Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

I listened to Tynaliev rage on about me being an incompetent bastard and Natasha being a deceitful whore. Then he moved on to what he would do to both of us once we were back in Bishkek. The phone line must have been red hot, but at least I was two and a half thousand kilometers from the basement in Sverdlovsky police station where Tynaliev liked to conduct his “questioning.” Finally, Tynaliev calmed down for long enough to start issuing orders, rather than threats.

“Contact Kulayev; get him to use his contacts to find the girl.”

I explained that would be difficult, given that Kulayev was currently housed in a morgue. I was sure the news would not please the minister, and I was right.

“This isn’t Kyrgyzstan,” I said. “I can’t just wander into a bar and beat the information I need out of one of our stool pigeons. The Dubai authorities are very big on law and order, and they wouldn’t look kindly on a foreign ex-policeman running around causing trouble.”

I decided not to mention the incident in the mall, or the fact that I’d killed one of Kulayev’s men in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses. I didn’t want to bring up the potential connection to Chechen terrorists either, not before I’d managed to find Natasha at any rate.

“I’ve got a couple of leads I want to follow up, Minister. Give me a few days and I’m sure I’ll be able to find the girl,” I said. Telling Tynaliev that one of the leads just happened to be Saltanat Umarova didn’t strike me as being particularly constructive, unless provoking the minister into a stroke would be useful.

I was about to end the call when Tynaliev did it for me, switching off his mobile. I didn’t know if our conversation had been recorded, but it wasn’t like Tynaliev not to think of every way of making himself secure. And that included disposing of an ex-police inspector who knew rather more than was healthy.

Saltanat was my most obvious lead to finding the Chechens, and through them Natasha, but I didn’t know enough about Saltanat’s mission to feel entirely happy about contacting her. She would certainly regard Natasha’s safety as surplus to requirements, and completely irrelevant if it got in the way of dealing with the terrorist threat. I wasn’t even sure if Saltanat wouldn’t consider me expendable, if it came to it. I was under no illusions about romantic love when it came to our relationship. When it suited her, which it did most of the time, Saltanat was all steel and no heart.

I ignored the NO SMOKING sign and lit a cigarette. I stared at the traffic flowing down Sheikh Zayed Road in an endless procession of wealth and wondered what Tynaliev would do to me if I failed to get his money back. I thought it might be easier just to kill myself on the spot, and save myself a world of pain. On the other hand, if there was a way to pry the money out of whichever Swiss bank looked after it, I’d always wanted to visit South America. I could wear a crumpled white linen suit and fedora, and drink caipirinhas in some Rio bar until Tynaliev tracked me down.

And with that cheerful alternative in mind, I decided it was time to return to reality and the Vista Hotel, to question a whore or two. Maybe even get some answers, if I was lucky.

There’s something singularly uninviting about a half-empty bar during the day, where the stink of last night’s beer and sweat and smoke still lingers like cheap aftershave. The atmosphere wasn’t helped by a row of working girls staring with vacant eyes at the few potential customers, who were really only there to get drunk and wonder why their life had turned so sour. Maybe a white linen suit wasn’t the answer after all.

A few heads turned to inspect me for possibilities, dismissed my badly cut suit, my cheap shoes. Clearly, no one thought they would get rich by luring me into their bed.

I sat down at one of the empty tables by the dance floor, looked over at the corner where the Kyrgyz women sat. There were three of them, all in their early thirties, I guessed, talking about whatever it was that got them through the day. I doubted that it was the latest events in Central Asian current affairs.

A waitress took my order for an orange juice, asked if I wanted it freshly squeezed. I said I hadn’t realized there was another way of making orange juice, hoping for a smile. Her look said “country idiot,” and when my drink came, the accompanying bill said “newly poor country idiot.”

I paid the waitress and sipped at my drink, ice chiming against the glass. If Tynaliev didn’t kill me for not finding Natasha, he might well inflict serious damage on me when he saw my expenses.

I smiled and nodded at the least ugly of the Kyrgyz woman. Maybe my smile wasn’t that reassuring, as she took a cigarette out of the pack in front of her and fumbled in her bag for a light. I held up my lighter, and she stood up and walked over, putting a little extra sway into her hips for that hot babe look. She held my hand steady for a beat longer than was necessary, inhaled as if on life support, blew the smoke out of the corner of her mouth in my direction. Perhaps that counted as sexy in the village she came from.

“ Spasibo ,” she said in a voice low enough to make me wonder what exactly she had between her legs.

“ Pozhaluysta ,” I replied, trying to suggest that time spent with her would be very welcome.

“Kyrgyz?” she said, looking puzzled, maybe suspicious. “We don’t get many Central Asians in here.”

I shrugged as if to say that I didn’t care either way. I offered to buy her a drink, made sure she saw the dollar bills when I paid. As always, the way to a whore’s heart is through her purse. She moved her stool a little closer to me, her hand on my arm, leaning forward to give me a better view of her breasts.

“You’re from Bishkek?” I asked, watched her nod, heard an accent that had never been within a hundred kilometers of Chui Prospekt. “Mikhail,” I lied, shaking her hand, then pressing it to my lips. I wanted to appear the kind of misguided fool who believes you can find love in a hookers’ bar and romance in stale perfume.

“You’re very handsome, Mikhail. I’m Jamila.”

Clearly, Jamila didn’t believe in a long courtship. We could probably get engaged, married and divorced in the space of an afternoon.

“A beautiful name for a beautiful lady.”

We gazed meaningfully into each other’s eyes, before she looked down at my right hand. No wedding ring, no pale band of skin to show I’d been married right up to the moment I walked into the bar. I was ripe for the taking. Jamila moved even closer, so that her breast pressed against my arm. It felt heavy, fleshy, firm. I would have been lying if I said I hadn’t noticed it, maybe even felt a little aroused. It wasn’t as if I encountered an apparently eager woman every day. Perhaps I needed to change my line of work.

“Where are you staying, Mikhail?”

“I’m thinking of moving into a suite at the Fairmont,” I lied.

“Won’t that be expensive?”

“Of course, but what’s the point of having money if you don’t spend it on beautiful things. Or people.”

I gave her my most sincere smile, the one that always worries suspects toward the end of an interrogation.

“I’m sure you’re a very generous man,” Jamila murmured, her voice now so deep it seemed to be coming from beneath her ludicrously high stilettos. A smear of lipstick had rubbed itself onto her front teeth, and this made Jamila seem human, slightly vulnerable.

I didn’t need to hear her life history to be able to picture it. Bride-stolen by a guy who grabbed her off the street, a stranger who she had to marry for fear of shaming her family, pregnant at sixteen, abandoned at seventeen by a husband who took off for Moscow and was never seen or heard from again. The decision to leave Kyrgyzstan, the loan at astronomical interest rates, the first time flying, the dingy flat shared with seven other girls. The boredom, sitting for hours in a bar, only to go home with no customer. Then when she did meet someone, the body odor, the halitosis, the weight of a strange body on top of hers, the grunting, the punches, the washing herself clean using the toilet hose in a bathroom festooned with drying underwear. And always the fading hope that she might meet a man who would take care of her, respect her, treat her like a human being.