After Yekaterina

by K. L. Abrahamson

  For a moment he wondered why, but the answer was obvious. There was a divide of faith in Fergana and though Kazakov wasn’t a religious man, somehow he’d come to obey those edicts. He sighed at the realization.

  He stopped and parked when the streets narrowed, and climbed out into the silent night. This far into the old city, the lights and traffic noise of the new city didn’t penetrate. The snow was a silent veil of white, the occasional house light a glowing beacon and the shadows a welcoming shield. He set off trudging through the snow until he reached the glass front of the narrow print shop and knocked on the door.

  The rap sounded like thunder in the quiet street, but it couldn’t be helped. He felt exposed and kept checking over his shoulder. Finally, a dim light appeared inside the shop as if someone had shifted the curtain from the back storeroom to expose light from the living area. Movement stirred the shadows inside the shop and then a face appeared briefly beyond the glass.

  A lock clicked and the shopkeeper’s narrow face peered out at him. “What do you want?”

  He was clad in a knee-length sleeping shirt as he checked the street behind Kazakov.

  “I need your help to reach a friend. They’re after us for what we know. I have to warn him.”

  The shopkeeper checked the street again and finally nodded. “Come. Come.”

  He stepped back and Kazakov ducked inside. The warm scents of paper and ink were welcome after the cold. The sounds of life reached him from deeper inside the house and for a moment he regretted his lack of family.

  Maria.

  He sagged and the shopkeeper caught his arm. “You’re injured more than bruises and blood on your face.”

  Kazakov shook his head. The shop’s darkness hid his bloody side. “It doesn’t matter. I need to warn Khalil Khan that they may be coming for him. I need you to contact him.”

  The shopkeeper went still.

  “I know you don’t fully trust me, but you trusted me enough to help me gather evidence from those who saw what happened to Semetai. Now two of his killers are after me and probably Khan. Phone Khan and tell him I’m here with a warning. Let him decide whether to talk to me.”

  Finally, the shopkeeper hustled to the phone on the wall behind the shop’s counter. He didn’t have to look Khan’s number up as he dialed. The phone must have rung for a long time on the other end, but finally the shopkeeper spoke softly to someone—in Arabic, the holy language of the Koran.

  Then he held out the phone. “He will speak with you.”

  Kazakov took the phone. “Khan?”

  “What is it? Have you looked at the hour?”

  “They came after me, Khan. They arrested me at the Red Veil. They took me in, but I escaped. It might be a setup so they can kill me on sight—an escaped prisoner. I think you’re on their hit list, too. They know your evidence on Maria’s death wouldn’t convict me. They know you have evidence on the Archer death and Semetai and Yekaterina’s, too. If they get rid of us, they’ll have gotten rid of anyone who could cause trouble.”

  Khan paused at the end of the line.

  “Listen, old friend. They won’t stop at you. Your whole family is likely to disappear, too.”

  Kazakov heard soft voices in the background at Khan’s end.

  Khan came back on the line. “My wife says there’s someone knocking on the door.”

  “Shit.” Kazakov thought a moment. “Your friend, Eric Clinton. Call him. I’m on my way.”

  Kazakov hung up and swung to the shopkeeper. “I need you to take me to Khan’s house.”

  The man shook his head. “I would need his permission to do that.”

  “We don’t have time. There are people there now and there’s a very good chance they are there to kill him.”

  The man read Kazakov’s face. Then his refusal faded. “Let me get my coat.”

  He ran through the curtain to the storage area and the rest of the house. Kazakov heard shouts. A woman’s answer. Then the man came back with a coat buttoned over his sleeping wear, his feet deep in knee-high boots, one of the ancient tribal rifles in his arms. He handed Kazakov a damp cloth for his face.

  “Follow me,” he ordered as he yanked open the door and plunged out into the night.

