Fly Hunter: The Story of an Inquisitor - страница 16

All the time Sardar Kareem was writing in his room, in the adjacent room Aman-Jalil was with his gangsters, bored, gnawing on chocolate tiles with nuts, a fine product from the shores of Columbus, washing down the delicacy with raw water from the tap, emitting an unpleasant smell of chlorine… One of the gangsters sat on the bedside table, pressing an empty glass against the thin partition, serving as a wall and separating the two rooms, listening to what Sardar Kareem was doing, another sat on a chair by the door, from time to time stretching, and the third was sitting in the wide, unloved bed, and with the usual thoughts, he inspected the girls from the front.

In the early hours, one of the henchmen picked the lock on Sardar Ali's door, and all three silently entered the room. Sardar Kareem was fast asleep, worn out by the road and his worries. Aman-Jalil poured chloroform from a flask onto a handkerchief and, nodding to the henchmen, pressed it to Sardar Ali's face. Meanwhile, the henchmen held Sardar Ali's arms and legs. After a few struggles, Sardar Kareem went still. Aman-Jalil surveyed the room and, seeing papers on the table, approached and started reading.

– He wrote quite a lot! – the henchman who had quietly come up to the table remarked.

Aman-Jalil quickly hid the papers in his briefcase, took out some photos—ones where Gulshan's face wasn't visible, only her naked body, yet anyone would recognize Sardar Ali in the naked man—and tossed them onto the table. He then retrieved a blank sheet of white paper from his briefcase and instructed the henchman:

– Write in Farsi: "Flip a coin, or else these photos will end up with the Great Iosif Besarionis. One day to decide."

The henchman reached for the pen Sardar Kareem had been using, but Aman-Jalil slapped his forehead.

– Forgot about your own fingerprints, fool? – he reminded the henchman. – They're on file in many databases.

He handed him a pencil… Once the note was written, Aman-Jalil quietly opened the window, gave a signal, and two henchmen lifted Sardar Ali from the bed and threw him into the courtyard. The dull thud of impact was barely audible. Leaving the window open, Aman-Jalil quickly left the room, ensuring it was empty and left no traces. The henchmen followed him…

At the reception, Aman-Jalil lingered, took a bottle of French cognac from his briefcase, and demonstratively poured himself a drink using a small glass that screwed onto the bottle. The concierge and henchmen watched enviously.

– Want some too? – Aman-Jalil asked affectionately.

– Of course, yeah! – the henchmen mumbled, swallowing saliva, while the concierge promptly fetched three glasses from under the counter.

Aman-Jalil poured them full.

– Drink up, you've earned it!

They eagerly gulped down the cognac and… collapsed dead on the floor in unison. Aman-Jalil carefully poured the cognac from his glass back into the bottle, tightly closed it, stashed it in his briefcase, and left the hotel. His car was already waiting, and Ahmed's private plane awaited at the airfield… The newspapers, briefly reporting a mysterious poisoning in the hotel lobby, said nothing of Sardar Ali's death. Nadir had tried to protect his friend's name from slander. The naive man, believing in people's better qualities, had been asked to display their worst.