Ehmet waved a hand in front of his face to shoo away a fly that had already followed the scent of blood through the open balcony window of the traitor’s apartment. “I am ready to go now if you have the arrangements made.”
Jiàn Zŏu shook his head without looking up.
“What were you doing while I was busy here?” Ehmet’s face darkened. “You have not made arrangements?”
The Chinese man suddenly pushed back from the table. “If you are done with this business,” he said. “A Tajik friend of mine has arranged passage on a cargo flight in a few hours.”
Ehmet leaned against a wall and wiped the blood from his hands on rag he’d gotten from the kitchen. He glared at Jiàn Zŏu through narrow eyes. Yaqub knew from growing up with Ehmet that with him it was not so much what you said, as how you said it. “You don’t approve of my actions?” he said, giving Jiàn Zŏu a confrontational shrug.
“I personally do not care who you butcher along our route,” Jiàn Zŏu said. “Your actions are your business. Getting us out of China is mine.”
“Well said, Mr. Zŏu,” Ehmet said, rifling through the dead man’s closet for a clean shirt. “As long as you remember your business, we may all live through the week.”
Yaqub considered the job that lay ahead and decided the odds of any of them living more than a few days were extremely slim, no matter what Jiàn Zŏu did or did not remember.
Chapter 14
“You know,” Thibodaux said as they watched Hajip from a safe spot in the crowded twilight, fifty meters from where he ran his matang cart. “Just once, I wouldn’t mind comin’ to an interesting place like this and having a little time to mosey along and enjoy the atmosphere. Camille could do a mean belly dance in one or two of these silk scarves.”
Since all of China operated on Beijing time, it was late in the west by the time the sun actually set. Uyghur people operated on their own unofficial time, two hours earlier than Beijing, making it just after nine. While people in the capital might be retiring for the night, the Kashgar night market still hummed with activity.
“Buy her a scarf,” Quinn said, breathing in the scent of barbecued lamb. Beside him, a man used a blackened piece of a cardboard box to fan a grill covered with sputtering kabobs. “It’ll fit in your pocket. It’s getting late, even on Uyghur time, but I’m sure we still have a few minutes before our guy closes up his cart.” Quinn nodded toward the adjacent stall where a sharp-eyed woman stood surrounded by wooden rods that held dozens of colorful Uzbek scarves. The apples of her round cheeks were red as if she’d just run a footrace and her blue eyes gleamed under the string of electric lights as if she’d won the race. A stray lock of auburn hair peeked from her head scarf. Her lips turned up in the tiniest of grins as she surely identified Jacques as a man to whom she could sell an entire sackful of scarves. “I’d offer her about half of her asking price,” Quinn said, knowing a pushover like Jacques would likely pay double. “You go on. I’ll keep an eye on our guy.”
Quinn bought himself a small cup of durap—a mixture of shaved ice, yogurt, and lemon juice. His mouth watered for some of the grilled meat and naan bread, but the likelihood of impending violence made him stick with something on the lighter side.
He paid two yuan to the smiling Uyghur — who looked a lot like his uncle — and walked with his paper cup of durap to stand under a mulberry tree and watch. Hajip was tall and he moved through the crowd hawking his nougatlike matang with the purposeful air of a man accustomed to getting his way. Gabrielle had been right. Hajip did take the best spot for his cart — but there were really no bad spots among the sounds and sights and smells that made up Kashgar’s night market.
Strings of electric lights and open flames from barbecue grills illuminated the night. A vast sea of stalls selling everything from goat testicles to pirated DVDs of Hollywood movies lined the road under the shadow of the yellow towers of Id Kah — the oldest and largest mosque in China. A few feet from Quinn, an ancient man in a ratty suit jacket and a white silk doppa sat cross-legged under a gas lantern selling refurbished leather shoes from a pile spread out before him. Not five yards away, another man, similarly dressed, knelt on the sidewalk over a hogtied ram, directing blood from the gurgling animal’s freshly slit throat into a plastic bucket. Beyond this gruesome scene, a Uyghur girl of seven or eight helped her father sell scoops from a pristine white mountain of ice cream.
The smell of fried, grilled, and boiled meat permeated the air, mulling with saffron and garlic and a thousand other spices that flooded Quinn with memories of bazaar and bizarre.
“Mighty short trip from the sidewalk to the stove,” Jacques muttered, tossing his head toward where the bleeding ram gave its last dying gurgles. “Pretty damn fresh.”
“How much did you pay?” Quinn asked, raising an eye at the two red silk Uzbek scarves Jacques held wadded in his fist.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” the big Cajun grumbled.
Quinn was about to rib his friend more — but down the block, Hajip answered a call on his mobile phone. He talked for a short time, and then appeared to hang up and make another call that lasted only a few seconds. A moment later, he lifted the handles of his cart and shoved his way through the crowd.
Quinn took the last drink of his melted yogurt and set the wadded paper cup on top of a barrel that overflowed with similar trash. Thibodaux stuffed the scarves in his back pocket. Without a word between them, the two men began to follow, moving slowly as if to look at merchandise, but always keeping an eye on Hajip.
Quinn’s hope was to keep the Uyghur in sight, but half a block past the last stalls of the night market the matang vendor took a quick right down a side alley. By the time they reached the corner, he had vanished. Quinn thought he heard voices in the darkness and held up his fist, motioning for Thibodaux to stop. Somewhere ahead, the wheels of not one, but two matang carts squeaked down the quiet street.
“He’s joined up with a friend,” Thibodaux whispered. “Maybe that’s who he called.”
Three blocks later the alley broadened and split into three different directions disappearing down pitch-black pathways between ancient buildings of leaning brick and slumping stone that had surely been here when Kashgar was still a thriving oasis for camel caravans. The voices fell silent, but the squeaking of the cartwheels continued. If Hajip had been better at maintenance they would have lost him.
Feeble pools of yellow lamplight spilled out here and there from windows at various heights in the ancient brick walls. Family sounds filtered down to street level with the reserved quiet of a people used to living in such close proximity and pretending not to know each other’s business. Padding slowly and knowing that the big Cajun had his back, Quinn rounded the corner of a crumbling three-story building in time to watch Hajip open the twin wooden doors of what looked like some kind of warehouse or a barn. Another matang vendor followed behind him, pushing an identical cart. The building was dark until Hajip entered and switched on a light.
“Looks like there’s just the two of them,” Thibodaux whispered from where they crouched at the corner.
A dog barked in the distance. The sizzle of frying meat popped through the window above, close enough for them to feel the splatter of grease through open shutters and taste the spiced mutton on the warm evening air.