The Outcast

by Michael Walters

  He stopped, deep in the darkness of the park. There was some illumination from the richly starred sky, but he could see only a few yards around him.

  And it was freezing now, far below zero. How long should he wait? How long could he wait in this temperature? The chill was already eating through his clothes, entering his limbs.

  He turned again, wrapping his arms tightly around himself, trying to keep the cold from his body. Straining his eyes against the dark, his ears against the silence, searching for some indication that he was not alone.

  And then, even though he had spotted no sign of any approach, a voice said quietly in his ear: “Good evening. I’m glad you could make it.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SUMMER

  Nergui had allowed himself to doze for a while, his feet propped on another chair next to Tunjin’s sleeping form. In some ways, he envied Tunjin’s slumber. Nergui had never needed much sleep, and over the years had acquired a habit of staying awake till the small hours, whiling away the time reading or listening to music, occasionally watching what passed for overnight television in this country. But sometimes he missed the repose, the opportunity to escape from the pressures of the day.

  He had been thinking, over and over, about that last discussion with Lambaa, trying to make sense of what he had heard, of what he now knew.

  “You think they’re terrorists,” he had said. “These students. You think they’re terrorists?”

  Lambaa had shrugged. “I can only give you the evidence. I think it suggests terrorism. Or at least subversion. Disruption.” Nergui suspected that, in Lambaa’s conservative mind, these terms were all essentially synonymous.

  “Take me through it properly. You followed two of our subjects to a location in the south of the city—an abandoned storage unit.”

  “In the industrial sector, yes. I was just keeping tabs on them, as you ordered.”

  “And do you know why they went there? Were they responding to a message, some kind of signal?”

  “Probably. We don’t know for sure yet. There were calls, some again from numbers we haven’t been able to trace.”

  “But you had them tapped?”

  “Of course. There was nothing suspicious. Not in what was said. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a code of some kind.”

  “And they seemed to know the way to this place, did they?”

  “More or less. Not like natives of the city—they were using a map—but they seemed to have a reasonable idea of where they were going. It wasn’t the easiest place to find, or somewhere that tourists would frequent. The whole place is a dump—abandoned factories, burned-out shops. Needs razing to the ground and re-building.”

  “It will happen,” Nergui said. “It’s happening everywhere else. The whole city is one big building site.”

  “When they got there, they didn’t hesitate, seemed to know it was the right place.”

  Nergui glanced up at the doughy, misleadingly complacent face of the man sitting opposite. “You think they’d been there already?”

  Lambaa shrugged, almost imperceptibly. “Maybe. They’ve not been here long, but they were here for a few days before we starting keeping tabs on them. Perhaps someone took them there before, which is why they needed the map. But once they were in the area, they seemed pretty confident.”

  “And they had keys?”

  “I think so. They both clustered around the door. It was one of those big industrial doors with a bolt and a padlock. I presume they had to unfasten the lock, but it might have been undone already. I couldn’t get too close. There was no one else around, so I’d have been too conspicuous.”

  Nergui didn’t doubt it. He knew, from his own painful experiences, just how deserted the old industrial parts of the city could be, particularly once the working day was over. And, in many of those former factories, the working day had been over years before.

  “But, yes,” Lambaa went on, with the air of one accustomed to precision, “I imagine they had keys and that they unfastened the padlock. They closed it up again afterwards, but they wouldn’t have needed the key to do that.” He said all this slowly, as if re-checking the facts in his mind. Years of training, Nergui thought. Committing everything to memory, noting all the facts with as much detail and accuracy as possible, resisting any speculation beyond what had actually been seen. And nothing on paper. Deniability, the mantra of the police state. Corrosive, he thought, in the new democracy.

  “But that didn’t stop you getting in there after them?” Nergui asked, superfluously.

  “It was hardly a challenge,” Lambaa said, with apparent regret. “Whole place was falling apart. I didn’t even try to get past the padlock—it was new, though it wouldn’t have stopped me for long. I went around to the rear—always worth looking there first,” he spoke as if instructing a junior officer in the finer arts of trade-craft. “There were a couple of windows at the back. Boarded up, but it only took me a few seconds to pull away the wood. Wasn’t even any glass in them. Climbed straight in. Made a bit of a mess of the suit, though.”

  Nergui knew the ways of the agency well enough to recognise that a disguised expense claim would be forthcoming in due course. “How long had they been in there?” he asked.

  “Not long. Fifteen, twenty minutes. I waited outside, keeping back in the shadows, till I saw them come out. I thought they might be carrying something, but I couldn’t see anything.”

  “We can check their apartments later,” Nergui said.

  Lambaa looked back at him, a glint of amusement in his eye. “I already have,” he said. “I was in there this morning, as soon as they’d gone off to the university. Did each in turn—they’re just student apartments. Nothing.”

  “Okay,” Nergui went on, “tell me what you found. Not just the headlines, but all the details. Let’s go through it.”

