The Adversary (11 page)

Tunjin looked at it carefully, and then looked down at his own bulk. The ladder should be capable of holding his weight, he thought, though he was glad that he wouldn't have to rely on it for too long. He took a deep breath and then slowly began to climb up
the rungs. The metal frame of the ladder creaked ominously, but seemed to be holding.

He reached the skylight, pulled on the handle and began to force it upward. For a moment, he thought that it would fail to open, but eventually, with a little shaking and pushing, it gave. Tunjin climbed the remainder of the ladder and, gasping for breath, he pulled himself up and on to the roof of the apartment block.

He lay for some minutes, feeling nauseous, his breath coming in painful gasps. He really wasn't cut out for this kind of thing. Not anymore, at any rate.

The bright sunlight and fresh air hit him almost as strongly as his breathlessness and the after-effects of his hangover. He rolled over on to his back and lay, still gasping, his eyes closed, the brilliance of the sun crimson through his closed eyelids. Thankfully, the sun was still relatively low and the air still chilly, the breeze riffling gently through his sweat-soaked T-shirt.

Finally, he recovered his breath and rolled over to shut the skylight firmly behind him. He looked around to see if there was anything on the apartment roof he could use to jam the skylight, in the hope of buying himself a little more time, but there was nothing.

He sat up and looked around. The rooftop was little more than an empty stretch of gray asphalt. A line of identical apartment blocks stretched off down the street, with a similar row opposite.

He had been up here on a couple of previous occasions, with the aim of getting an idea of the layout. The rooftop gave an attractive view of the city. In the distance, he could see the large buildings that
dominated the center—the Post Office, the Parliament house, the Palace of Culture. He could see the pink and black monolith of the Chinghis Khaan Hotel, the wide green spaces of Nairamdal Park, and the Naadam Stadium. In the distance, he could make out the haze and black tangle of buildings that denoted the industrial areas, and the long silver sheen of the railway line. And beyond all that, the wide open green of the steppes and the distant mountains.

He had grown up in this city, known it all his life and—in all honesty—had never thought much of it. But now, just at this moment, it looked genuinely beautiful. But that might, he supposed, have something to do with the fact that he really might not be enjoying the sight of it for very much longer.

He pulled himself slowly to his feet and walked unsteadily across to the edge of the roof above the main street. He lowered himself and peered cautiously down. The shaven-headed man was still there, but was now talking on a cell phone. There was no obvious sense of urgency in his manner, so Tunjin assumed that his own departure had not yet been noticed.

He pulled back and began to make his way slowly across the rooftop. His aim ought to be to put as much space between himself and Muunokhoi as possible. Or, perhaps more accurately, to give himself the opportunity to try to get a step or two ahead of Muunokhoi. He could perhaps simply flee the city—head off to another town, maybe down into the Gobi. Surely it must be possible to find somewhere where Muunokhoi couldn't track him down.

And it wasn't as if he had much of a future ahead of
him here. He had been deliberately provocative in his meeting with Doripalam, but he assumed that the outcome would be the same—his current suspension would be followed by dismissal. Someone's head was going to have to roll for what had happened, and Tunjin was the only candidate. If he was lucky, he might get to hold on to part of his pension. But he didn't have too many grounds for assuming that he would be lucky. He had been on borrowed time anyway, he knew that, given his drinking and the general state of his health, which was why he'd started all this in the first place.

He'd reached the end of his own apartment block. The rooftop continued on the next block, with a space of about half a meter between them. He peered down—the gap between the two buildings stretched four floors to the ground below. Typical Soviet design, he thought. It would have been too simple and too efficient to have built one large apartment block. Probably building them as separate units created enough additional work to help someone hit their production target.

There was no option but to jump the gap. It wasn't far, and for most people it would have presented no problem. Tunjin had a good head for heights, but his general obesity, not to mention his still mildly spinning head, meant that this was likely to be a challenge. He held his breath for a moment, teetering as close to the gap as he dared. Then, trying not to close his eyes, he leapt across.

