There was a question I knew I had to ask, dreaded hearing the answer.
“And then what happens?”
“A lot of the time, it goes through, the foreigners get a cut-price baby, the parents have some spare cash for the first time in years. A couple of thousand buys the baby a passport and adoption certificate, allowing it to leave the country, and we hope it all ends happily.”
I could follow the logic; if official channels were bypassed, that only meant fewer beaks got dipped.
“But?” I asked, certain there would be more to the story, and it wouldn’t be pleasant.
“It often depends on the foreigners, how gullible they are,” Saltanat said. “Sometimes the same baby gets sold to four or five couples; one of them gets the child, the other ones are told the child has died, or the parents have backed out at the last minute. Of course, it’s impossible to offer a full refund, and, having broken the law, the couples can hardly go to Sverdlovsky station and lodge a complaint. They’ve heard too many horror stories about Kyrgyz jails to consider that.”
“So they fly home to an empty cradle and a bank account light by thirty thousand dollars?”
Saltanat nodded.
“But the worst if no one buys the child?”
Her face grew hard, and I waited for her to speak.
“Better not to risk returning the child. The parents are told all went well, and they keep the thousand dollars.”
“And the child?”
“You dug seven of them up in a field outside Karakol. And I shouldn’t imagine that’s the only dumping ground. If they’re lucky, they get killed quickly. If not, they star in one of Graves’s home movies.”
I said nothing, remembering the pathetic bundles in that cold field, the sun turning the mountain snow the color of blood. I wanted to vomit, to blow the story to the newspapers and see nomenklatura heads on spikes. Most of all, I wanted to kill Morton Graves.
While we sat there in grim silence, the waitress brought over a fresh beer for Saltanat. She was young, pretty, and I couldn’t remember her name.
“You’re looking very serious, Akyl. Hope there wasn’t something wrong with the pizza?”
“It was fine.” I smiled, and made sure I didn’t watch as she walked back to the bar. However, that didn’t stop Saltanat.
“Pretty girl,” she said, in a nonchalant tone that didn’t lower my defenses for a moment. “You’ve known her for a long time?”
“She’s a waitress. In a bar. That I used to drink in. She’s seen us both in here before. I need a hard time about it right now?”
Saltanat was silent, but I knew that conversation wasn’t over.
Her phone rang, startling us both.
She listened, then broke the connection. She looked over at me, her face betraying absolutely nothing, professional, a trained killer.
“Albina,” she said. “With a time and a place.”
“You think she wants to give up Graves?” I asked. “Cut some kind of immunity? Do you trust her?”
Saltanat shook her head.
“Not a chance; I know what she wants. To kill me. As she always used to say, the hard bit is knowing who to trust. And when.”
Chapter 56
“What you just said about knowing who to trust? I just remembered where I’d heard that before,” I said. “Albina was the woman who came to visit the orphanage. Those were her exact words: I thought she looked familiar.”
“You didn’t recognize her from before?” Saltanat asked, never taking her eyes away from the traffic in front of us. We’d decided there wasn’t time to go to the lockup for more weapons; the Uighur knife would have to do.
“It was one incident one afternoon a long time ago, in a time I’ve tried to forget.”
Saltanat nodded, said, “I can understand that.”
“Really?” I asked.
“I was brought up in an orphanage too, Akyl. You’re not unique. But I did get adopted.”
Her voice told me it hadn’t been an idyllic childhood, that questions would not be welcome.
“How soon after Albina saw you did you get to go home?” she asked.
“My grandfather came down to Karakol about three months later and met me at the bus station. He bought two tickets to Bishkek and we headed west in a beat-up old marshrutka. Nine hours until we arrived, and I don’t think my dedushka said more than five words. He certainly didn’t say why we were going to Bishkek. We walked for about half an hour—my grandfather wasn’t one for spending unnecessary som on taxis—until we came to Panfilov Park and sat down on one of the benches near the amusement park.
“We waited for about an hour; grandfather bought me an ice cream with black cherry juice on top. I’d never had one before, and I tried to make it last as long as possible, until finally the ice cream started to melt and run down my arm and onto my shirt.
“I was licking the last of the juice off my fingers when I heard a woman’s voice. ‘I can’t leave you alone for a minute, Akyl Borubaev, can I? You think clean shirts grow on apple trees?’ and I looked up and there was my mama. She looked tired, older, her shoulders more stooped, but it was her. I think my mouth fell open in surprise, and then she opened her arms, and I was hugging her waist and we were crying. Everybody stopped to stare, but I didn’t care, and I thought my heart was going to burst with happiness.”
I sat still, remembering that day, how we’d stayed with one of her cousins until we could find a place of our own, in Alamedin, just behind the market, so our three-room apartment always smelled of newly picked fruit and fresh vegetables. It was the last time my mother ever showed me any emotion, any clue to her feelings. Whenever I was cross or unhappy, she would scold me, saying, “Don’t show your character.” She watched without comment, without emotion, as my grandfather’s body was carried out of our apartment, followed years later by that of my father, on one of his rare visits. She didn’t approve of me joining the police force, a staunch supporter of the widely held belief that all policemen are corrupt. My mother died not long after meeting Chinara. She approved of our marriage, said Chinara was too good for me. And when her time came, my mother fought her own death with an unwillingness to accept anything stronger than her own strength of will.
