The Outcast

by Michael Walters

  “Considering what?” Doripalam said.

  Nergui shook his head. “Nothing important. It was a long time ago.”

  “But something that makes you think this Wu Sam might be involved again?”

  “I have reasons for thinking we should follow it up.” The words were spoken without undue emphasis, but Doripalam knew that Nergui’s unspoken reasons were never wisely ignored.

  “But this Wu Sam couldn’t have entered the country without our knowing,” Batzorig said.

  Nergui shrugged. “It was all a long time ago. We do not know what happened after his return to China. In theory, he would be on our lists. But in practice—who knows?” As if responding to his own question, he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and thumbed in a number. “It’s Nergui,” he said. “I need an answer to a simple question.” He laughed gently at the unheard response. “Consider it a challenge then. We deported a suspected spy back to China about twenty years ago.” He laughed again. “Yes, I can.” He paused, and then named a precise date. “I could probably quote you the time and number of the flight he took, if you give me a couple of minutes. But I imagine your fancy databases can outdo that. You’ll have him on record—probably just hard copy, I don’t know—but there’ll be a photograph and all the details. I just want to know whether the same man has re-entered the country in, say, the last month. I told you it was a simple question.” He paused, clearly listening to what was being said at the other end of the line, a faint smile playing across his face. “Okay, I’ll make it even easier for you. Forget China. Have a look at other international arrivals first.” He paused again, listening. “I don’t know. How does fifteen minutes sound?”

  He thumbed off the call. “I think some of these backroom people spend too long away from civilised company.” He moved to slip the phone back into his jacket pocket, and then stopped as it vibrated in his hand.

  He held the phone to his ear, listening intently, and then looked back up at the expectant group around him. “I suppose this is hardly a surprise,” he said, speaking to Doripalam. “And it may mean something or nothing. But Tunjin has been true to form. He’s absconded from the hospital.”

  The young man was asleep now, his head lolling against the vibrating wall of the truck. Sam glanced at him, noting the trim muscular outlines of his body. Nothing like his father in that respect, though Sam could see a certain facial resemblance. In other circumstances he might have been more interested, especially given the history, but this was business. There might be time for distractions later.

  He glanced at the dashboard clock. Another hour or so. Wait till they were well away from the cities, up there in the foothills. Even if they could be traced—and for all his earlier confidence, Sam knew better than to underestimate the opposition—it would take too long for anyone to reach them. If necessary, it could all be finished almost before they realised it had started, and he would be long gone.

  He glanced at the satellite navigation screen. There were no real roads out here, just a tapestry of inter-crossing dirt tracks, but the equipment was pointing them in the right direction. Soon he would strike off east, heading towards the rising blue line of the mountains, driving until the grasslands grew more lush and thickets of fir trees rose around them. The land up there was less sparsely populated than these empty grasslands, but he had little concern about their being seen. Visitors, even foreign visitors, were much less uncommon here these days.

  Sam had been careful to organise the hiring of a Land Cruiser similar to those used by the tourist guides. Even if someone did register their passing, there was nothing to connect this hired vehicle back to Sam. By the time the vehicle was tracked down, it would be too late.

  The sun was high, and even this far north the temperature was rising rapidly. It was very different from the last time Sam had been here—the icy depths of winter, a sense of excitement, fear, auguries of impending chaos. For Sam, this society had seemed both strangely familiar and utterly alien, and he had struggled to regain a sense of control. In the end, he had been less experienced, less skilled than he had thought. They had played him, every inch of the way, while he had thought he was slipping beneath their radar.

  He remembered how it had ended—the fat man he had not seen for twenty years, but whose gloating face was imprinted immovably on his mind, and the other one—the one he had seen at the end, the one with the dark wooden face. The one who could have helped and had chosen not to.

  Suddenly realising that they had reached the point where they needed to strike off to the east, he peered hard at the sun-dried ground ahead of him, looking for any sign of a clear track. When he reached it, a hundred yards ahead, it was little more than a balder stretch of earth across the parched grasslands. He pulled to the right, the earth juddering beneath the truck’s tyres. And then they were off again, bouncing along the endless ribbon of the dirt road, the forests and mountains growing steadily closer.

  He smiled, feeling the earth’s vibrations through his fingers, watching the shadows shortening as the sun rose. He knew now, finally, after all these years, how everything worked. He knew everything he needed to know.

  He knew everything.

  WINTER 1988

  It was worse than he could have imagined.

  He had assumed that, however things turned out, it would be quick and brutal. He had imagined being bundled off at the dead of night, led anonymously on to a flight or train back home, handcuffed discreetly to some silent police officer.

  Instead, the two men—police officers themselves, he assumed, though he realised later that they had shown him no identification—had walked him, back through the icy streets to an undistinguished concrete building behind the central square. They had taken him to a tiny, dingy interview room in the depths of the building. It was a bleak room: a concrete floor, grey walls scattered with disturbing stains, a single table bolted firmly into the ground.

