The Searcher

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  They were among the first, and were shown to a table at the end of the little pier. The sun was warm and low, and beneath their feet, through the boards, they could see waves breaking and dragging on the beach. Koba inspected the menu sternly.

  “Let’s have some fish,” said Hammer.

  Continuing to read, Koba shook his head.

  “No fish?”

  “Not good. Not so good. You ask questions, we go to other place. Good place.”

  “Koba, we’re here now. Let’s have a drink.”

  “I will get car.”

  “Koba.”

  “OK, OK,” said Koba, with an air of frustrated martyrdom.

  A waiter came and Koba ordered, bearishly asking questions and pushing out his bottom lip.

  “And a bottle of their best wine,” said Hammer.

  “Is not so good,” said Koba.

  “Get it anyway. I want them to like us. And tell him I’d like to talk to the manager.”

  After five minutes a tall man in a black shirt and trousers came to the table carrying a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. He had the even, deliberate tan of someone who spends his spare afternoons lying in the sun. Koba, with an ill grace and a jerk of his chin, indicated that Hammer was the man to talk to.

  “Gamarjobat,” said Hammer, half standing from his seat to shake the manager’s hand. “Gamarjobat. Do you speak any English?”

  With a look of regret the manager shook his head.

  “Then my friend will translate.” Koba raised his eyebrows and nodded, and Hammer began. “You have a lovely place here.” Koba delivered the compliment flatly, and the manager acknowledged it with a little bow. “Listen. I’m a detective. A private detective.” He made sure Koba knew what he meant. “I’m here to find a man who has run away from his wife. OK? He was here four nights ago. This man.” He unlocked his phone and showed him the picture of Webster. “Do you remember him?”

  The manager shrugged. He thought so. He saw so many customers.

  “Koba. Explain to him that I know exactly how much he spent. A hundred and seventy-three lari exactly. I need to find that bill, and speak to the person who served him.”

  Koba translated, and the manager laughed as he uncorked the wine.

  “He says impossible,” said Koba.

  “Ask him if it’s still impossible if I leave him a hundred-lari tip.”

  Koba frowned. “Is too much.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Koba translated and the manager, pouring Hammer’s wine, considered the offer before responding. Koba looked affronted, and they argued for a moment.

  “I said fifty. He wants two hundred,” said Koba, as if it was the most ridiculous notion, and took a deep drink.

  “Tell him one fifty.”

  “Wine is terrible.”

  Finally a price was agreed on, and the manager went inside to see what he could do.

  Food came, and Hammer was pleased to find that very little of it was meat, and that most of it was pretty good.

  “This is OK,” he told Koba, who made a face that didn’t quite concede the point.

  When the manager returned he had with him two small pieces of paper and a young waitress, whose pale, serious face was tense with worry.

  “This is bill,” said Koba, passing the papers to Hammer. One was the credit card slip, with a signature on it. At a glance it looked like Ben’s. The bill was in Georgian, but the script was roman, and it seemed to show that two people had eaten.

  “What’s this?”

  “Beer.”

  “And this?”

  “Champagne. Two bottles.”

  “You don’t remember two bottles of champagne?”

  The manager shrugged.

  “And this is her name? The waitress?”

  Koba nodded.

  “Tell him thank you very much. That’s all for now.”

  The manager hesitated for a moment, but Koba repeated himself and he left. The waitress shifted on her feet.

  “Nino. Thank you for talking to me. I won’t be long.” Hammer smiled. “Do you remember, a few nights ago, Tuesday, there was a man here, a foreigner, young but with gray hair. This was his bill. Do you remember him?”

  Nino said that she thought she did.

  “Where did they sit?”

  She pointed to a table in the corner.

  “Was he alone?”

  No. He was with a woman.

  “What did she look like?”

  Koba translated as best he could. The woman was blond, young, pretty. Russian.

  “They spoke Russian?”

  Nino nodded.

  “Only Russian?”

  And some English, she thought.

  Hammer asked her what the couple had eaten, how long they had stayed, whether they seemed to know each other well, and to each question Nino gave nervous answers that smacked of the truth. The couple had come late and seemed, in Koba’s word, close. They hadn’t seemed that interested in their food. They had held hands across the table. No, neither had smoked.

  His questions almost at an end, Hammer thanked her and held up his phone for her to see. He had saved four photographs there, corporate mug shots downloaded from the websites of lawyers and consultants, all of men in their thirties with short gray hair. Webster’s was in among them.

  “Is this the man?”

  Nino peered at the phone from a distance, as if she didn’t want to come too close to it. She shook her head. Hammer swiped across the screen and showed her the next.

  “This one?”

  “Ah-rah.” She shook her head again.

  She said no to the third, and to Webster’s, and to the last. Hammer went through them again, encouraging her to make sure of each. She was. None of these men had been to the restaurant that night.

  Shyly, she began to say something in English, and then hesitated.

  “What is it, Nino? Tell my friend.”

  The man she had seen was handsome, very handsome. But his hair was different. She had noticed it when she had stood by him to pour his wine, a bald patch at the back of his head. She remembered thinking that he was unlucky, to be losing his hair so young.

