Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

“Isn’t that the difference? Isn’t that why we have laws?”

“While you’re waiting for justice, they’ll create more injustice, more dead, more tortured and broken. You stick with the rules, Akyl, and I’ll clean up the shit.”

I knew I couldn’t argue with Saltanat. What’s more, I knew that part of what she was saying was right. I wouldn’t stop to argue with a cobra in the mountains, I’d kill it. But a person isn’t a snake, however much of a deadly reptile he might be.

Instead, I tried another approach.

“Do we really need to involve Lin? This isn’t amateur hour.”

Saltanat merely shrugged. Lin was potentially collateral damage as far as she was concerned. The mission comes first. Always. Even when amateurs are involved.

The following night, Saltanat, Lin and I were sitting in a vehicle that Saltanat had liberated from a long-stay car park at the airport. She’d watched a family drive in, unload enough cases to suggest they were emigrating and head toward check-in. Business-class seats and complimentary lounge access, by the look of them. Three minutes later Saltanat was steering her way back toward Bur Dubai.

“What about CCTV?” I’d said when she turned up with her new toy.

“By the time they report the car stolen, we’ll either be out of the country or dead,” she’d replied, unpacking the bag of weapons onto the back seat, where the tinted glass meant they wouldn’t be seen.

The sour taste in my mouth had nothing to do with the bile gnawing away at my stomach. I’ve been afraid before and I recognized the symptoms. All your senses feel tuned to a high pitch but somehow off key. Sounds echo and are amplified almost to the point of distortion. A movement glimpsed out of the corner of your eyes slams the accelerator driving your heart. And the quiver in your hands isn’t simply due to the weight of your gun.

I don’t know if being afraid made me a good cop or not; I only knew that so far it had kept me alive.

I checked my watch: ten thirty, not so late that we’d attract attention but a time when most people would be switching off the TV, thinking about bed, winding down at the end of yet another uneventful day.

Saltanat had outlined her plan, and I was OK with it, as far as that went, which probably wasn’t far enough. She’d entrusted me with the role of backup, which made sense, given her training and skills. I might have felt my male vanity a little wounded, but if that was the only wound I got, I’d take it as a result. Saltanat and I were both wearing head-to-toe black, while Lin maintained her usual heart-of-gold hooker look. Makeup and a pair of dark glasses did a lot to hide the damage to her face, in the unlikely event that any man would be looking that high up.

“You stay here,” Saltanat had said to me. “Keep the engine ticking over in case we need to make a fast escape. If you hear shots, then we’re going to need you, but don’t just appear. I don’t want to kill you by accident; I don’t have the time or patience for remorse.”

I considered just how much of a blow to my masculinity I’d just received.

“Give me ten minutes to get into the stairwell,” Saltanat said. “There’s always a way into these buildings, maybe even as simple as walking into the car park then finding the stairs, but the odds are the place is monitored by the security guard on the front desk. CCTV screens under the desk, that sort of thing. So he’s going to need distracting while I make my way in.”

“I think I can manage that,” Lin said, tugging her blouse lower over her already highly visible breasts, but Saltanat shook her head.

“No, I’m saving those for later,” she said. “Once I’m inside the building and on the right floor.”

Saltanat turned and looked at me, raised that infuriating eyebrow once more.

“Time to try out your acting skills, Inspector,” she said. “Hollywood beckons.”

I switched off the car’s inner light; no point giving ourselves away any sooner than we had to. And with that Saltanat was gone, simply a black shadow sliding toward an outer wall.

The strangest thoughts come to you when you’re on a stakeout. I could sense Lin sitting too close next to me. She reached out, put her hand in mine. Her fingers were cold, the skin hard and worn, a lifetime of labor and trouble and the wrong kind of men. Maybe she was afraid, maybe she was only interested in revenge, whatever the cost. Me, I was just afraid.

I wondered about Saltanat, about the marriage she’d been in, why it had ended. I only knew what she wanted to let me know; she was a mirror turned to the wall so that no hint of anything personal escaped. But the problem with wearing a mask for too long is that when you try to remove it, you realize it’s become your face.

They say you don’t know it when love stalks you, only when it attacks. If I was falling in love with Saltanat—and it was becoming clear even to me that I was—then sharing a life together wasn’t going to be a big priority for her. Maybe that’s a consolation if you’re in the kill-or-be-killed business.

The cigarette between my fingers tasted dry, acrid, as if I was holding my head over a bonfire of autumn leaves. I ground the butt out, then I was out of the passenger seat and lurching toward the building’s entrance.

The security officer was obviously not the sharpest knife in the box, but he’d clearly seen enough drunken expats to recognize the situation. Before I’d got as far as the desk, he was walking toward me, holding his hand up in a stop-right-there gesture he’d obviously used before.

“Kairat,” I slurred, doing my best to focus through imaginary beer goggles. “Old pal Kairat lives here, which floor?”

“No, no,” the guard said, turning me by the shoulders so that I was facing the glass doors once more. “No Kairat here. You have too much drink. Go home or I call police.”

I sat down heavily on one of the leather sofas against the wall, underneath an abstract painting in brutal primary colors. I stared up at it with undisguised disgust and made as if to vomit. Create the painting’s twin brother, you might say.

The thought of cleaning the mess up obviously worked wonders; the guard had me up on my feet and out through the door in a matter of seconds. He stood just the other side of the glass, protecting the privacy and peace of the residents, but I didn’t need to enter the building anymore. The phone vibrating in my pocket told me that Saltanat was inside, and it was time for the next stage of her plan.

I staggered out of sight of the guard, giving a drunken wave as I left. But he was already back at his station, checking that his empire was still secure. I clambered back into the car, checked my phone. The message from Saltanat was short, to the point: “Side door wedged open at back by trash skips.” I was in for yet another exotic excursion.

“You know what you have to do, Lin?” I asked. She nodded, used to turning up at apartments in the middle of the night. As long as she followed Saltanat’s instructions, there didn’t seem much that could go wrong. There was no way Saltanat and I could find out which apartment Boris was staying in without attracting the wrong sort of attention, but we figured that the arrival of someone like Lin wouldn’t come as a surprise to the security guard. Boris was likely to have a string of overnight visitors happy to play party games. I’ve always been amazed by how many devout people fall prey to temptation. But then maybe eternity in paradise isn’t quite as much fun as the publicity brochures tell you.

I checked that the street was empty and walked casually down the side of the building. Run and look nervous, people notice; walk as if you own the place and they think you have every right to be there. I got to the door, pushed it open, removed the wooden pegs with which Saltanat had made sure it didn’t close tight. It was one of those emergency exits where a bar on the inside lets you out.