A Summer Revenge Read online

  “Well, am I looking for something the size of an elephant or the size of a pea?”

  “I don’t think you can carry an elephant as hand luggage,” Tynaliev said, trying to lighten what must have been a great embarrassment. I gave a polite smile, said nothing, waited.

  “It’s a memory stick for a laptop. Small—you could put it in your wallet.”

  “And what’s on this memory stick?”

  Tynaliev frowned, and I remembered the sheer brute power and influence the man possessed, how he held secrets close as sin to his heart.

  “You don’t need to know that, Inspector.”

  I paused, reached for my cigarettes, decided this wasn’t the time to light up.

  “You won’t be best pleased if I come back with Ms. Sulonbekova’s holiday photos,” I suggested, “even if they do show off her figure to best advantage.”

  Tynaliev looked at the vodka, pushed it away.

  “The memory stick contains details of a secret agreement I’ve made with a foreign power. You don’t need to know which one at this stage, or indeed what the agreement entails.”

  “But if it falls into the hands of another country or your political enemies here?”

  “For a policeman, you’re very smart,” Tynaliev said, and I could almost believe there was sincerity in his voice.

  “Is she blackmailing you? Demanding money for the memory stick?” I asked.

  Tynaliev frowned. “That’s the odd thing. So far, nothing. I think she stole the memory stick simply because she knew it was valuable to me. She took it because she was pissed off with me.”

  He gave me another of those man-of-the-world smiles.

  “I don’t think she means me any harm, politically. To be honest, her breasts are bigger than her brains.”

  I did the polite smile routine again, decided it was time to dig deeper, ask the question that no man who cheats on his wife likes to answer.

  “You’d promised to marry her, divorce your wife?”

  “I’d never do that. But maybe she got the wrong impression. And besides . . .”

  Tynaliev paused, looked away. I had a sinking feeling I knew what he was going to say, but I asked anyway.

  “She’s a working girl, Minister? Is that the problem? You suspect it might be a honey trap?”

  Reluctantly he nodded, poured yet another vodka.

  “My marriage would be over if that became public knowledge. My career would be over if someone releases the information she’s stolen.”

  I wasn’t happy. If I got the girl or the stick back, Tynaliev might decide I was surplus to his needs. A small accident seemed all too likely, in the interests of state security. Or in Tynaliev’s. Maybe they were the same.

  “I won’t have any jurisdiction over there, Minister,” I said, wondering if there was a way to slip the noose so adroitly thrown over my neck.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Inspector,” he said, “because I have in my possession a very interesting piece of footage from the Internet. Regarding our mutual friend Morton Graves.”

  “Oh,” I said and fell silent.

  “Oh, indeed,” he said and gave his most wolfish smile.

  Chapter 4

  I didn’t need to be shown the film; I’d taken it myself with a handheld phone outside Morton Graves’s villa, late at night. I saw him climb into his car, his height and shaven head unmistakable. The headlights flared, and then the image turned pure white, dazzling, before coming back into focus. The wrecked car sprawled in fragments and created a modern sculpture. Graves staggered out of the wreckage, twisting and whirling around, clothes on fire, burns decorating his head with patches of red and black skin. One of his hands had been severed, and he clutched it like a good-luck charm with the hand still attached to his other arm. The film was silent, but it was easy to imagine his screams.

  Perhaps he remembered his victims’ pleas and cries in his cellar, relived the pleasures of the knife and whip. Possibly he thought of the wealth and power he was about to lose. I know he died in agony and alone.

  That’s why I’d planted the bomb under his car.

  So now Tynaliev had a murder charge to hold over me if I didn’t cooperate, and even if I did, I had no guarantee he wouldn’t use it. I didn’t ask how he’d acquired the footage; men like Tynaliev can get anything they want.

  “I can see how this is a matter of state security, Minister,” I said, wondering how I was going to escape this mess. “I’ll go to Dubai as soon as I can get a visa. It’s my duty as a loyal citizen. Obviously, any information you can give me will be helpful once I’m on the ground.”

