Luvsan peered gloomily out through the rain-spattered windscreen. “I hope we don’t have to park too far away,” he said.
“You can drive almost up to it. In this weather, you can probably get quite close before they’d hear the engine.”
“Well done,” Doripalam said to the young man. “We’re very grateful.”
Luvsan turned his head away, smiling faintly. He knew that Doripalam was utterly sincere, but also that this was the most enthusiastic praise that was ever likely to issue from the chief’s lips. In this case, though, it seemed to be more than sufficient. Yadamsuren looked almost overwhelmed at Doripalam’s words.
“I hope these are the people you are seeking,” Yadamsuren said. It sounded like a genuine expression of goodwill rather than any prompting for more information. Luvsan had given Yadamsuren no indication of why they were interested in these people, although, if Yadamsuren read the newspapers, he might easily have arrived at the answer for himself.
“I hope so, too,” Doripalam said.
Luvsan started the engine and pulled back out on to the road. “This way?” he said, gesturing ahead.
Yadamsuren nodded. “Keep going up here a couple of kilometers,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to turn. The last part is over the grassland, but it should be solid enough even in this rain.”
They drove on through the dark. To Luvsan, as he peered out between the sweep of the wipers into the glare of the headlights, the whole landscape looked identical. There was simply the endless passage of the road, clusters of conifers that thickened and then fell away.
Yadamsuren, though, was peering carefully through the window, clearly enumerating every turn in the road and every copse of trees they passed. “Here,” he said at last. “Slow down. We’re almost there.”
Luvsan obeyed, slowing the truck down to a crawl, staring forward to try to find some discernible landmark.
“Just here,” Yadamsuren said. “Before that clump of trees. Turn right there, and then drive up slowly past the trees. Take it gently. The ground’s okay but a bit rough.”
Yadamsuren’s description seemed like an understatement as they slowly bounced their way across the uneven terrain up past the trees. “How far is it now?” Doripalam said.
“Just a few hundred meters,” Yadamsuren said. “How close do you want to get in the truck?”
Doripalam shrugged. “I think in this weather we may as well go all the way. We’ll still surprise them—so they won’t have much time if they’ve anything to hide—and they’re more likely to take us seriously if we turn up in a dirty great truck.”
“I could turn on the sirens,” Luvsan suggested. The truck had no police markings but carried a siren and lights for use in emergencies.
“I don’t think so,” Doripalam said. “I don’t think we want to risk terrifying the life out of them. We don’t know how they might react.”
“Do you think they could be armed?” Yadamsuren said, nervously.
“It’s possible,” Doripalam said. “It’s always possible. Bear that in mind. With this lot, we just don’t know. Assuming it is the people we’re looking for, all we know is that we want them as potential witnesses. But we don’t know why they’re hiding or what it is that they appear to be running from. So who knows?”
“This is connected with that woman?” Yadamsuren said. “The murder?” So he had been reading the newspapers, Luvsan thought. Smart boy.
Doripalam nodded. “This is her family. They traveled together. But they’d moved on before her body was found. We don’t know why.”
“You think they might have killed her?”
“They might. But they might also be running from whoever did. And maybe they’d left before she was killed. We don’t know. That’s why we don’t know how they’re likely to react.”
They had reached the top of the incline now, and the ground fell away before them. In the headlights they could see the tops of a cluster of gers, pitched in a low hollow, surrounded on three sides by trees. It was a good hiding place, if that was indeed the intention. The tents were hidden by the trees, as well as by their low elevation in the hollow. They would not be visible from the surrounding terrain until you were right on top of them.
Doripalam saw the door of the closest ger swing partly open. It was impossible to disguise their presence any longer—the inhabitants of the camp would have heard the truck’s engine, seen the glare of the headlights. Luvsan stopped the truck so that the headlights were shining down fully into the camp, and then killed the engine.
Almost simultaneously, before he had chance to direct their next move, Doripalam felt his cell vibrating in his pocket. He cursed, pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Headquarters.
“Just wait a moment,” he said. “Keep an eye on what’s happening down there. If you see any significant movement, we’d better get down.”
He thumbed the phone and took the call. For a few moments, he listened, saying nothing, then said: “You’ve got people over there? Search the apartment. Minutely. Anything you can find. Anything that might be remotely relevant. We probably won’t be able to get back till morning, but make sure you keep me posted.”
He ended the call and turned back to Luvsan. “It’s Tunjin,” he said.
“Tunjin? I thought he was suspended.”
“He is,” Doripalam said, noting that, despite all their efforts at keeping this information under wraps, it was already common knowledge. “That’s just it. There was some sort of disturbance outside his apartment block. Gunfire. His apartment looked as if it had been ransacked. And Tunjin’s gone missing.”
“Gone missing? But how—?” Luvsan was about to make some joke about the difficulty of losing eighteen stones of solid fat, but he didn’t finish the sentence.