  Kazakov followed, yanking the door shut behind him as he wiped his face clear of the worst blood. Then he hurried to catch up as the other man loped down the street. The snow was deeper here, for the wind had difficulty blowing the snow into drifts. Its depth was uneven from the passage of many feet, and the new snow masked the treachery. His feet slipped. He almost fell and twisted his side so the pain punched through him. The shopkeeper kept on going. He didn’t look back. Then another armed man joined him. And another.

  A third man, unarmed, arrived and slid to Kazakov’s side. He was young and tall and Kazakov recognized him as Semetai’s friend who had provided evidence at the group interview.

  “You are hurt?” he asked.

  “The bastards shot me last night. They killed a woman who could have given evidence against them.”

  The young man’s expression hardened. “They will pay, these men. There are many coming.”

  Many coming. Somehow the shopkeeper had called for reinforcements. But if all they had were the antique weapons of their forefathers, this could be a bloodbath against the firepower of Antonov and Alenin’s modern pistols.

  “We have to catch up to the others and make a plan. There’ll be too many killed otherwise.”

  The young man’s brow rose. “Too many of them? They have things to pay for.”

  Kazakov looked forward and realized that the shopkeeper and the others had disappeared and there were no more footprints to follow. He stopped dead realizing that he had missed the place where the others had turned.

  “What the hell is this? This is my fight and my investigation! Now where the hell are the others? Where’s Khan’s home?”

  The boom of a rifle report negated any need for an answer. The sound echoed off the maze of flat-sided buildings making it difficult to get his bearings.

  More shots, these the sharp bark of modern pistols. A man’s scream of mortal pain.

  “Idiots! They told you to keep me away, didn’t they?” He grabbed the young man by the scruff of the neck.

  “Ye-es,” the youngster said.

  “Well, you better damn well get me there or they’ll all be dead. Or are you going to make me waste time backtracking for their trail?”

  The young man hesitated, then nodded. “This way.”

  He set off at a run down a side street that wouldn’t even pass as an ally in the new parts of the city. Cracked, gray-brown walls showed marks where weather had washed away the stucco. More shots came from ahead and Kazakov stayed on the young man’s heels. The effort cost him. By the time they slowed at a corner, Kazakov was panting. He’d allowed his fitness to wane before this and with the wound, this was almost beyond him. Chasing down alleys was a young man’s game.

  More shots and something thudded into a wall across from them. Kazakov stopped the young man from stepping beyond the corner.

  “Where from here? Where’s Khan’s house? Is that where the others were going?”

  “Khan’s house is down that street. He has the whole house. The front is his medical clinic. You can’t miss it because of the sign.”

  Kazakov studied his face. He was smooth-cheeked, dark-eyed, and handsome like Semetai had been. “What’s your name, son.”

  “Adilet. Adilet Sultanbek, sir.”

  “Well, Adilet Sultanbek, you will stay here. This is no place for an unarmed youth. Do you understand? There are men beyond that corner who will kill you. They use real bullets that kill a man, even one named for justice, do you understand?”

  Adilet looked away, perhaps surprised that someone not Kyrgyz understood the meaning behind his name. Kazakov grabbed him by the collar. “You listen to me. I’ve had to look into the dead faces of too many young people who thought death couldn’t catch them. I’ve got news
for you. Death comes to us all. For some sooner than later. Semetai greeted him. So can you.”

  That seemed to shake the young man’s bravado a little. Kazakov released him and went to the corner. There was a pause in the shooting.

  He knelt and poked his head around the corner. A shot pinged off the wall next to his head and he threw himself backward, but not before he’d seen two bodies in the street. Both appeared to be Kyrgyz men. The fools had run right into the firefight.

  “Adilet, is there another way in to Khan’s house?”

  He looked over his shoulder. The damn kid was gone.

  “Derr`mo!” He scrambled up, his side radiating piercing blades of pain. The damn kid hadn’t listened to a word he’d said.

  Adilet’s footprints were clear in the snow, though the falling flakes would erase them. The prints led back the way they’d come and then turned at the next corner. That had to be the way closer. The gunfire started again.

