The Searcher (25 page)

“You take me home? Where is home? Here with your Georgian woman? Maybe I stay with her.”

Hammer closed his eyes for a moment, fought with some effort to control his anger, and put his hand on Koba's shoulder, solid and hot under his white shirt.

“You're leaving.”

“Ya, to my bed, with motherfucker sheep.” He looked down drunkenly at Hammer's hand, slow to register it.

“No one asked you to stay, Koba.”

With lazy, threatening eyes Koba leered up at him, stood with surprising deftness, and said something in Georgian as a parting shot to the table. Even before he had finished, Irodi was on his feet, ready to finally challenge
him; but Vano barked a reprimand at him, and with great reluctance he sat again, never for a moment taking his eyes off Koba, who, having said his piece, raised a dismissive hand and with a stagger made for the door. Halfway there he checked himself and turned to Hammer.

“This people took your friend. Ya. This is what happened. I stay, make you safe but you don't want. OK. OK.”

He turned again, and with his heavy tread disappeared into the blackness of the passage. Hammer heard the sound of the front door opening, and then Koba's voice before he slammed it shut.

“You love mountains, but this mountains kill. Kill your friend. Kill you, Isaac.”

T
he next morning, Hammer was full of apology, and his head full of jagged stones. He woke with the first light, which came unchecked through the thin curtains of his little room, and his first thoughts were a mortified recollection, one by one, of the words and events of the night before. God, it was bright. And cold on his face. His brain, shrunken and rattling about, cried out for water, and for air, and for the chance to say sorry to Eka for letting that ogre into her home. So with resolution, and some pain, he got up.

Eka was already downstairs, and though she didn't understand a word of his short speech, seemed to know precisely what he meant. Smiling in a slightly harassed way, she told him, as far as he could tell, not to worry about it in the least, and carried on her work with a concentration that belied the amount Hammer had seen her drink in that same room not eight hours earlier. She was busy with something particular, Hammer sensed, and she brought him tea and bread and cheese with a distracted air. As he sat down, wanting very much not to eat, he finally looked out of the little windows and saw what might account for it.

In the night, some time after his last cigarette with Natela, it had begun to snow. Real snow, which now lay four inches thick on the corrugated iron roofs and had already been trodden into slush in the yard outside. Two chickens strutted about in it, unconcerned.

The world was changed, as it always was when it snowed, but here the change was practical, and complete. The road would be closed. The helicopter had gone, and might not be persuaded to come back. Koba would not be able to leave. Worst of all, Ben's trail would be covered. The one thread that
might have led to him had surely just been cut, even if Irodi, whose priorities were presumably now rather different, were still able to help. Mortification about the previous night gave way to a frustrated imagining of the day ahead. He drank his tea and, because it was necessary, ate two slices of the dark bread.

Plates and bowls and glasses from the night before were draining beside the sink, but three plates and mugs that had not yet been washed up told Hammer that Vano and Irodi were already out and working. He knew nothing of their lives, but this must throw out all their plans, too. Perhaps he could help them, in order to give Irodi the chance to help him. Perhaps, crude though it was, he could simply pay him more money. Maybe he still needed Koba.

No. That was out. An easy decision, which was just as well, because he was tired of trying to decide what Koba was. Regardless of whether he could be trusted, there was now good reason to have had enough of him. Let him find his own way down to the plain. It was over, or would be once he had been paid, and with a moment's irritation Hammer realized that meant seeing the bastard once more. If he had made it back to his room, that is, and hadn't frozen to death on the road.

While Hammer was calculating, or failing to calculate, Natela came down the stairs behind him, and so immersed was he that he only noticed her when he felt her hand on his back. She wore no makeup, and though her face was tired some of the strain had gone from it. She was wearing jeans and sneakers and a soft red sweater.

“Now we have to stay,” she said as he stood.

“I guess so.” He smiled. “How's your head?”

“Better than yours, I think.”

“You got that right.”

He pulled out a chair for her and went to pour her tea from the pot, raising a hand to Eka to let her know that it was fine, he could do this himself. She and Natela exchanged greetings.

“I need to smoke,” said Natela.