It took them all by surprise. There had been no apparent movement from the camp below them. But then, suddenly, all at once, Doripalam caught the glare of gunfire, the sound of a shot, and the nerve-shattering explosion as their windscreen collapsed into countless tiny shards, brilliant in the glare of the headlights. And then there was screaming and the smell of blood and burning, and the sound of all hell breaking loose.
CHAPTER 11
He had his back to the wall and was watching intently, waiting for something to happen. Outside night had fallen and the darkness was thickening.
He needed to relax, he knew that. He couldn’t keep up this pace, this intensity for long. He just wasn’t built for it. And he knew, rationally, that as yet they could have no idea where he was. For the moment, at least, he was safe. The only question was for how long.
He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself down, trying not to think too hard about the implications of being found. He had bought himself some time, at least. Now he needed to make use of it. He needed to force himself to think, to work out what he was going to do next.
He looked about him, trying to rationalize his position, trying to think about what he needed to do. Okay, he thought, first things first. Work it all out, step by step. The position is straightforward. He had found himself a haven. As long as he stayed here, he was likely to be safe. The only problem was that he couldn’t stay here for very long.
He was sitting in the corner of a storeroom in an abandoned shop on the south side of the city. It was one of the industrial areas that had been redeveloped with the emergence of capitalism, where dozens of supposedly entrepreneurial businesses had sprung up apparently overnight. As the grand old monolithic communist enterprises gradually ground to a halt, the westerners had been quick to tell them that this was where the future lay, in the energetic play of the free market. Let a thousand self-employed flowers bloom.
But of course it hadn’t lasted. Tunjin had had friends and relations whose lives had collapsed during those fateful years, who had lost whatever security and savings they might have had. And he recalled the dreadful winters that had accompanied those years of depression, as if nature and the heavens had chosen to conspire with man’s worst ins
tincts.
The place was a wreck. The display window at the front had long been shattered, and large shards of glass still lay scattered across the tiled floor. Any remaining items of stock had been looted almost immediately, and all that was left now were a few broken shelves and display cabinets, faded printed notices advertising long obsolete electronic goods.
Behind the shop itself was a small network of rooms—a living area with a small bed-sitting room, a kitchen and a lavatory, and then, behind that, the small storeroom where Tunjin was currently sitting.
There was no furniture in any of the rooms, other than a discarded broken table lamp and a few tattered remains of what had presumably once been blinds. The storeroom contained a few empty cardboard boxes, some scattered unidentifiable electrical components, and little else.
Tunjin had come to the storeroom simply because it represented the point furthest removed from the front of the shop and the outside world. He had come to the shop in the first place because—well, because he could think of nowhere else to go. His journey out of the city on the motorbike had been utterly terrifying, because he did not know how closely he was being pursued. The shots had faded behind him, but he did not know whether Muunokhoi’s people would have other observers or pursuers stationed around the area. He half expected that, at any moment, another shot might bring him or the bike down, or that some car or truck would appear to block his route or sideswipe him.
But it didn’t happen. He kept on, making his way through the ruined factories and warehouses, and then between the camps of semi-permanent gers that surrounded the city, until finally he was away from the buildings and heading out on to the open steppe.
Finally, at that point, he felt able to stop and look back. Even if he were not being pursued, he was acutely aware of his potentially lethal ineptitude on the bike. In his younger days, he’d been a pretty skilled motorcyclist, having bought and maintained an old Russian bike when he was a teenager. He’d ridden that for years, around the city, out into the country, taking girls for dates on the back of it. It all seemed a very long time ago.
He’d even had a police bike for a while, and had received full professional training on how to ride it. So he should have known what he was doing. They said it was one of the things you never forgot. And that was probably the case, or he wouldn’t have made it this far.
But the young man who had ridden that old Soviet bike as if it was a part of his own body was long gone, replaced by this overweight old slob. When he’d first set off on Agypar’s bike, Tunjin’s sheer bulk had been a problem—he could feel his weight wobbling around the bike’s center of gravity as he struggled to maintain his balance. But he’d eventually come to grips with that and felt much more comfortable. Even then, though, he was aware that his reactions were not what they once had been, and that the nerve and lack of fear that characterized his younger biking were long gone. Left to his own devices, he would have ridden as slowly as possible until his confidence returned. But there had been no question of that—he simply had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
And somehow he’d made it. He was out in the grassland, looking back at the city’s jumble on the skyline. There was no evident sign of pursuit. It was a bright clear day, with only a few dark clouds clustering on the horizon. Everything looked beautiful and peaceful.
But out here, Tunjin felt exposed. Rationally he was safe. If anyone was pursuing him, he would see them from miles away. But, equally, they would see him. And perhaps someone was already watching him. Perhaps they had watched him the whole way, knew exactly where he was, but had not bothered to give chase. Perhaps they did not need to.
He looked up at the empty sky. Muunokhoi was a wealthy man. He would have access to aircraft, helicopters. He or his people could be out here in a matter of minutes if they so chose. Suddenly, the vast wasteland of the steppe seemed much less like a sanctuary.
