The Adversary

by Michael Walters

  He nodded and smiled faintly. “You never did tell me how you do spend your time.”

  She placed her knife and fork neatly across the plate. “It’s lovely food. But I think I need to leave a little room for dessert. The crème brûlée sounds excellent.” She paused as Nergui allowed the silence to extend, continuing to chew slowly at his own steak. “The truth is,” she said at last, “is that there’s nothing really to tell you. I work. That’s it, really. I mean, it’s a demanding job, though probably not as demanding as I make it. But I work long hours. I go home. I read a book. Maybe I try to watch TV. Then I go to sleep, get up early and go back to work. That’s it.”

  It was difficult to challenge her words without sounding either patronizing or rude. Nergui nodded, placing his own cutlery across his plate. “It sounds like your life might be even more unbalanced than mine.” Though, really, he thought, her description sounded uncannily like his own typical evening.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s not been an easy life.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “Though all that was a long time ago. You must have put it behind you.”

  She nodded. “I have. Really and truly behind me. It feels as if all that happened to a different person. Someone I met a few times and then lost touch with. Not me at all.”

  “It was a different life,” Nergui said. “Everything’s changed now. You’ve changed now.”

  This was certainly true. It was difficult to relate the elegant confident woman sitting opposite him to the scared figure he had first met that night—ten, eleven years before. Though it had hardly been surprising that she was scared, in the circumstances.

  They had made the arrest in the small hours of the morning, in the coldest days of that bitterly cold winter. All of that had been deliberate—to take Gansukh by surprise and prevent him from destroying evidence or making contact with his associates.

  There was thick snow on the ground, frozen into the hardest ice, and despite the best efforts of the snowplows the city had been virtually at a standstill for the whole day. By the time the police were ready to make their assault, at around two in the morning, the temperature had dropped again, far below zero. They had positioned their trucks, with their snow chains, at the two ends of the narrow street containing Gansukh’s apartment, blocking the exits. The arrest team, bundled up in heavy clothing against the rigors of the frozen night, had made their slow way down the icy street, firearms poised.

  They had not known how dangerous Gansukh might prove to be. Forty-eight hours before, a routine customs search on a truck entering the country across the northern border with Russia had uncovered a consignment of classified drugs, including heroin, apparently of Afghan origin. The driver of the truck, who had initially denied all knowledge of his cargo, turned out to be a known associate of Gansukh, a small-time businessman who had been under Nergui’s surveillance for some months. The driver had quickly named Gansukh as the instigator of the operation, pulling out the pitifully small handful of US dollars he had been paid upfront for undertaking the assignment. An equivalent sum, he said, would be payable by Gansukh on delivery. He named an abandoned warehouse, on the south side of the capital, as the spot where he had been due to rendezvous with another named associate of Gansukh the following evening. The police had duly arrived at the warehouse at the appointed time and arrested the associate, who without prompting also immediately named Gansukh as the paymaster.

  From that point, there was little time to waste. It was only a matter of time before Gansukh realized that the operation had not proceeded according to plan.

  And so, there they were, at two a.m. in the depths of winter, making their way slowly down this narrow street, poised for the arrest. Nergui had half expected that Gansukh might have tried to make his escape. But he had overestimated Gansukh’s perspicacity. As they stormed in through the shattered front door of his apartment, Gansukh stumbled out to meet them, rubbing his eyes, dressing gown pulled around him, demanding in a sleepy voice to know just what the fuck was going on. Ten seconds later, he was pinned to the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back, still screaming obscenities.

  It was at that point that Nergui had first met Sarangarel. They had discovered her, cowering in bed, like a child trying to hide from her nightmares. Even then, Nergui had been struck by her appearance. But it was impossible to relate that bunched, quaking figure with the poised woman now sitting opposite. He recalled her sitting slumped on the sofa in the small apartment, her head in her hands, staring at the floor, unable to comprehend what was happening.

