A Summer Revenge

by Tom Callaghan

  I couldn’t imagine a greater contrast to the roads, often no more than stony tracks, that lead up into the cool air of the Tien Shan mountains. There was nowhere I would rather have been at that moment.

  “They’ll kill her, you know,” Saltanat said, her tone as calm as if she was discussing what to order from a menu. “Whether you give them the SIM card or not.”

  “What else can I do?” I said. “Just let her get butchered, then go back to Tynaliev and say, I don’t have the girl, I don’t have the codes, but maybe you know some good hackers who can crack them. Oh and, by the way, do I still get my old job back?” I shook my head at the hopeless absurdity of the situation. “He’ll have my balls beaten to a pulp. That’s if he’s feeling merciful. And I don’t think that’s ever happened.”

  “So you’ll risk these guys killing you?”

  “You don’t think they might kill you as well?” I replied.

  Saltanat’s smile was enough to tell me that wasn’t going to happen any time this century.

  “I don’t worry about dealing with amateur talent, Akyl—you know that.”

  It struck me that an attitude like that might prove fatal one day, but I knew better than to say so. There’s always a gunman out there somewhere who’s quicker on the draw than you are.

  We were on the outskirts of the city, and the skyscrapers had become low-rise blocks of apartments, with desert stretching out behind them, gentle dunes thrown into shadow by the setting sun. I pointed to a half-built apartment building, the cranes now still, the site deserted.

  “That’s as good a place as any,” I said. “Why don’t you pull over and park outside the next building?”

  Just as I’d anticipated, Saltanat ignored my advice. She drove a little further on, until a gap appeared between two buildings. We drove off the road and onto sand, then, once we were behind the buildings, we stopped behind the apartment block I’d pointed out.

  “Here we’ve got a number of directions we take, if we have to,” Saltanat explained. “Out front we’re easily trapped, boxed in.”

  As usual Saltanat was at least two steps ahead of the opposition, and me.

  “You’re armed?” I asked.

  “Always,” she replied and pulled out one of her throwing knives from a boot. Only amateurs and action-movie fans think that throwing a knife is easy; I know that it takes years of practice to stand a reasonable chance of hitting a stationary target. A man’s throat as he runs toward you is even harder. But Saltanat had put in the years, and her skills were honed to an edge as sharp as the blades she carried. Perhaps more importantly, she’d used those skills in situations where a mistake carried the ultimate penalty.

  “You have a weapon?” Saltanat asked.

  “Only a gun, I’m afraid,” I said, “but it works.”

  I don’t share Saltanat’s apparent lack of compunction when it comes to killing people. I’ve done it, but only to defend myself, when it’s been the option of me or them on the morgue slab.

  We squeezed through a gap in the boards and entered the building. The air was thick with the sour taste of cement dust, and the floor littered with rubbish, empty bags and scaffolding joints. I used the light on my mobile phone to illuminate the room. A raw concrete stair led up to the next floor, and we made our way up to where we could see the road on one side and any vehicles that approached from the desert.

  “Time to make the call,” Saltanat said, and I nodded. We were both whispering, although there was no watchman, no one nearby. Perhaps the silence and the stillness of the desert had subdued us, or maybe we were just rehearsing for the trouble to come.

  “I’m going to send you some GPS coordinates,” I said when my phone was answered. “I’ll be there in one hour. I’ll wait fifteen minutes, and if you don’t show, just you and the girl, then I’m history and so is the money.”

  “You’ll get the girl when we get the money, not before,” the Chechen replied.

  “That’s not how it’s going to play,” I said. “No girl, no money. I assume she’s already given you the codes. You just key them in to the number on the card, and you can transfer the money straight away, to anywhere in the world.”

  I paused.

  “The thing is,” I said. “If Natasha thinks you’re going to kill her, why would she give you the correct codes? Three false tries and the whole thing shuts down.”

