A Summer Revenge

by Tom Callaghan

  I did my best not to wince or hobble as I walked through the hotel lobby and out to the taxi rank, gave the driver directions, then sat forward so my back wasn’t pressed against the seat. It wasn’t the pain that bothered me as much as the possibility of opening the wounds again and bleeding through my last clean shirt.

  In spite of my precautions, the driver drove as if he were in a grand prix, and I was slammed against the seat back repeatedly. As we barreled through the streets, I couldn’t help thinking of my ambivalence about Natasha. I obviously couldn’t forget the bullet she’d meant for my brain, but I also knew what a bastard Tynaliev was. You don’t rise to his level without cutting a few legs off at the knees on your climb up the ladder. And once he’d tired of Natasha’s silicone charms, he’d dump her, and the expensive presents and glamorous trips would stop. Worse, no sane man would take up with the former mistress of a man like Tynaliev. Even if she was still breathing and walking, her life would be effectively over, watching the seasons fade from a cracked window in a shabby one-story farmhouse on the edge of nowhere.

  I thought of the sort of decisions that weren’t really choices that Natasha had had to make in the past; I’d made a few like that myself in my time. And that was when I knew what I had to do.

  I told the driver to park across the street and wait. He started to complain that he was losing money, but I showed him what a fifty-dollar bill looked like. He stared at it, looked at my eyes, which didn’t blink or leave his face, decided to shut up.

  We waited for almost an hour, and then Natasha flagged down a taxi as the apartment block guard struggled out with two large suitcases. He put them in the trunk of the taxi, took the tip that Natasha waved in the air without looking at him, nodded, went back inside.

  “Don’t tell me, follow that taxi,” the driver said. A comedian. But I wasn’t in the mood for a movie wise guy, so I threw him the stare and crumpled the fifty in my hand. We followed Natasha’s taxi. I was watching the road signs and, as I’d assumed, Natasha was on her way to one of the three airport terminals.

  I had no way of knowing which one but guessed Terminal Three, the one that services Emirates. I assumed she intended putting as much distance between Dubai, Kyrgyzstan and herself as possible, maybe losing herself in New York and hiding out in Brighton Beach, where all the Russians live. The upside of that would be she could blend in, the downside that Tynaliev would probably have contacts there. Arrive, hole up for a couple of days and make an appointment for very expensive plastic surgery at some equally discreet clinic in Connecticut. A false passport to add to the one she was traveling under, and then she was home free to go anywhere on the planet.

  Her taxi stopped at the first-class departures lounge, and my driver maneuvered past and drew up at the cattle-class sign. I knew it would take a couple of moments for Natasha to organize a trolley, get her luggage on and find a flunkey to push it toward check-in. I threw the fifty onto the front passenger seat, got out and bustled into the main departure area of the airport. As I’d expected, it was possible to reach the first class check-in from there, just in case your chauffeur misheard where to stop the limousine. I gripped my gun in my pocket as I took a collision course toward Natasha. I didn’t think she’d be packing, having to go through airport security, but then I hadn’t thought she’d shoot me in the back a couple of hours earlier.

  Focused on heading to the check-in desk, Natasha didn’t see me coming. And I didn’t see the slender figure in black approaching from another angle, a hardly visible tiny sub-compact Beretta by her side. Saltanat Umarova.

  Chapter 52

  I saw Saltanat reach Natasha first, tap her on the shoulder, and when Natasha turned round, shock blazing on her face, Saltanat pulled her close. To anyone manning the CCTV, it would look like two friends embracing, but I glimpsed the gun pointed toward Natasha’s thighs.

  Saltanat muttered something, pointed to a coffee bar. Natasha shook her head and tapped her watch, telling any casual observer that she had to go, worried about being late for her flight, but Saltanat put her arm around the other woman’s shoulder and led her toward the bar’s seating area.

  As I watched, Saltanat turned, beckoned to me to join them, so I followed. In somewhere this public, Natasha had an advantage, and I didn’t have a plan, so it was strictly play it by ear.

