An Autumn Hunting

by Tom Callaghan

  We kept returning to the central questions: how did Tynaliev intend to become rich; why did I try to kill him?

  The answer to the first question was obvious, I told him. Heroin, smuggled across the Tadjik border from Afghanistan, then shipped on to Russia to feed the veins of almost two million ‘antisocial elements’. It’s become harder to get heroin out of Afghanistan and into the lucrative markets in the West via Pakistan, so now it’s a case of go east, young man. The Tadjik borders are as porous as muslin; the mountains make it almost impossible to police. And there’s usually someone to turn a blind eye as the mule trains go past in return for a few engraved pictures of Benjamin Franklin. Life might be cheap in our part of Central Asia, but that doesn’t make living any less expensive.

  By the afternoon of the first day’s relentless questioning, my nerves were frayed to the point where I could almost admit to anything, simply to sit back and smoke a cigarette down to the filter in one long majestic drag. Hell, I’d even smoke a papirosh cobbled together from roadside tobacco and the sports page of Achyk Sayasat. But it would be the final cigarette of the condemned man, and I wasn’t quite ready to face my execution yet.

  ‘What made Tynaliev think he could get away with trying to cut into our operation?’ Aliyev asked, giving me the kind of look that said we both understood the world doesn’t work like that.

  ‘He didn’t get round to explaining that to me,’ I replied. ‘He might have wanted me to work for him, but that doesn’t mean he was going to share his plan with me.’

  ‘He must have given you some idea what he wanted you to do? His tame policeman, used to obeying orders, doing as you were told.’

  I simply shook my head, knowing any answer would be a lie.

  ‘Didn’t he realise that if he tried to move into our territory, we would have sent someone to eliminate him? Someone with a better aim than yours?’

  My head was pounding, the dull burn you get when all you want is caffeine, nicotine and the chance to close your eyes.

  ‘He wasn’t too specific,’ I said, as if having a truth reluctantly dragged out of me. ‘I’d be some kind of liaison, with the Afghans, or maybe the Tadjiks. I knew I’d never get my old job back, and I need to put samsi on the table like everyone else.’

  ‘You wanted to go back to Murder Squad? Back to dealing with all that shit?’

  ‘It’s what I do,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could manage in a dank cellar surrounded by hoods. I didn’t tell him I’ve always believed either everyone has a right to justice, to a final peace, or no one does. Chinara always used to tell me it was my Achilles heel.

  ‘We handle the import, the distribution, the export. It’s a Circle of Brothers operation, and there wouldn’t have been room for newcomers, not even ones with an office in the White House, all fancy wood panelling and a view over Panfilov Park.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘So who was he buying from, and how was he going to move it?’

  ‘Above my need-to-know level,’ I said.

  At a nod from his boss, Zakir stood and walked towards us, cracking his knuckles.

  ‘I’m not sure the inspector is being entirely open with us,’ Aliyev said. ‘You may have to give him a little encouragement.’

  Chapter 15

  The open-handed slap Zakir gave me could have been heard in Kazakhstan. I used my tongue to check for loose or missing teeth, found everything more or less intact, shook the stars out of my eyes.

  ‘Nothing more you want to tell me?’

  I carried on shaking my head.

  Zakir clenched a boulder-sized fist in front of my face, but Aliyev held up a restraining hand. I knew it was time for me to talk.

  ‘You make a good living keeping heroin out of Kyrgyzstan,’ I said, ‘and the authorities turn enough of a blind eye for you to make a fortune from the Russkies. I dare say a few som changes hands in the process as well. But so far, you’ve seen yourselves as working to keep the country clean.’

  Aliyev shrugged. ‘I’ve never thought of myself as an influence for good, but if people choose to think that and let me make money, why should I disagree?’

  ‘Tynaliev wanted in on the operation, a chance to suck on the Russian tit. He knew he couldn’t take any of your slice, not without blood. But when your only child has been murdered, your mistresses cost a fortune and your wife only contacts you when the credit cards are due, why not take a chance?’

