The Outcast (33 page)

“We have a visitor. He was lurking at the door.” Tunjin looked back. Another identikit thug in the standard dark grey suit.

The other men in the room were watching Tunjin with curiosity, but no obvious anxiety. Whatever they were up to, they looked entirely in control. The young man on the high-backed chair had a pistol hanging loosely between his fingers. Solongo was on the sofa, her face expressionless. She had not looked up at Tunjin's entry.

The minister was staring at Tunjin. “What the hell is this?” he snapped at the man opposite. His voice had risen from the whisper that Tunjin had heard outside. “I mean, are you clowns capable of organising nothing? Who the hell is this?”

There was a protracted silence. Clearly, nobody had an immediate answer to these questions. Tunjin felt the prod of the gun in his back again. “Go on. Tell the gentleman who you are.”

“I'm a police officer. A member of the Serious Crimes Team,” Tunjin paused. “And if it wasn't for the fact that you have a gun stuck in my back, I'd be telling you that you're under arrest.”

The man behind him laughed. “Lucky for me, then. Though I think your boss over there might have something to say about it as well.”

The minister looked unamused. “I'm glad you're amused. This whole bloody thing's spiralling out of control. We have the whole works—up to and including a fucking policeman with a gun in his back. This isn't quite how I'd envisaged it.” His voice was quieter now, but sounded all the more threatening as a result.

None of this made much sense to Tunjin but, seeing no other options available, he decided to stir things up a little more. “I don't understand this,” he said, gently. “I don't know why you're here. And I don't know why you've brought this lady here. Of all people.”

He had the minister's attention now. For all the old man's bluster, Tunjin had begun to sense that the minister was out of his depth. “What are you talking about?”

“Let me introduce Solongo,” he said. “Wife of Doripalam, the head of the Serious Crimes Team. An interesting choice of kidnap victim.”

Tunjin looked at Solongo, whose expression had, for the first time, begun to reveal some emotion. He wondered whether her earlier consumption of vodka had helped her to retain her calm. But she appeared sober enough now, and he could see she was calculating how best to play the situation. Finally, she succeeded in raising a smile and turned on the sofa to face the minister. “Pleased to meet you at last,” she said. “My husband's said so much about you.”

The calm irony proved too much for the minister, who pulled himself to his feet and crouched over the man opposite. “What the
fuck
do you think you're playing at? You told me you had all this under control. You've told me a crock of shit since this all started, and I was stupid enough to believe you.”

He stopped and jerked his head back, almost as if the man had
struck him. It took Tunjin a moment to realise that the metaphorical blow had been nothing more than the other man's untroubled smile. Whatever the minister might say, this man simply didn't care.

The man's smile broadened. “Sit down, old man. Relax. We're here to help you. Everything is under control.”

The minister straightened slowly with the cautious stiffness of one accustomed to maintaining his dignity even in the most challenging of circumstances. “You're full of shit,” he said, softly. “You and your boss. I don't think you have a clue what you're doing.”

The other man was watching him, still smiling, his eyes unblinking. “Sit down, old man,” he said again. This time, there was an undertone of menace to his words. “We know much more than you imagine.”

Her first reaction was to storm out. Just walk out of here, get back into her car, and leave all this nonsense behind.

It was only the expression on Gundalai's face that stopped her. No matter what happened, he continued to believe. He really thought something important was going to happen. Not just some idiot stunt pulled by an overgrown student politician.

“So what are we waiting for?” she said.

He looked wildly around the stadium. The bustle of preparation continued as before. “I don't know. Something—”

Suddenly the rhythmic modulation of the
khoomii
cut off. There was a loud sharp crackling across the PA system, as if it had been affected by an electrical storm.

At first, there was no discernible effect on the individuals scattered about the stadium, most continued with their activities, assuming that the sound had been affected by some technical glitch.

