The Outcast (2 page)

“I'm afraid you have the wrong number.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.” He pressed his finger down and cut the connection. That was all they needed. Tomorrow they would meet. Face to face. For the first time.

It was instinct. Instinct and pure dumb luck.

Tunjin wasn't even aware of thinking, let alone taking aim. He dragged out the pistol and fired, his mind lagging a lifetime behind what his eyes were seeing, what his body was reacting to.

Afterwards, all that remained were sensations: the jarring kickback from the gunshot; the memory of the impact through wrist and arm; the noise, sharp, explosive, but somehow muffled, as though coming from somewhere far away; the figure crumpling to the ground, a startled expression on his face; the bleaching hot sunlight across the square. Everything fragmented and distant, like someone else's photographs. The blood. The crowd. The sirens and the endless screaming.

And finally it was as if the sky had darkened and closed in on him. There was a sudden sharp pain across his chest, and he stumbled, his legs unable to support his hefty body. The pistol dropped clatteringly from his hand, and his last image was the startled face of the young uniformed officer beside him.

It was several hours later when he woke. In the square, the sun had been high in the empty sky, relentless in its midsummer glare. Now, its low reddening rays were angled across his bed, glittering on the trolleys and medical equipment. His waking mind was a matching blaze of half-impressions, a brilliantly illuminated swirl that told him nothing.

From his supine position, Tunjin could just glimpse through the windows the startling black and pink monolith of the Hotel Chinnghis Kahn. Beyond that, there was only the sky, a translucent mauve in the dying sunlight. Even now, it looked warm out there.

He tried to move his head, but found the effort too great. He stared up at the blank white ceiling, suddenly conscious that there really was something wrong with him. Not just tiredness, or shock, or the after-effects of unconsciousness. Something more serious.

He couldn't move. He could—just about—twist his head from side to side. But when he tried to turn his head fully or move his limbs, there was nothing. Just deadness, numbness. No sensation at all.

He stared up, trying not to panic. There had to be some explanation. After all, he didn't feel ill, did he? No. He didn't feel anything. His mind felt as numb as his body.

He became aware that he was not alone. There was a chatter of voices, a buzz of white noise that had scarcely impinged on his senses before now. And somewhere a voice he knew.

“How is he?” Doripalam asked. They were standing just inside the door, whispering, as if trying not to disturb the vast figure on the bed.

The doctor shrugged. His demeanour and his expensive-looking Western-style suit suggested that his presence here was interrupting some more attractive engagement elsewhere. “It's too early to say,” he said. “He's been unconscious for a long time.” He glanced at his watch as if calculating precisely how long.

“A coma?”

“No.” The doctor smiled, adopting the patronising manner unique to his profession across the world. “Not what we would call a coma.”

“So what precisely would you call it?” Any member of Doripalam's team would have warned the doctor to avoid superciliousness when dealing with their boss.

“He's been unconscious, that's all. It's part of the recovery process.
He's been through a lot. But we don't know quite how much. We don't know how bad it is.”

“You don't know how bad what is? What is it exactly?”

The doctor stared at Doripalam for a moment, as if wondering whether to challenge his right to enquire into this matter. “There are no relatives?” he said at last. “No next of kin?”

Doripalam shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Not as far as we know.” He paused. “Look, he works for me. But that's not why I'm here. Not the only reason, anyway.” He hesitated again, unsure how to phrase his next words. “Let's just say I owe him one. He once saved my life.”

“It may be a stroke,” the doctor said, finally. “We're doing tests. But it wouldn't be surprising.” He was looking almost embarrassed now. “I mean, he's massively overweight. He drinks—”

“Like a fish,” Doripalam said. “Though rarely water, I understand.”

“His blood pressure was through the roof. He's really been very lucky. It could have been much worse.”

“So how serious is it?”

“We don't really know,” the doctor said. “He's still alive. That's a good sign.” He caught Doripalam's expression. “No, I mean it. This could easily have killed him.”