  Under questioning, Gansukh very rapidly admitted his involvement in the smuggling operation but—in what Nergui suspected was one of Gansukh’s very rare acts of chivalry—he was insistent that his wife knew nothing of the scheme. Sarangarel herself had expressed only bewilderment. She had had no involvement in her husband’s business schemes, no suspicion of any criminal activity.

  Nergui would have believed her, even without her husband’s insistent corroboration. Their apartment was modest—decently furnished, but with nothing to indicate any unexpected wealth. Nergui initially wondered whether Gansukh had smartly concealed his wealth elsewhere, but then recognized that Gansukh was exactly what he appeared to be—an unsuccessful businessman. It was just that his failed business was on the wrong side of the law.

  Then, unexpectedly, the story became more interesting.

  Although Gansukh had come clean about his own involvement very quickly, clearly recognizing that he had little alternative, he insisted that the real instigator was elsewhere, a big fish, sufficiently removed from the action for his involvement to be deniable.

  Nergui had no difficulty believing this, but it made little difference. Gansukh refused to give any more detail even in the face of repeated aggressive questioning and the threat of a lengthy prison sentence.

  “You just don’t know,” Gansukh said, finally, “who you’re dealing with.”

  There was something about the way he said the words that caught Nergui’s attention.

  “Muunokhoi,” he said, quietly.

  Gansukh tried hard to control his facial expression, but the sudden spark of fear in his eyes told Nergui everything he needed to know. He had Gansukh thrown back into custody and ordered a further inch-by-inch search of Gansukh’s apartment and of a number of other commercial properties he was leasing.

  Meanwhile, he and Tunjin—in those days, one of Nergui’s protégés—conducted endless interviews with the nervous young man, trying to get him to acknowledge some link, to provide some evidence. They offered him the prospect of a plea bargain and access to the state’s newly-established witness protection program. They talked and talked, and Gansukh sat, staring at the floor, saying nothing.

  After several days of this, Nergui finally thought they were making progress. At heart, Gansukh was a loser. He had always been a loser, and now he was on the point of losing everything. But maybe, as he listened to Nergui talk, he had begun to think that, for once, he might just salvage something.

  Late on the third night of interviewing, he dropped his head into his hands and, speaking through his fingers, he said: “Okay. Okay, maybe I can tell you something more. But I have to be sure—”

  “Sure of what?” Nergui leaned back in his seat and watched the man across the desk.

  “Sure it’s worth it,” Gansukh said. “You don’t know—”

  Nergui nodded, indicating that he knew only too well. “What would make it worth it?” he said.

  “How would it benefit me?”

  “There are no guarantees,” Nergui said. “It’s not in my power to guarantee, but it is in my power to influence. It will help you in two ways. First, it confirms you’re not the lead player in this. And, second, your co-operation will be taken into account. With all that—and it being a first offense, even if a serious one—you should get a minimal sentence. Maybe even suspended.” This was nonsense—regardless of the mitigation, the courts now took drug smuggling very serious
ly indeed—but it was what Gansukh wanted to hear. Gansukh nodded. “And what about protection?”

  “We have a fully established program now. Based on best practice from the West. If you go to prison, you’ll get full protection there. And if you don’t—or when you come out—we can organize an identity change, relocation, whatever it needs.” Again, it was an exaggeration. Nergui had little confidence that he could offer any real protection against Muunokhoi’s resources.

  It was as if Gunsukh had read his thoughts. “I don’t know what it needs,” he said, his face pale. “I don’t know that anything would be enough.”

  “We’ll do whatever is humanly possible.” Nergui paused, looking for the final lever that would unlock Gansukh’s response. “And if this person is as fearsome as you say, who’s to say you’ll be safe even if you say nothing?”

  Gansukh stared up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Nergui said, “that you’ve painted a picture of a very dangerous individual. Someone who makes you afraid even to open your mouth. To this person, you’ll always be a risk. You know. You might decide not to speak today or tomorrow or ever, but he can’t be sure.” He leaned forward, staring at Gansukh through his hard blue eyes. “How safe are you?”