A moment later, there was another loud electrical crackle and the two large screens burst into life. There was a brilliant dazzle of light from each, a blurred scattering of brightly coloured diamonds, and the two screens displayed an identical image.

With a comical synchronisation everyone in the arena looked up simultaneously. Silence spread slowly as the spectators ceased whatever activity they had been engaged in and watched the screen.

It took a while for them to understand what they were seeing. It appeared to be a live broadcast. But it was clearly not a film of the stadium or any of the surrounding area.

For a moment, a jumble of pale blue and turquoise lozenges danced diagonally across the shot. Then slowly the camera panned around and came into focus, as though an amateur cameraman was slowly gaining control of the instrument.

The fractured white and blue was revealed as sunlight and sky reflected on a rippling body of water. The curve of a broad river.

The camera pulled back further and the screen was filled with rich blue and green. The vast empty bowl of the Mongolian sky, the green of the plush northern grasslands.

The onlookers began to lose interest, assuming that this was some travelogue for tourists. Some had already turned back to their former activities.

Then there was an audible intake of breath from the remaining observers, as they realised what the screen was showing. A murmur of puzzlement spread slowly across the arena.

The camera had zoomed slowly in towards the river. There was an expanse of grass, a cluster of rocks stretching out into the middle of the current. The camera zoomed further and it was possible to discern an object spread out on the flat stone.

Sarangarel leaned forward, trying to work out what was being shown. Was this Odbayar's stunt? She braced herself for something unexpected. Some satirical joke.

But it was no joke.

The camera jerkily moved forward again, and the nature of the object on the rock became clear. Gundalai cried out something behind her. Though Sarangarel could not make out what he had said, his startled tone was echoed around the stadium.

The object was a human body, its limbs spread out as if it were a sacrificial victim, its head twisted at a grotesque angle. The
camera moved forward and, in close-up, the state of the body became clearer. The face was dark and bruised, already affected by decay.

The voices of the onlookers around the stadium were becoming more strident. Whatever this might be, it was clearly no test transmission. Sarangeral turned to say something to Gundalai, but the young man was no longer behind her. She looked around the arena, but could not see him. She glanced back up at the screen, waiting for some denouement to the scene. But the camera simply held for long seconds on the damaged face. A young man, she thought, once good looking.

Then the camera tipped back, focused now beyond the rock and the body, towards the far bank of the river and the grassland above it.

And the three figures making their way towards the water's edge.

An offering, Nergui thought. A sacrifice to some unimaginable deity.

He had paused, trying to make sense of the scene spread out below. Doripalam and Batzorig had stopped too, transfixed by the grotesque tableau.

“You were right, as ever,” Doripalam said. “Though I didn't expect you'd prove it quite so easily.”

Nergui's attention had already moved from the supine body, and his eyes were scanning the far bank. “Nor did I,” he said. “I wonder why we're being offered this.” He gestured down towards the river. “I feel uncomfortable when our work becomes too simple.”

Doripalam nodded. He and Nergui shared the same uneasy memories of the last time this kind of display had been prepared for them, two years before in a deserted warehouse in the back-streets of the capital. “What do you think?”

Nergui was still gazing intently at the far bank. “If this has been prepared as a welcome,” he said, “someone is waiting.”

Doripalam followed the direction of Nergui's gaze. “Maybe we should get some shelter,” he said. “We're pretty exposed here.”

“If he wanted to shoot at us, he could have done so by now. I don't think that's it.”

“Over there, sir,” Batzorig said, suddenly. He had taken Nergui's cue and had been carefully scanning the landscape.

The other two men looked where he was pointing. There was
something up there, just inside the shade of the thickening tree line, almost invisible against the afternoon sun.

Batzorig squinted. “It's metallic. I can see the sun shining on it through the trees.”

“Metal or glass. And something moving in the trees,” Nergui said.

“It could be a gunsight,” Doripalam pointed out.

“Or binoculars. Or a camera,” Nergui said. “Let's not panic until we've good cause.”