  “Happens to the best of us, Nino. You’re certain about this?”

  “Diakh.”

  Hammer quizzed her a little more, but Nino was sure.

  “Gmadlobt. You’ve been very helpful.”

  His mouth open, Koba watched Hammer hand her a hundred-lari note.

  “You are crazy, Isaac. Is too much.”

  “We need to leave.”

  Koba put his glass down, triumph on his face.

  “I tell you. Place no good.”

  “We need to leave Batumi. I have to be back in Tbilisi tonight.” Standing up, Hammer pulled some more notes out of his wallet to cover the bill. “Let’s go.”

  “But, Isaac. I cannot drive.” Koba turned his empty wineglass upside down.

  “You’ve had one glass. Come on.”

  But Koba shook his great head. “In Georgia, is same as ten glasses.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  “You drink also. No, Isaac. Tonight we must stay.”

  SEVENTEEN

  As they left the restaurant the sun was a red line on the horizon and the air had grown humid and thick, and together they trudged up the heavy beach like an old couple, Hammer impatient and ahead.

  “I not understand,” said Koba. “Where is your friend?”

  “Not here.”

  “In Turkey now, yes?”

  “If he wasn’t here, he isn’t there.”

  Koba put his hand on Hammer’s shoulder, in part to steady himself.

  “I not understand, Isaac.”

  Hammer stopped. “Someone wants me to think my friend was here. But
he wasn’t.”

  “What someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps someone steal his card.”

  “Perhaps.”

  They started up the promenade at the top of the beach, Hammer brisk and always a few steps before Koba, thinking hard. The stalls were shut, the cafés quiet. Cars streamed past.

  Whoever had been at the Sheraton, and at the restaurant, and everywhere else, it wasn’t Ben. And if the impostor was a mere thief, he wouldn’t have booked a flight out of the country on someone else’s passport, or spoken Russian and English at dinner. No. This was a sham, a masquerade. A trail had been set for him and he’d followed it. He had been gulled.

  In the past three days he had imagined so many fates for his friend: mugged for his money in the wrong part of town, kidnapped for ransom, knocked down by one of these crazy drivers, working out some personal torment in the wilderness. Drifting down the Kura River to the sea. He could discount all those. Whoever had done this had power, and resources, and a purpose.

  Gori was the key. It had sat squarely in Hammer’s imagination all day. He needed to know what had happened there: who had done this, and why, and by what dark means. Ben, of course, had wanted the same thing; he couldn’t have seen what Hammer had seen and not felt compelled to investigate it. That was Ben. He had to know. And while he was a self-righteous bastard about it, he was right. To stand there and see that much pain and simply pass by, knowing you might help, was a betrayal, of oneself and the people who had died. There was no great difference between that and walking past a murder with your head turned.

  His own mission had been feeling less and less righteous; now it felt wrong. Who was he here to help but himself? That unease, the dread that had been following him around, this was the cause of it. A herald of his hypocrisy.

  In the trees bordering the wide pavement ahead some unexpected movement caught his eye, and above the noise of the traffic he could hear a sort of roaring that he couldn’t identify. He slowed for a moment and was scanning the trees when from them, twenty yards away, staggered a drunk, his silhouette made strange by an overlong coat that swept its skirts across the ground. Howling at the night, he reeled and lurched toward the road, in his hand a glass bottle held high and oddly steady above his head. He looked set to pitch straight into the cars rushing along the street.

  “Hey!” shouted Hammer, as loud as he could.

  The drunk caught himself, just, swaying this way and that and looking round to see who had challenged him, the bottle now tucked into his chest. Bent almost double, he screamed something at Hammer and started moving toward him, muttering in Georgian as he came.

  “Oh, great,” said Hammer.

  “Bozis shvilo,” said Koba behind him.

  “Gamarjobat,” said Hammer, keeping a straight line. “Lovely evening.”

  As Hammer passed, the drunk reached out and grabbed his arm, slurring a string of words. The deep stink of filth and old booze radiated from him. He was young, as far as it was possible to tell, no older than forty, but had the dismal air of someone whose time was almost up. One glazed eye tried to stay on Hammer’s face.

  “No, thank you,” said Hammer, jerking his hand away and shrinking from the smell.

  Under all his clothes the man was slight but his grip was strong. He was leaning on Hammer now, still talking and making his points, whatever they were, by repeatedly shoving his bottle into Hammer’s chest. Through the alcohol his breath had an empty metallic tang.

  Puffed up, his big chest out, Koba came forward, screwed his hand into the clothes over the drunk’s chest, and in one movement pulled him off Hammer and shoved him backward, hard, so that he fell to the ground in a sprawl. His bottle skittered over the pavement but didn’t smash. Before Hammer could register what had happened, Koba stood over the man and kicked him hard in the thigh with the accomplished air of someone who has done such things before.

  “No,” shouted Hammer, dragging him back.

  “Motherfucker,” said Koba, shrugging Hammer’s arm away and glaring back at the drunk, who was stirring on the ground. “He hurt you?”

