The Adversary (19 page)

And, looking at her now, she had clearly taken full advantage of that freedom. She had made a life and a career for herself. She had a striking presence, a sense of hard-won but powerful authority. And he wondered precisely what it was she had lost, that frozen evening, when he had met her for the first time.

“I was expecting more sparkling conversation than this, if I'm honest,” she said. “But as I don't get out much, perhaps my expectations are unrealistic.”

He laughed. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I think that's been fairly obvious for some minutes. But about what?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. About the past, I suppose.”

She nodded. “I don't do that. Far too dangerous. I think about the future. Like the rest of this evening, for example. And beyond.”

He opened his mouth to speak, momentarily disconcerted by her tone. As he did so, he felt his cell phone, tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket, vibrate twice. A text message.

“I'm sorry—” He pulled out the phone and waved it gently in front of her. “I'd better check. It might be urgent.”

He thumbed the buttons on the phone and brought up the message on the screen. The number was familiar though it took him a moment to place it. The message simply said: “Call. Urgent.”

Nergui stared at the phone for a moment, absorbing the message.

“Well?” Sarangarel said, spooning up the last of her dessert. “Was it urgent?”

Nergui looked back up at her. “I rather think it was,” he said.

She nodded, amusement playing in her dark eyes. “Well, then,” she said. “What a useful device.”

The weather had grown more humid in the course of the evening, and now the first small spots of rain were beginning to fall on the windscreen. Luvsan cursed and switched on the wipers. “All we need,” he said.

“I take it this won't affect your famed navigational skills,” Doripalam said, gesturing toward the GPS system.

Luvsan shrugged. “The machine's fine. Whether I can make any sense of it in this darkness is another question entirely.”

Doripalam sat back, knowing that in truth Luvsan was fully in control and enjoying every moment of this trip through the darkness. They were still on the main road at the moment, heading north out of Bulgan toward the mountains. There was no other traffic or signs of life, other than the vanishing glow of the small city's lights behind them. Doripalam watched the progress of their headlights across the road, the monotony almost hypnotic.

“How far do we think it is?” Doripalam said.

“Not far. Twenty kilometers or so. That's where we'll meet the local guy, and he'll take us on to where the camp is.”

The local guy was the outstationed officer who had been keeping an eye on the camp. Luvsan had phoned him again from the hotel and asked for his help in tracking down the camp. He had agreed with alacrity, obviously excited at the prospect of working with the Serious Crimes Team. Doripalam could not help thinking that Luvsan had perhaps rather over-stated the importance of their mission, but it had seemed to have the necessary effect.

Luvsan turned on the radio, and twisted the dial till he found one of the commercial stations playing Western-style pop music. He banged his palm on the steering wheel as they drove in time with the music, occasionally singing along with the choruses. It was irritating, but preferable to the endless silence of the night.

Twenty-five minutes later they saw the few scattered lights of a small village—nothing more than a handful of timber buildings, a couple of prefabricated official blocks, and a filling station with a single gasoline pump.

“This is the place,” Luvsan said, pulling to a halt. “There.” He gestured out of the window toward one of the prefabricated concrete buildings, with the police symbol outside. As he spoke, the main door of the building opened and a figure stepped out into the glare of their headlights, waving to them. It was a young man, with thick dark hair. He was dressed in jeans and an anorak.

Luvsan lowered his window. “Yadamsuren?” he said.

“That's me,” the young man said eagerly. “You're Doripalam?”

Luvsan smirked gently and gestured toward the passenger seat. “This is my boss. I'm Luvsan.”

“Pleased to meet you both,” Yadamsuren said. “And very pleased to be of assistance.” He peered enthusiastically through the open window, the rain—falling more heavily now—dripping from his hair on to his forehead.

“You'd better jump in,” Doripalam said. “You're getting soaked.”

Yadamsuren looked almost overwhelmed at the generosity of the suggestion. He pulled open the rear door and climbed in behind them. “Thanks very much.”

Doripalam twisted in his seat to look back at the young officer. “How far are we from the site?”

“Not far. A couple of kilometers, no more.”

“They're still there?”

Yadamsuren nodded. “I checked again after you phoned.”

“And you're sure they've no idea you've been observing them?”

“I was very careful. I parked some way away and then walked up there. I know that terrain very well, so I had no difficulty finding my way up there in the dark.”

Luvsan peered gloomily out through the rain-spattered windscreen. “I hope we don't have to park too far away,” he said.

“You can drive almost up to it. In this weather, you can probably get quite close before they'd hear the engine.”

“Well done,” Doripalam said to the young man. “We're very grateful.”

Luvsan turned his head away, smiling faintly. He knew that Doripalam was utterly sincere, but also that this was the most enthusiastic praise that was ever likely to issue from the chief's lips. In this case, though, it seemed to be more than sufficient. Yadamsuren looked almost overwhelmed at Doripalam's words.

“I hope these are the people you are seeking,” Yadamsuren said. It sounded like a genuine expression of goodwill rather than any prompting for more information. Luvsan had given Yadamsuren no indication of why they were interested in these people, although, if Yadamsuren read the newspapers, he might easily have arrived at the answer for himself.

“I hope so, too,” Doripalam said.

Luvsan started the engine and pulled back out on to the road. “This way?” he said, gesturing ahead.

Yadamsuren nodded. “Keep going up here a couple of kilometers,” he said. “I'll tell you when to turn. The last part is over the grassland, but it should be solid enough even in this rain.”

They drove on through the dark. To Luvsan, as he peered out between the sweep of the wipers into the glare of the headlights, the whole landscape looked identical. There was simply the endless passage of the road, clusters of conifers that thickened and then fell away.

Yadamsuren, though, was peering carefully through the window, clearly enumerating every turn in the road and every copse of trees they passed. “Here,” he said at last. “Slow down. We're almost there.”

