The Outcast (10 page)

“In what way odd?” Nergui asked. “Death to the infidel, that kind of thing?”

Lambaa looked back at him, his eyes almost as expressionless as Nergui's own. “Some of that, but there's more.”

“Go on.” Nergui leaned back in his chair.

“The conversation is more businesslike than I'd assumed. I was expecting either nothing much or the usual kind of youthful posturing. But it's not like that. It's as if they're planning something.”

Nergui frowned. “Planning what?”

“That's more difficult to say.” Lambaa flipped the cassette into the air, then deftly caught it. “Look, I've been keeping a close watch on these guys. It's an easy enough job, since they've spent most of their time in one another's rooms in the university. They seem to have become acquainted very quickly since their arrival.”

“But then they have a common cause,” Nergui said. “You think they knew each other before?”

“Who knows? But I don't think it's an accident that they've come together here. I think it's been coordinated.”

“Coordinated? By someone here?”

“I don't know. But what's interesting is that they've already tapped into some kind of local network.”

“Within the university?”

“No. If they had connections in the university, that wouldn't be so surprising. It's wider than that. They've had continuous phone calls since they arrived—mostly from cell phones or numbers within the city. They've had two or three meetings. Again, locals from outside the university.”

“It's intriguing,” Nergui said. “But I don't think we frown on people fraternising with the locals in quite the way we used to.”

Lambaa's expression suggested that this change in official attitudes was perhaps regrettable. “The question is what they're fraternising about.”

“Quite,” Nergui said. “And who they're fraternising with. You've checked that, I assume?”

“Naturally. It's an odd mix. Some students, as you'd expect. But, more interestingly, some numbers we haven't been able to trace, which suggests people who know what they're doing.” He paused. “Professionals, I mean.”

“People who are one step ahead of us, in other words.”

“At least one step. But that's worrying. It suggests something more organised. But we've managed to identify some of the numbers they've called. And there does seem to be a link with some radical political types,” he stopped, allowing the words to hang in the air.

Nergui was interested now despite his previous scepticism. “Fundamentalists?”

Lambaa smiled faintly, as though he had been leading up to this. He was good, Nergui thought. Definitely one to bear in mind for the future.

“Some of that,” Lambaa said. “But some of the links go further. Not really what you'd expect at all.”

Nergui stretched himself back in his chair, lifting his feet to rest them on the corner of his desk. “Go on.” He decided to allow Lambaa his moment of drama.

“We've tracked some of the numbers back to other groups. Nationalists. Not the major nationalist parties, but fringe groups.”

“Racists?”

Lambaa shrugged, looking is if he didn't quite understand the term. “Patriots, I suppose, sir. People who think the government doesn't represent the glorious heritage of our nation.” He paused. “You know the type.”

Nergui nodded. He knew the type very well. There were plenty of them around—groups who hid behind the name and image of Genghis Khan, the father of this nation. Those who had never quite come to terms with the loss of the Mongol empire. Those who saw the decades of Chinese and then Russian subjugation, not just as a political burden, but as an unbearable suppression of the national spirit. It was perhaps not an entirely unreasonable point of view.

“So who are we talking about?”

“Fringe groups. The kinds of people who've been organising the protests.” He spoke with a contempt for extra-parliamentary action that could only be mustered by a former secret policeman. “They're hardly an organised force—a cluster of idealists, I guess you'd say, sir.” He paused, allowing the ambiguity of the second-person pronoun to hang in the air. “But potentially a threat to public order.” He succeeded in implying that this was the very worst kind of threat.

“So why would our young men be in touch with this group?”

“Well, that's the question, sir. It's not clear who initiated the contact, or whether the students were in contact with this group before their arrival here. Or even whether the students even knew quite who they were talking to. We've listened repeatedly to the recordings we have of their conversations and calls, but they didn't give much away. Obviously we missed their initial discussions.” There was the faintest implication, perhaps, that this had been the fault of Nergui's tardiness in authorising the operation. Nergui had already detected in Lambaa an instinct for political survival that easily matched his own.

“So what were they talking about?”

“Some kind of operation. The nature of it wasn't clear, but there were references to something being planned.”

“Doesn't sound like much, given we've had them under full surveillance for a week. Maybe they were just planning another tribute to the birth of the Mongol empire. Students are generally looking for an excuse for a party, I'm told.”

Lambaa looked pained, though it was unclear whether he was more affronted by the implied criticism of his own performance or by the flippant reference to their national heritage. “Something more than that, sir, I think. Some kind of covert operation.”

“But what kind of covert operation?” Nergui said. “Assuming they're not just ordering the vodka and beer.”

Lambaa sat back in his chair, as if the whole conversation had been leading up to this moment. “Terrorism, sir,” he said.

Nergui blinked at the quietly spoken, anonymous-looking man sitting opposite him. “Terrorism,” he repeated, trying to keep any note of cynicism out of his voice. “And you're sure about that?”

“Pretty sure, sir.”

“But you don't know what the nature of this covert operation actually is?”

“Not in detail, no.”

Nergui shook his head slowly. “Forgive me if I'm being a little slow on this one, Lambaa. But do you actually have any evidence to support any of these assertions?”

Lambaa looked up, smiling broadly now. “Yes, sir, as it happens, I do.”

It seemed to Nergui now that this meeting had occurred a lot longer ago than just three days. It was like looking back into another life, a world where all this discussion had been hypothetical. In Nergui's mind they had been two professionals speculating on possibilities, his own scepticism buoyed up by decades of experience of over-stated threats, imagined enemies.

But now suddenly it was real. It was here, on his doorstep, impossible to ignore or rationalise away. It was baffling, incomprehensible, illogical. But it was here, and it was as real as Tunjin's sleeping body.

