They all saw it at once, the flashing lights of a Bingtuan police checkpoint about the time the faint glow of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area, hove into view on the horizon.
Ma whistled sharply, warning his two passengers. He needn’t have. Medina and Perhat were already sliding the boxes in the back of the van to one side, so they could lie down in the hollow area beneath the false floor, what they called “the can.”
The government did not recognize Medina’s need to be anywhere. She was a fugitive in a part of the world where the Chinese Communist Party surveilled all its citizens. Throughout most of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing’s Social Credit System used a network of software crawlers, voice exemplars, security cameras, and facial-recognition programs to document the most mundane behaviors of daily life, from social media content, to shopping preferences, to how quickly one paid their bills, all in order to assign a numerical score. Much like a credit score in the West, something in the seven hundreds allowed a Chinese citizen to rent a car, book a hotel, or travel on a train, generally without leaving a deposit. The Social Credit System’s avowed goal was to allow honest Chinese citizens to travel freely around the world, but to keep dishonest people “from taking a single step” without being noticed.
In Xinjiang, the frontier province in far-western China, the system was made even simpler — and more onerous. Instead of a numerical score, there were three classifications. Ethnic Han Chinese and a chosen few Uyghur and Hui peoples who had jumped into the government wagon were deemed
Medina Tohti tried to stretch out as best she could in the cramped compartment. Pistol in hand, she slowed her breath as the van rolled toward the Bingtuan roadblock. If the XPCC militia soldiers decided to search the van, there was no doubt they would find the hiding spot. All three had agreed they would not be taken alive, vowing to take as many of these militia soldiers with them as they could before they were gunned down. Hopefully it would not come to that. Medina had cried too many tears and cursed too many curses to feel anything close to terror as the van came to a squealing stop. She’d hoped to see her daughter again one day, but had given up on even that. It was a liberating thing being numb to the idea of death — or life, for that matter.
Outside, voices barked orders in Mandarin. The van rolled forward a few feet. Medina heard the metallic whine as Ma rolled his window down. He chatted easily with the policemen, exchanging quick stories about the isolation of government work in Xinjiang, but how he was the kind of guy who liked isolation. He asked the men if they had water and offered to give them some, since he would be in the city soon.
Medina wished he wouldn’t wax so friendly at these stops. It took forever, and every second risked discovery.
The smell of cloves from Perhat’s mouthwash drifted over with the sounds of his breathing. He was a good man. In his mid-twenties, two or three years Medina’s junior, with the pronounced nose of his Turkic ancestors and a heavy brow overhanging dark eyes. Medina knew Perhat had a bit of a crush on her. They’d spent at least two of the last six hours lying alongside each other in the cramped hiding spot with gravel pinging off the thin metal between their backsides and the pavement. The highway was rough, often sending Perhat bouncing into Medina or her bouncing into Perhat. Their proximity made him self-conscious, and he’d asked Mamut to purchase the mouthwash when he’d stopped to buy petrol just before they turned east on the 312 for the final leg of their journey.
They rode in silence for ten minutes after the checkpoint, before another whistle from Mamut let them know it was safe to emerge.
