The Hydra Protocol (21 page)

“We need to lose our followers,” Nadia said. “My contact will not wish to be seen speaking with us.”

“It would help if we knew who our followers were,” Chapel pointed out. Then he saw something and had an idea. He walked away from Nadia and Bogdan and stooped down over one of the blankets, one selling sticks and cones of incense. The man who ran this impromptu store was wearing a pakol, the traditional soft round hat of an Afghan. Unlike most of the men Chapel had seen in Tashkent, he had a long, thick beard. “
Aya ta pa pashto khabarey kawalai shey?
” he said, asking if the man spoke Pashto.

The man looked up, surprised, and raised his hands in joy. “God is great!” he answered, in that language. “And full of surprises. A white man who speaks my language, and I am sure, has money to buy my wares, yes?”

Chapel got the point. A shared tongue wasn’t going to get him anything for free. “You’re from Afghanistan?” he asked. Not entirely surprising—Uzbekistan shared a border with Afghanistan, and the Taliban had driven a lot of refugees out of their country with nothing but what they could carry on their backs.

“I have the honor of being born in Waziristan, yes,” the vendor replied.

Chapel nodded. Waziristan was where he lost his arm, but he didn’t think it would help his case to mention that. “I imagine the local police are no friends of yours,” he said, trying hard to remember the correct grammar. “I’m being followed right now.”

“Sir, this is Tashkent, and we are foreigners both. We are all being followed. At night, I think they follow me through my dreams.”

Chapel picked up an ornate brass incense burner, the most expensive-looking thing on the blanket, and set it down in front of the man. It would probably fetch five dollars back on Canal Street in New York. He took seven twenty-dollar bills from his wallet, keeping them carefully folded, and used them to tap the incense burner. “Would you be so kind as to point out to me all the . . . special police on this street?” He couldn’t remember the word for “secret.” He knew the word for “security forces,” but that meant something very different in Afghanistan.

A few seconds later, a hundred and forty dollars lighter, and a little bit wiser, Chapel walked back over to Nadia. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got a plan.”

Nadia and Bogdan headed across the street, into the bicycle rental shop, while Chapel worked his way down the sidewalk, bending low to speak to each of the street vendors. It didn’t matter what he said to them, which was good since he didn’t share any languages with most of them. Only one spoke English—a teenage boy who looked more Asian than any of the others Chapel met.

“I’m from Russia originally, I mean, my grandparents were Russian,” the kid said, shrugging. “Before that, they were Korean. Stalin moved people all over, back in the 1930s, and this is where we ended up.”

Chapel nodded. “How did you learn English?” he asked.

The kid shrugged. “Watching your American movies, mostly. And talking to tourists like you. You going to buy something, or were you just so surprised to see a Korean sitting here you needed to ask?”

Chapel looked down at the wares the kid had on offer, a collection of bootleg videos on cheap DVDs. He didn’t really register any of the titles—he just pretended to study them while he actually watched what was going on at the far corner of the street. The Afghan merchant he’d paid off was rising from his blanket, speaking to the vendors on either side of him—most likely asking them to watch his stuff. One of them nodded distractedly, and that seemed to be good enough.

The Afghan strolled across the street toward a man who was sitting on a bench there, pretending to read a newspaper. The Afghan had identified this man as one of the three secret policemen working the street. The other two were sitting in a car parked about twenty yards away. Chapel was surprised he hadn’t spotted them himself—one of the men in the car was the SNB man with the shaved head who had greeted him when he arrived at the hotel.

Chapel sifted through the bootleg DVDs on the Korean boy’s blanket, trying very hard not to show how intently he was watching events unfold. The Afghan sat down on the bench next to the secret policeman and rested one arm on the back of the bench. He spoke a few words, seemingly to himself. Then the secret policeman folded up his newspaper and got up and walked away. After a second the Afghan followed him.

All according to plan. Chapel had paid the Afghan to say he had information on a suspicious American tourist, but he wanted money for it. The two of them headed into the back of the information kiosk, presumably to discuss terms. That would take them a few minutes.

