An Autumn Hunting Read online

  ‘Men like Zakir and the others are fine when it comes to waving a fist full of som or a fistful of fist in front of some minor border guard. But where’s the nuance, the subtlety? I want an operation that moves without ever disturbing the surface of the waters, you understand?’

  I nodded. I did understand. A shark, invisible, moving towards its prey until the final seconds before the strike and the killing. The instant when you know everything is about to end. I remembered the poem Usupov had found on the dead girl once he’d stripped her of her secrets, her hopes, her identity. Tiptoes past kisses still sweet but fading. Life once you start using your veins as a dartboard? Or when you decide to betray yourself and all you’ve worked for?

  I could still see the pallor of her skin, count the bites of the syringe, smell the moment of her death. I knew about the children that would never be hers, the home of which she would be so proud, of the husband who stayed loyal.

  Either the dead all count, or none of them do.

  A philosophy by which I’ve tried to live so far. Maybe one which was going to kill me.

  Chapter 25

  Finally I’d endured enough of the master plan, decided it was time to drag reality back into the picture.

  ‘I’m flattered you’re telling me all this. But right now, don’t you think we should find out who set out to blow us into scraps of meat at Derevyashka? And whose storm troopers attacked the safe house? Imported mercenaries or problems with your Chinese suppliers?’

  Aliyev nodded, slammed his open hand down hard on the table. One of the guards looked over, saw no immediate danger, turned round to stare blank-faced into the unfathomable future.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Someone who understands the big picture and the details that need to be dealt with.’

  Aliyev gave the smile I was getting used to, the one that never considered reaching his eyes.

  ‘Handing you over to the authorities gets me a lot of concessions. And the minister’s interest in seeing you wouldn’t be held back by being in a hospital bed.’

  I nodded. Better to shoot myself, get it out of the way, than reach the same conclusion after a few hours or days dark with pain.

  ‘You’re not worried Zakir might have betrayed this location as well?’ I asked, genuinely curious.

  ‘He didn’t tell anyone about the underground safe house,’ Aliyev said, his nonchalance surprising me.

  ‘But you still blew his brains out.’

  Aliyev shrugged.

  ‘Loyalty will only take a man so far, then he starts remembering the humiliation, the begging in front of his comrades. Then because the pain isn’t there to remind him he’s weak, he gets ideas above his station.’

  ‘So you shot him?’

  ‘What would you have done? Waited until he pressed a gun barrel into the back of your neck?’

  I said nothing. Aliyev shook his head.

  ‘Your scruples hold you back, our survival drives us forward. You want the sunlight and the mountains, but we live in the dark, in the shadows.’

  He rubbed at one of the streaks of blood on the floor with his shoe.

  ‘Zakir was a piece of shit anyway,’ he said, dismissing a man’s life the casual way you stub out a half-smoked cigarette.

  *

  We spent the next four days cooped up in the house, while Aliyev questioned me about every aspect of the police force. What I’d learnt, what corners could safely be cut, what was a no-go area that would pull down the wrath of the law upon his head. To my surprise, he didn’t seem interested in which police officers would be willing to look the other way, or make a quick phone call to warn of future trouble. Perhaps he’d already bought everyone worth knowing.

  I’d once watched Leonid Yurtaev, the first Kyrgyz grand master, play a series of games in a chess tournament; the way Aliyev thought reminded me of Yurtaev’s approach. Always aggressive, ready to smash forward, confident he could see ahead more clearly than his enemies, thanks to his deeper knowledge and understanding. If it ever came to the endgame between Aliyev and myself, he would sweep the board clean.

  Every night I would crawl into my bed exhausted, wondering if I’d made a fatal mistake, a flaw in my defence that would conclude the game with a midnight opening of the door, the bark of a shotgun. It didn’t make for a restful night’s sleep.

  Then one morning, as I stood naked by the window, staring out at the high brick wall, wondering what was taking place in the world beyond, I heard the door open. I didn’t turn round, concentrated on what looked like the first snow clouds of early autumn race across an ice-blue sky.

  ‘I’ve seen more muscles on a chair.’

