I knew that was all the information I was going to get out of her. Months, maybe years of enduring the worst that men could do to her had given her armor only violence could penetrate. I nodded, offered her drink back. She ignored the gesture, so I placed the glass on a nearby shelf and pushed my way through the crowd toward the door.
It was only as I reached the door that it opened, and a woman entered the bar. Long white-blonde hair twisted up into a French plait. A dramatic scarlet silk blouse with perhaps one button too many undone to reveal a cleavage deep enough to topple into. I’d never seen her before. But she was still the woman I recognized from a photograph I’d first seen two thousand miles and a culture away.
Natasha Sulonbekova.
Chapter 12
I stumbled as if one vodka too many had made me unsteady, brushed against her. Her glare was sharp as a switchblade, but I’ve been stabbed before, and for real.
“A thousand apologies,” I slurred, turning on what little charm I possess and my best Russian. “Please, allow me to buy you a drink to make up for my clumsiness.”
I tilted my head to one side, smiled. A friendly guy, maybe a little drunk, an easy mark perhaps. And a drink is a drink, after all. I looked around for a waitress, but one was already on her way, carrying a bottle of beer, the obligatory straw protruding in a mockery of arousal. Heineken safely in hand, Natasha deigned to nod, mutter thanks.
“You’re Kyrgyz?” I asked and was granted a second nod.
“My name is Kairat. From Bishkek. I’m over here for a trade convention. My first visit to Dubai; it’s quite a place. And you are?”
“Adelya.”
I wasn’t surprised. Most working ladies use an alias in case a punter causes problems, and knowing that a vengeful Tynaliev would be on her trail Natasha had more reason than most. That would explain the dyed hair as well. But she couldn’t conceal the too-large breasts or the intelligence in her eyes.
“A beautiful name for a truly beautiful lady. Please, give me the honor of joining me for a few moments. Perhaps for dinner later this evening? Unless you’re meeting someone?”
I made a show of looking at her right hand; no ring on her wedding finger, so I was merely being a gentleman, rather than trying to muscle in on some other man’s property.
Natasha gave me a smile that showed me just how easily she’d hooked the Minister for State Security. She linked her free arm in mine, pulling it close so that I could feel the heavy presence of her breast against me, a weight that went straight to my groin. She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, and I gazed into her eyes and realized just how skilled she was at the ancient hunt, the lure and then the coup de grace.
“I wouldn’t normally come into a bar like this, you understand,” she said. “Such low-class people. But I lent a lady who comes here quite a lot of money, and I wanted to collect it tonight.”
She looked over my shoulder and theatrically scanned the room before pulling a disappointed face.
“She doesn’t seem to be here,” she said, “and I really wanted my money today.”
She glanced at me from under eyelashes so heavily mascaraed I was surprised she could keep her eyes open.
“A thousand dollars,” she said in a wistful voice. “It’s a lot of money. I need it to send home to my mother. She’s not well, needs an operation. On her leg.”
If every working girl I’ve talked to actually was paying for medical treatment, surgeons would work round the clock—when they weren’t counting their millions. But it’s a great line. Who’s going to tell a woman they’re hoping to bed that she’s lying?
“It is a lot,” I said, steering her toward the exit before the girl I’d questioned came over and betrayed me as asking after her. “But I’d love to help if I can.”
Her gesture of I couldn’t possibly was simply for appearances’ sake. My smile was, if anything, even less honest.
“I’m in town for a few days; you can always pay me back tomorrow when you get the money from your friend. And besides, it gives me the pleasure of seeing you again. Now, where do you suggest for dinner?”
Natasha had enough style to wait until we were in the back seat of a taxi before suggesting a change of venue. After all, if we were quick, she could get back to the bar before it closed and hook another fish.
“Kairat, you’re very sweet to offer to help me, and I’d feel terribly guilty if you spent so much money on dinner as well. And I’m really not hungry.”
