The Searcher (12 page)

She ringed the two Russian words, put down her pen, and started her second whiskey.

“‘For administrators'?”

“For government. For politicians.”

Hammer had suspected before but now was almost certain. The fax was from Mr. V, former KGB, former FSB, an old spy who was Webster's first resource for all matters Russian. Mr. V knew everyone in Moscow: from the men in the archive rooms who would quietly pull a file for a hundred dollars, to his old colleagues, the colonels and generals who had quietly taken back so much of the country.

“Are there any names? Of people?”

“No. Only this.”

“Nothing else?”

Natela raised her eyebrows, as if to say that she didn't intend to repeat herself, and pushed the paper back to him.

“So, you are detective or spy?”

“I'm an investigator. I don't really trust spies.”

She touched the paper.

“This is about Karlo?”

“Maybe. Ben sent a request to Russia. To find out about a person. This was what came back. I have no idea where it fits.”

She nodded, considering.

“He is good friend, your friend?”

“He was.”

“Not now?”

“We don't speak.”

“Then why do you look for him?”

“It's complicated. I need him.”

Natela nodded slowly, and then finished her drink all at once.

“The people who go away, they never go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend. Karlo. My apartment, they search it, I am sure. Sometimes they are waiting outside and they follow me to work, to supermarket. I want to scream at them that he is dead, it is over, I know nothing, but I cannot.”

He shouldn't have called her. He hadn't thought.

“Did they follow you here?”

“I don't know; no, I did not see.” She reached down for her bag. “Do you have family?”

“No. Passed me by.”

“That is good. You can be a detective by yourself. Run around, investigate. No one will suffer. I need cigarette.” She felt around in the bag. “I'm sorry. I should not have said.”

“It's fine.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No. That's another thing I left behind.”

Natela surveyed the table, shook her head, and stood up.

“I have to go. I'm sorry.”

He stood with her. “Stay. Let's order some food.”

“I want to forget all this things.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and he thought, perhaps fondly, that there was a trace of regret in her eyes.

“Would you take this?” said Hammer, picking up the envelope and holding it out for her. Natela eyed it, for the first time not sure.

“You did your part,” he said.

She closed her eyes, as if making some accommodation with her conscience, and took it.

“Thank you.”

“And take this. Call me if you need to.”

He handed her a business card, and she took it with a nod.

“Good luck with your friend,” she said, and went.

Hammer watched her leave, her steps quick, her bearing correct. At the door she stopped, took a moment to find something in her bag, and came back to the table.

“For my drinks,” she said, dropping a twenty-lari note on the table and turning again.

It was too much, but Hammer knew better than to say anything, and with his own regret gathered his papers, put the twenty in his pocket, and picked up the menu.

H
ammer slept in pajamas, not for formality's sake but because he found that they kept his body evenly warm and encouraged an even sleep. As with most things, he had thought closely about it, to a point just short of fussiness. Now, sitting up in bed with his notebook open before him, the pajamas made him feel old. An old man gone to bed early while the city outside went inexorably about the business of living. The door onto the balcony was open and through it he could hear shouting and the yowling of sirens and dogs and the occasional crack of a distant gun.

These pajamas were Turkish, cotton, and had a scratchy label at the back of the neck. They could do with a few washes. He put his tired thoughts away and continued to fail to write anything coherent; after two whiskeys and some red wine and that long quick day, he could do little but catch fragments of his thoughts as they bounced about. Images of Ben, tied up or holed up or dead. Scattered bits of information with little to connect them. And one recurring memory, of Natela drinking whiskey as she worked, and of the pang of responsibility he had felt when he had realized that they would be listening to her phone.

Putting the book aside, he switched off his light and tried to concentrate on sleep. No matter what everything meant, he had to be up and at the car rental office by eight.

When there was a knock at the door five minutes later he was awake enough to hear it but not to register it as real. But it came again, a firm double knock, and switching on the light he swung himself slowly out of bed and went to answer it.

On the landing, backlit by the bright light on the stair, was Colonel Vekua, rigid and correct.

“Mr. Hammer. I am sorry to wake you.”

“You didn't.”

“Of course.”

“Not quite.”

Hammer blinked, growing used to the light.

“Can I come in?”

She was smiling her winning smile. No, he wanted to say. It's late, by my standards, and I've had better days, and the last thing I can stomach is sitting in my pajamas being charmed or warned or whatever you have in mind by yet another policeman or spy or whatever the hell you are. I would like to be left alone to do what really ought to be a simple enough if difficult job.

