The Outcast

by Michael Walters

  She thumbed off the phone and looked down at Gundalai. “How are you feeling?”

  “Battered,” he said. “But okay.”

  “Good. We have to get this place evacuated. We need to find out who’s in charge.”

  She was turning towards the door as the blast struck. The sound was extraordinary, a roar louder than any thunderclap, ripping through her body. The frail unit shook around them, and Sarangeral flung herself to the ground, rolling under one of the desks, wrapping her arms around her knees as she tried to compress her body into the smallest possible space. Across the room, she could see Gundalai scrambling into a corner, his face ashen with fear.

  The unit’s windows crashed inwards, and something unseen hit the floor behind her. She could hear shouting and screaming, a shrill repeated cry of panic. And then everything stopped and, in the aftermath of the explosion, there was a sudden, unnerving silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY - ONE

  “What’s going on here, Nergui?” Doripalam said. “How could Solongo be involved in something like this?”

  They were airborne again, heading back towards the capital. The sun was low, the hills and mountains throwing elongated shadows across the steppe. Batzorig had been left behind, coordinating the arrival of the local force who would be dealing with the two bodies and the aftermath of the explosion. Doripalam had asked for the whole area to be cordoned off and treated as a crime scene and had ordered post-mortem examinations of the bodies, but with no real expectation that this would reveal anything worth knowing.

  His mind was in turmoil with thoughts of Solongo at the museum. Nergui had already asked Doripalam to send a team there, and had arranged for two of his own men, including Lambaa, to join them. “We need to be careful,” he said. “We don’t know what might be happening.” The comment was scarcely comforting.

  A further team had been deployed to the Naadam Stadium, with arrangements for the arena to be evacuated as discreetly as possible. Bomb disposal expertise was being sought from the military to attend at both locations.

  It was all they could do, but the lengthy journey back to the capital remained a deep frustration. For all Sam’s incompetence, his plan had been cleverly orchestrated. Whatever they had done, they would have been in the wrong place.

  “Tell me, Nergui,” he said again. “Where does Solongo fit into this?”

  Nergui turned from the window. “When we were talking before, about Wu Sam, I said that his contact here was the head of the security services.”

  “Our friend Bakei. The minister.”

  “Exactly. But that wasn’t the whole truth. He was only an agent.”

  “An agent for whom?”

  Far below, Doripalam could make out the white scattered dots of a nomadic camp, the shifting patterns of their livestock. “For a senior Party member,” Nergui said. “Someone in a position of great influence and authority. Someone who was more powerful than the government he supposedly served.”

  It took Doripalam a moment to comprehend what Nergui was saying. “Solongo’s father,” he said. ’Battulga.’

  “I fear so.”

  Doripalam shook his head, struggling to take this in. “You’re saying he was a traitor?”

  “That’s a strong word,” Nergui said. “He was like Bakei. A survivor. Ready to bend with the wind, whichever way it might choose to blow.”

  “But he was selling secrets to the Chinese?”

  “Nothing so crude. I think he was in negotiation with them. He had found in Bakei a kindred spirit, but someone who had a more active vision of what he wanted to achieve. I don’t think Battulga wanted to initiate anything. He just wanted to ensure he wasn’t caught out by whatever future might emerge. He pulled the strings and provided the resources from above, but was quite happy to let someone else make the running. Bakei was a lot more self-interested.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Doripalam said. Sometimes he suspected that, faced with the world that Nergui seemed to inhabit, he would never understand.

  “Battulga was quite happy for someone to do his dirty work for him. He was even happier to find someone with the will and energy to initiate that dirty work for themselves. He didn’t need to tell Bakei what to do. Bakei was already out there, working towards his own warped vision of Mongolian-Chinese—well, what shall we call it? Cooperation? Coexistence? All Battulga had to do was watch from on high, give the strings a small tweak where necessary, provide some resources from time to time. But always staying detached, making sure that, if the wind blew in a different direction, it was Bakei who would be left exposed.”