  Kazakov set off at a limping run, the snow tangling his feet as he reached the end of the next block. He skidded to a stop and knelt to peer around the corner.

  Two men stood at the end of the block facing out into a small square. Adilet hugged the wall behind them. From somewhere a light illuminated the front of a building with a single doorway, above which hung a small sign with Arabic writing and the image of a stethoscope underneath. There were no windows. Outside of his long hours as an M.E., Khan was also a doctor for his people. The little M.E. was far more than he seemed. He had bucked tradition and turned the single door that led to the usually immensely private living space into a public entrance for a community medical clinic.

  But the door to the doctor’s office hung loose on its hinges and something—a desk perhaps—had been thrown up as a barricade.

  The men from the old town had the attackers pinned down for the moment, but that didn’t mean that the attackers hadn’t killed Khan and his family.

  Kazakov pulled Chelomeyev’s pistol out of his holster. The thing looked impressive with its blue-black steel, but was too heavy in the barrel to be a truly good weapon. He checked the chambers—thankfully loaded, but he had only six shots to do whatever it was he was going to do. Not get into a shooting match, that was certain. Not when his wound would impact his aim and not with a sharpshooter like Antonov.

  He edged along the wall until he could see into the square.

  More bodies that he hadn’t seen from the other angle. The man across from him glanced back. It was the copy shop owner and his face was angry.

  “How many have you lost?” Kazakov asked.

  “Five, at least. Two were able to crawl back to cover in that doorway.” He nodded at a doorway that gave onto the oddly-shaped common area. At one side, an ice-bound fountain still trickled water for the local women. In this weather, it would soon be frozen solid.

  Kazakov nodded. They needed to get help to those men and the other fallen, if they lived. They needed this ended.

  He held up his hand to the Kyrgyz men.

  “Antonov! Alenin! I know it’s you. Come out with your hands up and you just might live through this.” He just had to pray that they had already used a large portion of their ammunition.

  “Kazakov! I should have known.” Antonov’s grating voice carried across the square, but there was no sign of movement beyond the shop barrier. “We’ve got your little friend. His family, too. Give yourself up and we might let his family go free—at least the little boy.”

  “I don’t believe you. Khan had the chance to barricade the door. He and his family are safe and you’re trapped.”

  There was a disturbance in the medical office and then a scream, a shriek, and suddenly a small boy was swung over the barricade by his feet.

  “That look safe to you? Now get your ass in here and let’s have this out.”

  Sight of the child brought shouts from the armed men outside. The print shop owner turned and grabbed Kazakov’s arm. He hauled Kazakov forward. “You go. You save the boy.”

  Kazakov yanked loose and fell back a step. “Hold on. Hold on a moment.”

  There had to be something he could do. The fact the child was still alive was a wonder. If they already had Khan, they would have killed him and the rest of his family. No, something had gone wrong. Somehow Khan’s family had been caught, but probably not Khan. He said as much to the men he was with and scanned his surroundings seeking an answer.

  The building walls had barely a crack between what had been ancient homes of these people. The building walls were blank slates except where the antique stucco had fallen away revealing old mud, straw and animal hair. The streets were narrow and cobbled, and looking up it was as if the structures leaned together so that they loomed over him. “Make a difference,” the ancient walls seemed to say.

  “If you can.”

  So much destruction they had seen. From Ghengis Khan and Timur through to the Russians.

  The night sky was gauzy with snow and cloud.

  “How can I get into these houses?” He asked, patting the wall beside him.

  “Why?” demanded the shopkeeper, no longer so friendly. He’d seen too many of his friends fall.

  “If I can get to the roof, there’s a chance I can reach Khan’s house. If I can reach Khan’s house, then I’m betting Khan will let us in through the roof. But I don’t think we have much time. The threat to his children is too imminent. He’ll give himself up to save them.”

  The shopkeeper met his gaze and Kazakov nodded.