  Lambaa nodded, and then closed his eyes momentarily, mentally reconstructing his experiences. “The window led into a storeroom. A warehouse. That’s what the building had been. There was nothing there, as far as I could see. I shone the flashlight around it—it was getting dark outside, and the windows were mostly boarded up, except for a few of the high ones, so I couldn’t see much.” He paused. “I had to be careful with the flashlight—I didn’t want to risk alerting anyone outside.”

  Nergui nodded. “But there was nothing there.”

  “Not in that part of the building, no. There were old metal shelves, all of them empty. A few crates, but nothing much in them—bits of packaging, old newspapers, some pieces of rusty machinery. But nothing significant. I almost gave up because I thought that, if there was anything, it would be in there. There were two other rooms. Just wooden constructions, really, each side of the front entrance.”

  “Where the students came in?”

  “Yes. There was a heavy wooden double door there, with these two rooms either side. The rest of the building was just the warehouse space, with a loading bay at one end, near the window where I got in. Anyway, I thought I should look in the two smaller rooms—they looked as if they had been designed as offices in the original layout.”

  “And that’s where you found them?”

  “That’s where I found them,” Lambaa agreed. “There was a wooden crate, in the room on the right as you came in through the front entrance. It had a lid but it wasn’t nailed down. It was new—not more than a few weeks old. You could see the track-marks in the dust. It had been dragged in there quite recently.”

  “And what was in it?” Nergui said, determined now to be methodical, to draw on the precision of Lambaa’s delivery.

  “I’ve told you,” Lambaa said. “It was a crateful of arms. All kinds of stuff. Semi-automatic rifles. Handguns. And explosives. Detonators, fuses, timing devices. You name it. A pretty motley selection, but some of it lethal enough. Potentially, anyway. And there were some replicas, too.”

  “Replicas?”

  “Fakes. Quite decent ones. The sort of thing you might use in a m
ovie, I suppose. They were mixed in with the real ones.”

  “What about the explosives?”

  Lambaa shook his head. “Even for the real guns, there wasn’t much in the way of ammunition. And there weren’t any explosives. Just all the paraphernalia. The stuff to cause an explosion—even down to a suicide bomber’s belt. But nothing that would actually explode.”

  Nergui tried to make some sense of this. “Maybe that’s being stored elsewhere.”

  Lambaa shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe they don’t have the ammo yet. I just report what I saw.”

  Now, three days later, sitting in this silent hospital, watching Tunjin’s steady breathing, Nergui was even less sure what to make of Lambaa’s report.

  He leaned back against the uncomfortable hospital chair and closed his eyes, willing sleep to come. Moments later, he jerked fully awake, disturbed by the sudden buzz of his cell phone in his jacket pocket. He had the vague idea that cell phones were not allowed in the hospital.

  He pulled the phone from his pocket and stared at the caller’s number displayed on the screen. It was a number he recognised, but not someone already in the phone’s limited address book. He kept no personal names stored, always conscious that the phone could be lost or stolen.

  He thumbed the connect button. Before he could speak, a voice said, “Nergui? Is that you?”

  He paused, recognising the voice but unable, for a brief moment, to identify it. “Sarangarel?” he said at last.

  She laughed. “You don’t have my number in your phone. And you still pause a second too long before you say my name.”

  He smiled to himself, holding the phone balanced in his hand. Nothing much had changed here. “No one’s in my address book,” he said. “You’re not under-privileged.”

  There was an unexpected pause at the other end of the line. It occurred to him, finally, how odd it was that she was calling him after all this time. And even odder that she should do so in the small hours of the morning. “Sarangarel?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. Can you come to my apartment? As soon as possible.”

  “What’s going on?” Nergui said. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Not me,” she said. “But someone is, and I don’t know how much. It’s the minister. Your minister. He’s the one in trouble.” She hesitated again. “Or, rather, his son is—he’s been arrested.”

  “Dragged out of some protest?” Nergui said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Another silence, and he could hear the echo of static down the line. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think it may be a lot more serious.”

  Doripalam coughed abruptly as he and Batzorig left the dank storeroom, his throat catching on the cool fresh air. A welcome change from the damp and the smoke. The scent of decay.

  They had left the young officer in there, with instructions to keep watch over the body until the scene of crime people arrived. He looked much less self-assured now, and Doripalam felt almost guilty. It wasn’t this young man’s fault that Doripalam was angry. On the other hand, the young man hadn’t gone out of his way to find Doripalam’s better side. It wouldn’t do him any harm to cool his heels in this bleak spot for a short while.

  Doripalam edged his way back down the passageway, shining his flashlight around to avoid the heaps of rubbish. “Bastard,” he muttered, just loud enough for Batzorig to hear.

  “Who would that be, sir?” Batzorig said. He was, as Doripalam had frequently noted, skilled at defusing his boss’s temper while not challenging the generally legitimate targets of Doripalam’s anger.

  “Don’t be smart. The local guy. The chief. The bastard who didn’t tell us he’d picked up some character with a gun.”

  “Oh, yes. Him.”

  “So why didn’t he tell us?” Doripalam went on, rhetorically. “All that stuff about how it might have been a gas explosion.”

  “Probably wanted to keep it a surprise.”

  “It’s that all right,” Doripalam said, grimly. “Especially as we also have at least one victim.”

