The Searcher (2 page)

T
he man sitting across the table had come on his own, with no sign of an entourage, and had requested that Hammer do the same. That was surprising, and so was his appearance. His suit, though expensive, was too big and sat clumsily on his shoulders, which were lightly scattered with dandruff, and his glasses looked as if they hadn't been cleaned for days. He was mousy in coloring—a little mousy generally, in fact—and somewhat stiff in his greeting, so that if Hammer hadn't seen his photograph and read the headlines he would have found it hard to imagine what was generally held to be true, that this was the richest man in Poland. The head of the risk department of a provincial manufacturing firm, perhaps, or a tax partner in some calcified City law firm, but no ruthless entrepreneur or clear-eyed oligarch.

Still, he had to have something. Such people didn't rise by chance.

From a cheap-looking metal case the man produced a card, slid it across the table, and, while Hammer inspected it, looked down at London, bright and jumbled below them. The view was quite something from up here, or so Hammer had been told, but he took it in calmly, almost blankly, as one might a menu or an invoice. Milek Rapp. Just the name on the card—no company, no phone number.

Hammer passed him his own card in return.

“Welcome, Mr. Rapp. Beautiful day.”

“My lawyer says I can trust you.”

His voice was deeper than Hammer had expected, and more commanding, like the sound of a tuba coming from a penny whistle. When you heard it, it was easy enough to imagine it being obeyed.

“Then you're well advised.”

“This is a sensitive matter.”

“I don't doubt it. Most are.”

So there would be no small talk, which was a shame; as a rule it was rather more revealing than the big talk. Rapp took a moment to consider the man in front of him, seemed to approve of what he saw, and continued. Behind the smeary lenses of his glasses his eyes were wary and quick. In the main he kept them on Hammer, but he was also checking out the details, just as Hammer was: the cut of his clothes, the lines in his face, the clues in his manner.

“How many leaks have you had, in your time?”

“From my organization? None. In twenty years. From my clients, their lawyers, hangers-on? A few.”

“This matter, no one knows about it but me.”

“Then we should be fine.”

Rapp took his glasses off, inspected the lenses, and, satisfied, put them back on his nose.

“Do you have a family, Mr. Hammer?”

“I don't.”

“A wife?”

Hammer knew from his reading that Rapp was on his second. He shook his head. “I came close. But no.”

Rapp studied him some more, without hurry, before committing. Hammer knew this tactic: dictate the pace of a meeting and you dictated the meeting itself.

“You control your risk. This is clever.”

That wasn't my intention, Hammer wanted to say, but he left it. Across the table Rapp clasped his hands together and Hammer saw the muscles in his forearms flex as he squeezed, hard. The dusty exterior masked a passion or two, it seemed. His fingernails were cut so close that no white showed.

“I am good with risk,” said Rapp, his tone matter-of-fact, as if the subject were cooking or some other manual skill. “I make it work for me. There is advantage in it. But not always. Not now.”

Hammer thought he knew where this was heading, and wondered whether he should save the man his discomfort and tell him that Ikertu didn't do matrimonial work, no matter who the client. Too grubby, and too messy. But Rapp interested him, and he wanted to see how he would come at it. With a nod he encouraged him to continue.

“In one corner of my life there is currently too much risk. It is dangerous for my interests. I am hoping that you can restore the balance.”

“I'm an investigator, Mr. Rapp. I work best with specifics.”

Rapp nodded, twice. A resolution made. His hands tensed again and his eyes stayed locked on Hammer's, transmitting a certain expectation of power.

“My wife is sleeping with a man. A young man, Russian.”

Hammer nodded in sympathy, and confirmation. He raised a hand.

“Mr. Rapp, we don't do that kind of work. Never have.”

“You don't know what I want you to do.”

“I can imagine. You want us to prove it's happening. Get some evidence, get rid of the guy.”

Rapp shook his head. A brisk shake, impatient, as if Hammer might yet disappoint him.

