Covert One 4 - The Altman Code (16 page)

Their pursuers were relentless. There was no time for talk or questions.

No time for rest. No respite of any kind.

Smith lost his sense of direction, although he was certain he had run
miles. His muscles ached, and his lungs felt raw. By now, they must be
in old Shanghai or the French Concession. But then they emerged into the
packed masses of Nanjing Dong Lu again, where the world swarmed with
shoppers, bar hoppers, sightseers, thieves, pickpockets, and men on the
prowl for the women who had reappeared in the city as if by magic when
the economic “free” market became the new goal of socialism.

“The metro! There, old boy. Come along!” Mahmout skidded downstairs,
used his Y90 prepaid ticket to enter, and handed it back to Smith.

Smith pounded after, to a well-lighted platform marked he nan lu. At
this late hour, few people waited for trains. On edge, drenched in
sweat, Smith and Mahmout paced the loading area and studied the various
entrances. When a train finally came, they leaped aboard.

Smith took a deep breath as the cars rolled from the station, leaving
the platform behind. “Nice job,” he said in the mostly empty car. “But
you’ll never make a tourist guide. You don’t schedule in enough time to
enjoy the sights.”

Mahmout’s face was shiny with sweat, and his expression as always ranged
between grim and neutral. Suddenly he gave a sardonic grin. The skin
around his black eyes crinkled with humor. “Obviously, Colonel, you
don’t understand.” Smith was adjusting to the strong Brit accent from
the fellow who looked as if he might be Chinese but probably was not. “I
require very special tourists, those more interested in endurance than a
photo op. In any case, one must have a permit. That simply won’t happen
here, for me.”

“You can’t get one?”

“Not if the police are involved. They have a habit of chasing me.”

“This sort of thing happens to you often?”

“Why do you think I’m such a fine physical specimen? I may live in
China, but I still talk openly about the Party, the government, and the
minorities. I’m far from popular with those hired by the crooks at the
top.”

The subway car was clean, fast, and comfortable. When they reached the
next station, Mahmout stepped off and looked up and down the platform.

After one survey, he returned to the car, shaking his head.

“Trouble?”

“The city police are watching the exits, which tells me the Public
Security people know we took the metro.”

“But how would they know which direction?”

“They don’t. If they knew, we’d be seeing Public Security agents on the
platform, not city police. The security guys are waiting for us to be
spotted.”

“I don’t like that.” “I do,” Mahmout said. “It gives us a small
advantage. The city cops won’t arrest us–they’ll wait for Security to
arrive.”

The train pulled out again. Mahmout let two more stations pass before
telling Smith, “The next stop is Jing An Temple. We’ll get off there.

They never did get a sharp look at me, and in these clothes, I could be
anyone. As for you, I doubt they’ll stop you in the station, but I can’t
be certain. I’ll tell you which exit to take, and you swarm out with the
crowd. I’ll be right behind, in case you’re spotted. We’ll jump them
together.”

“Then what?”

“Then we run again.”

“Good. Can’t wait.”

Mahmout grinned widely, showing white, even teeth beneath his black
mustache. As the train burst into the lighted station and rolled to a
stop, he looked out the windows. “Go out with everyone else. Turn left
toward the far end of the platform. There’ll be three exits along the
way. Take the next to last.”

As they watched, the doors rattled open.

“Got it.” Smith stepped off the car with the surge of passengers. He
followed those who turned left. Fewer than a quarter chose the
next-to-last exit. He stayed among them, not daring to look back to be
sure Mahmout was near.

At the exit, two Shanghai policemen were scrutinizing each passenger.

The attention of the first officer passed right over Smith, but the
second, after an initial cursory inspection, jerked back and fixed on
his face.

Smith walked faster, with a glance back. The policeman was bent to his
communications unit, talking.

Smith had made it to the stairs, when a shout behind erupted first in
Chinese, then English: “Stop! Tall European, you will stop!”

A hand pushed him in the back. “Go, old man. Like the wind!”

Smith leaped up the stairs, raced forward, and burst out into a dark
street.

