The Searcher

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  “Whatever this is, he’s not in charge. He’s taking orders from someone.”

  She shook her head.

  “If he is in this now, when did he begin?”

  Hammer didn’t understand.

  “You give money to him, you give money to people who killed Karlo.”

  Her eyes were dark and set on his.

  “OK.” He reached out and touched her arm. “OK. First, we don’t know that but yes, probably you’re right. The important thing is, I pay him money, I can find out who he is. Where he is. He can’t take that money without me seeing him take it.”

  “Always it is money.”

  “I don’t have much else. I can’t shoot him, because then I’m in the dark again. Also, I’m not a big shooter. I’m a little rusty in that area. This is the only way. Money, and a trick or two. It’s all I’ve got.”

  Natela continued to look at him, not ready to yield.

  “I need your help with this,” he said. “I need you to tell Irodi what to do.”

  “He will suffer?”

  “If he’s guilty, he’ll suffer.”

  TWELVE

  Koba had gone outside for a cigarette. The soup blipped occasionally at the side of the hearth and Hammer, while he waited, gave it a stir. Either the riding, the mountain air, or the deep uncertainty had given him a hunger. Natela took a seat at the table. Neither spoke.

  When he returned, Koba grinned, looking his most satisfied, and took the spoon from Hammer.

  “You need food, Isaac. We eat.”

  Hammer sat next to Natela and watched the big man taste the soup.

  “Is OK. Where is salt?” Koba started searching on the low table by the fire, his back to Hammer.

  “Koba, how are you planning on getting down the mountain?”

  Koba, continuing to look, made a deep humming noise, signifying a weary resignation. “Snow will melt. Is October. Very early.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  Koba shrugged. “Ah! Here is salt.”

  “Because I was wondering if something else had kept you in Tusheti. If you had other business here.”

  Koba pinched salt between his fingers and scattered it into the soup.

  “How you mean, Isaac?”

  “I think I’m not your only client.”

  He turned to Natela, frowning. “What is ‘client?’”

  “Koba, it’s just us talking here. No one can hear us, OK? I’m not recording what we say. But if you try anything, Irodi and Vano are outside with their guns and while I’m sure you’re good, probably you’re not that good. Besides which, it will make no sense for you to kill me before you’ve heard what I have to say.”

  Koba rested the spoon on the table and looked at Hammer.

  “This is last night, yes? What I say. I say bad things to your friend.” He appealed to Natela, whose eyes didn’t leave his.

  Hammer shook his head. You had to admire his technique.

  “Forget it. You spent all morning camouflaging 4 x 4s and tidying up your little hiding place. Every five minutes you’ve been disappearing off to phone your boss, whoever he is. Yes? You’ve got an extra phone just for that. My guess, your job is to keep an eye on me and stop me getting too close. Is that right? Or have you got plans for me like you’ve got for Ben?”

  Koba shrugged and held his hands out, a final attempt to convince.

  “Isaac, I think you are hungry, maybe. The mountains, they—”

  “Enough. I have an offer for you. I think you’ll like it. I don’t know who you are—are you really called Koba, by the way?”

  Koba just watched him.

  “Let’s stick with Koba. So. I don’t know who you are, but I know this world and I’m guessing either you’re a policeman or a spy, or you were once and now you’re working for yourself. Any event, probably you’re being paid OK by Georgian standards, right? If you’re private, maybe what, five hundred bucks a day? At the top end, I should say. You’re taking some major risks, but in this business I should say five hundred was generous. So this year, give or take, you’ve got some quiet periods, the most you’re going to be taking home is sixty, seventy thousand, after tax. Am I right?”

  Koba put his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to the side. Casual, but listening.

  “Now, here’s what I’ve got. I can get Irodi in here and have him shoot you in the leg. Nothing dangerous, just something that’s going to stop you running around for a little bit. OK? He’d like to do it, I think, even if it isn’t exactly Georgian hospitality. Then we figure out what you’ve been doing and try and get my friend back. This isn’t great for either of us, but hey. If it’s necessary.

  “That’s up to you. The other way, I pay you lots of money and you give us everything, nice and direct. Did they tell you I was rich? No? Well, I am, and I can pay you a lot more than whoever’s paying you now. What I had in mind was twenty-five thousand straightaway, show I’m serious, then seventy-five thousand when you’ve brought me my friend and explained what in hell’s name is going on here. What it’s all about. The bomb, Ben, everything. You tell me everything you know and I won’t tell anyone where I got it. You’ll be free to spend the money. That’s a lot of cash. Give me an account, I can make a call, wire the twenty-five right now.”

  Hammer glanced at Natela and then watched Koba, who had stopped listening and was now thinking. “That much money, you could give up this line of work. Cultivate your bees with Mrs. Koba.”

  “I no have wife.”

  “No kidding. So just you and the bees.”

  Koba’s face was set now. It was the face he had worn when kicking the drunk in Batumi: professional, resolute, unhurried. He took in a deep, deliberate breath through his nose, stood, picked up a bowl from the side, and used it to scoop up a helping of soup straight from the pot. It dripped as he brought it back to the table, where he ate with his face low over the bowl. After three mouthfuls he looked up at Natela and then Hammer, who were both watching him with something between awe and dread.