  “But Bakei’s a smart operator. He wouldn’t have allowed that to happen.”

  “They’re all smart operators. They’re all busy playing games.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “What I said before—there was some falling out between Wu Sam and Bakei. I think Bakei was accustomed to making use of the young men who were sent here over the border. One of the perks of the job, you might say, supplied by his paymasters over the border.”

  “The minister? That great advocate of family values?”

  “He’s a politician,” Nergui said, as if that fact would explain any shortcoming. There are things that he has to—if you’ll pardon the pun—espouse. But I think that Wu Sam was not the first young man he propositioned. And perhaps not the first to refuse him.’

  “You think that’s what this was all about?”

  “Bruised pride? No, more than that. Once Wu Sam rejected Bakei’s advances, he was a loose cannon. He knew too much. Bakei was smart enough to know that the Chinese were happy to feed this appetite of his because it made him more controllable. His behaviour was still illegal in those days. It was another lever they could pull if they needed to. But I don’t think Bakei was too worried, so long as the arrangement was mutual—he no doubt had plenty of levers of his own. But Wu Sam wasn’t part of that game. There was a real risk that he might take some unilateral action to expose Bakei.”

  “So he planted a dead body? It sounds an extreme way of dealing with it. Wouldn’t it have been quicker and cleaner just to have arranged for Wu Sam to be deported?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Nergui said. “It was what made me dismiss Wu Sam’s story. I thought it was a last ditch attempt to save his own skin.” He looked directly at Doripalam. “But it depends, doesn’t it? If Wu Sam wasn’t responsible for the murder of those two students, then someone else was. As I say, Wu Sam may not have been the first to reject Bakei’s advances.”

  “You think that Bakei … ?”

  “I’ve no evidence,” Nergui said. “Nothing that would stand up in a court of law, anyway. I don’t think Bakei killed them himself. But he was—he is—a powerful and ruthless man. I don’t know whether the other two students were also Chinese operatives, or just local victims of Bakei’s tastes. But I suspect that he was already being blackmailed. He saw this as an opportunity to clear up a mess on his own doorstep, and destroy Wu Sam at the same time. Perhaps it was also a warning to the Chinese that he wasn’t someone they should mess with. And I think there was something more. I think that Wu Sam had discovered that Battulga was involved.”

  “You said that Battulga was careful to keep his distance.”

  “He tried to. But that’s the story through all this. Clever people playing games. Thinking they’re the ones pulling the strings. And the strings get tangled.”

  “And if Wu Sam had threatened to expose Battulga?”

  “That would have been disastrous. Battulga was a powerful man. More powerful than many people realised. He was never a public figure—never president or even a minister but the most powerful people never were. He was a key fixer for a generation or more. He kept things on the road, did the deals. The people who stood up in the Great Hural or on the podiums were just figureheads—people who could make the speeches, look good. But it was Battulga, and the apparatchiks behind him, who did the real work. He kept the balance, made sure tha
t no faction became too powerful. And he didn’t seek the limelight himself. Qualities that made him immensely influential.”

  Doripalam had met Battulga only a few times, in his early days of courting Solongo. The old man had been impressive, even though Doripalam hadn’t much liked him and had assumed that this sentiment was largely reciprocated. Battulga’s behaviour towards Doripalam had barely even risen to disdain. He seemed hardly to have noticed his daughter’s young suitor. Doripalam had occasionally wondered about how Battulga would have reacted to a request for his permission to marry Solongo. The question had never arisen because the old man had died before Doripalam had proposed, but Doripalam found it hard to imagine that an impoverished young policeman would have been welcomed with open arms.

  “Bakei was a protégé to him,” Nergui went on. “Battulga saw Bakei becoming an equally safe pair of hands, someone who could do his dirty work for him and, I think, towards the end, Battulga was losing his touch a little.”

  “You mean the drinking?” Doripalam said.

  “There were rumours,” Nergui said. “Perhaps more than rumours within the family?”

