Darkness Under Heaven (38 page)

He opened both hands in a peaceful gesture. “Speak Russian?” he asked in his very bad Russian.

The Mongol nodded warily and replied in that language. “A little. American?”

Avakian did not confirm or deny. “You—me. Talk. Do business?”

Another wary nod told him to continue.

“You. Take over border.” Avakian pointed to the truck. “I. Back. Secret. No tell border guard.” He knew how to say border guard, at least. “No tell none. You take other side—safe—I give you 150,000 yuan.” He unzipped Judy's bag to show him the color of his money. “Understand?”

During this little chat the Mongol's expression had shifted from outright skepticism, to impending dismissal, to holy shit.

“Think,” said Avakian. “You work one hour. Big money. Border guard, you tell Zhangjiakou fighting. Afraid. Go back. But.” At that he held up a warning finger. “You tell border guard I,” a wave of the hand toward the truck, “truck—you die number 1.” He showed him the pistol. “Understand? Tell me.”

The Mongol replied in much better Russian. “I hide you in back of my truck. Take you across the border. You pay me 150,000 yuan.” And at that point he stopped. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Avakian said, relived he'd gotten through.

“I tell border guard I scared of fighting in Zhangjiakou. Go back home. I tell border guard about you, you kill me.”

“First thing,” said Avakian, having dug up the right words in the interim.

“150,000 yuan?” said the Mongol.

Avakian nodded. He knew that had to be a couple years pay, if not more. He was counting on the nearly universal Asian belief in fortune and luck.

The Mongol gestured toward their truck.

“You want?” said Avakian.

The Mongol nodded.

“You take,” said Avakian. “After border.”

The Mongol grinned. “Okay,” he said in English, holding out his hand.

Avakian shook it. An ancient human custom that may have originated with the Mongols. Done in order to confirm that your weapon hands were empty. “Money after.”

“Money after,” the Mongol confirmed, still grinning.

While he conferred with his assistant, Avakian hobbled back to Judy. “Grab my bag, darlin'. We're leaving.”

“What's up?” she asked.

“They're going to give us a ride across the border.”

“Just like that?”

“I venerate human nobility,” said Avakian. “But I rely on human greed.”

By the time they packed up and made the way over the Mongols were hard at work in the back of the truck. The driver stuck his head out the top and waved them up.

It was another open-topped FAW. Red. There was a ladder on the front of the cargo bed just behind the cab.

“I'll take both bags,” Judy said, in a tone that brooked no discussion. “You just get yourself up, nice and easy.”

“Yes, Doc.” Avakian used both hands and one leg, rolling over the top onto the hay. The Mongols had pulled bales out like building blocks to create a hollow pocket near the bottom. It sure looked like they'd done this before. Maybe he hadn't needed to be all that persuasive.

The Mongol pointed the way down. He made a gun with his finger, aimed it at the cab, and mimicked the sound of a gunshot. Smiling all the time.

“What's that all about?” said Judy.

“Promised I'd kill him if he hosed me,” said Avakian.

They even arranged a bale to make a comfortable seat. For 150,000 Avakian would have expected no less. They sat down and the Mongols set the bales on top of them.
Lights out. They could hear and feel the bales thumping down, and the tarp being pulled back over the top.

“Are you sure you can trust these guys?” Judy whispered in his ear. “Wait a minute. Forget it. That had to be the stupidest question I ever asked in my entire life. And at the worst possible time.” She kissed his cheek. Still no temperature.

“Comes down to this,” Avakian whispered back as the truck started moving. “You go to Vegas, you bet your life on black, and you watch while they spin the roulette wheel.”

 

Commissioner Zhou's driver was a young officer 2nd grade who seemed overjoyed to have the opportunity to drive a hundred miles down a highway at top speed. He was also a terrifyingly bad driver, a rural boy who had probably never even set foot in a car until he joined Public Security.

To keep his mind off that Commissioner Zhou worked his phone the entire trip, hounding both the border post and the Erenhot Bureau. The bureau promised to begin sweeping both the highway and the town for the truck.

The car swerving caused him to look up from his phone just in time to watch the driver move into the oncoming lane in order to pass a truck. The boy was following his orders, he thought, dropping his head to dial again. The car shook, which made him look back up to see a car coming head-on, disregarding the police car and the flashing lights his own driver seemed serenely confident in. “Get over!”

The driver swerved back into the right lane, missing both the truck and the oncoming car by centimeters. “Be careful, you fool!” Commissioner Zhou snapped, as the phone in his hand rang. “Commissioner Zhou,” he said into it.

“Comrade Commissioner, Inspector Kuang of Erenhot. We have found your truck. Ten kilometers outside the city limits on 206 Highway.”

Commissioner Zhou cut him off with, “What of the Americans?”

“The truck is abandoned. There are gunshot holes in it and signs of blood. We have alerted all hospitals and medical stations.”

He must have wounded one of them. “Good work, Inspector. I am very close. Look for them on stolen motorcycles. They have done this before.”

“We will alert our units, Comrade Commissioner.”

Despite his words Commissioner Zhou was not encouraged. For Avakian to have left the truck without being chased meant he had found something else. Now the vehicle description was worthless to the border post.

“Lights ahead, Comrade Commissioner,” the driver reported.

“Stop at the truck.”

Officers were dusting it for fingerprints. A sergeant was in charge.

“Commissioner Zhou, Beijing.”