  I realized I sounded like a commercial for online banking, but at that moment I didn’t want to give them a reason not to bring Natasha along.

  “Where are we meeting?”

  “At a construction site. Nice and quiet. No inquisitive passers-by.”

  “Why not meet somewhere public?”

  “Like in Dubai Mall? Where I met your young friend Khusun Todashev? That didn’t end too well for him, I seem to recall.”

  The Chechen swore, but it wasn’t the first time someone had called my mother a whore. I waited until he stopped, then carried on as if I hadn’t heard him.

  “Todashev was collateral damage, nothing more. I don’t want you getting fancy ideas about avenging him. Just give his family a few thousand dollars and forget him.” I paused, lit a cigarette, dropped the match to join the rubble underfoot. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting with my back to the wall, seeing who comes through the door. And I’m sure you don’t want to be doing the same, either.”

  “There’s enough money for everyone to live happily ever after,” the Chechen said. “I’m sure you agree.”

  “That’s the other thing: how do we split the money?”

  “I think the fairest way would be straight down the middle, fifty percent for you and the girl. With that kind of money, I’m sure she’ll find you more than desirable, Inspector.”

  “I can live with that,” I told him, “and that means you’ll live too. Only one car. Just you and the girl. Text me when you arrive.” I ended the call, threw away my cigarette. The smoke lingered in the room.

  “So the plan is wait and see,” Saltanat asked.

  “It’s worked before,” I said, “and it’s not as if we’ve got a backup team hiding round the corner.”

  Saltanat’s silence told me that she had as little confidence in me as she’d had in the past, probably because she thought rescuing Natasha and Tynaliev’s money was less important than dealing with the Chechen.

  The sun had now set, but there was enough light from the moon and the road to make sure we wouldn’t be caught unawares.

  “He won’t come alone, you know that,” Saltanat said.

  “Of course, but he doesn’t know you’ll be here. And if you can deal with his team, then I’ll take care of the main event.”

  “Then I’ll wait downstairs; you can meet the Chechen and your girlfriend up here.”

  Despite the rubble, Saltanat’s departure was noiseless as she disappeared back down the stairs. I knew that surprise was on her side, and that she was locked into doing what she did best. But I still wished she’d show some emotion, some sense that she remembered our past together.

  I put the thought to one side, checked the Makarov and placed it on the window ledge, close to hand. I knew the Chechen didn’t like Russians, and I wondered if they considered anyone Kyrgyz to be Russian by association.

  The noise of traffic on the road didn’t dispel the sense that we were somewhere timeless, mysterious. I wondered what it would be like to sleep out in the heart of the desert, gazing up at the eternal wheeling and cascade of the stars. Then I settled down to wait.

  Headlights lit up the ceiling, shadows falling across the rough concrete. My phone vibrated, and I checked the message. They had arrived. I called the number.

  “I’m on the second floor.”

  I heard a car door open and close, footsteps outside then making their way up the staircase. Finally a man appeared in the doorway. Bearded, dark-haired, mid-thirties, in leather jacket and jeans in spite of the heat.

  “Inspector Borubaev, I presume.”

  “I
’m afraid I don’t know your name, so I can’t greet you properly.”

  The man smiled, but with his mouth, not his eyes. “I think it’s best if we leave it that way, don’t you?”

  I shrugged, not particularly caring one way or the other.

  “Where’s Natasha?”

  “In the car. I didn’t think you’d want her clambering around a building site in the middle of the night. Especially not in heels.”

  “Then I think we’d better go down and see her, don’t you?”

  I picked up the Makarov and showed it.

  “This is just a precaution, you understand. I’m sure you’re carrying as well. We take everything slowly and calmly, and we won’t need to use these. Agreed?”

  The Chechen nodded. “I’m unarmed; why spoil the beginning of a beautiful friendship?”

