Spring Betrayal

by Tom Callaghan

  These were Uighur knives.

  Chapter 46

  For those who don’t know, Uighur blades are the Central Asian knife equivalent of the Japanese Samurai sword, the ultimate combination of precision steel with age-old craftsmanship. They say if you hold a Uighur knife up in the air and let the wind blow a silk scarf across the blade, the silk falls into two pieces. If it doesn’t, the knife is broken up and the long process of manufacture begins again.

  I don’t know if there’s any truth to the story, never having had a silk scarf to try it out, but they’re fearsome weapons all the same.

  The Uighurs live on the other side of the Torugart Pass which leads from Kyrgyzstan to China, and knife-making is one of their proudest traditions, one that goes back for centuries. Every Uighur carries at least one knife, to use for everything from halal slaughter to preparing fruit and vegetables. The craft is usually handed down from father to son, and the Uighur take great pride in the beauty of their knives, as well as their practicality, with handles decorated with inlays of shell, bone, and semi-precious stones. But mine were different, very different.

  Some years ago, I’d helped out an elderly Uighur man. He’d lived for years in a tiny apartment in one of the older, more decrepit blocks in Alamedin, but the landlord was threatening to throw him out. A couple of heavies tried to persuade the Uighur to seek new lodgings. One of them lost a thumb and index finger when he discovered just how sharp the Uighurs make their knives.

  He returned the next day, this time with a Makarov, presumably having practiced with his other trigger finger. I took his gun away from him, and broke his remaining index finger in all three bones while doing so. I didn’t feel bad about it: he wasn’t planning on typing his memoirs.

  The old man was grateful, said so in broken Kyrgyz. I was puzzled when he took hold of my hands, judging the length of my fingers, the muscles in my palms, the flexibility of my wrists.

  Six months later, the old man appeared at Sverdlovsky station, and with a great deal of broken-toothed smiling pushed a thin package into the inside pocket of my jacket. I started to reach for it, but he looked worried and shook his head, his gold teeth catching the light. Our little secret.

  Once he’d left, I went back to my office, opened the package. Two knives, but not traditional decorated Uighur knives. These were brutal-looking unornamented throwing knives, handle-heavy, obviously handmade. They were made for fighting, for killing, nothing else. They fit perfectly in my palm, and I understood why the old man had taken so much time inspecting my hands. I took one, weighed it, threw it at my office door. The thud as it hit could have been heard in the street, and the quiver it made as it spun through the air set my teeth on edge.

  I bought a couple of dartboards, glued them together, fastened them to the back of the bedroom door, practiced my knife-throwing routine until I got pretty good, at least from about eight feet away. At first, Chinara would ask when I was going to run away to join the circus, but that joke got old very quickly. Then she started to complain about the noise, and why didn’t I get a quieter hobby.

  I said I’d get rid of the knives. Which I did, after a fashion, stashing them away in their hiding place, hoping I wouldn’t ever need them.

  If only life were that peaceful. But it rarely is.

  I used one knife to cut through the remaining restraint, and stretched as best I could in the confined space, while the car moved forward toward what promised to be the end of my life. I found a roll of duct tape and strapped one of the knives against my back, under my shirt, and held the other ready for a forward throw. A lot of the skill lies in the wrist, the sudden snap and release that triggers the blade forward. I’d practiced long enough on the dartboard, but never on a person. I wasn’t worried I might freeze when the time came to throw; self-preservation does away with all that nonsense. I was only afraid I might miss. Of course, once you’ve thrown your knife, you’ve effectively disarmed yourself, so I clutched the tire iron with my other hand. The blood from my thumb made it slippery and difficult to grip, but it was better than getting out of the car trunk with nothing more deadly than a smile.

  Squatting in the dark, waiting to kill or be killed, memories reeled past me, as if to remind me of the times I felt immortal, when the world was mine. Pulling Chinara toward me for a long kiss in the cold waters of Lake Issyk-Kul, dazzled by light reflected from the mountain snow. Joy that never seemed to end, pain that never seemed to stop. The livid scar that commemorated Chinara’s cancer. The corpses that showed how bottles and blades and bullets can drain the life out of anyone. And the taste of fear in my mouth, sour like cheap wine and copper wire.