“Of course. Please.”

He grabbed a robe from the bathroom.

“I get you anything?”

“What do you have?”

“Scotch. And that bizarre stuff you call water.”

“Borjomi?”

“I don't know what it is. It tastes of plumbing.”

“It is good for you. Your digestion.”

“Like I said, plumbing.”

Vekua smiled and pointed to the tiny bottle of Scotch he was holding. He poured it into the one clean glass, took another miniature for himself, and sat on the bed.

“Shouldn't you be out on the streets?”

She was in black again, a different suit but precisely cut and immaculate, even now, at the end of a hot day. She sat upright on the room's one chair with her hands clasped on her lap, still the same, strange combination of strict and engaged.

“I told you, I am not a policeman.”

“But you must be busy.”

“And you are important. Some people think.”

“Really? You have big stuff going on here tonight.”

She drank a little whiskey, considering.

“To you it looks big. To me it looks the same. Occasionally there is a little war that no one cares about. A bomb goes off. There are riots. The president changes. This will be the same, always. Georgia is a constant.”

“That's cheery.”

Vekua smiled. “You are American. You can believe in progress, because sometimes in your country there is progress. We have been the same for thousands of years. We are different animals.”

Hammer drank, the whiskey jarring with the taste of toothpaste. This woman unsettled him.

“Forgive me for being direct, Elene, but what brings you here? I have an early start tomorrow.”

Vekua smiled and put her drink down.

“I have been asked to tell you that you are embarrassing our police force.”

“How am I doing that?”

“Do you always rent two hotel rooms in the same city?”

Hammer smiled back.

“OK. I get a little edgy when people are tailing me. Especially when they're not so good and I can see them all the time. No offense to your colleagues but they . . .”

“They are not my colleagues.”

“Whoever they are, they're not the best.”

“Was it necessary to lose them twice?”

“I lost them twice?”

“Mr. Hammer.”

“I had no idea. I haven't seen a tail since the Marriott.”

Vekua raised an eyebrow.

“They are not the best. But they do not have resources. It is difficult work, as you know.”

Hammer acknowledged the point.

“If you continue, you will have to leave. I will not be able to argue for you again.”

“If it makes things any easier, tomorrow I'm going to Batumi, follow a lead. Ben's wife just got a postcard from him. Tell them where I'm going, by all means.”

“You have found him?”

Hammer shook his head. “We'll see.”

“They may not follow you to Batumi. I will tell them.”

“Thank you. Appreciated.”

Finishing her whiskey, Vekua stood and held out her hand.

“This morning I looked in our files, about your friend.”

“You did?”

This was curious. Hammer longed to ask her what she wanted in return.

“He was monitored, when he came to Tbilisi.”

“I wondered.”

“This is normal, at a time like this.”

“You mean I'm not that special?”

“He was watched for two days. While he was in Tbilisi. Then the surveillance stopped.”

“Why?”

“Because it was clear that he was no threat to our security.”

Hammer waited for her to explain.

“He went to Karlo Toreli's funeral. Afterward he went to a bar, by himself. Then he went to a restaurant, with a woman. After that to another bar, and then back here, to this hotel. With the woman. On Tuesday we followed them to Gori and then we turned back.”

“I guess you don't do marital work either, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.”

Vekua opened the door and stepped out into the hall.

“Thank you for the drink. I am sorry to give this information.”

“Hey, no problem. I'm not his keeper. Who was the girl?”

“We do not know. Russian, I think. Blonde. Not Georgian.” She attempted a sympathetic look. “You will still go to Batumi?”

“I still need to find him.”

 • • • 

H
ammer slept, and dreamed deep, irretrievable dreams full of unnamed and fearful things churning about.

At their deepest point something like a great crash broke in, and when he opened his eyes the room was bright and voices not unlike those he had dreamed were shouting something he couldn't understand. Groggy, instantly registering anxiety, he twisted and raised himself on his elbows, and found two men standing over his bed. They looked like brothers—squat, heavy, heads shaved above recessed eyes, arms bulging—and at least one of them smelled strongly of cheap, soapy aftershave. One wore a shiny sky blue tracksuit, open a little at the neck to show knots of black hair and three or four gold chains, the other a leather jacket. The first one pulled the duvet off Hammer and flung it into a corner of the room.

“Polis,” he shouted. “Passport.”

