Hala noticed for the first time that her aunt had already moved a stack of quilts out of the bedroom and put them in the corner of the main room.
The fat man touched his lips with clenched hands, peering over his knuckles in thought. “The girl is small, but I suppose she could warm my—”
“No!” Zulfira said. She touched her belly. “It is just that… I… my husband has only been gone a few months, and I am…”
Fat Suo scoffed. “With child?”
Zulfira chewed on her bottom lip but didn’t deny it.
Suo put a hand on Zulfira’s shoulder, caressing as if trying to calm an animal. Hala clenched her fist, ready to fly at the fat man, but Zulfira flashed her a look.
Suo gave a wry chuckle. “Have you heard of the wild horses of Kalamely Mountain?”
Tears pressed from Zulfira’s lashes as she clenched her eyes. She shook her head.
“Przewalski’s horses, they’re called,” Suo said. “Runty little beasts, in the great scheme of things, but they are thought to have been native to Asia many thousands of years ago. A few dozen were reintroduced here in Xinjiang, probably decades before you were born. There are still not very many, less than two hundred, so I am told.” Suo cocked his head to one side and then ran a knuckle down Zulfira’s cheek. “Every single foal is important to the people who are trying to grow this herd… but the stallions do not care about the herd as a whole. They only care about the foals that come from their loins. Did you know, for instance, that when a stronger stallion finds, shall we say, a pregnant mare whose mate he has killed or is no longer around for one reason or another, he simply mounts the mare with such force as to make certain that there is no chance that any progeny but his own survives?” Suo laughed, throwing up his hands. “Of course, we are not horses. There is no need for rough behavior—”
“So long as the mare remains civil,” Zulfira said.
“Something like that,” the fat man said and chuckled.
Zulfira folded her arms tight across her chest. “Where is your assistant?”
“Ren is busy taking care of another matter.”
A tear ran down Zulfira’s cheek. “What of Hala?”
Suo took her hand. “She may sleep by the stove.” His voice was husky now. “Unless my hand is forced, I have no interest in foals.”
Clark checked his watch. Two hours. That gave him enough time to catch a cab to his hotel and grab a couple of samsa from a street vendor. He’d let the minders watch him eat dinner while he studied a tourist map of the city he’d picked up in the terminal and waited for Midas to arrive on the next flight.
The two Campus operatives would coordinate but work without direct face-to-face contact with each other. Clark would take the lead, putting eyes on the Uyghur girl, Hala — and hopefully her mother, Medina Tohti, their actual target. Midas would hang back, taking a broader view, acting as backup and overwatch. The point was not so much to provide a safety net for Clark — there was little either one of them could do if the other was somehow compromised and picked up by XPCC authorities. Two sets of eyes, acting in a coordinated fashion, were far more likely to find Medina Tohti if she was anywhere nearby. If something did happen to Clark, Midas could continue the mission.
Though they would not make personal contact, Clark and Midas could communicate via text on a shadowed phone app developed by Gavin Biery, The Campus’s IT genius. The app — Biery called it Walk-to-Me — hid behind a functional pedometer application and wouldn’t show up without the correct code.
Clark’s phone buzzed as he walked to the line of green-and-white VW Santana taxis outside the large glass building. The
Clark punched in the code with his thumb, then read the message before it disappeared from the screen ten seconds later.
It was short and to the point.
Flight delayed. Twelve hours. m
This changed what Clark had planned to do. He was still hungry, and he still planned to do a quick drive-by of the house where Medina Tohti’s daughter was supposed to live. Now he’d just do it without any redundancy or backup. If he fumbled here, screwed up and somehow got himself killed, he’d die alone.
Not exactly a new situation for him. He needed to lose his two minders… Clark chuckled to himself. One thing at a time.
The message from Midas made him forget about the biting wind. A bitter gust hit him full in the face as he rounded a line of waiting city buses, taking away his breath and sandblasting his squinting eyes. He fished a black wool watch cap from the pocket of his navy peacoat. Pulled down over his ears, the wool hat did double duty of keeping him warm and providing natural camouflage on streets where virtually everyone had dark hair and a hat.
