The Outcast (37 page)

For a second, Sam seemed unable to respond. “They are building their own empire. The future lies with them. I am just doing what I can to hasten the day.”

He was virtually horizontal now, his body splayed back on the grass. The blood covered half of his chest, his shirt stained crimson. The pistol was held loosely in his hand, no longer a threat.

Nergui started to move forward. But Sam held up his right hand, which still clutched the thin black box. “Stay there,” he said. “This is a remote control device. I've primed it already. As long as I stay holding it, nothing happens. If I let go or loosen my grip …” he looked up at the car. “So if you shoot me or try to stop me, well, you know what will happen.”

Nergui took another half step forward, his eyes fixed on the other man's face. “Give me the device. We can get Odbayar out of the car. We can stop all this.”

“And what?” Sam said. “This is what I've lived for. To be a catalyst.”

“A catalyst for what?” Nergui said. “You said it yourself. For chaos.”

Sam shook his head. “No. For change. To bring back what we once had. To start all over again.”

Nergui moved forward another step. But again Sam held up his hand, pointing the remote control device towards the car. “It's up
to you, Nergui. It's all over now. For me. For Odbayar. Probably for you and your colleagues, if you come any closer. But I want you to live with your failure. With what will come after all this.”

For the first time, Nergui took his eyes off Sam's crumpled body and glanced behind him at Doripalam and Batzorig. “Get back, you two. Get back and get down. Now.”

Doripalam hesitated momentarily. “You too, Nergui. There's nothing to be gained.”

Nergui shook his head and remained motionless, as Doripalam and Batzorig began to back away down the slope. There was a low hillock twenty or so yards down the hillside, a row of trees. The only place where they might have a chance, Doripalam thought. He was moving more quickly now, Batzorig just ahead of him.

Behind them, Nergui turned back to face Sam. He was slumped back, his eyes tightly closed, his mouth half open as though he was about to scream in pain. Even as Nergui focused again on the supine body, Sam's right hand opened and the remote control slipped softly from his fingers.

The man looked at his watch for perhaps the fourth time in as many minutes. “This is no good,” he said. “He made us promises. We're holding the fucking minister of security against his will. This was supposed to make us all rich. I say we cut our losses now.” He pulled a handgun from his pocket. “No one knows we're here. We can just get rid of the evidence and leave.”

“Get rid of the evidence?”

The man walked forward slowly and placed the gun against the minister's neck. “The evidence,” he repeated, calmly.

The minister looked up at him. He was, Tunjin thought, remarkably calm. If they were prepared to shoot the minister, they were unlikely to have any qualms about doing the same to himself or Solongo. Tunjin looked across at her. Her face carried the same frozen, glassy-eyed expression that he had noted when he had first entered the room.

Was there anything he could do? At most, he could cause some
sort of distraction, maybe create an opportunity for Solongo to escape. There was little chance of saving himself or the minister. But there might be an outside chance of getting Solongo out of this mess. The main question, looking at her blank expression, was whether she had any inclination to help herself.

The man was pressing the barrel of the gun harder against the minister's neck. Finally, the minister looked up. “You don't have the nerve,” he said. “You're a small-time thug. All you're good for is doing my dirty work. You're out of your depth. Miles out of your depth.”

“Shut up, old man. You're finished, don't you realise that?”

Despite the pressure of the gun barrel, the minister managed to twist his head, regarding the man with an expression of contempt. “Maybe. But you've never even gotten started. You're just a loser. And it looks to me as if you've just lost again.”

If Tunjin was going to try something, he had to do it now. Inches from where he was sitting, there was a small stone statuette, which had been adapted as a pen-holder. With a speed and dexterity that belied his massive frame, Tunjin suddenly moved, sweeping up the statuette into his hand and throwing himself forward. The statuette made contact with the gunman's head, the stone striking his skull with a dull thump.