“That might have been preferable,” Doripalam pointed out. “Depending on what else is wrong with him.”

The doctor nodded. “We have to see. He might be paralysed, or partly paralysed. It might be minimal. Or it might not.”

There was a sound behind them. Both men turned and looked along the length of the quiet private room. Beyond Tunjin's bed, the city skyline was dark against the reddening glare of the setting sun. A nervous-looking nurse was staring at the monitors. She looked up at the two men, her eyes wide. “He's awake,” she said. “He's looking at me.”

The minister barely raised his head as Nergui entered. “Okay,” he said, “so what's this all about? What's going on?”

Nergui had grown accustomed to this absence of preliminaries, the lack even of common courtesy. There had been a time, not so long ago, when it had irritated him, but now he knew that it was all just part of the show. Occasionally, he could even feel a degree of sympathy for the old man.

Nergui lowered himself into the seat opposite the minister's desk without waiting to be invited. “We're trying to find out,” he said.

The minister looked up, with an expression that suggested that Nergui had just admitted to an act of criminal negligence. “You don't know yet, then?”

“No,” Nergui said. “Except that it's not what it looks like.”

“And what does it look like?”

“An attempted suicide bombing. Maybe something like Madrid or London but on a smaller scale.”

“Everyday life in Basra or Baghdad,” the minister said. “Well, that's what it looked like to me. But you know better.” The last words had an undertone of scepticism in them, but it was half-hearted. The minister knew better than to underestimate Nergui's judgement.

“I think so,” Nergui said. He stretched out his legs, looking untroubled. His socks, the minister registered, were a pale green. Inevitably, they matched the tie he was wearing beneath his usual dark grey suit. “There are factors that need to be explained.”

The minister stared at him for a moment, as though contemplating whether to enquire further. Finally he said, “We're keeping a lid on it, though.”

“As best we can. We've put an embargo on the media.”

“Can we make that hold?”

“For a while. They like to keep us sweet. But we can't push our luck.”

“What about witnesses?”

“Lots of them. But they don't know quite what they witnessed. We just have to accept that the rumour mill will be churning.”

“But they'll know we're concealing something.”

“That's hardly new territory. They'll make up some story about government iniquity that'll be even worse than the truth.”

“You always know how to reassure, Nergui,” the minister said. “But you're on top of things?”

“As far as it's possible to be.”

“Why do I have the feeling that you're keeping something from me?”

Nergui shrugged. “Because that's my job, I imagine. It's what you pay me for.” He paused, weighing up his next words. “I'm saying what I know. It's not my job to engage in idle speculation, Bakei.” Not many people called the minister by name, when Nergui did so, it was always with an undertone of warning, an invocation of their shared history.

The minister shook his head. “You never engage in idle anything, Nergui. What about the shooting?”

“That's in hand.”

“You knew the officer involved, I understand? One of your people?”

Nergui gazed back at the minister, his face blank. It never paid to underestimate the minister, either. “He was, yes. Before.”

“A good one?” In the circumstances, the question was far from casual.

“As good as they come.”

“And it's under control?”

“Trust me,” Nergui said. “It's in hand. All of it.” He paused. “All we need to do is find out quite what it is we're holding.”

“Tunjin. Can you hear me? Can you hear what I'm saying?”

It didn't seem appropriate to shout in a hospital, not in circumstances like these. But he wasn't sure what Tunjin could hear, what was getting through to him. His eyes were open, but there was no expression, no indication that he was awake. Without the remorseless pulsing of the monitor behind the bed, Doripalam could have imagined that he was looking at a corpse. He glanced back up at the doctor, who was watching the scene, his face barely more revealing than Tunjin's. “What do you think?” Doripalam asked. “Can he hear?”

The doctor shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “Keep trying.”

Doripalam looked back down at Tunjin. “Tunjin, it's me. Doripalam. Can you hear me?”