The sergeant saluted. “Sergeant He, Erenhot city bureau, Comrade Commissioner.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Sergeant He.”

A common enough name, but it had given him a start. “Report, Sergeant.”

“Ten bullet holes in the truck, Comrade Commissioner. Observe this one in the door.” The sergeant opened it. “And the blood on the inside, floor, and passenger seat. A substantial wound caused by the bullet through the door. Expended 5.7mm rifle casings inside the cab. No other evidence so far.”

“Witnesses?”

“None yet, Comrade Commissioner.”

Without another word to the sergeant, Commissioner Zhou walked slowly around the truck. On the southbound
side of the road yet facing north. Why not park on the normal side of the road?

The Erenhot patrol cars had parked both in front and behind the truck, in the soft sand beyond the highway pavement. And the vehicles in front were parked directly over the tire prints of another truck. The wind had barely blown sand into the tread marks. “Sergeant!”

He came running. “Yes, Comrade Commissioner?”

“Make a plaster impression of these truck tire marks before your fools drive over them again.”

“Yes, Comrade Commissioner. My apologies.”

Commissioner Zhou was already running for his car. Yokels. “Quickly, to the border,” he told his driver.

Who left his own sandstorm speeding away.

Would Avakian try the crossing, or would he brave the fences and mines? It was difficult to believe he would try to bluff his way across. Every westerner was taken aside for intensive examination, and all Americans automatically detained. This was not common knowledge but Avakian would of course suspect it. As for himself, he had no choice. He would have to stake everything on the border crossing. Deep in thought he chanced to glance out his side window. “Pull over,” he ordered.

Two bicyclists. Mongols. Pedaling for the border with their bicycles piled high with shopping bags. Everything was cheaper in China.

No other witnesses on the highway. Only vehicles that had long since passed by. But these two were just slow enough that they might have seen something.

Commissioner Zhou had risen when so many had not because he knew that nothing happened in China, nothing, without being seen by someone. The trick was always to find them, and make them talk.

The bicycles halted before his outstretched hand. “Speak Chinese?” Commissioner Zhou asked. With the police car behind him he did not bother with credentials.

One Mongol shook his head. The other said, “Yes, sir.”

“Did you see the green truck back on the highway? Abandoned?”

The Mongol gave a negative shrug.

“Papers,” said Commissioner Zhou.

Two Mongolian passports were handed over. They seemed to be in order. “What can you tell me about the people in the truck?”

“Nothing, sir. We saw nothing.”

The other trick was to know when you were being lied to. “Maybe you remember something at the station,” Commissioner Zhou said. “Get in the car.”

“What of our bikes, sir?”

“We have no room for bikes. Leave them here. Unless you remember seeing something.” Their bicycles and goods would most certainly be gone when they returned.

A brief conversation in guttural Mongol. “We saw two people with the truck, sir. A man and a woman.”

Despite his swelling excitement, Commissioner Zhou was careful not to react to that. “What did they look like?”

“Foreigners, sir.”

“Mongols?”

“No, sir. White foreigners. Both of them. The woman was blond. The man limping.”

“Where did they go?”

“Into the back of a red truck, sir. Filled with hay.”

“License number?”

“We did not see it, sir.”

“The driver?”

“Just a truck driver, sir.”

“Which way did the truck go?”

“North.”

Commissioner Zhou threw the passports at them and frantically dialed the number of the border post. As it rang he shouted to his driver. “The border crossing. Use the siren.”

 

Knuckles rapped on the back of the cab.

Avakian put his arm around Judy. “We're at the crossing. Not a sound.”

Right after he said that Judy was seized with an irresistible impulse to start drumming her feet on the floor. She actually felt like she had to grab ahold of her knees to stop herself.

The truck stopped, and those brakes really squealed. The hay shifted, rocking back and forth around them as if threatening to come crashing down. Avakian had always loved the smell of hay, but couldn't help wondering if Judy had allergies.

He could hear the driver speaking Chinese to someone. It sounded cordial. He only caught the word Zhangjiakou.

The engine started up, and they were moving again. The truck seemed to make a bit of a turn. Shit, they weren't getting sent over for inspection, were they?

The truck stopped again. More talking. He couldn't make out anything on either side this time.

Moving again. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. A siren behind them, getting louder. They came to a sudden stop. Both cab doors slammed. Son of a bitch! Getting out of the line of fire.

Feet clomping on the ladder and the tarp being pulled back.

Avakian turned Judy toward him so he could kiss her in the darkness. And took his arm from her so he could draw the pistol. Time for that last stand around the flag. The hay above them began to move.

 

Commissioner Zhou's driver came up the emergency lane of the four-lane border highway. When he jammed on the brake they went off the pavement and skidded into the soft sand, nearly knocking down a lamp pole.

An arch stretched across the width of the highway. It was painted like a rainbow. There was a white guardhouse with a red roof, and a metal accordion fence that could be pulled all the way across the highway if necessary. Two army light tanks were posted on either side.

He ran up to the guard on the northbound side. “Commissioner Zhou.”

A salute. “Yes, Commissioner, we are expecting you.”

“Have you seen the red truck?”

“Was it not a green truck, Comrade Commissioner?”

“Red. Red, I say. Filled with hay. You were not told?”

“No, Comrade Commissioner.”

At that precise moment an officer stuck his head out from the guardhouse and shouted, “Alert for any red truck filled with hay, trying to leave. Must be stopped.”