“Are you kidding? You just got up.”

“Exactly.”

Hammer laughed. “OK. You want company?”

Natela didn't understand.

“Shall I come with you?”

She nodded, and he went to get their coats.

Outside, all the color of Tusheti had become the flat brilliance of snow and the wet gray of damp wood. Fresh footprints neatly marked the path between the houses of Diklo, beyond them the pine forests were black touched with white and the whole scene was softened by the fat flakes that still fell. To the east, the mountains of Russia were lost behind settled clouds.

Natela lit her cigarette and pulled her coat tightly about her.

“Where is your driver?” she said.

“Up here somewhere, I guess. Unless he drove off the mountain last night.”

“I am sorry.”

“What for?”

“Some Georgians are like him. Angry. They think always about what they do not have. What they have not done.”

“Not just Georgians.”

For a moment he watched her smoke, and the snowflakes lighting on her hair.

“What did he say, anyway? Just before he left.”

Natela shook her head, her eyebrows raised.

“He said that the Tusheti people will finish what Shamil started.”

Hammer didn't understand.

“They will stop being. He said, in twenty years, only thing here is dead sheep.”

Hammer took a deep breath in the hope that it would clear his head. Around him the houses looked cold and hollow, and half of them were broken. Smoke came only from Eka's chimney and one other. Maybe Koba wasn't a thug but a seer, his blunt truths unpopular but correct.

“He's not very charming, is he?”

“Where did you find him?” said Natela.

“My hotel.” Natela raised an eyebrow. “I know, I've wondered myself.”

“Did they offer him?”

“No. I asked them to find me a driver, and he was the only one. When I first arrived, there was another guy but then there was the riot,” he touched his nose, where the plaster was beginning to feel a little loose, “and he couldn't do it, so they got me this one.”

Natela just looked at him.

“I didn't have much choice. And for the first day, to Batumi, he was fine. A little hungry, but fine. I didn't mind who knew what I was up to at that point, and in the meantime I kept an eye on him. He didn't do anything strange. Really. Just kept wanting to eat and show me the sights. Even, he even . . . it's hard to explain but he did things that you wouldn't do if you were spying on someone. Not unless you were an idiot.” He paused. “He could be an idiot, he could be something worse. But whatever he is, he's not a rich guy, and if he's bad, he's working for someone else. I'm going to find out who.”

Natela raised her eyebrow again and flicked the end of her cigarette into the snow.

“He is not idiot,” she said, and went back inside.

 • • • 

W
hen Irodi returned, not long afterward, he dusted the snow off his jacket, greeted everyone with his usual bow, and asked Hammer if he was ready to get going. As far as he was concerned there was no change. He had been helping his father get some of the sheep under shelter, but most of them were too far away to move now, so until the weather cleared, as it surely would, there wasn't very much to be done.

Relieved, and eager, Hammer found his coat and passed Natela hers, but Irodi stopped them and explained that they would be on horseback again today. Horses were better, especially in the snow—they could go everywhere, and 4 x 4s only some places. He could saddle up another if Natela wished, or she could stay with Eka and Vano, who would be back shortly and for most of the day. Natela was no rider, and in any case they wouldn't be long: they would follow the lead to the abandoned 4 x 4, and be back within two hours.

“I thought you only had two horses,” said Hammer, and as Natela translated Irodi grinned.

Shakari was more subdued today. For half an hour they trotted quietly along, to the sound of hooves crunching on the snow, seeing no one and saying nothing. A seductive peace fell on Hammer. It occurred to him that, however briefly, his head was empty of all thoughts of London, and Hibbert, and Sander. Usually it swarmed with ideas and plans and risks to be avoided and conversations that needed to be had, but here there was nothing but air, and light, and the troubles of two people who were dear to him.

When they reached the right spot, Hammer sent a message to Koba telling him to come to Diklo at three o'clock that afternoon to get his money. And in Shenako they looked for him, asking at the house where he had stayed. But he had gone in the night, the old man said, and in words to Irodi and gestures to Hammer, let them know that he had already driven off, toward Omalo and the road down the mountain. Perhaps he had decided to brave it, unable to tolerate these people and their simple ways a moment longer, and for an instant Hammer had a vision of Koba's face fading on a rude cross by the wayside.

