Ni placed another call, and it took only a few moments for the confirmation to be reported.
Dots were connecting in Malone’s brain.
Ni’s phone chimed again. He lifted the unit, tapped a button, and read.
Malone caught the consternation on the man’s face. He and Cassiopeia listened as Ni explained about a telephone call his people had intercepted just a short while ago, between Tang and Pau.
“There’s some sort of division occurring between them,” Ni said. “Pau Wen enticed Tang, and now he wants me to come as well. A few years ago we opened a website to allow informants to report corruption electronically. Pau is aware of the site. He made mention of it to me. He sent a message through the site.
“The bastard knew all along where the boy is,” she said.
Malone shook his head. “His information network must be top-notch. Pau knows we survived and that you have us.”
“Spies,” Ni said.
“We have to go there,” Cassiopeia said.
“Karl Tang is headed west, as we speak,” Ni quietly noted.
“She’s right,” Malone said. “We have to go.”
Ni shook his head. “I can’t allow it.”
Cassiopeia didn’t want to hear that. “Why not? I’m betting you know all about the
Ni’s expression softened. “There’s something that has to happen first. I was informed of it outside, earlier.”
Malone waited.
“We found Lev Sokolov. He’s on his way here.”
SIXTY-FIVE
KASHGAR
XINJIANG AUTONOMOUS REGION
FRIDAY, MAY 18
1:00 AM
TANG EXITED HIS JET AND STEPPED OUT INTO THE EARLY morning. The flight west across the Taklamakan Desert had been uneventful, the air tranquil. He noticed that the clocks outside the airport were set two hours early, an unofficial defiance of the decree that all of China run on Beijing time. The present government had been tolerant of such slights. He would not be as generous. The riots and unrest that permeated the western portion of the nation would be quelled. Separatist leanings would be punished. If need be, he would raze every mosque and publicly execute every dissident to make the point that this land would remain part of China.
Viktor followed him off the plane. They’d spoken little on the flight, both of them sleeping a few hours, readying themselves for what lay ahead.
He needed to speak with his office, but had been unable to make contact.
A military chopper waited a hundred meters away, its blades already whirling. The flight south, into the mountains, was only three hundred kilometers and should not take long.
He gestured and, together, he and Viktor trotted toward the helicopter.
CASSIOPEIA HAD BEEN THRILLED TO SEE LEV SOKOLOV. THEY’D waited for him at the airfield in Xi’an. Her friend appeared tired and fragile, but otherwise in good spirits. As soon as Sokolov arrived, she, Malone, Sokolov, and Ni Yong boarded a Chinese turboprop, commandeered from Sichuan Airlines. With room for sixty and only four aboard, they’d been able to stretch out and sleep, even eat a little something, as the galley had been stocked before they left. Before crossing the Taklamakan wasteland, they’d stopped once for fuel.
During the flight they’d listened as Sokolov explained about his capture by Tang, the torture, then imprisonment in the lab. Earlier, Ni’s men had stormed the facility, surprised the guards and freed him, killing two of Tang’s associates. Sokolov’s only concern seemed to be his son, and his spirits lifted when Cassiopeia told him that they may well know the boy’s whereabouts.
“Why are you so important to Karl Tang?” Ni asked.
“I hate you Chinese,” Sokolov spat out.
“He’s here to help,” she said. “Tang tried to kill him and me.”
“I understand your resentment,” Ni said. “But I did not have to bring you along, nor did I have to rescue you. I chose to do both, so I’m hoping that says something for my intentions.”
Sokolov’s face softened, his eyes cooled.
“I discover oil is infinite.”
TANG LISTENED THROUGH THE EARPHONES AS HIS SUBORDINATES reported what had happened in Xi’an after he departed, and what had happened at the laboratory in Lanzhou.
“Sokolov was flown south to Xi’an,” his chief aide stated. “Minister Ni is on his way west, with two foreigners and Lev Sokolov.”
“Do we know where?”
“No, sir. They filed no flight path.”
“Locate the plane. Sichuan Airlines has transponders. I want to know where they land.”
His aide acknowledged the order.
Time for some preventive measures.
“Connect me to the Pakistani defense ministry,” he told his subordinate. “Now.”
Viktor had been listening to the conversation through his own headset. While Tang waited for the call to be made, he said, “Ni has decided to utilize Malone and Vitt. Make them his allies.”
Viktor nodded. “Smart play. But Malone is a problem. Ni doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with.”
Tang didn’t like any of this. He was being forced to take ever-bolder steps. So far he’d been able to operate within the confines of Party secrecy where no one questioned anything. But this was not Beijing.
He felt vulnerable.
“You want me to go handle Malone and Vitt?” Viktor asked.
“No. This time I’ll do it myself.”
NI HEARD THE WORDS THAT LEV SOKOLOV HAD SPOKEN. “EXPLAIN yourself.”
“Oil is infinite. It comes from deep in earth and can be replenished. Its origins are abiotic. Biotic oil all consumed long ago.”
“Is that why Tang wanted the lamp with the oil?” Cassiopeia asked.
The Russian nodded. “I need sample for comparison test that would prove theory. Some oil taken from ground long ago, at defined spot.”
Ni’s mind reeled. “Tang knows this?”
Sokolov nodded. “That why he took my child. Why”—the man gently touched his shirt above his abdomen —“he torture me.”
“You have a way to prove that oil is infinite?” Malone asked.
“I do. It’s my lifework. My friend Jin Zhao was killed for it.”
