The Outcast

by Michael Walters

  But suddenly it was beginning to look as if these questions were no longer merely academic. Something was happening out there. Nergui didn’t yet understand quite what it was, but a suspicion was stirring in his mind. And if he was right, then it really did look as if the minister’s luck might finally be running out.

  WINTER 1988

  He pulled his thick coat tighter around his shoulders, and strode slowly across the square, worried about losing his footing on the icy ground. To his right, there was the equestrian statue of the revolutionary hero, stark against the gloomy bulk of the government buildings. He could see the squat tower of the Hotel Bayangol rising up ahead on his right, the monastery-museum of Choijin Lama on his left. Beyond that, there was the park itself.

  He had visited here by day and found it pleasant enough—grassland, a murky-looking lake, a run-down amusement park. He could imagine it thronged with children at the height of Mongolia’s brief summer. In the depths of winter, it retained a welcoming, if slightly desolate, air.

  In the frozen night, however, its atmosphere felt entirely different. The lines of conifers were blank shapes, empty spaces cut into the star-speckled sky. Although the moon had not yet risen, the stars ensured that the night was not quite pitch-black. Even so, the park was nothing more than an expanse of dark, its silence potentially concealing all manner of threats.

  The path stretched off from the gate into the dark interior, a pale luminous ribbon. He glanced back again. The hotel was behind him, a squat array of dimly lit windows, a slightly run-down frontage. From here it looked enormously welcoming, a warm and inviting contrast to the darkness in front of him.

  He walked forward a few more metres into the park. This was the spot they had arranged. The next meeting.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SUMMER

  At first, Doripalam could make out almost nothing. There was a glare of lights, harsh and unremitting after the darkness of the back streets. He could hear shouting, and his throat caught the acrid smell of burnt chemicals, the aftertaste of smoke.

  He stood for a second by the rear door of the car, trying to get his bearings. This wasn’t a part of the city he knew well, and the police driver had confused him by taking a twisting route to avoid the clusters of vehicles gridlocked around the site of the explosion.

  “Where is it?” he called to Batzorig across the roof of the car.

  Batzorig squinted into the gloom and then gestured off to their left. “There, I think. That’s the hotel.”

  Doripalam walked forward a few paces, wanting to get a sense of what was happening. It seemed to be largely chaos. There was a growing crowd of passers-by—a mingling of local residents drawn out of their own apartments and those who had been out on the town—standing watching, as if waiting for some event that had not yet taken place. Which might conceivably be the case, Doripalam thought. It surely wasn’t wise for all these people to be milling around, unprotected, in the proximity of an explosion. If this had been a bomb, there was no reason to assume that it was the only one.

  But no one seemed to be making any serious effort at crowd control. People were chatting and laughing, treating the event more as a social occasion than anything else. Doripalam pushed his way through, Batzorig close behind.

  The crowd thinned, and there, facing Doripalam, was a line of police officers surrounding the entrance of the hotel. At both ends of the line, there were armed officers, firearms trained on the hotel doorway.

  Doripalam blinked, his mind still not quite comprehending what he was seeing. He peered over the shoulders of the police cordon into the dazzling glare, trying to see the justification for the array of firearms. All he could make out was the shattered frontage of the hotel, the gaping doorway.

  He gently tapped the shoulder of the officer nearest to him, who turned, glaring into the darkness.

  “What’s going on?” Doripalam asked.

  The officer stared at him as though he were insane. “Just get back,” he said. “It’s not safe here.”

  “You can say that again,” Doripalam said. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his ID, thrusting it, perhaps slightly too vehemently, into the man’s face. “Where’s your commanding officer?”

  The officer stared at the ID card, obviously trying to work out its significance. Finally, he looked up. It wasn’t clear whether he’d succeeded in reading the card, or had simply decided not to bother. He gestured vaguely towards the end of the line. “Over there,” he said.

  Doripalam nodded and pushed his way to where an older officer was standing, a portable megaphone in his hand. The local area chief, Doripalam thought, a couple of ranks below his own.

  “Excuse me,” Doripalam said. The chief was a short, stout man, with a familiar air of self-importance. He turned blankly towards Doripalam, his attention clearly elsewhere. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “if I could just ask you—”

  “‘Sir’ is right,” Doripalam said, uncomfortably aware that his own self-importance seemed to be growing by the day. He already had the ID card in his hands. “Serious crimes,” he said. “What’s happening here?”

  The chief stared at him. “Sir,” he repeated, as though now uttering some kind of incantation. “I don’t think this need concern you,” he said, after a pause. “With respect—”

  “With respect, I’d like to know what’s happening.”

  The chief nodded, with the air of one dealing politely with a particularly troublesome member of the public. “We’re not entirely sure,” he said at last. “It was reported as a bombing, but we’re not clear whether that’s really the case.”

  “But it was an explosion?”

  “Yes. It was an explosion. But it could have been a gas leak, anything—”

  “If it’s a gas leak, do you think firearms are entirely wise?”

  “I’ve had to make some very quick decisions.”

  Doripalam nodded, deciding on the emollient approach. “Of course,” he said. “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on.”