  ‘I’m all for entrepreneurship. But I have very sensitive feet; my toes don’t like being trodden on.’

  ‘The way Russia is now, you could expand your market several times over. All that stops you is getting supplies into the country, right?’

  ‘The Russians are getting more prosperous, or poorer,’ he agreed. ‘Either way, we can shift the powder.’

  ‘Tynaliev wanted to open up the market, but without threatening you or your supplies,’ I said. We’d reached the crunch point, and both of us knew it.

  ‘How, exactly?’

  ‘Afghanistan’s not the only place in the world that grows poppies,’ I said. ‘And there’s more than one route into the Russian market. And other markets as well.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I already told you Tynaliev didn’t confide in me; I was just a useful fool as far as he was concerned.’

  I patted my pockets, brought out my cigarettes. As I lit up and felt the nicotine hit, I felt like I’d won a victory, however small.

  ‘Right now, you feed the Russian market with heroin from Afghanistan, brought into Osh and sent abroad. Because you keep the bulk of that shit out of the hands of the addicts in our country, you have a fair amount of freedom to do what you do. You control the supply so no one else splits your monopoly, right?’

  Aliyev gestured for me to continue.

  ‘Imagine if the drugs were sourced from somewhere else, brought into here. From Laos and Thailand through Myanmar. It would be a fresh source that you couldn’t control.’

  ‘Why would Tynaliev bring smack into the country? This isn’t a big market, there’s not much money, and big risks attached. A difficult supply route with the chance of getting busted all the time.’

  Aliyev sat back, shrugged.

  ‘Tynaliev was a bastard but I don’t believe he’d want to fuck over his own people like that. Remember, he’s survived two revolutions, he knows what the Kyrgyz are capable of when they finally rise up.’

  I nodded agreement. There are graves out in Ata-Beyit to testify to what happens when people reach the conclusion enough is enough, together with a lot of stolen money and backhanders safe in foreign banks, and former politicians safe in exile.

  ‘Suppose you get the Golden Triangle heroin into this country, but you don’t want to sell it here?’ I said, flicking my ash onto the floor. I could tell Aliyev saw the bigger picture.

  ‘China.’

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Ship it over the mountains to Urumchi and then filter it out. The Chinese already know the Triangle powder is better quality. And there are a lot more addicts there, with a lot more money.’

  The Chinese authorities aren’t noted for their softly-softly approach to addiction, and when it comes to suppliers, the most you can hope for is a bullet in the brain. Which makes the business much more risky, and therefore much more lucrative.

  ‘Tynaliev must know such a move would put him on a Beijing death list,’ Aliyev said. ‘Surely easier for him to just stick to robbing his own people?’

  I stubbed out my cigarette, considered lighting another, decided against it.

  ‘Not if he lays the blame for smuggling the drugs into China onto someone else,’ I said.

  ‘That someone else being?’

  ‘You.’

  Chapter 16

  We sat there in silence for several minutes. I’d baited the hook; all I had to do was see if the shark would take it or pull me into the water. The last thing I expected Aliyev to do was change the subject.

  ‘I’m afraid you still haven’t to
ld me who was responsible for the bomb at Derevyashka,’ he said, and I thought I could detect the slightest hint of uncertainty in his voice. ‘Clear that little incident up to my satisfaction, and I’ll make sure you die with the absolute minimum of pain.’

  ‘No need to be hasty,’ I said, trying to inject a note of confidence but being betrayed by a dry mouth. ‘I admit, I haven’t told you everything. Tynaliev didn’t tell me much more, but I can still put two and two together.’

  ‘Once a detective, always a detective, eh?’

  ‘You’re right, Tynaliev couldn’t have built up an organisation from scratch. You’d have wiped it into the dirt before it got too powerful to threaten you. So he had to have reached out for a partner, a potential rival to you.’

  Aliyev stared at me, his face impassive, as if I’d just passed on a truly uninteresting piece of information.