  Then the car turned, slowed, the clang of gates closing behind us.

  Time to die seemed the most likely option. I would have liked more years, children to scold, grandchildren to pamper. But we all get what’s coming to us, in my case, sooner rather than later.

  I guessed we were back at Graves’s compound. I held my breath, waited for the trunk to open, hoping I’d catch someone off guard, if only for a few seconds.

  With luck, it might even be Kurmanalieva herself, and I could sort out Saltanat’s problem with her there and then. The catch clicked, then daylight poured in.

  To his credit, the thug who peered down at me had quick reflexes. He was almost fast enough to step back and shout that I’d somehow got free. But I was faster. I felt as if I were moving in slow motion, with all the time in the world to take aim, register the surprise in his eyes, watch his mouth open to cry out. The knife left my hand with the same snap of the wrist I’d practiced so often. Sunlight caught the blade, like a sudden flash of summer lightning, moving with the effortless grace of an eagle swooping on its prey.

  The lightning turned scarlet as the blade hit the man’s neck, just below his left ear. Even as the first arterial spray jetted a thin stream into the air, I was pushing myself forward, feet on the trunk’s rim. The man’s hands grappled with the blade, as if pulling it out would somehow stop the pain, darkness already spilling into his eyes. I snatched the handle, twisting and pulling sideways, and with my other hand brought the tire lever down between his eyes.

  His blood splashed warm and sticky down my face. I was in a moment that lasted for hours, now bringing the tire lever down on the hand holding a gun glimpsed in the corner of my eye. Bones splintered, the impact jarred my arm, and as if from miles away, I heard a scream of anger, realized it was mine.

  And then everything snapped back to the present, as I felt the unmistakable bite of a gun barrel pushed into the back of my head.

  “That’s quite enough, Inspector,” a woman’s voice said, harsh and brutal as a raven’s cry. “I’ve no wish to kill you. Yet.”

  I paused, getting my breath back, feeling adrenaline rush through me. I dropped the knife and the tire lever. They lay beside the corpse of the man they’d just killed, almost as if I’d had nothing to do with his death. A few feet away, another man clutched at his shattered hand, bent double, face gray with pain and shock. After the trunk, the air tasted fresh, vital. I wondered how long I’d be around to savor it.

  “You have the advantage of me,” I said, in my best tough Murder Squad voice, feeling my knees tremble as my heart slowed.

  “I do,” she said, and the gun pressed harder against my skull. “And I intend to keep it that way.”

  “Albina Kurmanalieva,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “You’ve been busy, you and that bitch,” she said. “But she was never stupid, that one. You? Like all men, the merest sniff of pizda and you lose what brains your mother gave you.”

  I shrugged, very slowly, so as not to give her the opportunity to pull the trigger.

  “So where do we go from here?” I asked. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. The blood smearing my face felt like a mask I’d assumed as a disguise, only to discover I couldn’t peel it off. The stink of too-strong perfume was cloying, and I could taste bile rising in my throat. When she spoke, it was all I could d
o to stand still and not vomit.

  “I’m sure you’re an ambitious man,” she murmured, her voice making my flesh crawl. “I thought we might make a movie star of you, Inspector.”

  Chapter 47

  I’ve spent a lot of my working life in cellars, one way or another, and the experience has never been a good one. All too often, a cellar has seemed like a prelude to being permanently underground. I’ve been beaten, tortured, threatened with death in cellars. I’ve watched people die, helped them die. I’ve stood by in basement interrogation rooms as a burly ment beats a confession out of a suspect. Cellars are not my favorite places. But as somewhere to die, they’re almost unbeatable.

  Nothing looked to have changed in the cellar since Saltanat and I broke into the house what seemed like years ago. No fresh bloodstains on the floor, the hooks and knives still in their racks, ropes and chains coiled on shelves. Not that I could see much, since leather straps held my head, wrists and ankles securely in place against a semi-upright wooden table that stank of dried blood.