“That’s a good story, Akyl, you were lucky, believe me,” Saltanat said. I knew any attempt to interrogate her would lead only to silence and a distancing that would take hours to break down. If she told me, I might understand her motives, her attitudes. If she didn’t, she was still Saltanat, with all her mysteries.
“How dangerous is Albina?” I said.
“Hand to hand? The best.”
“Why don’t I wait just out of sight?” I said. “Then put her down with a single shot?”
Saltanat looked over at me, and smiled.
“One, you’re not that good a shot. Two, you’d never get near her, her instincts for a trap are superb. She’s relied on them for twenty-five years, they’ve never let her down. She’s as cautious as a snow leopard. Three, you wouldn’t see her coming until she’d brought death to your side. And four, this is between her and me, something waiting to be settled for a long time.”
“Personal stuff,” I said. She nodded.
“Very personal.”
We parked on Orozbekova, just beyond the statue of Lenin at the back of the Historical Museum, his new home since 2003. We don’t deny his influence, we just don’t give it the prominence it once had. His arm is still outstretched, pointing to the future, but his face is always in shadow, thanks to the tall trees that now surround him, trees that have lasted longer than his glorious revolution.
I looked across to the trees, but there was no sign of Albina.
“What makes you think she won’t just shoot you the moment you step out of the car?” I said.
“She’d see that as a failure,” Saltanat said. “She needs to show she’s still the best at what she does.”
“She’s pretty good at lots of things,” I said, feeling the burn in m
y toe, the tightness of the linen pad we’d bandaged it with earlier. “I’ve got something for you,” I added, handing over my Uighur knife. “Albina has its twin, and it’s only fair you’re as well-armed as she is.”
Saltanat took the blade, felt the heft, the balance, nodded approvingly.
“If I think she’s getting the better of you, or she’s going to kill you,” I said, reached for my gun under the seat, held it up, “then I’m going to blow her fucking head off.”
Saltanat started to protest, but I put a finger to my lips. She leaned forward, kissed my cheek, and I could smell the freshness of her perfume, the lemon shampoo of her hair.
Saltanat’s phone rang. As she listened, her face changed from shock into anger. She put the phone back in her pocket and turned to me.
“That was my embassy. Elmira, the woman looking after Otabek? She’s been shot, she’s dead. And the boy’s missing.”
And then she was out of the car, walking without haste toward the base of the statue. Albina emerged from the shadows, turned and beckoned Saltanat to join her. I got out of the car, following the two women further under the trees. Lenin ignored them, obviously dreaming about the irresistible rise of the proletariat.
Finally, we came to a spot away from the park paths, where carved stone statues stood in a ring, as if refereeing the fight. Their faces in the shadows were cruel or uncaring, as if they’d seen it all before and remained unmoved. Albina held up a hand toward me, indicating I should come no further. I nodded my acceptance.
Across the far side of the clearing, Otabek stood, his arms wrapped around a slender birch tree, wrists tied together. Even from a distance, I could see the despairing slump of his shoulders, the dried tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Will you be able to carry this bitch’s body back to your car on your own, Akyl? I imagine that foot of yours is giving you a little trouble!” Albina shouted. “You’ll need to make two trips if you’re going to carry the boy’s body as well.”
“We’ll be leaving your body where it falls,” Saltanat said. “Unless you’d like Graves to fetch you to star in his next major motion picture? A non-speaking role, obviously.”
“You always were a difficult child, Saltanat, you’ve grown up to be a troublesome woman.”
The two women, one blond, the other raven-haired, both dressed in black, crouched and started to circle each other. What little sunlight came through the trees reflected off the blades of the knives, the way ice skates spark and dance on winter lakes.
The two women moved sideways, placing each foot down, testing the ground, as if treading barefoot on glass. I’d been present at the aftermath of several knife fights, but those had been drunken, messy, brutal affairs, more bravado than an intent to kill. This was different, like watching two ballerinas performing to music only they could hear. There was a grace and elegance about the whole thing, a ritual no one but the participants could understand. There was none of that nonsense of tossing the knife from hand to hand you get in movies. If the knife isn’t in your hand, you’re unarmed. Drop it and you’re not just a bad juggler, you’re a dead one.
Albina skipped forward, light as a cat on her feet, flicked out with her blade, before stepping back. Saltanat twisted to stand sideways, and I thought the blow had missed her. Then I saw the cut in her sleeve, blood rising through the dark material. I slid my hand inside my jacket, loosened the Yarygin. At that distance, taking Albina down would be easy. Taking her alive? Rather more difficult.
Albina raised one leg and aimed a Thai-style kick at Saltanat’s hip, the knife as a follow-through aimed at the throat. Saltanat swayed backward, stabbed down with her own knife. The blade’s tip nicked the webbing of Albina’s thumb and forefinger, blood hanging in the air like a shower of rose petals.