  Aliyev. Perhaps I wasn’t going to be executed after all.

  ‘Brains beat brawn. Your words, not mine,’ I said, still gazing out at the sky.

  ‘Get dressed, ten minutes for chai and khleb, then we’re out of here.’

  I heard the door shut behind me, let out the breath I’d been holding in without even knowing it. Once outside the high walls, my chances of surviving – even escaping – might improve.

  The bread was stale, the tea tasteless; whatever Aliyev spent his millions on, elegant dining wasn’t one of his weaknesses.

  ‘Time to move on,’ he announced, dropping a single cube of sugar into his cup. I helped myself to my customary three.

  ‘You’ve heard something?’ I asked. ‘A police raid?’

  ‘The police aren’t my only enemies,’ Aliyev said, giving the twisted smile that somehow made him seem more human, more likeable. ‘But I don’t believe in waiting until anyone makes a move on me before I react. One step ahead for preference, two for advantage, three to make sure I win.’

  Very different from the old pakhan, I thought, an attitude that might even see Aliyev climb into his grave as an old man, grandchildren gathered around.

  ‘So where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘Rule Number Two. Know everything, tell nothing until it suits you.’ Aliyev gave me an interrogative stare. ‘Right now, you don’t need to know. And why is it so important to you anyway?’

  I tried to make my tone flippant.

  ‘I just wanted to make sure I packed the right clothes. No point in taking a swimsuit to the mountains, is there?’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll find everything there you need,’ he said.

  Breakfast over, Aliyev led the way outside. A battered marshrutka, one of the minibuses used by everyone as cheap transport around the city, was waiting for us, exhaust giving the depressing cough of a dying chain smoker.

  ‘Stylish,’ I said.

  ‘Safe,’ Aliyev replied, as the side door squealed in protest. ‘You’d rather be dead sitting in leather seats?’

  ‘I’d rather be somewhere warm, preferably several thousand kilometres away.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Aliyev said, beckoning me into the darkness of the vehicle. ‘That’s exactly what I have in mind for you.’

  Chapter 26

  Aliyev’s bodyguards clambered into the marshrutka, and the driver placed a worn sign announcing this was the 188 to Tungush on the outskirts of the city.

  ‘We’re going there?’ I asked, only to get a withering look from Aliyev.

  ‘I always tell my enemies where I’m heading,’ he said. ‘It makes it easier for them to kill me.’

  I shrugged, concentrated on staring out of the grime-encrusted window. No need for tinted glass here, not with several seasons of dust and mud to shield us.

  The sky was still clear, with the mountains rising up to meet it on the horizon, but I could sense the possibility of snow later on, even this early in the autumn. Like most Kyrgyz, I’m constantly aware of the weather. We watch it with all the attention of a farmer or a goatherd, people whose livelihood depends on it. Get it wrong, and you face inconvenience, delays, problems. Get it badly wrong and you could find yourself in serious, even fatal, trouble. Weather in Central Asia isn’t the mild-mannered polite affair you find in lots of countries.
We joke we spend six months of the year outdoors in the heat of summer, the other six months trying not to freeze to death. Like most of our jokes, it’s not really a joke at all.

  I didn’t know if Aliyev had a fleet of Ferraris tucked away somewhere in a villa on the North Shore, but he certainly knew how to travel around Bishkek with a complete lack of style. The engine of the marshrutka had advanced lung cancer, the tyres were smoother than an adolescent’s first shave, and the seats had endured generations of overweight babushki planting their over-wide arses on them. I settled back and tried to relax, treating the bouncing around as a form of rough massage therapy.

  Eight of us had clambered into the bus, sprawling across uncomfortable seats, staring out of the windows or demonstrating cool by trying to nap. We were headed out of the city up into the mountains. The air turned colder as we climbed, the clouds beginning to darken and gather like mourners at a funeral. I felt a chill the marshrutka’s heating failed to combat; perhaps it was saving its strength for the return journey.