The trickiest part about shaking this tail was going to be convincing the SNB that Chapel, Nadia, and Bogdan were just minding their business, and that they had no intention of evading pursuit. This had to look like it all just happened naturally.

Chapel took a few small bills from his pocket and handed them to the Korean kid. “I’ve seen all these, but thanks for the conversation,” he said. Then he moved down to the next blanket, one that sat just outside of the bicycle rental shop.

Just as he’d hoped, Nadia had come through on her end. She and Bogdan came rolling out of the alley that ran alongside the shop, each of them riding a motor scooter. Bogdan climbed off his and onto the back of Nadia’s vehicle, leaving one idling on the sidewalk. Chapel risked a quick glance at the two secret policemen in the car. As expected they were watching him closely. The one he didn’t recognize was holding a camera.

Nothing to be done about that—this wasn’t like in Istanbul where he could get to that camera and erase his presence. He wondered if that had been part of Nadia’s plan all along, to have their presence in Uzbekistan documented by the secret police. Then when they entered Kazakhstan, there would be a trail showing they had not entered through Russia, limiting the Russian government’s culpability.

Nothing he could do about that, either. He swung a leg over the idling scooter. The brand name—Vyatka—was emblazoned on its front shield. It was an attractive bottle green color, but that was about all it had going for it. Much of its rear end was held together with patches, and its engine puttered away beneath him with less power than a riding lawn mower. He estimated the thing would have a top speed of about thirty miles an hour, even less than that going uphill.

Still, scooters had their advantages.

“You okay with this?” he asked Nadia.

She strapped a helmet over her black hair and gave him a vampish look from beneath its brim. “Your concern is touching, but I had one of these when I was a teenager.” She handed a helmet back to Bogdan, who fussed and fumbled with the straps. She glanced back, and the look of terror on Bogdan’s face made her laugh. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Did you ever drive one before?”

“Motorcycles and bicycles, yes. Nothing halfway in between like this. But I’ll be fine,” Chapel said. Then he hit the throttle and roared out into the street. The engine made a nasty sound as it changed gears, but it didn’t die on him as he’d feared it might. He kept accelerating as he drove right past the parked SNB car. Much as he’d expected, as he passed he heard its much more powerful engine kick into life, and in his mirrors he saw it pull away from the curb.

The chase was on.

They headed down the wide tourist street, Nadia and Bogdan keeping close to Chapel’s tail. He pushed his scooter for all the speed he could get, but the SNB car had no trouble keeping up. There was plenty of room for the car to maneuver on the street, even when Chapel used the scooter’s small size to wind his way between the other cars. A few drivers shook their fists or shouted at him, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying so he ignored them.

The street went on for many blocks. Chapel dropped back a hair until he was riding alongside Nadia. “Left or right up ahead?” he shouted over the mosquito whine of the scooter engines. “We need to get somewhere more crowded.”

“Left,” she told him, and gunned her scooter forward. She took the turn without slowing down, leaning deep into the curve. Chapel nearly overshot the side street but managed to follow her by jumping up on an empty sidewalk for a second.

Behind them the SNB car made the turn effortlessly. The man with the shaved head was driving and he always stayed a few car lengths back, not so far that Chapel lost sight of him but not so close as to make it blatant that they were being followed.

The side street was almost empty of traffic. There were no stores on this block, just blind doorways that gave no sense of what lay beyond. No pedestrians on the sidewalks, either, which made Chapel uneasy. He had no idea why Nadia had taken this turn—until, without warning, she ducked up a long alleyway to the right. Chapel nearly lost control of his scooter as he spun around to keep up with her, but he kicked off the pavement with one foot and righted himself again.

The alleyway sloped downhill toward a busy street beyond. Clotheslines hung like drab bunting overhead, and windows high on the buildings were propped open to catch any breeze. The alley was just wide enough for the SNB car to follow them, though the driver scraped off half his paint job on a Dumpster at the back of one building. He didn’t seem to care—in Chapel’s mirrors he could see the man with the shaved head in the driver’s seat, and he didn’t even look over to see what all the noise was.

