The Searcher

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  “You’re all right?” he said, as Natela reached down to help him up, her face pale but resolute. She looked down at her attacker with something like disgust.

  “Who is he?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The policeman had gone from the corner opposite, and was nowhere to be seen on the street. Hammer’s legs were shaking as he stood and he was breathing hard. Almost instinctively he touched her coat, expecting to find a wound there, but there was nothing, not even a mark on the fabric.

  “You’re OK.” His tone had changed from concern to a sort of wonder.

  “He did not touch me. You?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine. We should go.”

  Shaking her head, Natela gently raised his arm to inspect his wound. He hadn’t looked at it, but now he saw that blood was streaming down the sleeve, pooling at the bend of his elbow, some of it washing away in the rain.

  “It’s nothing. We have to get you somewhere safe,” he said.

  Where, he didn’t know. Maybe Koba knew somewhere. A cheap hotel, pay cash, somewhere they didn’t insist on passports.

  Hammer squatted down to look at the man in the white shirt. He wasn’t unconscious, but his head twitched from side to side erratically and his eyes saw nothing. From a few yards along the pavement Hammer picked up the knife. It was evidence, but he didn’t trust anyone to read it correctly.

  “We go to my brother. He is doctor, for your arm,” said Natela. Her face was pale and fixed.

  “That won’t be safe.”

  She shook her head with a weary frustration.

  “Where then? Where is safe now?”

  “Somewhere they don’t associate with either of us.”

  “Jesus. This mess.”

  From her bag Natela took her cigarettes and pinched one out of the soft pack. After some rummaging she found a lighter, lit the cigarette, and took a deep drag.

  “Can I have one, please?”

  Frowning, she held out the pack. “You smoke?”

  “I do now.”

  Pain had begun to spread out from his arm. He clicked the lighter, touched the flame to the cigarette, and inhaled, the smoke familiar and foreign, harsh and comforting at once. Suppressing a cough, he drew again. The comfort was in the companionship.

  “Karlo’s brother. He is not my friend but he is good man.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Last time we speak was five years. Last time Karlo speak was ten.”

  He had nothing better.

  “Let’s go.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  It took twenty minutes to walk to Luka Toreli’s and by the time they arrived Hammer was dizzy and nauseous. The cut wasn’t so bad—no blood vessels, just muscle an inch or two below his shoulder—but either the pain or the shock of it was making him weak.

  How conspicuous they were. Or how conspicuous he felt, with his bloody arm rigid at his side, and his mauve coat shining in the dull afternoon. If he had been careful about being followed before, now he was obsessed by the idea that they weren’t alone. Everyone behind them was a threat; everyone passing in the other direction would turn after them as soon as it was safe to do so. The streets were just a grid for the game to be played on, a place for them to be caught.

  But they made it, and even in his paranoid state he was almost certain they hadn’t been followed. Twice he made them turn abruptly, to Natela’s consternation, to expose anyone who might be there, and twice he found the street behind them empty. The rain had drenched the city into quiet—they saw no protesters, no police. But by the end, his uppermost thought, to protect Natela, had become laughable. She was the one who knew where they were going, and she was the one leading the way. She was now protecting him. This was wrong, because he had got her into this mess; but as they walked he reflected that the blame was not perhaps all his, and that without Karlo and his obsessions neither of them would be here. Or without Ben and his.

  Luka was half the girth of his brother and a quieter proposition altogether. Behind small metal-rimmed glasses his expression was wary but studious, and as he was introduced to Hammer at the door he looked him up and down as a doctor might an infectious patient—carefully, with an eye on what was to be done, but keeping his distance all the same. He was Hammer’s height, wiry, and had only a few sparse hairs neatly combed on the top of his head; if Hammer had a brother in Georgia it was this man, not Koba. He wore an old blue jumper with holes at the elbow and white hairs and dandruff on the shoulders. An academic, Hammer thought, or a librarian, or a registrar of some kind. Rather than shake Hammer’s hand he gave a single slow nod of his head.

  He showed more irritation than surprise at being disturbed. Natela talked for a minute, and when she was done Luka looked at her, unblinking, for what felt like a minute more. There seemed no animosity between them, only distance. Finally, with a small nod that signaled his thinking was done, he headed into his apartment and they followed.

  From the narrow hall he turned into a bare, functional kitchen, brightly lit by the two fluorescent lights that he now switched on. Formica counters and cupboards, a table with two wooden chairs, every surface clear and noticeably clean, a net curtain across the bottom half of the single narrow window. Natela raised an eyebrow at Hammer and gestured to him to sit, while Luka busied himself with supplies—from one cupboard a roll of bandage, a roll of tape, and some sort of ointment, from another a new dishcloth, from a drawer a pair of scissors. He placed them with slightly fussy care on the table.

  He said something short and curt to Natela and left the room.