Past Shenako they rode for a mile or two along the road before taking a steep track on the right side of the valley that led to a wide stretch of pine woods on the crest of a hill. Here the terrain was less forgiving than any they had ridden yesterday, and Hammer, after his gentle warm-up, had to concentrate to stay in the saddle. If Shakari's hooves slipped a little on the snow, as they sometimes did, she would stop, give a snort of determination, and try again, until together they made steady progress up the slope.

Over his breathing and her panting he heard a noise that he struggled to place. He pulled back on the reins and for once Shakari responded immediately, as if she shared his curiosity. A rhythmic murmur, growing louder and more distinct. Fifty yards ahead Irodi had stopped and was scanning the sky to the south. Hammer couldn't tell where the sound was coming from but followed Irodi's gaze and after a moment the white nose of a helicopter emerged above woods on a hill to their right and flew above them, perhaps a hundred feet up. It was a small, commercial model, and as it passed them and banked away he thought he could see two men inside, one
at the controls and one alongside him. Hammer directed an exaggerated shrug at Irodi, who watched the thing until it was gone and then resumed his course without comment.

Hammer had begun to think that perhaps he had been left to get on with his search alone—that no one cared, finally, about a missing Englishman and the little American who had come to find him.

 • • • 

S
oon they were in among the pine trees again, where the ground leveled off and the floor was dry. If it was peaceful outside it was sepulchral in here.

Irodi went more slowly now, carefully inspecting the ground, Hammer as carefully watching him. This was the most elemental detective work of all; how much more delicate it was than surveillance, that bluntest of tools. He was envious of the skill. To track someone as they went along was one thing, to do it days afterward a more magical proposition by far. Nature recorded movement in ways that the city would not. Hammer had been doing the same thing, to an extent, but here the signs were not credit card bills but broken pine needles, not telephone records but marks left in the mud.

After four or five hundred yards, where the light had dimmed to a perpetual dusk, the track split, one fork going sharply left and the other curving round to the right. There was a tiny clearing here, a patch of brightness where some snow had fallen, and on the white ground, extending for just five yards but plain enough, what looked like three sets of tire marks. Irodi got down from his horse and squatted by them, carefully brushing the surface snow with the finger of his glove. Even to Hammer it was clear that not all three sets headed in the same direction, but in what sequence they had been made was far beyond his expertise.

Irodi spent a good minute examining the scene before standing up with great decisiveness and pointing further into the forest, down the right-hand fork. From here he walked, leading his horse by the reins and keeping it off the middle of the track, his eyes not leaving the ground until he stopped again, at a point where the shoulder was a little thicker and pushed its way
into the trees. There was no snow here, just needles and earth, and so little light that Hammer couldn't begin to see what had drawn Irodi's attention.

Without saying anything, or turning to look at him, Irodi beckoned him down from his horse and together they sat on their haunches in the gloom. Irodi pointed to two slight depressions at the edge of the track, and then to two more a few feet further in. Hammer ran his hand over one of them; it sank an inch or more into the dry ground. A car had stood here for some time. Around the depressions the pine needles seemed to have been recently disturbed.

Irodi said something in Georgian and pointed at the ground. Then he wandered a few yards further up the track, leaped into his saddle, turned around, and trotted off back down the track the way they had come. Hammer dusted his hands and with less grace did the same.

At the fork in the track Irodi hesitated for a moment, checking his calculations on the ground, then circled his horse and waited for Hammer to catch up. He held up one finger, and pointed into the forest; held up a second, brought his hand back, and pointed down the fork in the track where they had not yet been; then set off along it, at a decent walk. There was an alertness about him now. He had the scent.

One car had come in here. Two had come out, along this new path—to judge by the snow that had fallen in the clearing a few hours earlier, perhaps at first light. Hammer felt his heart quicken.

For perhaps a mile or more they went slowly so that every now and then Irodi might stop to check the trail, and then abruptly the trees stopped and the tire tracks ran clearly in the snow, staying close to the woods and taking them up onto higher ground.