Nergui snorted—a sound which somehow managed with absolute eloquence to express his disgust. “How can you say that?” he said, staring out of the passenger window at the hypnotic passing of the landscape. “You see why I was suspicious of you?”
Doripalam sighed. “You understand my point,” he said, “even if you choose to misinterpret it. If Muunokhoi really had infiltrated the police to the extent you suggest—”
Nergui turned his head slowly toward Doripalam. “There is no question,” he said. “Muunokhoi had—has—infiltrated the police to the extent I suggest. If not more.”
“But my point is,” Doripalam said, “that even if that is true—I’m sorry, yes, I accept it, I know that it is true—Muunokhoi was simply protecting his own interests. He may have constrained our work—or, at least, made sure that we didn’t constrain his work too much—but he wasn’t concerned to disrupt our work generally. We were able to police serious crime—”
“So long as it was serious crime not perpetrated by Muunokhoi,” Nergui pointed out.
“I’m not trying to excuse or justify it,” Doripalam said. “I’m not—I’ll keep repeating this till I’m absolutely sure you believe me—I’m not on Muunokhoi’s payroll. I’m saying only that—well, it was a controlled situation. It was an explicable situation. It might even—I shouldn’t say this—it might even have been a manageable situation.” He paused, still watching the curves of the road. “But now things have changed.”
Nergui looked across at him, nodding slowly. He smiled faintly. “You’re right,” he said. “Of course you’re right. You’re always right.”
“I thought that was your prerogative,” Doripalam said, barely able to contain the edge of smugness in his voice. It was strange how, even now, after all this time, and despite his own seniority, their relationship remained that of master and pupil.
Nergui smiled. “Not now,” he said. “Not at all now. I think I have not been right for a long time. Not in this matter. But, yes, on this occasion, you are certainly right. Things have changed. But I don’t know why.”
Doripalam clutched the wheel. “That’s the point, isn’t it?” he said. “Whatever the situation before, it was rational. It was possible for us to respond to it. We could handle it.”
“And now we don’t know what’s happening,” Nergui said. “We have a brutal murder—perhaps, though let us hope not, more than one. We have kidnapping—certainly one, perhaps more. We don’t know about Gavaa. We don’t even know now about Tunjin.” He paused. “They may have caught up with him,” he said, finally.
Tunjin had been expecting it, at least in theory. Nevertheless, when the blow came, it took him by surprise. The man moved suddenly, an unexpected jerking motion, the gun barrel abruptly raised, then thrust across his face.
The metal barrel was cold and hard against his flesh. Tunjin fell backward, gasping for breath, startled less by the pain than by the suddenness of the action. The pain was slow in coming, but when it came it was sharp and agonizing. He staggered backward, trying to suppress a scream, and then his own substantial weight dragged him off his feet, and he fell backward on to the floor.
He floundered for a moment, rolling around on the cold stone like a turtle toppled on to its shell. The man moved forward, the harsh light of the bare light bulb glittering on the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. He drew back his foot and kicked savagely out at Tunjin’s ribs. Tunjin rolled, avoiding the worst of the blow, which glanced across his shoulders. The man struck out again, forcing Tunjin back against the wall, this time absorbing the kick painfully against his stomach.
Tunjin gasped for breath, cowering back in expectation of the next blow. But the man paused, holding the gun barrel steadily toward Tunjin. “Now,” he said, “perhaps you will tell me the truth. I have to confess that, after your unexpected disappearance, we were not expecting to encounter you again so soon.”
Tunjin rolled over, still cowering against the wall, and stared at the man. It was difficult not to imagine that Muunokhoi had some powers that were more than merely human. He had managed—through who knew what kind of inside information—to see through Tunjin’s half-baked attempt to frame him. He had managed to identify Tunjin as the perpetrator of this idiotic scheme, almost before he’d had time to admit his guilt to Doripalam. And, now, when Tunjin had harbored vain hopes of taking him at least momentarily by surprise, this operative had recognized him almost straight away. How was that possible? If the explanation was not supernatural, he could assume only that his picture—the policeman who had dared to threaten Muunokhoi with prison—was hanging up as a dire warning all around Muunokhoi’s properties. The thought was not comforting.
“You look surprised,” the man said, echoing Tunjin’s own thoughts. “You should not be. We have a very good memory in this organization. And good communications. It is helpful of you to have made yourself available so readily, but you would not have escaped us for long.”
The man smiled, the smile all the more terrifying for the blankness of his mirrored gaze. “Though I confess I do not understand why you have chosen to come here. You are clearly more accommodating than we imagined.”
Tunjin said nothing, staring up at the towering figure of the man. Even if he had wanted to, he did not think that he could have provided any coherent explanation. Like so much of his life, it had seemed a good idea at the time.
The only question now was what would happen to him. He could not believe that Muunokhoi’s people had in mind to furnish him with a simple clean death. There would be more to come.