  The chief gestured towards the hotel entrance. “We understand most of the guests were evacuated immediately. There was some kind of political rally here tonight. We don’t know who else might be in there. We can’t be too careful.”

  Doripalam sensed a man out of his depth, struggling to retain control of the situation in the only way he knew how. “If there are people still in there,” he pointed out, “they’re more likely to be casualties than potential terrorists.”

  “We can’t be too careful,” the chief repeated. “Sir.”

  It was the dismissive tone of the last word that galvanised Doripalam into action. “Tell your men to stand down,” he said. “I’ll take control of the situation now. It falls under our jurisdiction.”

  The chief stared at him. “Look—”

  “Tell your men to stand down,” Doripalam said. “That’s an order.”

  The chief had turned and was squaring up to him. “It’s not really your position to give me orders,” he said. “I don’t accept that this sits within your jurisdiction. This is my patch; I’m in charge here.”

  It was clear that some of the officers around them had been listening in to the discussion. Doripalam cursed inwardly, berating himself for his handling of the situation. No senior officer with any self-respect would allow himself to be publicly brow-beaten. It was time to offer an escape route.

  “I’m not challenging your authority,” Doripalam said. “But I have a responsibility as head of the Serious Crimes Team.”

  The chief allowed a faint smile to play across his face, clearly sensing a weakness in Doripalam’s position. “Of course, sir,” he said. “I fully understand that. But, again, with respect, this really doesn’t fall within your jurisdiction. If it’s some kind of accident—a gas leak or whatever—then it’s at most a matter of public safety. If it’s a bombing, well …”

  Doripalam glared back at him. “Well, what?”

  “Well, our orders are to re
port all potential terrorist activities to the ministry of security. And to retain command until their representatives arrive.” His smile was serene now. It would probably not remain so, Doripalam thought, if Nergui really had been summoned from the ministry to deal with this.

  “So you’ve called the ministry?”

  The chief blinked. “Well, not yet, we’ve only just arrived ourselves—”

  “So don’t you think you should?”

  “As I say, sir,” the chief resumed, “I think it’s my call as to whether—”

  Doripalam had pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He shrugged. “I’ll give them a call,” he said. “I know people there. I’m sure they’ll be interested, even if it turns out to be a false alarm.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Doripalam’s thumb was already on the speed-dial code to Nergui’s office, wondering if his bluff might be called. But before he could dial a shrill voice cut through the darkness beside them.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  Both Doripalam and the chief turned. It was a young uniformed officer, breathlessly approaching from the rear of the hotel. “Sir, I think you ought to see this.”

  The chief glared at him. “What is it?”

  “I was checking the hotel’s function rooms at the back, sir.” The young man tried to catch his breath. “We’ve found a body, sir. A dead body,” he added, as if to remove any ambiguity.

  “Killed by the blast?” the chief queried.

  The young officer stopped, noticing Doripalam for the first time. “Well, no, sir, that’s just it.”

  “What is?” Doripalam said, stepping forward.

  The young man’s mouth opened and closed again, as he tried to work out whether he should respond to Doripalam’s question. Eventually, he compromised, answering but staring fixedly at the chief.

  “The body, sir, he wasn’t killed by the fire. It looks as if he was stabbed.”

  The chief glanced across at Doripalam. “Stabbed?” he said. “But that means—”

  Doripalam leaned smoothly forward. “With respect,” he said, “what that means is that this is now in my jurisdiction. Tell your men to stand down.”

  The full dimming of the lights was unexpected. Nergui blinked, aware that his mind had been drifting in the silence. He had been staring blankly at his own reflection in the window. With the sudden gloom, his image vanished, replaced by the black rectangles of the buildings across the square, the pale glimmer of the streetlights.

  He glanced towards the doors of the hospital room, and then down at his watch, wondering whether the lights were on some kind of timer, or whether some member of the nursing staff had made the decision. There was no sign of movement in the corridor.

  Tunjin slept on under the effects of a sedative. He was lying on his back, snoring heavily, but looking calm. It might all be coincidence, Nergui thought. It might all still be coincidence. Tunjin’s involvement.

  But it was strange that this had so suddenly come so close to home. Nergui was never inclined to dismiss the power of coincidence—more prevalent than most people recognised, particularly in a population as small as this. And the coincidence was remarkable, which was why he found himself sitting here, watching over Tunjin’s corpulent sleeping figure.

  The first connection was the supposed bomber, the young man who had died under Tunjin’s gunfire. Tunjin had done the right thing but it had been unnecessary. Not only because the bomb itself had turned out to be a fake, but because Nergui’s team already had the young man under close surveillance. They had been watching him for a couple of weeks, along with a number of other visiting students. There was growing unrest among the student population, which over the last year or so had seemed to take on a more sinister form than the usual youthful rebellion and student politicking. There was an increasing involvement of overseas students in anti-government activism. Those involved were a mixed bunch—some Chinese or Russian, some from the West and some from the less stable former Soviet republics and other satellites. And while much of it was straightforwardly political—including those who still hankered for a return to the old regime—there was an undertow of religious fundamentalism.