  The scenery was familiar; we were on our way to Issyk-Ata, the old Soviet-period sanatorium still used by the locals for the hot springs and cold baths. I’d been there once before, to solve the murder of a prominent member of the nomenklatura found floating face-down one Sunday morning in a hot springs pool with his bathing trunks around his knees, a wrist-thick mountain ash branch inserted into his backside.

  My enquiries gave me a number of leads, but all the suspects I questioned had rock-solid alibis, their wives testifying that their husbands were not only indoors on Saturday night, but inside them as well. I never solved the case, and the inquest decided the deceased had ‘accidentally impaled himself while diving into the pool while drunk’. No mention of the three empty vodka bottles and a hundred cigarette butts at the scene of the ‘accident’. A warning for us all.

  The wheezing from the engine grew more laboured as we climbed up towards the Issyk-Ata Gorge. Finally, with the marshrutka on the point of collapse, we pulled into an empty gravelled car park. The main building of the sanatorium was visible through the trees at the end of an overgrown and winding path. The upraised arm of Lenin pointed through a gap in the trees, the statue reaching out to snatch a cloud. After independence, no one dared to pull down the statues of the Great Leader just in case the Soviets came back, but it was decided to move them to rather less prominent sites, just in case the Soviets didn’t return. Having stared at Vladimir Ilyich’s embalmed corpse, his face candlewax yellow, in its mausoleum outside the walls of the Kremlin, I didn’t think he looked too upset.

  ‘You spoil us, pakhan,’ I said, as brightly as I could manage, looking at the tree-lined gloom shrouding the path. It looked bad, but I knew the buildings would be worse.

  Soviet architecture was designed with the best of intentions and the minimum of skill and materials. I knew what to expect: broken steps made of rotting concrete, corridors painted murk-green up to waist height, then mottled cream up towards stained ceilings. Only half the light fittings would contain a bulb, and only half of those would be working, giving a thirty-watt attempt at illumination. The smell of cabbage overlaid with disinfectant. Unwashed windows with cracks repaired with thick brown tape, light blue paint covering more of the glass than the frame. Only the best for the people, as Lenin and then Stalin and then Khrushchev had decreed. And this was a place where people came to get well.

  We made an odd-looking party as we traipsed up the path, avoiding the worst of the mud, bodyguards leading the way and bringing up the rear, with Aliyev and me firmly secured in the middle.

  Before independence, you might have thought we were members of the Politburo, come all the way from Moscow to see just how well the Great Soviet Experiment was working. Now, we looked exactly what we were – a bunch of thugs on our way to a hideout or a shootout.

  ‘You promised me somewhere warm,’ I complained. ‘This doesn’t look like it, unless you’re planning to torch the place.’

  Aliyev gave one of the shrugs that were beginning to annoy me.

  It had begun to drizzle, the rain pushing its way through the mist clinging to the tops of the trees, then waiting until I was underneath before beginning its final descent.

  Finally we paused in front of the main building, drab as all the others but with double doors that gaped open. A note taped to the left-hand door proclaimed opening hours, next to a handwritten scrawl saying the complex was closed ‘for a week, due to a prior booking’. I couldn’t help noticing we were two hours earlier than the scheduled time; on the other hand, the place looked as if we’d arrived forty years too late.

  Aliyev saw the look on my face.

  ‘Relax, Inspector, we’re expected. I made a couple of calls before we left Bishkek. And round here, I’m not just anyone, you know?’

  He waited for the guards to check the entrance, ushered me in with a sweep of his hand. The hallway wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; if anything, it was worse. There were patches on the wall, where the portraits of previous dignitaries had hung until they fell from favour, took the long one-way trip to Siberia or the short ride to the Lubyanka. Naturally, as they vanished, so did their portraits. Long streaks of damp and mould created a surreal mural of swirling patterns and stains. The air smelt of rotting wood, mouse shit and more than a hint of despair. Offhand, the only place I could imagine being less healthy for someone requiring treatment would be at the bottom of a plague pit.

  ‘The Hyatt Regency was fully booked?’ I asked.

