The Outcast (20 page)

But it wasn't only that. There was something else. A creeping contempt for his own stupidity, his naivety, for allowing himself to walk into this. For wanting to walk into this.

He had no idea where the unexpected thought came from. And at that moment the contact reached out and began gently to stroke his face again, his gloved fingers harsh against the cold skin.

“There is a place we can go,” the contact said. “It is warm and discreet. No one will know we are there.”

It was all suddenly too much. He thrust the contact's hand away from him, and turned on his heels, walking with increasing speed back down the path to the road.

He half expected that the contact would follow, try to change his mind. But when he reached the park gates and glanced back, the contact was still there, a motionless silhouette against the paler dark of the sky.

He hesitated a moment, almost considering going back. His role was to obey, to be one of the pawns in this unfathomable game. But he knew that he could not.

There was no way out of this now. He would not be allowed to remain here, a walking threat to the contact's reputation. And he would have no career to return to. Failure might be tolerated but disobedience—and he had disobeyed, even though no orders had ever been articulated—was beyond the pale.

He looked back again, but the contact had gone, melted back into the icy darkness. He stayed for a moment, peering into the blackness, but he could feel the cold cutting through his clothes, eating into his skin and bone.

He pulled his coat around him, and began the lonely walk through the empty streets towards the central square.

 

He had been expecting it. The only question was how soon.

A week went by. He spent it crouched in his tiny apartment, trying to work but unable to make sense of the words in front of him. He had been passionate about this history, about Genghis Khan, the legacy of the empire, the potential for the future. The vision that would unite their two nations. But now none of this meant anything to him any more.

He sat at the rickety desk, waiting for the knock that would announce the end of his trip here, the beginning of his expulsion back to—what? He had no idea, except that his career would be finished.

But the week went by and nothing happened. Finally, he regained the confidence to leave his apartment. He had barely eaten for days, surviving on the remnants of a stale loaf of bread and some old biscuits. Now, he felt able to visit the university refectory, eagerly wolfing down a plateful of their bland, fatty mutton stew. And later he took a walk into the city. The sky was a clear empty blue, the air fresh and sharp, and he felt alive again. He had spent the week tense with anxiety, convinced that he would be picked up at any moment. Now he decided that he had been deluding himself, more idiotic self-aggrandisement.

As he returned from his walk, he saw two men in heavy coats and trilby hats, emerging from the apartment block. One of them—a heavily built man, already lighting up a cigarette, his hands cupped against the chilling wind—gazed at him, as though with mild curiosity. “Your name Wu Sam?” he said, his voice gentle around the bobbing cigarette.

Wu Sam nodded. “I've been expecting you,” he said.

The man raised his eyebrows slightly and glanced across at his colleague. “Have you?”

Wu Sam felt it was necessary at least to state his position clearly. “You can see my papers,” he said. “Everything is in order. I have permission to stay for three months. My visa—”

The man held up his hand, with the air of one accustomed to directing traffic. “That's not why we're here.”

“Then what?”

“We're here to ask you some questions.” The man shook his head, an expression of vague regret crossing his face. He took another drag on the cigarette, and then tossed it, barely smoked, into a lingering pile of grimy snow. “About a dead body.”

Out here there was nothing. Just endless undulating grassland, miles of dusty dirt road, and occasionally a copse of fir trees providing the only shade. Earlier in the morning, with the first sunlight appearing above the low-lying eastern hills, they had passed a nomadic camp. There was no sign of human life but a scattering of tethered goats and horses had simultaneously raised their heads as the truck sped past. Since then, more than an hour later, they had seen no further evidence of habitation.

“How long do we give them?” Odbayar said. He flicked his cigarette butt out of the truck window.

The Chinese man, Sam, glanced at him irritatedly. “If you have to smoke, at least use the ashtray. The grass out there is dry enough to ignite.”

“There's hardly any grass to ignite,” Odbayar said. “I've never known it so dry this far north.”

“We are ruining the planet,” Sam said, piously. “We will pay the price.”

“That'll be your country ruining the planet. And the rest of us who pay the price.”

“And which country would that be?” Sam said. His knuckles were white around the steering wheel as he held the truck straight on the uneven road.

“Either. Both.” Odbayar shrugged. “You tell me. They're both the same in that respect. Each as bad as the other.”

Sam nodded solemnly, considering the merits of this judgement. “No doubt,” he said. “And not just in that respect.”

Odbayar pulled another cigarette from the packet in the breast pocket of his shirt and lit it carefully, blowing the first stream of smoke expertly out of the window. “So,” he said again, “how long do we give them?”

Sam's eyes were fixed on the long straight road. It stretched out apparently as far as the mountains, though in the far distance it was lost in the deep green shade of the forests. The shadow of the truck extended lengthily behind them, an endless black companion to their journey. “Not too long,” Sam said finally. “We need to get far enough away. And give them time to become uneasy.”

“That could take a while,” Odbayar said. “They probably don't even realise I'm missing.”

“That's true,” Sam agreed. “It was all too chaotic last night. Maybe we overplayed that a little.”

“It would have been too risky otherwise. If things had been calmer—well, either we wouldn't have been able to stage it at all, or it would have been spotted too quickly. I think it was just right, with the gun and everything. Dozens of people must have seen us, even if they didn't understand what they were supposed to be seeing.”

Sam laughed. “No doubt they will realise quickly enough when the police come to collect their witness statements. Which the police will do as soon as they register what has happened. What has apparently happened,” he corrected himself.

“What if the police can't identify any witnesses? I don't imagine they'll have been collecting names and addresses last night.”