There was something there, he thought. Definitely something. He tried again, louder this time, trying to ignore the doctor's presence. “It's Doripalam, Tunjin. Can you hear me?”

Tunjin's pale fleshy head was slumped back on the bed, but something in his eyes indicated recognition, acknowledgement, awareness of who he was or what he was saying. It was, Doripalam thought, like reaching into a cave or into deep water, sensing there was something to be grasped if you could only reach it.

Tunjin blinked unexpectedly. “Tunjin,” Doripalam said again, “can you hear me? Can you understand what I'm saying?”

Tunjin was blinking repeatedly now, as if trying to clear his vision. Swimming up from the depths, awareness filling his eyes. The set of his face changed, concentration welling up from within, and his mouth began to move.

“Ungh …” It was little more than a plosive exhalation of breath, but it was the first sound that Tunjin had uttered since they had brought him in here.

“Tunjin. Can you hear me?” Doripalam looked back at the doctor, wondered whether he could somehow use his authority to make the laid-back bastard
do
something. Though he had no idea what it was that needed doing.

“Umph …” Tunjin's mouth and jaw were working, wrestling with the air. His eyes were bright, now full of expression, staring upwards at Doripalam.

“Gun,” Tunjin said. It was the first distinct word he had spoken.

Doripalam looked at the doctor, who gave another of his characteristic shrugs. The familiar intelligence was returning to Tunjin's eyes, but his body looked like a beached whale on the hospital bed, his immense chest rising and falling as he struggled to speak.

“Can you hear me, Tunjin? It's me, Doripalam. Are you all right?”

“Gun,” Tunjin said again, his intonation growing more urgent. “I shot—” His eyes were darting backwards and forwards, as though
trying to work out who was present, who was listening. It was still not clear he recognised Doripalam.

“It's all right,” Doripalam tried to sound calm. “You don't need to worry. You did the right thing.”

“But—” Tunjin stopped, as though trying painfully to work his way through a complex argument. “But …” He stuttered to a halt once more.

Doripalam turned to the doctor. “Is he all right, do you think?”

The doctor was watching Tunjin's movements with apparently casual interest. He nodded towards the monitor behind the bed. “Better than I would have believed possible,” he said at last. “I don't know what was wrong with him, but it certainly wasn't a stroke. Or if it was we've just witnessed a miracle. Perhaps I should get one of the priests in here. Those Western born-again ones who hang around the square. They're very keen on the hand of God stuff, I understand.”

Doripalam gazed at him for a second, then redirected his attention back to Tunjin. Tunjin's mouth was opening and closing. Finally, he spoke again: “Gun—I shot—” He paused again, holding his breath as though making a final effort to articulate whatever idea he was wrestling with. “It was the gun,” he said at last, quite distinct this time. “Whose gun? Whose gun was it?”

It suddenly struck Doripalam that this was more than a succession of random stuttered words. He had assumed that Tunjin was simply trying to come to grips with the whirl of ideas and images filling his brain. But he was trying to say something quite specific.

“Tunjin,” he said, “what is it? What do you mean?”

“I think,” a quiet voice said from behind them, “that he's enquiring about the ownership of the weapon.”

Doripalam looked around, startled despite the gentleness of the voice. Startled, above all, because he recognised the speaker. “Nergui,” he said, turning to face the tall figure standing in the now open doorway.

Nergui said nothing, his impassive gaze fixed on the figure on the bed.

“I left you a message,” Doripalam was aware that his voice sounded almost accusatory. For the first time, he realised that Nergui was not alone. Two men in plain dark suits were standing behind him, only half visible in the shadows of the corridor.

Nergui nodded. “I know. Thank you. That was good of you.” He paused, his blue eyes still fixed on Tunjin. “But I'd already been contacted.”

Doripalam finally grasped the significance of the words that Nergui had spoken seconds before. “What did you mean, ‘ownership of the weapon'?”

“The ministry is investigating what happened in the square.”