  ‘The Hyatt is where my predecessor would have chosen for a meeting like this,’ he said, ‘and that’s why there’s a marble slab in Ala-Archa Cemetery with his ugly old mug engraved on it, and his ugly old body rotting away underneath. His epitaph should read “Predictable”. I’ve no wish to join him until my own face is just as old and just as ugly. So this place suits my purposes, Inspector. My apologies if you’re accustomed to better surroundings. I always thought you were that rare creature, an honest policeman. I’d hate to discover I was wrong.’

  I couldn’t think of a smart answer to that, decided to hold my tongue, wait to see what surprises were on their way for me.

  ‘Kenesh? Kairat?’

  Aliyev waved towards a door at the end of the hallway, his guards already halfway there, guns drawn and held down by their side, reluctance to be first in the line of fire clear in their faces and their cautious approach. I expected a hail of bullets as they opened the door, but heard only silence.

  By the time they reported the place was empty, with no sign of an armed reception party, the cold mountain air had started to gnaw at my bones. I watched my breath turn white, felt my feet ache from the cold. Judging by the state of the floorboards, stamping my feet to keep them warm might earn me a quick trip to the cellar.

  ‘Perhaps we could wait in the marshrutka?’ I suggested.

  ‘Smart,’ Aliyev said. ‘That way we can be grouped together as a sitting target for whoever drives up the road. You might as well make yourself comfortable; we have a little time to wait before our meeting.’

  He didn’t volunteer who we were going to meet, or at what time. Either he’d tell me when he was ready, or he wouldn’t. I wondered why he’d brought me along. A sacrificial offering perhaps, or a sign of his good faith. Backed by the AK-47 assault rifles two of his men were carrying.

  I tried not to think of piping hot chai, raspberry jam stirred into it for sweetness. Even the thin blanket in my room back at the safe house held a sudden delicious promise. The way the temperature was dropping as the afternoon wore on, if a bullet didn’t kill me, pneumonia would.

  The next four hours passed in a delirium of boredom. I tried to spot faces in the stains on the wall, counted the number of missing window panes, wondered whether my watch had died.

  Aliyev gave a nod of dismissal, and four of the guards left the room, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders like a refugee army on the march. The remaining two guards took up position by the windows looking out onto the path.
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  ‘Can I ask who we’ll be meeting? I don’t want any nasty surprises, like coming face to face with an armed man I sent to Penitentiary One for a ten stretch.’

  Aliyev gave me another of those pretending-to-be-human smiles.

  ‘Don’t worry, Inspector, none of our guests have ever seen the inside of a Kyrgyz prison. Or prison anywhere, for that matter.’

  I supposed that was reassuring, and it did suggest the people we were about to meet were both foreign and professional.

  ‘Maybe an idea not to call me Inspector,’ I suggested. ‘We don’t want your guests to get the wrong idea.’

  ‘These people wouldn’t give a fuck one way or the other. And they already know exactly who you are. Shooting a minister earns you a certain notoriety; you mustn’t be modest.’

  ‘Why am I here at all?’

  A not unreasonable request, I thought, but Aliyev wasn’t to be drawn.

  ‘In good time, when the moment is ripe. I’ve got big plans, and they do include you.’

  ‘At least tell me when they’re due to arrive. I don’t want to spend the night here.’

  Aliyev looked at his watch, perhaps as keen to return to his bed as I was to mine.

  ‘Another few minutes before they land,’ he said.

  ‘They’re not driving?’

  Aliyev shook his head.

  ‘Time is money. And our guests are short of one and possess plenty of the other.’

  It was then I heard the unmistakable clatter of a helicopter. Whoever they were, money was never going to be a problem.

  Chapter 27

  I don’t care for helicopters. When I’m in one, I have to concentrate through sheer willpower on keeping the thing from tumbling from the sky and smashing into some mountainside. The winds are unpredictable in the Tien Shan, especially in the autumn. Sudden unexpected gusts sweep the loose snow from the peaks, hurling it into the air, reducing visibility to zero in seconds. And it’s at that moment the mountains are transformed into giant, jagged and razor-edged teeth, ready to bite down in anger at the temerity of anyone foolish enough to intrude on their territory.