Performance Anomalies (18 page)

The U.S. Defense Secretary said they had accomplished their mission of keeping the bomb-grade material “forever out of the reach of black marketers, terrorists, or a new nuclear regime.”

November 22, 1994. Reuters. “Nuclear Bomb Cache Found In Kazakhstan.”

November 24, 1994. Washington Post. “Kazakhstan Site Had Lax Security.”

October 24, 1996. Washington Times. “Kazakh Uranium Shipment Was Shy Enough For Two Bombs.”

November 11, 1996. Nucleonics Week. “Sapphire HEU Is Less Than DOE First Claimed, Government Admits.”

The pain in Cono’s head returned, now with greater force and centered just above his palate. He stood up, walked shakily to the bright-eyed young man behind the cash box, and paid with a trembling hand.

“You all right, man?” The youth’s brow creased in concern.

“Just fine, just fine,” Cono responded automatically in Mandarin. “Just fine.”

The pain was excruciating. A sharp metallic taste spread across the back of his tongue, as if he were chewing on aluminum foil. He turned and focused on the glass door, which was filled with flashing zigzags of blurred light. His toes turned inward as he tried to walk, stumbling with stiff legs that didn’t want to move. His feet suddenly pointed like a ballerina’s, lifting him in his last lurch toward the exit. His hand was just able to swing the door partway open before his rigid body fell onto the sidewalk.

“Hey! You all right?” The Mandarin voice sounded strangely like Cono’s father’s, but the fuzzy face didn’t match. The young man was poking a finger against Cono’s carotid. Cono’s jaw was so tightly clenched that he couldn’t have spoken even if his mind had formed words. “Open your eyes!
Ta ma de
! Shit, are you alive?” Cono’s eyes fluttered open. “Oh, man, you’re scaring me. You’ve been out for a while. I called the embassy. You don’t look so Chinese, but that’s the way you talk. They’ll be here any minute. Better than calling an ambulance in this town. I’ll get you some water, okay? You okay? Your head okay?”

Cono’s body slackened slightly. He uncurled his fingers. He could feel his arms, but barely. He tried to turn over and get his knees under him. Gradually he pushed himself up onto all fours, wobbling as he watched strings of saliva elongate from his mouth down to the concrete. Two vaguely familiar polished black shoes planted themselves on either side of his splayed hands.

“Your description of him was quite accurate, young man. Thank you for alerting the embassy. He doesn’t look it, but he is one of ours. Your guess is probably right, just a seizure, or maybe food poisoning. He will be grateful to you when he regains full consciousness.”

Still unable to speak, Cono felt his body being lifted and carried. The sun blanched his retinas. As he was folded into fetal position in the back seat of a car, he heard the faint whisper of Xiao Li’s voice in his head, saying, “Is Almaty such a big town?” The fleeting thought of her led to a jumble of pleasurable sensations that vanished when he felt the blunt pressure of the Makarov’s muzzle on his pubic bone. The wetness down there was warm. The vague thought assembled in Cono’s mind that he had peed on Timur’s cherished pistol. The humor of it partially assembled itself too, then faded, as did the whole of Cono’s consciousness.

Zheng turned to the troubled café attendant. “And now please show me which computer our compatriot was using.”

“Aren’t you going to take him to a doctor? He looks pretty bad off.”

“Which computer?” Zheng said tightly, forcing a smile. “Maybe we can discover some information that will allow us to inform his family.”

The young man pointed to the terminal Cono had used. Zheng sat down and scrolled back through the recent queue of sites. HEU, radiation containment, enrichment stages, canister configurations, Sapphire, Kazak uranium shipments … Zheng became more puzzled and disturbed as he scanned page after page. The insulting foreigner with the dirty face in the park was much more than Zheng had surmised, not just a go-between. Now he appeared to be a threat, but from which angle? At last the clicks of the mouse arrived at a site for Romanian marriage brokers.