“I have all that. No. Something else. I want you to study him, this man. Where he goes, who he calls, his e-mails, bank accounts, everything, going back as far as you can.”

“You planning on ruining him?”

“I can do that on my own. And I will. No. She gives him money. I know this. An allowance, she will say, but it is blackmail, in another form. I want to show he has done this before, with other women. That it will get worse. That as I was a business proposition to her, so she is to him.”

“You know he's done this?”

“I have reason to believe.”

“And then what?”

Rapp's eyes screwed a little tighter and he shook his head again, not understanding.

“What does that accomplish?” said Hammer. “Where does it get you?”

“She stops entertaining thoughts of freedom.” Rapp's hands relaxed and separated, his voice chill. “It restores the contract. And then I can stop worrying.”

Hammer was glad he had allowed Rapp to come this far. This was a species of craziness that in all his years he hadn't seen before, not quite in this form. One for the collection. Before he let him down he had one more question.

“Why us, Mr. Rapp? You clearly have resources.”

“Because if this comes from you she will be forced to believe it. From Isaac Hammer.”

Hammer raised an eyebrow to acknowledge the compliment.

“Well, peace of mind is important, Mr. Rapp. But I'm not sure we're the right people, and I'm not sure you've thought this through. First thing, we don't eavesdrop. Not on phones, not on e-mails. We can't, and we won't.”

Rapp cocked his head a fraction, as if to suggest that between men of the world there need be no pretense about such things.

“It's a practical objection, Mr. Rapp. A lot of people would love me to put a foot wrong, and so for your benefit, and all my clients, and the couple hundred people on this floor whose livelihoods depend on me not screwing things up I try very hard not to. OK? Apart from anything else, we do things properly, I get to charge you more money.”

Hammer smiled, a little curtly.

“And we could. We could do things properly. But I don't want to, is the thing. This kind of work I leave alone, because I don't like it, and neither do you. Even if I do a great job, you're never going to think fondly of me again. You're not going to send me a Christmas card. I'm like the guy who comes to do your drains. You forget the sweet smell I leave behind and remember the stench that brought you here in the first place. Some of the stench stays on me. Now, I hate to send you to the competition, which ordinarily is what I do in these situations, because I'm a helpful guy and you have a problem that needs some help. Ordinarily, that's what I'd do. But in this instance, I have to say I don't agree with your strategy.”

“I didn't come here for strategy advice, Mr. Hammer.”

Hammer smiled again, beginning to mean it. A stubborn client brought
out the contrary in him. “Well, with respect, that may be your loss, Mr. Rapp.”

The quick eyes were considering again, and Hammer could tell that the conversation had reached a crisis. Even money he would leave, but if he did he wasn't the right sort of client in any case.

Rapp didn't do what most men would have done in such a situation. He didn't narrow his eyes, or stroke his chin, or cross his arms, or try to establish his dominance by staring Hammer out. He just sat, and looked at Hammer, and thought. After perhaps half a minute he gave a little nod; Hammer reciprocated and went on, after a brief ceremonial pause to acknowledge the new footing of their relationship.

“Good. OK. Twenty years ago, this company was maybe a year old, I took on a case for this well-known guy, a very successful guy in entertainment. You'd know him. A big name. And he says to me, ‘I think my wife is cheating on me, and I want you to follow her and find out.'”

Rapp cocked his head again, but this time it meant something different. Is this relevant? We may have an understanding but my time is important.

“Bear with me, Mr. Rapp. I don't enjoy this story but I think it's something you need to hear. I tell this guy everything I've just told you, but I made a mistake, which was to tell him that in any case I'd have to charge him a million pounds. This was when million-pound cases weren't so common. I shouldn't have said it, but I thought it would end the conversation. And of course he says, fine, make it two, whatever it takes. So I have nowhere to go, and part of me is thinking, OK, this is good money, and also he's this big guy and back then maybe I'm a little wowed by that, so we do the case. For two months we followed that poor woman everywhere she went. Team of God knows how many people. We did everything. Wired the house, the cars. We knew every step she took. No terrorist has ever been as closely watched, and I hated every minute. I have never liked a case less. And after everything, this huge operation? There was nothing going on. Not a thing. She went to the shops, she played with her kids, she had drinks with her friends. That was it. Didn't so much as smile at another man all that time.”

