A Spring Betrayal Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes.
    “That’s not the sort of question you ask a man like the minister,” he said. “But maybe it’s not about state security.”
    I waited for him to add to that. He shook his head, stood up, began to walk toward the elevator doors, turned and looked back at me.
    “Maybe you should ask if it’s about you.”

Chapter 6
    I’d last seen Mikhail Tynaliev when his bodyguards had dragged my old boss out of his office to a painful, solitary death. I didn’t expect thanks—he wasn’t that sort of man—but I had hoped he would leave me alone. As I watched Usupov disappear into the elevator, I guessed it was the minister who had ordered me into this internal exile.
    I wasn’t going to tell the world about the chief’s death, but keeping hold of power means making sure the bag is securely tied when you drown those kittens you don’t want. If Tynaliev wanted to make sure my tongue stayed behind my teeth, he could have arranged it. A car accident, a shooting in the line of duty. But that wasn’t the minister’s style. Better to keep me alive but off balance, in case I came in useful later. Everyone said he was devious. No one ever said he wasn’t smart.
    I knew that since Tynaliev was involved, there was something political floating in the wind. Maybe a power struggle at the White House; I’d heard rumors of a potential palace coup. That was something Kyrgyzstan didn’t need; yet another president in less than twenty-five years, the country weakened and looking to Russia for help. But I couldn’t see any connection between dead children and whoever was going to be next in line to siphon off our taxes.
    At one time, I would have poured myself a couple of shots of the good stuff, oil to lubricate my thinking, push me in directions I wouldn’t consider when sober. But the last time I had a drink, it was to summon the courage to end my wife’s cancer with a cushion over her face. And ever since then, I knew vodka would only taste of bile and rot, a dead woman’s tongue thrust into my mouth.
    I lay back on the hotel bed, its lumpy mattress digging springs into my shoulders, smoked, wondered if I’d finally reached the edge of my abilities, if all the deaths I’d paid witness to had soured and staled me beyond all redemption. The hesitant afternoon light dwindled to black, headlights crisscrossing the bedroom ceiling like prison searchlights.
    The call came an hour before dawn, my cell phone summoning me from a dry-mouthed dream I couldn’t recall but which had left me apprehensive, as if something dreadful had happened while I dozed.
    “Inspector, there’s a car downstairs waiting for you. To take you to Orlinoye.”
    The voice was distant, mechanical, heartless.
    Orlinoye. The village where my wife Chinara grew up, and where she now lay in the small graveyard on a bluff overlooking the valley.
    “What’s this about?”
    “There’s been a development. New information regarding the death of your wife. The courts have ordered an exhumation, and you are ordered to attend it.”
    I shook my head, still fuddled with sleep, sure I’d misheard.
    “Some mistake.”
    “No mistake. It’s a direct order. Go now.”
    An elderly Moskvitch with a taciturn uniformed ment at the wheel took me past the potato field where the children’s bodies had been found. White crime scene tape still fluttered from the three apple trees, a warning to the curious, flags indicating a surrender of sorts.
    We didn’t slow down, but turned north, onto the road to Orlinoye, passing through a couple of small hamlets, clusters of worn farm buildings surrounded by bare fields, their backs toward the mountains that mark the border with Kazakhstan. The car’s worn suspension wasno help against the potholed road: I swayed left and right to avoid the worst of the ruts, feeling the holster of my gun rub against my hip with each turn.
    We drove for almost an hour until we reached Orlinoye’s one road that splits the village in two. With each