It was that thinking that had led him back into the city, and back here. He had twisted the bike round and, taking a convoluted route back around the city, entered it again from the west side and made his way down here. He had used all his police skills and training to try to lose any possible pursuit, twisting and turning up and down alleyways, between and through abandoned buildings, jumping red lights, taking narrow passages so that pursuit by car was impossible. And finally he’d arrived here.
For the moment, then, he was safe. But he knew that this state could not last long. He would soon have to emerge to find some food and drink—he had managed a single stop on his way here to get some bread, fruit and bottles of water from one of the small new supermarkets, but hadn’t dared to linger. And he was conscious that he already presented a conspicuous figure, with his heavy weight and disheveled appearance. People would notice him, and he was sure that, sooner or later, the message would get back to Muunokhoi.
He wondered whether he’d made a mistake in coming back. Maybe he should have just carried on, maybe gotten a flight down into the Gobi or up into the north. Taken himself as far away as possible from the capital and from Muunokhoi, tried to make himself a new life somewhere else.
But he knew that this was impossible. Muunokhoi would track him down no matter how far he fled.
So what options did he have? Precious few, it seemed. Hide out here like a terrified rabbit for as long as possible, then emerge and take the consequences? It didn’t seem much of a prospect.
Or he could try to take the initiative. He could at least try to use what few resources lay at his disposal. He could go down fighting.
It was his own fault, his own responsibility that he was in this mess. But there was one other factor that had contributed, one other person who was, at least peripherally, involved. One other person who had the same drive, the same motivation in this, as he did.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly nine. Outside, the sun had set and the deserted streets and alleyways were in darkness.
Tunjin reached into his pocket, pulled out the cell phone he had not yet dared to use, and very carefully began to dial.
Doripalam was out of the truck and had pulled out his pistol almost in one movement, rolling across the wet grass until he was standing upright, facing down into the camp. He moved himself quickly back behind the truck’s bulk, and stared out ahead of him.
There were four of them, standing in a row, all apparently holding rifles. They had all fired in sequence, round after round, the echoes still reverberating around the distant hillsides. It seemed, though, that only one bullet had found a target, shattering the windscreen of the truck.
Doripalam saw that Luvsan had followed his example, and was now moving back to join him.
“How’s Yadamsuren?”
“Okay, I think,” Luvsan said. “Bullet just grazed his shoulder. Fair bit of blood, and we need to get it bandaged, but it’s not serious. Lucky, though. Could have gotten any one of us.”
“Unlucky, I think,” Doripalam countered. “I don’t think they actually meant to hit us at all. That was just a stray shot.”
“Oh, that’s okay, then,” Luvsan said. “When I get hold of those bastards, I’ll make sure one of my boots strays into their teeth.”
Doripalam carefully pulled open the back door of the truck, and lifted out a loud-hailer which he raised to his lips.
“Armed police. I repeat, armed police. Put down your weapons. Otherwise, we will open fire.”
There was a long pause. The four figures below them, little more than black shadows in the truck’s headlights, remained motionless. And then, like a soldier breaking ranks, the figure on the far left stepped forward and threw down his rifle. There was a further pause, and then, one by one, the others did the same.
Doripalam glanced at Luvsan. “I’ll go down there,” he said. “Cover me. If there’s any sign at all of trouble, start firing.”
Luvsan nodded. He had pulled a medium range rifle out of the truck, and now set it down carefully across the roof, the sights trained on the figures below. “Good l
uck,” he said.
Doripalam stepped out from behind the truck, holding his pistol out in front of him in both hands. The rain was still falling heavily, and the cold water ran down his arms, dripping off the steel of the gun.
The four men still stood motionless. Doripalam stopped and called out: “Put your hands on your heads. No other movements.”
The men obeyed silently, watching his descent. He moved slowly, watching them carefully, alert for any movement.
He moved closer, reaching the point where the discarded rifles lay in the sodden grass. Moving carefully, his eyes still fixed on the four men, he kicked the rifles back to ensure they were out of the men’s reach.
“Okay, you,” he said to the man on the far left—the first to discard his weapon. “Take off your jacket—very slowly—and throw it on the ground. Then turn out your pockets. Slowly.” The four men were all dressed in Western clothes, anoraks and jeans.
The man hesitated for a moment and then obeyed, throwing his anorak down on to the grass. He pulled out the pockets of his jeans—a wallet, a few coins, nothing else.
Doripalam repeated the process with the other three men, then beckoned Luvsan down to join him. Luvsan held his rifle trained on the men while Doripalam talked.
“I’ve an injured officer in the truck,” he said. “Injured by one of you. I’m planning to arrest you all and charge you with assault, maybe even attempted murder. I’ll go through all the formal procedure in a moment. In the meantime, any of you want to tell me what this is all about?”
Luvsan glanced across at him in mild surprise. But it was as clear as it could be that these men posed no serious threat. All four of them looked scared out of their wits, trembling not just with the rain and the cold, but also from the unwavering sight of Luvsan’s firearm.
The men looked at each other in some confusion. Then, finally, the man on the left spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We have been very foolish. We did not realize you were police. We were terrified. We thought you were—” He stopped.
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