She let her hand rest on my thigh, her nails etching an erotic tattoo into my skin. Her perfume was overpowering, the scarlet slash of her mouth hypnotic as she spoke, her eyes wide and never leaving my face.
“What do you have in mind?” I said.
Natasha pouted so prettily I wondered if we were in a scene from a 1950s’ Soviet romantic comedy. We were both acting a part, and both knew it, with only a matter of a few frames and some passionate glances before we kissed.
“Perhaps you’d like to come to my apartment for coffee or a drink? My flatmate’s away at the moment, visiting her mother in Kiev, so we won’t be disturbed.”
The way she looked at me as she spoke made me aware of the sweat on my skin, the hair on my arms suddenly erect. I patted her hand, the flesh cool and tender under mine. I felt as if I were stroking some wild creature, one that could turn and bite at any moment, and probably would.
We pulled up outside one of the seven-story apartment blocks that litter that part of Dubai, and the driver stopped the meter.
“Fifteen dirhams.”
I gave him thirty, half for the ride and half as a tip; you never know when you might need a helpful and discreet taxi driver. He gave me the merest hint of a wink as he unlocked the door; this was obviously the kind of journey he made several times a night. I helped Natasha out of the taxi, noticing the way the slit in her skirt revealed her slim thighs. The air felt greasy, soiled, smearing my hands and face with something thicker than sweat.
As the taxi drove off, Natasha led me toward the front door of her building. A security guard paid us no attention as we walked toward the lifts, concentrating instead on his mobile phone. Like the taxi driver, he probably saw several such scenes every evening. Natasha’s heels beat a Morse code of desire on the marble floor, a message for which I didn’t need a translator.
Natasha stood closer to me than the lift necessitated, and her perfume seemed headier than ever, almost like a drug. We turned left out of the lift and down the sort of corridor you don’t find in Bishkek apartment blocks: tiled, with windows facing an inner garden courtyard. Natasha’s door was at the far end, and she fumbled in her bag for the key. I wondered if there would be an irate “husband” inside, ready to proclaim his outrage, an outrage that could only be calmed by money, but the apartment felt deserted.
Natasha turned on a couple of side lights on low tables on either side of a long leather sofa. Set to one side, near floor-to-ceiling balcony doors, a small table with matching chairs was the only other furniture in the room. The apartment had all the romantic atmosphere and lived-in charm of a furniture showroom during a going-out-of-business sale.
Natasha dumped her handbag on the table and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Another vodka, darling?” she called out. “You were drinking vodka? I couldn’t smell anything on your breath.”
“Just some juice, thanks, if you have any.”
She came back into the room, carrying two glasses.
“Mango juice. Very refreshing.”
Another button on her blouse had mysteriously come undone, and she saw me looking.
“Let’s sit down and get to know each other,” she said in the kind of voice that makes a man’s throat tighten. I knew it wasn’t the only effect she was hoping for.
Once we were sitting down, she was all business.
“Let’s get your donation out of the way first, shall we? Just to avoid any misunderstandings?”
She placed her hand on my shoulder, slid it down my
back toward my waist, nails light as feathers, sharp as blades. And it was then she felt the cold and unmistakable shape of the Makarov.
I looked over at her, smiled, made sure she realized she was in a whole new realm of trouble.
“OK, Natasha,” I said, “let’s cut the shit.”
Chapter 13
The look of shock on her face was quickly washed away by comprehension. Whatever else Natasha Sulonbekova might have been, she wasn’t stupid.
“You’ve been sent here by Mikhail, I suppose,” she said, taking cigarettes out of her bag. Her hands trembled slightly, so I did the honors with my lighter.
“By the minister, yes,” I said. “And it’s not a job I volunteered for, believe me.”
“What’s your plan? ‘Mysterious suicide of Asian woman in luxury apartment’?”
I looked around the room. No designer furniture, no stylish ornaments or pictures, nothing to show anyone had ever lived here. I’m no expert, but this wasn’t what I’d call luxury.
