An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  I still had no idea who I was going to meet, but I knew they must be reckless. That didn’t do much for my confidence. The rotor blades grew louder, dropped in pitch as they slowed down, finally stopped.

  In the sudden silence, my stomach rumbled, and I wondered why Aliyev hadn’t brought food. Either the meeting was going to be a short one, or no one would be leaving alive, so why bother?

  I watched the two guards in the room as they checked their Kalashnikovs, flicked the safety catches into the ‘fire’ position, positioned themselves at opposite sides of the room slightly in front of us, to command a complete field of fire. Ex-military, had to be, maybe lured out of the forces by dollars or the adrenalin of danger. There’s a perverse comfort in knowing the men with weapons are trained not to panic and spray the room and everyone in it with sudden death. I only hoped our visitors would be as well-behaved.

  We waited in silence, alert for the sound of boots on the gravel path outside. I moved to behind the wooden table, ready to topple it onto its side for shelter in case whoever walked through the door came in shooting.

  ‘Aliyev?’

  A voice from outside, shouting from a safe distance. I glanced over at Aliyev, saw him nod to the guards. The one nearest the door pulled back the bolt, let the ill-fitting wood swing open. The guard peered outside, seemed satisfied with what he saw, beckoned Aliyev to join him.

  In the doorway, Aliyev cupped his hands, made sure anyone outside could see he wasn’t carrying.

  ‘I’ve got two guards with me. And the inspector. Please join us. With two of your men, obviously.’

  I moved to one side, so I could look beyond Aliyev in the doorway. At first, I saw no one, then a patch of green detached itself from the larch trees opposite, became recognisable as a man wearing camo. Two more figures emerged, both similarly armed as Aliyev’s men, pointing the business end of their Kalashnikovs in a vague direction not too far from us.

  As the man moved closer, I could see he wasn’t Russian, not even Kyrgyz. He had the dark colouring and flat cheeks of the Chinese who live over the other side of the mountains near Urumchi, skin weathered and baked by the desert. Uyghur maybe, or Dungan, with a dash of Han Chinese thrown in for good measure. Thick black hair swept back from his forehead gave him a powerful, confident look, a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

  I watched him approach, until he stood a couple of metres away from the entrance, his men flanking him, their eyes watchful, cautious.

  ‘Yusup,’ Aliyev said, holding out his right hand in greeting. Yusup raised his right arm in response, and even from where I stood, I could see three of the fingers on his hand were missing. He said nothing, but nodded his response to the greeting.

  ‘We’ve always got along in the past, Yusup,’ Aliyev said, his hands palm upwards, a peaceful gesture. ‘You’ve had your business interests, we’ve had ours, and where they’ve coincided, we’ve reached an agreement, divided the territories up.’

  Aliyev stepped outside the building, the wind catching at his hair, his jacket open to show he was unarmed. I followed him, the guards close behind. When Aliyev spoke, his voice was mild, conciliatory.

  ‘Neither of us wants a war. Dead bodies draw the attention of governments, yours and mine, and I imagine your prisons are every bit as brutal as ours. If any of us even succeed in making it as far as a cell, that is.’

  Yusup continued to remain silent, but nodded his assent.

  ‘We know you need our trade routes to get to the Russians, the ones not already dosing themselves on home krokodil, that is. And we permit that, for a price, and up to a point. But now you’ve started to shift the “serial killer” into this country, and it’s got to stop.’

  Without turning round, Aliyev must have guessed at the puzzled look on my face.

  ‘Carfentanil, Inspector. Hundreds if not thousands times more potent than heroin. Known in the USA as “serial killer”. For once, that’s an understatement.’

  I thought back to the dead girl I’d found in her decrepit apartment, saw her body being turned into stewing steak, wondered if the man standing before us was her source, her executioner.

  My fists tightened in anger, nails digging half-moons into my palms, and I knew I would enjoy beating him to death. Slowly, making each blow count, painful but not fatal. Cheekbones splintered, the ribcage torn apart like a tree struck by lightning, teeth scattered on the ground, dripping with blood.