Mahmout passed him. “Follow me!”

More shouts reverberated through the night, above the sounds of traffic.

“Halt! You, Colonel Smith. Stop, or we shoot!”

Public Security had arrived. Vehicle headlights blazed on, and motors
roared.

“Stop them, you idiots!” This was in the best English.

Smith thundered after Mahmout, both trapped in the glare of headlights,
like antelope fleeing across the African veldt. There was no shelter to
hide behind. The street was open and straight.

“We can’t outrun them!” Smith snapped to his side.

“We don’t have to.” Mahmout turned ninety degrees and darted down an
inky side street.

They passed a stately European house from the early 1800s, and Smith
realized they must be in the old French Concession at last.

The headlights closed in. Mahmout turned again onto an even narrower and
darker side street. They sprinted past rows of what looked like attached
terrace villas enclosed by walls that were of an architectural style
that did not match the villas. Before the headlights of the security
police could round the corner, too, Mahmout flung open a gate in a wall.

He dashed in and darted to the side as Smith bolted through after him
Immediately, Mahmout closed the gate. As headlights illuminated the
street, the two men ran past a row of the brick villas. They left a
broader alley for what became a labyrinth of passageways, each smaller
than the last, with doors opening from all sides. Laundry hung between
windows in rising rows, two and three stories up, still out in the warm
night. Battered bicycles leaned against brick walls. Rusty air
conditioners stuck out of windows like rectangular tumors. Greasy
cooking odors permeated everything.

“Is that gate we came through the only way out?” Smith asked.

“Usually,” Mahmout said. “Come along now. In here.”

He ducked into one of the buildings along the most constricted alley
Smith had seen so far. Smith followed through small rooms where men with
long, dusky faces similar to Mahmout’s, all wearing white or mosaic
skullcaps, sat in chairs or lounged on rugs and pillows. Most slept, but
others studied him curiously, without fear.

Mahmout stepped lightly, making as little noise as possible, as he
headed toward an irregular hole in the wall. He crawled through. “Come
along, Colonel. Don’t dawdle.” “What’s this?” Smith asked dubiously,
following.

“Safety.”

They were in another room, this one furnished with beds, chairs, small
tables, and standing lamps. They were alone.

“We’re in the French Concession, but where?” Smith wondered. His heart
still hammered from their long marathon, and he was drenched in sweat.

Mahmout’s face was not only sweaty but deep red from the exertion. “In
the longtangs.” He wiped an arm across his forehead.

“What’s that?”

“Attached European-style brick houses built in the late eighteen
hundreds. However, the houses are clustered, and the walls around the
clusters are in the Chinese style. The longtangs were designed on the
old Chinese courtyard pattern–many houses inside each set of walls,
most connected by walkways.”

“You mean alleys.”

“You noticed. Yes, in this case. The Europeans realized they were losing
money by keeping the Chinese out of the concessions. So they built the
longtangs to rent mostly to the wealthiest Chinese. All native
Shanghainese used to live in them. Maybe forty percent still do. These
in the French Concession are the most habitable. Sometimes whole
families, groups of friends, or people from a particular village share
the same courtyard.”

Smith heard a noise. He glanced back in time to see an entire section of
brick wall, the exact shape of the hole they had come through, being
fitted back into the opening.

“From the other side, the hole’s essentially invisible now,” Mahmout
explained.

Smith was impressed. “What the hell is this place?”

“A safe house. Hungry?”

“I could eat the imperial palace.”

“For myself, I’m regretting those crabs we left behind.” Mahmout opened
a door, and they entered another room. This one contained a long table,
a stove, and a refrigerator. Mahmout started to open the refrigerator,
but his hand stopped in midair.

Smith heard it, too.

On the other side of the far wall, heavy feet walked, and male voices
argued and discussed. They sounded like the security police, and only a
room away.

Mahmout shrugged. “They won’t find our hole in the wall, Colonel. You’ll
adjust to a feeling of safety. We’re not even in the same longtang they
are. When we came through the wall, we entered the next one, and … ”

He stopped again, and his head whipped around. Smith was already
staring. There were new commanding voices, but they were not on the
other side of the bedroom wall. These were outside the building.

