The Outcast (25 page)

“I see your problem.”

“And the real question,” Dorilpalam said, “is whether any of this is connected. At a mundane level, I don't even know where to focus the resource. I mean, the urgent issue is Odbayar's disappearance, but we don't even know whether he's really disappeared.”

“Or whether it's some kind of stunt, you mean?”

Doripalam nodded.

“If so, we should know soon enough. There's not much point in publicity stunts unless you want publicity.”

“Is that why you're holding off breaking the news to his father?”

“Maybe,” Nergui said. “Or maybe it's just another wild hunch.”

Gundalai remained hunched in a corner of the sofa, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees, staring fixedly into space.

“Gundalai, it's going to be all right.” Sarangarel didn't really even believe this herself, so there was no reason why Gundalai should.
But there was no option other than to be positive. “We don't even know that anything's happened to Odbayar.”

“I know what I saw.” His voice was quiet and steady.

She shook her head. “I didn't learn much from my time in the judiciary. But I learnt one thing. You can never be sure what you saw. I lost count of the cases where witnesses gave diametrically opposed accounts of the same event. Everyone swearing blind they were telling the truth.”

“People lie in court,” Gundalai said, bluntly.

“Most people don't. They're just witnesses, with no axe to grind. They still disagree.”

“I know what I saw,” he repeated.

“Maybe,” she said, doubtfully. “But, even if you do, you don't know what it means.”

“Odbayar was being taken away.”

“You don't know that. You don't even know for sure that it was Odbayar.” Even to herself, her words sounded unconvincing.

“So where is he?”

It was a question she couldn't answer. She turned back to the window. “You're very close to him, aren't you?” she said, finally. “He means a lot to you?”

She looked back and realised that Gundalai was nodding, his eyes still staring at the floor. “More than you know,” he said.

She nodded. “I think I know,” she said.

She was not surprised, though many of her fellow citizens would be simply baffled by the idea. Homosexuality was not illegal now, though its existence was barely acknowledged. But it was a country with a young population, and she had no doubt that many engaged in activities, legal or illegal, which would have been unknown—or at least unacknowledged—in her generation.

“Do you trust him?” she said.

He looked up at her, the question clearly taking him by surprise. “Trust him?”

It occurred to her that, in fact, she had intended to ask whether Gundalai loved him, but she had not been able to articulate the
words. But, now it had been asked, the question seemed to be the right one.

“Of course I trust him,” he went on, without waiting for her to respond. “Why wouldn't I trust him? You don't know—”

“I don't know anything,” she said. “I don't know you, really. My nephew. My sister's son. I haven't seen her for five, six years. I haven't seen you for even longer. I've never met Odbayar. Do you trust him?”

This time, he didn't respond immediately. “I think so,” he said. “He means well. He has good intentions …”

“But do you trust him?” she persisted.

Finally, he said: “I don't know. That's the truth. I don't know.”

She nodded, as if this was the answer she had been expecting. “Why don't you know?”

Gundalai was shaking his head, slowly, rocking backwards and forwards, as though trying to deny the world. “I—” He stopped, his head still moving, the words eluding him. “It's not the same,” he said, at last. “He's not like he was. Nothing is like it was.” He lowered his head into his hands, running his fingers through his hair repeatedly and fiercely, as though trying to remove some foreign body.

Sarangarel had lowered herself on the sofa beside him. “What's not the same?”

“I thought we were drifting apart. I mean, it didn't really surprise me. Odbayar was never really comfortable with …” He looked up at her, as if conscious for the first time of what he was saying. “Well, you know …”

“With your relationship?”

“Exactly. I mean, it was different when we were students. It didn't really matter, even with Odbayar's background. It made him feel rebellious. Knowing that it was something his father would have disapproved of.”

“You don't think he took it seriously? Your relationship, I mean.”

“It's hard to tell what Odbayar really thinks about anything. And now that he's begun to take the politics more seriously, I thought
—well, I thought it was probably going to end soon, anyway.” He seemed more composed now, as if he had unloaded some burden. “But it's more than that,” he went on. “I think there's something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. I thought at first that Odbayar had found someone else. But that's not the way he does things. Whatever else he might do, he'd be honest about that. If only because it wouldn't occur to him to worry about my feelings.” He laughed, mirthlessly. “If there was someone else, he'd just have told me.”

“So what was it?” she prompted.

“He was distracted. I mean, we were going along with all the political stuff. But it was if his heart wasn't really in it.” He frowned. “No, that's not quite right. It was still important to him. But I don't think he believed in what we were doing—the meetings, the speeches, the protests. It was as if he'd realised that he wasn't going to achieve anything that way.”

“I thought he'd made quite an impact,” she said. “He got people out on the streets.”

“Don't get me wrong,” he said. “He's a brilliant speaker. Even when he was going through the motions, he could get people eating out of his hand. And you're right—there was a movement starting to build. Not just through Odbayar, but he was part of it.”

There was genuine enthusiasm in Gundalai's tone. For the first time, Sarangarel realised how seriously he had taken all this. “You really thought you could change things?” she asked, trying hard to keep any scepticism from her tone.

He looked up at her, trying to gauge whether she was mocking him. “I still think we can,” he said. “Things have to change.”

“Things have changed,” she pointed out. “More than you can imagine. In my lifetime.”

“I know,” he said. “And even in mine. But it's not enough.”

“I don't know,” she said. “We've had two decades of change. There was a time when I really thought this country was finished. You don't remember; you were a child. There were people starving.
People out on the steppes who were killing their livestock—their livelihood—to survive. People without a roof over their heads. There was economic disaster.”