This guy was determined, Chapel had to give him that. He wasn’t going to let them get away with a little trick driving.

At the end of the alleyway Nadia waved to the right, as if she was going to turn that way. Chapel wondered why she would throw such an obvious signal—then grinned to himself as she shot forward between two cars and into an identical alleyway across the busy street. Her signal had just been a feint. Chapel had to twist around and lean away from an oncoming car as he bounced and rolled across the main street, but he managed to shoot into the second alleyway without crashing. Nadia glanced back over her shoulder at him, smiling. Bogdan looked like he might start screaming at any moment, his eyes rolling under their fringe of hair. He had one arm tight around Nadia’s waist, hanging on, while with his other hand he tapped at the keys of his MP3 player. The hacker was crazy, Chapel thought—if he was that scared, why not use both arms to hold on? The key clacking seemed to comfort him, though, like an infant with a security blanket.

Chapel glanced back and saw the SNB car slowly threading its way into traffic in the street behind him. They were gaining significant ground on the car, not least because the downward-sloping alleyways helped their struggling engines.

Up ahead of them the alleyway descended toward a parking garage. Chapel could see flickering sunlight through the open structure. He rushed forward to catch up with Nadia, then pointed at the garage. She nodded back so he took the lead again, using his forward momentum to carry him up a ramp and through the structure, the wind making chopping noises on either side as he flashed past a long rank of parked cars. A second ramp continued up into the higher stories of the garage, but Chapel didn’t want to go that way—there would be no way down from up there and he would be trapping himself. Instead he looked for and found an exit from the structure on its far side. A low wall prevented cars from just driving straight through, but there was a gap in that wall for pedestrians who wanted to get to their parking spots. There wasn’t a lot of clearance but Chapel threaded the needle and shot through to the other side, just as a car was coming into the garage. The car’s horn blared and someone shouted a warning, but Chapel just twisted around and shot past the side of the car, out into a wide street beyond.

Nadia was right on his tail as he blasted through an intersection and slipped between two lanes of traffic. Up ahead he saw that the road opened into a broad plaza with the huge curved wall of a stadium filling up half the sky down there. Traffic swirled around the stadium in a vast gyre, the cars inching forward against gridlock.

Chapel cut some of his speed and let Nadia catch up to him so they could talk again. “Did we lose them?” he asked.

“We must have,” she said, as they joined up with the barely moving traffic circle. “There was no way he could get through there.”

Chapel nodded and studied the cars around him. The drivers were all staring at them, but that couldn’t be helped. An American and a woman who looked like Nadia riding scooters were bound to attract attention in Tashkent.

“So who’s this contact we’re meeting with?” Chapel asked, as they crept forward, around the circle. They were moving so slowly they had to put their feet down so their scooters didn’t fall over. It gave them a chance to talk, though Chapel would have preferred to keep moving—he never liked feeling trapped, even in gridlock.

“She’s trustworthy. I know that’s what you’re asking. At least,” Nadia called over to him, over the traffic noise, “we can trust her not to betray us to the SNB.”

“That’s a big ‘at least,’” Chapel said.

Nadia shrugged. “We need certain things for our trip into the desert. Only one person in Tashkent can get us what we need. Therefore, we must trust her. She’s a
vory
. You know what that means?”

Chapel grimaced. “Russian mafia.”

“The word means ‘thief-in-law,’ a lawful thief,” Nadia told him. “One who follows the thief’s code.”

“A criminal. Every criminal I ever met followed the same code—do what benefits them, and everyone else can go to hell.”

Nadia laughed. “You in the West, you will never understand. The
mafiya
—the gangs—do you know where they came from? The gulags. They were born in Stalin’s prison camps. They hate nothing so much as central government. The irony is, they have come to be so powerful, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, they are a kind of government in themselves. The
vory
—”

“Car,” Bogdan said.

Chapel stared at the hacker. “Yes, Bogdan, there are lots of cars here,” he said.

The Romanian shook his head. “That car,” he said, and pointed with one very long finger.