Ahaseurus

A continuation of the espionage story Skinless
Please be aware that this piece contains adult language.

Run: Central Asia

The skinless man who had once called himself Ahmed hid from overflights under an IR-reflecting blanket. He used no lights. It was easy to hide here. This was the soft place of history, where legion disappear into anthology. Five days later he hopped an overloaded bus through the Kaoshan and into western Szechua. Forty eight hours later in Hong Kong he had bought a freighter cabin, meal service, a carton of cigarettes, and a case of Kruggerands. The Kruger gold would have to be sat on for a while before it could be put into assets, and while that was happening he had to have zero profile. Working to clear his equipment from electronic traces it might have picked up, scanning for the RFID dust they were spraying all over creation. Working to clear himself of his PLA helpers, hooking up with old associates, and avoiding his family, who, over the years, had employed half of the former KGB to bring him back to Columbia.

It was one of those agents, long a hunter in Central Asia, who came after him, looking over the barrel of an entirely unfashionable Norinco QSZ-92, to go with the ugly PLA officer's uniform he stole from somewhere. Like 0SIG this man had only a nickname, something to use other than, "Sir" or, "Gaaah". 0SIG called him Ahaseurus. He had an equine face with a nose so long it didn't seem real, which was quite likely. His eyes tiny, extremely close together and painted black-black by contact lenses, watched 0SIG intently, flickering madly around the room with the smallest movement. 0SIG, for his part, stayed slumped in exactly the same position he had passed out in. The cabin stank of equal quantities sweat, hoisin, and rice liquor.

April 12, 2002, Hong Kong, passenger quarters of the COSCO TIANJIN

"Hey, shithead," said Ahaseurus. "Don’t make me scream in Mandarin."

0SIG looked at the older operative without moving his head, which hurt very badly. "Sino-Tibetan. All of it. Hate. Like listening to cat vomit."

"Yes, this is why I wish to dump it all over your head." Ahaseurus paused, stood and circled the room, as if giving a lecture in a graduate conference. "The Amis have their panties in a rock-hard bundle about someone hollering command signals, from an extremely obsolete geographical survey satellite. Funny eh?"

"Wow. That's something."

Ahaseurus slapped him, not entirely mindful of the gun in his hand, then bent low to scream at the younger man.

"You piece of shit. Your father is pissed. More pissed than usual. Everyone who knows what hemisphere you are in knows that you are tipping Ami bombs to blow out swimming pools for Hajjis or some goddamned thing. What the jumping fuck? Are you trying to give your mother a heart attack?"

0SIG shook his head. Ahaseurus' hot breath inches from his face, combined with the Mandarin, was urging an attack of vomitus. "I love my mum."

"Christ" Ahaseurus circled the room, saw that his inadvertent pistol-whipping had opened a fresh slice on 0SIG's head, pumping blood into the mattress. He brought out a towel from the head, pressed it tenderly against the younger spy's head. "I mean, what the hell? There's no amount of money in the world to make you do this. I mean the Americans will find something, your bloody shoe size or some goddamn thing. They will kill everyone with that shoe size. Because someone is stealing from them, taking their bombs. Using their bombs. That's . . pretty funny, it is, but still. Why? Why do you do this?"

0SIG shrugged, a hard gesture to perform when laid in a crooked, passed-out, pistol-whipped position. He looked like a hundred pounds of wet bleeding laundry.

"Listen. Come with me tomorrow. Get liquid. Get off this rusted tub, meet me at the Banana Leaf in HKG, with everything, you understand. Tomorrow, oh seven three oh. A job for you, special for you, you won't believe."

0SIG stirred, "Getting liquid that fast is going to cost ten thousand at least."

Ahaseurus half-opened the door, "Ten what? Eh? Forget about money will you? You're worth more than Harry Fucking Akande and Prince Bandar rolled up into one big money ball, alright? You're a cartel kid. Ten thousand! Shit, I paid a couple of thousand for fucking dinner at El Bulli last week."

"El Bulli? Really? I didn't think you could spend that much money there."

"Well, it would have been a lot less, but the family came along, you know. You can come next time too, eat and talk to your father. Airport, tomorrow." Ahaseurus left the cabin with a bang and whimpers as the crew grovelled before his PLA officer uniform, their attitudes genetically modified by four thousand years of authoritarianism. O-SIG lay unmoving as minutes ticked through the awful gray-green hangover, each second marked by a sick throb. Eventually the bleeding stopped.

Slowly 0SIG got up, vomited, stumbled around, slapped duct tape on his head wound. El Bulli had sent his soul spinning into the realm of infernal gluttony, a waking dream of the best food in the world, for fine food was 0SIG's one permanent addiction, like women to Bond, or melodrama to Jack Ryan. El Bulli could be only the start of a Continental tour of gluttony; it would probably be out of fashion by the time they got to it anyway. After Spain they could make their way through Brittany, Provence, the Aegean, never stopping. Carré d'Agneau à la Provençale, rabbit six different ways, osso buco, fois gras. Stilton and Madeira. Rheingau and Emmanthaler! 0SIG stared forlornly at the broken quail necks on the floor, pools of grim hoisin sauce, tasteless dumplings, godforsaken rice liquor. Without the family he'd be living on dim sum for months, speaking Cantonese through his nose at sailors who probably couldn't spell la dolce vita, or even acknowledge the alphabet of any Indo-European language. God, I hate China, thought the secret agent. 0SIG scambled for his appointment book, and mumbled an entry.

"HKG INTL BANANA LEAF 0730. Tomorrow”