  After much deliberation, they had focused on a small number of students whose activism seemed the most serious and threatening. These included three students—intriguingly, all from the West rather than from any of the territories closer to hand—who had been actively preaching potentially threatening Islamist messages.

  There was little real enthusiasm for the exercise on Nergui’s part. He thought they were unlikely to uncover anything more than another peculiar manifestation of post-adolescent behaviour. The young men might well be juvenile fanatics, but it didn’t necessarily mean that they had any criminal intent. If their objectives were malign, why would they draw attention to themselves? More likely, that was their sole intention—to attract attention. Nergui understood that it was one of the things that young people were prone to do.

  Nevertheless, he allocated an experienced agent to the task, reckoning that one capable officer should be able to keep tabs on all three students. Nergui didn’t want them watched twenty-four hours a day—he just wanted to ensure he knew what they were up to.

  And three days ago the agent conducting the surveillance, a middle-aged, nondescript officer called Lambaa, had appeared in Nergui’s office doorway holding up a cassette tape. “You need to hear this.”

  Nergui recalled the meeting in detail now as he gazed sightlessly at his reflection in the hospital window. He had worked with Lambaa only peripherally since his arrival at the ministry. But he knew he was well regarded by his colleagues as thorough and meticulous: a safe pair of hands. The undramatic qualities that distinguished the most effective intelligence officers.

  “What is it?” Nergui was already beginning to feel the stirrings of unease. “The students?”

  “The students,” Lambaa confirmed. “Recordings of some of their cell calls, plus some stuff we bugged in their rooms.”

  Nergui nodded, feeling his usual mild discomfort with this intrusion into others’ privacy. “Suspicious?”

  Lambaa shrugged. “Well, odd, anyway.” He lowered himself gently into the chair opposite Nergui, and began to tap the corner of the cassette gently on the desk, looking as if he had just wandered in for a casual chat.

  “In what way odd?” Nergui asked. “Death to the infidel, that kind of thing?”

  Lambaa looked back at him, his eyes almost as expressionless as Nergui’s own. “Some of that, but there’s more.”

  “Go on.” Nergui leaned back in his chair.

  “The conversation is more businesslike than I’d assumed. I was expecting either nothing much or the usual kind of youthful posturing. But it’s not like that. It’s as if they’re planning something.”

  Nergui frowned. “Planning what?”

  “That’s more difficult to say.” Lambaa flipped the cassette into the air, then deftly caught it. “Look, I’ve been keeping a close watch on these guys. It’s an easy enough job, since they’ve spent most of their time in one another’s rooms in the university. They seem to have become acquainted very quickly since their arrival.”

  “But then they have a common cause,” Nergui said. “You think they knew each other before?”

  “Who knows? But I don’t think it’s an accident that they’ve come together here. I think it’s been coordinated.”

  “Coordinated? By someone here?”

  “I don’t know. But what’s interesting is that they’ve already tapped into some kind of local network.”

  “Within the university?”

  “No. If they had connections in the university, that wouldn’t be so surprising. It’s wider than that. They’ve had continuous phone calls since they arrived—mostly from cell phones or numbers within the city. They’ve had two or three meetings. Again, locals from outside the university.”

  “It’s intriguing,” Nergui said. “But I don’t think we frown on people fraternisin
g with the locals in quite the way we used to.”

  Lambaa’s expression suggested that this change in official attitudes was perhaps regrettable. “The question is what they’re fraternising about.”

  “Quite,” Nergui said. “And who they’re fraternising with. You’ve checked that, I assume?”

  “Naturally. It’s an odd mix. Some students, as you’d expect. But, more interestingly, some numbers we haven’t been able to trace, which suggests people who know what they’re doing.” He paused. “Professionals, I mean.”

  “People who are one step ahead of us, in other words.”

  “At least one step. But that’s worrying. It suggests something more organised. But we’ve managed to identify some of the numbers they’ve called. And there does seem to be a link with some radical political types,” he stopped, allowing the words to hang in the air.

  Nergui was interested now despite his previous scepticism. “Fundamentalists?”

  Lambaa smiled faintly, as though he had been leading up to this. He was good, Nergui thought. Definitely one to bear in mind for the future.

  “Some of that,” Lambaa said. “But some of the links go further. Not really what you’d expect at all.”

  Nergui stretched himself back in his chair, lifting his feet to rest them on the corner of his desk. “Go on.” He decided to allow Lambaa his moment of drama.

  “We’ve tracked some of the numbers back to other groups. Nationalists. Not the major nationalist parties, but fringe groups.”

  “Racists?”

  Lambaa shrugged, looking is if he didn’t quite understand the term. “Patriots, I suppose, sir. People who think the government doesn’t represent the glorious heritage of our nation.” He paused. “You know the type.”

  Nergui nodded. He knew the type very well. There were plenty of them around—groups who hid behind the name and image of Genghis Khan, the father of this nation. Those who had never quite come to terms with the loss of the Mongol empire. Those who saw the decades of Chinese and then Russian subjugation, not just as a political burden, but as an unbearable suppression of the national spirit. It was perhaps not an entirely unreasonable point of view.