  “He wasn’t shot,” Batzorig pointed out.

  “Are you looking for a transfer to pathology? I saw he wasn’t shot. But he didn’t die of old age, either.” They were approaching the end of the passage, and Doripalam could see the glare of orange spotlights across the front of the hotel. “You won’t believe how heavy the book is that I’m going to throw at that bastard.”

  “Literally, quite possibly,” Batzorig murmured, in a voice just too low for Doripalam to hear.

  The line of armed officers had dispersed, and instead a small cluster of uniforms was easing the assembled crowd back behind freshly erected barriers. There were fire engines drawn up in front of the hotel, and several tired-looking fire officers were stowing away equipment.

  Doripalam walked forward and flashed his ID at the most senior-looking of the fire officers. “All under control?”

  The man nodded. “More or less. There wasn’t much of a fire. We delayed before we went inside in case there were more explosions. But it was a pretty small blast in that room,” he gestured to one of the street-facing windows. “More noise than anything else. Window had blown out and we were able to dowse the flames from out here. We’ve been in to check the rest; the building looks safe enough but they’ll need to get it assessed before we allow the public back in.”

  Doripalam nodded. “What’s the room?”

  “Just an office. Doesn’t seem to be in use at the moment. Lots of junk stored in there—old files, paperwork. Perfect if you wanted to start a fire.”

  “You think that’s what it was?” Doripalam said. “Arson?”

  The fire officer shrugged. “That’s for your lot to say. But I’d check the insurance policies on this place if I were you.”

  “You think it was deliberate?”

  “It’s not my job to speculate. But there was definitely an explosion. Might have been gas, but there were no obvious appliances in there. Didn’t spot anything else that might have caused it.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Doripalam said. He turned and watched the gradual extension of the police cordon. “Main priority now is to get this place sealed off.”

  He made his way slowly forward, looking for the local police chief; there was no sign of him. Finally, Doripalam spotted one of the officers he had seen near to the chief earlier. He was a middle-aged man, overweight, standing back from the rest, hands in his pockets, watching the receding crowd with an air of profound boredom.

  “Not too busy?” Doripalam asked.

  The officer started slightly and turned to face Doripalam, his expression betraying that he had recognised the senior officer only just in time. “Sir?” he said, finally.

  “You’re coping okay?” Doripalam said, gesturing towards the crowd. “With the pressures?”

  “Yes, sir. More or less.” The man frowned, impervious to Doripalam’s irony.

  “Where’s your boss?” Doripalam said. “The chief.” He looked around. “Is he helping with crowd control as well?”

  “Sir?”

  “Is he around? I don’t see him.”

  “I think he went, sir.” The officer blinked, clearly trying to work out the most appropriate response.

  “Went?” Doripalam said. “You mean left the site? In the middle of a live operation?”

  The officer nodded. “He told us you were in charge now, sir. That it was your operation.”

  “So you’re reporting to me?”

  There was a long pause. Behind, Doripalam heard the burble of the crowd, the angry shouts of the officers trying to gain control. “Well, yes, I suppose so, sir. For the moment.”

  “For the moment,” Doripalam agreed. “Okay, then, just for the moment, tell me about this man you picked up.”

  “Man, sir?”

  “Man, sir. You probably remember him. He was carrying a gun. Those things usually stick in the mind.”

  “Sir.” The officer l
ooked around, as if searching for someone who might help him out.

  “Not too difficult a question, is it? You picked up a man. With a gun. Tell me about him.” Doripalam’s voice was icy calm. Just behind him, Batzorig involuntarily took a step back.

  For a second, it looked as if the officer might try to brazen the matter out. Then, finally, he said, “He came out of the hotel. Just after we arrived. He was staggering, shouting something. He had a gun in his hand—some sort of handgun. I didn’t see what, but he was waving it around and shouting.” He paused. “I think we were all a bit on edge. Not knowing what was happening. What had caused the explosion.”

  “So what happened?” Doripalam asked, suddenly fearing the worst.

  “We had a bunch of armed officers here,” the man said. “We didn’t know what we might be facing so we thought we’d better be cautious. One of them fired.”

  Doripalam was staring at him, his face aghast. “You shot him?”

  The officer shook his head. “No, no. I mean—well, I suppose one of us tried to. But we missed. At first we thought we’d hit him. He staggered suddenly, just as the shot was fired and fell forward, dropping the gun.”

  “But you hadn’t shot him?” Doripalam said, trying to follow this narrative.

  The officer shook his head. “No. I mean, there was someone behind me cheering because we’d gotten him—” He stopped, seeing the expression on Doripalam’s face. “It was nerves,” he said. “We were all scared. But, no, we didn’t shoot him. We hesitated for a moment, then someone went forward and touched him.”

  “Go on.”

  The officer breathed out suddenly, as if he had been holding his breath for a long time. “It was a real shock. We assumed he was dead or badly injured. Then, just as the guy got near him, he rolled over. We thought at first that it had been a trick. Then we realised he was choking and coughing. He’d been caught by the smoke. Couldn’t breathe. That was why he’d collapsed.”