The Outcast (38 page)

“Are you okay?” Doripalam asked.

Batzorig looked up, then back down at his hand. “I think so,” he said, finally. “It's just a scratch. A piece of glass.” His expression suggested that the minor injury had brought home how lucky they had been.

Doripalam looked across at Nergui. “How's Odbayar?” He presumed that they would not have risked their lives if the young man was already dead.

“I think he's okay. He's been sedated, but he seems to be breathing all right.”

“What happened up there?” Doripalam gestured up towards where the Land Cruiser had been. Above them, under the canopy of the trees, a cloud of smoke had gathered, dimming further the thin sunlight that filtered through the leaves.

“Sam was haemorrhaging blood pretty fast from that wound. Assuming that he was telling the truth about this,” Nergui held the remote control device loosely between his fingers, “I was concerned about what might happen if he lost consciousness.”

“And did he?”

“I got as close as I could. He was in no state to shoot me. When I saw his eyes starting to close I threw myself forward and hoped that I'd be in time to grab this before he lost his grip on it.”

“Which you did.”

Nergui looked down at the slim device. “There was a moment when I thought I'd lost it. Or there was some delay on the device detonating. I don't know.”

“But you had time to get Odbayar out?”

“Only just.” Nergui shuddered, as if the shock was only just hitting him. He peered over the top of the rocks. “I think we can assume that, one way or another, we don't need to worry about Sam any more.”

There was little left of the Land Cruiser. Part of the chassis, with an axle and one of the wheels visible, was standing in the clearing, and there were twists of jagged metal scattered around it, thick smoke guttering into the air. It was impossible to see what remained of Sam's supine body.

“We should go and see,” Doripalam said. “He might still be alive.”

Nergui shook his head. “I don't know how much fuel was on board, but we might have another explosion on our hands. There's nothing we can do for Sam. He was beyond help a long time ago.”

“This is madness,” Doripalam said. “What was he trying to achieve?”

“What he said,” Nergui said. “To be a catalyst. And he may still succeed.”

Doripalam stared at him. His relief at their escape had been so overwhelming that he had forgotten what Sam had been saying. “You really think he's planted other bombs?”

“He's done enough already to suggest that we shouldn't underestimate him.” Nergui glanced back up the hill, his eyes following the rising plumes of smoke. “The worst of it is that he wasn't even the professional he thought he was. He was a bungling, incompetent madman. He was probably promoted above his level of ability even when he first came here. But that made him even more dangerous.”

“Because you don't know what he was capable of?”

“With professionals, you know there'll be some limits. With Sam—well, who knows?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “We need to get the stadium and the museum cleared and searched.”

Doripalam's mind was racing back over what Sam had said. “He said that Solongo was there,” he said. “Why would he want to
involve Solongo in this? To get revenge over me? He doesn't even know who I am.”

“No,” Nergui said. His head was down, as he thumbed through the call on his cell phone. “But he does know who Solongo is.”

Tunjin was still standing over the unconscious man, the gun held to his head, trying to work out some further option, anything he might be able to do to retrieve the situation. The man on the sofa had the barrel of his own pistol pressed firmly against Solongo's neck. As though by instinct, the minister had edged further away from both of them.

“Okay,” Tunjin said, finally. He carefully placed the gun on the desk, away from the reach of any of the dark-suited men. He wasn't going to make it too easy for them.

“Very smart,” the man on the sofa nodded. “Okay, now get back from my friend there. Go back to your seat. And we'll have a think about what we do next.” He smiled. “Or what some of us do next. I think we can probably forget about him.” He gestured towards the man still slumped on the polished wooden floor. “I think the best thing we can do is cut our losses and go.” He paused. “Taking this lady with us for insurance purposes.”

“I don't think so,” the minister said, unexpectedly. “Not just yet, anyway.”

The man twisted, still holding the gun against Solongo's skin. “You're going to stop us?”

“Possibly with a little help from my associate over there.” He looked across at Tunjin. “Pick up that gun again, will you?”

