The Adversary

by Michael Walters

  Muunokhoi stared at him, his eyes as blank as ever. “Go ahead,” he said. “What do you know?”

  “Your story,” Nergui said. “Which begins a long time ago. Sixteen, seventeen years ago, I guess. It is difficult for us to remember now. You have been so good at building your own mythology. But you were not quite then the power you are today. You were small time.”

  For the first time, Doripalam thought that Nergui might have gotten under Muunokhoi’s skin. “I was bigger than you’ll ever be, Nergui. What were you in those days? A secret policeman?”

  “Something like that, I suppose. But you were—what? A small time crook with a lot of ambition. Protection rackets. Smuggling from Russia and China. Small scale drug dealing. Prostitution. Illegal gambling. Anything where you could turn a quick buck.” He paused. “We could have had you then, but we didn’t take you seriously enough.”

  “Not usually one of your failings, Nergui.”

  “We had other things on our minds,” Nergui smiled. “The state was more concerned with what was happening in the Soviet Union than with petty criminals. Except that, for exactly that reason, you weren’t going to be petty much longer. All those changes across the border would start to open doors for you. And then you made what probably seemed to others a pretty dumb business decision. You went into partnership with Gansukh.”

  Muunokhoi raised his eyebrows, as though about to challenge this assessment of his business acumen, but he remained silent.

  “Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit,” Nergui went on, “but I don’t think you were taken in by Gansukh’s bravado. You saw him for what he was. Small-time, no brains, a risk-taker. Gansukh was dispensable. But he had one thing that you didn’t. He—or at least his associate Khenbish—had good contacts in the drugs trade. I’m not entirely sure how he acquired them even now—I don’t imagine, even in those confused days, that it was easy to develop those kinds of networks as a soldier in Afghanistan. But Khenbish was smart. He was like you. If you’d let him live, he might be sitting in your place today.”

  “You’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Nergui. I’m not the only one skilled at myth-making.”

  Nergui leaned forward in his seat, staring at Muunokhoi. “I got close to the story at the time, but not close enough to pin you down. You brought Gansukh and Khenbish on board. They didn’t have the resources or expertise to take advantage of their contacts, but you did. You tried to muscle in, but Khenbish was too smart for that. He insisted on a deal.” Nergui paused. “And for the first and probably last time in your business career, you were forced into the open. You knew how important this was. You knew the opportunity that was out there. And you knew it couldn’t be left to intermediaries. This had to be face to face, with them and with their contacts.”

  Nergui’s voice was hypnotic in the silent room. Doripalam watched him in something close to awe. Muunokhoi was a charismatic figure, capable of dominating a room without obviously trying. But Nergui was matching him easily.

  “And it was worth the risk,” Nergui said. “You established a dominance in the drugs field just at the right time. The iron curtain was crumbling, the borders were opening and chaos was spreading across eastern Europe. By the time the game might have been open to other players, you had it sewn up. It’s been the foundation of your empire ever since, the base on which everything else—the energy interests, the media empire, everything—has been built.” He paused. “But it’s also your one area of vulnerability.”

  “I should simply kill you now, Nergui,” Muunokhoi said, dismissively. “It would save us from listening to this nonsense.” But there was something in his tone that belied the words, as if, finally, he wanted the story to be told.

  “You exposed yourself too much,” Nergui said. “Gansukh and Khenbish weren’t to be trusted. I imagine they tried to blackmail you, tried to squeeze out a better deal. Even then, you had a lot more to lose than they did. You were building a public profile, making friends in the right places, developing the networks that have served you ever since. You needed Gansukh and Khenbish, or at least you needed what they could bring you, but you couldn’t afford to be held to ransom by two small-time crooks.” Nergui hesitated, as though he were just at that moment working out the final details of his story. “So you had Khenbish killed. Not difficult. He was a serving soldier. He drank heavily. He’d made enemies in the army and outside. And, before he was killed, you tried to make him tell you what information he had. But Khenbish, being the smart one, tried to buy his own life by laying the blame on Gansukh—it was him behind the blackmail attempt, he had the incriminating material, all that. It didn’t matter whether you believed him or not. When you couldn’t get anything else from him, you had him killed anyway. Then you went after Gansukh.”

