Cai pretended to explain the details of the carpet. Her wrists peeked from the sleeves of her long coat, exposing a cluster of scars when she reached to unroll the edge — cigarette burns that didn’t look accidental. It was no wonder she was helping Yao. Sadly, the fact that this woman had likely been tortured by the same people who were after him allowed Clark to relax a notch. She had her personal reasons for fighting the Han government.
“I am to give you some special items.” She took the carpet they were looking at and reached below her table to retrieve a small one, deep red and coal black, about the same size as the one she’d sold the German couple. Stepping closer to the blue tarp wall of the pottery stall to block the security camera’s view, she unrolled it enough to reveal two handguns. One a semiauto Norinco known as a Black Star, a Chinese copy of the venerable Russian TT-33. Two magazines of 7.62×25 Tokarev ammo lay nestled in the carpet beside the pistol. Clark wasn’t a big fan of Norincos, but you took what you could get at times like this.
Mrs. Cai unfurled the carpet a few more inches to reveal a puggish stainless-steel derringer with the words SNAKE SLAYER and BOND ARMS engraved on the side of its three-inch over and under barrels. Elegantly simple, the little gun was chambered to fire either two .45 Colt or two .410-gauge shotgun shells. Cai had no .45, but provided six .410 shells loaded with number-six birdshot — a snake slayer indeed. Always a gun guy, Clark resisted the urge to pick up the derringer and handle it.
Cai rolled the carpet and tied it with a piece of strong cord.
“Some Bingtuan police carry 7.65,” she said. “Others nine-millimeter. The derringer was given to me by a friend. I would like the girl to have it.”
“Of course,” Clark said. He marveled that the little Texas-made gun had somehow found its way to the frontier city of Kashgar, about as close to the rough and tumble of the real Wild West as anywhere left on earth. “It will be perfect for her, should we need it.”
“I fear you may have many opportunities before you are out of this country,” Cai said. “These guns are small but powerful. Perhaps you can use them to obtain other weapons.”
“Getting out of the country,” Clark said. “I understand you have the contact for the route.”
“You must leave the city as soon as possible,” she said. “Too many cameras here. They are looking for the girl, saying she has been kidnapped. If they have her photo, facial-recognition software will eventually identify her.” She scribbled an address and a new passphrase on a piece of paper, holding it out of view of the surveillance camera while she showed it to Clark. “Memorize this.”
He nodded, reading it to himself and committing it to memory before she rubbed the pencil marks away with her thumb.
“This person will help you get out of the country. You can trust him.”
She handed him the carpet and held out an open hand.
Clark looked at her.
“You have to pay me,” she said. “People will think I am giving things—”
A commotion on the other side of the cobbler’s stall drew both their attention up the aisle. Four XPCC soldiers moved among the crowds, stopping every few steps to look at people’s phones and question them. They were led by a tall officer with dark glasses and a gray hat of curly Karakul lambskin. This kind of hat, known as a
Behind Clark, Hala gave a startled gasp. He turned to find her crouching behind the stack of carpets at the far end of Mrs. Cai’s stall. Deathly pale, she chewed away furiously at her collar, rocking forward and back as if she might bolt at any moment.
Clark stepped closer.
“Do not run,” he said, keeping his face passive, his voice low and even. “They will notice us more if we look afraid.”
“It is him,” Hala whispered.
“Ren Shuren,” Cai said, running a hand across one of the carpets for the benefit of the security camera that viewed that end of the table. “A major with the local Bingtuan police service. His younger brother, Ren Zhelan, works for the Kashgar building council.”
“It is him,” Hala whispered again.
“Ren,” Clark said under his breath. Of course. He’d heard Hala use that name before. The major bore an uncanny resemblance to the man Hala and her aunt had been fighting with when Clark first stepped into their home — the same man he’d finished off with the cleaver.
Major Ren Shuren waved his men along, scanning the crowds like a machine as he stalked forward. He hadn’t made eye contact with Clark yet, but he was close, less than thirty feet away, and closing fast.