Zheng was already pushing the door open when the attendant said: “Hey! You have to pay.” Zheng turned back and faced the upstart.

“Who owns this place?”

“My mom and dad.” The attendant was blustery and perturbed. He planted his hands on his hips and stuck out his chest.

“So you are a good son. Where is your family from in China?”

“Why do you want to know? We live here now. Where are
you
from?” The young man had an accent from the south, perhaps Yunnan. His Mandarin was shabby, and it grated on Zheng’s ear.

“I’m from Beijing.” Zheng pulled a business card from his suit coat and held it in front of the young man’s eyes.

The attendant snatched it and read. “So, big man, this isn’t China,” he said. “We already cough up enough cash to the
raket
for our roof here. You try to butt in on the action and they’ll fuck you good.” The card landed on the toe of Zheng’s shoe. “Now pay up.”

The only other customer in the café, a middle-aged Chinese woman wearing socks and sandals, placed a bill on the desk and eased around the two men in order to leave.

With a look of disgust, Zheng pulled a few tenge notes from his pants pocket and let them drop on the floor. As he walked out the door the attendant shouted: “Hey! You take care of that guy. And … and
fuck
Beijing!”

Zheng emitted a low growl as he turned back to the door and opened it, a fresh smile on his face.

“Tell me, young man, where is the toilet, please? Bodily functions. I’m sure you understand.”

The attendant pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Pee or shit? There’s no toilet paper.”

“No need for toilet paper, thank you. Where is the bathroom?”

“It’s back there.” The young man waved his hand impatiently.

“Where exactly? Can you show me? I need to go.”

The young man strode to a narrow door wedged between two computer terminals and opened it. “You have one of those prostate problems, big man?”

“You’re so cruel, speaking that way. Age comes to all of us.”

They were now on the threshold of a small hallway crowded with stacks of partly dismantled computers. Zheng walked ahead.

“Show me the toilet please—it’s urgent.”

“It’s down there on the left. I’m not a tour guide. And if you’re one of those perverts, you’ll just have to shake it off yourself.” The young man turned to go back into the shop.

Zheng rotated swiftly on his heel. His left arm encircled the young man’s neck like a noose. He flicked open a knife in his right hand and swung it around, plunging it into the young man’s chest just below the sternum. Zheng squeezed with both arms, so hard that his victim could not cry out.

“You are an insult. Your family too. Hear me?” Zheng probed deeply with the blade, up to the heart for two swipes. “An insult to our people, to my people, to all we have suffered through.
Quitters.
” Zheng pushed the blade all the way back to reach the descending aorta; he felt its pulsations through the knife. “Ah, there you are.” One more sweep of the blade. Computer screens crashed to the floor. The young man’s kicking stopped. His hands released the snarl of computer cables he’d been trying to loop backward around his assailant’s head, and he slumped over.

Zheng withdrew the knife and let the boy fall to the floor, face down.

“Peasant trash,” Zheng said as he spat and wiped the blade on the young man’s shirt. He clicked the knife shut and slid it into the pocket with his business cards. He rolled his head right and left, tugged on his coat sleeves to make them straight again, adjusted the white trim on his breast pocket, and strolled out of the shop.

It was cool when Cono opened his eyes again, but his wrists and ankles were warm. He felt as if he were arched in a backward swan dive, looking up at a ceiling with fluorescent lights. There was a cold, hard surface under his back, and the chill of it against his shoulders and buttocks told him that he was naked. He moved, and found that his wrists and ankles were tightly bound, and that the surface underneath him was too small to support the full length of his body. His head draped off one end of what turned out to be a desk, and his legs were dangling off the other end toward the floor. He felt like a slab of meat on a butcher’s block.

Something brushed against his cheek and eased with greater pressure toward the corner of his lips. A knob wedged between his teeth and into his mouth. The taste was of oil and smoke. The knob went deeper until he was choking.