Hammer paused, took a breath, nodded to himself. Rapp was still paying attention.

“I had the guy just pay me my costs, because I didn't like myself very much by this point and didn't want to make a profit. And a year later, less, they divorced. She met someone else and left him.”

“She knew what you had been doing?”

“No. We were spotless. Maybe he told her, but I doubt it. No. He wanted it to happen, is my guess, somewhere deep down. Or he made it impossible for it not to. Anyway, point is, some situations, you don't need information. Information's my business, and I believe in it, and I can see you do, too. But this guy, everything he needed to know was in his head, and in hers. He didn't need surveillance, he needed a conversation.”

“This is what you're saying? I should talk to my wife?”

Hammer grinned, held his arms up. “That's what pays for all this, Mr. Rapp, advice of that caliber. Of course you should talk to your wife, but that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, take the route you're planning and where does it get you? It doesn't change the situation. She breaks it off with this guy, but what about the next one? Maybe he's not a gold digger, and what then? You've got the same risk and no defense.”

“It is always about money.”

“Maybe the next guy's rich.”

“He will not be as rich as me.”

That was true. Hammer had to admire the singularity of the man's perspective.

Rapp's brow tensed a little into a frown. He had the look of someone encountering something foreign for the first time.

“Why do you tell me this?”

“Because it's true, and one day you might remember that. Man like you has other problems, I imagine, and advisers everywhere telling him what he wants to hear.”

Rapp pushed his glasses up his nose. Hammer felt the urge to clean them for him.

“So you do not want my business?”

Hammer smiled. “I've told you. It's not business.”

Against expectation, and all the odds, Rapp smiled back. It was dry, and
quick, but a smile nevertheless. Putting both hands palm down on the table, he gave Hammer one last, significant look, and stood.

“I think you are right to concentrate on your work.”

“Keeps things simple.”

“Perhaps we will talk again.”

Any time, Hammer was going to say, but he was interrupted by the phone on the table.

“Excuse me,” said Hammer.

It was Katerina, one of Hammer's directors. “We need you in reception.”

“I'm just finishing with someone.”

“Well, finish quickly. It's the police.”

“What do they want?”

“You. There are fifteen of them.”

He put the phone down. If there were fifteen they had come to talk about Ben. No question. Not for the first time Hammer cursed the man and his deceptions.

“My next meeting's here,” he said, and ushered his new friend toward the door.

O
nce, in Algeria, working for
The
Times
, Hammer had watched as two men were pulled from their car by a mob and dragged away to be stoned. His photographer had caught it, and now, watching people bang on the window and pull at the doors, it was that image he remembered: the first man's eyes closed against the sun and the dust and the thought of what was to be done to them as the rioters hauled his friend from the backseat. A Frenchman and a Dane, whose driver had taken a wrong turn on the way to the airport, as innocent of the politics of the place as the children who sat on walls and at windows to watch. They had probably known as much about the Islamists as he knew about Georgian bombs. Hammer hadn't seen them die, the crowd around them was so dense.

His car slowly rocked. The crush of people was now too great for him to tell whether they were being driven on by the police behind. He positioned himself in the middle of the seat, sitting forward, an eye on each door and slipped his wallet and phone from his pockets, stuffing them down the gap between the seat cushions. An urge to flee began to give way to pure fear; two dozen times a year he made a journey like this: car to the airport, comfortable plane, car to the hotel, cosseted all the way and spared contact with anything like real life. Well, here it was. It had been waiting for him.

