The Shadow Walker (37 page)

He was wearing a black skiing mask which entirely covered his face except for two small eyeholes. And, whereas the rest of this figure was unexceptional, the eyes were striking. They stared fixedly at Drew, reddened, burning, unblinking. It was impossible to read the emotion that lay behind them, there was just an emptiness, a blankness, that seemed almost less than human.

Up to now, Drew's terrors had been substantial but unfocussed,
nothing more than a fear of what might be impending. Now, though, the threat was real and immediate.

Drew lay still on the bench, his legs and right arm free, but his neck still pinioned to the bench. He shifted his head further, feeling the bindings cutting painfully into his neck, and saw that his left arm was fastened with the handcuffs to a ring on the end of a metal pole. Drew pulled hard on the handcuffs, but it was clear that the pole was set into some heavy, immovable base. It was this, perhaps, which Drew had heard his captor dragging along the floor.

The figure stood motionless, watching Drew. The ax hung loose in his left hand. And, in his right hand, held equally loosely, was what appeared to be a pocketknife, gleaming brightly in the room's stark illumination.

Drew stared back in terror, as the figure began to move slowly forward, raising the knife before his face. His eyes still seemed expressionless, empty of thought or feeling.

As the knife approached his face, Drew suddenly felt as if life and feeling were flooding back into his inert body. Too late, he kicked out with his legs, trying to thrust himself free, feeling the grip of the bond around his neck, preventing him from throwing himself off the bench. The knife rose above him, and Drew screamed, the echoes bouncing ineffectually around the walls and empty spaces.

Nergui had been here before.

How long was it? Three years, maybe four. Something like that. But the sights and sounds and smells—especially the smells—of this place had stayed with him ever since.

It was a place he would dearly have liked to forget. He remembered what he had seen here, at a time when he thought that his country was finally succumbing to irrevocable chaos. This place had seemed almost like a symbol of those miserable days, an image of the depths to which the nation had sunk and from which it had seemed unlikely ever to arise.

But things had changed, and Nergui supposed that this augured well for the future, even if his cynicism did not allow him to entertain excessive optimism. This place was as eerie and unnerving as ever, but its connotations were changing. Already the past was being put behind it.

Visually, the place was extraordinary, a tortuous tapestry of black twisted pipes and billowing steam. It was the entrance to a sewer pipe, a massive construct built in the Soviet days. The pipe network had been built to transport not only sewage but also steam heat from the then thriving factory units around to domestic buildings in the neighborhood. It had not been a particularly efficient arrangement, in that substantial amounts of steam billowed out into the frozen air. But it did ensure, with characteristic Soviet ingenuity, that heat that would otherwise have been wasted—and which, in the West, would perhaps have been discarded without a thought—was transferred to a practical use.

But, with the collapse of the economy, the steam tunnels had been transformed into something more than merely practical. For some, in the most unpleasant and tragic circumstances, they had become lifesaving. This area, only a few years before, had been overwhelmed by those with no other homes to go to—the majority of them children or teenagers.

Whatever their various backgrounds, the hordes of homeless young people had congregated here, trying to find some way of enduring the bitter cold of the icy Mongolian winter. The steam pipes had provided one source of warmth, and the homeless had come in their hundreds to shelter inside, braving the stench of the sewers in exchange for survival.

Initially, the authorities had largely turned a blind eye. If these people were able to fend for themselves, however harsh the conditions, then so much the better. But crime levels had risen, and the groups of semiferal children became seen as a scourge by those in more fortunate positions. Pressure was placed on the police to deal with the problem, and Nergui recalled numerous raids on the area. Children were picked up in their dozens, and
shipped off to shelters that were often only marginal improvements on the makeshift hovels they had left behind. Inevitably, many of those picked up simply ran away again within days, and the whole miserable cycle continued.

Gradually, though, things had changed. Crucially, the economy had slowly improved, and some foreign aid had been obtained to deal with some of the specific problems of homelessness. There was a growing number of decent children's hostels, many of them run by international charities. Work was now more plentiful, and many of those who had been homeless were able to fend for themselves.

Nevertheless, this still tended to be a place where the homeless would cluster, particularly as the winter approached. Many of the formerly thriving factories now lay abandoned, and it was possible to find shelter close enough to the steam pipes to stave off the rigors of the winter nights.

Now, though, the area looked deserted. Alleys ran off between the factories, deep in shadow. In the open areas, the ground was thick with snow, melting only where the steam continued to billow, filling the frozen air with a dense white fog. Nergui stepped slowly forward, straining his eyes. He could see only a few feet in front of him.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly three, as Badzar had stipulated. Behind him, across the city, the sun was already setting, and the shadows were lengthening between the buildings.

This was insane, he thought. He had sought no permission for coming here, nor even told anyone, other than Doripalam, where he was going. This solitary action went against every rule of policing. On the other hand, he did not see much alternative. The Minister, if he had been consulted, would probably have seen things the same way, though might have felt unable to say so overtly.

The proper thing to have done would have been to initiate a full-scale police operation. They should have surrounded the area, given Nergui full backup, ensured that, whatever else might
happen, at least there would have been no chance of Badzar escaping from this alive.

Instead he just had Doripalam, his gun, and his cell phone with Doripalam's number already dialed. They had agreed that if Nergui should call the number without subsequently speaking, Doripalam should summon backup immediately. But Nergui had no illusions that backup would arrive in time to prevent Badzar's escape.

However, if the worst did happen and Drew was killed, the Minister could present this as a maverick escapade, not officially sanctioned. At worst, they would be back where they started, and Nergui would be left to take the responsibility, probably posthumously. At best, though, this might just conceivably produce the positive outcome that would never be achieved through more orthodox means.