  “I know you. Ya.” He pointed with his spoon. “I know much. You are Isaac Joel Hammer. You live in London. You are detective. Is right word? Detective. Well done, Isaac Hammer. You are good detective, but not now.”

  He bent his head again and returned to his soup. Hammer thought he understood.

  “Why not?”

  “My job, it was to keep you living. Stop you seeing things. You not find anything, is OK. You live. Now, is not good. You find something.”

  A string of cabbage hung on his lip; with a slurp he sucked it in.

  “So you have to kill me?” said Hammer, a little daunted by the man’s composure.

  “Me, or other man. When time will be good. Like your friend.”

  “My friend is dead?”

  “No. Time is not good.”

  Hammer wished he could believe him. Koba took another deliberate mouthful and chewed, his eyes cold, and as Hammer watched him he felt an increasing repugnance. Imagine the things this man has done.

  “Koba, you’re in trouble. Even if you manage to get out of here, you can’t get down the mountain. Thank you for protecting me, really, but your job’s over. My offer is good.”

  Koba swallowed his soup and laughed. “When sky is clear, I call for helicopter. Yes?” He laughed again. “This mountains are not fortress. Not now.”

  Hammer looked at Natela, and if his own face was full of perplexity hers was full of disgust. With her chin up, she spat a short volley of Georgian words at him, and his response was to raise his eyes to look at her with black eyes full of a cold violence. Hammer felt fury run through him like ice.

  “Fuck this,” he said, and stood. Koba looked up, for the first time engaged. “Irodi!”

  “What are you doing?” said Natela.

  Irodi appeared from the passage, his r
ifle held across his body.

  “I’m going to shoot him in the leg. I’m sick of his bullshit.”

  Hammer moved round the table and motioned to Irodi to lend him the gun. Concerned but calm, Irodi handed it to him. Koba, still chewing, looked at them as a bored man might a pair of flies fussing in the heat.

  It had been a long time since Hammer had had a gun in his hands. Not for the first time he wondered how old it was, and when it had last been fired. It felt like a remnant of some mythical Georgian last stand. He cocked it, and holding it low pointed it at Koba’s thigh.

  Koba sat up straight, put his spoon down beside the bowl, and held Hammer’s eye. He barely blinked. For a moment the room was still, and then Koba spoke.

  “Two million dollars. One now, one when finished. For your friend.”

  He reached inside a trouser pocket. Hammer’s finger tensed around the trigger, but all Koba pulled out was a phone. He pressed some keys, and put it on the table. From it came a voice that Hammer knew, thin and faint.

  “This is Ben Webster. I think this is Wednesday, the third of October. It snowed last night. I’m being held by three men. They’ve taken me . . .”

  The recording stopped.

  “Two million dollars,” said Koba.

  Hammer released his grip.

  “I don’t have two million dollars.”

  Koba scraped his spoon round the bowl for the last of the soup.

  “Yes,” he said, without looking up. “You have. Four million in Fidelity, in New York. In London, three million and half pounds with Barclays, two million with Moore Capital. You have house in London, house in New York. There is more.” He looked up. “You have no family, Isaac. How much is life of friend to you?”

  Hammer held the gun as firmly as he could while his thoughts reeled. Who was this man?

  “One million.”

  “Two. This is not meat market.”

  “What’s your boss going to say about this?”

  “I am boss,” said Koba.

  THIRTEEN

  Webster was in Russia. Or so Koba said—there was no real reason to trust him one way or the other. The whole deal rested squarely on his greed.

  That night they would meet on the path to the east of the village, at the fork that led to the fortress. There, at the edge of the woods, Hammer would find a shrine built of rocks and Koba waiting for him. Both men would come alone.

  Before he left, Koba told them little. The rendezvous; three account numbers, all in Russia; that he would check shortly that the first part of the payment had been made, and only then radio his men with his instructions; that the money was for Webster, and nothing else. Despite Hammer’s pressing, he would reveal nothing about the job he had been doing.

  Then he went, driving off, no one knew where.

  For an hour, Hammer was busy. He drove Irodi’s car until he picked up a signal, and stopped to make two calls. To his bank, who needed some persuading that the transaction was genuine, and to Elsa, to tell her that he had heard her husband’s voice and was going to see him that evening, all being well. The last went to voice mail. He tried hard not to make promises. For a moment he imagined how distant she must feel, and how scared, and compared it with his own sense of powerlessness.

  He returned resolute. This would not go wrong.

  Then came the wait. They would leave at seven, and it was now only two. For Hammer, inactivity was a foreign state, especially when he might have been doing so many things. Follow Koba, for instance; find a radio and monitor his communications with his men; start checking on those accounts. None was sensible. Hammer might not like not knowing, but here knowledge wouldn’t help. The deal was delicate, but balanced. Nothing could be allowed to upset it.

  He found his new friends finishing lunch, and with some aversion but greater appetite accepted the last bowl of Koba’s soup. Through Natela, he thanked his hosts for their hospitality, which had gone far beyond their duty, and promised that he would find some way to show his gratitude before the affair was done. Vano heard his speech with his usual gravity, and then declared that it was no burden to protect a good man against thieves, and that they expected no reward for it. The honest people of the world must defend each other, and it had always been this way.

