Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

“Where are the rest of your crew, Boris?” I asked, but I’d already begun to put the pieces together. Sometimes it saddens me how much I know about human greed.

“They’re in one of the bedrooms, aren’t they?” I said, nodding toward a closed door, “but they’re not sleeping, right?”

Maybe it was my imagination, but I’ve smelled the aftermath of death too many times to be mistaken about the odor that seemed to creep under the bedroom door. Hot copper with a hint of charred meat left too long on a grill.

Boris gave a noncommittal shrug, giving nothing away. I looked at his dark hooded eyes, saw how they gleamed with certainty, confidence. And greed. I’d seen that look before on members of the Circle of Brothers, senior criminals who believed they’d bought their way into immunity. It had been my job to make them blink in a sudden realization that not everything has a price.

“What happened? They were committed to jihad under any circumstances, ready to die for their beliefs? The money meant nothing to them, just a way of creating the chaos they wanted, out of which would come a better world? And if they don’t want to share the fun of this world, why deny them entry to the next?”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, calculating how far I would get before Boris put a bullet through my throat.

“But you?” I continued. “It’s easy not to be tempted by money, to remain pure and unsullied when you’re living in a shit-hole slum in Grozny. But Dubai? That’s a different story. Designer clothes, expensive cars, even more expensive women, all yours for the taking. What happened? ‘Start the jihad without me’?”

Boris condescended to smile.

“The jihad will happen, don’t worry about that. I still believe that. Just slightly delayed, that’s all. I just couldn’t convince my two colleagues of the error of their certainties, that’s all. It’s a battle that’s been going on for centuries, so a couple of decades is neither here nor there. Killing them was unfortunate; I liked them personally. Not too bright but they did what they were told. Now? They’re martyrs enjoying the eternal rewards of Paradise. And besides, ten million dollars doesn’t go that far if you have to share it out.”

“Not even in Chechnya?”

“You can get tired of winter snow.” Boris smiled.

I must have made some sudden movement as the black hole at the business end of his gun suddenly grew a lot closer to my face.

“You don’t have to kill me,” I said. “All you have to do is give me the girl and I’ll give you the codes. You win, I win. We both get what we want.”

“That’s a very sensible suggestion, Inspector,” Boris said, “but with one flaw, a major one. If you and the girl are still alive, you’ll be able to tell your boss where the money went, and who took it. Dead, there’s no one left to point at me.”

“And what about this one?” I asked, nodding toward Lin.

“A piece of street meat, raddled with who knows what diseases. Why would anyone care if she’s alive or dead? She probably doesn’t even care herself.”

Boris placed his gun at Lin’s temple, his finger tensing on the trigger. It must have been the prospect of imminent death that made Lin draw the concealed knife from her belt. With all her strength, she struck upward, the blade gleaming and deadly in the light, slicing through Boris’s wrist. Blood flecked across the floor and spattered the white walls. Boris grunted with shock and surprise, the gun spinning from his nerveless hand.

I snatched up my own gun and took aim, but Lin was still locked in Boris’s grasp, kicking and scratching to get free, so I didn’t have a clear shot.

The bullet that burst Boris’s face as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer passed so close to my ear that I felt the air sway against my skin. The shot took him just beneath the left eye, the impact tearing through his skull, ripping open his cheek and revealing a row of teeth. Brain matter erupted from his ear like blood-streaked vomit, and his remaining eye gave an involuntary blink in a hideous yet somehow comic moment of surprise.

The second shot ripped out his throat, and a fountain of deep red blood splashed like a wave over Lin’s face and hair. And then Boris was falling back, dragging Lin down with him, the remains of his face pointing up at the ceiling.

In a reflex action that had nothing to do with consciousness, Boris pulled the trigger of his gun twice, the second shot punching a hole through the bedroom door. Then he jerked, convulsed, his heels drumming on the floor, and was still.

“You took your fucking time,” I said, my voice hoarse, before I turned to see Saltanat standing in the doorway to the apartment, her gun still leveled worryingly in my direction.

But she wasn’t looking at me. Instead, she was staring at the floor, at the body sprawled there in the broken-stringed puppetry of death.

Lin.

Boris’s first shot had taken away the back of Lin’s skull, leaving bloody splinters of bone gleaming through her hair. But her damaged face was shockingly serene, as if she’d merely closed her eyes to take a nap or rest them from the light.

I knelt down beside her, tugged her away from Boris’s embrace. It was the least she deserved, dying far from her home, her family. Children living in a hut beside a rice paddy or in a rat-infested slum on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. A brutal life, with a great deal of pain and fear and very little consolation, now ended.

Perhaps there’s a peace to be found in death, but that doesn’t mean it’s not terrifying in the seconds when the light is snapped off.

“Fuck!” was all I said. Not much of an epitaph, but sometimes words are not strong enough to bear the weight. Perhaps that’s why we write names on tombstones, not to commemorate the dead, but to remind ourselves that they too once walked and laughed, loved, existed.

I reached for Lin’s purse, found what I was looking for, slid it into my pocket.

As always, Saltanat appeared unmoved, professional. She kicked the gun away from Boris’s hand just in case he decided to perform a miracle and rise from the dead, holstered her gun, looked down at the bodies and then asked the obvious question.

“Where’s the girl?”

For a few seconds my mind remained focused on Lin, so I couldn’t understand why Saltanat didn’t believe the truth of the dead woman at our feet. Then I realized she was talking about Natasha.

I tucked my gun back into the back of my trousers, covering it with my shirt.

“We should search the rest of the apartment,” I said, “and quickly. Someone must have heard the shooting. I’m surprised the police aren’t here already.”

“No need,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m here.”

I turned and saw Natasha leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. The first thing I noticed was the blood-stained bandage covering the place where her missing finger had been. The second thing I saw was the Glock in her other hand, pointed at Saltanat but equally ready to turn toward me. I guessed that Natasha had no intention of returning Tynaliev’s money or of coming back to Bishkek to face the music. She would probably be more than happy to shoot me and Saltanat, head for the border.

“Losing the finger must have hurt,” I said more as a conversational distraction than out of any real concern. Behind me I could sense Saltanat shifting her weight, and I wondered how long it would be before her throwing knife planted itself in Natasha’s throat. Not that that would help me much; I’d be dead meat before Natasha coughed up the first spray of blood from her lungs.

“I take it you’re still not planning on giving the minister most of his money back,” I said, weary that I’d been sucker-punched again. “But you know he’s not going to stop hunting you.”