  “You know how I like my coffee, Akyl,” Saltanat said, her gun pointing at Natasha under the table.

  “Something for you, Natasha?” I said, getting ready to play the useful idiot. Natasha’s eyes opened wide when she saw me. I was supposed to be lying dead in a hotel room, not deciding between Colombian and Kenyan. But she was calm enough not to scream or faint or make a run for it.

  “I shouldn’t really,” she said and pointedly stared at her watch. “Espresso, then I have to catch my flight.”

  “Sit there,” Saltanat said, her tone light, conversational, “other-wise I’ll give your money maker an extra hole.”

  “Charming,” Natasha said and turned to me. “You go along with this shit?”

  “My back looks like a map of the Moscow Metro,” I said, “so I’m not feeling particularly protective toward you right now.”

  “You’re going to kidnap me, carry me out kicking and screaming, and no one will notice?”

  “Maybe I’ll just kill you, spare Akyl the guilt,” Saltanat suggested.

  I reached over, opened Natasha’s bag, took out her ticket. “First class. Rio. What’s the weather like this time of year?”

  “I’m not planning on staying there long,” Natasha said. I didn’t know whether she was telling the truth. I suspected she wanted the trail cold before I got back to Tynaliev. Either way, it didn’t matter.

  “Let’s take a walk outside,” I said. “I need a cigarette.”

  We finished our coffees, stood up, and I pushed Natasha’s luggage trolley back toward the entrance. We walked into the brutal night heat, found a quiet spot away from the door, lit cigarettes, inhaled hot smoke and the hotter air. The humidity sparkled in the night air as if the stars had melted and run down the sky.

  “And now?” Natasha asked, defiant to the last.

  I felt a stab of envy, regret even, as I looked at her and thought of all the young girls I used to watch parading their immortality up and down Chui Prospekt, the sound of their high voices musical and sweet. They sit over coffees outside Sierra next to the Russian embassy, lingering for hours as they catch up on boys, music, gossip, and watch the envious world go by. They never realize how quickly the world slaps them across the mouth, demands that they do the bidding of their fathers, their husbands. And that’s when their immortality ends.

  Saltanat turned to me, raised an eyebrow.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said to both of them. “Saltanat, you achieved what you came for. Boris and his gang aren’t going to cause any more trouble, right? So you can go back to Tashkent, report mission accomplished. And as a bonus you can tell your superiors that the influence of Kyrgyz Minister of State Security Mikhail Tynaliev has been greatly reduced.”

  For once Saltanat looked less than completely composed. She stared at me, obviously wondering if I meant she should leave. I gave an almost imperceptible shake of my head.

  I turned to Natasha. “I’m supposed to bring the money back, with you as an added extra. Tynaliev was quite explicit on that point.”

  “And I don’t suppose he’s planning that we kiss and make up.”

  “No,” I agreed, remembering how my old boss had been dragged out of his office by Tynaliev’s thugs, begging for mercy, never to be seen again. I didn’t want to think what he would have suffered for orchestrating the murder of Tynaliev’s daughter. A bullet to the head would have been a merciful release.

  “But you don’t care about that,” Natasha said, her voice expressionless, her eyes revealing her anger and fear.

  I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another, wondered how much I should say.

  “For my entire working
life I’ve wanted to bring justice to those people who can no longer demand it for themselves. I don’t believe the dead rest until they’ve been avenged. And at the very least, you stop their killers from doing it again.”

  The fresh cigarette tasted vile, my mouth full of ashes and phlegm. I threw it away, spat into the road. A passing taxi honked a rebuke, and I barely resisted the temptation to raise a finger. In Dubai that can get you arrested.

  I wouldn’t tell her about the voices in the cold hours of the night, the sobbing, the screams, the silence. That is my burden, and one I carry alone, sharing it with no one. But I knew I couldn’t condemn Natasha to torture, rape and finally death, Tynaliev watching, not out of enjoyment but to see his revenge complete, his power absolute.

