CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Gaithersburg
M ujaheed Beg ran a chipped fingernail across the black-and-white striped pillow from Veronica Garcia’s rumpled bed. Egyptian cotton. She had good taste. He held it to his nose and breathed in the musky floral scent of jasmine perfume. A pile of clothes lay strewn over the bed as if she’d dumped them out of a hamper. A small wicker basket full of lipsticks and eye makeup sat on the nightstand beside the bed. Two empty suitcases lay tossed on top of one another in the corner.
Wherever she’d gone, she left in a hurry.
Beg picked up a skimpy pair of leopard-print panties from the laundry on the bed and twirled them around his finger.
“It’s now or never,” he sang in a passable Elvis impression. His eyes wandered around the bedroom. “Show me her secrets…”
He’d made a similar trip to Grace Smallwood’s apartment. It was how he’d discovered her allergy to bees.
Garcia’s ballistic vest had been tossed unceremoniously on a pile of dirty laundry. A large-frame. 40-caliber Glock and a smaller, more feminine Kahr nine-millimeter sat loaded and holstered on the top shelf of the closet. He slid the hangers over one by one, stopping at a sequined blue evening gown. It made him laugh out loud to think of this buxom woman trying to hide a pistol under the sheer gown.
“What has become of you, my dear?” he muttered, running his hands along the hanging clothes.
He found it unbelievable that the dangerous woman he’d seen coming into Nadia Arbakova’s house would leave her weapons at home… unless she’d gone somewhere she could not take them…
Veronica Garcia’s bathroom revealed less than her bedroom. She took no medications but aspirin, used tampons instead of pads, and shaved her legs in the shower. Jasmine was her preferred scent for soaps and body lotions.
The familiar smell made him ache to meet her, to spend time with her alone in this house. He went back to the bedroom and shoved the pile of clothes on the floor to lie down on the striped sheets that smelled so strongly of her.
His phone began to buzz before his head hit the pillow. It had to be Badeeb.
He sat up, cursing in Tajik.
“Yes?”
“Allah be praised. Are you well?”
“Yes.” He did not wish to waste time with the doctor on pleasantries.
“Are you nearby?” came the familiar clicky voice.
“How would I know if that is so until you tell me where you are?”
“Never mind,” Badeeb said, snapping his cigarette lighter closed. “I have a job for you. I believe it will be straight up your street, so to speak…”
Beg rubbed a hand over his hair. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You know,” Badeeb stuttered. “Something you will enjoy-up your street.”
“Right up my alley,” Beg corrected. That such a witless man could accomplish so much of such great importance was surely a mystery.
“Yes, exactly that,” the doctor continued. “This one will be quite enjoyable, for you. I need you take care of an issue with the congressman. There is a situation.” Badeeb paused to take a long drag on his cigarette. “A situation I have been, of necessity, keeping from you…”
Beg picked up Garcia’s striped pillow and held it to his nose.
“Of course.” He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, unwilling to leave the scent of Veronica Garcia so quickly for any reason. “I will meet you in two hours’ time.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Xinjiang Province/Uyghur Autonomous Region China
D ressed in matching olive two-piece Rev’it textile riding suits against the chill of high altitude, Quinn and Garcia reached the police checkpoint at Tashkurgan before lunch. They’d stopped on the way for a bathroom break along the Karakoram Highway at the black waters of Lake Karakul. Quinn paid a Uyghur man five quai — less than a dollar-to take a photo of Ronnie sitting on a camel. They didn’t have the time for such things, but a tourist who rode by the high desert lake and didn’t take stop for photos would be highly suspect. And, he had to admit, she looked pretty good sitting up there, snowcapped peaks in the background, her hair blowing in the wind.
The ramshackle outpost of Tashkurgan was little more than a faceless government building and a touristy hotel with a line of fake yurts. They would need a special permit to continue down the Karakoram to their ostensible destination of the Khunjerab Pass leading into Pakistan. Umar had assured them the police were used to letting people riding his motorcycles through. As it turned out, the three Chinese guards, who were barely out of their teens, offered to let Garcia get her picture taken wearing one of their hats for twenty U.S. dollars-each. Quinn gladly paid the sixty bucks and they were able to slip through as long as they promised to just “go and come back” to the Pakistani border.
“Not a bad fee all in all,” Quinn said as they pushed the Enfields away from the concrete barricades and back on to the Karakoram heading south.
“That wasn’t a fee.” Ronnie wrinkled her nose. “That was a bribe.”
Quinn swung a leg over his bike. “You say tomato… We made it through without having to duct tape anyone and leave them in the closet. That’s what matters.”
Thirty miles south of Tashkurgan, they cut right, leaving the relative comfort of the paved Karakoram Highway to head west on an old jeep trail toward the sixteen-thousand-foot level marking Wakhir Pass and Afghanistan. Luckily, they saw no other traffic at the diversion from their promised route.
Garcia handled the rock-strewn road like Quinn had seen her handle everything in the short time he’d know her: by pretending she was an expert long enough that she became one. She was a strong woman, naturally athletic. Off-road motorcycling appeared to come easily to her.
As Umar had promised, the Enfield Bullets thumped along the rutted trail without complaint. Quinn had expected some drop in performance as they climbed near six thousand meters, but the bikes took Gabrielle’s impossibly steep smugglers’ trail along a sheer rock wall like metal mountain goats.
The only lag in performance was of the human kind. Both Quinn and Garcia were in excellent physical shape, but they were accustomed to living at sea level. By twelve thousand feet, even the act of horsing the motorcycles over gravel and dust forced them to stop for frequent breathers and sips of water. He’d read stories of ancient Buddhist monks who gave these places names like Big Headache and Nosebleed Pass. The throbbing killer at Quinn’s temples made him understand why.
Garcia made no secret of the fact that she hated the dizzying heights, refusing to look down and urging Quinn to get going again shortly after they’d stopped. He was sure her knuckles were white under the thick leather gloves.
Fatigue wasn’t their only problem. At thirteen thousand feet, they ran into a wall of blowing gray dust, ground fine as talc by the host of glaciers among the endless sawtooth peaks that stretched before them. The air was thin enough already and the dust made it nearly impossible to draw a breath.
Used for centuries by Silk Road travelers who wanted no contact with government officials, the hidden trail rose quickly, jogging around slabs of rock the size of houses and fields of gray boulders that fanned from snowcapped crags on all sides. Finally battling their way above the dust storm, they were able to make good
