A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 39

By silent consent, neither of us discussed what turned out to be a confession, perhaps even a declaration of sorts. We shared a mattress on the floor of an upstairs room, Saltanat sleeping with her head on my shoulder while I lay awake for hours, staring at the faces that emerged from the stains on the wall.

We spent the next day discussing what to do. I voted for a quick headshot and a high-speed exit over the border into Kazakhstan. Once there, we could work out what to do next. My desire for revenge was fierce, on behalf of Gurminj, Rustam, the dead children. At night, I dreamed of seeing the sudden terror in Graves’s eyes, heard the half-uttered scream and watched his brains spatter gray and viscous against a bloodstained wall. I could almost taste his fear. And if a bullet came my way, perhaps that made a suitable end for an endless struggle.

Saltanat was calmer, more rational. She wanted to see Graves punished, but, smarter than me, she thought ahead, wanted to prove me innocent of the child pornography charges. Hour after hour, we debated strategy, tactics, but all the time I could feel the tension on a trigger, imagined my finger tightening and then the recoil. The muscles in my jaw pulsed with the need for sudden blood.

“Listen to me, Akyl, killing Graves isn’t the answer. We haven’t even proved it’s him,” Saltanat argued, pounding one fist into another for emphasis.

“He’s dirty, and you know it. You saw the films.” My voice flat.

“Yes, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he wholesales the porn, buys it in, that makes him guilty of a lot of things. But maybe not murder.”

“I don’t give a fuck about proving it. He doesn’t know what goes on in the cellar of his own house?”

I heard my voice getting angrier, didn’t bother to rein it in.

“When you scoop shit off the street, do you care whether it’s from the ass of a dog, a cow, or a horse? It’s still shit, and needs to be cleaned up.”

Saltanat sighed in frustration, sat back on her heels.

“If you’re looking for a gunfight, one in which you die heroically, gun blazing, the bad guys falling dead, that’s up to you. I can’t stop you. If you don’t mind everyone remembering you as a man who peddled the worst kind of filth for money, again, your call.”

I shrugged, as if I didn’t care one way or the other.

“First of all, we have to appear to back away. To convince Graves the slaughter at the hotel made us realize we were in too deep. Amateurs. And with him having the iPhone evidence of his involvement, we’re just going to disappear.”

I had to admit it made a lot of sense, even if my anger and pride made it hard to swallow the truth.

“So what do you want us to do?”

“We call him,” Saltanat said. “We tell him we got the message, we’re crossing the border, he has nothing to be concerned about.”

“He won’t believe that,” I said. “He’s made a lot of dirty money, dirty friends, dirty enemies. He won’t be happy until we’re in the cellar starring in his next home movie.”

“That’s why I’m going to make the call,” Saltanat said. “He hears an Uzbek accent, we’re a gang from over the border. Especially when I tell him you’re dead. And send him the photos to prove it.”

“I take it I’m not actually dead,” I said.

“You’re face down, shot in the back, somewhere up in the mountains where it’s still snowy,” she said.

“I hope it was quick,” I said.

“You never knew what hit you,” Saltanat said.

It’s as good a description of love as any I’ve ever heard.