Doripalam had borrowed a flashlight from one of the uniformed officers, but the thin beam made little impression on the hazy dark. The smoke and dust hung motionless in the warm summer night, the fumes harsh at the back of his throat. Ahead, he could make out the occasional flicker of another flashlight, but he had lost sight of the officer who was leading them to where the body had been found.

“I suppose it would be possible for them to be less helpful,” he called back to Batzorig. “Though I'm not quite sure how.”

“Never high on the local agenda,” Batzorig said, inches behind him. “Helping out the visiting team from HQ. Especially when we've just snaffled a juicy case from under their noses.”

“We're here to lighten their load.”

“But always unappreciated. I don't know why we bother.”

Doripalam was placing his feet warily. The narrow alleyway was cluttered with several years' worth of accumulated rubbish. At this time of the year, it might be a favoured sleeping area for some of the city's homeless. Directing the flashlight warily around him, he spotted, behind a row of overflowing refuse bins, a bundle of blankets that might well be someone's stowed bedding.

The end of the alleyway came suddenly, and Doripalam stumbled out into a small open area, his flashlight beam lost in the smoky space. To his left, along the rear of the hotel, he saw a rectangle of deeper darkness—a double doorway, gaping open. He flicked the light across the wall and found the local officer, leaning against the doorway, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“Maybe not the smartest move,” Doripalam said, “if there really is a gas leak.”

The man shrugged. “I don't smell it,” he said. “Do you?” Nevertheless, he tossed the cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his boot.

Doripalam stared at him for a moment, trying to make out the officer's expression in the dim light from the flashlight. “This the place?” he said, finally.

The officer gestured towards the open doorway. “In there,” he said. “I'll wait out here, if that's all right with you.”

Doripalam stepped forward, playing his flashlight across the gaping doorway. “Not really,” he said. “We're all in this together, you're supposed to be guiding us.”

The officer stared at him for a second, as if wondering just how much Doripalam's authority was actually worth down here. Then he nodded. “If you insist,” he said. “I don't think any of us will want to stay in there any longer than we can help.” He switched on his own flashlight and shuffled slowly through the doorway, Doripalam following close behind.

The smell struck him at once. Not strong—the body had clearly not been here for long, given the heat of the day—but unmistakable even through the acrid burn of the smoke.

“Where is it?” Doripalam said, trying not to breathe too deeply.

“There,” the officer said, lifting his flashlight. The pale light ran across a row of wooden crates, piles of some kind of fabric, a clutter of old machine parts.

The body was lying behind all of this debris, face up on the filthy concrete floor. Doripalam had to concede that the local officers had carried out their jobs with some rigour—it was surprising that the body had been spotted at all.

He moved forward and shone the flashlight into the narrow space. The body was wedged between the cold stone of the wall—dripping with damp even in the height of summer—and the jumble of discarded rubbish that dominated most of the room. The limbs were twisted awkwardly, the head at a disturbing angle,
as if the neck had been broken. On the face of it, though, that did not appear to have been the cause of death. The cause of death was, most likely, the ornate-handled knife protruding from the victim's T-shirted chest.

“Probably not an accident, anyway,” Batzorig said, inches behind Doripalam.

“Not overcome by the fumes, either,” Doripalam replied, moving slowly forward. He looked up at the local officer. “Nobody's touched the body since it was found?”

“What do you think? Don't imagine anyone's been down here to do an impromptu post mortem.”

Doripalam glanced up at the young man but said nothing. Instead, he leaned over the body, getting as close as he could without touching or disturbing it. He had already put in a call to the scene of crime team and the pathologist, but he recognised that neither would be in a hurry to arrive, given the demands they had already faced that day.

The body was male, its hair trimmed very short, balding slightly at the crown. The head was thrown back and angled towards the wall, but the cast of the face did not look Mongolian. It was difficult to make out much more. The body was clothed in the now blood-stained T-shirt, a leather jacket—apparently fairly new, good quality—and a pair of denim jeans. Probably a relatively young man—no more than thirty or so at the most. Thin, but quite muscular.

Doripalam played the flashlight beam gently around the supine body. There was no sign of any other possessions, nothing that the victim might have dropped. To the left of the body there was a rapidly coagulating pool of blood, evidence that the murder had indeed been committed here.

He flashed the flashlight beam back towards the door, where the young local officer was leaning. “Was it you who found him?”

The young officer nodded, less cocky now, more sombre. Perhaps, Doripalam thought, he had been more shaken by his first sight of a dead body than he had wanted to admit. “There were two of us,” he said, after a pause. “We'd been asked to check out the back of
the hotel—make sure the fire was properly out, check if there was any other damage. You know.”

Doripalam nodded. “Where's your colleague?”

“Out front somewhere. I think the chief asked him to look after things out there. I'll find him for you if you need to speak to him.”

“Later we will,” Doripalam said. “You didn't spot anything else?” His voice was less dismissive now of the young man. He wondered whether he had volunteered to act as their guide back here, or whether the local chief had given him no choice.

The young man frowned, clearly taking the question seriously. “I don't think so,” he said. “I mean, it was too dark to see much at all. We were just looking around, looking for anything obvious. We didn't want to get too close to the building.”

“In case there was another explosion?”

“Yes. Or some damage done to it. You know, falling masonry, things like that.”

“So what made you look in here?” Doripalam said, shining his flashlight around the narrow storeroom. The walls were badly plastered, cracked and stained with damp. The dark corners were thick with dust and cobwebs. “It might have been risky.”

The young man nodded, his eyes wide as if the reality of this had only just occurred to him. “I—We just thought we ought to look in here. At least to check. I mean, after the guy out front—”