  I took comfort in the thought that no one else had stared into the unwinking eye of the camera since we’d started our hunt. A small boy kicking his football against a wall with a goalmouth chalked on it, a little girl singing lullabies to her favorite doll; they were safe, if only for the moment. If I was the price to be paid for their safety, that goes with the territory every policeman signs up for, the day they pin on their badge and strap on their gun.

  I was under no illusions about my bravery. I’d seen too many people broken in cellars to believe that. The toughest guys loosen their tongues if you push a needle under their fingernails or a lit cigarette against their eyes. The Circle of Brothers might take an oath of silence, but where are your brothers when you watch someone pouring a cup of hot oil into a funnel or whetting the edge of a kitchen knife? It takes so little to make a man talk, sometimes just the thought of the pain to come is enough.

  “I apologize, Inspector, for not having anywhere more congenial to chat with you,” Kurmanalieva said, her voice hoarse and menacing. She came into my line of view, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail, her suit immaculate. When you have something very special to sell to collectors, you can afford to buy the very best for yourself.

  “I thought this was one of your favorite places, Albina,” I said, using her given name to show my contempt. “The only place in the world where you can reveal your inner nature.”

  Kurmanalieva smiled. This close to her, I saw the generous lipstick did little to hide thin, bloodless lips. Her skin looked stretched, waxy. I wondered if it was vanity that had inspired the plastic surgery, the nips and tucks, or simply to avoid being captured in the field. Her face was that of a woman in her early thirties, I guessed, but her hands were old, compact and brutal, veins like blue strings under the skin. Early forties? It didn’t really seem to matter. I didn’t think she would want to fuck me before killing me.

  “I want you to know, Inspector, I don’t enjoy the things I’m about to do to you. Not like some of my colleagues. They sometimes get carried away in their enthusiasm, with tragic consequences. Tragic for the individual, of course, but also tragic because one may not get all the information required. Then there’s all the mess and fuss involved in disposal.”

  She reached forward and drew a fingernail across my forehead, pausing to hold it against my right eye, its touch as light as a spider’s web.

  “Me, I know exactly what I’m doing. When to start. When to stop. When to let someone consider the error of their ways in trying to be brave.”

  She pressed her fingernail ever so slightly harder, and I could feel the edge hard against my eyeball. Three millimeters more and she would blind me. Then, almost coquettishly, she pulled her hand back.

  “And that, Inspector, is why I am the best. Unfortunately for you.”

  She turned and strode out of my sight. I heard the creak of a chair, the rasp of a match, the quick breath in and the satisfied exhale.

  “It’s a cliché that people enjoy a cigarette after sex, don’t you think? Personally, I like to smoke before I get down and dirty, before I set to. It’s the ritual, you see. And control. Smoke and fire and death, all in that one little white tube of passion. You’ve heard people say they’d die for a cigarette? Sometimes I make it come true.”

  I sighed, as if I’d heard it all before.

  “Just what is it you want, Albina?” I asked.

  “Well, I’d appreciate knowing where I can put my hands on Ms. Umarova, for a start.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” I said, glad Saltanat and I hadn’t arranged to meet at the apartment. “And I don’t see how finding her helps you, to be honest. There’s too much information out there now, about you, about Graves.”

  She simply laughed.

  “You’d be surprised at how little people hear when you stuff their ears with som, Inspector. Everyone looks the other way for the right price.”

  “You’re asking me to betray her?”

  “I’m asking you to save yourself a lot of unnecessary anguish. If she were here now, strapped next to you, maybe even holding your hand in some sickly sentimental pact, whose eye would you rather I took out? Hers or yours?”

  I was silent. Kurmanalieva stood in front of me, blew a cloud of smoke into my face, and smiled. But it was more like a grimace than a smile, making her look both human and insane.