  You’re never going to stop people damaging themselves, with booze, nicotine, sex, drugs. But some things go beyond tolerance if you witness them yourself. I’ve always prided myself on self-control, even in the face of the horrors I’ve witnessed, so this visceral unexpected rage left me gasping. As a policeman, it would have been my duty to arrest him. As a human being, I thought the best thing to do was to put him in the ground.

  ‘We both supply drugs, Aliyev, you don’t have a moral high ground to preach from,’ Yusup said.

  ‘I don’t supply “serial killer”,’ Aliyev answered. ‘And I don’t supply drugs to my people.’

  ‘Which is why they come to me,’ Yusup said. ‘Or they buy once your product has reached Moscow, which naturally jacks up the price. So to feed themselves, they cut it so the next junkie down the line has to take more. Which costs more. So they steal, rob, mug . . . you know the story.’

  Aliyev smiled.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, the Russkies can shoot up with whatever they want. There’s no love lost between us. If they’re stupid enough to give me roubles to help them kill themselves, I won’t sit on my hands and shake my head. Of course, I sell. But not here.’

  He paused, cupped his hands, blew into them for warmth, looked up at the sky, at the clouds starting to gather and shroud the mountains.

  ‘Anyway, the market here isn’t big enough to make the risks worthwhile. Especially if someone decides to trample on my turf.’

  Commercial interest and self-preservation disguised as patriotism. I hated it, and I was trapped in it. For the first time I was grateful Chinara was dead and buried: my wife would have been ashamed of me.

  A sudden breeze grew in strength and threatened to become a gale, scuttling along the treeline, pulling down leaves and sending them spiralling up into the air. I could taste the electricity in the air, smell the sharp, fresh scent of the ozone promising rain that would turn to snow up in the mountains. Issyk-Ata didn’t strike me as the sort of place you’d want to weather out a storm overnight.

  ‘I won’t sell them carfentanil either. One lethal and all too easy shot, you’ve lost a customer, so the money turns to a trickle. When you don’t have enough money for everyone to dip their beak, people get confused, nervous. They decide you’re weak, ready to be overthrown, and the safety catches on their guns are released. And after that, the first shot starts war.’

  I’ve heard some clever arguments for legalising drugs before, maybe even been half convinced by some of them. Personal freedom, the need to end organised crime, even the idea that a medicated country is a peaceful one. I’d heard the same arguments about vodka when I was a rookie officer out on the streets.

  I’ve seen just how peaceful people are when they’ve finished a bottle of the good stuff, never mind the home-made samogon. I’ve taken some of them to the emergency unit at the hospital on Krivonosova, taken others to sober up in one of the cells in Sverdlovsky station. Then there were the ones I’d had sent over to the morgue, men killed with an unlucky punch, women beaten for refusing sex, children battered for crying too loudly or too long.

  Let people have the stuff that stuns elephants and kills humans with a single grain? Not a chance.

  Yusup stamped his feet, the cold clearly working its way into his shoes. Aliyev looked down at his own boots, then at Yusup.

  ‘You should have come prepared,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want you to catch cold. It’s amazing how quickly a cold can turn nasty. Even fatal.’

  The threat was not lost on Yusup, judging by the way h
e narrowed his eyes, pulled his coat collar up.

  ‘I’m sure you have men beyond the treeline, guns trained on the back of my head.’

  Aliyev shrugged, noncommittal.

  ‘And, of course, you know I have a couple of snipers with you in their sights.’

  Aliyev showed no surprise.

  ‘I’d expect nothing less from you.’

  ‘So it’s stalemate?’ Yusup said.

  ‘Let’s call it a draw. Here’s the deal. You ship whatever you want to Russia. To pass through Kyrgyzstan, you pay the usual tariff. In dollars, not product. And not to a bank here. Somewhere secluded, peaceful and very, very private. Preferably warm as well.’

  Even as Yusup nodded, Aliyev held up a forefinger in warning.

  ‘It arrives, it passes through in transit, it leaves. And not a gram of that shit falls out and lands here. Not in Osh, not in Bishkek, not on the road over the mountains. If it does, then our agreement is over.’