Tunjin looked bewilderedly from the minister back to the man with the gun. “I'm not sure that's a good idea.”

“I think it's an excellent idea,” the minister said.

The man on the sofa shook his head. “It's quite simple. If he picks up that gun, I shoot her.”

The minister shrugged. “So shoot her.”

Tunjin stared, horrified, at the grey-haired old man. Was this
just more posturing? Calling the gunman's bluff on the assumption he wouldn't have the nerve to go through with it?

“If you shoot her,” the minister went on, “then you've shot your bargaining counter. You can only shoot her once.”

Tunijn didn't know whether Solongo was really taking all this in. She still seemed to be in a daze, her eyes fixed on some point in the middle-distance. There was no sign that she realised that her life was being debated.

The gunman himself looked baffled. He clearly hadn't expected events to move in this direction. He shook his head. “So then you become my hostage,” he said.

The minister nodded. “And you think I care whether you shoot me or not? And I'm sure he doesn't.” He gestured towards Tunjin. “Pick up the gun,” he said again to Tunjin.

There was a faint look of panic now in the gunman's eyes. Somehow his authority was slipping away. He looked across at Tunjin and pressed the gun hard into Solongo's neck. For the first time, she showed some reaction, grimacing slightly and trying to pull away. “If you pick it up, she dies.”

Tunjin made no move. Perhaps the minister's judgement was sound, but Tunjin didn't feel inclined to take the risk. Not on Solongo's behalf, at least.

“If he doesn't pick it up, I will,” the minister said, making a motion to rise from the sofa.

“I'm telling you—”

The minister turned, his eyes unblinking. “And I've told you. Go ahead and shoot, if you must.” He climbed slowly to his feet.

By now, there was no doubt about the gunman's panic. He looked wildly from the minister to Solongo, uncertain what to do next. At last, he jumped to his feet, pulling Solongo along with him, the gun now pressed to her temple. “I'm telling you,” he said, “if you make one more move, I'm pulling the trigger.”

“So do it,” the minister said, moving calmly across to the table.

The gunman stared at him, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. He looked down once at Solongo, hesitated for a second,
and then finally, frantically, he squeezed his forefinger around the trigger and pulled.

“What are you talking about?”

Sarangeral pushed past the two men. “You saw what was on screen,” she said. “He was talking about some kind of explosive device.”

“But that was—well, wherever that was being transmitted from. And we don't know if any of that was real.”

She shook her head. “That was for real. Whether the bomb itself was real—well, who knows? But I wouldn't want to take the risk, would you?”

“So what are you saying?” the man said. “That he's planted a bomb here as well?”

“Well, if he told you that there was going to be something else here …”

“This whole thing is crazy. I just want out of it.”

“Then go,” Sarangeral said, dismissively. It was clear that she was going to get no support from them. It was equally clear, as she gazed down at Gundalai's battered, forlorn body, that help wouldn't be forthcoming from that direction either. The two men stood awkwardly for a moment, uncertain what to do. Finally, they looked at each other, and one of them stepped forward to pick up a tool-box from the desk. “Look,” he said, “if there was anything we could do—”

“Just go,” she said. The man shrugged and pushed open the office door, his colleague following closely behind. In the doorway, the second man stopped, looking back. “Good luck,” he said. Then the door swung closed and they were gone.

She stood silently, despair sweeping over her. If there really was some kind of explosive device in the stadium, how long did she have? It might be that any bomb would be timed to detonate at the height of the festival, when the stands would be thronged with spectators.

But the two men had been told to make themselves scarce. If anything was going to happen, it would happen soon.

She pulled out her cell phone. Nergui, she thought. Everything had been happening too quickly, and, since she'd left the messages earlier, it hadn't occurred to her to try to contact him again. She had no idea why he'd been present on the large screen, but it might mean that he'd discovered something.

She keyed in his number and waited anxiously, but the call cut straight to his voicemail. “Nergui,” she said. “It's Sarangeral. I'm at the Naadam Stadium and I need to talk urgently. Call me back as soon as you can.”

