Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

“This young Bulgarian came up, introduced himself and said, ‘Any important financial information you want me to hide for you?’”

Natasha didn’t care for the sarcasm, but carried on.

“He spent ten minutes staring at my tits, then asked if he could buy me a drink. I said I wasn’t in the mood for company, but I had a problem that was worrying me.”

“What made you think he’d know anything about computers?” I asked.

“Maybe it was the SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS logo on his T-shirt, and the word GEEK stenciled on his forehead, just above the bottle-bottom glasses,” she replied.

Touché.

“So you told him some unbelievable story he didn’t even listen to while he dreamt of visiting your Silicon Valley?”

“He offered to solve my problem for me. Told me how many degrees he’d got, the games software he’d written. Of course I was so impressed, I let him buy me that drink. Freshly squeezed mango juice.”

“So then you come back here, you start to make out, then he drinks your new and improved freshly squeezed mango juice.”

“Watermelon, actually. And I didn’t use the handcuffs for when he woke up.”

I couldn’t help smiling.

“In the morning you told him what a wonderful lover he had been, but your husband was arriving that evening, so you wouldn’t be able to meet again. You explained that you needed his help to hide some financial accounts before you and your husband got divorced. And he was happy to oblige.”

Natasha looked at me, gave a nod of grudging admiration. “Inspector, you should have been a detective.”

I shook my head. I was out of my country, out of my depth.

“What I should have been is a better one.”

“You’ve got this far; you should take some credit for that.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I suppose you’re wondering if there’s enough money there for both of us.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure if I cared for mango juice. Too sweet.

“If I could find you, then it would be twice as easy for someone to find us. Someone who’s got the killing skills I seem to lack.”

“I want you to go back to Mikhail. Tell him I’ll keep ten percent and he can have the rest back. In exchange for letting me live, not sending someone out after me.”

“I don’t think he’d be too pleased if I brought him news like that. In fact, I might be the one ending up underground.”

“I’m sure you have great powers of persuasion, Inspector. Or perhaps I should call you Akyl, now that we know each other so well?”

She tilted her head to one side and gave me the sort of look romance novels call coquettish. If I hadn’t felt rather vulnerable without my trousers on, it might even have worked.

“But why should I help you?”

Natasha gave one of her trademark cold smiles. “Mikhail might be angry if you don’t return with his money, but he’ll certainly have you killed if he thinks we’re lovers. He doesn’t like to lose any of his prize possessions.”

“Why would he think that?” I asked with a sudden terrible feeling that I was about to find out.

“Because you’ve very photogenic, in a thuggish sort of way,” Natasha said, and threw some color prints on the bed. Photographs. Of two naked people, one of them with long blonde hair and big breasts, the other with a lot of scars. Apparently making love. I took a quick look, closed my eyes, lay back and thought of Kyrgyzstan. By the look of it, just as I had in the photographs.

“Let me get dressed. I need coffee, aspirin, explanations. And not in that order.”

Natasha nodded, pointed to my clothes on the chair, left me to put them on. She didn’t leave the gun.

I took my time, washed my face, wondered what new and unpleasant surprise Dubai was going to drop on me. I knew Tynaliev would go crazy if he saw the pictures. If I were very lucky, he’d simply beat me to death with his bare fists. Or he’d get some psycho who would make sure I ended up in a quiet field or up in the mountains, with crows snacking on whatever had been left of my face.

“I don’t suppose the minister would believe I was unconscious,” I said to myself, looked again at the pictures. My eyes were closed, but that might have been in passion. The sheets had been positioned to hide any lack of interest on my part, but Tynaliev obviously believed in paying for the best for his companions. God knows why he’d picked me.

I emerged from the bedroom to find Natasha ready to leave, bag slung over her shoulder. From the weight of it against her hip, she was obviously keeping the Makarov.

“We’re going out?”

“Coffee.”

I looked at the kitchen. As empty as a hooker’s heart. Clearly Natasha wasn’t the homemaking type.

Outside, the air was just as unrelenting, like hot wet towels wrapped around my head. The air tasted of cinders, car fumes, sweat. Small sand devils danced and swirled in the roadway, lifted and spun by the breeze that meandered between the buildings.

“Does it ever get any cooler?” I asked.

“The winters are nice. And everywhere has air conditioning. Even the taxis.” And she put up her arm to hail a cab.

I was sure she was right, but no one had told our driver. Obviously he liked the heat, because he was wearing a T-shirt under his uniform, and probably had a scarf and coat in the trunk, in case the weather got suddenly chilly, down to about ninety degrees. I asked about the air con and he gave me several enthusiastic nods but just closed the windows. He was obviously a big garlic fan as well, and so we made our happy way with me feeling both seasoned and cooked.

We arrived at Burjuman, the mall where I’d had coffee with Kulayev what felt like years before. I paid off the driver, with a tip for him to put toward buying a pair of winter gloves, and we went inside. The chill of the air was like a slap around the head; obviously Dubai took temperature control very seriously.

I ordered coffee and fizzy water, watched Natasha take a couple of foil-wrapped tablets out of her bag. She pushed them across the table.

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m still recovering from the last medicine you gave me.”

“Aspirin. Still in the packaging, you’ll notice, being a detective. But if you don’t want…”

I popped the tablets out of the plastic, chased them down with the water. After all, I’d survived the Rohypnol, right?

“You never told me why you shot Marko Atanasov.”

Natasha gave an offhand gesture, dismissing him as if of no importance. “Nothing to do with this, OK?”

“But still,” I persisted, “you must have had a reason.”

I guessed that the gun she’d used was somewhere in the muddy waters of the creek, but I decided not to ask her. The less she knew about what I did and didn’t know about her, the better. I particularly didn’t want her to know I used to be Murder Squad. Trust’s a very valuable thing—probably because it’s so rare, and for good reason. Natasha had killed at least one man that I knew of, stolen millions of dollars, dragged me three thousand kilometers from Bishkek, drugged me, and was blackmailing me about my boss. I liked her, but trust didn’t enter into the equation.

Natasha fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes, realized that she couldn’t smoke unless she went outside into the heat.

“I didn’t know anybody when I came here,” she began, taking a sip of her espresso, “but I knew that a lot of Kyrgyz girls went to the Vista Hotel, some to meet customers and some just to socialize. I got friendly with a few of them, heard their stories.”

Natasha paused, finished her coffee, stood up. “Let’s go outside. I really want a cigarette.”

We stood in the shadow of the Metro station, and I watched as Natasha lit up. Even in the shade, it was stifling, and sweat dribbled down my back. I missed the weight of the Makarov in my pocket, sensed the CCTV cameras everywhere, wondered if we were being watched and by whom. Tobacco smoke mingled with car fumes; it was a perfume I was beginning to dislike. Along with pretty much everything else about Dubai, about this job.