  Then Natela and Hammer were alone. For a while they talked, but there seemed an unstated understanding between them that to talk about the exchange would be bad luck, and about anything else impossible, so at Hammer’s suggestion, they agreed to walk, for the air and for their sanity.

  The sun shone full now, and the dull, close world of the morning was transformed into glistening monochrome. A thin crust was forming on the snow, and wherever they looked, they had to squint against the light. The little village of Diklo seemed pristine and tiny among the white slopes and the black forests and the great peaks that circled them all.

  “Chances are I won’t see this place again,” said Hammer.

  “You sound sad.”

  “Part of me could stay here,” he said, and wondered if that were really true, and how much of it had to do with the company he had been keeping.

  They walked up the main street, if you could call it that, past the houses all closed for the winter, past the one other house still occupied and out along the path that led to the fortress, stopping to read the sign that commemorated the siege. “Sixteen fearless heroes live on in vivid memories to this day,” it read, and Hammer wondered how long his own shabby episode might be remembered.

  After a while they began to talk, about all manner of things. The lives led by these people, and their fading culture. The relationship between the mountain Georgians and their neighbors on the plain. How precious wilderness was, and how vulnerable. Natela’s children, and their father’s death. London, and Hammer’s solitary life there. Soon they were out of sight of the village, and alone in the hills. They seemed to slip briefly out of time, until Hammer was barely conscious of what was set to happen that night, somewhere further along that same path.

  Rounding a corner, they saw three dogs on a ledge of land across a shallow gorge, just below the trail, all lying in the snow, apparently asleep. They were all too familiar to Hammer. He touched Natela on the arm.

  “We should go back.”

  She looked at her watch. “We have long time.”

  Hammer pointed to the dogs, talking quietly. “We don’t want to disturb them.”

  “You are scared? Of dogs?”

  “Not even Irodi messes with these dogs. They’re sheepdogs. I guess they’re bred to fight.”

  “If you want. They look OK.”

  “More excitement I don’t need. Really.”

  Natela shrugged. Across the way, one of the dogs had woken and was lazily lifting its head. It barked, once, got to its feet, and started barking furiously, an almighty noise in the silence. Its two friends roused themselves and joined in.

  “OK,” said Natela, more concerned now, but as they turned Hammer heard a scrambling in the snow above them, and then another burst of noise. A fourth dog had been waiting on the slope above and now stopped on the path, immense, its mouth wide, blocking their way back. It was wilder than the others; its fur was matted with mud, its eyes enraged. Hammer pulled Natela back so that she was standing behind him.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t run.”

  Squatting down, he ran a hand under the snow in search of a rock. Nothing but stones, and none bigger than the end of his thumb. He considered his options. They could walk away, but even if the dog accepted their retreat they would still have to negotiate its friends, who were now making their way up the shallow bank to the path. They could try to climb over this little spur and go around the dog, but that was its territory, and perhaps the worst place they could go. Or they could stand still until it got bored or decided to act.

  Oh God, thought Hammer, as he realized
what he had to do.

  “If it attacks me,” he said, over his shoulder, “get out of here.” He pointed up the slope. “Fast as you can.”

  The dog was close, and he dared not advance too far. With his hand behind him he motioned to Natela to back up, and moved forward, setting his foot slowly onto the snow. He had never been so conscious of a single step. The dog’s barking slowed. He watched it carefully, avoiding its eye, ready for the sign of a muscle flexing, of the first hint of a spring. A second step gently down, and a third.

  Crouching, he stretched a hand out onto the ground, lowered himself as steadily as he could until he was on his side, and relaxed onto his back. How blue the sky was, and not a cloud in it. He twisted his head a little to see Natela, who was standing utterly still. A breeze he hadn’t known was there brushed his face, and cold bit the back of his head.

  The dog was quiet now but he heard its breath, a lazy panting, and its paws on the snow. He kept his eyes open. A foot away from him it stopped, so that he could see the underside of its snout and the U-shaped bone of its jaw and the two long teeth that poked sharply out of its wet mouth; stopped and paused, looking about it at Natela and the dogs across the gorge. Dipping its head to Hammer’s waist, it sniffed, rubbing its nose against his jacket. Inside, his whole body was rigid, like a man long dead, but his heart beat wildly against his ribs. The dog sniffed his belly, and his chest, and then it was nuzzling his neck, its nose cold on his exposed skin, its breath a warm fug that stank of old meat, warm drool swinging from its muzzle. He closed his eyes, so that all he knew was the panting and its wet touch. The dog spent so long at his throat that Hammer, beyond thought, found himself imagining what was inside: the veins, the larynx, the gullet, all the soft flesh. All waiting, still, while every instinct told him to bolt.

  But the dog was done. With a low grumble it lifted its head and in one movement turned away down the bank toward its friends. Before he opened his eyes Hammer felt the sky lighten and the air clear, and a strange elation spread through him that was not all relief. He had submitted, and yet he had won.