  “It was your people who went after Gansukh, if you remember,” Muunokhoi said.

  Nergui nodded. “Gansukh’s usual inept sense of timing. You were coming to get him, but instead he managed to get himself arrested. And then, like Khenbish, he tried to talk his way out of trouble by claiming that he had useful things to tell us.” Nergui stopped again, and then continued almost wistfully. “And maybe he had. I really thought, just for a moment, that I might have had you then.”

  “So where does this leave you, Nergui? All this nostalgia for two decades ago, and the vendetta you’ve waged against me ever since?”

  Nergui smiled. “I don’t know where it leaves me. But it left you, Muunokhoi, in a very interesting place. There’s one part of the story we haven’t touched on yet. Your affair with Khenbish’s wife. Mrs. Tuya. A very attractive woman in those days, I imagine, though I don’t know if that’s what you were interested in. If I’m not drifting too far into the realms of psychology, maybe it was a power issue. You’d given a lot of ground to Khenbish. Perhaps you wanted to get some back. And, traditionalist that you are, you did it in the way that would have most impact on an old-fashioned Mongolian male. Possibly you even took steps to ensure that he knew, or at least suspected. And one side effect, if you’ll excuse me—” Nergui gestured apologetically toward the cowering young man, “—is this poor individual, who was introduced to us as Kadyr, one of Mrs. Tuya’s cousins, but who is, of course, Gavaa, her son. Who has spent the last few weeks on the run from you. No wonder he looks terrified.”

  “He’s no son of mine,” Muunokhoi said.

  Nergui shrugged. “I don’t see any strong resemblance at the moment. But you believed he was. And it suited you to allow his mother to think so.”

  Muunokhoi shook his head. “You’re rambling, Nergui.”

  Nergui continued as though Muunokhoi hadn’t spoken. “Gansukh and Khenbish were both dead. But you still didn’t know whether there was anything incriminating out there. You searched Gansukh’s apartment. I imagine you did the same with Khenbish’s. But you found nothing. For a while, you lived with the fear that they might somehow have arranged for the material to be released posthumously. But it didn’t happen. And you’d put in place an insurance policy of your own. You encouraged Mrs. Tuya to believe that Gavaa was your son, and you offered to pay her a very generous continuing allowance. If she had the materials, or if she knew where they were, there was a strong incentive for her not to use them. And, over time, nothing happened, and you allowed yourself to relax a little, assuming that now nothing ever would.”

  Muunokhoi smiled. “So tell me why, eighteen years down the road, I should suddenly take an interest in all this?”

  “Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” Nergui said. “As I see it, a combination of things all happened at once. The most important one, I’m sure, is that young Gavaa here found himself on the brink of adulthood. His mother realized that, before long, the allowance was going to cease. So she made one last request. Or was it a demand? She asked you to take him into the family business.”

  Gavaa sat forward, looking as if he had suddenly returned to life. “She didn’t do that. It was nothing to do with her. I made the contact. She alw
ays thought she had to do everything. But it was me. I wasn’t going to be stuck out there forever, herding sheep. I wanted to be—”

  “Like your father?”

  The young man nodded, his face reddening. “I suppose so. He’d talked to people—to my uncles and others—years ago about how he was working with Muunokhoi—this was when Muunokhoi was just beginning to become a public figure—about how he had Muunokhoi just where he wanted because he had evidence that would bring him down. Nobody believed him. They thought it was just the drink talking. And, years later, when Muunokhoi became really famous, my uncles used to tell the stories, laughing at what my father had claimed, making a fool of him—”

  “But you thought he had been telling the truth?”

  “I knew he’d been telling the truth. He was a clever man and a brave one.” He stopped and looked at Muunokhoi. “Worth ten of this—”

  “So you approached Muunokhoi?”