  “After you,” I said, waiting until the man was halfway down the stairs before following him. My mouth was dry, the way it always is when you don’t know if the next few moments may be your last, and I wished I had some water to swill the cement dust from my tongue.

  “You have the SIM card with you?” the Chechen asked.

  “All in good time,” I said. “Slow and calm, remember?”

  Once we were outside, I could see that the front passenger seat of the Chechen’s car was empty. I wasn’t really surprised; I’d expected a double-cross somewhere down the line. But I could see that the Chechen had a puzzled expression as he looked around in the gloom.

  And it was then that I stumbled across the body.

  Chapter 32

  I didn’t recognize the man sprawled on the ground inside the fence, his clothes stained with dust and a Glock in his outstretched hand. Something that looked like a black scarf around his throat, the ends trailing in the dirt. It took me a few seconds to realize it was blood, to smell the raw-meat stink of it.

  Saltanat’s handiwork.

  The Chechen swore, pulled at the car door, started to open it.

  “Don’t move,” I said perhaps unnecessarily, pointing the Makarov at his head. He didn’t follow my advice, and I didn’t have the chance to shoot him because the man hiding in the back of the car started firing.

  Either he was incompetent or he was nervous, because he should have been able to pick me off at that distance. Instead, the bullets went high and wide, and I dropped to the ground, rolled back into the entrance of the building. I snapped off a couple of shots, but my aim was no better than his. And now I was out of bullets anyway.

  The Chechen scrambled into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine and slammed his foot down. The car lurched forward as if drunk, paused for a second, then reversed back toward the road. I watched the headlights dip and bob, receding in the darkness before being swallowed up in the traffic.

  I dry-spat into the dirt, my hands shaking, determined to regain control. But my legs wobbled, and I could taste the bile in my throat, smell it, rich and sour. Then my heart almost burst as a figure suddenly appeared out of the darkness.

  I only relaxed my finger on the trigger when I realized it was Saltanat.

  “I almost blew you away,” I said, then laughed as I remembered my gun was empty. Not a hearty, amused laugh, more a snicker of fear and relief at having Death’s scythe miss me by a hair’s breadth.

  “He was making his way toward the entrance,” Saltanat said, pointing at the dead man, “and I didn’t want to shout in case the man upstairs had a gun.”

  “Did you have to kill him? He might have been able to give us some answers.”

  “You want to rescue your girlfriend. My job is to take these guys out.”

  “Different priorities, right?”

  Saltanat pulled a face, as if tasting a piece of rotten fruit.

  “I didn’t see the backup guy in the back seat,” she admitted, “but they obviously planned to torture you to get the SIM card, then dispose of you. And your cutie, Miss Big Tits, as well.”

  “I keep telling you, she’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “And now where do we go from here, and what do we do with him?”

  “There’s nothing we can do with the body. If we take it anywhere, we might be spotted, as well as leaving forensic evidence in the car. Easy enough for the authorities to find out who rented it, and then we’re fucked.”

  She started to make her way back to our car, and I followed her, looking back for one last time at the body. Something that had once been a man, maybe with a wife, children, now just a piece of meat already starting to rot in the heat. Maybe he deserved it, maybe he’d tortured or raped Natasha, but having your throat sliced open like a watermelon is no way to die.

  I used my sleeve to wipe where I’d pried the boards apart, wondered if I’d left fingerprints anywhere else. There would be footprints in the dust, but I calculated that enough people worked on the site to make one more pair of size 44 shoes pretty anonymous. And there was nothing I could do about them anyway.

  At the car I found Saltanat cleaning the blood off her knife, wiping it over and over in the sand.

  “I’ll sharpen it later. Sometimes the blade gets nicked by the target’s jawbone or collarbone. First lesson—keep your equipment in shape. That way, it doesn’t let you down next time.”

  I hoped there wasn’t going to be a next time, but with a killing machine like Saltanat, I wasn’t putting any bets on it.