Above the din he became aware of one voice louder than the rest, and looking up saw a young man, his face pressed against the driver's window and alight with power. He was skinny and gaunt and his eyes were full of the righteousness of his cause. He wore a cap down low on his brow. Shouting the same words over and over and each time pounding the glass with the
flat of one hand, he pointed with the other at Hammer in the backseat. The driver shook his head and held his arms up, but the man just repeated his question, jabbing his finger into the back of the car and staring right at Hammer. The driver turned to look at him.

“US,” he said, pointing. “American.”

From the man's expression and the new fervor of the crowd he guessed being American wasn't good. A friend of the president, on the wrong side of this thawing cold war.

These were his thoughts as the window to his left frosted and with a dead sound became a sheet of ice, a thousand crystals bound together; it held for a moment, sagging heavily, and fell in; after it came hands blindly searching for a handle. In an instant the door was open, and Hammer was sliding across the seat and into the reeling chaos of the crowd. He felt the heat of people's bodies as he was jostled and passed among them. He didn't resist. Curiously, now that he was out of the car he was less afraid. It was happening.

Spun round, this way then that, he was pushed forward until he faced the man with the question. Someone strong locked his arms behind him while the young man spoke.

“Vy Amerikansky. Vy yobaniy Amerikansky,” he shouted, one hand screwing into Hammer's collar. His head was tilted in a leer, and flecks of spittle struck Hammer as he talked.

This was Russian. “Niet,” Hammer shouted over the noise, shaking his head emphatically. “No.” He held the man's gaze, kept his expression open. Match his craziness with as much calm as you can manage. Their eyes were level. “English. UK. London.”

“Passport. Pokazhi mne passport.”

Hammer struggled against the hold on his arms and shook his head. “I don't have it.” He shouted again above the noise all around. “I don't have it.”

The young man cocked his head, considering. He was a bony specimen, all of a hundred and forty pounds at most, with staring wide pupils and a sprinkling of mustache that ran across his upper lip and pointed down round his oddly fleshy mouth. His cheeks were pocked from old acne and on his
sleeveless white T-shirt was a bad drawing of an AK-47. A revolutionary in his own mind, running on the energy of his convictions and the wildness of the crowd. Hammer understood him, but wanted very much to send an uppercut into that delicate-looking jaw.

Cocking his head the other way the Georgian fished inside Hammer's jacket with his free hand, first one side then the next. After that, the breast pocket and the two side pockets, coming up empty each time. Finally he ran his hands round Hammer's midriff, looked him in the eye, grinned, and ripped his shirt apart to expose a money belt secured around his waist. Unzipping it, he pulled out a passport and a sheaf of dollar bills, and briefly there was an almost innocent pleasure in his face as he felt the notes and registered their value. Folding them, he pushed them into the pocket of his jeans and began to leaf through the passport, rotating it to check the photograph against the face of the birdlike man in front of him, staring hard at both. He shook his head and let out a long, low whistle.

“American. American not good.”

“This American's here on vacation. Holiday. Understand? Holiday.”

As Hammer said it he felt his right arm being twisted up into its socket. He yelled in pain and protest but could hardly hear himself above the shouting and singing and screaming.

“Tell them to get the fuck off.”

“Vacation.” The man looked him up and down, releasing his hold on the tie and rubbing the fabric between his fingers. “Amerikansky bullshit.”

Glancing back, Hammer saw two men taking his bag and his briefcase from the trunk of the car. The driver looked on with his hands raised.

“There's more money in that case, OK? More dollars. It's locked. Bring it to me.”

The young man continued to leaf slowly through the pages of the passport, studying each, as if somehow he had secured a pocket of silence and time, while the strong hand on Hammer's arm continued to twist. The pain built until, unable to bear it, Hammer stamped on his captor's foot, hard, with the sharp edge of his heel, and in the instant that the grip loosened wrenched away and pulled himself clear.