“What–!” Smith began.

A heavy knocking hammered a door not twenty feet away from where they
stood.

Asgar Mahmout chuckled silently as he reached into the refrigerator.

“Take a seat at the table, Colonel. They won’t find us.”

Smith was doubtful as he listened to the voices and heavy feet walking
on a wood floor. They sounded even closer.

But Mahmout showed no more interest. “Our hole is the only way any of
them can find us. No one will notice it.” He had decided where their
pursuers were, and he trusted his security. He pulled out more food,
carried everything to two microwave ovens, and turned them on. As their
dinner heated, he found two bottles of ale and sat at the table.

He pointed to the second chair. “Trust me, Colonel.” The voices and feet
continued to sound, but no one had appeared, and Smith was hungry. He
sat, facing Mahmout, who opened bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and
poured them into common English pub imperial pint glasses, etched crowns
and all.

“Cheers and safe passage.” Mahmout raised his glass and cocked his head
as if entertained by Smith’s nervousness.

At last Smith shrugged. His throat was tinder dry from all the running.

“What the hell. Bottoms up.” He drank deeply.

Mahmout put down his glass and wiped foam from his mustache. “You should
give us more credit, Colonel. This is as safe a house as any that your
CIA maintains.”

“Who’s us, and why do you have two names? One Chinese and one something
else?”

“Because the Chinese insist the land of my people is in China, so I must
therefore be Chinese and have a Han name. Us are the Uighers.” He
pronounced it weegahs. “I’m a Uigher from out in Xinjiang. Actually, a
half Uigher, but that’s a technicality important only to my parents. My
real name is Asgar Mahmout. At the metro, they called you Colonel Smith,
and you obviously have military training. Do you have other names as
well?”

“Jon. Jon Smith. I’m a medical doctor and scientist who happens to be a
military officer. And what the hell is a Uigher?”

Mahmout took another gulp of ale and gave a wry smile. “Ah, Americans.

You know so little of the world, so little of history, even, sadly,
sometimes your own. Charming, energetic, and ignorant–that’s you Yanks.

Allow me to enlighten you.”

It was Smith’s turn to smile. He drank. “I’m all ears, as we ” say.”

“Gentlemanly of you.” His voice rose with pride. “The Uighers are an
ancient Turkic people. We’ve lived on the deserts, mountains, and
steppes of eastern Central Asia since long, long before your Christ.

Long, too, before the Chinese worked up the nerve to escape their
eastern river valleys. We’re distant cousins of the Mongols and closer
cousins of the Turks, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, and Kazakhs. We had grand
kingdoms once–empires like you Americans hunger for now.” He circled
his hand dramatically above his head, an imaginary sword in it. “We rode
with the great Khan and with the legendary Timur. We ruled in Kashgar
and owned the fabulous Silk Road that Marco Polo raved about on his
visit to the Khan’s grandson, who by then, of course, had beaten the
pompous Hans and taken over China himself.”

He drained his ale. His voice was grim as he continued, “Now we’re the
slaves, only worse. The Chinese force us to take Han names, speak Han,
and behave like Han. They close our schools and refuse to teach us in
anything but Han. They send millions of their own to populate our
cities, destroy our way of life, and drive us from our farms into the
desert or the high steppes with the Kazakhs, if we wish to survive as a
people. They don’t let us pray to Allah, and they demolish our historic
mosques. They’re stamping out our language, customs, and literature. My
father was Han. He dazzled my mother with his money, status, and
education. But when she refused to abandon Islam, to raise me and my
sister as Han, to leave Kashgar for the pestilence of the Yangtze valley
or the swamps of Guangzhou, he abandoned us.”

“That must’ve been rough.”

“Ghastly, actually.” He went to the refrigerator for another ale. He
gestured, silently asking whether Smith wanted one, too.

Smith nodded. “And your Brit accent?”

“I was sent to England.” He brought the brown ales to the table and
poured. “My mother’s father felt a Western-educated man would be useful.