  I pushed the luggage trolley back into the building, the two women following me. I turned to face them, jerked my thumb over my shoulder.

  “You’d better hurry if you want to sunbathe on Copacabana beach tomorrow,” I said, my face empty of any expression.

  Natasha looked at me, paused, then took the handles of the trolley and started forward. I had wondered if she would thank me, maybe even give me a peck on the cheek, but she did neither of those things. Instead, she glanced back at my face, trying to read the motives I was determined to keep hidden, then nodded and turned away, heading toward the check-in desk and a new life. She didn’t look back again.

  I watched her for a couple of moments, saying nothing. Then I turned to Saltanat, who was regarding me with her traditional raised eyebrow.

  “One day, that white knight act of yours is going to put you in your grave,” she said.

  Chapter 53

  “Those photos Natasha showed you—” I began.

  “I don’t care,” Saltanat interrupted. “You’re an adult, so’s she. You do anything you want.”

  “They were faked,” I said. “Well, not faked exactly, but she drugged me, posed me when I was unconscious so that she could use them to blackmail me with Tynaliev.”

  I could hear the lameness of my excuse and knew how it must sound.

  “I don’t care,” Saltanat repeated, with more emphasis this time, and those three words were like knife thrusts under my ribs. We would get close to each other, and then our flaws, our insecurities, our obsessions, would push us apart. Perhaps it was simply fucking as far as Saltanat was concerned. But for me she was one of the possible paths back to a life that didn’t center around blood and decay.

  I could think of nothing to say, so I said nothing.

  We stood there in awkward silence for a few moments while the tannoy system boomed out incomprehensible Arabic. Then Saltanat spoke.

  “You’d better take this,” she said, pushing the gun into my hand. I looked at her, not sure why she’d done that until it dawned on me that she didn’t want to carry a piece through the scanners. She was leaving.

  “I’d better go, or I’ll miss my flight. I’ve already checked in.”

  She started to walk away, and I still couldn’t tell her I loved her. “Business class?” I called out after her. She turned and gave me one of her rare smiles.

  “Of course; I’ll have a glass of champagne for you.”

  A couple of paces later, she turned again. “I believe you, Akyl, about the photos. Honestly.”

  I felt a stab of delight.

  “But it doesn’t make any difference.”

  And the stab turned into despair, burning more than the wounds on my back.

  She didn’t look back again either.

  I broke the gun down, wiped it clean on my shirt and disposed of the pieces in various bins on my way to the taxi rank. Throughout the journey back to my hotel I brooded on Saltanat’s dismissal, on the way I felt both women had used and then discarded me. I knew it was partly pride that drove my anger, but I also knew that Natasha was right when she’d said I let my emotions overwhelm my abilities as a detective. Maybe going back into the force wasn’t such a good idea after all.

  Throwing my few clothes back into my bag, I checked out. The bill devoured almost all of what was left of my money, leaving just enough for a taxi to the airport and maybe a coffee before I flew. I had a few hours to kill, and I hated airports even more than usual at that point, so I sat in the hotel bar, in a dark corner, away from anyone else stupid enough to make small talk with me.

  I thought about calling Tynaliev with the not-so-great news, saw that it was 1 a.m. in Bishkek and decided that waking him would not be a career-enhancing move. After all, the news wasn’t going to be any worse in the morning. Back home, shower, sleep for a couple of hours and then get ready to face the firing squad.

  Did I have to go back and face the minister’s anger? Perhaps not, but I was almost out of money, with no place to hide. I’d rather die and be buried in the hilltop cemetery next to Chinara, where we could look at the mountains, hear the wind rushing through the valley below and watch the kites spiraling on the thermals, hunting their prey. Perhaps that’s the only place where I can ever find peace.

  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that while you can avenge the dead, you can never join them. We’re born alone, then cling together in the dark until we sleep, dreamless and alone. And to give up on life is the ultimate crime, no matter what it hurls at us. Because while the people that concern me have no say in their deaths and die in pain, terror, despair, there are more ways to kill yourself than knife or rope or gun. And I’ve brooded over all of them.