  An hour or so later the questioning began. The thin one asking him repeated insinuating questions, promising that it would all soon be over. The fat one chain-smoking cigarettes, slamming his fist on the Formica table top, jabbing his finger in Wu Sam’s face, blowing smoke. The threat of violence moments away.

  He had no idea what they were talking about. Some body they had found. Some student. Someone he supposedly knew. Some relationship he had supposedly had.

  The inquisition went on and on, variations on the same question in an endless loop—persuasive, aggressive, cajoling, threatening. Wu Sam’s responses were hardly even denials, little more than blank incomprehension.

  After another hour, as if at some unspoken signal, the two men suddenly rose and left the room. He sat by himself, his mind still reeling, trying to work out what was going on.

  Finally, the door opened and another officer—one he had not seen before—stuck his head around the door and announced, in a grudging tone, that he was free to leave. “For now,” the officer went on. “But we’ll be keeping tabs on you. Don’t make it difficult for us.” The undertone of threat was hardly concealed.

  Outside, Wu Sam stood for a moment, breathing in the icy late afternoon air.

  The fat cop had emerged from the main doors of the police building, and was standing on the steps smoking. He was looking in Wu Sam’s direction, but his gaze seemed unfocused, as though he was looking far beyond, at some impossible horizon.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SUMMER

  She reached for the bottle, but he shook his head, pulling it away. “I don’t think you should,” he said. “Not this early, anyway.”

  “You’re ahead of me,” Solongo pointed out. “Two glasses ahead.”

  “I’m used to it,” Tunjin said. “And nobody’s ever told me it’s an admirable quality. Besides, do you want to end up looking like me?”

  She opened her mouth, but could clearly think of no response. “You’re right,” she said. “Not that that helps.”

  “Has this been going on long?” he said. “The drin
king, I mean.”

  “Yours or mine?” she said. “Sorry. I mean, I don’t know. Not long. Not at this time of the day, anyway. I mean, in the evenings when Doripalam’s delayed yet again or called back in, and I’m stuck here—a glass or two, then, I suppose. A bit more over the last few weeks—trying to cope with this bloody museum job. I don’t think you can blame me.”

  “I’m the last one to blame anyone,” he said. “But I know the costs.”

  She shrugged. “I should tell you it’s none of your business. But you’re right. I’ve known for weeks.” She paused. “Doesn’t mean that I don’t want another drink, though.”

  “No,” he agreed. “It never does.”

  “And what about Doripalam?” she said.

  He glanced sharply up at her, wondering where this was going. “What about Doripalam?”

  “His drinking,” she said. “You must have noticed. You of all people.”

  “Me of all people,” he said. “Yes, I should have noticed. You think he’s drinking too much?”

  She shrugged. “What’s too much? He goes to that bar of his, most nights when he’s not working. Sometimes when he says he is working.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know that. I’ve called the office. They’ve told me. Sometimes they haven’t told me, but they’re poor liars. And I’ve called his cell phone. He doesn’t answer. Or he calls back once he’s out into the street. But I’ve seen him in the bar.”

  “You’ve followed him?”

  She smiled. “Not really. I just happened to be there one evening. I went for a quick drink with some of the students from the museum. He came in, on his own. He didn’t see me—we were in a dark corner. I nearly went up to him, but I got the impression he didn’t really want to see anyone.”

  “And did he drink a lot?”

  “A few beers. But that wasn’t the point.” She hesitated, as though searching for the words. “He went there rather than coming back here. And when he did come back here, finally—I made sure I got back first—he drank some more. A few more glasses of vodka.”

  This sounded pretty tame by Tunjin’s standards, but perhaps not by Doripalam’s. “Just the once,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No. I went back there—the students pop in most nights. I went a couple of times. His routine was the same.”

  “And what’s your concern?” he said. He could feel himself slipping into the unaccustomed and unwanted role of agony aunt, but had no idea how to extract himself from the conversation. “Is it that he’s drinking too much, or that he prefers to do his drinking without you?” Spoken out loud, the question sounded too blunt.

  “It’s—well, it’s both, I suppose,” she said. “But mainly the second. That’s what drives me to drink.”

  “But you don’t—” he stopped, not knowing how to finish the question. How do you ask a woman whether she suspects her husband of having an affair? A question like that, he conceded, was probably better left to someone with some tact and sensitivity. “You don’t think anything else is going on?”

  She looked at him for a moment, as though mentally translating a question unexpectedly asked in a foreign language. “You mean an affair?” Suddenly, she burst out laughing. “Doripalam? No, I don’t think so. Not unless you count his infatuation with the job.”

  “I think you might reasonably count that,” he said. “Or at least I would if I was in your position.”

  She nodded, smiling now, and Tunjin began to wonder if he had a future in relationship counselling after all. But perhaps he shouldn’t push his luck. “I need to decide what I’m going to do,” he said. “I can’t stay here for ever.”

  “No,” she said. “Unless you want to wait for Doripalam. He’s bound to get back eventually. I imagine.”

  So much for his attempt to change the subject. “I need to get a handle on all this. What happened in the square. What Nergui’s up to. This body at the museum.” He paused. “Wu Sam.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “This student you deported twenty years ago. How can he be connected to any of this?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? A body in a carpet. Someone drugs me and sticks a gun in my hand. Gets me to shoot what might turn out to be an innocent man.”