  Saltanat drove back to her hotel as calmly as if she’d been shopping for beachwear. I knew that she prided herself on her sangfroid; I also knew that underneath her composure the demons writhed and twisted and sometimes rose to the surface. I remembered how Saltanat had suffered a terrible rape that only ended when she killed both of the men attacking her, and how her solution then had been to withdraw into herself. And I wondered if she had now become hardened to killing, if the essential light inside her had also died.

  Saltanat handed the car keys to the hotel valet, turned to me. “You look like you could use a shower. And some new clothes.”

  I stared at my reflection in the mirrors that lined one wall of the lobby. My face was streaked with dirt and dust, and my clothes looked like I’d taken a beating.

  “I can do all that where I’m staying,” I said, wondering why I was reluctant to tell her the name of my hotel.

  “Get cleaned up here, and then we can decide what to do next,” she said. As always with Saltanat, it came over as an order, not a suggestion. And I obeyed.

  The shower was the last word in luxury; scalding hot water jetted out from every angle with a force far greater than the single showerhead in my Bishkek apartment. Steam clouded the bathroom as the water started to ease the tension in my neck and shoulders.

  And that’s when Saltanat joined me.

  “This didn’t work out too well the last time we tried it,” I said.

  “What? If at first you don’t succeed, never try again?” she said, and took hold of me. “What sort of philosophy is that for a Murder Squad inspector?”

  “A cautious one,” I replied, and the rest of my answer was lost in her kiss.

  Afterward I found a toweling dressing gown in one of the wardrobes, knotted it at the waist and returned to the bed. As always, Saltanat appeared entirely relaxed in her nudity, something I’ve never been able to achieve myself. But then I’m no oil painting, unless it’s by Picasso.

  “Either you’re more relaxed these days, or you’ve been practicing. You’ve been horizontal jogging with Miss Natasha?”

  I smiled back at Saltanat, who looked down at her breasts, small and perfect.

  “I’ve always preferred quality to quantity,” I said, “and reality to fiction.”

  “You’re getting better at giving compliments,” Saltanat said and pulled the sheet up to her neck. I opened the minibar, took out another exorbitantly priced bottle of mineral water, mimed drinking.

  “Nothing for me,” Saltanat said, and her voice was suddenly all business, as if the last hour had been locked away, and the key hidden somewhere safe.

 
“Time we worked out our next move,” she said.

  “That’s easy. They’ll contact us again. No one’s going to turn down so much money.” I paused, considered another possibility, stared at my reflection in the window. “And presumably they’ll also want revenge.”

  Chapter 33

  “Get dressed.”

  I looked over at Saltanat, noticing the way her hair sprawled across the pillow.

  “You want me to go?” I asked.

  “I want you to return the car.”

  “It’s after midnight; the place will be closed.”

  She looked at me, raised an eyebrow, said nothing. I nodded; once the dead man was found, the police would examine the CCTV footage on that stretch of road to identify any vehicles traveling along there during the estimated time of death. They would look out for hire cars to begin with. Then they would start looking for people, a man and a woman, Russian most likely.

  “Irina Badmaeva,” Saltanat said. “The name on the fake driving license I used. Just park outside, make sure you wipe down the doors and the wheel, then push the keys through the letter box.”

  I didn’t need Saltanat to teach me tradecraft, but it made sense. The trail would stop, or at least slow down, at the car-hire firm.

  “You want me to come back afterward?” I asked.

  “It’s too late; the hotel will notice you coming and going. Best you go back to where you’re staying, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  It all made sense, but it still felt like a dismissal, like I was no longer part of the hour we’d just shared, forgetting about guns and blood and death. Now it was back to the real world. Or at least the world that was real for her and me.

  After dumping the car, I walked for several blocks, making sure as best I could that I wasn’t leaving a CCTV trail for the police to follow. Finally, I flagged down a taxi, but I didn’t take it back to my hotel. Instead, I told the driver to drop me at the Vista.