you.” Virk chuckled without moving his head while Deuben pulled the last of the sutures tight. He waved his hand over the four unconscious gangsters on the bedroom floor. “But I do not imagine that will prove much of a deterrent for men like you.”
“Hajip is active in the East Turkistan Islamic Movement,” Deuben said. “To tell you truthfully, I am not certain why the Chinese have not already rounded him up.”
“Sounds like a good place to start,” Quinn said, shooting a glance at Thibodaux. “The Feng brothers are ETIM as well.”
“Anyway,” Deuben said. “Hajip will be easy to find. He takes the best spot for his matang cart across the street from the mosque.”
It was not unheard of for matang dealers to use their large and intimidating knives to up the price of their fruit and nut confections after they’d hacked off a piece for a customer. It was delicious but sticky stuff, prone to pulling out fillings, even if the vendor wasn’t the sort to rest a thumb on the balance scale and then haggle with his blade.
Virk groaned and let his head fall back in relief as Deuben finished with her needle. She stood and peeled off her blood-smeared latex gloves and tossed them in the garbage bin.
His full beard had cushioned many of the blows from his attacker, but precise sutures crossed much of the flesh of his cheeks like tiny sections of black train track.
“So you are finished torturing me then,” the Sikh said.
“I am indeed.” Deuben collapsed back on the bed, sitting with her hands in her lap. She looked up at Quinn. “Beijing has doubled our number of PLA soldiers, and that does not take into account the already huge presence of People’s Armed Police and the roving packs of sanctioned thugs they use as leg breakers. Nationalist views are high on both sides all over China, but they burn especially bright here in the west. The average Han soldier will see you as Americans — the enemy. Most Uyghur people are hardworking folk who are happy to see a few tourist dollars — but separatists like Hajip are growing in number. To them, you are an infidel, less than human.” She looked over the top of a prominent, though not unattractive nose. “Many of the people you meet tonight would be all too happy to see you dead.”
“She is right, you know,” Virk said, pulling aside his beard to study his wounded face in a hand mirror. He dabbed at the sutures with the tip of his finger, earning another scolding from Deuben.
“The Uyghurs are armed with religious zeal,” he continued, “not to mention all manner of axes and knives. The Chinese soldiers have guns and the weight of law. Placing yourselves in between these two factions will be an extremely dangerous endeavor. It will require a… delicate touch.”
Thibodaux winked his good eye. “That’s us.” He gave a sickly grin, nodding at the blood-soaked piece of gauze that held Grigor The Mongol’s severed ear. “Delicate.”
Chapter 12
Everyone stood when President Hartman Drake entered the situation room, but they kept their eyes glued to the door to make certain McKeon followed him in.