The Adversary

by Michael Walters

  She nodded as though carefully absorbing this information. “What about a threat of physical violence?” she said. “Would you consider that serious?”

  “We might,” he said. “It would depend on the circumstances.”

  She nodded again. “What if the purpose of the threat was to intimidate a member of the judiciary?”

  “A member of the judiciary?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A judge. A judge who generally deals with major criminal trials. That is, what you might call ‘serious crimes.’” She stared fixedly at Sangajav, and it was impossible to be sure whether she was being ironic.

  “I think that might count,” Sangajav said. “If that were the case.”

  “It’s the case,” she said, slowly. “I’m a judge. And I’ve been threatened. It may just be nonsense. But it may not.”

  Sangajav still wasn’t entirely sure about her sanity. But if what she was saying was true, then it probably merited taking seriously. The Chief probably wouldn’t thank him if he turned away a senior judge from the door. And, at the very least, it would give him a legitimate reason to fob her off on to someone more senior. “I think I probably need to get someone to talk to you,” he said at last.

  She paused, as if some thought had struck her. “You said the Serious Crimes Team was here? It’s just that I think I know the Chief.”

  “Doripalam?”

  There had been a look in her eye which Sangajav—experienced as he was in the appraisal of women—couldn’t quite read. But as he spoke, the look vanished with the suddenness of a light being extinguished. “Doripalam?” she said. “No, I don’t know him. I was thinking of someone else.”

  “Perhaps his predecessor,” Sangajav said, intrigued despite himself. “Doripalam’s not been in the job all that long. His predecessor was a man called Nergui.”

  The same look, or something very close to it, reappeared in her expression. “Nergui,” she said. “Yes. It was Nergui I knew.” She hesitated. “We had some dealings—oh, years ago. He has—moved on?” She asked the last question hesitantly, as though concerned about the possible nature of Sangajav’s response.

  “Promoted,” Sangajav said, bluntly. “To the Ministry of Security.”

  She nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “Though hardly surprising, I guess. I’m sorry not to have been able to meet him, though.”

  Sangajav had begun to see a way in which he might extricate himself from this increasingly insane conversation. She had expressed a desire to see Nergui, and that was good enough for Sangajav. “Well, actually, you probably can,” he said. “He’s here at the moment, as it happens, carrying out some assignment.” Like most of the team, Sangajav was as yet unclear precisely why it was that Nergui had reappeared, though experience suggested that the impact of his return was unlikely to be straightforward or comfortable. “I can try to track him down for you, if you like.”

  She smiled fully for the first time, and Sangajav was forced to revise his original judgment. She was indeed a striking woman, but she was also, he realized, actually very beautiful.

  “I would like that,” she said. “I would like that very much.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “I still don’t understand what exactly it is you’re up to, Nergui. But I do know that I don’t feel very comfortable about it.”

  They were sitting in Nergui’s temporary office. It was much smaller than Doripalam’s, tucked away somewhere at the end of the corridor. When he had first received the request from the Ministry to provide some temporary accommodation for Nergui, Doripalam had been tempted to find him a broom cupboard, if only on the accurate grounds that they were already severely pressed for space. In the end, by reorganizing some of the administrative staff, they had managed to vacate this room, which was an improvement on the proposed broom cupboard in that it at least had a window. In fact, it had a window which, unlike those in Doripalam’s office, actually had a partial view, sandwiched between two adjoining office buildings, out over Sukh Bataar Square.

  Doripalam was currently standing staring out at this view, trying to avoid catching Nergui’s eye. He was getting better at standing up to him. At least now he felt comfortable saying what he thought. But he still felt faintly patronized, as though Nergui were patiently tolerating his comments rather than paying them any serious attention.

  “I’ve explained,” Nergui said. “I’m conducting the inquiry as instituted by the Minister. You know that we have to go through this.”

  Doripalam was watching the traffic swirling slowly around the square in the chilly morning sunshine. There was the usual procession of battered old Soviet cars and buses, belching thick fumes. The square was thick with clouds of pigeons, scattering for breadcrumbs thrown by a small group of school children passing on the far side. It was still early, and there were relatively few pedestrians other than a few suited figures heading into the government and commercial offices in the streets around the square. “I know I have to go through it,” he said. “But I’m still not clear why you have to.”

  Nergui shrugged. “I thought we’d been through this,” he said. “I know the team well. I understand all the pressures you have to face. I’ve no axes to grind—”

  Doripalam turned, shaking his head fiercely. “No axes to grind? Come off it, Nergui, this is your show from start to finish. It’s nothing to do with the Minister, except that his signature has somehow appeared on the bottom of the terms of reference. What was it he thought he was signing?”

  Nergui smiled. He was, as always, leaning back in his chair, his ankles resting on the corner of the desk. How did he always manage to look so relaxed these days? Perhaps after all the life of a pen pusher had turned out to suit him. “I think you’re getting much too cynical,” he said. “It must be the job that’s getting to you.”

  Doripalam sat himself slowly down in the chair opposite Nergui, trying to control his exasperation. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me again, very slowly, what it is you’re trying to do here.”