  Hammer had turned from him to tend to the drunk.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  He squatted down and touched the man’s shoulder. His eyes were closed, and the smell of ammonia rose up off him. Koba was still tensed, ready to continue.

  “He needs a doctor. Where’s the hospital?”

  Koba made a low, disdainful noise, took a step back, and lit a cigarette. “Fuck him. Not need.”

  “Koba, he’s a mess. Get the car.”

  “No way. My car?” Koba laughed. “No way in my car.”

  As Hammer stood to remonstrate, the drunk raised himself on his elbow, looked stupidly around him, and sat up.

  “Are you all right?” said Hammer.

  There was no recognition in his eyes, and it seemed likely that he remembered neither Hammer nor what had happened. He blinked a couple of times with his good eye and started to stand, Hammer instinctively supporting him.

  “You need to see a doctor,” said Hammer, but his drunken charge was up now, and moving. Without looking back, he stooped to pick up his bottle, all but empty, and stumped back through the trees.

  “You see? He is fine. Motherfucker.”

  Hammer watched the man walking away and took a deep breath. The smell of him was still on his clothes and in the air.

  “Isaac, you are too good. Such people do not deserve.”

  • • •

  Before going to bed, Hammer picked a pair of tiny whiskey bottles from the fridge in his room, poured them into a glass, and sat on the bed. He had one more duty, and it would be the hardest part of the day.

  Elsa picked up on the first ring.

  “Ike.”

  “Hey. How you doing?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Good.”

  “Thanks for your texts.”

  She sounded cautious, as if she didn’t know how things stood between them.

  “I wish there’d been more to say.”

  “Are you . . . do you have anything?”

  He took a drink, uncertain where to begin.

  “I’m getting there. He did go to the funeral. He was in Tbilisi and then he went to a place called Gori. That’s as far as I can see.”

  “You said you had a good lead.”

  “I did, but it’s like all leads, it only gets you so far.”

  Elsa didn’t respond.

  “Hey. It’s progress. Progress is good.”

  She was quiet for a moment longer, and Hammer knew she wasn’t convinced.

  “Ike, please. I can’t get more worried. Tell me.”

  Oh boy, he thought, and told her about Iosava, and Gori, and the trail to Batumi that had turned out to be a fiction. He left out the men in his room and their visit to the dogs.

  “So he was never there?”

  “Never.”

  “Why? What does that mean?”

  “Stop anyone coming to look. Listen, if I’d had a half-decent man in Georgia I’d have sent him, and chances are he’d have been happy with the story. They did a pretty good job, and anyone not looking really closely would have believed it. Or I might have done it all from London, on the phone, checking Ben’s cards. Either way we’d think he was in Turkey now, with some woman, and this call would be very different. So whoever did it wants us to look the wrong way.”

  “Because something’s happened to him.”

  That was the conclusion Hammer hadn’t wanted to reach. Not with Elsa, at least.

  “I can’t think what else it means.”

  “God, Ike. What’s he done?”

  What had he done? What had he been thinking? For two days Hammer had been in Webster’s world, but now he was jolted back to that other reality, of children
and home and simple, immediate responsibilities. See the devastation in Gori and it became your duty to expose what had happened; speak to Elsa for a moment and you knew that was impossible. Both were essential and could not coexist.

  This was the same paradox that had colored Ben’s every moment at Ikertu. He loved it, he had loved Hammer, but his inability to ignore the tiniest promptings of his conscience had led him to try to destroy it. This Hammer at once understood and didn’t understand. Understood the impulse but not the absence of any mechanism to control it. He had loved Ben for it, his seriousness, his sense of justice. But controlling impulses was what it was all about; learning to do so is life.

  “Got himself involved. Like he always does.”

  Elsa said nothing for a moment.

  “I don’t think I can take much more of it, Ike.”

  “Hey, I may be wrong.”

  “No. You’re not. Find him, would you? The mess he’s made. For you and us. You were right. He needs to clear it up.”

  EIGHTEEN

  In the rain you couldn’t see what was coming, and that was almost a comfort. Whether he was disappointed about Borjomi, which again Hammer refused to visit, or ashamed of his treatment of the drunk the night before, Koba drove as hard as the rain fell, overtaking everyone they met, sliding round corners without slowing, playing chicken with any car bold enough to occupy the middle of the road. Hammer didn’t protest; it was probably impossible to reconcile Koba’s protectiveness with his desire to kill them both on the roads, or to curb either. It had been a long time since he’d met anyone whose energies ran in so many conflicting directions.

  He was smoking more than usual, and if it hadn’t been for Hammer would have been happy to do so with the windows closed. Hammer had opened his but the car was thick with smoke, and eventually he had to deal with it.

  “Koba. Would you open your window a little, please?”

  Koba looked across at him, drew on his cigarette, and opened the window an inch as he exhaled.

  “I did bad last night. You think.”

  “No. I don’t. I just need to get to Tbilisi.”

  But Koba, determined to be petulant, only raised his eyebrows.

  “That man, he is fine. He is fine today.”