  ‘Whoever he was talking to would have been the ones that tried to kill you with the bomb in Derevyashka,’ I continued. ‘Cut off your enemy’s head straight away and you need no longer fear him. Then, while your forces try to regroup and secure a new leader, he seizes power. Getting rid of me at the same time would have been a bonus, drawing a line under past issues.’

  I sat back, pleased with my analysis.

  ‘You don’t need to be an inspector to work that out,’ he said. ‘Even an idiot could put that scenario together. You don’t have any idea who he might have decided to go into partnership with?’

  ‘The obvious answer would be an Uzbek team,’ I said, ‘trying to get in on the Russia trade, and hit out at you. After all, Osh is pretty much an Uzbek city in all but name, and that’s where the Tadjiks bring the drugs.’

  I didn’t need to explain there’s always been tension between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks, and it sometimes erupts into mob violence, leaving bodies and burnt-out houses in its wake. Stalin knew ‘divide and rule’ was the best policy for keeping a grip on somewhere as vast as the Soviet Union, so he drew the country borders to set Kyrgyz and Uzbeks at each other’s throat. Smart move, and one both sides have paid in blood and death ever since.

  Aliyev nodded but didn’t look completely convinced.

  ‘The old pakhan hated Uzbeks worse than poison. And Kazakhs, Tadjiks, Chinese and Russians, now I come to think of it. So he refused to have Uzbek partners. Me? I believe there’s more money to be made out of peace than out of war. I negotiated an agreement with the big men in Tashkent. We leave each other’s markets alone, nobody dies and everyone goes to the bank.’

  I nodded my understanding: there’s nothing profitable in killing each other when there’s a whole world out there ready to be plundered, bled dry.

  Then Aliyev almost caught me out, with one of the unexpected changes of subject in which he was clearly expert.

  ‘You’re an ex-cop, kicked out of the force, wanted on charges. Why would Tynaliev let you within a hundred kilometres of any scheme he was setting up?’

  I knew I only had a few seconds to answer, or everything was going tits-up. I pretended to look puzzled, gave Aliyev my best innocent look.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Tynaliev was going to need protection, right? From you, from whoever he was involved with if things went wrong. So he put about the story I’d been fired, told the security forces to work with me as if I were undercover. That way, his arse was covered if I put a foot wrong. And there was one other reason he chose me.’

  I paused, pointed to my cigarettes. Aliyev shook his head.

  ‘The minister might have beaten the shit out of suspects down in Sverdlovsky basement, given a few dentists some extra work, had doctors sew a few stitches. And he probably killed my old boss with his bare hands, revenge for organising the murder of his daughter Yekaterina. But he’s never had to kill someone who was about to kill him. Look them in the eye, pull the trigger first, watch the hope and the life go out of their face. And I have. There’s a world of difference in using your fists and boots on some poor sod tied to a chair in a cellar, and looking down the barrel of a Makarov.’

  Aliyev didn’t look entirely convinced, but shrugged and gestured to me to keep going.

  ‘So you were best of friends, comrades together in the crusade to get rich? So why did you shoot him?’

  I knew my life hinged on the answer. And fortunately, I was granted a little time to think of a convincing lie.

  Because that was when the hand grenade exploded in the house above us.

  Chapter 17

  The entire room shook, as if the building itself was being swept away by an avalanche. The harsh overhead lights flickered for a couple of seconds, and then we were swamped with total blackness until the emergency batteries kicked in a moment later. One of the men cried out, his voice driven by terror rather than surprise. The air was thick with dust, acrid and dry in my throat, and I could feel my eyes beginning to sting.

  Like most Kyrgyz, I’ve felt the after-shock of the earthquakes that hit our country every so often, escaping from the intolerable pressures hiding deep below the mountains. But knowing this tremor was man-made, deliberate, made it feel malevolent, its sole purpose to terrify and then obliterate.

