The Adversary (33 page)

There was a long silence at the other end of the line, so that Doripalam began to think that the signal had been lost.

“I don't really know,” Yadamsuren said, finally. “I've not really had any contact since it all happened.”

There was something in Yadamsuren's voice that made Doripalam uneasy. “What about their
gers
?” he said. “Have they been back there?”

There was another pause, less extended, but somehow more freighted with meaning than the previous one. “No,” Yadamsuren said. “I've not seen them here. The
gers
are still there—” There was a hesitation. “Some of the officers from Bulgan came out,” he said. “They conducted some sort of search through the tents.”

“A search?” Doripalam said, looking up at Nergui. “For what?” He had, he thought, made it very clear that this was a Serious Crimes case. The local brief was simply to provide protection, not to get involved in any kind of investigation.

“I don't know,” Yadamsuren said. “They didn't give me any kind of explanation. Well, there was no reason why they should. I mean, I assumed—well, I assumed that it was your people behind it.”

“What did they say?”

“Well, not much. They told me that I should just keep an eye on the
gers
until they were dismantled. And to find someone to look after the animals, temporarily.”

“When the nomads returned, you mean?”

“Well, that wasn't very clear. I had the impression it would be the police who would do it. Presumably just to keep the tents safe. I assumed that the nomads were under protection of some sort.”

“They are,” Doripalam said, deciding that there was no point in raising Yadamsuren's interest further.
There was no reason to suspect Yadamsuren, but any information could potentially get back to those who were perhaps less trustworthy. “Just seems to be a bit of confusion, that's all. That's why I've been trying to find out what's going on. Thanks for your help.”

He ended the call. Nergui was watching him closely, having apparently followed the gist of the conversation.

“I think we need a trip to the mountains,” Nergui said.

Doripalam nodded. “I'll go,” he said. “You need to be here. In case there are any developments on the kidnapping.”

Nergui shrugged. “There is nothing I can do here except worry. It is better that I'm taking some action.” He paused, still scrutinizing Doripalam closely. For a moment, Doripalam wondered whether Nergui really did trust him, or whether he was reluctant to allow the younger man to make the trip on his own. But he also knew that Nergui, ever the pragmatist, was right. There was little they could do here for the moment, except make sure that the usual investigatory processes were in place.

“And if you're right,” Nergui went on, displaying his usual uncanny ability apparently to follow Doripalam's train of thought, “if there is some link between Muunokhoi and the Tuya murder, then perhaps this is another thread we can begin to pull. Let us hope that something of this begins to unravel before it's too late.”

“Well,” the voice said, “it's always pleasing to welcome an unexpected visitor.”

The tone was surprisingly relaxed in the circumstances. After all, even Tunjin had to acknowledge that he did not, just at the moment, present the most prepossessing sight. His usual shambling overweight figure was clad in a T-shirt and pants which were quite clearly showing the impact of his brief period of living rough. His always-greasy hair was matted down on his head. And, on top of all that, he was covered in grass and bruises from his tumble down the hill.

He might have expected a rather less calm response from the man facing him. On the other hand, he also had to recognize that the man in question was holding a handgun, pointed unerringly at Tunjin's heart. Perhaps the man could afford to be relaxed.

Tunjin looked behind him at the broken fence, wondering precisely what kind of explanation he might offer for his presence. “Um, I'm sorry,” he said. “I slipped.” It didn't sound particularly appropriate.

The man was dressed in a plain dark suit, with a pale gray tie. He was Mongolian, but otherwise had few obviously distinguishing features. His hair was
slicked back and he wore a pair of mirrored sun glasses, providing Tunjin with a disconcerting convex view of his own disarray. Tunjin noted irrelevantly that the effect of the curved mirrors did little to flatter his already obese figure.

The man, unsurprisingly, ignored Tunjin's offer of an explanation, and instead gestured with the barrel of the gun. “I think you had better come this way,” he said. “So that we can welcome you properly.”

Tunjin walked forward in the direction indicated by the gun barrel. The house was ahead of them, a rear door open in the spring sunshine. Tunjin hesitated, wondering if he should enter.