  It was while I was musing on these cheerful thoughts that I heard my phone give its usual irritating buzz. I didn’t recognize the number, so I knew it had to be trouble. I had no friends in Dubai; in fact, I probably had no friends at all.

  “Yes?”

  “My flight leaves in a few minutes.”

  Saltanat. I tried to keep my voice calm and professional. That’s how much of a coward I can be. “Have a safe journey. How was the champagne?”

  “Excellent. I wish you could have joined me.”

  “Well you had something to celebrate,” I said.

  “And you?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I wondered if there was a hint of concern, some emotion in her voice. I couldn’t help leaping at the idea, a falling climber lunging for a crevice in the rock face. “Well, Tynaliev isn’t going to be happy. And when he’s not delighted, people have a habit of disappearing.”

  There was a pause, and I heard the chink of a glass.

  “Then why go back?”

  I looked around the bar, which was almost empty, at the rows of ludicrously expensive bottles, at the overstuffed chairs, the decor that had never been touched by any sense of style or elegance or restraint. And then I spoke the simple truth, harsh and inevitable.

  “Because I’ve nowhere else to go.”

  Chapter 54

  The silence that lay between us felt smothering as I waited for her to speak, to say what I half-hoped, half-dreaded to hear.

  “Why not come and—”

  “Live in Tashkent?” I interrupted, sounding more terse than I had intended. “I don’t think so, although I’m sure your government would welcome me with open arms.” Which is more than my own will, I didn’t bother to add.

  “I’m not suggesting we live together,” Saltanat said, her voice resuming its usual dispassionate tone, “but I’d prefer you alive, rather than buried under a mound of rocks in the Tien Shan.”

  “What about letting Natasha shoot me back at the hotel? I didn’t sense much compassion and care for my well-being then.”

  “There wasn’t anything I could do in that situation,” she said as if patiently explaining to a slow-witted child, “but I knew Natasha would head for the airport.”

  I knew Saltanat was right. Melodramatic gestures are strictly for amateurs, and she hadn’t been one of those since she learned to walk. But knowing she was right didn’t make me feel any better. The pain from the wounds in my back was evidence of that.

  “I was surprised you let her go,” Saltanat said. “Your
white knight act again. I’ve told you, one day it will get you killed. Today it almost did.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. I was trained to bring justice to the dead. You were trained to create them.”

  “Better your life than hers, you mean?”

  There was an underlying truth there that I didn’t want to explore, so I said nothing. When you feel you have very little to live for, to rejoice in, a future in which to believe, the difference between life and death is paper-thin, fragile and blown away by the first breeze.

  “I understand wanting to lay down your life for your friends,” Saltanat said. “But for a hard-faced thieving bitch who dazzles every man with her plastic chest into doing what she wants?”

  A man and a woman walked hand in hand toward a table at the back of the bar; I wondered why there was never anyone to hold my hand.

  “Either no one counts, or everyone counts,” I said and wondered at the self-righteousness in my voice. Fine words, but I wasn’t at all sure I could live up to them, wondered if in fact I ever had.

  “You need to sleep, Akyl,” Saltanat said, and the pity with which she spoke almost unmanned me. “Push all this away until the morning, then flush it out of your life.”

  I couldn’t help wondering if her voice held a degree of contempt for me.

  A sudden craving for a drink deluged my brain, raging like water brought to the boil or racing down a storm drain after a downpour. I could feel the ice against my teeth, the bite of the lemon mixed with the stab of vodka as brutally cold as if it had lain buried in a snowdrift all winter. The great thing about vodka, perhaps the only thing, is there’s no reason to drink it except to get drunk. No pleasant bouquet, no lingering aftertaste, no harmonizing a decent vintage with a good steak. Cheap, effective and everywhere. But if I’d hadn’t stopped drinking after I’d killed my wife, I’d have drunk myself into the ground next to her.