  Doripalam shook his head. “I never saw anything. But, well, I put two and two together.”

  “I think Bakei was protecting him more and more towards the end,” Nergui said. “Wu Sam would have been the final straw. If it had emerged that Battulga was trying to do some deal with China, however good his intentions, that would have been all the ammunition his enemies needed. And, in those uncertain times, if Battulga had fallen the result would have been chaos. The turmoil came soon enough, in any case, once the Russians pulled out.”

  “So Bakei framed Wu Sam to protect Battulga?”

  “And himself. He was in a position to do it, as head of the security services. I don’t know about the murders, but it wouldn’t have been difficult for him to find someone to take the necessary steps.”

  “But it would have left Battulga in his debt?”

  “Again, nothing would have been explicit. But Battulga would have pulled some appropriate strings. The minister is very able. He would have risen to his current eminence in any case. But it does no harm to have a helping hand.”

  “But where does all this fit in?” Doripalam said. “Wu Sam’s return? Whatever it is that’s been going on?” He paused. “Solongo?”

  “I’ve been trying to put it all together,” Nergui said. “We heard what Wu Sam said. We have a confluence of interests here, everyone playing their own little game and hoping to come out on top. Sam wanting his own revenge. His masters at home hoping to destabilise our government.”

  “You really think the Chinese would do that?”

  “There are some who, quite publicly, speak of our country becoming part of the greater Chinese People’s Republic. They would not show their hand openly—not unless things changed significantly between our counties—but they would not discourage actions which might move things in their desired direction. I’ve no doubt that they funded Wu Sam’s escapade, however indirectly. But we will never be able to prove it.”

  “And the minister?”

  “I think the minister was very neatly set up,” Nergui said. “He has been building bridges with the Chinese—just as, in fairness, he has with the Koreans and the Russians and the Americans and any other nation that might consider investing. But there’ve been rumours about his links with China for some time. His involvement in the free-trade zone in the south, for example, supposedly building economic links with the Chinese. There were those—and, ironically, his son was one who articulated this very publicly—who thought that all this was a betrayal. I suspect that the betrayal might have been more than merely economic. I think he might have been happy to go along with a plot to destabilise our society, to cause panic and confusion, to suggest some sort of terrorist threat.”

  “To allow the Chinese to invade?” It sounded like madness to Doripalam.

  “Not quite,” Nergui said. “But if there was a perceived threat to us—the increasing possibility of terrorism, some kind of historically justified jihad, increasing civil unrest among our own people—it would give the Chinese an excuse to strengthen the military on our borders. It would give them the excuse to take over the jointly administered free-trade areas. Over time, it might give them the excuse to extend their influence to some of the mineral-rich areas over the border. And—well, you know how it goes.”

  “But why would the minister have become involved with Wu Sam, after all their history?”

  “Because he didn’t know it was Wu Sam. He thought he was playing his own games. Wu Sam thought he was pulling the strings. And the truth probably was that both were being manipulated.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “That’s what worries me. Wu Sam told us about a bomb in the Naadam Stadium, a bomb in the museum. I don’t think he was bluffing. By now, the minister must know that he’s been set up, but he won’t know how much this has exposed.”

  “And Solongo?” Doripalam said.

  “I think initially just Wu Sam’s black sense of humour,” Nergui said. “As he said, he kept close tabs on things while he was in exile. He followed the remainder of Battulga’s career, and kept an eye on his family. He probably saw the opportunity for some potential mischief when Solongo married you and you took up your current role, particularly as I’m sure he was keeping tabs on me too. And I imagine that when Solongo took on the job at the museum that was too perfect an opportunity to miss.”

  “Opportunity?”

  “He’d have gotten the minister there on some ruse or other—Bakei is used to dealing with dubious characters, so I don’t imagine it was too difficult. And then I think that, at some point in his broadcast, Wu Sam would have confronted him with the daughter of his old associate and then revealed that his own son was a potential victim. If Wu Sam had succeeded in broadcasting all that stuff to the stadium, with a television crew present, he’d have gotten immediate nationwide coverage.”