Hammer felt small and exposed, like a bullied child. And old. He was fit enough, and strong enough, but not against people like this. These were expert frighteners. Career men. He made to stand and was pushed back onto the bed. Properly awake, he felt rage and fear starting up in him.

“Don't touch me, and tell me who you are.” He kept his voice level.

“Passport.”

“Tell me who you are.”

The first man blinked dully, looked at his partner, and gave him the merest of nods. The second man moved toward Hammer, grabbed him by the arm, pulled him off the bed, and pushed him toward his partner. His chubby fingers dug in.

“You get the fuck off me.”

Unhurried, the first man looked Hammer up and down and then stared at him hard. His eyes were dark and bloodshot. Without looking away he said something in Georgian, and his friend let go of Hammer's arm and started to search the room, opening cupboards and drawers and throwing what he found there behind him.

“It was stolen from me. I don't have it.”

They didn't seem to understand. Hammer stayed where he was and watched, wondering who these men were and who had sent them. How many others they had intimidated and terrorized in their time. They looked nothing like police, and cruder than Iosava's mob—they were gangsters, plain as day, but then gangsters in places like this could work for anyone. The thought scared him: why involve such people if not to do the dirtiest of jobs? Last night, in the police station, he had felt ill equipped. Now, he felt acutely alone.

“I have money. There's money in my pants.” No reaction from the man in front of him, who continued tirelessly staring. “Dollars. Lari.”

Eventually the man gave up his search, throwing his hands up in a shrug. At some further instruction from his friend, he picked up Hammer's clothes from the chair where they had been neatly folded and thrust them at him.

“Uh-uh,” said Hammer, shaking his head. “I'm not going anywhere.”

The first man nodded, slow and deliberate.

“Forget it,” said Hammer.

Reaching behind him and under his tracksuit top, the man produced a pistol—black, automatic, efficient—and holding it by his side nodded again.

T
here was no one in reception, and barely anybody on the streets. He had no idea what time it was, but the city had finally gone to sleep. He had no one to call to, and no words to call.

Hands bound with a plastic tie, Hammer sat in the back of the car next to the man with the gun, who held it casually in his lap. The air was a dull stink of cigarette smoke and bitter sweat. His neck squashing out under his massive bald head, the thug in the leather jacket was driving, too fast, along the empty road alongside the river and then off into a part of the city Hammer hadn't been to before, where the buildings grew less solid, the road more uneven. Houses gave way to warehouses and scrappy undeveloped lots studded with rusting machinery and overgrown with grass and weeds.

Now he was scared. Everything else had been negotiable, but this—this was looking final. His last trip. The fear was different, too—consuming, but somehow healthy. If he had ever worried that life had no meaning, now he knew without doubt that it did.

At a red signal Hammer quietly moved his hands across to try his door, ready to spring as quickly as he could into the dark side streets, but found it locked.

“Where are you taking me?”

The man with the gun seemed not to hear. Hammer patted the pocket of his trousers.

“There's money here. Lari. How much do you want? I'm a rich man. Ten thousand dollars.”

The car continued to drive.

“No one's paying you anything like ten thousand dollars. You want to be rich?” Nothing. “A hundred thousand.”

But neither man answered, and their silence felt like the end.

Finally, they stopped at what seemed to be the edge of the city, a black wasteland of dead buildings and abandoned things. Nothing happened here; no one came here. That was why he had been brought.

Hammer felt his heart quicken and his breath go short. This was the kind of fate he'd imagined for Ben, but it seemed it had been his own all along. He cursed his preparations, or the lack of them. He should have found a bodyguard of his own. What would that have taken, a couple of calls and a hundred bucks a day? Never underestimate your opponent. How many times had he said it? Even if you had no idea who they might be.

The first man pulled him from the car and marched him with the gun at his back toward a compound of low prefabricated buildings surrounded by a high metal fence and sparsely lit by two dim lights in dirty housings. In among them stood a larger concrete block, windowless, with a stubby chimney rising above it. Three ancient vans stood by the gate. A waste management plant, Hammer thought. The mob were the same the world over. In the air there was the sound of howling and an acrid stench of ammonia and shit that went deep inside and made it impossible to think. His captors seemed not to notice and pushed him on. He forced himself to think.

Four concrete blocks marked the end of the road and beyond them, perhaps half a mile away through the darkness, he could see a highway with the odd car and truck on it. The ground in between he couldn't see, but whatever was there couldn't be worse than being shot in the head without any kind of struggle. Probably they'd simply shoot him in the back instead, but it was dark, and he was still quick, and neither of these lunks was a runner. Poor odds, but at least they were odds.