  “Take off your coat,” said Natela. “And everything.”

  Two coats he was wearing—he had forgotten. Still dazed, he peeled them off one shoulder and Natela helped him with the other, and it was a relief to get rid of them. As he unbuttoned his shirt she went to the sink and ran the tap for a minute before wetting the cloth.

  “He OK?”

  “He does not like people. They are in his way. He writes. All the time he writes.”

  The last time Hammer had sat with his shirt off while someone cleaned a wound he was six years old and he’d fallen onto a rusted iron rod while playing on a building site with his friends. The scar was on his other arm, a little lower down. His mother had washed it and dressed it and put him to bed only to wake him an hour later and take him to the hospital for stitches. This was like her: independent but ultimately careful. Natela had a similar manner, gentle and stern at once, and it calmed him. He worked hard not to wince.

  “It hurts?”

  “You shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve had a shock. You need sweet tea.”

  “Why?” She was squatting by him, dabbing at the cut.

  “It’s what mothers give their children when they’ve been in an accident. It relaxes you.”

  Natela took the cloth away from Hammer’s arm and looked up at him.

  “I do not need tea.” She turned her head toward the door and shouted, “Luka!” and a string of Georgian words. His reply was gruff.

  Standing, she opened one cupboard, then another, and pulled from a third an old water bottle full of golden brown liquid. It looked like the bottle rolling around in Koba’s car. She found two odd glasses, and poured a couple of inches into each.

  “Drink,” she told him, handing him one. “Like this.”

  Throwing back her head she downed it all, shuddered, set the glass on the table, and watched Hammer, who didn’t need prompting to do the same. He flinched at the fire of it. It was like a blow to the back of the throat.

  “Chacha,” said Natela. “Brandy. His father makes it. He has vines.”

  “Some vines,” said Hammer, feeling the heat spread through him, almost inch by inch. Better than Mirtazapine, no question. Natela resumed her work. That was the first thought he’d given to his medication all day.

  “Wh
at does he write, Karlo’s brother?”

  “Poems. He is poet.”

  “Any good?”

  “No one knows. He does not show.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “He is taxi driver, at night. In day he writes. For thirty years, but no one sees.”

  “You sure they were brothers?”

  Natela gave him a weary look. “Same here.” She tapped her temple three times. “Do what they like.”

  It wasn’t a subject he should have brought up, and he changed it.

  “You OK?”

  “I am fine.” She went to the sink, washed out the cloth, wrung it dry, and went over the wound one last time. It was deep but narrow. With a good bandage it wouldn’t need stitches.

  “Really? That kind of thing’s normal in Georgia? You’re used to it?”

  Ignoring him, concentrating on the job, she smeared pink ointment from the tube onto Hammer’s arm.

  “Natela, that guy was going to kill you. And he wasn’t some random lunatic. He wanted you.”

  “Bullshit. He never saw me before.”

  “Exactly. You want someone whacked, the easiest way is find a drunk who can just about stand up and pay him a couple hundred bucks. There’s no comeback.”

  She cut off a length of bandage from the roll “You live in dream world.”

  “I wish I did. Where were you going? You often go that way?”

  “To my brother. His family. Today, he cooks, people come.”

  Hammer didn’t say anything, waiting for her to look up. When she did, her eyes had relented, as if finally acknowledging something she’d been trying hard to ignore.

  “I know nothing. Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They think you do.”

  Shaking her head with a sort of frustrated fury, she finished taping the bandage, pressed the edges in place more firmly than she needed to, and then stood abruptly to pour herself another glass of chacha. Hammer put his shirt back on and with clumsy fingers did up the buttons. His arm was stiffening up and he felt cold.

  She poured the chacha and drank it down in one swig without so much as a shiver. She seemed to glow when she was done.

  “You want?” she said, once she had drunk it down. He didn’t. “Cigarette. I need cigarette.”

  “Natela, would you sit? Please. Sit down.”

  When she had the cigarette lit she drew angrily on it, pacing the tiny room. She opened the window and fanned smoke toward it, with little effect.

  “You. You bring this here.”

  “Maybe. But I think it was Ben.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He came to your apartment, and they saw him is my guess. They think he knows something, and now maybe you do, too.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “I think you did.”

  With her free hand Natela rubbed one eye, wrinkling her forehead, as if refusing to wake from a heavy sleep. Hammer watched her and waited, knowing he had said enough.

  “He came to me,” she said at last, flicking ash out of the window and looking down into the street. “Day after funeral.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He said someone killed Karlo. That he didn’t kill himself.” She paused. “He said Karlo had asked him a question. A week before he died. It was important.”

  “What was the question?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  She looked right at him, a reproach. “I do not want to know.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  Holding his eye, stubbornly holding on, she took another drag. Each question was a new opportunity to decide she’d had enough. “If I knew Karlo’s work. If he said something to me.”

