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Not long afterwards, Abdul saw shadowy movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look. There was no sound, and it took a moment to locate what he had glimpsed. There was no moon, but the starlight was bright, as usual in the desert. He saw a creature with silvery fur moving so smoothly that it seemed to glide, and he suffered a moment of superstitious dread. Then he realized that something like a dog had entered the compound, a dog with a light-coloured coat and black legs and tail. It crept silently past oblivious sleepers in their blankets. It was cautious but confident, as if it had been here before, a regular night visitor haunting this crude encampment in the wilderness. It had to be some kind of fox, and he saw that it had a pup at its heels. Mother and child, he thought, and he knew he was seeing something rare and special. When one of the bus passengers suddenly snored loudly, the vixen was alerted. Turning her head in the direction of the sound, she pricked up her ears, which were remarkably long and stood upright, almost like rabbit ears; and as Abdul stared, mesmerized, he realized this was a creature he had heard of but never seen: a bat-eared fox. She relaxed, understanding that the snorer was not going to wake. Then vixen and pup began to scavenge the ground, noiselessly swallowing scraps of food and licking dirty bowls. After three or four minutes they left as silently as they had arrived.

Soon afterwards, dawn broke.

The migrants got up wearily. Today began their fourth week on the road, and every night was more or less uncomfortable. They rolled up their blankets, drank water, and ate dry bread. There was no water for washing. None of them except Abdul had been raised in houses with hot showers, but just the same they were used to regular washing, and they all found it depressing to be so dirty.

However, Abdul’s spirits lifted as the bus drove away from the gas station. The Toubou must get paid a hefty fee for safe passage of the drugs and migrants, he thought; enough to motivate them to keep their word and hope for another shipment soon, instead of killing everyone and stealing everything.

As the sun rose, they left the mountains behind and entered a vast flat plain. After an hour Abdul realized that the sun had been consistently behind them. He stood up and went to the front of the bus. ‘Why are we heading west?’ he said to Hakim.

‘This is the way to Tripoli,’ said Hakim.

‘But Tripoli is due north of here.’

‘This is the way!’ Hakim repeated angrily.

‘Okay,’ said Abdul, and he returned to his seat.

Kiah said: ‘What was that about?’

‘Nothing,’ Abdul said.

It was not his mission to get to Tripoli, of course. He had to stay with the bus wherever it went. His mission was to identify the people running the smuggling, learn where they hid out, and pass that information to the Agency.

So he shut up, sat back, and waited to see what would happen next.

CHAPTER 19

The incident in the South China Sea could become a crisis, Chang Kai thought, if it was not handled carefully.

Satellite photos on Kai’s desk showed an unknown vessel near the Xisha Islands, which Westerners called the Paracel Islands. Aircraft surveillance revealed it to be a Vietnamese oil exploration ship called theVu Trong Phung. This was dynamite, but the fuse did not have to be lit.

Kai was familiar with the background, as was just about everybody in the Chinese government. Chinese boats had fished these waters for centuries. Now China had dumped millions of tons of earth and sand onto a group of uninhabitable rocks and reefs and then built military bases. Kai thought any fair-minded person would concede that this made the islands part of China.

No one would care much about it except that oil had been discovered beneath the sea bed near the islands, and everybody wanted some. The Chinese considered the oil to be theirs and were not planning to share. That was why the voyage of theVu Trong Phungwas a problem.

Kai decided to brief the foreign minister himself. His boss, Security Minister Fu Chuyu, had gone out of town, to Urumqi, capital of the Xinjian region, where millions of Muslims stubbornly adhered to their religion despite the Communist government’s energetic efforts to repress it. Fu’s absence gave Kai the opportunity to discuss theVu Trong Phungquietly with Foreign Minister Wu Bai and agree a diplomatic course of action to be suggested to President Chen. But when he arrived at the Foreign Ministry in Chaoyangmen Nandajie he was dismayed to find General Huang there.

Huang Ling was short and wide, and looked like a box in his square-shouldered uniform. He was a proud member of the Communist old guard, like his friend Fu Chuyu. Also like Fu, he smoked all the time.

Huang’s membership of the National Security Commission made him very powerful. Like the gorilla at the dinner party, he sat where he liked, and he had the right to muscle in anywhere in the Foreign Office. But who had told him about this meeting? Perhaps Huang had a spy in the Foreign Office – someone close to Wu. I must remember that, Kai thought.

Despite his irritation, Kai greeted Huang with the respect due to an older man. ‘We’re privileged to have the benefit of your knowledge and expertise,’ he said insincerely. The truth was that he and Huang were on opposite sides in the rancorous ongoing struggle between the old school and the young reformers.

As they sat down, Huang immediately went on the attack. ‘The Vietnamese keep provoking us!’ he exclaimed. ‘They know they have no right to our oil.’

Huang had an assistant with him, and an aide sat close to Wu. There was no real need for assistants at this meeting, but Huang was too important to travel without an entourage, and Wu probably felt the need for defensive reinforcement. Kai had slightly lost face by showing up alone. Such bullshit, he thought.

However, it was true that the Vietnamese had twice already attempted to explore the sea bed for oil. ‘I agree with General Huang,’ Kai said. ‘We must protest to the government in Hanoi.’

‘Protest?’ Huang was scornful. ‘We have protested before!’

Kai said patiently: ‘And, in the end, they have always backed down and withdrawn their ship.’

‘So why do they do it again?’

Kai suppressed a sigh. Everyone knew why the Vietnamese kept repeating their incursions. It was all right for them to withdraw when threatened, for that meant only that they had been bullied; but to stop trying would be like accepting that they had no right to the oil, and they were not willing to do that. ‘They’re making a point,’ he said, simplifying.

‘Then we must make a stronger point!’ Huang leaned forward and tapped cigarette ash into a porcelain bowl on Wu’s desk. The bowl was ruby-red with a double-lotus pattern and probably worth ten million dollars.