An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  ‘Money talks, you know that, sometimes in whispers, sometimes by banging on the table, shrieking in indignation at the top of its voice. A comfortable cell, food brought in from outside, a lawyer arriving to negotiate his release,’ Saltanat said. ‘He’ll be out and organising repairs to his property while we’re still in the air. Getting the army to do the work, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  With our diplomatic passports, we were through and sitting in a coffee shop in a matter of minutes. I was pretty certain there wouldn’t be anyone from Quang’s team stalking us; presumably they’d be waiting until Achura reported the two farang problems had been suitably disposed of.

  ‘You still haven’t told me why we’re going to Kyrgyzstan. You said yourself I’m going to end up in a grave there.’

  Saltanat sipped at her coffee, pulled a face.

  ‘How do people manage to make coffee as weak as this?’

  ‘I’m sorry the coffee isn’t to your liking, but to get back to what I was asking . . .’

  Saltanat put her cup down with a clatter that almost made the barista drop his mobile phone.

  ‘Simple. Quang will be out of his cell and back in business in a few hours. He agreed a deal with you, and for all he knows, you’ve passed that information on to Aliyev. Right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, he has to honour that agreement, or his reputation gets a hammering. Once suppliers, dealers, his whole network get the impression he can’t be trusted to keep his word, then it’s only a matter of time before he’s deposed.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, not entirely sure Saltanat wasn’t looking too much on the bright side.

  ‘Then there’s the problem he faces if the government legalise yaa baa. He needs a new product, and the simplest, cheapest and most profitable way to get that is through Aliyev. So Quang might be pissed off with you, especially after you killed his girlfriend, but as far as Aliyev’s concerned, everything went well.’

  ‘Suppose Quang decides he wants my head in return for keeping to the deal?’ I asked.

  ‘Aliyev needs you as well,’ Saltanat said. ‘Think about it. You’re famous as the ex-cop who shot the Minister of State Security. You’re living proof Aliyev can go anywhere, do anything, with complete immunity. The government can’t stop him, the army can’t catch him, and the security forces are too busy wondering who’ll be blamed for the assassination attempt.’

  She finished her coffee. The waitress came to collect our cups.

  ‘How was your coffee?’ she smiled.

  ‘If it hadn’t been so weak, it would have been disgusting.’ Saltanat smiled in return, stood up, shouldered her handbag.

  The waitress gave me a puzzled look, unsure whether she’d just heard a compliment or an insult. I stood up, shrugged, and joined Saltanat. It was time to go home.

  Chapter 48

  The journey to Tashkent gave the sense of being trapped out of time in a miniature world, an identikit copy of every flight I’d ever taken. Saltanat was quick to fall asleep, her hands folded over her belly, protecting a child that wasn’t yet showing. I couldn’t spot any signs of her pregnancy, but then I wasn’t any kind of expert. I envied her the ability to simply shut her eyes and lose the world. I just stared out of the window and felt the minutes drag along like dying men. A seven-hour flight, followed by a long drive to Bishkek to put my head in the lion’s mouth, didn’t cheer me up.

  We were picked up at the airport and driven into Tashkent by a burly man in his thirties, who, judging by his deference, was one of Saltanat’s junior colleagues. I’d been to the city before, but never spent time there. I wondered if I was going to get an insight into how Saltanat lived when she wasn’t on a mission. But it wasn’t to be.

  ‘Akram will drive you towards the border,’ Saltanat said as the car pulled up outside the massive Chorsu Bazaar. Even outside the blue-domed building, I could smell the perfume of spices and herbs in the air, the sense of being back among people I understood, whose food I ate, whose hopes and fears I shared.

  ‘Arrangements have been made for you once you’re across the border at Osh, and you’re booked from there on an internal flight to Bishkek. After that you’re on your own.’

  ‘I was wondering about staying with you for a couple of days,’ I said.

  Saltanat shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want to upset Otabek,’ she said. I understood; when Saltanat and I rescued the little boy from the paedophile who meant to kill him, he’d been mute with terror. Seeing me might only revive memories best forgotten.

