An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  Finally, he spoke.

  ‘Maksat Aydaraliev.’

  I nodded, showing I knew the name, admitting nothing more. The pakhan, the boss Saltanat and her colleagues had gunned down and dumped in the snowdrifts outside the Kulturny that dark freezing night.

  ‘I believe it’s you I have to thank for his unfortunate demise, Inspector,’ he said, his voice as free of emotion as if he were reciting the Trans-Siberian Railway timetable. I raised an eyebrow, to suggest I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave a sardonic smile at my reaction, bluff and counter-bluff.

  ‘No need to be coy, Inspector, we’re all friends here.’

  His eyes moved left, and I followed his glance to an SUV parking a little way down Ryskulov. I couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t some high-society matron taking her poodle for a ride.

  ‘You’ll notice I’m keeping my hands on the table. All my cards as well,’ he said, ‘but you clearly don’t trust me enough to put your gun away.’ He cocked his head to one side, raised an eyebrow.

  I shrugged, nodded, left my gun where it was. Men like Aliyev will apologise for ripping your head off even while they’re pissing down your throat. It comes with the territory.

  ‘Thank me for what?’ I asked.

  ‘You took care of Maksat Aydaraliev, didn’t you?’

  I shook my head, but I knew he didn’t believe me. Someone had killed the old pakhan, and it made sense to decide I was the one responsible.

  ‘You know about the alpha male in the pack, Inspector? Lions, wolves, whatever. When the alpha male gets old, starts to weaken, he can’t lead the pack as well as he once did. He stands in the way, so the pack dispose of him, to ensure their survival. He’s removed for the continuance of the pack, the tribe, the gang.’

  Aliyev took a sip of his tea, savoured the aroma.

  ‘With humans, the ways that once served Maksat became old-fashioned, last-century, not fit for today. He was a survivor, tough, until it was time for him to move on, for a new face, new ideas, to take over, lead the way ahead.’

  ‘Goodbye, Maksat, hello, Kanybek?’ I asked, injecting a little sarcasm into my voice.

  ‘Maksat believed in the old ways; the fist, the boot, the bullet. Lead or gold, da? Fine for those days, when you could see your enemy face to face. You remember his right hand? Broken in twenty-eight places by your colleagues, he used to say, and his fingernails torn out. Down in that basement no one ever talks about. That was the world then. Do it to me and I do it to you, twice.’

  He paused, inspected his own fingers. Nothing broken or mutilated, nothing old-school about him. Yet.

  ‘But now your enemy might be anywhere in the world,’ Aliyev continued. ‘Nothing but an email address, a Facebook photo, a warning sent as a text message. What good are muscles and Makarovs then?’

  He sat back in his chair, sipped at his green tea.

  ‘New times, new ways, Inspector. You either move with history or you are history. Which are you, I wonder?’

  ‘It’s my history I’m planning to change, now I’m no longer Murder Squad, not even a lowly uniformed ment. That’s why I wanted to meet you,’ I said, then fell silent and stared over his shoulder, weighing up the situation. A couple of tables away, four elderly men wearing ill-fitting suit jackets and felt kalpak hats were working their way through a bottle of vodka and a plate of pickled gherkins. Two of the waitresses were texting their friends as if the only way they could ever communicate was via their fingertips. An Asian woman carrying a large shopping bag was making her way to the toilets at the back. No one was paying us any attention, just two more middle-aged men with time on their hands and no particular place to go.

  ‘A pity. You’d have been useful to me on the inside, pissing out of the yurt, not into it, opening your beak to sing to me, me feeding you scraps in return. But now . . .’

  Aliyev shrugged, held his hands wide in one of those ‘what can I do’ gestures.

  ‘You’ve terminated your employment in the police force almost as quickly as you terminated the Minister for State Security.’

  I did my best to appear surprised he already knew about that afternoon’s events, but he merely smiled.

  ‘I heard about you shooting Tynaliev before the sound of your shots had stopped echoing from the mountains,’ he said. ‘Did you really think I’d have agreed to meet you otherwise?’

  ‘So why did you agree?’ I asked, knowing my chance to implement my plan depended on his reply.