Hammer ran. Got a good start on the loose dirt underfoot and, leaning forward as far as he could with his hands tied together, set off, half a dozen determined strides, aiming for a gap in the concrete blocks and waiting every moment for a shot to crack the air and tear into his back. Voices shouted and footsteps followed, clumsy and heavy, and still he ran. Then
with an abrupt clap a shot came, and he felt the muscles in his back tense in expectation, but the bullet flew past him—where, he couldn't tell. A second, then a third; he was off the road now and forced himself to concentrate on staying upright on the sand and stone that stretched ahead of him. The light to see by was going and a single stumble would end it. Ignoring the shouting and the shots he propelled himself forward, foot after foot, until, coming down a bank, he saw the darkness in front of him take on a different quality and only by sliding onto his backside stopped himself from pitching into the lights from the road reflected in a broad channel of water.

“Fuck,” said Hammer, and pushing himself up on his elbow got upright again. The water ran across his path, a canal of some sort; it must have been twenty yards to the other side. He ran to his right but found the driver scrabbling down the bank; turned to see the other man standing above him with his gun faintly silhouetted against the night sky.

“Sakmarisi,” said the man, and gestured to his partner, who walked calmly toward Hammer and with the back of his clenched hand struck him across the face. Hammer cried out with pain and felt himself being pushed up the slope, back toward his fate.

 • • • 

W
hile the driver held Hammer tightly by the arm his friend shot the padlock off the railings that ran round the compound. The first bullet didn't do it, and he fired another, relaxed in the knowledge that there was no one nearby to hear or care. Breathing hard from the exertion, Hammer turned away, his head resounding with the noise and the fresh pain, but he couldn't escape the smell—an unholy caustic dying reek that seemed to occupy the whole of him. Like sulfur and burning tires and month-old fish. Somehow it scared him more than the two men who had such total power over him. He brought his sleeve up to his newly broken nose in a hopeless attempt to filter it.

As the ringing of the shot died and he was pushed through the gate a frenzy of barking began, and over it the howling Hammer had heard earlier, high and ghostly. There were dogs here. Many of them—dozens, it sounded like, fear in all their voices. Hammer recognized it as his own.

He was pushed past the low buildings to the side of the enclosure and rounding the corner saw in the scant light two rows of pens made of chain-link fencing about six feet high. There were maybe ten in all, and in each one there were ten or fifteen dogs, some lying down, some prowling madly, some with their muzzles pressed to the wire and their teeth bared, angrily barking, crazed at the sight of the three men. The straw in their cages was matted with feces and slick with urine. Hammer halted, gagging at the smell, and was pushed ahead once more. This was where the strays were brought to be destroyed. This was where he had been brought for the same purpose. He looked at the dogs and wondered who was better off, the ones who didn't understand or the ones who had given up hope. With panic starting up in him he struggled against the grip on his arm but it was unyielding, and too strong.

The man with the gun walked down the corridor between the two pens and, stopping by the last one on the right, took a flashlight from his pocket and shone it inside. A large black dog was by the door; Hammer could see its ribs under molting fur and a red sore that ran from its neck down its foreleg. As the light flashed in its eye it bared its teeth and gave a long, low growl. A smaller dog, tan and wire-haired, yapped behind it, alternately inching toward and backing away from the fence.

The man aimed the gun at the smaller dog and shot it. The bullet struck it in the flank, halfway along, and Hammer shouted out as he watched it topple from the force. Something about the casualness of the act and its innocent victim appalled him, even here. The black dog whimpered and turned, and as it backed away the man tucked the gun in the back of his trousers, opened the door to the cage, took the dying dog by the scruff of its neck, and pulled it out, shutting the door behind him. He held the dog by his side, its blood streaking his tracksuit.

With a jerk of his head he told his friend to follow, and set off toward the biggest of the buildings, three stories tall and now looming over them in the night. In the light of the flashlight, Hammer saw the dog's blood dripping onto the ground and by some old, futile instinct stepped around it. The butt of the pistol was visible under the man's tracksuit and he began to
imagine how he might reach it, but his guard seemed wise to the possibility, and hung back while his friend opened the heavy metal doors.

