Performance Anomalies (28 page)

He heard a burbling and put his hand on Timur’s back. Yes, he was breathing, barely.
Friend
. The friend who had brutalized Xiao Li. The friend who had murdered Muktar. The friend who was so eager to murder Cono.

Cono waited to feel the killing reflex he had confessed to Bulat. He replayed the abuse of Xiao Li in his mind, to amplify his rage. And the chains in the chamber below, the women Timur had starved as his slave-prostitutes.
Take the knife out of Tamaris’s ear. Put it where it is due.

The reflex remained mute. Maybe, Cono thought, he had been hypnotized by his own talk of fruits in the crate, closing two eyes.
Friendship of youth. Peas in a pod
.

The reflex wasn’t responding.

Cono got on his knees next to the two bodies. He reached into his vest and pulled out a coin. With a flick of his thumb the coin became two disks attached to each other by a circular joint. Cono held the disks like a scalpel as he lifted Timur’s head to see his face.

The edge of one disk was as sharp as a razor blade. With it Cono sliced downward from the corner of Timur’s left eye and then upward, carving out a piece of skin in the shape of a long teardrop. Blood quickly streamed from it. Cono turned Timur’s head to expose his other eye. He carved another tear, longer and deeper this time, wiping the shred of skin on Timur’s black hair.

Cono rolled his index finger in the blood oozing from Timur’s tear-cut, then put the red finger into Tamaris’s gaping mouth. He placed the same finger in the blood dripping from Tamaris’s penetrated ear, and then put the finger between Timur’s lips. Finally, Cono scored his forearm with the coin until it seeped red. With his own blood he painted a C first on Tamaris’s forehead, then on Timur’s.

“So you will remember me in the next life,” Cono breathed, “and not forget each other.” He wiped his finger clean on Timur’s shirt.

Cono’s head reeled as he stood up; he stumbled over the hoses, trying to get away as fast as he could from the bodies.
Xiao Li. Dimira. Zheng
. He grabbed the welding mask hanging on one of the tanks and trudged toward Azmat, trying to guess where Zheng might have taken his captives. Maybe he should have given Xiao Li another mobile phone, so she could alert him if there was a problem, but it could have been a liability if she’d used it incautiously. Or so he told himself.

Cono lifted Azmat’s ankles and propped them up on the welding mask. The boy was in shock, but his chest was still rising and falling with shallow breaths. Cono gathered up Azmat’s fallen pistol and went back to the two bodies. He pulled the AK from between them and unwrapped the grenade from Tamaris’s fingers.

He carried the weapons to the base of the cockpit stairs where he’d laid Timur’s handguns. Here, next to the door leading to the quarry, the crusher seemed horribly loud and demanding.
Where are Xiao Li and Dimira?
He felt like a hunter without a spear, naked with stupidity.

The humming machine beckoned him. It would take only fifteen minutes or so to get rid of the rest of the canisters.
Only three or four more
.
Which was it?
Or he could stretch out on this floor, just for a little while … He closed his eyes and staggered to the door to the quarry, bracing himself against its bent frame. He felt warmth and opened his eyes. The sun, a red sphere on the horizon, was blinding. He turned his head back to the interior, blinking, trying to form images. He saw Azmat on the floor. There was another boy below, killed by two knuckles on Cono’s right hand. And somewhere behind the cylinders was the boys’ brave, dead leader.

Dying for a lump of metal in a barrel. What foolishness.
He laughed, still holding himself against the doorframe. He could prove their foolishness by tossing the rest of the lumps into the hungry mouth. He laughed again, and again; it kept him alert as he hoisted the canister lying on the floor and carried it to the crusher, where he lobbed it into the feed bin.

He climbed into the pit to go down for another one. As he entered the hole he stepped on the gun he’d left on the second rung of the ladder.

“Your mind is mush, Cono,” he yelled as he wedged the gun into his waistband and went down, laughing hysterically.

The sight of the dead young man in the tunnel silenced his laughter. Cono pulled him away by the ankles to clear the space next to the high-U.

He brought up the fourth and fifth canisters. “Yes, I
am
a mule, yes I
am
a mule,” he repeated to himself. Tamaris’s words formed a rhythm that kept Cono marching as he delivered each yellow barrel to its death. His hysteria broke free each time he pressed the crusher feed lever and shouted, “Dust to dust!” toward the sunrise shimmering in the distance.

The last canister seemed the lightest of all as he lugged it up the ladder, and he found it easy to thrust it onto the diminished pile of rocks in the feed bin. He felt his cheeks flushing as he came down the steps from the cockpit.
More! More! What else can I return to the earth?
Midway down the stairs, he stopped.

“Timur! My BROTHER!” he yelled. “Dust to dust!” He almost tripped as he leaped off the stairs in eagerness.

But while he was airborne, he heard above the drone of the crusher a creak, like a distant hinge coming to life. As he landed at the foot of the stairs, Cono seized the AK and spun.

It was Bulat. Same clothes, same cap. He had just walked through the little door next to the interior shed.

Cono looked for others behind the intruder. There were none. “So, Teacher, speak to the class.”

Bulat steadily shuffled forward, looking left at Tamaris and Timur, and then at Azmat, lying to the right.

“Stop there.”

Bulat stood still, surveying the parts of the building that hadn’t been visible from the doorway, then his gaze veered back to Cono. “You seem to have recovered quickly since our last meeting.”

“Take off the jacket and cap and throw them in front of you.”

Bulat complied, saying, “I assure you I have no weapons.”

“Assurances are as dependable as alley cats lately. Take off your shirt and pants and throw them down too. Then take five steps backward and turn around. A full circle. Arms in the air.”

“This is quite, quite irregular.”