  “Yes. I made contact. It wasn’t easy. But when he realized who I was he agreed to see me. I didn’t threaten him or anything—”

  Muunokhoi laughed harshly. The words sounded absurd coming from the mouth of the trembling teenager, but Nergui seemed to be taking him seriously.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Nergui said. “You just talked about your father and how he’d worked with Muunokhoi. And you asked whether Muunokhoi would be prepared to give you a job.”

  “That’s what happened,” Gavaa said, miserably. “I just thought that—well, that he must have respected my father. That he’d want to help.”

  “You didn’t know that he’d been paying an allowance to your mother all your life? That he might be your father?”

  “He’s not my father,” the boy said indignantly. “But, no, I didn’t know any of that. I was just using my initiative. Following up my father’s networks. And it worked. He took me on. Said he wanted me to be his—”

  “Protégé?” Nergui prompted.

  “Something like that. He wanted to honor my father’s memory—”

  Nergui turned to Muunokhoi. “It was just another lever for you. Another insurance policy. Make sure he was with you, implicated in everything you did. Even if his mother did have any dirt on you, she couldn’t use it.”

  Muunokhoi opened his mouth to say something but the boy interrupted before he could speak.

  “That’s exactly it,” he said. “Exactly what he did. I thought he was going to involve me in the business but he didn’t. He put me with his heavies, his—security team—” He stopped, almost sobbing now, then continued, barely in control. “We killed someone. The second day I was there.” His eyes were wide, staring at the ground, but it wasn’t clear what he was actually seeing. “They called it discipline,” he said. “Someone who’d—I don’t know—but they were going to punish him. I had to go, they said, so I’d understand how things were done. I thought—I thought they were just going to burn the car. I thought it must be his car—the person they were punishing.” He paused, hardly able to continue. “But he was inside, locked in the trunk. They told me later, but I already knew. And they said it should be a lesson to me if I ever did anything—”

  Muunokhoi shook his head and climbed slowly to his feet. “Enough of these stories,” he said. “Why do you think I am interested? Why do you think I brought you here?”

  Nergui shrugged. “I presume for the same reason you brought Mrs. Radnaa here. Or wherever you’ve taken her.”

  Muunokhoi laughed. In other circumstances, Doripalam thought, it would have been fascinating to watch this clash of egos. Muunokhoi was standing, looking as if it was he who was out of his familiar element, trying to regain some ground.

  “You’re right, of course, Nergui,” Muunokhoi said. “I wanted you here initially because of Mrs. Radnaa. I thought she might have given you—whatever she had.” For a moment, he looked confused as if suddenly even he was unsure where all this was heading. “But that is unimportant now. If you and your colleague—” He glanced down at Doripalam. “If you and your colleague are out of the picture, then I no longer need to have any concerns about what incriminating material might be out there.”

  “What makes you think that?” Doripalam said, speaking for the first time. “Nergui and I are just two small parts of the machine. If there is something out there to incriminate you, it will see the light eventually.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Muunokhoi said. “You’re even more naïve than you look. Do you really understand the nature of the team you supposedly lead? I think Nergui knows better.”

  “You don’t own everyone,” Nergui said. “Not every officer is in your pocket.”

  “Of course not. I would not be so presumptuous. But I own, as you put it, most of those who matter. Yourselves excluded, of course.” He glanced across at Luvsan, who avoided his gaze. “Luvsan is one of my most loyal and pro-active servants, but he is by no means the only one. I think that now I can be reasonably confident that, even if some material does emerge, it will be handled with—discretion.”

  “So what are you planning to do with us?” Doripalam said. “Even you wouldn’t dare to kill two senior government officials.”

  Muunokhoi smiled. “You really don’t understand this, do you? You really don’t understand me. I can do anything. I’m the power in this country now. Me and people like me.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Nergui said, his face as expressionless as ever: “I haven’t finished telling the story yet. Perhaps I should.”