Again, with almost telepathic precision, the man echoed his thoughts. “So,” he said, “what are we going to do with you? There is nothing complicated about this. You know what you’ve done. You know what is likely to happen to you.” He paused, the smile, like the gun barrel, unwavering. “For my part, I am curious to know what prompted you to come here. I am not sure whether to admire your courage or despise your stupidity. Quite possibly both, I suspect.”
Tunjin couldn’t really argue with this judgment, which largely replicated his own. In any case, he was hardly in a position, or a state, to offer any kind of meaningful response. There was a part of him that hoped that, if he just kept still—if, for once, he just kept his mouth shut—he might still be allowed out of all this.
“You don’t seem to have a lot to say,” the man observed. “Perhaps I should offer some encouragement.” He stepped forward, and aimed another kick at Tunjin. Tunjin wrapped his arms around himself, pressed into the corner of the room, awaiting the blow.
Even so, its ferocity took him by surprise. He rolled just in time, taking the force of the impact on his arm. The blow was agonizing. It felt as though his arm was broken. It was fortunate that the kick had not hit him in a more vulnerable part of his body, though for the moment that seemed little consolation.
“Now, do you feel encouraged?” the man said. “Would you like to be a little more talkative?”
In truth, Tunjin felt precisely the opposite, though he suspected that this would not be a welcome response. He gasped, trying to grunt out some kind of answer, some words that might at least momentarily stay any further violence.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I’m having difficulty following you. Perhaps you need a little more prompting.”
He stepped back, lifting his foot, preparing to aim another kick at Tunjin. Tunjin twisted awkwardly, feeling the agonizing pain from his arm, the underlying pattern of bruising from the previous assaults and from his tumble down the hillside. This, he realized, was simply going to continue. Blow after blow. Kick after kick. Pain following pain, until he could bear it no longer. With any luck unconsciousness would follow, but he imagined the man would keep him awake for as long as he could. And then at that point he might introduce some more imaginative form of torture.
Afterward, he remembered seeing the man raise his foot. He remembered tensing, his body poised for the impact. And he remembered somehow twisting suddenly, his body mo
ving purely through instinct, his legs moving with an agility unexpected for someone of his bulk.
It was as if, up to that point, Tunjin’s streetwise skills—the instincts that had enabled him to survive through thirty years of hard policing—had deserted him, as if he had suddenly become a victim. And then, just as unexpectedly, all those instincts, all that unconscious savvy, suddenly returned.
His movement clearly took the man by surprise. Tunjin spun over, ignoring the agonizing pains coursing through his body, and hooked his foot behind the man’s leg. The man had been in the process of kicking, one foot raised, the other anchored to the floor. Tunjin dragged his foot around the latter, pulling the man off balance. Caught by surprise, the man staggered, toppling backward. Tunjin took his momentary advantage and kicked out with his other foot, hitting the man at the top of his thigh. Then he kicked again, savagely, as the man fell, aiming for the groin.
The effect was better than he might have dared hope. The man fell, his arms flailing, his pistol clattering into the far corner of the room. He staggered backward, trying desperately to regain his balance, slipping on the smooth flagstones, and then finally fell, his head hitting the solid stone floor with an appalling thud.
There was a long silence. Tunjin lay, gasping for breath, waiting for the man to sit up, to resume or increase his assault. But nothing happened. The man lay motionless, apparently unconscious.
Tunjin sat up, wondering what to do next. He clambered on to his hands and knees, his breath still coming in agonizing bursts.
There was blood spreading from the man’s head, seeping out from beneath the splayed skull. The stain, crimson as the spring sunset across the steppe, expanded slowly across the gray stone, stark against the unrelenting flags.
CHAPTER 20
It was like another world, Nergui thought. Like an alien planet.
He always felt like this, away from the city. He was an urban creature, a creature of the twenty-first century. For all its faults, for all its shortcomings, the capital was part of the modern world, part of everything he associated with the West.
Nergui was hardly typical of his countrymen. Indeed, he was probably close to unique here. He had traveled widely in the West. He had lived in the US. He had lived in Europe. He was able to compare all this—everything his fellow citizens took for granted—with something different.
Not necessarily something better. He was no apologist for the West. He recognized, and was happy to acknowledge, its shortcomings. It was a godless place, he thought, a faithless place, with an emptiness at its heart. It was—ironically, given the nomadic culture of this place—a rootless civilization. Here, for all the privations and suppression of the communist era, something spiritual had survived, some sense of contact with the land, the past, community and family.
But, out here, out in these rural spaces, it was difficult to feel that. They had driven through mile after mile of empty grassland, the rolling plains abolishing all sense of distance, as though this landscape might simply continue forever. In the clear spring evening, they saw no other vehicles, no other sign of life. Ahead, there was the dark shadow of the mountains, sharp against the crystalline sky. And before that they could see the black shading of the forests, though the shapes of the trees were too far away to discern.
Eventually, they saw the small scattering of hazy lights that revealed the presence of Bulgan in the distance. From here, it looked like a solitary beacon in the fading light, a single indication that human life had not abandoned this landscape.
It was another forty minutes or so before they reached the outskirts of the town. The woodland had thickened around them as they drove, and they began to see a scattering of log cabins and other buildings.
