It was something Cabrillo had always enjoyed about the Middle East and Central Asia, everyone was always fishing for something more out of a deal. Didn’t matter how insignificant so long as the other guy gave up just a fraction more than you. To most Westerners, it was seen as deceitful and greedy, but, in truth, such negotiations were a test of each other’s character. Accept too quick and you were dismissed as a rube; push too hard and you were a snob. The balance defined what kind of person you were.

“Agreed.” Cabrillo nodded and held out a hand to finalize the deal, then said, as their palms touched, “But only if you have a glass of tea for me back at your office.”

Osman’s smile returned, and it was much more genuine than the salesman’s smarm he’d displayed before. “I like you, Mr. Smith. You are A-okay.”

The diversion of having tea with Osman would only take up a few minutes, but being called A-OK by this young Uzbek hustler made Juan smile for the first time since Borodin’s death.

The road north to the former seaside town of Muynak was a kidney-jarring ribbon of cracked asphalt, made worse by the UAZ’s nonexistent suspension.

The terrain was flat, windswept desert with the occasional clump of faded vegetation. The only thing Cabrillo saw of any interest were double-humped Bactrian camels. They were shorter than their single-humped cousins and had tufts of heavy fur along their necks and crowning each fatty hump. He wasn’t sure if these belonged to anyone or were wild. But by the way they passively regarded him as he drove along the lonely highway, it was obvious they were used to man.

Muynak was only a hundred twenty miles from Nukus and yet the trip took almost four hours. Evening was still some time off, so the air remained hot and acrid, and the closer he got to his destination, the more it tasted of salt, not the refreshing sea air he enjoyed from the bridge wings of the Oregon but a dry bitterness like vinegar.

The town had once been the Uzbeks’ major port on the southern reach of the Aral Sea. Now that the lake was some hundred miles farther north, Muynak was an isolated speck of civilization with no right to exist today. Once thriving with commerce, it was virtually dead, its population a fraction of what it had been. Driving past abandoned houses and commercial blocks, Cabrillo came to what had once been the main wharf. A tower crane set on rails stood sentinel over a weedy trench that had once been the harbor.