  “There’s no need, Nergui,” Muunokhoi said. “I think we all know how the story is going to end.”

  “Go on, then. You may as well get on with it,” she said.

  Tunjin stared down at the woman, wondering what she was talking about. “I don’t—”

  “Are you the best they could find?” she said. “Still, I don’t imagine they expected much resistance. Maybe I should try to prove them wrong.”

  She looked vaguely familiar, he thought. A very elegant middle-aged woman, now slightly disheveled. Perhaps she was one of Muunokhoi’s girlfriends, maybe a celebrity of some kind. But, if so, what was she doing in the cellar? Perhaps she’d just been down here for some reason and had assumed him to be—what? A burglar? It was as if she had been expecting him.

  Tunjin held up his hands, realizing too late that he was holding a gun in one of them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Her eyes opened in surprise. “You aren’t? Then why are you here? I told Muunokhoi, I don’t have anything. I can’t harm him. He’s made a mistake.” She paused, thinking that it was worth one last effort. “He can let me go. I mean, I’m not pleased about any of this. But I’m not going to make an issue of it. Not if he just lets me go.”

  Tunjin blinked at her, trying to work this out. “Muunokhoi is holding you against your will?”

  “Well, of course he is.” She looked around the empty cellar. “Did you think I was enticed by the comfortable environment?”

  “No, but—” He was finally beginning to work out the misunderstanding here. “I don’t work for Muunokhoi.” He smiled, finally, with the recognition that he and this woman might be potential allies. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said. “That is, I’m an intruder. I broke into the house.”

  “A brave intruder, then,” she said, trying to understand this. “I don’t imagine many people choose to break in here.”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “But I’m not a thief. I’m a policeman.” He paused. “Or at least I was.”

  She nodded, trying to behave as if this was the most natural conversation to have while locked in an empty cellar. Or rather, she thought suddenly, reflecting on Tunjin’s presence, now apparently not locked in a cellar. “Well, that’s obviously destiny,” she said, “because I’m a judge.”

  “A judge?” He stared at her for a moment, as his brain made connections. So that was why she’d looked familiar. She’d been pointed out to him—before everything fell apart—as the
judge in Muunokhoi’s aborted trial. “Is that why you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. It’s another long story. And one I’m not sure I understand myself.” She looked behind him at the stone stairs rising up to the cellar entrance, conscious that at any moment they might receive another, less welcome visitor. “Look, I don’t know why you’re here,” she said. “But can you get us out of here? The cellar, I mean.”

  Tunjin produced the heavy key from his pocket. “From the cellar, yes. But I don’t know that we’ll be able to get out of the house. It’s very secure. Cameras. Guards. You name it. They’d stop us before we’d gone five meters.”

  “What about you?” she said. “How were you planning to get out?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t, really. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to.”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean? What were you going to do?”

  “I was going to kill Muunokhoi,” he said, simply. “I thought it would be a public service. If I don’t, he’ll kill me anyway. So I might as well try to get a two-way deal. But—” He paused, as if a new thought had struck him. “I don’t know what will happen to the rest of them.”

  “The rest of them?”

  “You’re not the only captive here. Muunokhoi has more upstairs.” He stopped. “He’s gone mad. He really must be insane.”

  “What captives? Who?”

  He shook his head. “Police officers. Senior officers. Ministry officials. He’s insane.”

  She was staring at him aghast. “Ministry officials? Who do you mean?”

  “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “You know Nergui? Used to be our chief. And Doripalam. He’s our chief now. They’re both there.”

  “Nergui?” she said, with a look more despairing than he might have expected. “That must be because of me. That’s my fault. He warned me. Muunokhoi warned me. But I never imagined he could do it so quickly.”

  “I think none of us know what Muunokhoi is capable of,” he said. “Some of us thought we knew. But we’ve always fallen short. He’s always been one step ahead.” He looked at the elegant Mrs. Radnaa, wondering how it could be that Nergui’s imprisonment here could be her fault.