  “I rest my case, Inspector,” she said, inspecting the glowing tip of her cigarette as if solving a puzzle, before stubbing it out on my left hand, the one with the scar tissue I’d acquired during the Tynaliev affair. A lot of the nerves in my hand had been damaged and the scars were thick enough to lessen the pain, but it was still enough to make me cry out.

  Kurmanalieva threw the butt onto the floor, grinding it out with her shoe. Elegant scarlet stilettos, I noticed. If I was going to be tortured, it might as well be done with style. She reached up again toward my face, my eye, and smiled as I flinched. She patted my cheek, and her fingernail scratched against the stubble on my jaw. I felt beads of sweat slide down my back.

  “Back in the good old days of the USSR,” she said, “I was seconded to the Lubyanka in Moscow for two years. The Kremlin was keen to ensure its distant territories stayed loyal, or at least quiet. So it made sense to have some Central Asians batting for the team.”

  As she spoke, she walked toward the shelves with the knives, hooks, and whips, testing the point of a boning knife with her fingertip, running her thumb against the edge of a narrow blade, choosing how to inflict pain. She hesitated, selected a pair of pliers, old and rusted.

  “I imagine you’re thinking ‘Traitor,’ or some such nonsense,” she said, her back toward me, so I was unable to read her expression. “But times were different. The Russians offered stability, peace. Casualties? There always are. But the people who bleat about democracy are always the ones with a passport and money for a ticket out.”

  She turned back toward me, stood in front of me, her eyes drilling into mine.

  “No comment, Inspector?” she asked. “You spent a few years in an orphanage, you know how turbulent things were then.”

  I said nothing, unwilling to provoke her, to risk further pain.

  “Did you know the Lubyanka was originally the headquarters of an insurance company?”

  She laughed, that horrible false laugh again, charming as a scar.

  “If you think about it, in one way, that’s what it stayed as. Insurance for the elite, for the country.”

  She shrugged, resumed pacing around the room.

  “I learned the virtues of patience. Rush in too quickly with the pliers or the electricity and you either kill your subject or they defy you, tell you nothing. The way I work, you’ll tell me everything, I’ll be a mother confessor to you. Your words spilling out, tripping over your tongue, unstoppable.”

  I remained silent, shut my eyes, wished I could do the same for my ears. The awful thing was I knew she was right. I’d talk, sooner o
r later. Her voice continued, cajoling, wanting me to see her point of view.

  “Normally, I’d take my time. Mix a little pain with a lot of sympathy and understanding. I don’t want to do this, any more than you want me to. But what choice do you give me?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, focusing on the pain rather than her hypnotic voice. A standard anti-interrogation technique, only a matter of time before I broke. Hours, days, weeks; none of it matters if you’re dreading the next few minutes.

  “As I recall, you didn’t say anything the last time we met. Or don’t you remember?”

  I remembered her perfume, the scent of dying lilies, the curve of her breasts, the cruelty in her eyes. The woman in the orphanage. I’d sensed her malevolence even then.

  Without warning, Kurmanalieva knelt down and took hold of my foot. I tried to pull away, but the leather straps held me firmly in place.

  “Ticklish?” she asked, drawing her fingernail lightly across the sole of my foot. She looked up at me, winked, as if we were in some conspiracy together.

  I watched as she held up the pliers.

  “Haven’t used these for a while,” she said brightly, snapping the jaws open and closed, open and closed. “I do hope I haven’t lost the knack.”

  She placed the pliers against my little toe, and squeezed, just hard enough for me to feel the cold steel.

  “Start off small, that’s always been my motto,” she said, cheerful, as if giving a toast at a birthday celebration. “The trick is not to damage the root bed; that way, your toenail grows back. Eventually. Of course, there’s a certain amount of initial discomfort, live and learn, eh?”

  The last thing I wanted was a lesson in anatomy, but I could only listen.

  “The nail plate, the bit you trim, that’s just dead, compacted cells, the stuff that rhino horns are made of. But underneath, at the back, that’s the matrix, the living tissue that grows the nail. Very sensitive.”