Sam glanced at the young man, mentally reminding himself that Odbayar did not know the full detail of the previous night's events. “They'll be asking for witnesses to the bombing to come forward,” he said. “There won't be any shortage of busybodies. And some of them will remember what they saw. Your performance was noticeable
enough.” He smiled. “But that's the icing on the cake. Worthwhile, but not essential.”

“I hope it was worthwhile,” Odbayar said. “I was nearly gunned down. Probably would have been if I hadn't pretended that the smoke had gotten to me. And I still have bruises from where those goons grabbed me.”

“They had to think it was for real, just like the police did. If they'd known it was staged, that would have been two more people we'd have had to trust.” Two more loose ends, Sam added to himself, to be dealt with. Just as he had dealt with the others.

“Even so, I'm a VIP, you know. You could have told them to go easy.”

“I did.” Sam laughed. “Think what it would have been like if I hadn't.”

Sam seemed more relaxed, Odbayar thought, now that they had reached this point. There had been a lot resting on him, while they were setting this up. But then there was a lot resting on both of them, and it was far from over. Odbayar himself wasn't yet feeling any obvious sense of relaxation.

“So how long?” Odbayar persisted. “When do we contact them?”

“Let's get up there first,” Sam said. “Another couple of hours or so.”

“Will we be able to call from there? I mean, will the cell phone work?”

“Mine will,” Sam said simply. “That's all under control.”

Odbayar nodded. That was what he liked most about working with Sam; nothing was left to chance. He was a professional, and he had resources behind him, even if Odbayar had chosen not to enquire too deeply into how or where those resources had been acquired.

“Won't they be able to trace it?” Odbayar said. It was only by working with Sam that Odbayar had realised how amateurish his own approach had been.

He had been cocksure before, buoyed by his own momentum, like one of those American cartoon characters who run off the
cliff, still running until they make the mistake of looking down.

Sam seemed untroubled. “Not with my phone,” he said. “Not until it's far too late, anyway. I've told you. Relax. That side of things is all under control.”

Odbayar settled back in the passenger seat. His mind kept running back through everything they had done, trying to spot anything they had overlooked. He had wondered whether Gundalai suspected anything. Gundalai, for all his easy-going nature, was no fool.

At one point, Odbayar had thought they would take Gundalai into their confidence. He would have preferred that. Although he would never say so explicitly, Odbayar trusted Gundalai. He trusted his judgement. He trusted his reliability. And he trusted his integrity.

That had been the problem, he supposed. He could tell himself otherwise, but he knew that Gundalai would never have accepted this. If he had known what was going on, he would have tried to stop them. At best, he would have turned around and walked away. You could call that integrity. But you could also call it naivety. It was why Gundalai would always remain just a dreamer.

And, unwittingly, Gundalai would have an important part to play in any case. His lack of involvement enabled him to be the perfect witness. He would confirm what Odbayar wanted the authorities to believe.

“You think too much,” Sam commented, glancing across at his silent passenger. “It can be unhealthy.”

“I thought that was one of your gifts,” Odbayar said. “Thinking things through.”

“I think when I need to. I make sure I don't miss anything. But then I stop. If you think too much, you create problems where none exist.” He paused, his hands tight on the throbbing steering wheel. In a while, he would perhaps let the young man drive again. But he was conscious that Odbayar must be tired after the rigours of the previous night. It would not help them to have an accident out here. “And you need to be ready,” he went on. “You cannot plan everything. Some things will happen in ways that you do not expect. If you think too much, you will deaden your reactions.”

Odbayar nodded, unsure whether Sam's words represented ineffable wisdom or empty truisms. “You think something could go wrong?” he prompted.

“Something will go wrong,” Sam said, calmly. “Something always goes wrong. We expect that and are ready for it.” He glanced across at Odbayar's anxious face. “But it will be nothing important.” He smiled. “I have made sure of that. Now get some sleep. It's been a long night. And we're only at the start.”

“I can take over the driving later if you want me to.”

“Sleep first. We need to keep our minds clear.”

Odbayar slumped back in his chair, feeling the rhythms of the road through his body. He wondered, as consciousness slipped from him, how long it had been since Sam had last slept.

“So he was framed?” Solongo said. She was facing him across the kitchen table. Her eyes were boring into his, and he seriously believed, at least for a moment, that she could read what he was thinking.

“No,” Tunjin said. “I don't know.”

“But this was murder you're talking about? He was accused of murder?”

“Yes,” Tunjin wondered quite how he'd gotten into this.

“He was framed,” she said, simply. She'd missed her vocation in the legal profession, he thought. Five minutes in court with her, and he'd confess to anything.

“You said it. He was set up.”

“No,” Tunjin insisted. “I don't know that. He was a murderer, we knew that.”

“But you had no evidence,” she said. “Until the second murder.”

“Yes, until we found the second body.”

“And you thought that that was all just a bit too convenient. But you did nothing about it.”

“What could I have done? The evidence was there. It was what we needed.”

She watched him, unblinkingly. “Doripalam always said you were one of the ones with integrity. Whatever other faults you might have.”

“I think he was generally more conscious of my faults.”

“But I'm right, though, aren't I?” she continued. “You're one of the ones with some integrity?”

“There are more of us than you might think,” Tunjin said. “But, yes, I hope so. I've done some stupid things in my time, but usually with the best of intentions.” He paused. “Which doesn't make them any the less stupid.”

“And this was stupid, was it?” she said. “Turning a blind eye. No—more than that. Using this supposed evidence to fit him up.”

“If you want to put it that way. Things were different in those days.”

“You don't need to tell me that,” she said. She thought back to her father, and how little attention he would have paid to these niceties. “Okay. So I accept that, even if I don't like it. But, if you think the evidence was faked, where did this body come from? You don't just find a conveniently murdered corpse sitting on a street corner. Not even in those days.”