“Tynaliev doesn’t want you dead. Or if he does, he knows I wouldn’t carry out the wet work.”
Wet work; it’s a phrase from the good old Soviet days cleverly designed to make you realize you’re nothing more than a mass of blood and meat held together in a fragile bag of skin. An unimportant mess to be cleaned up and hosed away.
She took a long drag, held the smoke deep, sent bluish gusts down her nostrils. The elegance with which she did it reminded me of a wild horse in winter on the jailoo high plains between Bishkek and Osh. The same sense of living in the moment, of apprehension, fear, exhilaration.
“I’m sure he wants his memory stick back,” she said, looked contemptuous. “Even more important to Mikhail than the stick between his legs. Twig, more like.”
This was the sort of talk that might have earned her a bullet at some unspecified time in the future, but whatever else she was, Natasha wasn’t a coward.
“There’s a reason they call them state secrets,” I said. “Because they’re not meant for prying eyes.”
“Is that what he told you? That I’d stolen state papers? And you believed him?” The incredulity in her voice was matched only by contempt that anyone could be so gullible.
I didn’t reply; I learned a long time ago that silence drags the truth out of most people.
“They’re secret all right. But his secrets, not the government’s.”
I couldn’t say that I was surprised by the revelation and nodded for her to go on.
She took another long breath, stubbed out the cigarette. I noticed the bright red lipstick smeared on the butt.
Natasha took a long drink before handing me the second glass. I had to admire her poise. I picked up the glass, drank, tasted the sweetness of the juice.
“A teetotal assassin?”
“A teetotal policeman. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t add that sometimes you could hold the difference up to the light and not even realize it existed, like cobwebs in moonlight. Silence hung like suspicion in the air, brutal and intoxicating as her perfume. The minutes lasted for decades, her eyes never leaving mine. I felt as if my chest was being skewered by hot pokers.
“It’s money?”
“Well, it’s not going to be a signed first edition of Das Kapital, is it?”
Natasha’s laugh gave me a hint of what she’d be like in bed. I wondered if I was blushing, pushed the thought of her naked as far away from my mind as I could.
“Our incorruptible Minister of State Security? The man before whom all criminals tremble? He’s hidden ten million dollars in offshore accounts, and he didn’t accumulate that through being frugal, buying cheap toilet paper and making a few wise investments.”
I swallowed hard, the saliva in my mouth suddenly thick and sour with bile. I didn’t want to know about any of this stuff. I’m good at catching murderers, not corrupt politicians. I could already feel the cross hairs of one of Tynaliev’s paid thugs burning my forehead.
“And you’ve stolen this alleged ten million dollars?” I asked.
Natasha gave another of her pretty little pouts, but I was more interested in preserving my balls than in using them.
“Actually, I haven’t,” she said. “More like I’ve been responsible for him misplacing them. If you know what I mean.”
“She knew I didn’t—another move to put me on the defensive. And if she was a queen, then I knew who was king. And what he could do to a pawn like me.”
When I spoke, my voice sounded like I’d dumped my throat in a blender filled with pebbles. Fear will do that to you.
“You want a proper drink? Vodka?”
“No. I told you, I don’t drink.”
I didn’t tell her that vodka had given me the courage to kill my wife as she lay dying of cancer. Only one woman knew the truth, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see Saltanat again.
I drank down the rest of the ice-cold mango juice, sat back, waiting to hear her story, her confession. But I had a curious sense that rather than doing the questioning, I was the one being interrogated.
The ceiling lights were harsh, unforgiving, like the lights in the basement at Sverdlovsky station. The brightness pressed into my eyes like knuckles. My heart was racing, dull percussion hammering in my chest. The room seemed to sway, as if a minor earth tremor was taking place on a nearby continent. I screwed up my eyes, blinked, discovered I couldn’t open them again. Too much effort, too much like staring out into darkness.