He fell flat on his face on the other side, his fingers scraping at the asphalt, his knees and chest stinging
from the impact. His feet, he was aware, were still sticking out over the gap. But he seemed to have made it over.

He looked ahead of him. There were two more similar gaps he would have to cross before reaching the final block. And then he would be faced with the problem of how to get down again. But he hoped he had that one sorted.

He continued steadily along the rooftop, until he reached the next block. Then—and this time he did close his eyes—he threw himself forward. Again, he landed roughly but safely. Maybe he was fitter than he thought. He rolled over, pausing to recover his breath. At least this exertion meant that, for the moment, he could postpone thinking further about what the future might hold.

He was dragging himself to his feet again when he heard the sound of some kind of commotion behind and below him. He slowly moved toward the edge of the roof and peered down at the street below, trying to see what was happening without risking being seen himself.

There was no doubt that the disturbance, whatever it was, was happening outside his own block. There was a shouting and a banging. The shaven-headed man, he noticed, was no longer standing in the same position, but had moved into the middle of the street, apparently looking at what was going on.

Tunjin moved himself forward, trying to get a better view, but conscious that—with his equilibrium still disturbed—it would not be wise to lean too far forward. But he could see enough. There were a
couple of figures standing outside the door of his block, banging on the glass doors and shouting. Tunjin couldn't recognize them from this distance, but he assumed that they were fellow residents of the block who had discovered that the front door was both locked and firmly jammed.

Perhaps, on reflection, his attempt to buy himself some extra time had not been a wise one. If Muunokhoi's people had tried to make a move straight away, it would have certainly given him an additional respite while they forced their way into the building. As it was, the barring of the door had probably simply highlighted to the shaven-headed man that there might be some sort of problem. Tunjin could see that the man was already drawing closer to the door, and that he was engaged in some sort of dialogue with the locked-out residents.

Tunjin was contemplating his next action when he saw the man gesture furiously to the residents, waving his arms to signal them to move aside. Then—when they had presumably obeyed his instruction—he raised his arm and the sound of a gunshot echoed down the empty street, followed an instant later by the sound of shattering glass.

Tunjin needed no more prompting. He rolled over and staggered to his feet, thinking that, perhaps for the first time in years, he really did have an incentive to lose some weight. He began to jog, as fast as his bulk would allow, toward the next rooftop, this time by some miracle managing to stay on his feet as he threw himself over the gap.

He knew that the end block was identical to his
own, and his original plan had been to use the screwdriver to lever open the skylight. In retrospect, he thought, perhaps this whole scheme would have benefited from a little more thinking through. And now time was definitely not on his side.

He reached the skylight and pulled out the screwdriver, slipping its blade into the gap along the edge of the framework. He pushed it down, but the frame showed no sign of giving. He looked across at the rusted hinges of the window, aware that the screwdriver was already bending under his weight.

Finally, he pulled it out and slammed the blade down into the center of the glass, which shattered explosively beneath him. He pulled his hand back just in time, avoiding being badly cut. Then he lifted his foot and began to slam down hard on the remaining glass, rapidly clearing the edge of the frame until he felt it would be safe to drop through.

He looked down into the empty gap. There was a ladder, as in his own block, but this one looked to be badly broken. He reached and tried to lower it, but couldn't move it at all. Finally, he looked behind him and, clutching hard on the edges of the frame, dropped through the gaping hole.

There was a battered kitchen table, now only half a meter or so below his dangling feet. He scrambled for a moment, then dropped, trying to land safely on the polished wooden table top.

His feet hit the table and skidded so that he slipped sideways, his fingers desperately clutching for some kind of purchase. His stomach landed heavily on the table surface and then, just when he thought he had
landed safely, he heard the sound of cracking wood as one of the table legs shattered beneath his weight. The table tipped sideways, and Tunjin toppled off to one side, landing heavily among a pile of empty paint-pots, as the table fell across him.