The man fell forward instantly, stumbling against the coffee-table. He tried to regain his balance, before toppling sideways, landing awkwardly between the table and one of the sofas. The gun flew out of his hand and, with a perfectly timed movement, Tunjin caught it. Before anyone else could react, he grabbed the man's collar and pulled him back, slamming the barrel of the gun hard against his temple. Then he looked up.

One of the dark-suited men on the sofa reached into his jacket, but Tunjin pressed the gun harder against the head of the man in front of him. “You know,” he said, “it's less than two days since I shot a man down in the middle of Sukh Bataar Square. Just over a year ago, I shot and killed the most powerful man in Mongolia. Do you want me to make it three in a row?”

The man on the sofa slowly withdrew his hand from his pocket.
But then he smiled at Tunjin. “That was very impressive,” he said. “But if you think we give a fuck about what happens to him, you're wrong. Shoot him in the head for all we care.”

Tunjin had been watching the hand that had been reaching into the jacket. But the man raised his other hand, and there was already a handgun in it. Still smiling, the man placed the gun barrel, very gently, against Solongo's neck. “On the other hand,” he said, “I'm willing to bet that you might give a fuck about what I do to this fine lady here. So put that gun down, you fat bastard, and we can start this all over again.”

At first, Sarangarel tried to resist, but her captor was too strong. If she were able to scream, someone in the arena might hear her, but a hand was clasped firmly across her mouth. She was dragged backwards, her feet stumbling on the sandy ground.

A moment later, the figure behind her pulled open one of the doors of the office unit and thrust her inside. She staggered, only just retaining her balance, and fell against one of the desks.

Gundalai was sitting on the floor in front of her. His face was bruised and there was blood dripping from an ugly-looking graze across his cheek. To his left, there was a man, dressed in Western-style jeans and white T-shirt, holding a pistol.

She turned and regarded her own assailant. He was similarly dressed; anonymous gear for anonymous-looking men. Probably late twenties or early thirties, clean-shaven, neat hair. Nothing memorable about them at all.

“Found her outside,” the man behind her said. “Being nosy.”

“This is getting too deep,” the other man said. “I didn't expect this. Just a technical job. Get in, get it running, get out. There wasn't supposed to be anyone in here.”

“There wasn't,” the other man said. “Till this guy turned up.”

Gundalai sat sullenly at the man's feet. “Where is he?” he said.

The man stared at him for a moment. “You don't give up, do you?” he said. “I thought I'd beaten some sense into you.”

“The man on the screen. I need to find him. I need to find the
man in the car.” His voice rose, a note of panic crackling just under the surface.

“We're just here to do a job,” the man said. “Get the satellite link working, and get it up on to those screens. Technicians, that's all.”

“Pretty violent technicians,” Sarangeral pointed out.

The man shrugged. “I didn't start it. He attacked me. We were expecting this to be a little more low-key.”

Sarangeral gestured towards Gundalai. “It was his friend, in the car.”

“In the film, you mean?”

She suddenly realised how little these men knew about what they were involved in. “It wasn't a film,” she said. “Do you know what it is?”

“A protest. Against the government selling off the mineral rights. That's what we were told.” He frowned, sensing her disbelief. “Some sort of propaganda. We were going to do it at the festival itself, but then it got brought forward, thank God. It would have been a nightmare to get in here while the festival was on.” He paused, as though trying to take in what was going on. “But that's all we were supposed to do. We had a portable satellite receiver, a designated channel we were supposed to use, and then we were supposed to show—well, whatever it was. I thought it would be a link to a live protest somewhere. I didn't understand what was being shown, some sort of mock-up perhaps.”

She shook her head. “No. It was live. And real.”

“Real?” She could see that he was only just taking in the significance of what she was saying. “You mean the body … ?”

“The body,” she said, “and the bomb.”

The man looked across at his colleague, who was pacing up and down behind Sarangeral. “We've been set up,” he said. “Well and truly fucking set up.”

“Who asked you to do this?”