  Tynaliev stood up and held out his hand. I shook it, and he escorted me to the front door. He asked for my passport, and I handed it over.

  “Come back for this in two days’ time,” he said. “We’ll give you temporary diplomatic status.”

  Which I suspected wouldn’t help me much in Dubai if it all got difficult.

  “One last thing, Minister,” I said. “What do you want me to do about the girl?”

  He looked at me, dispassionate, as if he were choosing between two joints of meat. Finally, he spoke. “I don’t really give a damn, Inspector. Fuck her or kill her, it’s your call. But keep her mouth shut. Or bring her back and I’ll silence her myself.”

  And with that, the door shut behind me as if I were leaving a prison cell. As I walked back up the drive, it struck me I was very probably doing exactly the opposite.

  A week later I was looking down at our final approach to Dubai International Airport, the guidance lights on the runway flickering and wavering in the heat. I’d left Bishkek’s Manas International Airport four hours earlier, as dawn broke across the Tien Shan mountains, turning the snow-covered peaks a gentle gold and casting long shadows into the valleys. The runway had been extended for the American supply planes that fueled the war in Afghanistan. Now the Americans were gone, and so was the money they had brought with them. I felt as if my entire country had been a well-paid hooker, lying back until the client had departed, leaving a handful of som on the table and tucking himself back into his trousers. No one likes to be fucked for money, but if you’ve a family to feed, what else can you do?

  I sat back in my seat as the plane slowly rose from the runway and made for the mountains. After a few moments, we were above them, gazing down at their eternal beauty. Ancient glaciers have pushed the rocks into convulsions, scraping paths through and leaving towering crags and pinnacles no army has ever been able to cross. I sometimes forget how beautiful my country is, and how remote.

  Even when the Silk Road passed through much of Kyrgyzstan, the trade it carried back and forth had little effect of the lives of the Kyrgyz nomads. The mountains kept us apart, helped us retain our culture, our beliefs. The plodding camels laden with silks and spices, gold and metalwork, jade and porcelain did little to change the annual ritual of taking flocks up to the high jailoo grass pastures in the summer and down into the valleys for the winter. And the voices of our manaschi reciting our ancient epic poem, the Manas, were always a counterpoint to the muezzin’s cry . . .

  My newly acquired diplomatic status got me through immigration with no problems, and I wandered into the vast baggage hall. I’d been told Dubai International Airport is the busiest in the world, and I watched as thousands of passengers scooped up their suitcases, passed through customs and out toward a long line of waiting taxis. The air conditioning inside the airport was brutal, and so was the heat outside. I felt wrapped in a thick wet wool blanket, the sweat immediately springing to my forehead.

  I reached the front of the line, dropped my bag in the taxi’s trunk, climbed into the back seat. The elderly Indian driver wore a lined face that looked like a road map of his native country.

  “Denver Hotel, Bur Dubai,” I said, stifling a yawn. He nodded, hit the meter, pulled away from the curb. The morning rush hour in full flow, I watched as hundreds of cars jostled for position. Moscow was the biggest city I’d ever b
een in, but that couldn’t compare with the flyovers, roundabouts and multiple lanes of traffic that Dubai boasted. Dubai has oil, Kyrgyzstan has snow. Perhaps that’s why we have potholes, not Porsches.

  Over on my left I could see skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes, and towering above them all a silver needle stabbing the sky.

  “What’s that?” I asked the driver.

  “Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world,” he said, proud as if he’d built it himself. “Over eight hundred meters.”

  I watched the morning light bounce off each facet of the tower as we passed, stared like some idiot from a village in the big city for the first time. As we crossed the creek and headed toward Bur Dubai, it struck me that Ms. Sulonbekova might be more than a little difficult to find.

  Chapter 5

  I hadn’t expected Tynaliev to book me into the Burj Al Arab but the Denver was no one’s idea of luxury. I checked in with a surly desk clerk who barely deigned to look at me, pressed the elevator button for the fifth floor, stood there for several minutes.

  “The lift isn’t working?” I asked.

