Tom Callaghan - A Spring Betrayal

“So what am I supposed to do?” Saltanat said.

“Wait here until I call you. If you don’t hear from me in a couple of hours, go somewhere, but don’t tell me where, and take the battery out of your phone. Call me from a throwaway in twenty-four hours, and if I don’t answer, head across the border.”

“And from there?”

“If I’m not answering, you’ll know I’m dead or locked up. That means Tynaliev is tied in with Graves and the porn. If he is, contact Usupov, get him to send the material I gave him to the papers. Better still, you send it to the Uzbek papers, and the BBC and CNN. There’s no way Tynaliev could survive a media strike like that.”

“Why not do that anyway?” she asked.

“I need to know if Tynaliev’s involved or not. Bring him down and he’s innocent, the stability of my country is threatened. It’s not as if we’re Switzerland to begin with.”

“Twenty-four hours, right?”

“Unless I call you first.”

“And if you don’t?”

I stumbled for the right movie cliché, pulled her close to me, hugged her. I pushed the image of Chinara on the Ferris wheel out of my mind, thought only of the here and now, the woman in my arms.

“Then we’ll always have Bishkek.”

I felt a lot less confident when I arrived at Minister of State Security Tynaliev’s town house. The one time I’d been there was when I came to tell Tynaliev that his daughter, Yekaterina, had been found butchered above Ibraimova, near the Blonder Pub. In daylight, the place still looked like a mafia pakhan ’s armed compound, with more guards than the White House. Two men with Uzis tracked my progress as I parked the Lexus at a suitable distance to prove I was suicide-bomb-free. The armed guard at the gatehouse inspected my police pass as if looking for a reason to shoot me, handed it back to me, thumbed toward the scanner. “Trust no one” was the motto of the day.

I handed over my gun, walked through the scanner, and a guard led me to the front door.

“Wait here,” he ordered, with all the politeness you’d expect from a man with a machine pistol in his hand.

“I called the minister earlier, said I was on the way,” I said.

The information didn’t send the guard into a fit of groveling; I couldn’t have said I was entirely surprised. I didn’t add I’d given a list of conditions for coming in, the most pressing of which was not being gunned down on sight.

“Wait here,” he repeated, letting his hand rest on the Makarov on his hip just to make sure I’d fully understood. I was finally escorted into the hallway, and from there into the same small, overheated study where I’d first met Tynaliev. The minister stood there, cracking his knuckles in a way I didn’t find reassuring.

“You’ve sorted this business out, I hope, to everyone’s benefit?” he barked.

“In a manner of speaking, Minister,” I said. “I can tell you where the porn films were made, point you to the main suspect. I’m sure you’ll be able to spin the case so you come out of it with the maximum credit, without embarrassing us or your Uzbek counterparts.”

“Sit,” the minister said, and it wasn’t a request. He poured himself a small vodka, picked up a second glass, looked at me.

“You don’t, if I remember,” he said. “I was always told never to trust a man who doesn’t drink.”

“My mother always said never to trust a man who does,” I said.

He tossed back the vodka, poured another, and smiled, the same wolfish grin I’d seen before.

“Perhaps you should have listened to your mother,” he said, and sat down behind his desk.

“If I could remind you—” I began, before he interrupted me with an impatient gesture.

“Yes, yes, the order’s already gone out, the Circle of Brothers was trying to discredit you by planting kiddie porn in your apartment, you’re reinstated with no loss of pension, pay, or seniority.”

“I’m grateful, Minister,” I said, and for once when talking to a government official, I meant it.

“There is a problem, though,” I went on, “with the making of the film, the bodies we found, and, of course, the murder of Gurminj Shokhumorov.”

“What sort of a problem?”

“There had to be a considerable investment in making those films, the equipment.” I shuddered, thinking of the belts and knives in Graves’s cellar. “Finding the victims, ensuring they weren’t missed, not to mention the distribution, the bribes that had to be paid all along the line. So obviously, this wasn’t the work of a poor man.”

“You’ve found links to the Circle of Brothers? Something we can use to smash them?” Tynaliev asked.

“I’ve no doubt they helped with the distribution, at least some of it,” I said, choosing my words with care, “but this isn’t the sort of thing they would get involved with. Too unpopular.”

“Explain,” Tynaliev said.

“The Circle makes its money through what most people consider facts of life. Bootleg vodka, gambling, trafficking drugs to Russia and the West, prostitution. Men pay money to fuck, women fuck for money, the way of the world, oldest profession and so on. People say, well, if not them, someone else. And everybody likes to take a drink now and then. But something like this isn’t acceptable to most people. And that weakens the Circle in all their other activities. The money starts to dry up. And the foot soldiers in the Circle, they start to wonder if it’s the turn of their daughters, their sons to become film stars, meat for the mincing machine. So everyone’s unhappy. Bad for business.”

I stood up and took one of the bottles of sparkling mineral water. I held it up to the minister, asking his permission. He nodded, I unscrewed the top, drank. Now came the time when my mouth would be dry, and I’d have to fight to keep the fear out of my voice.

“So you need someone powerful and rich to do all this. Someone with som in his pocket to make people look the other way, to buy his way out of any trouble. And if people won’t be bought, then get rid of them with no consequences.”

“That sounds like half the people I know.” Tynaliev smiled.

Now came the hard part, and I took another drink before speaking.

“The problem is, Minister,” I said, “I know who is responsible. People you know as well.”

“Are you fucking with me, Inspector?” Tynaliev said, and his voice conjured up images of tiled interrogation rooms, blood spatter on the walls, broken teeth on the floor crunching underfoot.

“No, Minister,” I said, pleased I sounded unafraid, confident even. “There wouldn’t be any point in me doing that. We both want whoever did these awful crimes to be punished, don’t we?”

“Who?” he said, his voice the sound of prison doors slamming shut.

“Obviously, I’ve got documentary evidence to back up my case,” I said.

“You mean you’ve taken out insurance? Left the files with someone you can trust?”

“I’m dealing with a powerful man, Minister. I wouldn’t want the case to fizzle out if an ‘accident’ happened to me, I’m sure you agree.”

I didn’t need to spell out that my “insurance” would pour a world of shit on Tynaliev if he was involved and had me put in the ground.

“I ask again. Who?”

“Morton Graves. And a woman. Albina Kurmanalieva.”

The names hung in the air like distant smoke. Tynaliev looked at his vodka, then pushed the glass away.

“I have met Ms. Kurmanalieva, just once. A striking woman, very single-minded. If my tastes were to run to more mature women, I have no doubt that ours would be a friendship on many levels. I trust you can back your claims with evidence?”

I nodded.

“And also against Morton Graves? He’s one of this country’s major foreign investors. He’s brought trade here, exports what little we have, brings foreign currency in, provides jobs, even medical care and housing. And you know how good we are at doing all that for ourselves.”