Luvsan obeyed, slowing the truck down to a crawl, staring forward to try to find some discernible landmark.

“Just here,” Yadamsuren said. “Before that clump of trees. Turn right there, and then drive up slowly past the trees. Take it gently. The ground's okay but a bit rough.”

Yadamsuren's description seemed like an understatement as they slowly bounced their way across the uneven terrain up past the trees. “How far is it now?” Doripalam said.

“Just a few hundred meters,” Yadamsuren said. “How close do you want to get in the truck?”

Doripalam shrugged. “I think in this weather we may as well go all the way. We'll still surprise them—so they won't have much time if they've anything to hide—and they're more likely to take us seriously if we turn up in a dirty great truck.”

“I could turn on the sirens,” Luvsan suggested. The truck had no police markings but carried a siren and lights for use in emergencies.

“I don't think so,” Doripalam said. “I don't think we want to risk terrifying the life out of them. We don't know how they might react.”

“Do you think they could be armed?” Yadamsuren said, nervously.

“It's possible,” Doripalam said. “It's always possible. Bear that in mind. With this lot, we just don't know. Assuming it is the people we're looking for, all we know is that we want them as potential witnesses. But we don't know why they're hiding or what it is that they appear to be running from. So who knows?”

“This is connected with that woman?” Yadamsuren said. “The murder?” So he had been reading the newspapers, Luvsan thought. Smart boy.

Doripalam nodded. “This is her family. They traveled together. But they'd moved on before her body was found. We don't know why.”

“You think they might have killed her?”

“They might. But they might also be running from whoever did. And maybe they'd left before she was killed. We don't know. That's why we don't know how they're likely to react.”

They had reached the top of the incline now, and the ground fell away before them. In the headlights they could see the tops of a cluster of
gers
, pitched in a low hollow, surrounded on three sides by trees. It was a good hiding place, if that was indeed the intention. The tents were hidden by the trees, as well as by their low elevation in the hollow. They would not be visible from the surrounding terrain until you were right on top of them.

Doripalam saw the door of the closest
ger
swing partly open. It was impossible to disguise their presence any longer—the inhabitants of the camp would have heard the truck's engine, seen the glare of the headlights. Luvsan stopped the truck so that the headlights were shining down fully into the camp, and then killed the engine.

Almost simultaneously, before he had chance to direct their next move, Doripalam felt his cell vibrating in his pocket. He cursed, pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Headquarters.

“Just wait a moment,” he said. “Keep an eye on
what's happening down there. If you see any significant movement, we'd better get down.”

He thumbed the phone and took the call. For a few moments, he listened, saying nothing, then said: “You've got people over there? Search the apartment. Minutely. Anything you can find. Anything that might be remotely relevant. We probably won't be able to get back till morning, but make sure you keep me posted.”

He ended the call and turned back to Luvsan. “It's Tunjin,” he said.

“Tunjin? I thought he was suspended.”

“He is,” Doripalam said, noting that, despite all their efforts at keeping this information under wraps, it was already common knowledge. “That's just it. There was some sort of disturbance outside his apartment block. Gunfire. His apartment looked as if it had been ransacked. And Tunjin's gone missing.”

“Gone missing? But how—?” Luvsan was about to make some joke about the difficulty of losing eighteen stones of solid fat, but he didn't finish the sentence.

It took them all by surprise. There had been no apparent movement from the camp below them. But then, suddenly, all at once, Doripalam caught the glare of gunfire, the sound of a shot, and the nerve-shattering explosion as their windscreen collapsed into countless tiny shards, brilliant in the glare of the headlights. And then there was screaming and the smell of blood and burning, and the sound of all hell breaking loose.

He had his back to the wall and was watching intently, waiting for something to happen. Outside night had fallen and the darkness was thickening.

He needed to relax, he knew that. He couldn't keep up this pace, this intensity for long. He just wasn't built for it. And he knew, rationally, that as yet they could have no idea where he was. For the moment, at least, he was safe. The only question was for how long.

He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself down, trying not to think too hard about the implications of being found. He had bought himself some time, at least. Now he needed to make use of it. He needed to force himself to think, to work out what he was going to do next.

He looked about him, trying to rationalize his position, trying to think about what he needed to do. Okay, he thought, first things first. Work it all out, step by step. The position is straightforward. He had found himself a haven. As long as he stayed here, he was likely to be safe. The only problem was that he couldn't stay here for very long.

He was sitting in the corner of a storeroom in an abandoned shop on the south side of the city. It was
one of the industrial areas that had been redeveloped with the emergence of capitalism, where dozens of supposedly entrepreneurial businesses had sprung up apparently overnight. As the grand old monolithic communist enterprises gradually ground to a halt, the westerners had been quick to tell them that this was where the future lay, in the energetic play of the free market. Let a thousand self-employed flowers bloom.

But of course it hadn't lasted. Tunjin had had friends and relations whose lives had collapsed during those fateful years, who had lost whatever security and savings they might have had. And he recalled the dreadful winters that had accompanied those years of depression, as if nature and the heavens had chosen to conspire with man's worst instincts.

The place was a wreck. The display window at the front had long been shattered, and large shards of glass still lay scattered across the tiled floor. Any remaining items of stock had been looted almost immediately, and all that was left now were a few broken shelves and display cabinets, faded printed notices advertising long obsolete electronic goods.

Behind the shop itself was a small network of rooms—a living area with a small bed-sitting room, a kitchen and a lavatory, and then, behind that, the small storeroom where Tunjin was currently sitting.

There was no furniture in any of the rooms, other than a discarded broken table lamp and a few tattered remains of what had presumably once been blinds. The storeroom contained a few empty cardboard boxes, some scattered unidentifiable electrical components, and little else.