  ‘This is where you live?’ I asked, keen to find out more about her, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’m taking the metro home; it’s the fastest way to get around the city, and I have things to do. I’ll see you in Bishkek in two days’ time. Noon, by the statue of Kurmanjan Datka, not too far from the White House. I’ll text you to confirm.’

  As always with Saltanat, there was no discussion, merely a statement of intent. I didn’t have any choice in the matter. I wound down the car window as she started towards the station, never looking back, determined as ever. I wondered if this was yet another of her ploys to ensure I knew as little about her as possible.

  ‘I love you,’ I called out as she plunged into the crowd.

  I wasn’t sure if she heard me.

  *

  It’s an eight-hour journey from Tashkent to Osh, but we broke the journey at Angren, where I found a back-street barber, had my hair trimmed to a coarse stubble. It wasn’t much of a disguise but the best I could do. We crossed the border without any problems, my fake passport simply held up and waved through without even being examined. As we drove towards the airport, Akram spoke his only words of the journey.

  ‘She gave me this to give to you,’ and handed me an envelope. I opened it, finding nothing but a one-way plane ticket from Osh to Bishkek. No note, no message, no slip of paper with a mobile number. I felt as if I’d been summarily dismissed from her life.

  At Osh Airport, Akram nodded a curt goodbye and drove away back towards the border. I felt more nervous on home soil and at an airport. Security is always more stringent there, and there was the chance a vigilant police officer patrolling the building might recognise me. It was only when we were in the air on our forty-minute flight that I was able to relax a little.

  Outside Manas Airport, I looked around for the most dilapidated taxi I could find. The driver had been one of a handful who gathered outside the arrivals hall; international flights with their collection of rich and gullible tourists offered much better pickings. I gave him the address of my apartment on Ibraimova, haggled for a few moments over the price, with much swearing and threats to walk away, finally reaching an agreement. In some countries, haggling is almost a game; in mine, it’s done in all seriousness, the difference between a meal on the table or hunger.

  It was only as I was getting into the taxi that I realised someone was staring at me from the pavement. Staring hard.

  Kenesh Usupov.

  I’d worked too many times with Bishkek’s chief forensic pathologist to have any hope he wouldn’t have recognised me. The look on his face was one of shock, even fear.

  I made the ‘I’ll call you’ gesture with my fingers, looking back at him as we drove away. I only had one question: would he tell Tynaliev I was back?

  We drove down Chui Prospekt, maybe not the quickest way home, but one that reminded me of how much I’d missed simply being able to walk around the centre of my city.

  The apartment smelt musty, unloved, but as far as I could tell, there had been nobody watching the building. I put water on to boil for tea, remembering how Chinara would always have a cup ready for me when I came home from work and I hadn’t had too much vodka on the way. I took my tea into the main room and stared at the framed photo of her I’d taken at Lake Issyk-Kul a lifetime ago. Hers, and perhaps mine.

  I wondered what she would have made of the news about Saltanat’s pregnancy, the disappointment at it not being our chi
ld, resignation at the thought I’d found someone else to love while she slept cold in her grave.

  ‘I never planned to meet someone,’ I said out loud. ‘I still miss you more than I can say. You’ll never leave me, I’ll never forget you, but life’s a river that carries you along.’ But in the silence, I found no sign of acceptance, heard no whisper of an answer.

  Chapter 49

  Chinara always came to me when I least expected her. And that’s how it was that evening, when she woke me with her fingertips stroking my face, her breath warm on my cheek. I tried to sit up, felt the palm of her hand pressing me back down to the mattress with surprising strength.

  I tried to speak, but no words came. All I could do was put my arm around her shoulder, pull her head against my chest, and stare up into the darkness only broken by car headlights on the road, their beams like searchlights hunting for me.

  She took my hand and pressed it against the warm skin of her stomach where our baby had lived for so short a time. She gave a barely heard sigh that might have been sorrow, regret, or merely resignation. Then I felt her slipping out of my arms, and I knew she would never return, that the link remaining between us had dissolved like mist into night air. She knew another woman had replaced her.