“It’s quite an old gun, but still very useful.” Zheng’s carefully cropped head was just a silhouette against the bright ceiling lights. The Makarov barrel was withdrawn with a snap, breaking off the point of one of Cono’s canines.

“So sorry,” Zheng cooed in Mandarin. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He stroked the tip of the gun against Cono’s cheek. “I want to help you. I want to help you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Zheng’s voice was cool and smooth, like the gun muzzle that caressed Cono’s face.

Cono’s eyes rolled, trying to register the scene; he was still dazed in the aftermath of the seizure. Zheng’s features were coming into focus, but a pulsing pressure in Cono’s head made it hard for him to take in anything else. He thought he could make out two more cropped-hair silhouettes, one at each side. Were there others? He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

“Ah! You are thirsty. I forget my responsibilities as a host. Please, forgive me.” Zheng motioned to one of the silhouettes, who presented a glass. Zheng put down the gun, cradled Cono’s head in one hand, and with the other tipped the water glass carefully so Cono could drink. “Is that better, my friend?”

Cono swallowed repeatedly, but the water came too fast. He coughed and jerked his head away from Zheng’s hand.

“Thanks for the drowning,” Cono said groggily in Mandarin, looking around the room. “How can I help you, my friend?”

“Let me begin by saying that you are such an
intriguing
personality. I knew it the first day we met, so at ease, so charming. I don’t even know what to ask first. Maybe you can just talk to us, tell us what is on your mind, what attracts you to Almaty. You seem to have many friends here.”

“I’m attracted by the women. What attracts you to Almaty?”

Zheng sighed and paced from one end of Cono’s bound body to the other. He picked up the Makarov and stroked the muzzle lightly along Cono’s chest, slowly down his abdomen, and then along the inside of his left thigh and all the way to his instep. “I am very, very curious about who you are working for here in Almaty. It’s a simple question.”

The stroke on Cono’s thigh had reflexively caused his cremaster muscle to pull up the testicle on that side, and Zheng had noticed. Cono feared his genitals would be the first part of his body to suffer.

“I said I like the women here, so I don’t think I’m the right one to help you,” Cono said. “But I can arrange to get you laid by a horse-hung teenager working at Hotel Ratar.” The angle of the light on the face to his right allowed him to perceive one of the henchmen half-smirking.

The pistol slammed against Cono’s jaw.

“So you’re an S&M guy,” Cono said, his senses recovering. “Go ahead and suck the iguana, but don’t bite
too
hard.” The half-faces on both sides compressed their lips to contain either their amusement or their shock at Cono’s nerve.

Zheng ignored the remark; he took off his suit coat and laid it neatly across the back of a desk chair. His white shirt was sweat-stained beneath the armpits. Cono’s eyes had regained their focus, but to see anything he had to lift his head up, and his neck muscles were already feeling the strain. He saw that the white trim at the breast pocket of Zheng’s suit coat wasn’t a handkerchief; it looked like stiff paper, the size of a postcard.

“What’s that, your torture notes?” Cono asked, his eyes on the pocket. “And I thought you were a pro.”

Zheng’s body tensed. The blood vessels in his forehead became engorged; it seemed that he wasn’t breathing. Finally he closed his eyes and let out a long exhalation. He reached for his suit coat, carefully folded it so that the breast pocket was covered, and placed the coat on the shelf behind him.

“It’s a shame,” Zheng said, still recovering his breath, “that in this primitive outpost we don’t have the drugs at hand to make this easier for you. But being such a reasonable and experienced man of the world, I’m sure you’ll tell us what you are doing in this backward place.” Zheng lit a cigarette and took a long drag, speaking as the smoke veiled his silhouette. “Who are you?”

Cono tried to find Zheng’s eyes within the shadow of the face. “I’m a swimmer, like Mao in those old pictures—all that paddling around. A surfer too,” Cono said. He tried to find an equivalent of
surfer dude
in Mandarin, but failed and laughed.