  The clerk merely shrugged, turned his attention to his mobile. As I headed for the stairs I noticed an ornamental fish tank now acting as a fish cemetery. Maybe it was an omen. I climbed up the stairs, doing my best to avoid the more obvious holes and stains in the worn carpet. A series of bare lightbulbs lit my way, and I found myself outside Room 503. The key was attached to a block of wood the size of a brick, in case someone liked the key so much they tried to steal it. I opened the door, expecting to find nothing very much. It was worse than that.

  The single bed was pushed up against the opposite wall, and if I held my breath I could probably walk past it. I pressed on the mattress and listened to worn springs give a sigh of contempt. A cupboard held a toilet and shower, small enough so I could shower and shit at the same time. A dripping tap had left an orange streak down one wall, and judging by the hairs in the plughole someone had recently shampooed a large dog. I decided this probably wasn’t where the minister stayed when he came to Dubai.

  Tynaliev had given me three thousand dollars and a mobile phone with a local SIM card, so I could make calls without the authorities identifying me. There was a single name in the contact list. Salman Kulayev. Tynaliev had told me Kulayev could organize everything I might need, including “necessary liaison and equipment.”

  “Flight upgrades? Restaurant reservations?” I’d asked. Tynaliev had glared at me, and I’d looked down at his hands, seen the scars from other people’s teeth across his knuckles.

  “I expect you to take this matter seriously, Inspector,” he said, “very seriously indeed.”

  I’d mumbled an apology, made my escape, wondering what would await me on my return.

  Now I sat in that shabby hotel room and listened to the air conditioning grumble and splutter, coughing out an occasional and ineffectual breath of cold air. I thought of Saltanat, in Tashkent or who knew where, remembering her slim body against mine, and felt totally alone.

  I ignored the sign on the wall, lit a cigarette, sucked deep, dialed. The phone rang for several minutes, was eventually answered.

  “Da?”

  “Kulayev?”

  “Who’s this?”

  A smoker’s voice, rasping, middle-aged. Chechen accent. Probably on the run from the Russians and hiding out in Dubai.

  “Mikhail suggested I call you.”

  Silence. I heard the snap of a lighter, the crackle of burning tobacco.

  “The Dôme coffee shop at Burjuman Mall. Noon.”

  “How will I recognize you?”

  Kulayev, if it was him, laughed, and I could hear phlegm rattling in his throat. No nonsense about carrying yesterday’s Pravda and code phrases about weather in the Baltic.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll know you.”

  And the line went dead.

  I asked directions at the desk, had a printed map thrust at me, headed outside. The heat was a punch in the face, a slap from a wet towel. According to the map, Burjuman was only a few blocks away, but by the time I reached the first pedestrian crossing, I was drenched in sweat, my shirt clinging to me like a teenage girlfriend. Maybe I could use some of Tynaliev’s dollars to buy some lightweight clothes. I could always give him the receipts. Or the clothes.

  Burjuman Mall was next to a futuristic-looking building which turned out to be a station on the Dubai Metro. I’d ridden the Moscow Metro with Chinara and we’d admired Mayakovskaya station with its high ceilings and marble walls. Maybe I’d get to ride the Metro in Dubai.

  The Dôme stood next to one of the four entrances to the Metro. I went inside and found a small table in one corner, away from the other customers. A Filipina waitress brought me a menu, but thanks to the smattering of English I’ve picked up over the years, I waved it away and asked for an espresso.

  I’d only taken a sip when a shadow fell across the table and I looked up. I’d expected the usual Chechen stereotype, stocky, muscular, dark hair, black eyes, a scowl that emerged from a tangle of beard, leather jacket, an attitude that said, “Fuck the world.” The man in front of me was in his late thirties, slight, dressed in a white linen shirt and blue chinos, balding, with melancholy brown eyes that suggested the world had given him more than one beating over the years. He pulled up a chair, beckoned to the waitress, pointed at my cup, held up two fingers and gestured he wanted large ones. She nodded, bustled away.