  “It’s really very simple,” Nergui said. “We have had something of a political embarrassment. We know it wasn’t your fault, and I know exactly the problems that you’ve been facing. They were problems I faced when I was in the role, and I never succeeded in resolving them. We’ve both made some progress, but we both know there’s a long way to go.”

  “You mean corruption?”

  Nergui nodded. “We all know that the civilian police was made up initially of every deadbeat that they wanted to kick out of the militia. We took people who could barely string a sentence together and then stuck them in positions of real power. And then we seemed surprised when that power became corrupted almost overnight.”

  “There are some decent people in the team,” Doripalam said.

  “I’m not denying it,” Nergui said. “Especially among those we recruited later—as the present company amply demonstrates—though even there we were hampered by the poor wages we could offer. Who wants to come risk their life in the police force when you can earn twice as much working in a shop?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  Nergui nodded. “I suppose you did. And one day I’ll have to make a serious attempt to find out why.” He smiled faintly. “But you’re the exception, along with one or two others. There’s a hell of a lot of them out there who really just aren’t up to it. The worst ones are corrupt—not seriously so, for the most part, but taking the odd quiet backhander just to turn a blind eye. The ones who aren’t corrupt are just incompetent—they don’t understand what the job is or why it matters. They don’t follow the procedures. They lose us virtually every case we manage to get to court. And the few who aren’t corrupt or inept are just lazy. They can’t be bothered with the job.”

  “That doesn’t say a lot for my leadership.”

  “Oh, come off it, you’ve only been in the job five minutes, and I know you’ve made some real progress. How long was I in the job? What does it say about my leadership?”

  Doripalam knew
better than to try to answer that one. “Okay, so where does that get us?”

  “It gets us to a point where maybe we have an opportunity to begin to put things right.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Doripalam, when I was in the job, I pushed and pushed for more resources to get this place sorted out. I managed to get some, but never anything like enough. I imagine you’ve been doing the same, and I’ve certainly tried to use whatever influence I’ve got to support you.”

  “Well, I’m sure I’m very grateful,” Doripalam said. He intended to sound ironic, but was conscious that he merely ended up sounding petulant.

  “But no-one’s interested. There’s a flurry of excitement when something really serious happens—like our murders last year—but that kind of thing is generally too embarrassing so all they want to do is sweep it under the carpet.”

  “As they did very effectively in that case, as I recall.”

  “Indeed. They’re politicians. Their job is to avoid embarrassment. And unfortunately they tend to see a team like this, not as a force for social good, but simply as a source of potential embarrassment.”

  “And you think we’re a source for social good?” he asked.

  “Of course I do. You know me. I’m a patriot, for all my cynicism. I want what’s best for this country. I think, in a thousand small ways, we’re under siege. We’re under siege from the West, from the East. And, potentially, we’ve already been infiltrated. Our defenses are already being undermined.”

  “Sounds a little over-dramatic to me.” From the corner of his eye, Doripalam could see the pedestrians strolling across Sukh Bataar Square on their way into work. There was a man, dressed in a gray business suit, sipping American-style coffee from a paper cup as he made his leisurely way past the large statue of the revolutionary hero toward the government offices. Close by, a couple of teenage girls, dressed in T-shirts with Western designer labels emblazoned across the front, had stopped to chat before going their separate ways. This did not look like a country under siege. On the other hand, young as he was, it did not look much like the country Doripalam had grown up in.

  Nergui shrugged. “Maybe I spend too much time with politicians. Too much rhetoric. But I think it’s true. We expend all our time and energy on the big political questions—our relations with China, with Russia, with the West—while I grow increasingly afraid that it’s the smaller crimes, the smaller corruptions that are undermining the stability of the state.”

  “The state’s always been corrupt,” Doripalam pointed out.

  “Maybe. But, whatever we thought of the old system, things were under control. Now I’m not sure they are. Profit drives everything, and it’s slipping away from us. I’m not sure anybody cares enough to fight back.”

  “Except you?” Doripalam was unsure whether he intended his question to sound mocking or sincere.

  Nergui smiled. “I’m just a civil servant. Just doing my job. But I do want to have the resources to do it properly.”

  “So what does this have to do with the inquiry?”

  “We’ve suffered yet another political embarrassment. The Minister’s ridden out the storm, as he always seems to, but the opposition have made serious capital out of it.”

  Doripalam nodded. “The Minister made that very clear to me. Kept assuring me that it wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t clear who else’s fault it might have been.”

  “Certainly not his. But the point is that, for once, they couldn’t brush this under the carpet. Which, by a very entertaining irony, was largely the Minister’s own fault.”

  “Because he extracted such political kudos from the fact that we were bringing Muunokhoi to trial in the first place?”

  “Precisely so. If I recall correctly, I did warn him that this might not be the wisest move, but he can be an impetuous fellow where political advantage is concerned.”

