The Searcher (34 page)

At first the slope was clear and he hung against Irodi's weight, and then he was in thick brush, and it was as if the world had been flipped on its side and he was climbing backward through the woods he had left just an hour before. The dry wood gave and cracked as he went down. Wedging his feet against a sturdier trunk, he took the flashlight from his pocket and turned to shine it below. He could see her now, suspended in a tangle of branches denser than the rest, as if they had come together to catch her as she fell.

“Natela,” he said. She was so close. Her face was turned away from him, her head pushed into her body at an angle that caused the fear to start in him afresh. “Natela, it's OK.”

But she didn't answer, and, putting the flashlight in his mouth, Hammer leaned against the rope once more and took the last few steps down, until finally he was beside her, searching for a hold, his breath blooming in the shaking light. He watched it, his heart beating hard, and wished it was hers.

“Natela.”

She was so still. The branches that had caught her now seemed to claim her.

He shone the flashlight full on her face, which was pale but for a gauze of thin scratches. The light found no breath; not a wisp. A great emptiness took hold of him, as if the world had just changed.

“Natela,” he said once more, in a different tone, and reached out to brush her hair from her cheek. For a moment he held his hand there, feeling the warmth of her, willing it to hold.

And then he knew that it would. Even before she opened her eyes he knew that there was life in her.

Tears came to his eyes, and in his joy he cried out to Irodi.

T
he rain was still falling in Tbilisi, but this was a different kind, mild and fertile, a spring rain in autumn. The woods above Iosava's house had begun to turn, and their fading green and burned orange glowed calmly in the wet.

The guard knew Hammer, and returned after only a minute to take him into the house and up to the first floor, where Iosava was standing at the window looking down at the square, a gray-looking man at his side. He dismissed him with an irascible wave of the hand as Hammer approached; his anger, always an undercurrent, felt present and intense.

“Sit.” He continued to stare at some papers spread out in front of him.

“Bad news?”

Iosava looked up, his black eyes burning.

“My news not your business.”

“But mine is yours.” Hammer pulled a chair out, set it at an angle to the table, and sat down.

“I hear nothing. Four days, nothing.”

“I figured you might be getting updates from someone else.”

Iosava didn't understand. His eyes challenged Hammer's.

“I've come to tell you that I've failed. I haven't found what you needed.”

This he understood. His chin jutted forward. “Bullshit.”

“You wanted proof the president killed his own people to get elected. It doesn't exist. OK? He didn't do it.”

“Bullshit.”

“He didn't do it.”

“Who?”

“I have a feeling you know who, but maybe I'm wrong.” He took his phone from his pocket and passed it to Iosava. “Do you know who this is?”

On it was a photograph of Vekua, lying dead at the bottom of the cliff, her severe face ashen against the snow in the light of the flash.

Iosava studied it, and Hammer studied him. In a normal face something would have registered, but in his there was nothing. No recognition, not even blankness.

“You do,” said Hammer. “She was at the airport.”

“No,” he said, and passed it back.

“She was Karlo's source. She planned the bomb. She also killed Karlo.”

“She work for president.”

Hammer leaned in and lowered his voice.

“Mr. Iosava, I don't know whether that's what you want to believe or what you're pretending to believe. But she had one client, and that was the Russians.”

Iosava's dark eyes studied him, and not for the first time Hammer felt glad that he hadn't seen what they had seen.

“Bullshit. You talk bullshit.”

Hammer smiled.

“Hey, maybe you didn't know. Maybe they don't trust you with the important stuff. Keep their assets separate. Anyway, she didn't make it. Seems she went to the mountains to tie up a loose end, shot a colleague of hers, and when the locals chased her she fell off a cliff. That's the story I want in your newspaper. OK? That's the story I want the police to believe. Nice and simple. Yes? I don't want to be involved and I don't think you do either.”

Iosava sniffed, drummed his fingers on the table, and said nothing.

“I'm sure that suits you, but you come after anybody who had anything to do with this and someone's going to start having a good deep look at you. Understand? You're such a great buddy of the Russians, we'll find it. If you're not, we'll find something else. OK? Leave the story alone, and we can all live in peace.”

“Webster. My money.”

“I paid you back this morning. You're a hundred grand better off. Enjoy it. Buy yourself some soup.”

Hammer stood. Iosava sat back, crossed his legs, and watched him with the air of a man who's been threatened before.

“You leave Georgia. Today.”

“Oh, I'm leaving. With regret. This country doesn't deserve people like you. I'm going to come back when the place has calmed down.”

“Will never happen,” said Iosava, with a final glare.

 • • • 

O
utside, Hammer crossed to the car with his face up to the sky, relishing the rain. Almost over.

He climbed in beside Natela; she opened the window wide and flicked her cigarette out, waving the last smoke away.

“Sorry.”

“Don't be silly.”

“OK?”

“OK,” he said. “I think it's OK.”

“Did he know?”

“Impossible to tell. It doesn't matter.”

Under the stares of the drivers and the bodyguards he started the engine, reversed, and swung the 4 x 4 out of the square into the narrow street that led down the hill to the river.