Doripalam shook his head, recognising that this was not the moment to respond to Nergui's provocations. “So what do you suggest we do?” he asked. “Instead of panicking.”

“We could have a look at the body.” Nergui began to stride down the bank, passing Doripalam and Batzorig. “See if it's who we're assuming it is.”

“Which may be exactly what's expected. Maybe he wants us in range.”

There was no arguing with Nergui. One day he would finally be proved wrong. Doripalam wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to be present when that happened. Reluctantly, he followed Nergui down towards the water, Batzorig trailing a few steps behind.

The body was decayed but not in a bad state. It didn't look like a body that had been sitting out in the summer heat for a week or more. The white face was discoloured with bruising, the neck twisted, but there was no major decomposition. Out here, too, the body would surely have been attacked by animals or birds.

It was casually dressed, Western-style—blue jeans and some sort of sweat-shirt, trainers on the feet. There were brown spots of blood scattered across the pale cotton of the sweatshirt. A young man, Mongolian, probably in his early twenties, thick dark hair swept back from his forehead.

Nergui glanced back over his shoulder. “Do you think it's him?”

Batzorig had managed to track down a photograph of the missing graduate student, Sunduin, among the university records. It was
an unhelpful photograph—several years old and cropped from some larger picture.

“He's the right age, certainly. And has the right kind of looks. But then so do lots of young men.”

Nergui was at the edge of the water, peering more closely at the body. He turned to Batzorig. “Can you call the local police? We need someone out here to deal with this.” He glanced up at the sun. “Soon, I think. And make sure they have someone who can deal with the evidence properly.”

“For what it's worth,” Doripalam said. “Do you think it's likely to tell us much? This hasn't been left here by accident.”

“Who knows?”

The sudden explosion was shattering in the silence. Doripalam threw himself to the ground, closely followed by Batzorig, both assuming that this was gunfire they had been half-expecting.

Only Nergui seemed unmoved. He had turned back towards the river and, Doripalam realised, was calmly watching the opposite bank.

There was a man standing, twenty metres or so up the far slope, as calm and motionless as Nergui. He was slightly built, a hunched figure dressed in a black T-shirt and black trousers, Chinese in appearance. He was holding a smoking pistol in his left hand.

“Wu Sam,” Nergui said.

The man bowed slightly. “Professor Sam Yung,” he called back, “from the University of Syracuse in New York.”

“So I understand,” Nergui said. “It is always pleasing to meet a true authority.” He gestured towards the supine corpse. “This is your work, I take it.”

Sam bowed his head again. “Symbolic, really. Though he will not be missed.”

Nergui turned to look at the body, the bruised figure of the young man, as though preparing to challenge this assertion. “It captured our attention, certainly,” he said, finally.

Sam nodded. “I had not expected you to come here. Not so soon. But it's good that you have come.”

“I am sure we are pleased to be of assistance.”

Sam stepped slowly down the bank, the pistol hanging loosely in his hand. “You are here as witnesses.”

Nergui glanced up at the shadow of the trees behind Sam. Following his gaze, Doripalam noticed for the first time a video camera standing on a tripod a little way up the slope. It was trained on the rock where the body lay, taking in their own figures as well as the rear of Sam's body.

“You already have a witness,” Nergui said, nodding towards the camera.

“Many witnesses,” Sam agreed. “It is a clever piece of kit. It is amazing what my countrymen are capable of producing these days.”

“Your countrymen?” Nergui said. “In the United States?”

Sam laughed. “Some of the technology is no doubt American. But the Chinese duplicate it more cheaply.”

“So I understand. Not always legally.”

“My countrymen are rewriting the rules in many areas. That is why we are so successful.”

“No doubt. So you have a camera. You have a transmitter?”

Sam nodded, a touch of eagerness in his manner, as though he was pleased to be demonstrating his ingenuity. “A satellite transmitter. Very neat. But the clever part is elsewhere. I can claim only a little credit for that.”