Chapter 14
The last time I’d woken with such an all-consuming tornado of a headache was after being kicked in the head as a young officer during the new year celebrations in Bishkek’s Ala-Too Square. The fireworks cascading up into the sky that night were matched by those currently racing behind my eyeballs. Whatever had happened to me hadn’t pulled any punches.
I looked around to try to work out where I was: a small bedroom, curtains drawn, with me lying on my back on the bed. A clock on the wall sounded a deafening drumbeat that matched the pulse of my blood. I tried to sit up, felt the tug at my arm that stopped me. Police-issue handcuffs, one end around my wrist, the other fastened to the metal bed frame. They appeared to be the only thing I was wearing. Maybe Natasha catered for a kinkier clientele than I’d realized.
Natasha came into the room, sat down on the edge of the bed just out of kicking range. I tried not to look too worried at the sight of my gun in her hand.
“Rohypnol? In the mango juice, I suppose.”
My voice came out as a harsh croak. My mouth was dry and crusted with spit.
“A girl has to be prepared for any eventuality, wouldn’t you agree, Inspector?”
I shrugged, regretted it as the earthquake in my head started up again.
“I found your passport, made a couple of calls back home. It was easy to find out who you are. Useful too. Mikhail is being sensible, using a cop to find me rather than some half-witted hit man.”
“So now you know I’m not here to kill you, how about losing the handcuffs.”
“All in good time. You know, a lot of people pay very good money to be tied up in my bed. And speaking of money, I didn’t empty your wallet. I may be many things, but I’m not a thief.”
Being unable to raise my hand, I raised an eyebrow instead.
“That’s not what my boss says.”
Natasha gave me a look that said, You have no idea what you’re talking about.
“What have I stolen from Mikhail? Nothing but a few code numbers. You can’t arrest me—you’ve got no jurisdiction here. And I can’t imagine you want to talk to the Dubai police, particularly not when you’re in possession of a firearm. You can’t put me on trial in Bishkek because that would reveal how much Mikhail has salted away. And best of all, you can’t kill me because then he loses everything.”
It’s always hard to argue with a woman, especially if she’s holding a Makarov. I made a pathetic attempt at a reassuring smile and rattled the handcuffs against the bed frame.
“Why don’t we discuss this like grown-ups? Over coffee and aspirin next door?”
Natasha thought it over, gave a reluctant nod, fished the key out of her pocket, threw it to me. I caught it with my free hand, fumbled with the lock. Her eyes never left my face.
Natasha stood up and moved toward the door as I swung my legs off the mattress. I felt my muscles pull tight as I started to stand, heard my bones creak, my joints protest. I had to put my hand against the wall to steady myself, and the beating in my skull started a fresh rhythm, frantic, almost crazed. I knew I was in no shape to rush Natasha, get the gun from her, turn the tables. And besides, I wanted to know what exactly was going on.
I lurched into the other room, stumbled across the floor, flopped down on the ugly leather sofa.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a difficult guest,” I said, my eyes squinting at the glare from the balcony, “but I really need some water.”
“Wait there,” she said, went into the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open, the gurgle of bottled water, the clatter of ice. She placed the glass just out of my reach, sat down on a chair, held the gun on me. A cautious woman. I picked up the glass, sniffed the contents, looked over at her.
“Just water.”
“I should trust you?”
Natasha answered with a shrug, but the gun never left my face.
I took a sip, tasted nothing unusual, drained the glass, the cold stabbing at the backs of my eyes. My headache didn’t decide to go on holiday, but at least my tongue was no longer glued to my teeth.
“Tell me about Tynaliev’s memory stick.”
I could see the distrust in Natasha’s eyes, didn’t blame her. Dealing with the Minister for State Security made everyone cautious. Some people it made dead.
“Maybe I can broker some kind of deal between the two of you,” I said. “Get everyone out of this mess without too much blood.” I paused, trying to work out what was happening behind those impenetrable eyes, black opals flashing splinters of light.
A Summer Revenge Page 5