  I watched Yusup’s face as he considered Aliyev’s words. He looked ahead, impassive. At that moment, if someone could have carved a series of giant faces into a mountaintop, like the ones in America at Mount Rushmore, Yusup would have been the ideal model. He ran the hand with the full complement of fingers through his hair, looking more than ever like an Asian version of Brezhnev.

  Our breath gusted on the cold air as we stood in silence.

  ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  And with that, Yusup strode away down the path, his bodyguards walking backwards, keeping us covered with their guns.

  As they reached the cover of the trees, Yusup turned and shouted something, but the wind snatched his words away. And then he and his men were gone.

  We waited until Aliyev’s men emerged, guns ready in case Yusup was considering a surprise attack. Before they reached us, I turned to Aliyev, saw implacable anger stamped across his face as if he’d been branded.

  ‘What did Yusup shout?’ I asked.

  For a moment, Aliyev stared at the forest, his eyes black and unblinking. Then he turned to me.

  ‘Condolences, that’s what Yusup shouted,’ he said, his voice flat and unemotional. ‘Condolences.’

  He didn’t explain why.

  Chapter 28

  ‘Where are we going now?’ I asked, the wind from the mountains gnawing at me. I could have sworn I felt the first snowflakes of winter tremble across my face. Aliyev ignored me, staring out towards where Yusup’s helicopter had landed. I repeated my question. Finally he turned to me, looked at me almost puzzled, as if wondering who I was, or from where I had appeared.

  ‘Back to the city, of course,’ he said. ‘No point in staying here any longer.’

  I started to make my way towards the marshrutka, but Aliyev put his hand on my sleeve to stop me.

  ‘In a couple of moments,’ he said. ‘Indulge me, Inspector.’

  As if hearing his words, the noise of the helicopter engine starting up filled the air, the whine of the rotors rising as they picked up speed. I returned to his side; he was the man with the guns, after all.

  ‘It looks like he’s leaving,’ I said, suspicious of our delay.

  ‘And if he’s waiting until we’re on a narrow, winding road with no turn-offs, where we can’t drive fast, and he decides to spray us with machine-gun fire from the air, you’ll be happy, Inspector?’

  The possibility hadn’t occurred to me; once again I understood why Aliyev had become pakhan.

  ‘I anticipate scenarios, then neutralise them before they happen.’

  I lit a cigarette, relishing the instant of warmth against my face, dragging the hot smoke deep into my lungs, pluming the smoke to dissolve in the air. The sun was setting, leaves on the trees falling faster now, as the wind picked up momentum. I had no reason to think of Chinara, but suddenly a memory of her grave overlooking the valley below and the mountains beyond came into my head. I hoped she was at peace; it’s all I’ve ever wanted for the dead, to lie quiet in their graves. And if they don’t? I may not believe in redemption, but I do believe in revenge.

  I wiped my eyes dry, damp from the evening mist or the tobacco smoke blowing back into my face. Not tears; they’re wasted on the dead.

  We could hear the rotor blades of the helicopter, and after a few seconds, it came into sight, moving slowly as the pilot gained cruising height. I guessed their plan was to skim the treetops, fly to their prearranged landing spot, transfer Yusup and his men to a less conspicuous form of transport to take them back across the mountains and over the border.

  The pilot dipped the helicopter nose slightly, a mocking tribute to those left on the ground, turned away from the sanatorium towards the hills.

  Then the air shimmered for a brief second as the helicopter was transformed by a spasm of fire.

  It hovered in the air for a few seconds, as if uncertain it had been hit, the rotor blades stuttering and dancing erratically. I could see flames devouring the cockpit, saw a figure on fire plunge towards the ground, arms raised in a parody of flight. The body – I hoped it was a body – bounced across the tops of a couple of trees taller than their neighbours, then fell from sight.

  The helicopter gave a couple of feeble half-turns, as if gravity and death were now its masters. I watched as it dragged a trail of black oily smoke behind it, then fell to the hillside, cutting branches aside as it fell. I waited for the big movie explosion, but nothing happened. Perhaps in real life it never does.