“Keep going,” the man said. “Inside.”

Tunjin nodded, noting that the man's voice had become less welcoming. Tunjin found this oddly reassuring. At least, that was closer to what he understood.

He followed the path toward the door, glancing momentarily around at the tidiness of the garden. The grass was well-trimmed, the conifers neatly pruned. It hardly looked organic, he thought. It was as if someone had sculpted it from stone or wax. Even the colors seemed too bright.

“Inside,” the man said, again. His tone was definitely less friendly now, almost aggressive. Tunjin obeyed, and stepped through the doorway into the gloomy interior.

He wasn't sure what to expect beyond the door. Perhaps a hallway, or a kitchen. Instead, though, he found himself in a blank, empty room, probably originally intended as a scullery or cloakroom. Tunjin
stopped, hearing the footsteps of the man with the gun behind him.

“Turn round,” the man said.

Tunjin turned, taking the opportunity to look around the room. There was little to see. The room was painted gray, with a floor of heavy stone tiles. There was no window, and the only light came through the door by which they had entered. There was a further door at the far end of the room, a solid-looking wooden edifice which appeared to be closed and, perhaps, locked. There was no furniture, and no decoration on the walls. Even as an entrance hall, the room looked bizarrely bleak and inhospitable.

The man reached behind him and pressed the light switch. Tunjin glanced up. There was a single bare light bulb, which gave a harsh glare that served only to expose the asceticism of the room. The man smiled thinly, and then reached behind him to pull closed the outer door. It was a duplicate of the interior door—just as solid, just as impenetrable. It slammed shut with a dull thud, and the man carefully turned a large key in the lock. Still smiling, he slipped the key into his trouser pocket.

“There,” he said, “now we're secure.” He was still smiling, but there was no warmth to the smile. It was as if the expression was a mask, painted on his face.

He walked forward slowly, still holding the gun pointed steadily at Tunjin's chest. For the first time—as though, up to that point, he had somehow managed to resist the evidence of his own eyes—Tunjin realized that his predicament was serious. He was in trouble.
Deep trouble. And he had walked—or, more accurately, fallen—into it entirely of his own volition.

The sun was setting behind them, staining the western sky a deep crimson. Blood, Nergui thought. It does really look like blood. It was as if a tide of blood was pouring down on the city. As if chaos really had arrived. As if all control was lost.

“I'm getting old,” he said to Doripalam, sitting beside him. “I'm getting melodramatic. Sentimental.”

Doripalam laughed. He was leaning forward, concentrating on the road. He wondered whether they should have brought another officer, someone who could at least have done the driving. Luvsan, for example. He loved this kind of trip. Loved the buzz of driving these new 4x4s up on to the steppe. But Nergui had insisted they make this trip alone.

“I look forward to the day when you're sentimental,” he said. He paused, wondering whether to point out that, to take just one instance, Nergui had preferred to make this trip to the mountains rather than to stay in the city and wait for news of Sarangarel. It was a rational decision—of course it was, there was little that Nergui could do in the city—but it was not one that many men would have taken in the circumstances. But perhaps that thought was better kept to himself. “Melodramatic,” he went on, “perhaps, yes, I can see that. But you've always been that. It's nothing to do with growing old.”

Nergui grunted, although it was unclear whether this sound represented assent. “It's as if,” he said, after an extended pause, “as if we lost control a long time
ago, but didn't know it. As if everything had spiraled out of our grip, and now we're flailing around trying to hold on to something—”

“Yes, melodramatic,” Doripalam nodded, his hands gripping the steering wheel. The empty road stretched ahead of them. In the distance, they could see the mountains, a dark strip against the translucent mauve of the evening sky. “That's definitely the right word.” The truck hummed beneath them, echoing the repetitive pounding of the road. “It's strange, though, isn't it?” Doripalam went on. “Okay, if you're right, things have been out of our control for a long time. Or, at least, we've had nothing like as much control as we thought. But maybe that didn't matter too much—”

Nergui snorted—a sound which somehow managed with absolute eloquence to express his disgust. “How can you say that?” he said, staring out of the passenger window at the hypnotic passing of the landscape. “You see why I was suspicious of you?”