  “Frames you, you mean,” she said.

  He nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “But you weren’t framed,” she pointed out. “You did what you thought was right. You did it to save lives.”

  “But I killed an innocent man.”

  “Not so innocent. He was carrying a bomb.”

  “A fake bomb. That doesn’t make him a murderer. Or even a terrorist.”

  “It gives you legitimate grounds to shoot him.”

  “Maybe in legal terms. But that doesn’t make it any better for me. I killed an innocent man.”

  “But you were drugged. You were manoeuvred into it.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better,” he repeated. He picked up the vodka bottle again. Then he placed it carefully back down on the table. “For once, I don’t think that’s what I need. I think I need a clear head.”

  “Is it him?”

  Nergui was sitting facing Doripalam’s desk, looking utterly relaxed. He was in his familiar posture, leaning back in the seat, his ankles resting precisely on the desk’s corner, staring hard at the photograph he was holding. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be, but it’s difficult to be sure.”

  “He’s Chinese,” Doripalam pointed out.

  “I’d determined that much. It was twenty years ago though. He looks about the right age. I could persuade myself it was him. But I could probably do the same with any middle-aged man of Chinese origin.”

  “And it’s not the best picture.”

  Nergui shook his head. “You’d have thought by now they could have gotten the technology right. It’s hardly worth them bothering.” The photograph had been taken at the airport, part of the immigration procedure at the point of entry, each passenger’s digital image captured on an automatic camera. But the image remained blurred, a scramble of pixels when blown up.

  “I presumed your people were responsible for the technology. A ministry responsibility.”

  “No doubt. And no doubt they purchased the technology from the Chinese or Koreans, and were royally ripped off in the process.” Nergui tossed the image on to Doripalam’s desk. “I don’t know. He sounds promising, though. He flew in from the US. New York, via Chicago and Seoul. But Chinese.”

  Doripalam looked again at the notes that had been sent with the photograph. “By birth, according to his passport details. Born in Beijing, but now resident in the US. Been there since the 1990s, apparently. Has obtained his Permanent Residence card.” He paused. “Occupation given as ‘professor.’ He’s here on an exchange visit at the National University. At the faculty of Mongolian studies.”

  “So far so good, then,” Nergui said, studying the back of the photograph. “And his name is Sam Yung.”

  “Supposedly.”

  Nergui turned the photograph over and gazed at the glossy image. “And that’s all there is about his background?”

  “So far. I think they’ve done well to pull this particular needle out of the haystack so quickly.”

  Nergui nodded. “They’ve done brilliantly,” he agreed. “If this really is him. We don’t know how much time we have. Assuming we’re not chasing shadows.”

  “Assuming we’re not chasing shadows, we don’t know that we’re not already too late,” Doripalam pointed out. “What have you told the minister?”

  “Nothing yet,” Nergui said.

  Doripalam looked up at him in surprise. “Nothing? Is that wise?”

  Nergui shrugged. “The sensible thing would have been to have told him straightaway, so that my back was covered. But it’s never been my policy to be over candid with the minister.”

  “Over candid? But th
is is his son.”

  “I know. And we don’t know yet that anything’s happened to him.”

  “We know,” Doripalam said. “I know. You know. Something’s happened to him.”

  “But we don’t know what. And we don’t know why.”

  Doripalam shook his head. “You can be bloody gnomic, Nergui. But even by your standards—”

  Nergui held up the photograph, as though to halt any further discussion. “So this Sam Yung,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “I have Batzorig over at the university now, trying to find out. According to the visa details, he’s on a three month visit.”

  “Do we know why he’s here?”

  “I did a bit of hunting on the internet to see if I could find anything. There were a couple of references to academic papers he’d published on the origins of the Mongol empire. I imagine he’s here for the Genghis Khan anniversary.”

  “Or that’s his excuse for being here,” Nergui said. “If we assume that his motives are not purely academic.”

  “Quite. But, if so, why is he here? Why after all this time?”

  Nergui continued to study the photograph, as though he might glean more knowledge from the blank oriental features staring back at him.

  “One of your hunches? You think there’s something behind all this?” Doripalam picked up the phone and pressed the speed-dial code for Batzorig’s cell phone.

  Nergui placed the photograph carefully down on the desk. “I’m flying blind, you know that. I’m always flying blind.”

  “But usually in the right direction.” Doripalam’s tone was wry.

  Batzorig had just entered the vice-president’s office when his cell phone buzzed. The middle-aged man, rising from his desk, had opened his mouth to speak, but Batzorig held up his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the chief. I need to speak to him. I do apologise, but I’m sure you understand.”

  The vice-president looked as if such behaviour was far beyond his understanding but he watched unblinking as Batzorig took the call.

  Normally Batzorig would have felt some discomfort at his own rudeness. But, having been kept waiting for thirty minutes after he had seen the vice-president stroll past his secretary into the office, he felt little inclination towards generosity.