Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

I said nothing, remembering the pathetic bundles in that cold field, the sun turning the mountain snow the color of blood. I wanted to vomit, to blow the story to the newspapers and see nomenklatura heads on spikes. Most of all, I wanted to kill Morton Graves.

While we sat there in grim silence, the waitress brought over a fresh beer for Saltanat. She was young, pretty, and I couldn’t remember her name.

“You’re looking very serious, Akyl. Hope there wasn’t something wrong with the pizza?”

“It was fine.” I smiled, and made sure I didn’t watch as she walked back to the bar. However, that didn’t stop Saltanat.

“Pretty girl,” she said, in a nonchalant tone that didn’t lower my defenses for a moment. “You’ve known her for a long time?”

“She’s a waitress. In a bar. That I used to drink in. She’s seen us both in here before. I need a hard time about it right now?”

Saltanat was silent, but I knew that conversation wasn’t over.

Her phone rang, startling us both.

She listened, then broke the connection. She looked over at me, her face betraying absolutely nothing, professional, a trained killer.

“Albina,” she said. “With a time and a place.”

“You think she wants to give up Graves?” I asked. “Cut some kind of immunity? Do you trust her?”

Saltanat shook her head.

“Not a chance; I know what she wants. To kill me. As she always used to say, the hard bit is knowing who to trust. And when.”

“What you just said about knowing who to trust? I just remembered where I’d heard that before,” I said. “Albina was the woman who came to visit the orphanage. Those were her exact words: I thought she looked familiar.”

“You didn’t recognize her from before?” Saltanat asked, never taking her eyes away from the traffic in front of us. We’d decided there wasn’t time to go to the lockup for more weapons; the Uighur knife would have to do.

“It was one incident one afternoon a long time ago, in a time I’ve tried to forget.”

Saltanat nodded, said, “I can understand that.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I was brought up in an orphanage too, Akyl. You’re not unique. But I did get adopted.”

Her voice told me it hadn’t been an idyllic childhood, that questions would not be welcome.

“How soon after Albina saw you did you get to go home?” she asked.

“My grandfather came down to Karakol about three months later and met me at the bus station. He bought two tickets to Bishkek and we headed west in a beat-up old marshrutka . Nine hours until we arrived, and I don’t think my dedushka said more than five words. He certainly didn’t say why we were going to Bishkek. We walked for about half an hour—my grandfather wasn’t one for spending unnecessary som on taxis—until we came to Panfilov Park and sat down on one of the benches near the amusement park.

“We waited for about an hour; grandfather bought me an ice cream with black cherry juice on top. I’d never had one before, and I tried to make it last as long as possible, until finally the ice cream started to melt and run down my arm and onto my shirt.

“I was licking the last of the juice off my fingers when I heard a woman’s voice. ‘I can’t leave you alone for a minute, Akyl Borubaev, can I? You think clean shirts grow on apple trees?’ and I looked up and there was my mama . She looked tired, older, her shoulders more stooped, but it was her. I think my mouth fell open in surprise, and then she opened her arms, and I was hugging her waist and we were crying. Everybody stopped to stare, but I didn’t care, and I thought my heart was going to burst with happiness.”

I sat still, remembering that day, how we’d stayed with one of her cousins until we could find a place of our own, in Alamedin, just behind the market, so our three-room apartment always smelled of newly picked fruit and fresh vegetables. It was the last time my mother ever showed me any emotion, any clue to her feelings. Whenever I was cross or unhappy, she would scold me, saying, “Don’t show your character.” She watched without comment, without emotion, as my grandfather’s body was carried out of our apartment, followed years later by that of my father, on one of his rare visits. She didn’t approve of me joining the police force, a staunch supporter of the widely held belief that all policemen are corrupt. My mother died not long after meeting Chinara. She approved of our marriage, said Chinara was too good for me. And when her time came, my mother fought her own death with an unwillingness to accept anything stronger than her own strength of will.

“That’s a good story, Akyl, you were lucky, believe me,” Saltanat said. I knew any attempt to interrogate her would lead only to silence and a distancing that would take hours to break down. If she told me, I might understand her motives, her attitudes. If she didn’t, she was still Saltanat, with all her mysteries.

“How dangerous is Albina?” I said.

“Hand to hand? The best.”

“Why don’t I wait just out of sight?” I said. “Then put her down with a single shot?”

Saltanat looked over at me, and smiled.

“One, you’re not that good a shot. Two, you’d never get near her, her instincts for a trap are superb. She’s relied on them for twenty-five years, they’ve never let her down. She’s as cautious as a snow leopard. Three, you wouldn’t see her coming until she’d brought death to your side. And four, this is between her and me, something waiting to be settled for a long time.”

“Personal stuff,” I said. She nodded.

“Very personal.”

We parked on Orozbekova, just beyond the statue of Lenin at the back of the Historical Museum, his new home since 2003. We don’t deny his influence, we just don’t give it the prominence it once had. His arm is still outstretched, pointing to the future, but his face is always in shadow, thanks to the tall trees that now surround him, trees that have lasted longer than his glorious revolution.

I looked across to the trees, but there was no sign of Albina.

“What makes you think she won’t just shoot you the moment you step out of the car?” I said.

“She’d see that as a failure,” Saltanat said. “She needs to show she’s still the best at what she does.”

“She’s pretty good at lots of things,” I said, feeling the burn in my toe, the tightness of the linen pad we’d bandaged it with earlier. “I’ve got something for you,” I added, handing over my Uighur knife. “Albina has its twin, and it’s only fair you’re as well-armed as she is.”

Saltanat took the blade, felt the heft, the balance, nodded approvingly.

“If I think she’s getting the better of you, or she’s going to kill you,” I said, reached for my gun under the seat, held it up, “then I’m going to blow her fucking head off.”

Saltanat started to protest, but I put a finger to my lips. She leaned forward, kissed my cheek, and I could smell the freshness of her perfume, the lemon shampoo of her hair.

Saltanat’s phone rang. As she listened, her face changed from shock into anger. She put the phone back in her pocket and turned to me.

“That was my embassy. Elmira, the woman looking after Otabek? She’s been shot, she’s dead. And the boy’s missing.”

And then she was out of the car, walking without haste toward the base of the statue. Albina emerged from the shadows, turned and beckoned Saltanat to join her. I got out of the car, following the two women further under the trees. Lenin ignored them, obviously dreaming about the irresistible rise of the proletariat.

Finally, we came to a spot away from the park paths, where carved stone statues stood in a ring, as if refereeing the fight. Their faces in the shadows were cruel or uncaring, as if they’d seen it all before and remained unmoved. Albina held up a hand toward me, indicating I should come no further. I nodded my acceptance.