For a moment there was silence, and Tunjin lay breathing heavily, convinced that every bone in his body was broken. It took him a few moments to realize that this probably wasn't the case, and that he appeared to have survived the fall with no more serious consequences than some bruising.

He pulled himself into a sitting position, pushing the table away from him, trying to maneuver his body away from the scattered pile of paint tins. For a moment, he felt relief. He was alive. He had—at least for the moment—escaped.

Then his relief vanished, to be replaced by a gut-wrenching fear. He choked, feeling waves of nausea sweeping over him, as though all the symptoms of his hangover, having been suppressed during his traverse of the rooftops, were now returning in redoubled form.

The two barrels of a shotgun were inches from his face, pointing unwaveringly at his forehead.

From behind them, a quiet voice said: “I do hope you're going to clean all this up.”

“But you know what he's up to. It's what he's always up to. Undermining you.”

Doripalam shook his head, trying to close his eyes. The sight of his wife pacing up and down the room always made his head ache. “I don't think that's it,” he said. “I don't think that's really ever been it. But certainly not this time.” He had a small glass of vodka in his hands, chilled from the fridge, and he wanted just to enjoy it, but Solongo, as so often, seemed to have other plans.

“You're just too trusting, that's your trouble. That's always been your trouble. You let people walk all over you.”

He knew she meant well. She always meant well. That was part of the problem. Of course, she was concerned for her own interests—who wasn't? But, deep down, he was convinced that this wasn't simply selfishness, that she really did care about his own interests as well. But then, he reflected, maybe he was just too trusting.

“Why should he want to undermine me? He appointed me into the job.”

“He wouldn't have appointed anyone into the job if he could have helped it, you know that. He'd have been in the job himself. For life.”

“But now he isn't in it. He's in a much bigger job. So why should he care about me?”

“Because you're in the job that he used to do—that he still wants to do—and you're handling it far better than he ever could.”

This was rare. Solongo was generally reluctant to make positive comments about her husband, even when criticizing her favorite hate figure—his former boss, Nergui. Maybe this was some sort of positive sign.

He opened his eyes and took a cautious sip of the vodka. “Well, I'm flattered that you should think so,” he said, trying his hardest not to sound sarcastic.

“Well, it's obvious,” she said. “You're no fool, Doripalam, even if you quite often act like one. You can do your job very capably. Nergui's going to feel threatened.”

Doripalam found it difficult to envisage Nergui feeling threatened even by physical violence, let alone by the possibility that some youngster might possibly upstage him. “But even if that's true,” he said, “it doesn't explain what he's up to at the moment. Why he's been so keen to lead this inquiry.”

“Are you sure he's not going to offer you up as a sacrificial lamb?” Solongo said. She finally sat down and picked up her own glass of vodka, watching him carefully. “I mean, I know he'd made all these positive noises. But this case with—what's his name? The gangster?”

“Muunokhoi.”

“Yes, Muunokhoi. Well, this case would give Nergui all the ammunition he needs if he wants to get rid of you.”

“And replace me how? There's no one else who could do the job. No one who would want it, anyway.”

She shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe Nergui would bring it back under his own empire again. I'm sure he's arrogant enough to think he could do both jobs without breaking sweat.”

“You're just paranoid,” he said.

But maybe she was right to be. Doripalam looked around the living room in which they were sitting. A decent-sized room in a decent-sized apartment in one of the better areas of the city. A large leather sofa, thick crimson pile carpets, expensive rugs and a scattering of tasteful ornaments and paintings. It really wasn't too bad. He'd progressed much further in his life and career than he had ever really believed possible, even if it wasn't yet quite as far as Solongo would have preferred. His father—a factory worker under the old regime—wouldn't have believed that his son would ever be living in a palatial residence like this.