Doripalam sighed. “You understand my point,” he said, “even if you choose to misinterpret it. If Muunokhoi really had infiltrated the police to the extent you suggest—”

Nergui turned his head slowly toward Doripalam. “There is no question,” he said. “Muunokhoi had—has—infiltrated the police to the extent I suggest. If not more.”

“But my point is,” Doripalam said, “that even if that is true—I'm sorry, yes, I accept it, I know that it is true—Muunokhoi was simply protecting his own interests. He may have constrained our work—or, at least, made
sure that we didn't constrain his work too much—but he wasn't concerned to disrupt our work generally. We were able to police serious crime—”

“So long as it was serious crime not perpetrated by Muunokhoi,” Nergui pointed out.

“I'm not trying to excuse or justify it,” Doripalam said. “I'm not—I'll keep repeating this till I'm absolutely sure you believe me—I'm not on Muunokhoi's payroll. I'm saying only that—well, it was a controlled situation. It was an explicable situation. It might even—I shouldn't say this—it might even have been a manageable situation.” He paused, still watching the curves of the road. “But now things have changed.”

Nergui looked across at him, nodding slowly. He smiled faintly. “You're right,” he said. “Of course you're right. You're always right.”

“I thought that was your prerogative,” Doripalam said, barely able to contain the edge of smugness in his voice. It was strange how, even now, after all this time, and despite his own seniority, their relationship remained that of master and pupil.

Nergui smiled. “Not now,” he said. “Not at all now. I think I have not been right for a long time. Not in this matter. But, yes, on this occasion, you are certainly right. Things have changed. But I don't know why.”

Doripalam clutched the wheel. “That's the point, isn't it?” he said. “Whatever the situation before, it was rational. It was possible for us to respond to it. We could handle it.”

“And now we don't know what's happening,” Nergui said. “We have a brutal murder—perhaps,
though let us hope not, more than one. We have kidnapping—certainly one, perhaps more. We don't know about Gavaa. We don't even know now about Tunjin.” He paused. “They may have caught up with him,” he said, finally.

Tunjin had been expecting it, at least in theory. Nevertheless, when the blow came, it took him by surprise. The man moved suddenly, an unexpected jerking motion, the gun barrel abruptly raised, then thrust across his face.

The metal barrel was cold and hard against his flesh. Tunjin fell backward, gasping for breath, startled less by the pain than by the suddenness of the action. The pain was slow in coming, but when it came it was sharp and agonizing. He staggered backward, trying to suppress a scream, and then his own substantial weight dragged him off his feet, and he fell backward on to the floor.

He floundered for a moment, rolling around on the cold stone like a turtle toppled on to its shell. The man moved forward, the harsh light of the bare light bulb glittering on the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. He drew back his foot and kicked savagely out at Tunjin's ribs. Tunjin rolled, avoiding the worst of the blow, which glanced across his shoulders. The man struck out again, forcing Tunjin back against the wall, this time absorbing the kick painfully against his stomach.

Tunjin gasped for breath, cowering back in expectation of the next blow. But the man paused, holding the gun barrel steadily toward Tunjin. “Now,” he said,
“perhaps you will tell me the truth. I have to confess that, after your unexpected disappearance, we were not expecting to encounter you again so soon.”

Tunjin rolled over, still cowering against the wall, and stared at the man. It was difficult not to imagine that Muunokhoi had some powers that were more than merely human. He had managed—through who knew what kind of inside information—to see through Tunjin's half-baked attempt to frame him. He had managed to identify Tunjin as the perpetrator of this idiotic scheme, almost before he'd had time to admit his guilt to Doripalam. And, now, when Tunjin had harbored vain hopes of taking him at least momentarily by surprise, this operative had recognized him almost straight away. How was that possible? If the explanation was not supernatural, he could assume only that his picture—the policeman who had dared to threaten Muunokhoi with prison—was hanging up as a dire warning all around Muunokhoi's properties. The thought was not comforting.