She thumbed off the phone and looked down at Gundalai. “How are you feeling?”

“Battered,” he said. “But okay.”

“Good. We have to get this place evacuated. We need to find out who's in charge.”

She was turning towards the door as the blast struck. The sound was extraordinary, a roar louder than any thunderclap, ripping through her body. The frail unit shook around them, and Sarangeral flung herself to the ground, rolling under one of the desks, wrapping her arms around her knees as she tried to compress her body into the smallest possible space. Across the room, she could see Gundalai scrambling into a corner, his face ashen with fear.

The unit's windows crashed inwards, and something unseen hit the floor behind her. She could hear shouting and screaming, a shrill repeated cry of panic. And then everything stopped and, in the aftermath of the explosion, there was a sudden, unnerving silence.

“What's going on here, Nergui?” Doripalam said. “How could Solongo be involved in something like this?”

They were airborne again, heading back towards the capital. The sun was low, the hills and mountains throwing elongated shadows across the steppe. Batzorig had been left behind, coordinating the arrival of the local force who would be dealing with the two bodies and the aftermath of the explosion. Doripalam had asked for the whole area to be cordoned off and treated as a crime scene and had ordered post-mortem examinations of the bodies, but with no real expectation that this would reveal anything worth knowing.

His mind was in turmoil with thoughts of Solongo at the museum. Nergui had already asked Doripalam to send a team there, and had arranged for two of his own men, including Lambaa, to join them. “We need to be careful,” he said. “We don't know what might be happening.” The comment was scarcely comforting.

A further team had been deployed to the Naadam Stadium, with arrangements for the arena to be evacuated as discreetly as possible. Bomb disposal expertise was being sought from the military to attend at both locations.

It was all they could do, but the lengthy journey back to the capital remained a deep frustration. For all Sam's incompetence, his plan had been cleverly orchestrated. Whatever they had done, they would have been in the wrong place.

“Tell me, Nergui,” he said again. “Where does Solongo fit into this?”

Nergui turned from the window. “When we were talking before, about Wu Sam, I said that his contact here was the head of the security services.”

“Our friend Bakei. The minister.”

“Exactly. But that wasn't the whole truth. He was only an agent.”

“An agent for whom?”

Far below, Doripalam could make out the white scattered dots of a nomadic camp, the shifting patterns of their livestock. “For a senior Party member,” Nergui said. “Someone in a position of great influence and authority. Someone who was more powerful than the government he supposedly served.”

It took Doripalam a moment to comprehend what Nergui was saying. “Solongo's father,” he said. 'Battulga.'

“I fear so.”

Doripalam shook his head, struggling to take this in. “You're saying he was a traitor?”

“That's a strong word,” Nergui said. “He was like Bakei. A survivor. Ready to bend with the wind, whichever way it might choose to blow.”

“But he was selling secrets to the Chinese?”

“Nothing so crude. I think he was in negotiation with them. He had found in Bakei a kindred spirit, but someone who had a more active vision of what he wanted to achieve. I don't think Battulga wanted to initiate anything. He just wanted to ensure he wasn't caught out by whatever future might emerge. He pulled the strings and provided the resources from above, but was quite happy to let someone else make the running. Bakei was a lot more self-interested.”

“I'm not sure I understand,” Doripalam said. Sometimes he suspected that, faced with the world that Nergui seemed to inhabit, he would never understand.

“Battulga was quite happy for someone to do his dirty work for him. He was even happier to find someone with the will and energy to initiate that dirty work for themselves. He didn't need to tell Bakei what to do. Bakei was already out there, working towards
his own warped vision of Mongolian-Chinese—well, what shall we call it? Cooperation? Coexistence? All Battulga had to do was watch from on high, give the strings a small tweak where necessary, provide some resources from time to time. But always staying detached, making sure that, if the wind blew in a different direction, it was Bakei who would be left exposed.”