  Aliyev said nothing for a moment, dropped a couple of sugar cubes into his tea, stirred then sipped. For a couple of seconds he looked oddly melancholy, as if his life was also dissolving into nothingness.

  ‘Why do people want to join my organisation?’ he asked.

  I shrugged, rubbed my thumb against my first two fingers, the universal sign for cash.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, ‘although only up to a point. I’ve no use for people only looking to make enough money to get laid or stoned or drunk. Any street robber can do that. I look for certain qualities in a man, to ensure he’ll be a smooth-turning cog, working for the good of the whole machine.’

  Qualities wasn’t exactly the word I’d choose for people prepared to rob, rape, murder; men willing to take out an entire three generations of a rival’s family to avenge a perceived slight or a business deal gone sour. It takes a certain determination to walk up to a man you’ve never met and fire two shots into his head. But it’s also barbaric, a sign our species hasn’t progressed much, if at all.

  I’ve killed people, usually when they were trying to kill me. Sometimes I see their faces as I turn a corner, or see a reflection in a shop window. They don’t disturb me: I know why they died – them or me – and I believe they deserved no better. It’s at night when victims visit me, their open staring eyes asking why I haven’t solved their murder or brought them justice yet. They are the ones who haunt me, the ones I’ve failed, the ones who remind me I have to do better.

  Aliyev tapped on the table. I shook myself out of my reverie and stared back at him.

  ‘Of course, it’s easy to find people to do the muscle work, the threatening, and, sometimes, the finishing, the wet work,’ Aliyev continued, ‘but they don’t use what little brains they have. They can’t even spell initiative, let alone use it. Then there are the ones who see themselves as criminal masterminds, future pakhans. But they generally have no spine, no balls when it comes to pulling the trigger, putting death through a man’s eyeball or slashing a throat to stain a white shirt red.’

  ‘Maybe you need a better recruitment agency?’

  Aliyev gave a dry smile to show he appreciated the joke.

  ‘You’re a man of action, but you temper it with thought. You’re honest, but not too honest. And you’re looking for a job, right?’

  I nodded. ‘I thought you might help me get out of the country, and fast. After all, you wouldn’t be sitting at the top of the table if Maksat Aydaraliev was still around, pulling out fingernails and counting out banknotes. So you owe me.’

  Aliyev nodded, his gaze never leaving mine.

  ‘You’re right, I owe you. But the thing is,’ and he dropped another sugar lump into his tea, watching the ripple hit the edge of the cup, ‘I also own you.’

  He smiled at my puzzled look.

  ‘Can you imagine how many favours I’ll be able to call on if I hand over the man who gunned down the Minister of State Security? That’s worth twenty million som in the bank. It’s just a question of deciding if you can be more useful to me than all those get-out-of-jail-free cards.’

  ‘Not much use to you if I shoot your balls off while you’re deciding what to do,’ I said, rapped the underside of the table to prove my point.

  ‘You could do, but you won’t, because it doesn’t benefit you to do so. Brains trump action.’

  ‘On this occasion,’ I said, nodding at the strength of his logic. I looked around the bar, wondering ho
w it was my life had become thrown into such disarray. The vodka-drinking men had finished their bottle and were trying to catch the attention of the waitresses, who remained resolutely immersed in the digital world. The Asian woman was making her way towards the door, obviously unwilling to spend any more time in the bar than she had to. In her haste, she’d forgotten her shopping, and I wondered if she’d realise her mistake before walking outside.

  ‘So?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘What’s your answer? Job or jail?’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he never heard my reply.

  Because that was when the bomb went off.

  Chapter 10

  An irresistible hand lifted me up and threw me backwards, bringing the table down on top of me. The windows behind me turned to sheets of ice that fractured and split, throwing diamond sparkles high into the air. Someone had poured hot wax into my ears, then punched both sides of my head; all I could hear was a distant bellowing, as if someone on the other side of the park was shrieking nonsense through a bullhorn. I put my hand to my thigh, found it wet, wondered if I’d been shot, put my fingers to my lips, tasted tea.