“I know,” he said. “I've read about all that.”

“But you don't know what it was like to live through it,” she said. “You were a child. And things weren't so bad for you. Your father had a government job. He was still being paid. There were countless people who had nothing.” She stopped, wondering why she was rehearsing all this, why it seemed to matter.

Gundalai was staring at her, surprised by the vehemence of her words.

“It was a strange time,” she said. “We'd all had so much hope at first. We all thought that at last the country was ours again.”

“But you knew it was going to be difficult,” Gundalai pointed out. “You must have known that once Russia withdrew its support.”

She nodded. “We knew how dependent the country was on the USSR's money. A third of our GDP. But we had a sense of history. We had a sense of what this country had once been.”

“Then we're not so far apart,” Gundalai said. “That's what we believe. That's what Odbayar believes. That we can make the country great again. Not like it was. But a genuine, successful independent nation, in charge of its own destiny.”

“I hope you're right,” she said. “I'm sure, in the long run, you are right. But it's taken so long. We've had years of turmoil. We've had corrupt governments, incompetent governments. But, yes, things are improving. And, yes, things could have been much worse.” She leaned back in the sofa, feeling weary. She had been awake since the small hours dealing with Gundalai. “But it's stability I want. Not more years of change.”

Gundalai nodded, as though reflecting on her words. “Odbayar says it's the politics we need to change. And the politicians.”

“Including his own father?”

Gundalai smiled faintly. “Especially his own father. I think even Odbayar would acknowledge the Freudian undertones of what he wants.”

“And what does he want?” she said. She had assumed that Odbayar's goals would be ill-defined, that he was a student activist interested in change primarily for its own sake.

“He wants politicians who are motivated by the interests of the country, not just by lining their own pockets. Who really want this country to be in control of its own destiny, not subservient to Russian, China or the West.” It sounded like a prepared speech, and Sarangeral suspected that the words were Odbayar's.

“Not all politicians are self-seeking,” she pointed out.

“Maybe not. But even if they're not, they don't have a vision. They just bumble along from day to day.”

“And Odbayar has a vision?”

“You only have to hear him speak. He could make us great again.”

“When he becomes president?”

“You're laughing at me,” Gundalai said, without bitterness. “We're used to that. We're still young. Time's on our side.”

“I can't argue with that,” she said. “And I hope you're right. I'm just too old and cynical now. I've seen too many young firebrands turn into everything they once despised. Perhaps that's what's happening to Odbayar,” she said. “Perhaps that's why you thought he was just going through the motions.”

“No,” he said, firmly. “That's not what I meant at all. I think he believed it more than ever. But he'd realised we weren't going to get there by making speeches.”

“So how was he going to get there?”

“I don't know. I just had the feeling that something was going on. Something he wasn't sharing with me.” The sense of betrayal was unmistakable. Sarangarel wondered whether Gundalai would have found the treachery less profound if the cause had been sexual or emotional, rather than political. “Did you have some reason to think this? Something he said or did?”

“No. But I knew him. There was something he wasn't saying. And he started being secretive—taking mysterious phone calls, disappearing for the day. Not telling me what he was doing.”

“Perhaps you were right the first time. Maybe there
was
someone else.”

“Maybe. But I don't think so. There was no sense that he was—I don't know—embarrassed or feeling awkward, the way you would—”

“If you were having an affair? He might just be a better liar than you.” The words came out more bluntly than she intended, and she realised she felt protective towards the young man.

Gundalai smiled. “Maybe. He's a politician, after all. And I know that the partners are always the last to find out. But I still don't think so.”

“He might have thought you'd cause trouble,” she persisted. “He had his potential political career to think of. You could have embarrassed him.”

“I wouldn't have. He knew that.”

“Okay. But you think there was something going on, all the same. Something to do with his political activities?”

“I suppose so.”

“So why wouldn't he share that with you? Surely you were partners in that as much as in anything else?”

“In a way. But never equal partners.”

“He wouldn't have trusted you with whatever he was doing?”

“Maybe not. Not because I'd betray him. Just because—well, he thought I was naïve.”

“That suggests that whatever he was planning was risky or needed to be kept under wraps.”

“Anything's possible with Odbayar. I don't think he'd do anything that was illegal.” He stopped. “No, that's not true. He'd happily do something that was illegal, if he thought it was right. But he wouldn't do anything that he thought was unethical.”

“That could still mean that he had something to hide from you. If it was something illegal, he might have wanted to protect you.”

Gundalai looked up at her, his eyes bright, as if this thought had not previously occurred to him. “I suppose that's right. He always looked out for me.”

“So do you think,” Sarangarel said, finally, “that any of this might be connected with what happened last night?”

It was the unspoken question that lay behind everything they had been saying, but Gundalai seemed surprised. “His disappearance, you mean? I suppose so, but I don't know how.”

“Perhaps he was meddling in something more dangerous than he realised?”

“I can't imagine what.”

“I can imagine things,” she said. “There are dangerous people out there.” She thought back to her own experience, a year or so previously, of coming up against one of the most dangerous. “If Odbayar was trying to expose corruption, anything's possible.”

He stared at her, his eyes beseeching, and for a moment she thought he might burst into tears again. “There's nothing more you can think of?” she asked. “Nothing that might give any clues? If you can think of anything, we can pass it on to Nergui and Doripalam. It would give them somewhere to start.”

He shook his head. “Nothing. There was nothing he said. Nothing he gave away. I don't even know if it was just my imagination.”