  Gansukh shook his head. This was clearly a new thought to him. “I don’t know,” he said finally, in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.

  “So if you don’t speak, you go to prison, a long sentence, with no protection. Do you know how many violent deaths there have been in prison over the last year?” Nergui himself didn’t know, but he thought he was unlikely to be required to provide a definitive figure. “Whereas if you tell us what you can, we give you full protection and support—in prison, if necessary, and outside.” He allowed silence to fall across the conversation, almost able to read the thoughts that were rushing through Gansukh’s head.

  Finally, Gansukh looked up at him. “I need to think about it,” he said. “I don’t know—”

  “It’s late,” Nergui said. “Think about it overnight. We can talk in the morning.”

  This was standard practice, allowing the interviewee to stew with his thoughts. But afterward Nergui considered it the biggest mistake he had ever made.

  He was woken in the small hours of the morning, the telephone in his silent apartment unnaturally shrill in the night. It was the duty officer at the station. There had been an incident. Gansukh was dead.

  He had been found in his cell, hanging from the window bars, a bed-sheet twisted awkwardly round his neck. It looked an impossible way to commit suicide, though the pathologist claimed it was not unknown. Nergui bustled around, trying to find out how it had been allowed to happen. Gansukh had not been under any kind of suicide watch—there had been no reason to assume that this was necessary. His cell had been regularly patrolled but was not under continuous surveillance.

  Nergui had to acknowledge that, with hindsight, suicide might have been a predictable response. Gansukh had been scared of the consequences whether he spoke out or not. This form of death might be a lot less unpleasant than anything Muunokhoi’s people could inflict.

  But something nagged at Nergui. He couldn’t honestly say that Gansukh was not the suicidal type—how could you judge that?—but Nergui had never seen him that way. And the timing of Gansukh’s death, so soon after he had indicated that he might be willing to speak, seemed too convenient.

  But only he and Tunjin had been present when Gansukh had been speaking. Nergui quickly found Tunjin and asked him whether he had shared the contents of the interview with Gansukh with any of his colleagues. Tunjin, looking justifiably terrified of Nergui, nodded almost imperceptibly. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t realize—” It turned out that he had been transcribing the interview notes, and had chosen to share the contents with a number of colleagues. Quite possibly, by the time Gansukh had died, most of the officers on duty would have been aware of what he had said.

  So did Nergui have any grounds to treat the death as suspicious? Only the most circumstantial ones. Gansukh had been under great pressure, was facing a lengthy prison sentence, might be at risk of reprisals. Suicide was hardly an outrageous verdict. This was how the pathologist saw it. After all, what did Gansukh have to live for?

  Well, thought Nergui, there was the woman now sitting opposite him delicately eating her crème brûlée. Though by the time he died, he might well have lost her anyway. Certainly, when Nergui had visited her in her hotel room to break the news, she had been—well, upset, certainly, but perhaps also secretly relieved. She would not have to drag forward the legacy of that former life—the trial, her own role as a witness, the endless rounds of visiting Gansukh in prison, the slow and painful progress toward an inevitable divorce. Perhaps, Nergui thought, Gansukh’s suicide—if that was what it had been—was less selfish than it might have appeared. Perhaps, after all, he had taken that final step to prove his love for his wife.

  And, looking at her now, she had clearly taken full advantage of that freedom. She had made a life and a career for herself. She had a striking presence, a sense of hard-won but powerful authority. And he wondered precisely what it was she had lost, that frozen evening, when he had met her for the first time.

  “I was expecting more sparkling conversation than this, if I’m honest,” she said. “But as I don’t get out much, perhaps my expectations are unrealistic.”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s been fairly obvious for some minutes. But about what?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. About the past, I suppose.”

