An Autumn Hunting

Chapter 54

‘You swear you’ll meet me in Red Square?’

‘You saw my ticket. I’ll even take you in to see Lenin embalmed in his glass box.’

‘That’s not the most romantic offer I’ve ever had.’

‘I’m out of practice,’ I said, and kissed her again. Somehow, her tea managed to get spilt all over the Hyatt’s pristine white sheets, but at the rates they charged, I figured they could afford a little laundry bill.

In the morning, showered but unshaved, I watched Saltanat get dressed. She looked at me as she fastened her bra at her waist, turned it round and up, sliding the straps over her arms. At that moment, she had the grace and poise of a ballerina, each movement instinctive and perfectly judged. I smiled as a wave of tenderness, not desire, swept over me.

‘Let me show you something,’ she said, and pulled at the side of her bra, exposing the end of a thin metal wire which she then pushed back out of sight.

‘Ground to a point at both ends. Push this into someone’s ear, you can watch it come out the other side. Always prepared, that’s me.’

The smile slid from my face, remembering Saltanat’s existence as a perfect killing machine. It didn’t stop me loving her, but it reminded me ours was never going to be a picturebook romance.

‘Clever,’ I said.

‘Good for picking locks too,’ she said, and a smile danced across her face.

I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock: time to head down to the lobby. I’d called Usupov the night before, asked him to meet us, take us for a drive. I didn’t say where. Saltanat paid the bill with a credit card I was certain didn’t have her real name on it. The clerk gave an uninterested smile, wished us a pleasant journey, hoped to see us again. Not if I’m paying, I thought as we stepped out into the crisp morning air.

Usupov was waiting, the car exhaust coughing smoke. We climbed into the back seat, and Usupov pulled away.

‘I told Tynaliev you were back in the city,’ he said, his voice thick with apology. ‘If I hadn’t, and he found out I knew…’

‘I understand, Kenesh, I’m sure he has the airport watched full time,’ I reassured him. I hoped the use of his first name would tell him I was on his side. And I knew the risk he was taking in being with us, a reminder there are still decent people in the world, pressured, intimidated, afraid, but prepared to do the right thing.

‘Where are we going?’

‘The station,’ I said.

‘No luggage?’

‘Travel light, move fast,’ I said. ‘It’s kept me alive all these years.’

Then I sat back, slumped down in my seat to minimise the risk of being spotted, watched Bishkek stretching and yawning as it woke up…

I’ve known men who’ve told me it’s possible to love more than one woman at the same time. I’ve even put a couple of them behind bars when their romances turned sour, and one of the women had to go. The truth is you can love two women, but in different ways, for different reasons.

Sometimes it’s just hoping you can still attract women, that they’re willing to overlook the sagging jawline or beer belly because of your wonderful personality. Or the size of your bank balance. Other times, it’s having so much money you can buy what passes for love and desire. Or maybe it’s just a need for company and comfort as the years scurry by and the long night approaches.

I knew I’d loved Chinara for all she had been, loved her still. And I hoped she would have approved of me finding someone after she left me. A professional assassin wouldn’t have been her ideal choice, but then we can’t dictate the future, no matter how much we might try.

Bishkek railway station is a big place, considering how few trains actually run there. From the outside, it could pass for the town hall of a rural oblast, built with civic pride for some district far from a capital city. Built in High Soviet style, with a tall three-storey central building flanked by two extended wings, it proclaims the power and invincibility of the USSR. The Union has long gone, but the station remains.

Inside, massive windows light up the floor, while overhead, intricate paintings weave an elaborate design around a single silver six-pointed star. The walls are splendid with painted bas-relief plasterwork, as if modelled upon Tsarskoe Selo, the Catherine Palace outside St Petersburg. In another life, the room could have been a grand ballroom, a string quartet high above in the gallery, aristocratic ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet. Now, in place of violins and violas, the gallery houses a neon timetable board showing the times of the few trains that visit here.

The grandeur of the interior is rather let down by rows of those uncomfortable metal seats you find in airports everywhere if you can’t afford to visit the business lounge. Under the high interior, the benches are grouped together in one corner, huddled together as if for warmth. Like so many of the buildings of that era, it looks impressive at first sight, before you notice the peeling paint, the half-hearted repair jobs, the corners where decades of dirt and dust lurk.

It wasn’t the starting point of a great journey. But I knew it was Saltanat’s best hope of getting out of Kyrgyzstan, with Aliyev’s men watching the airport and the border crossings into Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

I gave her the last of the roubles from my lock-up so she had enough to bribe any border guards that showed too great an interest, held her hand as Usupov pulled up by the little park opposite the station entrance.

I kissed her on the cheek, felt her breast against my arm.

‘I booked you a four-berth compartment,’ I said, ‘so you’ll have all the privacy you want.’

I knew people would try to push their way into her compartment, pitied anyone foolish enough to try it. I wanted to catch Saltanat’s eye, but she looked away, unwilling to show her feelings.

‘Here’s to meeting in Moscow. I’ll text you when I’m on my way. Pay my respects to Vladimir.’

Saltanat got out of the car without saying anything, walked across the road to the ornate entrance. She didn’t look back. Right then, I wondered if I was making a catastrophic mistake, whether I should have been on the train with her, travelling towards a new future.

I watched her disappear into the entrance, tapped Usupov on the shoulder. He turned around to stare at me, puzzlement and pity plain in his face.

‘You’re letting her leave? Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ I said. ‘Safer for her.’

Usupov shook his head, disbelieving. ‘You need your head examining.’

‘You’ll have to wait until I’m dead before you get the chance,’ I said as he drove back towards the city centre. But being on Usupov’s slab in the near future seemed a distinct possibility.

He dropped me at the top end of Ibraimova, near the Blonder pub. I could walk back to my apartment from there, check if anyone was watching the building, maybe even manage a couple of hours’ sleep before contacting Aliyev. I had a very vague plan sketched out in my head, but plans have a habit of falling apart when bullets start slicing the air.

I crossed the footbridge near where I’d found the butchered body of Tynaliev’s daughter, his beloved Yekaterina. That felt like decades ago. No sign anything had ever happened there, the trees as indifferent to human suffering and death as always. Only a few faded scraps of police crime tape fluttered from the branches. As a rule, the murdered dead aren’t commemorated with a plaque; perhaps to do so would be to show the world how vile we are to each other. But I remember them, if that’s worth anything.

I passed a battered trash can, the sort that swivel over and turn upside down so they can be easily emptied. Someone had emptied it all right; the ground was patterned with crushed beer cans and an empty vodka bottle like a drunk’s carpet on a Sunday morning. Someone’s idea of an al fresco party, or a wake. I reached into my jacket and dropped the train ticket with my name on it into the trash can. I knew I wasn’t going to be travelling to Moscow.

And I was pretty sure I’d never see Saltanat again.