  I scrabbled on the floor for my gun, found it where I’d dropped it, the weight reassuring in my hand. I cocked the hammer, ready for whatever would come next. Aliyev was sprawled against a pillar, the same one that had spared me a lot of the blast. He hadn’t been so lucky. His forehead had been ripped open, probably by a wooden splinter, and his face wore a scarlet mask. His eyes were swollen and bruised, his pupils dilated with shock. He mouthed something at me, but I couldn’t hear anything above the bells tolling endlessly in my head.

  I looked around at the wreckage, hoping to catch sight of the bomber, saw a woman’s coat on the ground, shredded and part covering what had once been a body and was now a butchered carcass. Either she’d intended a suicide bombing, or her willingness to die had failed her at the last minute and she’d triggered the timer too early to make a clean escape. Either way, she wouldn’t be answering any questions down the station.

  Over by the bar, next to the till, one of the pretty waitresses was trying to glue her face back onto her skull, while her friend did her best to comfort her, saying over and over again it was just a scratch, nothing serious. I couldn’t hear the words, but I recognise the comfort of lies all too easily.

  We had to leave before the police and ambulances arrived. They would certainly know Aliyev’s face, and every officer would have seen my ID photo, labelled ‘SHOOT ON SIGHT’. I hauled Aliyev to his feet, using my sleeve to wipe away the worst of the blood on his face, and together we crunched our way over shards of glass and spears of wood, stumbled through the devastated bar and out onto the street. The air was full of the stink of smoke, burnt wood, half-cooked flesh.

  Aliyev’s bodyguards were running towards their boss, fifty metres too far away, sixty seconds too late. The leading two pushed me aside, took Aliyev’s arms and half-dragged, half-carried him towards the car already moving towards us. The third man grabbed my arm and collar, propelled me towards the SUV. I was thrown into the back seat, then we were racing at speed down Togolok Moldo, past the football stadium, towards Jibek Jolu.

  We crashed through the red light, turned right, ignoring the cars around us that slid to a halt or slammed into each other. A car as expensive as this one, driven like this, means only one thing to the average Kyrgyz motorist; these are people you don’t want to get involved with or you might end up with something far worse than a dented bumper.

  Aliyev was starting to come round out of the shock. The wound on his forehead screwed his face into a grimace of pain. The nearest bodyguard held a cloth to his boss’s forehead, doing his best to stop the blood pouring down over his cheeks. But scalp wounds are messy, with so many blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. You end up bleeding like a slaughtered goat, with the wound looking far worse than it actually is. Aliyev would be able to boast a striking scar, would probably use it to bolster his reputation as a pakhan that took no shit from anyone.

  I could tell the bodyguards were uncertain about me; they knew I was law, but they’d also just seen me rescue their pakhan. Time to hold back in case I was important, until Aliyev recovered enough to give them orders. I wondered about pulling the door open, rolling out and taking my chances in traffic. But we were going way too fast for that, and any attempt to get away would look like a confession to having been party to the bombing. My hearing was starting to return, and I could make out the driver asking where to go. Aliyev was barely conscious, so it was time I took control, to prevent my being pulled out of the car at the roadside and taking two shots to the head.

  ‘Tokmok,’ I ordered, as if no other choice was sensible or safe. The driver turned around, as if to question my destination, stared at me, nodded, put his foot to the metal. I realised I was still holding the Makarov. Sometimes even a simple command needs a little extra encouragement. And Tokmok was seventy kilometres away, which gave me some breathing space to think and plan.

  By now, we were on the outskirts of the city, and I gestured to the driver to slow down. He saw my signal in the rear-view mirror, lifted his foot a little off the accelerator. There was no point in getting stopped by an officious traffic cop looking to earn a little lunch money. The guys in the car weren’t the sharpest knives in the box, and they would be worried, suspicious, ready to shoot it out with anyone who stopped them, especially if they wore a uniform. There had been enough violent death for one day, and I didn’t intend becoming an addition to the total.

  ‘Where are we taking the boss?’ the biggest thug asked. I looked at his tattooed knuckles, at the weight of his fists, wished I had an answer.