  She nodded. “I don’t do that. Far too dangerous. I think about the future. Like the rest of this evening, for example. And beyond.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, momentarily disconcerted by her tone. As he did so, he felt his cell phone, tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket, vibrate twice. A text message.

  “I’m sorry—” He pulled out the phone and waved it gently in front of her. “I’d better check. It might be urgent.”

  He thumbed the buttons on the phone and brought up the message on the screen. The number was familiar though it took him a moment to place it. The message simply said: “Call. Urgent.”

  Nergui stared at the phone for a moment, absorbing the message.

  “Well?” Sarangarel said, spooning up the last of her dessert. “Was it urgent?”

  Nergui looked back up at her. “I rather think it was,” he said.

  She nodded, amusement playing in her dark eyes. “Well, then,” she said. “What a useful device.”

  The weather had grown more humid in the course of the evening, and now the first small spots of rain were beginning to fall on the windscreen. Luvsan cursed and switched on the wipers. “All we need,” he said.

  “I take it this won’t affect your famed navigational skills,” Doripalam said, gesturing toward the GPS system.

  Luvsan shrugged. “The machine’s fine. Whether I can make any sense of it in this darkness is another question entirely.”

  Doripalam sat back, knowing that in truth Luvsan was fully in control and enjoying every moment of this trip through the darkness. They were still on the main road at the moment, heading north out of Bulgan toward the mountains. There was no other traffic or signs of life, other than the vanishing glow of the small city’s lights behind them. Doripalam watched the progress of their headlights across the road, the monotony almost hypnotic.

  “How far do we think it is?” Doripalam said.

  “Not far. Twenty kilometers or so. That’s where we’ll meet the local guy, and he’ll take us on to where the camp is.”

  The local guy was the outstationed officer who had been keeping an eye on the camp. Luvsan had phoned him again from the hotel and asked for his help in tracking down the camp. He had agreed with alacrity, obviously excited at the prospect of working with the Serious Crimes Team. Doripalam could not help thinking that Luvsan had p
erhaps rather over-stated the importance of their mission, but it had seemed to have the necessary effect.

  Luvsan turned on the radio, and twisted the dial till he found one of the commercial stations playing Western-style pop music. He banged his palm on the steering wheel as they drove in time with the music, occasionally singing along with the choruses. It was irritating, but preferable to the endless silence of the night.

  Twenty-five minutes later they saw the few scattered lights of a small village—nothing more than a handful of timber buildings, a couple of prefabricated official blocks, and a filling station with a single gasoline pump.

  “This is the place,” Luvsan said, pulling to a halt. “There.” He gestured out of the window toward one of the prefabricated concrete buildings, with the police symbol outside. As he spoke, the main door of the building opened and a figure stepped out into the glare of their headlights, waving to them. It was a young man, with thick dark hair. He was dressed in jeans and an anorak.

  Luvsan lowered his window. “Yadamsuren?” he said.

  “That’s me,” the young man said eagerly. “You’re Doripalam?”

  Luvsan smirked gently and gestured toward the passenger seat. “This is my boss. I’m Luvsan.”

  “Pleased to meet you both,” Yadamsuren said. “And very pleased to be of assistance.” He peered enthusiastically through the open window, the rain—falling more heavily now—dripping from his hair on to his forehead.

  “You’d better jump in,” Doripalam said. “You’re getting soaked.”

  Yadamsuren looked almost overwhelmed at the generosity of the suggestion. He pulled open the rear door and climbed in behind them. “Thanks very much.”

  Doripalam twisted in his seat to look back at the young officer. “How far are we from the site?”

  “Not far. A couple of kilometers, no more.”

  “They’re still there?”

  Yadamsuren nodded. “I checked again after you phoned.”

  “And you’re sure they’ve no idea you’ve been observing them?”

  “I was very careful. I parked some way away and then walked up there. I know that terrain very well, so I had no difficulty finding my way up there in the dark.”