  The fridge was as empty as my heart, so I decided to go out for breakfast. A couple of samsi, hot tea, then it was time to face the music. The only question was who would be playing the tune: Tynaliev or Aliyev.

  I debated spinning a coin, made a phone call. I arranged a meeting under the giant Ferris wheel in Panfilov Park at seven that evening, after dark, when the spokes of the wheel light up with flashing colours. A meeting in the open air, with people around, seemed a little safer, unless someone organised a sniper from somewhere under the trees. If I didn’t make it to the meeting the following day with Saltanat, she’d know I wasn’t ever going to turn up.

  The rest of the morning and early afternoon passed in a haze. Wondering if you’re still going to be alive that evening has a curiously disorienting effect, as if all the minutes have drained out of your life and the only thing left to do is wait for the end. Sometimes hours pass while you think only five minutes have gone by; sometimes the minutes become hours. When the walls of my apartment closed in I knew I had to get out.

  I looked around at the apartment that had housed my marriage, at the photograph of Chinara. I debated locking the door behind me, decided it didn’t matter one way or another. There was nothing to steal I’d miss, and if I didn’t return, someone else would live there soon enough.

  The weather had turned cold as I walked down Ibraimova and turned on to Chui Prospekt. The park was a good forty minutes’ walk away, and part of me relished the idea of exercise after being cooped up for so long. A glance at the darkening sky hinted at snow in the near future. Autumn was coming to an end and the death of the year was at hand.

  I avoided the cracks in the pavement as I walked, in much the same way as I’d skipped over them as a child, hoping to avert bad luck, not wanting the demons who lurked there to spring up and snatch me away. Maybe I was trying to avert my death, habit being so strong.

  I reached the edge of the park after a brisk walk that somehow raised my spirits. I was unarmed; there hadn’t seemed much point in bringing the gun I kept in a lockbox in the apartment. Dead is dead, as I kept reminding myself.

  The wheel loomed above everything else in the park, the spokes moving slowly, lifting the carriages in an endless vertical circle to offer a view of all Bishkek before bringing their occupants back to earth. As a summing up of life, I thought it was pretty accurate; at the end of your ride, you have to get off, whether you want to or not.

  There aren’t many lights in the park, so there are long stretches under the trees where all you can see is the outline of benches, each with its couple of lovers with nowhere else to go, impervious to the cold in the warmth of each other’s company. I’d sat there myself, a lifetime ago, when a lifetime seemed to last for ever, a future filled with promise.

  As the lights on the wheel’s spokes danced up and down, turning from white to green, blue to red, pulsing like some giant heartbeat, the leaves on the trees turned matching colours. I passed a couple deep in some silent argument, the girl weeping, the boy trying to comfort her. I thought of Saltanat back in Tashkent, wondering if she was considering terminating her pregnancy.

  The wheel was surrounded by railings, with one gap leading to the entrance. It was there I could see the outline of the man I was due to meet, dark against the ever-changing lights. A little way away, two other figures waited, watching, their body language telling me they were bodyguards, poised for violence. If there were to be any trouble, it would come from them, and it would be coming my way.

  I walked up to the waiting man, bulky in a thick overcoat, hair hidden in a fur ushanka. I didn’t try to hide my footsteps, watched as he turned round to meet me, his face unreadable as it turned white to green, blue to red.

  I stopped a couple of metres away. He stood motionless, arms by his side, his body solid, square. He could have been one of the statues dotted around the park. I waited for some kind of acknowledgement, a sign he was aware of my presence. Finally, I spoke.

  ‘Hello, Minister. Kak dela?’

  Chapter 50

  Tynaliev merely grunted, fumbled in his overcoat pocket, pulled out a hip flask and took a deep drink. I was pretty sure it wasn’t hot chocolate. He didn’t offer it to me.

  ‘Those blanks really bruised me,’ he said. ‘I had the marks for weeks. And the fake blood bags ruined that suit as well.’