  “Even if the case hadn’t fallen apart quite so spectacularly, the Minister’s comments might have been prejudicial to a fair trial,” Doripalam pointed out. “I wasn’t exactly pleased about that, though in the circumstances it didn’t seem appropriate to bring it up afterward.”

  “I understand that Muunokhoi’s lawyers were planning to argue precisely along those lines,” Nergui said. As always, it was not entirely clear how he had come by this particular piece of information. “But the question was entirely academic, as things turned out.”

  “And so now we—by which I mean you—have to investigate how Tunjin was allowed to get us into this mess? I’m not sure I quite see how that’s likely to help us. I certainly don’t see how it’s going to help me.”

  “I’m just being opportunistic,” Nergui said. “The Minister has to be seen to be doing something if only to cover his own back. He wants a short sharp review that will result in a few suitable rolling heads.”

  “With my name high on the list?”

  “Of course not. The Minister can be impetuous, but he’s no fool. He knows—not least because I’ve repeatedly told him so—that you’re the best asset he’s got in this force. He’s not going to risk losing you over something like this. But, in any case, that’s not the way this thing is going to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the Minister has made what might turn out to be—in terms of short term political expediency —one tiny error. He agreed to let me run the inquiry.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means we do it properly. You and me. We take this as an opportunity really to come to grips with the problems in this team. We can root out the real problems—the real corruption. We make as many heads roll as we need to, knowing that the Minister has to back us up.”

  “Why does he have to? He’s never been keen on raising his head above the battlements before.”

  “Because having announced the inquiry—which he did with as much fanfare as when he announced Muunokhoi’s arrest—he can’t then be seen not to support it just because the outcome turns out to be rather more radical than he might have expected.”

  Doripalam shook his head. He was beginning to suspect that Nergui had been with the politicians too long. “Are you sure about this?”

  Nergui shrugged. “Not at all. I’ll probably be whipped off the inquiry and find myself facing a sudden early retirement. But I think it’s worth a shot, don’t you?”

  He’s bored, Doripalam thought, suddenly. That’s what this is about. He’s bored witless in that comfortable office of his, shuffling his paperwork. All that talk about the nation under siege—well, that was probably sincere, knowing Nergui’s distinctive form of patriotism. But it wasn’t what was really driving Nergui. What was really driving him was the need to stir the pot again, to get things moving. To raise some sort of hell.

  Doripalam smiled. “As long as it’s you facing the early retirement and not me. Yes, maybe it’s worth a shot.”

  Nergui sat silently at the desk, listening to Doripalam’s footsteps receding down the corridor. He supposed that it might have been possible to have found him a temporary office that was smaller and even more isolated than this one, but probably only by utilizing a broom cupboard. Not that he could blame Doripalam. On the whole, Nergui thought that the younger man was taking it all rather well. Nergui was behaving like the very worst kind of manager. The kind who gets kicked upstairs and then just can’t tear himself away from the job he’s supposed to have left behind. Just can’t believe that anyone could do it as well as him.

  Was that it? Nergui hoped not. He had enormous respect for Doripalam—he thought Doripalam handled the day to day aspects of this job better than he had, if only because he seemed to have infinitely more patience with all the nonsense involved. No, it was the job he couldn’t leave behind. And not just because he liked the pace and the excitement of it, compared with the cerebral challenges of his Ministry role. But also because he thought it mattered. It was important. It was what held the fabric of this increasingly fragile society together.

  All
the rhetoric he’d trotted out to Doripalam—well, of course it was overblown. How else did you get the Minister to take any notice of this kind of thing? But, nonetheless, it had been sincere. As he saw the growing influx of drugs dealing, mindless violence, not-so-petty theft—the slow but sure seepage of influence from the wider world—he did begin to think that maybe the battle was already lost. All those grand ideological battle-cries—equality, freedom, democracy—and yet it was this mundane criminality, the underbelly of capitalism, that would end up on top of the pile.

  So here he was again, dabbling in things that he should have left far behind. If he’d been in Doripalam’s shoes, he’d probably have told them precisely where to stick their inquiry. But that was why Doripalam was good in this role. Because he only fought the battles that mattered. Because, much as he might resent Nergui’s repeated intrusions, he also recognized that the older man’s experience and knowledge could be useful. Maybe, in the end, it was Doripalam who was exploiting Nergui. At least, Nergui hoped that was the case.

  His musing was interrupted by the telephone on the desk in front of him. The sound was startling. Nergui didn’t think that anyone yet had this contact number. The Minister would call him on his cell—probably several times a day once he realized that Nergui wasn’t immediately on hand to respond to whatever minor crises were brewing—as would any of his Ministry colleagues. Nergui liked the cell, partly because he could switch it off when he chose.

  He cautiously picked up the receiver. “Nergui?”

  “Sir. I’m sorry to disturb you. I have a visitor down at the reception. She’s here to report a crime—a threat of physical assault.”

  Nergui shook his head, wondering if the call had been transferred to the wrong extension. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think you want someone else.”

  “No, sir. I’m sorry, but she was keen to speak to you.”

  “To me? Why should she want to talk to me? Just send her over to the police station.”