“Forgive me,” he said, and took his phone from his pocket. “One last call.”

The line rang three times.

“It's me. How's the leg?”

“Working. Just.”

“And your passport?”

“Easy. I told them I'd had a hiking accident and my old one was at the bottom of a ravine. They were very concerned.”

“I'm amazed.”

“They need to review their procedures.” Webster paused. “So. How long before we get arrested?”

“I think we're fine. Everyone wants us gone. Listen, do me a favor, OK? Your friend the president's friend? Give him a call.”

“Really?”

“Really. Tell him if one of their colonels should happen to die any time around now they should look closely at her connections with the Russians. Very closely.”

“I'm not sure I get it.”

“It's time for them to do some work. I'm tired of being involved.”

“Of course you are. You hate being involved.” Webster laughed. “I'll see you at the airport.”

“You won't.”

“Ike, I'm sure you've got everything sewn up, but you need to leave.”

“I bought a car. We're going to Turkey.”

“What's in Turkey?”

“The slow road home. I'm not ready for London.”

“But you need to be. The interview.”

“It's different now. You can give them the answers.”

Webster said OK, in a way that suggested he wasn't sure. Hammer scarcely cared.

He glanced across at Natela, but she wasn't listening. Her eyes seemed to be on the furthest point of the road. Before, he might have wondered what she was thinking, but now he felt no need. He knew and he didn't know, and that was good.

“When you get back, soon as you've seen your family and they've decided if they still want you, go see Hibbert. He's expecting you. Figure out between you how we get the police on the right track. They need to be looking for whoever really gave Saber their instructions.”

“I have some ideas.”

“I'll be back in a few days in any case. Send my love to your wife and try not to fuck anything up on your way home.”

“No more fucking up.”

“Of course not.”

Hammer hung up. They were by the river now, just one of a stream of cars heading out of the city.

“How is Ben?” said Natela.

“Same old.”

“I like him.”

“He could be worse.”

For a while they drove in silence, Hammer watching the road and doing his best with the other drivers and occasionally looking over at Natela, her hair rippling in the wind from the open window.

“She really hit you, huh?”

She didn't understand.

“With the gun. Here.” He pointed to her cheekbone, where a bruise had spread up around her eye. “Does it hurt?”

“It is better now that she is gone.”

“It sure is,” said Hammer. “It sure is.”

The city began to fall behind them. Trucks appeared by the side of the road selling vegetables and honey. Soon they were out on the green plain, with the mountains just visible in the distance on either side.

“You want to stop in Batumi? I know a good place for dinner.”

Natela shook her head. “Stop when we are out of Georgia.”

T
he road felt like Koba's road. They passed the corner where he had refused to help the car in the ditch, passed Gori, passed the point where the motherfuckers had made their first call. Hammer wondered where his computer was now, and what had happened to the boy who had lived.

A hundred dollars a day for the versatile Koba; some bargain that had been. He should have been wary of his presence from the start, the confidence, all that purposeful jollity that had felt so reassuring. Still, he owed the man his life, in a sense, and this opportunity: if Koba had been less greedy, if he'd played it straight with Vekua, the two of them could have done as they pleased with their two captives and there would have been no return journey to make.

The thought troubled Hammer, though he wasn't sure why, and to take his mind from it he asked Natela for a cigarette, which she gave him with a look of pleased bemusement, and for a long time as the road slipped by they talked, about things of consequence and others of no consequence at all. The rain cleared and the sun began to cut across them through the clouds, and when they finally reached the sea they turned to the south, so that the light was glaring off the wet tarmac and Hammer, doing his best with the unruly traffic around them, had to squint hard to see. He didn't mind. He was exhausted but not drained, full of some deeper energy that he hadn't felt for some time.

The road ran parallel to the coast now, sometimes through thickly wooded hills and sometimes by the water. Ten miles beyond Batumi the traffic slowed and they came to a stop in a queue of cars high above a strip
of beach that gave onto the calm gray and green of the Black Sea. Just ahead of them the road curved round the side of a hill, so that Hammer couldn't see the cause of the delay.

“Border,” said Natela. “Will take time.”

This was predictable, of course, but until now the way had been so clear that Hammer felt a faint stab of anxiety prick his mood, like an echo of the fears that had first brought him here. Scenes from the riot and that first traffic jam flashed across his mind. He wanted to be gone, he realized, in a place that had no hold over either of them. Free. Nothing more than that.

Natela smoked continuously, and from time to time he joined her. The comfort lay in the companionship, he told himself, but the truth was his nerves needed it. As the queue slowly shortened he watched the surf and the handful of people who played in the waves, did his best to enjoy the faint breeze that did little to soften the heat pressing against the car. He wondered aloud what could be taking so long, and she told him that there were two sets of border guards, one Georgian, one Turkish, and that the only power they had in the world was to make people wait.