  ‘You wanted it to look authentic,’ I pointed out. ‘No point in it looking like something in a fifties Mosfilm shootout, where you clutch your side and carry on as normal.’

  ‘Usupov told me you were back, said he’d seen you at the airport. I don’t think he would have the balls not to tell me.’

  ‘He’s got a wife, children, a career,’ I said. ‘None of which I have. And as far as he knew, I was an enemy of the people. Or at least, an enemy of you.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’ Tynaliev said. I didn’t reply.

  ‘Didn’t you ever wonder about putting proper bullets in the gun, Inspector? It’s not as if you and I are friends. You can bring me down if you want to, if you live long enough. And vice versa. A couple of slugs in my back and you’d have had one less enemy to worry about.’

  ‘And then all the might of a vengeful government to hunt me down,’ I said. ‘This way, you kept them off my back so that I could hook up with Aliyev.’

  Tynaliev nodded.

  ‘For a Public Enemy Number One, you kept yourself well hidden.’

  ‘You’d given orders to shoot on sight,’ I reminded him. ‘And I know there wouldn’t have been a posthumous rehabilitation and a ceremony honouring me at my graveside. “Borubaev, A, died in the line of duty”.’

  Tynaliev shrugged. The life of one police officer, more or less, didn’t tip any scales as far as he was concerned. What mattered was the success of his plan.

  ‘You know what I wanted; to set my enemies against each other, then behead them at their point of weakness.’

  With me as the axe, I thought.

  ‘Yusup got taken off the board, so the Chinese will be looking around for someone they trust to negotiate future drug sales,’ Tynaliev went on. ‘There’s a success right there.’

  ‘But Aliyev is still on the scene,’ I said. ‘It’s just a momentary blip in his business, a nuisance, that’s all.’

  ‘Maybe so, but he still has to find new markets in South-East Asia. That’s why tying up with the Thais would have been a perfect fit, with access to Malaysia as an added bonus. And I’m sure he’s still wondering who tried to kill him with the bomb in Derevyashka. Before you ask, it wasn’t me. Killing him would have just moved his second in command into the top spot.’

  Tynaliev took another drink, lit a cigarette, stamped his feet against the cold.

  ‘Winter’s coming, an
d it’s going to be a harsh one,’ he said.

  ‘You still haven’t explained why you wanted Aliyev and Quang to team up,’ I said, taking a cigarette from the pack he offered. I saw one of the bodyguards take a quick step forward, then settle back as Tynaliev sparked a flame for me.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tynaliev said, blowing smoke into the air, watching it flower white and green, blue and red, before dissolving into the night air. ‘I want them to destroy each other. Aliyev dependent on selling, the Thais dependent on buying, both of them unwilling to trust the other. How long do you think a partnership like that will last?’

  ‘Depends on the money,’ I said. ‘A few hundred million can mean true love.’

  Tynaliev snorted and threw away his cigarette. The sparks scattered along the ground, then died.

  ‘It’s not about money,’ he said, ‘not really. I could have retired years ago, fucked off to somewhere warm, sat on a sunny beach, cold beer in one hand, hot tart in the other, no looking over my shoulder to see which bastard wants to plant one in my head.’

  ‘But you didn’t,’ I said, ‘because that way you keep the money, but lose the power.’

  ‘I think you’re starting to understand the ways of the world, Inspector,’ Tynaliev chuckled. ‘And about time too.’

  So you’ve got Aliyev selling spice to the Thais, the Thais selling spice to Russia. And then?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Maybe I’m not devious enough to understand all the intricacies,’ I said.

  ‘If they do that, it puts both of them out of their comfort zone, puts them at risk,’ Tynaliev explained, as if deciphering algebra for a particularly stupid pupil. ‘The Russian mafia that have been dealing with Aliyev for years aren’t going to like him supplying anything that might threaten their monopoly, their profits. Especially if those profits are going to end up in the pockets of the Thai mafia.’

  Tynaliev ticked off each point on his fingers as he made them.