Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

The wheezing from the engine grew more laboured as we climbed up towards the Issyk-Ata Gorge. Finally, with the marshrutka on the point of collapse, we pulled into an empty gravelled car park. The main building of the sanatorium was visible through the trees at the end of an overgrown and winding path. The upraised arm of Lenin pointed through a gap in the trees, the statue reaching out to snatch a cloud. After independence, no one dared to pull down the statues of the Great Leader just in case the Soviets came back, but it was decided to move them to rather less prominent sites, just in case the Soviets didn’t return. Having stared at Vladimir Ilyich’s embalmed corpse, his face candlewax yellow, in its mausoleum outside the walls of the Kremlin, I didn’t think he looked too upset.

‘You spoil us, pakhan ,’ I said, as brightly as I could manage, looking at the tree-lined gloom shrouding the path. It looked bad, but I knew the buildings would be worse.

Soviet architecture was designed with the best of intentions and the minimum of skill and materials. I knew what to expect: broken steps made of rotting concrete, corridors painted murk-green up to waist height, then mottled cream up towards stained ceilings. Only half the light fittings would contain a bulb, and only half of those would be working, giving a thirty-watt attempt at illumination. The smell of cabbage overlaid with disinfectant. Unwashed windows with cracks repaired with thick brown tape, light blue paint covering more of the glass than the frame. Only the best for the people, as Lenin and then Stalin and then Khrushchev had decreed. And this was a place where people came to get well.

We made an odd-looking party as we traipsed up the path, avoiding the worst of the mud, bodyguards leading the way and bringing up the rear, with Aliyev and me firmly secured in the middle.

Before independence, you might have thought we were members of the Politburo, come all the way from Moscow to see just how well the Great Soviet Experiment was working. Now, we looked exactly what we were – a bunch of thugs on our way to a hideout or a shootout.

‘You promised me somewhere warm,’ I complained. ‘This doesn’t look like it, unless you’re planning to torch the place.’

Aliyev gave one of the shrugs that were beginning to annoy me.

It had begun to drizzle, the rain pushing its way through the mist clinging to the tops of the trees, then waiting until I was underneath before beginning its final descent.

Finally we paused in front of the main building, drab as all the others but with double doors that gaped open. A note taped to the left-hand door proclaimed opening hours, next to a handwritten scrawl saying the complex was closed ‘for a week, due to a prior booking’. I couldn’t help noticing we were two hours earlier than the scheduled time; on the other hand, the place looked as if we’d arrived forty years too late.

Aliyev saw the look on my face.

‘Relax, Inspector, we’re expected. I made a couple of calls before we left Bishkek. And round here, I’m not just anyone, you know?’

He waited for the guards to check the entrance, ushered me in with a sweep of his hand. The hallway wasn’t as bad as I’d feared; if anything, it was worse. There were patches on the wall, where the portraits of previous dignitaries had hung until they fell from favour, took the long one-way trip to Siberia or the short ride to the Lubyanka. Naturally, as they vanished, so did their portraits. Long streaks of damp and mould created a surreal mural of swirling patterns and stains. The air smelt of rotting wood, mouse shit and more than a hint of despair. Offhand, the only place I could imagine being less healthy for someone requiring treatment would be at the bottom of a plague pit.

‘The Hyatt Regency was fully booked?’ I asked.

‘The Hyatt is where my predecessor would have chosen for a meeting like this,’ he said, ‘and that’s why there’s a marble slab in Ala-Archa Cemetery with his ugly old mug engraved on it, and his ugly old body rotting away underneath. His epitaph should read “Predictable”. I’ve no wish to join him until my own face is just as old and just as ugly. So this place suits my purposes, Inspector. My apologies if you’re accustomed to better surroundings. I always thought you were that rare creature, an honest policeman. I’d hate to discover I was wrong.’

I couldn’t think of a smart answer to that, decided to hold my tongue, wait to see what surprises were on their way for me.

‘Kenesh? Kairat?’

Aliyev waved towards a door at the end of the hallway, his guards already halfway there, guns drawn and held down by their side, reluctance to be first in the line of fire clear in their faces and their cautious approach. I expected a hail of bullets as they opened the door, but heard only silence.

By the time they reported the place was empty, with no sign of an armed reception party, the cold mountain air had started to gnaw at my bones. I watched my breath turn white, felt my feet ache from the cold. Judging by the state of the floorboards, stamping my feet to keep them warm might earn me a quick trip to the cellar.

‘Perhaps we could wait in the marshrutka ?’ I suggested.

‘Smart,’ Aliyev said. ‘That way we can be grouped together as a sitting target for whoever drives up the road. You might as well make yourself comfortable; we have a little time to wait before our meeting.’

He didn’t volunteer who we were going to meet, or at what time. Either he’d tell me when he was ready, or he wouldn’t. I wondered why he’d brought me along. A sacrificial offering perhaps, or a sign of his good faith. Backed by the AK-47 assault rifles two of his men were carrying.

I tried not to think of piping hot chai , raspberry jam stirred into it for sweetness. Even the thin blanket in my room back at the safe house held a sudden delicious promise. The way the temperature was dropping as the afternoon wore on, if a bullet didn’t kill me, pneumonia would.

The next four hours passed in a delirium of boredom. I tried to spot faces in the stains on the wall, counted the number of missing window panes, wondered whether my watch had died.

Aliyev gave a nod of dismissal, and four of the guards left the room, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders like a refugee army on the march. The remaining two guards took up position by the windows looking out onto the path.

‘Can I ask who we’ll be meeting? I don’t want any nasty surprises, like coming face to face with an armed man I sent to Penitentiary One for a ten stretch.’

Aliyev gave me another of those pretending-to-be-human smiles.

‘Don’t worry, Inspector, none of our guests have ever seen the inside of a Kyrgyz prison. Or prison anywhere, for that matter.’

I supposed that was reassuring, and it did suggest the people we were about to meet were both foreign and professional.

‘Maybe an idea not to call me Inspector,’ I suggested. ‘We don’t want your guests to get the wrong idea.’

‘These people wouldn’t give a fuck one way or the other. And they already know exactly who you are. Shooting a minister earns you a certain notoriety; you mustn’t be modest.’

‘Why am I here at all?’

A not unreasonable request, I thought, but Aliyev wasn’t to be drawn.

‘In good time, when the moment is ripe. I’ve got big plans, and they do include you.’

‘At least tell me when they’re due to arrive. I don’t want to spend the night here.’

Aliyev looked at his watch, perhaps as keen to return to his bed as I was to mine.

‘Another few minutes before they land,’ he said.

‘They’re not driving?’

Aliyev shook his head.

‘Time is money. And our guests are short of one and possess plenty of the other.’