  Shouts of confusion and fear bounced off the concrete walls, until Aliyev gestured to his men to remain silent. Whoever was standing above us had clearly come prepared; I could hear pickaxes biting into the packed earth concealing the cellar. The noise changed as steel rang upon the steel of the trapdoor entrance. The heavy bolts on the underside of the door would hold for a long time, but that wasn’t what concerned me. A high-speed drill could gnaw its way through the metal in minutes, creating holes through which gas could be pumped, either to force us to surrender, or to kill us. Knockout gas, maybe the sort that killed so many children during the school siege in Beslan, an agonising death, hands tearing at your throat, struggling not to breathe, failing, choking, dying.

  Along with his men, Aliyev was staring up at the trapdoor, its outlines obscured by the clouds of dust and dirt raining down from the ceiling. I seized the moment to pocket my phone, make my way towards the back of the cellar and the bedrooms. I knew there would be an escape route; you don’t survive long in the world of the Circle of Brothers without preparing for every eventuality. A hand on my shoulder spun me round: Aliyev.

  ‘Come with me, Inspector.’

  I let him lead the way, into the furthest of the rooms. A metal-framed bunk bed stood against the far wall, and I watched as Aliyev pulled it towards himself. A low and narrow hole broke through the concrete, barely wide enough for either of us to squirm through on our bellies. A rancid stink of damp earth and rotten wood belched out at us, but Aliyev jerked his thumb towards the hole.

  ‘Get going, we haven’t much time,’ he whispered, dropping to his hands and knees.

  ‘What about the others?’

  I knew they would be standing away from the trapdoor, waiting for it to swing open, for a tornado of bullets to spray the room.

  ‘If there’s no one here when whoever it is breaks through, they’ll know we’ve escaped. This way, just you and me, we have an advantage, and maybe even a chance.’

  He jerked his head back at the main room, shrugged.

  ‘Expendable. Cannon fodder. I can get a hundred of their sort tomorrow.’

  He must have seen the expression of disgust on my face, gave a smile that never reached his eyes.

  ‘If you want to change places with any of them, Inspector, and go down fighting . . . No? I thought not.’

  Aliyev pushed me towards the hole in the wall and I clambered through. He followed me, using a length of rope to pull the bunk beds back into place, switching on a torch he’d kept inside the entrance for when a day like this would happen. Then he kicked at a piece of wood supporting part of the ceiling, and I watched as a fall of earth blocked the entrance. No one would be joining us in our escape.

  I took the torch from his outstretched hand, directed the weak beam of light
down into the blackness. Tree roots emerged from the earth walls and ceiling, like misshapen hands waiting to clutch at us as we crawled past. I felt a familiar panic rise up in my throat, threatening to drown me: I’ve always thought the most terrible thing in the world would be to be buried alive.

  I half-cried out as something scuttled over my feet. Unbidden, impossible to ignore, I thought of vipers, rats, scorpions, all the creatures that lie hidden in the dark and the shadows, waiting to strike, to bite and tear, then to feed. Including humans.

  I forced myself to control my breathing, to not think about the weight of earth pressing down upon us. The roof of the tunnel seemed to get lower, until I could feel stones and clods of earth scraping against my back. I was still on my hands and knees, my muscles protesting against the unfamiliar strain.

  ‘How much further?’ I whispered, as if a loud voice would cause the roof to collapse and bury us.

  ‘Maybe another ten minutes until we reach the treeline,’ Aliyev said, his voice subdued, gasping between each word. I wondered if he shared my phobias, if the stink of damp earth and vegetation reminded him of death and oblivion as well.

  I pushed those thoughts away, tried to focus on our immediate future. I had no way of knowing where the tunnel would emerge, if we were crawling towards capture or something as final as a bullet in the head. I ignored the scrapes and cuts my hands were accumulating, forced myself on, counting down from a thousand, willing myself to keep going.

  It wasn’t as if I had a choice.

  Chapter 18

  I sensed rather than felt the roof begin to rise above us, even as the tunnel became an upward crawl. My face was slick with sweat, not all of it from the effort of crawling. I’d had more than enough of being trapped in dark enclosed spaces with the weight of the world above, waiting for the roof to cave in and bury me alive.