 • • • 

H
ammer drove up to the barrier, one of a dozen in a low, modern building that stretched across a huge forecourt right to the beach. He cut the engine. Two Georgian border guards in green uniforms and peaked caps came to his window, and he handed over the two passports. The first guard, a round man with bad skin and broken veins across his cheeks, gave Natela's to his colleague, who walked round the front of the car, asked Natela to wind her window fully down, and then stared at her hard for a full ten seconds before leafing deliberately through every page.

Hammer watched him closely, resenting the bullying manner, the petty exercise of a petty power. He was skinny and sharp, and his jacket and shirt hung loosely off his frame, as if he was filling in for a larger man. Then he spoke, a command, and opened Natela's door. She looked at Hammer, and her face had lost its habitual calm. Whatever the guard had said, he repeated it.

“What does he want?”

“He says there is problem.”

“What problem?”

“I don't know.”

Natela turned to the guard and asked him, Hammer guessed, to elaborate. He grunted something in response.

“He says my passport is wrong. Too old.”

“Is it?”

“No. No, it is OK.”

There was no one left who had any interest in keeping them here. The story was over. Controlling his fear and his anger, Hammer leaned forward in his seat and looked across at the guard, who again told Natela to get out. Hammer hated every gaunt bit of him.

“How much does he want?”

Natela frowned, with that seriousness he loved in her, but behind her disapproval he could tell she was scared.

“Isaac.”

“Either we're his bonus for the day or someone's telling him to do this. So he has his price.”

“Always the answer is money.”

“That's his choice. Not mine.”

The first guard banged on the top of his car with an open hand; the second shouted, a single syllable. As Natela got down from the cab Hammer made to open his door but his guard held it shut.

“I'm with her,” he said. “Let me out.” But the guard kept his hand against the metal and told him in Georgian that he wasn't going anywhere. The unease Hammer had been feeling now built to something like panic.

“Natela, listen. This needs to come from me. Tell him you're translating what I say. Tell him when I came into the country I failed to declare some goods, and I'm feeling bad about it, and I'd like to pay the extra now.”

Natela looked back at him, and with his eyes he tried to tell her that he wasn't a bad man, and that she must know this. That he understood this world.

“Just tell him.”

Her eyes challenged his but eventually she nodded, turned, and spoke to the guard, slowly and coolly—how much greater she was than the little men who held power over her, Hammer thought. How much he loved her for it. The guard glanced at Hammer, and at first his expression suggested that everything would be all right, that a simple transaction was going to be enough. But then his face grew dark, and shaking his head he shut the car door and began to walk away, motioning for Natela to follow.

“Isaac?” This time it was a question, but he had nothing for her—no understanding, no ideas. If they weren't on the take, these two were following instructions, and the instructions were specific. Who benefited from this? Who even knew that he and Natela were here?

“Hold on. Hold on.” He turned to the guard at his window, somehow still managing to keep his voice and his temper under control.

“Wait. Wait, OK? Telephone. OK?”

The guard simply looked at him, his expression between a sneer and a smile. Shouting something over the roof of the 4 x 4 he made some signal with his free hand, and the barrier opened.

The skinny guard had Natela by the sleeve now and was starting to lead her away from the car. Hammer shouted across.

“Tell him to wait. Tell him I'm calling his boss.”

Natela said it, and the guard hesitated. The mood changed, just a fraction.

“I'm going to straighten this out.”

He found the number and dialed. On the third ring came a croaked yes, in English, the voice low and cracked.

“OK. Listen to me. I'm at the border and I'm having some problems. I'm hoping you can make them go away.”

“Like this you ask for help.”

“They're stopping a friend of mine leaving the country. There's no reason for it, and I thought of you.”

Natela watched him, her eyes no longer scared. There was a sadness in them that he had seen before.

“I let you leave.” Iosava's voice was the same dry rumble.

“She's leaving with me.”

“You cannot have all you want. No one can have.”

“That's what this is? The last laugh?”

“Georgian problem stay in Georgia. Give phone to guard.”

Hammer hesitated. He looked at Natela, whose dark eyes seemed to contain some deep understanding, as if she had always known that their paths could not run together. Her hair was tied back and loose strands at the nape of her neck waved in the wind. The guard still had his hand on her arm, and the sight of it crystallized Hammer's fury, and his helplessness.

“No tricks,” he said to Iosava, and passed the phone through the window.

The guard listened for a moment, the smile gone, stood slightly more erect, nodded deeply, and said three or four words in Georgian. Then he hung up with a fat, clumsy thumb, put the phone in his trouser pocket, took two steps back from the car, and pulled out the gun from its holster on his waist.

“Go.” He nodded at the Turkish border. “Tsavidet. Go.”

Hammer shook his head and breathed deeply, in search of some final piece of inspiration that he knew would not come. Natela was trying to shrug off her guard, but his hold was strong and he was pulling her away now, making her stumble on the tarmac.

“I'll come for you,” Hammer shouted, his voice loud and powerless. All there was in her eyes was good-bye, and it terrified him.

“They will not allow.”

Gun up, his legs set apart, the other guard bellowed at him again to go.

“There's a way.”

There was always a way. There had to be.

Natela held her eyes on his until she had no choice but to turn.