The revolutionary was still grinning at him. Guided by some old instinct
that he hadn't drawn on for a long time Hammer sent his fist in a neat uppercut into his jaw, watched the grin slip, and followed with a left to his sharp little nose—felt it give, and the hardness of bone underneath. The guy reeled into the crowd, brought a hand up to the blood on his lip, a look of bewilderment and hurt in his eyes, and Hammer grabbed for the passport that was still in his hand. But he was pulled back; the man who had held him cursed, turned him, and brought an elbow round into his face.

Hammer's sight went and, stumbling backward, he fell into passing bodies, which pushed him away. For a moment he swayed in a small space of his own making, black and red pulsing behind his eyes. He tried to comprehend the pain that cut up through his skull; he'd never been hit like that without gloves. When he opened his eyes, still staggering, his interrogator was there, his bloodied face a foot away, the leering turned to viciousness. Hammer felt first one arm then the other twisted up behind him and winced at the fresh pain.

The punk spat at him, the spittle red, and brought his face so close that Hammer could smell the beer on his breath and something else, something rank and crazed.

“Shevetsi. What is this?”

The punk held the passport up to Hammer's face, jabbing a finger at the page.

“Israel stamps.”

Hammer looked down at himself. There was blood on his tie, down his white shirt, dripping onto his jacket. People crowded past, barely aware of him.

“You are fucking Jew. You work for president. You come to kill Georgians.”

“Yeah, that's right. I'm going to start with you.”

The young man leaned back to grin at his friends and opened his eyes wide and punched Hammer in the stomach, not a great punch but enough to double him up. Then he closed the passport and handed it to someone by him. Hammer's eyes followed it.

“Give me that.”

The passport was passed on again. Around them the crowd continued to rush, began to thin.

“Give me the fucking passport.”

“You are enemy of Georgia.” The young man leered into Hammer's face and pushed his hand up into his throat, straightening up. Hammer felt his breathing tighten. The lock on his arms was total.

“I'm a fucking tourist, you idiot.”

Hammer fought for breath. He felt the blood pulsing round his skull.

“Why you here?”

“To drink the waters.”

“Why you here?”

The punk was shouting now and showing no signs of backing down. The leer had gone. Hammer was getting no air, and his body was beginning to panic.

There was no way he was going out at the hands of this schmuck. He tried to kick, to bring his knee up into his crotch, but the little fucker was standing to the side of him now and nothing found its target. He jerked his head back but for a runt he had strong hands and he kept an iron hold.

“Why you here?”

Hammer could barely talk and his lungs felt full of acid. The time for wisecracks had gone.

“To find a friend,” he said, with the last breath he could find.

The revolutionary looked into his eyes.

“Bullshit.”

From somewhere down the street came three shots, and Hammer felt the hold on him relax, just a degree. Then two more shots, from the same gun. The young man looked beyond him down the street, released his grip, and nodded at his friend, who with a glance backward let go of Hammer's arms and moved off, at one again with the scattering crowd. Hammer bent over, sucking in air, and felt himself being pulled upright by the young man, who patted the breast of Hammer's jacket and gave him a look, somewhere between mischief and mania.

“Next time, American,” he shouted, and slipped into the tide.

The last stragglers hurried by, throwing some final taunts behind them, until Hammer was alone with his driver and the beaten Mercedes, all its windows smashed and one door hanging from its hinges. Placards lay
broken at his feet, and papers spilled from the car onto the ground. He felt in his trouser pocket for his handkerchief and brought it up to his nose, bending over to catch the drips, watching them spread crimson onto the smudged white cotton.

His hand shaking, the driver walked toward him, holding out an open cigarette packet.

“You OK?” said Hammer, twisting his head to look up.

The driver nodded, but his face was white. He offered the pack to Hammer, pushing up a single cigarette.

“Hell yes,” said Hammer, and took one. His own hand shook as he reached for it. If his memory was good it had been twenty years since his last.

Before he lit it from the driver's trembling lighter, he sensed movement behind him and a new voice shouted something he didn't understand. The driver let the flame die, raising his hands once more in submission, and as Hammer straightened he saw six policemen rounding the corner, guns up and pointing at him.