“Where’s the place we’re looking for?” Nergui said.
Doripalam turned. “The camp. Just a few miles north of Bulgan. I hope I can find it again.”
“Assuming that the gers are still there.”
“Yadamsuren said the tents were still there yesterday. He’s obeyed his orders and not gone near them, but he’s been keeping an eye on them from a distance.”
“Assiduous of him,” Nergui commented.
“He’s a good officer,” Doripalam said. “We could use more like him in the team. He’s wasted up here. Perhaps worse than wasted.”
Doripalam had wondered whether to make another effort to contact Tsend, to see whether he could glean anything more about what had happened to Mrs. Tuya’s family. But, despite the supposed urgency of the message Doripalam had left, Tsend had not so far returned his call. In the circumstances, they had to proceed with caution. If Tsend’s behavior was suspect, there was little point in giving him any further warning that they were heading up here.
“You should make him an offer,” Nergui said. “See if you can tempt him into the big bad city.”
“I don’t know whether he’d want to go.”
Nergui looked out of the truck window. They were passing through the center of Bulgan. Even though it was the aimag capital, in the evening it looked like a ghost town. The streets were largely deserted, other than the occasional knot of bored looking teenagers drifting aimlessly through the central square. There were a few parked cars, but little traffic. “If I was in his position,” Nergui said, “I’d go tomorrow.”
“With respect,” Doripalam said, “I’m not sure your views are representative.”
They passed through the town, and the buildings began to thin out again as they headed north into the forests. Once the city was behind them, Doripalam slowed, keeping alert for the turn off to where the gers were situated. It was dark now, and there was little to distinguish any part of the tree-lined road in the sweeping glare of their headlights.
At first, he thought he had missed it. Then, finally, when he was convinced they had gone too far, he spotted the angled track leading off the paved road up toward the trees.
He slowed right down. “There it is.”
“I’m impressed,” Nergui said. “It looks just the same as the last four or five miles of forest to me.”
Doripalam turned the truck so that the headlight beams shone up through the trees, illuminating the rough track. “No, that’s it, I’m sure.”
“Where was the camp?”
“Over the hill. There’s a kind of hollow beyond that. The tents are well concealed. You can see nothing at all from the road. You wouldn’t know they were there unless you went looking for them.”
“Or unless someone had told you they were there,” Nergui said.
Doripalam nodded grimly. “That’s what worries me,” he said.
The two men emerged from the truck and stood for a moment breathing in the clear woodland air. It had been a warm day and the evening air was still temperate, rich with the scent of the pine trees. Other than the occasional rustling of the trees, the silence was complete.
Doripalam flicked on his flashlight and shone it up the path. “This way,” he said. “It’s not far.”
He began to walk slowly up the incline, mindful of his last visit here—the pouring rain, the unexpected gunshots, the fear in the eyes of the four men. In the soft warmth of the night, it was hard to believe this was the same place.
They reached the top of the hill and stared down into the hollow beyond. There were no lights other than the flickering beam of the flashlight and for a moment Doripalam thought that the gers had gone. Then he shone the beam a little further back and found the gray shape of the foremost tent.
“There they are,” he said. “Still there.”
Nergui moved beside him and nodded. “No sign of life, though,” he said.
“I hope that’s all it is, though,” Doripalam said. “An absence of life rather than the presence of death.”
Nergui glanced at him, seeing the silhouette of Doripalam’s face. “You’re getting philosophical,” he said. “Maybe you’ve been in the job too long.”
Doripalam said nothing but began to make his way slowly down into the hollow, ap
proaching the door of the first ger. He shone the flashlight carefully along the wall of the tent. The two other gers stood behind, as silent and dark as the first.
Doripalam reached out and pulled open the ornate wooden door. It was not locked and swung open easily to his touch. Beyond the door, there was only blackness. Doripalam stepped forward and shone his light into the interior, recalling the similar search he had conducted with Luvsan in Mrs. Tuya’s ger.
It was immediately clear that the tent was empty. The interior had a slightly stale smell, with an undertone of soured milk—maybe someone had spilled some airag. But there was nothing more unpleasant than that. Doripalam shone the flashlight around the enclosed space.
“Looks as if they conducted a pretty thorough search,” he commented. All the cupboards were pulled open, clothes and personal goods scattered across the floors. The bed had been pulled out, and the coverings torn from it. Drawers lay upended on the floor. Various containers—jars, tins, bottles—that had contained dried foodstuffs had been emptied with no concern for their contents.
“They were policemen,” Nergui said. “Professionals. What would you expect?”
“The question is,” Doripalam said, “did they find what they were looking for?”
“If they did,” Nergui said, “they clearly didn’t find it quickly. Let’s have a look in the other gers.”
They stepped back out into the night. The sky was clear above them, studded with stars. There was a yellow moon rising over the horizon, enormous and swollen. They made their way around to the remaining two gers and systematically entered each one, looking carefully around at the contents. All of the gers were in the same state, clearly resulting from a painstaking search of their interiors.
“They’ve made no attempt to clear them up,” Nergui said. “Just left them as they were.”
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