The Adversary (37 page)

She shrugged, tired already of this interchange, suddenly feeling the sharp pain in her knees and all the weary aching of her body. “Tell me,” she said. “You clearly intend to.”

He looked at her, no longer smiling, and paused as though now, at this point, he was suddenly unsure whether he really did want to share his story. Then he said: “Okay. Indulge my storytelling. This is not quite ‘once upon a time' but it begins fifteen years ago—”

She nodded, determined to strip any shreds of melodrama from his story. “When else?”

He shrugged, smiling again. “You are clearly ahead of me,” he said. “Perhaps I should ask you to tell the story. But, no, you claim not to know all the details. That is the point. Fifteen years is, after all, a long time.”

“At the moment,” she said, pointedly, “five minutes is beginning to seem like a long time. If you have something to tell me, please get to the point.”

His smile was unwavering, his eyes fixed on hers, their dark pupils glittering in the brilliant cellar light. “I had not intended to try your patience. But I have to start fifteen years ago. You were, I believe, married then?”

She stared at him, refusing to give any acknowledgment of his question. He knew full well that she had been married then, and to whom, just as he presumably knew equally well that she was not married now.

Nevertheless, Muunokhoi nodded as if she had responded to his question. “Your husband, as you have probably surmised, worked for me.” He paused. “He was not one of my more effective associates. But then, I imagine that is also not a surprise to you.” Again, he paused, as though expecting some sort of response. This is, Sarangarel thought, a man used to playing to an appreciative audience.

“Your husband was a fool in many ways, Mrs. Radnaa. Let me enumerate some of them for you.” He smiled faintly, watching her closely. It was all an act, she thought. Every word, every gesture. This was no more the real Muunokhoi than the silent figure who had sat opposite her in court. His eyes were blazing, staring at her unblinking, but there was nothing behind them, no sense of life or personality.

“Some would say,” he went on, “that your husband's first foolish act was accepting my offer of work in the first place. But he did not know that the offer was mine, any more than I knew, initially at least, that it had been made. It was simply an offer of a commercial contract from one of my companies for the handling of some import work. The terms were generous, as they always are with my suppliers. I think loyalty is always worth buying, don't you?” He smiled and waited a moment, as though seriously expecting her to answer the question. “As you can imagine, I had no personal awareness of your husband at that point. He was recommended to us by some mutual contact. We were told that he was already running a successful import and export business.”

It was Sarangarel's turn to offer a thin smile. “I hope
that your sources are better informed today.” She paused, wondering how far to take this. “But perhaps not, given that you've brought me here in the hope of obtaining some information.”

Muunokhoi ignored her comment. “You are right, of course. We had been misled. Though I believe that your husband was always skilled at creating the illusion of success.”

“One of his few talents,” she said. “A fatal one, as it turned out.”

“We realized very quickly that your husband's business was less prosperous than he might have led us to believe. That did not necessarily worry us unduly so long as he was capable of fulfilling our contract—which did not initially appear to be a problem. After a trial, we offered him more work which he carried out to our satisfaction, and he became a regular supplier to us. More than that, he introduced us to some of his own contacts—notably, Khenbish, the soldier, who was able to offer us some useful, ah, overseas relationships. We were very pleased with your husband at first. His contacts opened up some useful seams of business for us. Some profitable areas.”

“I never met Khenbish,” Sarangarel said. “He had served in Afghanistan, I understand.” She paused, regarding Muunokhoi closely, trying to read his expression. There was nothing to read.

She remembered this period of their marriage, shortly before Gansukh's arrest and death. Gansukh had finally thought that things were coming right for him. There was the prospect of ongoing work, money was coming in. For the first time, the business was
something more than merely hand to mouth. He told her little about the nature of these new contracts, and she had not wanted to inquire too closely. She hadn't really believed a word of it. Gansukh had always been full of pipe-dreams—an apposite description given the kind of business he was probably involved in. She knew he had, at that moment, been making some good money, but she had assumed it would just fizzle out like all his previous schemes.

Even now, she was not entirely sure what Muunokhoi was talking about, but she could easily envisage the nature of these illicit imports best handled by some disposable third party. Probably, despite what Muunokhoi now said, they had selected Gansukh precisely because his business was struggling. He would have done anything for these people, and he was the kind of small fry who could be dropped at a moment's notice if anything went wrong. As, of course, it had.

As though reading her thoughts, Muunokhoi went on: “But it was then that your husband began to demonstrate quite how foolish he could be. First, we discovered that he was handling other, similar consignments alongside our own. Not necessarily a problem in itself. We do not demand exclusivity from our suppliers—that would not be realistic—but we do expect that they exercise some discretion and care. We have our own interests to protect. And it soon became clear to us that your husband was less discreet and careful than we might have liked.” He paused. “So we began to pay a little more attention to him. And we discovered that his foolishness was really quite
considerable. Not only was he handling other consignments alongside ours, but it appeared that, on occasions, he was substituting inferior product for ours.” He stopped again, as though allowing Sarangerel an opportunity to appreciate the enormity of this behavior. “In other words,” he continued, “there were occasions when our customers received inferior goods from those they had expected. Whereas presumably your husband was selling our products on to his own customers. Not good for our business reputation.”

Sarangarel was beginning to find the circumlocution very wearying. “What are we talking about here?” she said. “Drugs?”

Muunokhoi smiled at her. “We supply a wide range of import needs,” he said. He sounded as if he was giving evidence to a government committee.

“So why didn't you do something about Gansukh at that stage?” she said. “I'm sure you have means of dealing with those who don't meet your exacting commercial standards.”

He nodded. “We would have taken some action. Some disciplines are needed in business. But it was rendered unnecessary by your husband's own continuing foolishness.”