“We don't know. Friends of friends of friends. We went on a few anti-government protests. Someone heard we had the technical skills. You know how it is.”

“Someone must have told you what was required.”

“A middle man,” he said. “No one we knew. Gave us instructions, provided the equipment. Promised us everything would be ready. Gave us a down-payment. More money when it was done.”

She had no idea whether to believe him, but the story made sense. “So you don't know where all that was taking place? You don't know where the man in the car is?”

The man looked between her and Gundalai. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know anything except what we were told.” Sarangarel could see that there was something else in his mind.

“What else?”

“I don't know. The guy who paid us. He said we should do our job here and then get out. That there'd be something even more spectacular to follow.”

She stared at him, thinking about the man who had appeared on the screens. About Odbayar in the car, and the device strapped to the seats behind him. About the stadium and the impending festival.

“Oh, my sweet heaven,” she said.

Doripalam held his breath, waiting for the force of the explosion to hit them. His body was flat to the ground, but he had little confidence that the gentle gradient would offer any real protection. He breathed in the sweet scent of the grass, his ears straining for any clue as to what was happening. He moved his head slightly, squinting to his right. Batzorig was in a similar posture, his body spread-eagled further along the same hollow.

Doripalam had no idea how much time had elapsed. Batzorig had raised his head and was looking back at him quizzically. At last Doripalam risked peering out.

Nothing had changed. The Land Cruiser was in the same position. There was no sign of Nergui or Wu Sam. Other than the occasional ripple of birdsong, the silence remained complete.

“Anything?” Batzorig whispered.

Doripalam shook his head. He was beginning to feel embarrassed at their hurried retreat down the slope. But who knew what was happening up there?

The question was answered almost immediately. There was a bang from somewhere on the other side of the Land Cruiser. Doripalam started and got his head down, but realised almost immediately that the sound was simply that of a car door being slammed.

He peered over the edge of the bank. Nergui emerged from behind the vehicle, his face set in a grimace of exertion. It took
Doripalam a moment to realise that he was dragging something—a body, Nergui's arms wrapped under its armpits, its feet scraping along the ground.

“Come and give me a hand,” Nergui said. “It's safe for the moment. At least, I think it is.”

Doripalam had assumed that the body was Sam's, but as he drew closer he realised that it was the young man. Odbayar. He grabbed the dragging feet, helping Nergui move the body further down the slope. Batzorig arrived a second later and began to help with Odbayar's upper body.

“We need to get as far down the slope as we can,” Nergui gasped, the exertion making him breathless. “I don't know how much time we have.”

Nergui was still stumbling down backwards, the young man's torso clutched in his linked arms. For the first time, Doripalam noticed that between Nergui's clasped palms there was a slim black box. The remote control.

Nergui looked back over his shoulder. “If we can get to those rocks, that should be okay.”

Some fifty metres away there was a small cluster of trees surrounding three large rocks, dumped at the riverside by some prehistoric glacier.

They zigzagged awkwardly down the uneven slope. Finally, they reached the shelter of the rocks and placed the limp body safely on the ground, the three men slumping down beside it.

Nergui held up the remote control. “Keep your heads down,” he said. “I'm holding this down so it shouldn't detonate the device, but I don't know what—”

As if on cue, his words were cut short by a sudden roar from above. For a second, Doripalam was surprised by the sound—more gentle than he might have expected. But then the force of the blast struck them, a physical wind that buffeted them heavily even in the lee of the rocks, a shattering noise too loud to describe. Some large object—presumably part of the truck—flew over their heads and landed with a crash beyond them. Doripalam kept his
head down, his face buried in his arms, feeling something scattering against his hair and back.

The noise of the explosion terminated as abruptly as it had begun, its echoes lost in the open terrain. Doripalam's ears were still ringing, and he looked around confusedly. Nergui was crouched over Odbayar's body, protecting the young man from the falling debris. Batzorig was staring at a line of blood welling up on the back of his hand.