Albina fell back, her face a mask of anger and pain, raising her hand to suck on the wound. When she took her hand away, the blood that smeared her face and teeth reminded me of the wolf I’d once seen shot in the mountains. But this wolf’s eyes were ferocious, alive with hate and bloodlust.
“You used to be good at this,” Saltanat taunted. “Old age finally caught up with you?”
“Good enough to have killed your friend, the orphanage director. Good enough to have given you that scar,” Albina said, pointing at Saltanat’s face.
The dance never stopped, a step forward, a step back, block, move, thrust, both women swaying from side to side to hide their next attack. Albina leapt forward two paces, catching Saltanat just below the earlier wound, deeper now, blood staining the grass. But the leap had caught Albina off balance and as she stumbled, Saltanat plunged her knife into the bicep of Albina’s knife-arm. Even as Albina registered the shock of the blow, Saltanat twisted the blade and drew it down the length of the arm.
The dance was coming to its inevitable conclusion, as Albina dropped her knife and fell to her knees. With her other hand, she tried to pull the edges of the wound together, but blood continued to spurt, and I realized Saltanat had hit an artery.
I stepped forward, but Saltanat turned on me, enraged, raising her knife at my face.
“Get back,” she said. “It’s not over.”
Albina’s clothes were drenched in blood, and I knew that even if Saltanat had let me approach, it would have been too late to save Albina. She knew she would bleed out in just a few minutes, but the expression on her face said she wasn’t ready to submit. She intended to face death as it ran through the trees toward her, scooping her up and carrying her off to feast at its leisure.
“Saltanat,” I said, tried to put my arm around her. She pushed me away, lowered her blade, walked over to where Albina still knelt, upright by some miracle of will.
“We always knew it would end this way,” Saltanat said, “ever since I was a little girl.” And there was a softness in her voice that sounded almost like love.
“You made me what I am, Albina, for good or bad. Good for me, bad for you.”
Albina’s eyelids drooped, her head swaying. She started to speak, but only disjointed sounds emerged.
“I suppose you killed Gurminj when he caught you abducting Otabek,” Saltanat said. “A decent man, who only wanted to help children. Even if I could, I wouldn’t help you. Now all that’s left for you is to rot in the earth.”
Saltanat spat onto the ground, wiped her mouth with the back of one bloodstained hand, walked toward Otabek.
I watched as Albina’s face went slack, and death began to flood her eyes. She made one ineffectual grab for her knife, missed, tried again, and then fell forward onto her face.
And then Saltanat was walking back to me, carrying Otabek, who clung to her neck as if nothing could ever break his grasp. They passed Albina’s body without sparing it even a glance as I picked up the knives. I saw Saltanat’s face was filled with a haunting mix of love and sorrow. Perhaps mine was as well.
Chapter 57
The three of us managed to sneak through the hotel lobby and up to our room without attracting too much attention. I’d managed a makeshift bandage for Saltanat’s arm, and her dark clothing hid the blood fairly effectively. I bathed the cut, shallow and just above the elbow, poured the remaining hydrogen peroxide over the wound. I remembered how much it had hurt when Saltanat had done the same for me and couldn’t help smiling.
“Revenge?” she said, gritting her teeth.
“Something like that,” I said, rolling a bandage around her arm. Saltanat gave me one of her specialty suspicious scowls.
“So, do you want to tell me about it?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About Albina and you, what there was between the two of you,” I said.
Saltanat sighed in exasperation, stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. We’d already taken the room next to ours, with a connecting door between the two suites. Saltanat had bathed Otabek and held his hand while he curled up under the covers and escaped into sleep. I dry-swallowed a handful of the extra-strong painkillers I’d managed to ca
jole out of the pharmacist, waited for the pain in my shoulder and foot to also take a nap.
“I told you I was adopted,” she began. I nodded.
“Well, Albina didn’t choose you to be her pet. I wasn’t so lucky.”
“She adopted you?”
“That’s right.”
“But why? She was young, she could have had children of her own.”
“I don’t think Albina had the slightest interest in sex,” Saltanat said. “Oh, she knew how to use the promise of it as a weapon, sometimes it was all she needed to get what she wanted. But actually carrying out the deed, that would have made her vulnerable, and she couldn’t abide that.”
Saltanat stopped, turned away from me.
“You don’t have any cigarettes, do you?”
“No, I only smoke yours,” I said, hoping to make her smile. “And besides, they’re bad for your health.”
A grunt was Saltanat’s only answer.
“So Albina adopted you?”
“Yes, but not in the way you think. She didn’t want a child to love, but one she could train.”
I looked puzzled, and Saltanat began to explain.
“In my country, the authorities are very cautious, and they value loyalty very highly. What they don’t believe in is trust. Some families have always supplied the elite in the security services, because it’s a lot easier to guarantee loyalty if you have a hold over someone’s children, parents, grandparents. She’d been trained by her father to fight, spy, kill, just as he’d been trained by his father. That’s how it’s done.
“Albina married very young, a marriage of convenience to the son of one of the other families. He was killed during ‘an anti-Uzbek rising of disloyal citizens,’ leaving Albina a childless widow.”
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