“He was arrested,” she said. She hesitated as another thought struck her. “Were you behind that?” After all, she thought, there was really no need for Muunokhoi to engage in strong arm tactics. A quiet word in the right quarters would presumably be sufficient.

“I run a very efficient business, Mrs. Radnaa. I have good contacts. I maintain high commercial standards. If someone—one of our suppliers—was behaving
inappropriately, I would certainly consider drawing this to the attention of the appropriate authorities. But in this case it was not necessary. Your husband was not only dishonest. He was also incompetent.”

Sarangarel wondered whether Muunokhoi thought that all these disparaging references to Gansukh were likely to have an impact on her. If so, he knew little about either her or her marriage.

“We have a range of operating procedures. We have developed these over years as the most effective and secure methods of handling our business. We asked your husband to follow these procedures. He chose not to. He was arrested. No action was needed on our part.”

It was easy to believe, she thought. Gansukh had been capable of making many enemies, but none worse than himself.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I still don't understand why you're telling me all this. It was all a very long time ago. I knew nothing of it. I still know nothing of it.”

“I understand that,” he said. “But this was only the beginning of your husband's foolishness. As I say, we do look for a little discretion from our suppliers, particularly if things go wrong. That is partly why we pay them so well. We organize things very carefully so that the nature of our business relationships does not become too explicit.”

I bet you do, she thought. “You mean so that no one can link you to the poor bastards who do your dirty work,” she said.

“Not quite the words I would use,” Muunokhoi said. “But, yes, a reasonable summary.”

“But you must have contracts? Written arrangements of some kind?”

He nodded. “But the nature of the contracts—the companies involved—do not always fully reflect the nature of the business transacted.”

Sarangarel wondered where Muunokhoi had picked up this kind of Western business speak. Was this how all the gangsters talked these days? Concealing the reality of their activities under this shell of meaningless verbiage. Another triumph of Western capitalism. “So how do you make sure your—suppliers adhere to your real terms?” she said, despising herself for adopting the same kind of euphemistic language.

He shrugged. “Most of our contracts are verbal,” he said. “It does not matter. Our suppliers—and our customers—fully understand the implications if they fail to adhere to our terms. It is a matter of honor.”

She almost laughed out loud. Did Muunokhoi really believe all this? Had he become so lost in the tangle of his own commercial transactions that he no longer recognized what he was really involved with? It was quite possible, she thought. And arguably this was no different from any other business—just a difference in scale, perhaps. Those at the top didn't allow themselves to reflect on the realities of their activities. “And I take it Gansukh was not so honorable?” she said. For the first time, she almost began to feel a trace of admiration for her late husband.

“You might say that. I think he had tried to take out some insurance. He knew he was playing a dangerous game, but I'm afraid that greed got the better of him.”

Muunokhoi was shameless, she had to give him that, lecturing others on the perils of greed.

“So he tried to pre-empt what we might do. He had recorded some of the conversations he had had with my people—both telephone and face to face. Probably not good quality, but enough to be potentially incriminating. And then there was Khenbish. We built up a rather more substantial relationship with Khenbish than we did with your husband, as he was able to put my companies in contact with some lucrative overseas opportunities. Our relationship was a little more—formal. We hadn't realized—at least, not initially—that Khenbish was also working closely with your husband and was involved in some of his petty scams. A pity. Khenbish could have worked very successfully with us without getting involved in that kind of sordid enterprise, if only he'd played straight.”

In her professional life, Sarangarel never ceased to be astonished at the subtle gradations of criminal morality. In other circumstances, she would have been blackly amused at Muunokhoi's contempt for those engaged in less successful criminality than his own.

“We hadn't realized—not until a little later—that Khenbish had shared some of these formal arrangements with your husband. We don't know precisely what was disclosed, but we have reason to believe that your husband copied at least some of the material.”

To her own surprise, she found that this time she did laugh out loud. For the first time, Muunokhoi showed some reaction, opening his blank eyes wider in surprise. “You find something amusing in this?” he said.

“You've gone to great lengths to illustrate how
foolish my late husband was—which, I have to tell you, was scarcely news to me. But it seems to me that he was probably smarter than you gave him credit for.”

Muunokhoi nodded. “There was a degree of—street cunning there, I admit,” he said. “He was a different creature from those we were used to dealing with.”

“Anyway,” she went on, looking to press home some sort of psychological advantage, even though she was still unsure where this discussion was heading, “how do you know he tried to take out this—insurance? Did he try to—make a claim?” This euphemistic nonsense was disturbingly catching, she thought.

“He did not have a chance,” Muunokhoi said.

“That was why you had him killed,” she said simply, watching for his reaction.

He threw up his hands and laughed. “Mrs. Radnaa, I am not a murderer. I cannot deny that your husband's suicide was convenient for me, in that it removed a risk. But it required no intervention from me. He had nowhere else to go.”

She stared at him, trying to detect some sign of emotion, some revelation in his expression, but there was nothing.

“So why do you think he had this material?” she repeated.

Muunokhoi shrugged. “Some of it we learned from Khenbish, who was rather more co-operative once he realized what we knew about his dealings with your husband.”

“I bet he was,” she said. “I hope that you looked after him well in return.”

“Sadly, we did not have the opportunity.”

“You killed him as well.”

“Mrs. Radnaa, you really do have a low opinion of me, don't you?”

“You've no idea,” she said.

“He was a soldier. He died in action. Or, at least, on duty.”

“You really are an unfortunate man, Muunokhoi. People are dying all around you.”

He smiled icily. “Then you should be concerned at being in my presence, Mrs. Radnaa. Especially as I believe that some of your husband's insurance policy is now in your possession.”