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.
Chapter Eleven
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