The afternoon was already growing dark. Nergui pulled out his flashlight and shone it down the narrow alleyways, though the illumination was almost useless within the dense clouds of steam. He could make out only the cracked and stained concrete of the old factory buildings. Above, there were lines of smashed and boarded up windows. Below, there was just scattered rubbish, the debris of abandoned industry, white shapes under the snow.

Badzar had not indicated precisely where he would be, or how he would make his presence known. He had simply told Nergui to come to this spot at three, and then to wait.

Nergui flashed the light up and around him, occasionally glimpsing, as the steam momentarily cleared, the dark towering factories. Once, far above, he caught sight of the densely star-covered sky. There were no working streetlights down here, though behind him he could see a faint glow in the distance behind the mass of buildings. Through the mist, the sky was darkening from red to a dark purple as the sun disappeared. Soon, the darkness here would be thick and heavy, softened only by the continually billowing steam.

The atmosphere was getting to him, and the shifting clouds of
steam created phantoms as he moved forward. He thought of the headless corpses and, despite the cold, the sweat trickled down his back. He told himself that if Badzar wanted him dead he would have killed him the night before. But the thought did nothing to calm his nerves.

Nergui carefully moved the flashlight around him, watching the thickening shadows, the constantly shifting clouds, trying to keep his back close to the wall. The only sound was the insistent hiss of the escaping steam, the rustle of his own footsteps in the frozen snow.

And then, without quite knowing how, he was aware of another presence. He peered forward into the gloom and the steam, trying to make out any movement. Just when he was almost convinced that he had been mistaken, he saw something, across the open space, at the entrance to one of the many alleyways. At first, it was nothing more than a movement, undefined, a sense of shifting space. And then it resolved itself into a shape, a silhouette, half obscured by the darkness and the drifting steam.

“Badzar?” Nergui called. He pointed his flashlight toward the shape, but the beam made little headway in the foggy night.

There was no immediate response. Nergui was sure now that the figure was that of a man, dressed in a long dark garment, but could still make out little more. His hand clutched at his pistol in his pocket and he began to move slowly forward.

He walked forward some meters, holding the flashlight steady, watching the black figure emerge slowly from the darkness. “Badzar?” he said again.

The figure remained motionless, apparently watching him without concern. It was still little more than a silhouette, the face featureless.

He took another step forward, and at last the figure moved, raising its hand. “Stop there.” It was the same deep sibilant voice he had heard on the phone.

“Badzar. It's not too late to put an end to this.” As he spoke the
words, Nergui knew that he was lying, something had been set in motion here that lay far beyond his powers to resolve.

“Stop,” the figure repeated.

Nergui obeyed, holding the flashlight out toward the figure. As far as he could make out it was dressed in a long black coat, some sort of hood pulled over its eyes.

“What is it you want?” Nergui said. “Why have you brought me here?”

“The British policeman is safe,” the figure said, as though answering the question. “He will remain so as long as you have done what I say.”

“Where is he?”

“He is here. Close at hand. Are you alone?”

Nergui gestured with the flashlight. “Completely. As you can see.”

“How do I know that?”

“How do I know you have McLeish?”

“You don't.”

“Likewise, then. You have to trust me.”

The figure nodded, as though considering this. He continued to stare toward Nergui, his face invisible. “I trust you,” he said. “For the moment.” And then he turned abruptly, and disappeared back into the darkness of the alley.

Nergui stared after him for a moment, then walked rapidly across the open yard to where the figure had been standing. There was no one there.

Nergui shone the flashlight down the alley. A trail of footprints disappeared across the icy snow. Nergui traced their path to where they ended at an open doorway leading into one of the factory buildings. For a moment, Nergui felt bizarrely reassured by the sight of the footprints—as, he realized, he had the previous night. It was as if he had to keep reminding himself that Badzar was, after all, only human.

He made his way cautiously down the alley, occasionally glancing behind him, in case this was some kind of trap. The
silence had returned, and he could hear nothing other than his own footsteps.

There was no light showing beyond the doorway. The door hung open, and Nergui saw a broken padlock on the ground nearby. He stopped by the opening, conscious that he did not wish to make himself too visible a target. “Badzar. Stop playing games. Tell me what you want.” He could hear his voice echoing in the empty spaces beyond the doorway, an unexpected contrast to the muffled snowbound world outside.

There was no response. Nergui switched off the flashlight, aware that it would only betray his position. He pulled out his pistol, thumbed off the safety catch and stepped forward into the darkness.

Once through the doorway, he stepped rapidly away from the door, moving himself along the wall so that his position would not be obvious. He stopped, his back pressed against the wall, and held his breath, listening for any clue as to what might lie inside this vaulted room.

There was nothing. The silence and the darkness seemed complete, other than the very faint grayness coming from the open doorway. He had no idea what was in the room, whether it was simply an empty abandoned space or filled with equipment of some kind. He did not know if Badzar was really in here, and if so whether he was here alone.

He stayed motionless by the wall, wondering what his next move should be. If there was no other response, he would have little option but to switch on the flashlight again. He felt absurdly exposed in here, recognizing that Badzar was playing with him, leading him into a position where he had no choice but to reveal his position, to present himself as a target to an unseen enemy.

He pressed himself back against the wall, his pistol clutched tightly in his hand, his finger resting on the trigger, preparing for what might happen when he switched on the flashlight.

And then the decision was taken out of his hands, so suddenly that he almost fired involuntarily. The great vaulted space was
suddenly flooded with light, rows of fluorescent tubes flickering into life along the roof beams.

Nergui tried to keep his eyes open, but was dazzled by the unexpected brilliance and for endless seconds could see nothing. He held the gun tight, wanting to be ready for whatever might be waiting, but aware of the risks of shooting into the unseen.