Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

After a couple of hours, Aliyev began to regain some semblance of his old self, even managed to tell the driver where to find the safe house, an hour or so further on, just as the lake appeared over on our right.

Lake Issyk-Kul doesn’t reveal itself all at once, with the kind of boastful drama you might expect from the world’s second-largest mountain lake. Like the Kyrgyz people, the lake first appears with an abashed reticence, looking like nothing so much as a marshy puddle, before expanding to fill the gap between two sets of snow-capped mountains. The water is clear, placid, never freezing even in the most brutal winter, while the mountains on the horizon remain impassive, indifferent, unconcerned. It’s a landscape, or rather, a lakescape, that reveals us as the small and insignificant creatures we really are. And it was to this place of austerity and beauty we came to hide and plot, perhaps even to die.

The safe house was tucked away at the end of an unmarked track leading away from the town of Cholpon-Ata and up towards the mountains. We had to drive halfway along an abandoned airport runway, avoiding the worst of the potholes. Weary-looking bushes pushed through the broken asphalt, then regretted their decision. On either side, decaying buildings showed the punishment two decades of Kyrgyz winter had inflicted. I had the feeling I’d fallen into one of those movies set in a post-nuclear world, where men revert to animals and gangs roam abandoned cities looking for prey. Knowing I was travelling with a gang not so very different didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.

After five bone-shaking minutes, during which I’d repeatedly slammed my head against the car roof, we pulled up outside a dilapidated single-storey farmhouse, the once-whitewashed walls grey with dust and the window panes cracked and repaired with tape.

‘There’s no place like home,’ I said, and this certainly didn’t look like any home I’d want to stay in.

‘You were expecting a gangster villa, Inspector?’ Aliyev asked. ‘A luxury pool with bikini-clad silicone beauties sipping cocktails and eating Beluga caviar?’

I shook my head; I knew Aliyev was too clever to fall for all the usual trappings of criminal success, the ones that shrieked ‘Arrest me!’ to any policeman who wasn’t dipping his beak in the pot. Even so, the farmhouse seemed too primitive for anything but the most basic peasant existence.

The car parked, we clambered out and one man handed Aliyev a new cane. Perhaps when you live the life of a pakhan , you need a constant supply. I watched as one of the bodyguards unscrewed the number plates, took new ones from under the driver’s seat, attached them with a speed that suggested much practice. Aliyev didn’t believe in taking the chance of a random police patrol spotting them and calling in a specialist team of snipers.

‘I think I’d better have your gun, Inspector, don’t you? To avoid any confusion or uncertainty.’

I didn’t see how I could disagree, simply nodded. One of the bodyguards relieved me of the Makarov; I shrugged one shoulder, as if to say my jacket sat better without the gun’s weight dragging one side down. Unarmed, I knew the only option I had was to sit back, win Aliyev’s trust, and work out how to explain what I wanted without getting killed in the process. Simple.

‘We’re going to stay here? In this shithole?’ I asked, and the incredulity in my voice wasn’t entirely faked. It might have been safer than the Hyatt Regency in the centre of Bishkek, but it was also a hell of a lot less comfortable.

‘Just for a couple of days,’ he assured me, leading the way towards the front door. ‘Just until we can assess the situation properly, decide what steps to take.’

That sounded like a roundabout way of saying ‘retaliate in blood’, but I nodded as if I agreed. The driver pulled open the farmhouse door, hinges squealing like a village pig being slaughtered, and Aliyev gestured for me to enter. I felt the hair on my neck prickle; it was one of those moments when it’s very easy to put a bullet into the base of someone’s skull, smashing through the spinal column and creating instant death. But I didn’t have a choice, so I stepped over the threshold.

The inside of the farmhouse lived up to my expectations. It was clear no one had lived there since the collapse of the Soviet Union, perhaps even earlier. The place stank of urine, damp earth and rotting food. Two stained mattresses lay on the floor, not far from an overturned stove. The room looked as if two of the local brown bears had broken in, thrown a wild party, got drunk, then had a running battle, before sleeping it off and skulking back to the nearest nature reserve.

I turned to Aliyev, catching his arm to steady him as he skidded on the grimy grease-soiled floor.

‘Which mattress do you prefer?’ I asked. ‘And would you mind if I slept in the car?’

Aliyev didn’t answer, merely gesturing to the bodyguards, who used their boots to kick one of the mattresses aside. I had to admire Aliyev’s cunning; the mattress was filthy enough to stop anyone discovering the trapdoor beneath.

‘I think we can do rather better than that,’ he said, waving his cane. The trapdoor was lifted, to reveal a flight of steep steps leading down into a cellar. I wondered if this had originally been a vegetable or potato store; it had certainly been cleverly concealed to deter the casual searcher.

‘Will you be able to manage?’ I asked, looking down at the cane on which Aliyev was supporting his weight.

‘This?’ he said, and handed the cane to one of the bodyguards. ‘I think so.’

And with that, he stepped over to the stairs, turned around, and climbed down into the darkness with a great deal more agility than I could muster.

It never hurts to have your enemies, real or potential, underestimate you, and his pretending to be lame had certainly fooled me. I made a mental note to take nothing about him for granted, followed him down the steps, towards whatever fate was lying in wait for me.

The steps went down for three metres, enough to ensure this underground hideout would be soundproof. Fire a gun down there and it wouldn’t be heard outside. It was likely someone had done just that, and not as an experiment.

The basement was huge, stretching far beyond the footprint of the farmhouse above. Recessed lights illuminated a plain wooden floor, with a long table and chairs at one end of the main room. A corridor at the rear led off to three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a small room stacked with guns, a well-stocked kitchen and a storeroom full of tinned food. The air smelt musty, disused, as if it had been a long time since anyone had come down here. The dust in the air tasted metallic, harsh the way silver foil feels on metal fillings. It made me think of the underground bunker in Berlin that the German High Command retreated to as the Red Army approached to end the Great Patriotic War. The place was sterile, impersonal, but like the basement at Sverdlovsky station, I sensed it had seen its share of begging, beatings and blood.

‘Where does the power come from?’

‘We have a concealed generator a little way away, and reserve batteries, of course.’

‘You could withstand a siege here,’ I said.

‘The point of building this was so we wouldn’t have to,’ Aliyev replied. ‘My predecessor, the late unlamented pakhan , believed in showing the world how tough he was, how he would end in a blaze of glory. He’d consider this a cowardly way to live. Well, look how he ended up. Face down in a snowdrift, his jaw shot away. Me? I prefer to stay alive. Once you’re in the grave, you can’t spend money, drink, eat, fuck. From the outside you wouldn’t have seen anything other than a squalid and decrepit ruin. Which makes this safe.’