  I turned and looked at Aliyev.

  ‘You set this up?’ I said, finding the courage to ask.

  ‘Not at all. If we’d reached an agreement, then he’d be on his way to home, warmth, in time to read a bedside story to his children. He didn’t know one of my men served in Afghanistan, did two tours and became an expert with plastic explosive. The Taliban weren’t the only ones who set traps, you know. Easy enough to plant a few grams when the pilot isn’t looking, even easier to detonate when the time is right.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ I asked, throwing my cigarette to the earth. Aliyev ground it out with the toe of his boot, mashing it into the fallen leaves. I looked around. The smoke from the explosion was already thinning out into tendrils and strands drifting across the setting sun. I could smell petrol, fumes, the smell of autumn about to give up the ghost and transform into winter. The first few drops of rain began to fall.

  ‘Well, at least we know the people who bombed Derevyashka and blew our safe house cover won’t be bothering us any more,’ Aliyev said as he headed for the marshrutka. ‘And naturally I’ll send my condolences.’

  Chapter 29

  We rode back to Bishkek in a silence punctuated only by the coughs, splutters and general wheezing of the marshrutka engine. After the guards had checked the grounds and house were clear, we sat in the kitchen to get warm. Aliyev made tea and handed me a glass.

  Finally, he spoke.

  ‘You’ve nothing to say about what happened up at the sanatorium?’

  I stared at the ceiling for a moment, picturing the smoke drifting up from the trees and across towards the mountains. I remembered the smell of the burning, wondered if any of it was human flesh, dismissed the thought.

  ‘I hate helicopters,’ I said. ‘Always have.’

  Aliyev looked at me, as if examining an unusual and rare botanical specimen.

  ‘That’s a very pragmatic attitude, Inspector, particularly for a man with a reputation as a white knight.’

  I shrugged; when you’re on the run, noble gestures become too great a risk. And I couldn’t help wondering if all the police work I’d done, all the crimes I’d solved, all the villains I’d put behind the walls of Penitentiary One, if it had all been pointless. Perhaps all it had led to was drinking tea with the biggest villain in Kyrgyzstan.

  ‘I didn’t take any pleasure in eliminating Yusup,’ Aliyev explained, his voice thick with fake sincerity. ‘He would have done the same to me in different circumstances. When you’re in a business like ours, you have to do har
sh things.’

  He drained his glass, poured himself another half, pushed the sugar in my direction.

  ‘No woman to take care of us, you see,’ and there was an almost apologetic tone in his voice, as if being on either side of the law excludes you from normal family life. ‘You have no family, I believe, Inspector?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I know about your wife,’ Aliyev said. ‘A tragedy. And if you’d been working for me . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We would have flown her to Moscow. Or Geneva. Wherever the best treatment was to be found. We look after our own, you see.’

  I knew Chinara would never have accepted treatment paid for by drug addiction, prostitution, blackmail and corruption, even if it cost her her life. I debated telling Aliyev, decided there was no point. Chinara was dead and buried, and the sun had rarely shone for me since.

  I thought about Saltanat, the woman I was half in love with, wondered if she was back in Uzbekistan or somewhere in the field, her cross-hairs already trained on eliminating an enemy of the state. Perhaps I was on her hit list, if Tynaliev’s influence stretched as far as Tashkent.

  I wondered about Otabek, the small boy Saltanat and I had rescued from the clutches of a wealthy foreign paedophile, the man I’d later assassinated knowing the only justice he would ever have to face would be when he walked with the dead. Saltanat had taken Otabek away with her, hoping to mend his mind, and I wondered whether he was still mute, suspicious of the adult world, afraid of the horrors that stalked it.

  ‘It can’t be easy, losing someone to such a terrible disease,’ Aliyev said, and I wanted to punch his sympathy back down his throat until the hypocrisy and pointlessness of it choked him.

  But most of all, I knew my anger and resentment and disgust were all aimed at one person, the man who stood every morning with a razor in his hand and avoided staring into his eyes in my mirror.