A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 46

For those who don’t know, Uighur blades are the Central Asian knife equivalent of the Japanese Samurai sword, the ultimate combination of precision steel with age-old craftsmanship. They say if you hold a Uighur knife up in the air and let the wind blow a silk scarf across the blade, the silk falls into two pieces. If it doesn’t, the knife is broken up and the long process of manufacture begins again.

I don’t know if there’s any truth to the story, never having had a silk scarf to try it out, but they’re fearsome weapons all the same.

The Uighurs live on the other side of the Torugart Pass which leads from Kyrgyzstan to China, and knife-making is one of their proudest traditions, one that goes back for centuries. Every Uighur carries at least one knife, to use for everything from halal slaughter to preparing fruit and vegetables. The craft is usually handed down from father to son, and the Uighur take great pride in the beauty of their knives, as well as their practicality, with handles decorated with inlays of shell, bone, and semi-precious stones. But mine were different, very different.

Some years ago, I’d helped out an elderly Uighur man. He’d lived for years in a tiny apartment in one of the older, more decrepit blocks in Alamedin, but the landlord was threatening to throw him out. A couple of heavies tried to persuade the Uighur to seek new lodgings. One of them lost a thumb and index finger when he discovered just how sharp the Uighurs make their knives.

He returned the next day, this time with a Makarov, presumably having practiced with his other trigger finger. I took his gun away from him, and broke his remaining index finger in all three bones while doing so. I didn’t feel bad about it: he wasn’t planning on typing his memoirs.

The old man was grateful, said so in broken Kyrgyz. I was puzzled when he took hold of my hands, judging the length of my fingers, the muscles in my palms, the flexibility of my wrists.

Six months later, the old man appeared at Sverdlovsky station, and with a great deal of broken-toothed smiling pushed a thin package into the inside pocket of my jacket. I started to reach for it, but he looked worried and shook his head, his gold teeth catching the light. Our little secret.

Once he’d left, I went back to my office, opened the package. Two knives, but not traditional decorated Uighur knives. These were brutal-looking unornamented throwing knives, handle-heavy, obviously handmade. They were made for fighting, for killing, nothing else. They fit perfectly in my palm, and I understood why the old man had taken so much time inspecting my hands. I took one, weighed it, threw it at my office door. The thud as it hit could have been heard in the street, and the quiver it made as it spun through the air set my teeth on edge.

I bought a couple of dartboards, glued them together, fastened them to the back of the bedroom door, practiced my knife-throwing routine until I got pretty good, at least from about eight feet away. At first, Chinara would ask when I was going to run away to join the circus, but that joke got old very quickly. Then she started to complain about the noise, and why didn’t I get a quieter hobby.

I said I’d get rid of the knives. Which I did, after a fashion, stashing them away in their hiding place, hoping I wouldn’t ever need them.

If only life were that peaceful. But it rarely is.

I used one knife to cut through the remaining restraint, and stretched as best I could in the confined space, while the car moved forward toward what promised to be the end of my life. I found a roll of duct tape and strapped one of the knives against my back, under my shirt, and held the other ready for a forward throw. A lot of the skill lies in the wrist, the sudden snap and release that triggers the blade forward. I’d practiced long enough on the dartboard, but never on a person. I wasn’t worried I might freeze when the time came to throw; self-preservation does away with all that nonsense. I was only afraid I might miss. Of course, once you’ve thrown your knife, you’ve effectively disarmed yourself, so I clutched the tire iron with my other hand. The blood from my thumb made it slippery and difficult to grip, but it was better than getting out of the car trunk with nothing more deadly than a smile.

Squatting in the dark, waiting to kill or be killed, memories reeled past me, as if to remind me of the times I felt immortal, when the world was mine. Pulling Chinara toward me for a long kiss in the cold waters of Lake Issyk-Kul, dazzled by light reflected from the mountain snow. Joy that never seemed to end, pain that never seemed to stop. The livid scar that commemorated Chinara’s cancer. The corpses that showed how bottles and blades and bullets can drain the life out of anyone. And the taste of fear in my mouth, sour like cheap wine and copper wire.

Then the car turned, slowed, the clang of gates closing behind us.

Time to die seemed the most likely option. I would have liked more years, children to scold, grandchildren to pamper. But we all get what’s coming to us, in my case, sooner rather than later.

I guessed we were back at Graves’s compound. I held my breath, waited for the trunk to open, hoping I’d catch someone off guard, if only for a few seconds.

With luck, it might even be Kurmanalieva herself, and I could sort out Saltanat’s problem with her there and then. The catch clicked, then daylight poured in.

To his credit, the thug who peered down at me had quick reflexes. He was almost fast enough to step back and shout that I’d somehow got free. But I was faster. I felt as if I were moving in slow motion, with all the time in the world to take aim, register the surprise in his eyes, watch his mouth open to cry out. The knife left my hand with the same snap of the wrist I’d practiced so often. Sunlight caught the blade, like a sudden flash of summer lightning, moving with the effortless grace of an eagle swooping on its prey.

The lightning turned scarlet as the blade hit the man’s neck, just below his left ear. Even as the first arterial spray jetted a thin stream into the air, I was pushing myself forward, feet on the trunk’s rim. The man’s hands grappled with the blade, as if pulling it out would somehow stop the pain, darkness already spilling into his eyes. I snatched the handle, twisting and pulling sideways, and with my other hand brought the tire lever down between his eyes.

His blood splashed warm and sticky down my face. I was in a moment that lasted for hours, now bringing the tire lever down on the hand holding a gun glimpsed in the corner of my eye. Bones splintered, the impact jarred my arm, and as if from miles away, I heard a scream of anger, realized it was mine.

And then everything snapped back to the present, as I felt the unmistakable bite of a gun barrel pushed into the back of my head.

“That’s quite enough, Inspector,” a woman’s voice said, harsh and brutal as a raven’s cry. “I’ve no wish to kill you. Yet.”

I paused, getting my breath back, feeling adrenaline rush through me. I dropped the knife and the tire lever. They lay beside the corpse of the man they’d just killed, almost as if I’d had nothing to do with his death. A few feet away, another man clutched at his shattered hand, bent double, face gray with pain and shock. After the trunk, the air tasted fresh, vital. I wondered how long I’d be around to savor it.

“You have the advantage of me,” I said, in my best tough Murder Squad voice, feeling my knees tremble as my heart slowed.

“I do,” she said, and the gun pressed harder against my skull. “And I intend to keep it that way.”

“Albina Kurmanalieva,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“You’ve been busy, you and that bitch,” she said. “But she was never stupid, that one. You? Like all men, the merest sniff of pizda and you lose what brains your mother gave you.”

I shrugged, very slowly, so as not to give her the opportunity to pull the trigger.

“So where do we go from here?” I asked. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. The blood smearing my face felt like a mask I’d assumed as a disguise, only to discover I couldn’t peel it off. The stink of too-strong perfume was cloying, and I could taste bile rising in my throat. When she spoke, it was all I could do to stand still and not vomit.

“I’m sure you’re an ambitious man,” she murmured, her voice making my flesh crawl. “I thought we might make a movie star of you, Inspector.”