  “He’s my friend. I know him. His family is everything, but he would try to hang on. He knows we’re coming.” But did he? Khan had as much as told him to get out of his life—that he could not take the risk of having Kazakov as an associate, let alone a friend. And yet the man had been there for him, had even brought in the American.

  The shopkeeper jerked his head back down the street. “Adelit, take him. We’ll provide cover when you are ready.”

  Sighing, Adilet led Kazakov back the way they’d come, but turned aside to knock at a stout wooden door. Adelit shouted something in his own language and soon the door swung open. Adelit slid inside, speaking quickly to the man who had answered. When Kazakov entered the dark passage beyond the door, their greeter gave him the once-over and shook his head.

  “You don’t look fit for anything, let alone what you propose.” He was a slim man, as all of these tribal men seemed slim and just newly parted from small rugged horses who would gallop them across the mountain steppes. He had a rugged face that had seen wind and rain and snow glare, and his mouth was filled with absences of teeth that he exposed in a grin.

  “I guess we’ll see,” said Kazakov, “But if you want Khalil Khan as a neighbor, you’d best let me try.”

  The man nodded and hurried down the arched-roof passage and out into a courtyard of snow-covered paving stone. Broad balconies shielded doorways and windows from the snow on the first and second floor. On one side, near a single glowing window, a stairwell led up to the second floor, coming out even with the top of a leafless pomegranate tree. Kazakov crossed the courtyard snow, his boot prints defiling the pristine nighttime white. He climbed the stairs and spotted a rickety wooden ladder that led to the roof.

  Not waiting for Adelit, he made the climb, feeling the frozen wood sway and creak under his weight. A trapdoor blocked his way at the top, but he shoved it open and climbed out.

  A gust of wind surprised him and sent him stumbling sideways. He caught himself against a wooden lean-to that would provide shade in the summer. Between the low walls that edged the rooftop, lines were strung and hung with wash. The women would beat them free of the frozen wash water in the morning.

  Ducking under the clotheslines, he reached the side of the house that overlooked the street and fountain. Keeping low to minimize being seen, he took a chance and peered down.

  The bodies still lay in the street. The print shopkeeper and his man still stood sentry on the side street. From this height, he spotted three more groups
of men guarding other paths of escape. There was no way Antonov and Alenin were getting out of this alive.

  Unless they had a hostage.

  That was why they hadn’t killed Khan’s family. They were caught, but they still had a card to play. Let them continue to think that.

  The other side of the roof gave onto the street that separated this building from Khan’s house and clinic. It was a long way down to the snow-covered street where another body lay. A span of seven feet separated the two buildings. From the ground, the distance between the rooftops had been deceptive.

  Well, there was no help for it.

  “What do you think?” Adelit asked from behind him. “It is far, is it not?”

  “Not so far.” When Kazakov was younger he would have made the jump in a heartbeat, without thinking. Now, as a man in his forties, it was no longer so simple. He took off his coat, for the weight would make the leap more difficult. “Hold onto this for me and stay here.”

  He tucked Chelomeyev’s weapon in the waistband of his trousers and walked back as far as the clotheslines would allow. It was barely fifteen feet. Barely far enough for him to break into a run and then there was the low wall to clear.

  Ignoring Adelit, he paced it out, then did a few painful jumping jacks to get the blood running. It was already running down his side.

  It was time.

  One. Two. Three.

  He had that many strides before he drove himself up off the rooftop, up over the wall, up into open air, arms reaching, body straining.

  He soared up over the street, but already knew it wasn’t enough. The blood loss had sapped him of his strength. Already he started to fall.

  His reaching hands caught the edge of Khan’s rooftop, scrabbled there, and managed to cling as his body slammed into the stucco side. Oomph and the air went out of him. All the muscles in his hurt shoulder screamed.

  His feet scrabbled for purchase where none existed. If he could just grab the other side of the roof wall, he could pull himself up. He scrabbled with his feet again and found the barest crack in the stucco with one booted foot. He kicked it and kicked again and heard stucco falling, then hiked himself up, daring to release one finger hold to grab the other side of the wall.