Tom Callaghan - A Summer Revenge

“Of course.”

“Five hundred dirhams.”

I smiled again. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this conversation, but never with claws that could castrate me so close to my balls.

“I’m staying with friends. It wouldn’t be right,” I explained, did my best to look heartbroken. Her hand released its grip as if she’d been shot. Her face hardened as if set in plaster.

She slurped the remnants of her Bullfrog, pushed the glass toward me. “Buy me one more Bullfrog.”

“Later,” I said, trying to be reasonable with Tynaliev’s money. “First, Kyrgyz ladies?”

Her lips narrowed even further, if that were possible. “Bullfrog.”

I sighed, caught the eye of the waitress, pointed at Lin’s empty glass. The waitress arrived with the drink, left with a hundred-dirham note.

Lin reached for the glass, but I was quicker. Holding it out of her reach, I asked again. “Kyrgyz ladies?”

Lin scowled and pointed to an alcove between two pillars. “They sit there. But they all left, one hour past. You come tomorrow; they’ll be here.”

Then she snatched at her drink, gave me a scornful glare, headed off to seduce someone else. I sighed. It looked as if tomorrow would be another fun evening in the Vista Hotel.

After I’d managed to get a drunk Kulayev and his sober new girlfriend into a taxi, I decided to walk back to my hotel. It was still ferociously hot, as if a celestial oven door had been left open, but a breeze coming off the creek made it slightly more bearable. And I do most of my best thinking when I’m walking. But thinking doesn’t mean I get distracted.

I’d noticed the tail almost as soon as I left the bar, sometimes out of the corner of my eye, sometimes reflected in shop windows as I passed. I’d been followed before, and by experts. This guy was strictly amateur hour.

I deliberately hadn’t told Kulayev where I was staying, so I wondered if he’d set someone up to follow me. But I imagined he would have enough contacts all over the city to trace me to the Denver easily enough. And if I was being followed, that meant I’d stirred something up. All I had to do now was stand back and find out what that was.

I walked up toward the docks, then crossed the road to the taxi line in front of the Ascot Hotel. I climbed into the first taxi, told him to head toward Burjuman. I saw my shadow waving at the next taxi, trying to catch his attention, not succeeding. Tradecraft again.

At the second set of traffic lights I handed the driver a twenty-dirham note, got out, crossed the road as the lights changed, and headed down the first alleyway I saw. I took a left, then a right, until I emerged by the creek, where I could get my bearings.

The air was fresher here, away from the stink of petrol fumes. I sat down, lit a cigarette, stared out across the water, thought about the last couple of hours. If I was prepared to admit it to myself, my thoughts kept returning to Lin’s hand on my thigh, her nails raking my skin, the promise of a warm body underneath mine in exchange for just a few pieces of paper. It wasn’t the thought of sex so much as the idea of someone being close. For years it had been Chinara, until the cancer snatched her away from me. And then it had been Saltanat, who remained a mystery to me, even when we were lovers.

I didn’t know where Saltanat was, if she wanted to see me, if she was even alive. I didn’t enjoy being on my own, but I couldn’t think of a way to solve the problem. I thought about the girls I’d seen in the bar; I don’t believe there’s any man who’s never considered sex without responsibility, sex you can just walk away from, leaving a handful of notes on the bedside table. Maybe it’s not safe sex, but I don’t believe there’s ever been such a thing.

My old boss, the chief, now resting in an unmarked grave somewhere thanks to Tynaliev and his men, always said, “You don’t pay a hooker to fuck you, you pay her to fuck off afterward.” I don’t know about that. But when the woman you love is taken from you, it leaves a scar nothing can heal.

I threw the butt into the water. The streets were empty now, just an occasional taxi with its VACANT sign on cruising for customers. This wasn’t an area where the rich all-night-party people lived; the residents were all asleep, preparing to put in twelve hours at some mundane, low-paid job in the textile souk or in an electronics shop. The little restaurants that served Punjabi thali meals on metal trays had all closed, the souvenir stores had pulled heavy metal shutters down over their windows as if they sold diamonds and gold instead of plastic models of the Burj Khalifa.

I wondered if Saltanat ever thought of me, if I’d just been a diversion for her, a way of passing the time. I thought about trying her mobile, decided a 4 a.m. call would not be appreciated. So I was brooding on the desert called my love life when I let my attention wander.

And once the gun barrel was pressed against my spine, it was a lifetime too late to do anything about it.

“Shut the fuck up,” the voice said, digging the gun harder into my back for emphasis.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” he repeated in the style of every gangster movie he’d ever seen. Which was his second mistake.

I stopped, stabbed my heel onto his right foot, at the same time pushing myself backward and left, away from his gun hand. I raised my left arm and pivoted my elbow in a spin that connected with the side of his head. Hit someone with your elbow properly, using the momentum of your shoulder, and it’s like being smashed with an iron bar. I carried on, dropping my arm so that I could snatch at the gun. But it had already fallen from his fingers as he reeled back. His legs gave way, and he sat down on the pavement, his hand scrabbling for the gun. But my Makarov was already out and aimed, and my hand wasn’t shaking.

“A classic mistake,” I said. “Get too close and I can beat you before your reflexes have time to pull the trigger. Stay half a meter away and you’ve all the time in the world to shoot me if I try anything.”

I looked at him and decided to reinforce the lesson, so I kicked the side of his knee. Not hard, but it doesn’t have to be hard when you wear steel-capped shoes like I do. His scream wasn’t loud but it held a world of pain.

“Get up,” I said. “I want answers, not your blood on my hands. At least, not yet.”

I took a good look at the man as he hauled himself up, using the wall as a support. More a boy than a man, really, late teens at the most.

“Who told you to follow me?” I asked, jabbing my Makarov into his throat to encourage him.

“I can’t tell you. I daren’t,” he said, looking around to see if there was some way he could escape.

“Let me guess,” I said. “They’ll kill you if they find out you’ve told me? Well, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But you have to ask yourself how you feel about me pointing my gun nice and square between your eyes.”

I could smell the panic on him, a sour amalgam of sweat and alcohol seeping out of his pores. I pushed the gun into his face, sighting down the barrel, and that was when he pissed himself. I almost felt sympathy when he started to cry, heaving sobs that made him shake as if having an epileptic fit. He didn’t look old enough to shave, judging by the few straggling wisps of hair on his chin. Some hit man.

I pushed his gun further away from him, then picked it up, checked it. Loaded, and I wondered who would send a hopeless amateur after me. Maybe they didn’t know who I was, thought I was just some tourist hoping to get laid. Or maybe they were enemies of Tynaliev—God knows he had enough of them.