“This is an irregular place.”

“I assure you …”

“I assure you I am very impatient. And not normal in the head.”

Bulat removed his shirt and tossed it. He had a hard time getting his pant legs over his shoes.

“The shoes too.”

When the trousers and shoes joined the pile, Bulat, wearing only baggy gray briefs, a sleeveless undershirt, and drooping brown socks, stepped backward and turned around. He was a short block of a man, with legs like tree stumps.

Cono approached the clothes and began to step on them to feel for weapons.

“My phone. Don’t break it. It’s in the coat.”

Cono found it and put it in his pocket.

“Now I am
sure
you are a very capable man,” Bulat said, “just as Miss Oksana told me. It has been quite a spectacle.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I came shortly after the head of the Bureau arrived.”

“You saw everything?”

“All that I could see from that little door when it wasn’t being guarded.”

“And you didn’t help me?”

“It was hard to make sense of it all. A puzzle with so many missing pieces. And, from what I could see, you seemed to need no help from an unarmed man.”

Cono let the AK rest at his hip. “I could be one of the corpses here.”

“With such a complicated picture, how could I know that was a bad thing?”

Cono raised the rifle to his shoulder again. “Do you think it would be a bad thing if I put you down right now?” Cono had been standing still for too long. The lack of vigorous movement, which the canister toting had afforded, was allowing weariness to reinvade his body.

“For me, a very bad thing indeed,” Bulat said. “For you, I’m not sure. But a man, especially a naked man, deserves to know why he is to be killed by someone he helped such a short time before.”

“Get dressed.”

Bulat gathered up his clothes.

“Tell me, Slem, where is Miss Oksana?”

“I don’t know. And please, Bulat is a much better name.”

“Why are you here, Bulat?”

“I relieved another man who works for Miss Oksana. He was keeping watch on the Bureau chief, for what purpose I wasn’t informed. As I arrived the other man got a message from Miss Oksana. She told him not to bother with the surveillance—I like that word, ‘surveillance.’ The other man left with surprising haste; perhaps he was happy to get some sleep.” Bulat continued talking as he buttoned his shirt. “But I had already slept for several hours. What was I to do? Go home and play chess against myself? My family is in the countryside; I am all alone. And I was right—chess is nothing compared to the drama I have witnessed here.” Bulat put on his cap.

“That’s enough. Do you know that Oksana has turned over two women, my friends, to a Beijing agent, who will surely kill them?”

“I heard the Bureau chief shouting something about a tart a short time ago, and a Kitai. Regrettably, I could not understand all that he said.”

Cono moved slightly so he could see Bulat more clearly in the sunlight glowing from the doorway behind him. The broad Kazak face lacked any momentary ripples of lies.

“I don’t know about these women,” Bulat said. “Why would Miss Oksana put your friends in danger? I thought Miss Oksana was your friend too. I am confused. What Beijing agent?”

“Your Miss Oksana couldn’t get what she needed from the Americans, so she cut a deal with the Kitai, the ringleader of Beijing’s grab for your country—the torturer you saved me from. That’s why she called off the surveillance of the Bureau chief, who came here to trade with the jihadis to get their support. She called off the chase because the Bureau chief was soon to be Beijing’s man too.”

Creases appeared in the wide slab of Bulat’s forehead. “Miss Oksana? No. There must be another explanation. Perhaps she just took my advice that the jihadis were a distraction from the bigger problem.”

Cono pulled out Bulat’s mobile and handed it to him. “Call her.”

“Oh, no. We never communicate by phone.”

Cono planted the butt of the AK in his shoulder and aimed.

“That number is only for the most extreme of circumstances.”

“Look around. There’s another dead man down in the tunnel. Do you want me to cut an equation into your forehead?”

“Miss Oksana going over to the Kitais? After all my warnings about Beijing taking my country? It cannot be so,” Bulat asserted, but a telltale vertical wrinkle of doubt formed between his eyebrows.

“Call her.”

Bulat carefully punched in a number by memory. “It’s ringing.” Bulat held the phone to his ear for a dozen rings. The wrinkle on his forehead grew deeper. “No answer,” he said softly.

“Call again.”

“She told me if circumstances ever became extreme, she would respond immediately,” he said slowly, as if explaining a theorem to a student. “She said my good service demanded that of her.” He punched in the number again and listened, his head bent down.

“Hallo. Miss Oksana. Yes, it’s Slem. It’s an emergency …”

Cono grabbed the phone. “Where are they?”

“Cono, you sound like you’ve lost your cool.” Katerina’s voice was even. “You see? You
are
addicted.”

“Where are my friends?”

There was a momentary silence. “You mean the Chinese street whore? Why bother? A woman like that is always asking for trouble.”

“And what were
you
when you first came to Almaty?”

Silence.

“And what are you now?”

Silence.

“And the other woman you gave to Zheng, a mother,” Cono said. “Children—you were so worried about them. A million dead.”

Cono heard Katerina draw in a breath. “You mean the one with the ugly ears,” she said. “We know her kid is dead anyway. Just get out, Cono.”

“Why did you turn? Have you been hedging your bets all along? Where are the two women?”

“Listen. Simmons’s replacement doesn’t like my
style
. She called me a liability. You know what that means, Cono? It means my family is fucked unless I find another way, and my bones will be found someday in an acid vat at a tannery in Chimkent. So, Mr. Free to Go Anywhere Anytime, see reality and get the fuck out of town.” There were three clicks. The connection went dead.

“Well?” Bulat looked alarmed by the anger in Cono’s face.

“It’s true. She’s working for Beijing. In hopes of freedom.”

“Beijing? Freedom?” Bulat started to laugh, but stopped himself. He shook his head. “Oil and water.”