  “Salman Kulayev? I’m . . .”

  “Akyl Borubaev. I know.”

  “So Minister Tynaliev does share some of his secrets?”

  Kulayev smiled, looked ten years younger. The coffees arrived, and he downed the first one in a single gulp, pulled the second cup toward him.

  “When it suits him,” Kulayev said, “which isn’t all that often.”

  I sipped at my espresso, thick and aromatic, my heart thumping with the caffeine, wondering why Kulayev wasn’t bouncing around like a rabbit after two huge ones.

  “Any idea where I can find this woman? Natasha Sulonbekova?”

  “Possibly. How much do you know about her?” Kulayev asked, dabbing at his mouth with a tissue.

  “She was involved with the minister. She stole something from him. He’d like it back,” I said, not wanting to reveal too much.

  “You know she was a prosti?”

  I nodded. “That’s what the minister finally told me. I think he was reluctant to admit a man of his position would pick such a woman.”

  Kulayev laughed. “That’s what happens when you think with your little head. You think he’d prefer someone with a degree and a face like a bag of walnuts?”

  “You think that’s what she’s doing here?” I asked. “Working one of the bars? Or out of an apartment somewhere?”

  “Probably, to get day-to-day living expenses, food, rent, that sort of thing,” Kulayev said.

  “You think she’s got an agenda about the information she stole?”

  “Of course.” Kulayev shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’s worth a lot of money, or Tynaliev wouldn’t have sent you here.” He gave me an appraising look, sizing up just how much of a help or a threat I might be to him. “How do you know the minister, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I am—was—an inspector in the Bishkek Murder Squad. I investigated the death of his daughter.”

  “So he trusts you?”

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “I don’t think he trusts his own reflection in the mirror when he shaves,” I said.

  Kulayev smiled.

  “So she’s here to sell information?” I asked. “Where would I look for her?”

  “I would have thought the best place to start would be one of the bars. The authorities don’t approve of working girls. They round them up from time to time, put them in the cells for a couple of days and then deport them. But I know a Bulgarian guy, Marko Atanasov, a real piece of shit, who runs some of the girls here. He keeps them in line with the threat of the police
or the occasional beating. It’s amazing how easy it is to keep a woman in line with a wire coat hanger. And the coat hanger always comes in handy if they fall pregnant.”

  Kulayev shrugged, took a sip of his coffee. Taking a moral stance on someone else’s business obviously wasn’t his thing.

  “Without his say-so, you’re going to find it difficult to get anyone to talk to you. He’d be the best place to start.”

  He looked around, caught the eye of the waitress, summoned the bill with the universal squiggle of an invisible pen in the air.

  “I’ll call him, tell him you’ll see him tonight. Why not take the afternoon off, have a look around Dubai?”

  I nodded. Not because I’m interested in tourism, but it’s always best to familiarize yourself with new surroundings. You never know when you might need an escape route.

  “There’s some equipment you’ll want. I’ll ask him to provide that for you as well.”

  “Such as?” I asked.

  He stared back at me, face expressionless as he handed some money to the waitress. “My dear Akyl,” he said, standing up and reaching over to shake my hand, “you might believe you can get by on Kyrgyz charm, if such a thing exists. But I think you’re going to need a gun.”

  Chapter 6

  It was midnight when I got back to the Denver, but sleep was out of the question. I called Kulayev, and listened while his phone rang and rang. Finally, he answered, grumpy at being woken.

  “Atanasov, that piece of shit you said I should go and see?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, now he’s a dead piece of shit, and one missing a few essential pieces,” I said.

  “Meet me where we met before. Thirty minutes,” Kulayev said and hung up.

  He was already there when I reached the Dôme, with a few late-night caffeine addicts sitting at the metal tables outside. Once he saw me, Kulayev turned and crossed the road. Obviously I was meant to follow him. I felt the reassuring heft of the Makarov in my pocket. I wasn’t born last week, and I wasn’t born stupid either: Kulayev might be Tynaliev’s man, but I still didn’t trust either of them.