  “Did he?”

  She gave him a look that suggested he couldn’t possibly be serious.

  “Karlo called me for the children. Or for money. That is all. Sometimes to say he was better.” Crossing to the sink, she took a plate from the drainer and tapped ash onto it. “He never was.”

  Hammer waited a decent interval before he spoke again.

  “Was that all?”

  Natela shrugged. “Yes, I think. I told him nothing.”

  “You mean there was something you didn’t tell him.”

  Natela’s eyes held his for a moment, then resumed their vigil beyond the window.

  “Karlo came to my apartment, first time in many months, the day before he died. He was crazy-crazy. Like there was a devil in him.”

  “What kind of crazy?”

  “Like a boy before his birthday. His big story, it had been in paper, but he told me it was wrong, that the new story was bigger, more impossible. He told me he would be famous all through world.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “No. I did not ask. I did not want. He said he would write, then go away. London, somewhere.”

  “Why go away?”

  “Because it was too dangerous here.”

  It took effort for her to say it in a level voice, and Hammer stopped pressing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK. You did not kill him.”

  No. He hadn’t. It wasn’t in his nature to do things. Other men did them, and he arrived later to investigate what they had done. He hadn’t thought of himself in these terms before, but now he doubted that he had earned the right to cause a woman like this anguish. While she was dressing his wound, he was scratching away at a scar that had barely formed over her own, and somehow his having so little to do with any of it made it worse.

  Enough scratching. Enough questions. In any case, he believed her—she may not be giving him much but it was more than she’d given Ben. It was four now. Soon he would have to leave for his showdown with the motherfuckers, but no part of him wanted to leave.

  Hang the motherfuckers. Hang his clients and their paltry secrets. Hang the bankers and the lawyers and the fund managers and the chief executives, all marching with such certainty to an end they couldn’t see. What did Ben call it? The Project. The unexamined faith that all this work would somehow save the world—that money would prevail. For years he had marched with them, but in this moment he felt himself pulling up and watching them march on. A deserter discovering his conscience—or perhaps his consciousness. Waking up to the plain truth that there was more for him in this blank little room than in all the offices in the world.

  Hang the march.

  The mood had changed. Natela seemed to sense his unwillingness to go on. She stubbed her cigarette out on the plate, and Hammer found himself amused by the thought of Luka’s reaction when he saw it.

  She pulled the other chair out from under the table and sat down. There was a new connection in her eyes.

  “Your friend. Who is he?”

  “We worked together for years.”

  “He must be good friend.”

  “He was.”

  If she noticed his evasion she didn’t show it.

  “You are not like him. I know him. He is like Karlo.”

  “He’s a good man. And a fool, like many good men.”

  “You are fool maybe, to follow him.”

  “He drives me nuts. But somehow that’s the point.”

  “Sounds like son,” said Natela. “Or husband. You want more chacha?”

  • • •

  Natela topped off their glasses. The little room had grown darker and thunder rolled around them. He should have been keeping a straight head but all that nonsense seemed so distant. And in any event, how hard could it be? Hand some money over, tell the little bastards what was what and get out of there with his things. Compared to everything else it was simple, and when it was over he could turn his mind to the more difficult and important business of keeping Natela safe. After consulting her, he se
nt a text to Koba telling him to be waiting outside a pharmacy four streets away in half an hour.

  They sipped their drinks now, in silence. Natela lit another cigarette and as an afterthought offered him one. There was no reason not to. Natela got up to shut the door, as far as he could tell to prevent the smoke from reaching Luka, though it was too late for that.

  “Why do you come here?” she said at last, watching his slightly awkward handling of the cigarette. She was a natural; he felt like a teenager trying to look as if he’d been smoking his whole life.

  “To ask you about Ben.”

  “No, no. To Georgia.”

  “To find my friend.”

  “This is not whole reason. Why must you find him?”

  It was like being with Elsa. No secrets. Only Natela’s bedside manner was a deal more brusque.

  “I’ve been asking myself that.”

  She frowned, not understanding, and Hammer sighed. He didn’t want to explain himself—not, as he might have told himself once, because it was complicated and hard to translate into words she would know, but because he wasn’t proud of what he was doing. That was another difference between the two women. With Elsa, he wouldn’t have felt that.

  “I came because something he did got me into trouble and I need him to get me out.”

  “You look like this is bad.”

  “There’s not a lot of glory in it.”

  “I know this people. They make big explosion,” she threw her hands out, “you get hit. But you feel like mess is your mess. Why do you feel bad?”

  “Because I think his trouble may be a whole lot worse than mine. And every night I call his wife and that puts it in perspective.”

  Natela didn’t know the word, and gave a short shake of her head to say as much.

  “I’m scared she’s not going to see him again.”

  Natela nodded, and Hammer knew he didn’t have to say more. When she understood, she understood.