Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

I understood Saltanat’s logic, even agreed with it. But doubts nagged in the back of my head, like blisters from a pair of new shoes.

“I can’t imagine Tynaliev would approve of Graves’s cellar activities, not after the murder of his only daughter,” I said, “but as minister for state security, a dog can’t bark in Panfilov Park without it being reported to him.”

“Then why would he fly down to Jalalabad to see you, tell you to solve the case, tone down the police hunt for you?” Saltanat asked. “Surely if he was involved, he’d be more interested in you taking the fall for everything?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe he fancies a press conference where he can announce ‘Rogue Inspector Shot Dead Resisting Arrest.’ And then everybody can get back to the cellar work, cutting and raping and killing and piling up the money just like before.”

Saltanat didn’t look convinced, although the logic seemed pretty plain to me.

“So who killed Gurminj? And the buried children? And why the false identity bands?”

I didn’t have a reply. I wasn’t even sure I wanted one. All I knew was my gun had the solution. Or rather, seventeen of them. Sixteen for the bad guys and one for myself.

Saltanat must have seen what I was thinking in my face, because she reached over, put her hand on the butt of my gun.

“Not an answer,” she said. I thought of Lubashov’s brother, bleeding out on Chui Prospekt outside Fatboys, three of my bullets taking refuge in his chest. I remembered Chinara’s uncle, Kursan, dead at my feet, his brains spoiling the pattern of the carpet. Men I’d killed.

“Sometimes it is,” I said, stared out of the window.

It was Saltanat’s turn to shrug. I looked over at her. Something was off, out of kilter.

“That woman, the one with Tynaliev?” I said. “You know who she is?”

Saltanat paused for a moment, nodded.

“Not good news,” she said. “Not for you. And especially not for me.”

“So who is she?”

“She’s called Albina Kurmanalieva. She used to be in the Uzbek security service. But now she’s freelance, a specialist.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I’ve known too many specialists who let their work get out of hand.

“Specialist in what?”

Saltanat said nothing for a moment, her mouth set fierce.

“We call it ‘spilling,’ sort of an office joke,” she said. “But not really a funny one.”

“Spilling what?” I asked, already guessing the answer.

“Blood. Brains. Whatever needs taking care of, or whoever. She’s an assassin, Akyl.”

I lit another cigarette, trying to put together an understanding of a situation that seemed to swirl and drift and go out of focus, as ungraspable as smoke, fragmented as ash.

I’d heard of Kurmanalieva, though I’d never encountered her. She was supposed to have been responsible for mokroye delo , the old KGB phrase, “wet work,” down in the south near Osh, where the riots started back in 2010. Only we don’t call them riots, or civil unrest, or even revolution. The politically correct phrase is “events.” The KGB weren’t the only ones good at euphemisms.

I’d heard Kurmanalieva had crossed the border, taken down two of the principals behind the troubles, one Kyrgyz, one Uzbek, handcuffed them back to back, and gave each of them an unseeing third eye. She left them propped against each other in the center of Osh, then drifted like smoke back to wherever she came from. A message to both sides to stop fucking around.

It wasn’t the only story I’d heard about her. She’d spent time in Chechnya, working with the Spetsnaz, Russian special forces, hunting down people the Russians called terrorists and who called themselves freedom fighters. You could use her name to frighten young would-be police officers at the academy. Screw up, and Albina would pay you a visit.

“She’s good with handguns, rifles, unarmed combat,” Saltanat said. “Better than me. Better than you. And what she’s best at are knives.”

“So why is she here with Tynaliev?” I wondered. “And why would he take her to meet up with Graves?”

“My guess?” Saltanat answered. “You spooked Graves with that hand grenade and arson play. He knew his crew wasn’t up to dealing with whoever you were. So he called his good friend, Minister Tynaliev, asked for a specialist to help him out with his problem. For a price, of course.”

I nodded. It made a kind of sense, like reflections in an old mirror where half the silvering has rotted away and the frame is buckled.

“So you don’t think your call made any difference?” I asked.

“It didn’t do any harm,” she said, “but men like Graves don’t get rich and powerful by taking other people’s word as the truth.”

“Have you had dealings with this specialist, this Albina?” I said.

Saltanat looked away, as if pulling bitter memories out of the sky. She touched the thin white scar that bisected her left eyebrow. I’d always wondered how Saltanat had been cut, and now I had a vivid image in my mind. I pictured a Chanel-clad beauty wielding a switchblade, then decided, as with so many parts of Saltanat’s life, to leave the question unasked.

“We have a history,” she said. “We’re never going to go shopping for shoes and makeup together, put it that way.”

She didn’t volunteer the rest of the story, the violence it surely contained. I thought of Chinara, her gentle soul, teaching the laws of the universe at school, and at the same time trying to decode human beings through poetry. A woman who’d never come close to violence, let alone been the cause of it, until the cancer attacked her, savaged her like a rabid dog. Show me the poem that can make that go away.

“So now what do we do?” she asked, the intensity of her gaze searing.

“I’ve already told you this isn’t your fight.”

“Akyl, this is where I want to be. Even if you don’t want me here. If I’m not here to look after you, who knows what trouble you’ll get into.”

Then she smiled, and my head and heart turned like distant planets around the sun.

We sat and watched Graves’s mansion for a couple of hours before Saltanat turned the key in the ignition and started to pull away.

“You don’t want to wait and follow Kurmanalieva?” I asked.

Saltanat shook her head, her hair cascading across one cheek. So beautiful, so deadly. I could smell her skin, cool, delicate.

“She won’t stay with Tynaliev,” she explained, turning right toward Chui Prospekt. “That would put him in jeopardy if things didn’t work out and she was caught or killed. And if she’s here to protect Graves, why would she leave his side? I’m sure he’s got a couple of guest rooms.”

“I’m sure he won’t take her on a tour of the cellar,” I said, then wondered if that might not be something they would have in common.

“Kurmanalieva isn’t a sadist,” Saltanat said. “It’s always strictly business with her. Unless it’s personal, of course. Then all bets fall by the wayside.”

I cleared my throat. I was always on dangerous ground whenever I asked Saltanat about her past. I knew she was divorced, but I didn’t know where she lived, if she had brothers and sisters, if her parents were still alive. Shit, I wasn’t even sure if Saltanat was her real name. Smoke and mirrors; no one wants to fall in love with a reflection, a mirage.

“The history you have with her. That was personal?”

Saltanat’s face tightened, and once again she touched the scar that ran through her left eyebrow. Not a good memory.

“Yes.”

It was obvious she didn’t want to tell me any more so I rolled down the window, lit the last of my cigarettes, watched the girls on Chui in their pretty spring dresses as they laughed and chattered and believed they would live forever…