The stench outside was of animal decay; in here it was chemical, like a blast of bleach with fire in it. It hit Hammer in the face, burning his eyes and the back of his throat and causing a new terror to rush through him. He fought again to get free, stamped his feet on the man's shoes, tried to wrestle his arm away, but the man tightened his hold and then brought the point of his elbow sharply onto the base of Hammer's neck. His knees went and he sank back, powerless, into the man's arms.

The lights were on. He was being dragged through a vestibule into a larger space, perhaps twenty feet wide, that was gloomily lit by two fluorescent strips. The walls and ceiling were concrete and filthy with muck and blood; but for a tiled strip running round the outside, the floor was a pool of liquid.

Hammer knew what it was the moment he saw it. It was thick, like loose mud, and an uneven brown made up of blacks and dull reds, and though it was still it seemed to seethe, as if it had purpose of some kind. There was a pure horror in it. He turned away, but that did nothing to dull the sense of it, the dark presence that filled his head. His chest had tightened and his lungs seemed to contract.

One of the men shouted, and Hammer felt his head being lifted by the hair above his ears.

“Please,” he said. This was how he would die. Pleading for life to men who had never known the value of it. “Please.”

He hadn't thought he would beg. He would go out nobly, even if there was no one to see his dignity. But that was a vain thought; of course you begged. Every cell in him was straining in terror from the end that seethed and swirled beside him, and his tongue was no different.

“Don't.” If he could see the man's eyes, find some forgotten scrap of good in them. But his head was being twisted away.

His time hadn't come. He was just required to watch.

The leader was squatting down halfway round the side of the pool, holding the dog out with a straight arm above the sludge. The dog seemed to be
moving, but Hammer couldn't tell whether it was alive or just swinging in the man's grip.

He let go, and the dog dropped onto the surface of the liquid, sank an inch and stayed there, its legs out awkwardly beside it.

It was still, thank God; already dead. A terrier: short-haired and black-eyed, a chunk gone from its uppermost ear. Nothing happened for several seconds, and then Hammer heard a faint fizzing noise as the fur began to burn. He looked away but the man in the blue shell suit was by him now, gripping his chin and forcing him to watch.

After thirty seconds the fur was slipping off; after a minute the flesh on the creature's legs began to dissolve, melting into the ooze around it. A minute later, bone showed on its front leg. Through the acid fumes Hammer could smell burning meat. Time slowed to a stop.

Revulsion and fear filled him; he had had enough. He wrenched his head from the man's hand and looked him full in the eye.

“Fuck it. If you're going to do it, do it.”

The man glanced at his partner, nodded, a mere jerk of the chin, and grabbed Hammer's shirt around the neck, twisting it until he had a firm grip. Then he turned so that Hammer's back was to the pool and his shoes at its edge, and began to lower him toward the surface. Hammer grabbed instinctively at the man's jacket and let his feet slip between his legs, but still he went down, the fumes growing stronger, until his head was six inches away.

The man's face above him was fat and solid and certain. He didn't blink. Sweat beaded at his hairline; half his teeth were yellow-black. On his neck a tattooed spider crawled up toward his face. Tightening his fist he let Hammer down.

Hammer could sense the acid beneath him as surely as if it had been a flame and its heat playing over his skin. His bravery was all external. All he knew was his fear. He closed his eyes and when he did he saw Ben, and Elsa. Saw Natela, at dinner, pen in hand.

“You. Go.”

Hammer opened his eyes and the man repeated what he had said.

“You. Go.”

With that he swung Hammer round and flung him hard against the wall. For a moment he stood over his broken form, letting his prey appreciate the quality of his mercy, then nodded to his partner.

“You go. Georgia. Now,” he said, and together they left, calmly, their work done.

Hammer stayed where he was, on one elbow, pressed awkwardly against the wall, tears of fear and exhaustion and pure release starting in his eyes. The dog was almost gone.

The palm of his hand was tingling sharply, beginning to burn. Some acid had splashed onto the tiles and was now eating into his trousers and the sleeve of his sweater. He stood quickly and left the gruesome place, staggering out into the air and breathing the dogs' stench with something like relief. Hardly hearing the barking all around him, he watched the car drive away, throwing up dirt behind it.

By the pens was a pile of buckets and a freestanding tap. He rubbed the water between his hands and let it run over his clothes, and when he was done brought some up to his face in his palms, again and again, the cold vital and pure and finally familiar.

Still the dogs barked. As quickly as he could, Hammer made his way between the two sets of pens, shooting back the bolts as he went.