  Doripalam let out a low whistle. “But what about Odbayar?”

  “Bakei and Odbayar were effectively lured into the same trap. For Odbayar, the whole thing was a glorified stunt. Like his father, he thought he was playing the part of an unwilling victim, supposedly kidnapped because he was Bakei’s son. He thought that this, combined with a small campaign of nonlethal smoke bombs—which he understood had been planted at his own rally—would be enough to raise questions about national security and put the nationalist cause back on the agenda.”

  “Sounds pretty naïve,” Doripalam said. “Though I suppose it would have severely embarrassed his father, if nothing else.”

  “Make of that what you will,” Nergui said. “Sam’s objective wasn’t that different. Just a lot more deadly and a lot more cynical. He was always planning to kill Odbayar—that was his real revenge on Bakei.”

  “But how did Sam think he’d escape? Even if he’d been able to keep himself and the truck undamaged, if Odbayar’s death had been witnessed on TV, we’d surely have been able to apprehend Sam before he could leave the country.”

  “Who knows?” Nergui said. “It’s a big empty country. Perhaps he originally intended to take the bomb and Odbayar away from the truck, so he’d be in a position to drive off afterwards. Perhaps he’d arranged to be picked up by air from somewhere in our borders—he could probably have managed it before we’d gotten our act together. Maybe he changed all his plans once he discovered we were on our way up here.” Nergui paused. “But I think actually he never meant to leave. I think he always intended to die up here. I think this was always his grand finale—leaving his chaotic legacy behind him.”

  Doripalam stared out at the passing landscape. Far off in the distance, ahead of them, he could make out the dark hazy smudge of the capital. The elongated shadow of the aircraft ran far ahead of them, as if as eager as Doripalam to be reaching their destination. “So what will the minister do now?”

  “He must know that it’s all over, that he can’t cov
er it up or bluff his way out of it. He’s a smart man, and he’s not prone to panic. But he doesn’t have many options. I imagine that his strategy will be to try to negotiate his way out, and call in some favours from the Chinese. I don’t see any alternative now for him but a one-way trip to Beijing.”

  “But what does he have to negotiate with?”

  Nergui looked at him, his face blank. “He doesn’t have much,” he said, finally. “But he has Solongo.”

  Tunjin closed his eyes, his body braced for the inevitable explosion.

  But instead there was a gentle click and then silence. Tunjin opened his eyes. Nothing had changed. The man on the sofa was still holding the gun to Solongo’s head. Her eyes were closed too, her face scrunched in terrified anticipation. Finally, after what felt to Tunjin like minutes, she opened her eyes and peered over at the gunman. He pulled the gun back and moved to take another shot.

  “Don’t bother,” the minister said. “It’s not loaded.”

  The man stared at the gun, then up at the minister. “What do you mean?”

  The minister gestured to Tunjin. “Pick up that gun,” he barked. “Quickly, before any of these fools makes a move.”

  Tunjin grasped the pistol from the desk, pointing it towards the man on the sofa. The third man started to make a move, but Tunjin waved the gun towards him. The man’s hand paused, halfway to his jacket.

  The minister shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Yours isn’t loaded either. Just that one.” He waved his hand towards Tunjin, and then reached into his own pocket. “I’m not an idiot,” he said, pulling out a handgun of his own. “I thought I’d set this up with your friend over there.” He pointed to the unconscious man still lying stretched out on the carpet. “Though it looks as if I was the one being set up.” A look of vague regret passed across his face. “It’s always the way. You can’t do everything yourself, but you can’t trust anyone else to do it.” He appeared to be in a momentary reverie, but his arm jerked sharply towards the man on the sofa who was reaching into his own jacket pocket. “If you have some other weapon in there, I’d advise you not to go for it. Bring it out slowly and throw it on the table.”