  ‘The safe house, of course,’ I improvised. The network of the Circle of Brothers stretches all the way across central Asia and Russia, and when you’re shipping industrial-sized amounts of heroin around the region, it pays to have several choices for storage and somewhere to hide. Tokmok was far enough out of the city to serve as a bolthole in time of trouble, but not so far away someone might get ideas about usurping the throne.

  ‘What about a doctor?’ he added, gesturing at Aliyev, who groaned and closed his eyes. ‘Someone to stitch his head, check for brain damage?’

  ‘You don’t have a tame doktor sharlatanov?’ I asked, fake incredulity flooding my voice. ‘I thought this was a serious outfit.’

  ‘The boss will know someone,’ he said, scowling at my insult.

  ‘And he’s in a fit state to tell us?’ I asked. ‘Don’t bother both your brain cells, you don’t want to wear them out, I’ll sort something.’

  Tokmok doesn’t have a lot to recommend itself to a visiting tourist. Once you’ve seen the town’s main attraction, a Soviet Ilyushin bomber perched on a pedestal as if in the throes of take-off, all that’s left is the usual collection of drab shops selling fruit or vegetables as a sideline to shifting bottles of vodka to a dour population. We drove around until I spotted an apteka, a pharmacy whose windows were as heavily barred as the State Treasury. The sullen woman inside directed us to a doctor’s house a couple of streets away, off the main road to Issyk-Kul.

  The bodyguards helped Aliyev into the shabby waiting room stocked with mismatched chairs, while I explained to the doctor that our friend had been in a car crash and needed stitches. Judging by his wary gaze and clear nervousness, I could tell he didn’t believe me, but when I showed him the Makarov, he quickly remembered his Hippocratic Oath.

  Twenty stitches later, Aliyev’s forehead looked like a badly sewn curtain, but the bleeding had stopped. I persuaded the doctor to forget we’d ever been there, and he couldn’t have been more eager to do just that. He didn’t forget to take a fistful of notes for his time and trouble though; doctors are the same wherever you go.

  After a couple of hours, Aliyev began to regain some semblance of his old self, even managed to tell the driver where to find the safe house, an hour or so further on, just as the lake appeared over on our right.

  La
ke Issyk-Kul doesn’t reveal itself all at once, with the kind of boastful drama you might expect from the world’s second-largest mountain lake. Like the Kyrgyz people, the lake first appears with an abashed reticence, looking like nothing so much as a marshy puddle, before expanding to fill the gap between two sets of snow-capped mountains. The water is clear, placid, never freezing even in the most brutal winter, while the mountains on the horizon remain impassive, indifferent, unconcerned. It’s a landscape, or rather, a lakescape, that reveals us as the small and insignificant creatures we really are. And it was to this place of austerity and beauty we came to hide and plot, perhaps even to die.

  Chapter 11

  The safe house was tucked away at the end of an unmarked track leading away from the town of Cholpon-Ata and up towards the mountains. We had to drive halfway along an abandoned airport runway, avoiding the worst of the potholes. Weary-looking bushes pushed through the broken asphalt, then regretted their decision. On either side, decaying buildings showed the punishment two decades of Kyrgyz winter had inflicted. I had the feeling I’d fallen into one of those movies set in a post-nuclear world, where men revert to animals and gangs roam abandoned cities looking for prey. Knowing I was travelling with a gang not so very different didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.

  After five bone-shaking minutes, during which I’d repeatedly slammed my head against the car roof, we pulled up outside a dilapidated single-storey farmhouse, the once-whitewashed walls grey with dust and the window panes cracked and repaired with tape.

  ‘There’s no place like home,’ I said, and this certainly didn’t look like any home I’d want to stay in.

  ‘You were expecting a gangster villa, Inspector?’ Aliyev asked. ‘A luxury pool with bikini-clad silicone beauties sipping cocktails and eating Beluga caviar?’

  I shook my head; I knew Aliyev was too clever to fall for all the usual trappings of criminal success, the ones that shrieked ‘Arrest me!’ to any policeman who wasn’t dipping his beak in the pot. Even so, the farmhouse seemed too primitive for anything but the most basic peasant existence.