“They speak English?”
The priest shook his head. Behind him Koba was scrambling down the last of the bank.
“Too bad. I don’t suppose you want to introduce us? I’d make a big contribution to your church.” The priest smiled. “I’m serious.”
“I will be there later. After lunch. You can say that I sent you.”
“Thank you, Father. That’s kind. Listen.” Koba would soon be with them. “One last thing. Do you happen to know where they found that truck? The one that was involved in the bomb in Gori?”
The priest looked at him with a new kind of concern.
“My friend’s a journalist. I think he was chasing a story.”
“Then your friend was chasing trouble.” Before, the priest had been welcoming, in an august, almost ceremonial way; now he was wary. He looked at Hammer as if evaluating a changed proposition. “Are you a journalist also?”
“Not anymore.”
“These people are innocent. The world doesn’t come here. They don’t need stories.”
“No story, Father. I just want to find my friend and go. Quietly as I can.”
The priest breathed out slowly, with the air of a man considering an offer he doesn’t trust, and for a moment kept his eyes steadily on Hammer’s.
“Are you here to make trouble, Mr. Hammer?”
“I think it may be here already.”
“What happened to your nose?”
Hammer brought his hand up to the plaster that now ran across its bridge. It no longer needed a bandage.
“This? I wandered into a riot. It wasn’t my idea.”
The priest didn’t smile, but he seemed to finish his appraisal.
“You seem a good man.”
He did. He seemed it. But a good man would be here to rescue Ben, not to save himself by dragging him back home. A good man would do it without thought of being proved right.
“I don’t feel like one, Father.”
“No good man does.”
Koba was by them now. He stopped with his legs planted and his arms crossed, blankly eyeing the priest, who nodded to both men and then touched Hammer on the arm.
“Do not make trouble for my friends.”
And with a final look into Hammer’s eyes he walked away.
FIVE
To Diklo, at the end of the road. Two miles short of Russia. For a moment, Hammer saw himself as a pinprick on the globe, slowly heading for its remotest corner, beyond it miles of mountains and thousands of miles of steppe and desert, with only the Caspian and a few lonely, dusty cities for relief. As if to emphasize the point, a flatbed truck piled high with assorted possessions—suitcases, a mattress, two wooden chairs tied back-to-back—passed them on its way out.
Here the landscape flattened out, but ahead the mountains seemed to grow in number and in size. Hammer wondered whether this was a psychological effect, and whether Ben had had the chance to register it, too. Without doubt it was wilder here. On the way, Koba had to stop to let a herd of horses cross in front of them, and Hammer could see hawks, or what looked like hawks, circling in the sky above. By now the dark forests that edged closer to the road were surely full of wolves, and bears, and heaven knew what. As they arrived at the edge of the village a huge white dog barked madly at them from its wooden pen.
The priest was right. The first person that Koba asked was able to direct them to Vano’s house, which was notably more substantial than its neighbors. There was an air of tidiness and activity and general upkeep that was missing elsewhere: chickens strutted about, herbs and flowers hung drying, pans and pails sat ready for fresh milk, firewood lay stacked and dry.
Koba knocked on the door, waited a while, knocked hard again, and, after another half a minute, just as they were turning away, it opened. This was Vano. There was no doubt even before he confirmed it. Like the landscape in which he lived, he gave the impression of wildness more or less tamed, and of peace won only with great vigilance. He was utterly calm and utterly watchful at once. Though he might have been ten years out, Hammer put his age at sixty: there were decades of healthy work in that face, but whether they had aged it or kept it young was hard to say. Regardless, it was handsome, and narrow, in a way that wasn’t like other Georgians, and his skin was the color of oiled oak, made deeper by the white of his hair—all of which, Hammer noted with a certain envy, he still had. He wore an old black anorak and black trousers and a cap pushed up at the peak.
Hammer talked and Koba translated while Vano listened without saying a word. When they were done, he moved inside the house and they followed, Koba giving Hammer a glance that said these mountain people are crazy. Hammer wasn’t so sure.
The back of the house opened into a neat yard where more chickens roamed and muslin bags full of curds dripped into buckets. Vano gestured for them to sit at a table in the middle of a large, low room whose walls were lined with dark wood, and finally, when they were all seated, he spoke in short, contained sentences. Koba fished a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
“He no see your friend. Irodi, his son, he can help.”
Hammer looked at Vano and nodded his thanks.
“Tell him that would be great. I’ll pay him well. Ask him if there’s anywhere for me to stay.”
There was; twenty dollars a night. They would feed him. But there was room only for one. Vano glanced at Koba with a fixed sternness as he said it, and Hammer heard him with a sort of relief.
“OK,” he said, glancing at Koba. “We’ll sort something out. When can we start?”
His son would be back at lunchtime.
Hammer checked his watch. It was eleven. He thanked Vano and asked Koba if he would talk to him outside. Head hung, he came, like a dog in disgrace, cigarette in hand.
“Koba,” said Hammer, his expression as sincere as he could make it, “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Really. You’ve been great.”
“I find different place. To stay.”
“You should get down the mountain, before the snow. To your wife. It’s not fair to keep you here.”
“How you get out?”
“Push comes to shove I’ll get a helicopter.”
Koba shook his head. “No. Not right, leave you with this idiots. I stay. I cook.”
Hammer took his wallet from his back pocket. “I’m going to pay you through Thursday. We had an agreement for that. You take the food.”
“Who say to you what they say, in English?”
“The priest.”
“The priest leave.”
“Not straightaway.”
Koba took his cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt and lit one.
“Look,” said Hammer. “I feel bad about this. Probably this whole trip is for nothing, and I don’t want to risk you and your car getting stuck up here because of my wild-goose chase.” Koba frowned at the phrase. “Mrs. Koba would never forgive me. Also, anything happens here I’m going to need someone in Tbilisi to help. OK? That’s you. I don’t have anyone else.”
Koba nodded and Hammer, thinking he was about to relent, felt an unacknowledged weight lift.
“I stay. I find room. Is not safe for you, with this people. Quiet, yes. Safe, no.”
Koba stubbed his cigarette out on the ground with a determined finality, and clasped Hammer by the shoulder.
“Money later. These people, they look simple. But they are not.”
• • •
On his way to find lodgings Koba dropped Hammer at the only spot with a signal anywhere nearby, halfway along the road back to Shenako, and with a great resolve told Isaac that he would see him later, for sure. By wandering around with his arm stretched up Hammer eventually found a little patch where his phone worked long enough to show him there was no word. He tried Natela’s number but the line was dead. With his thoughts half in the city
and half on his afternoon’s work—half desperate, half hopeful—he walked back to his new hosts.
While he waited for Irodi he watched his mother make lunch and busy herself in the kitchen, and as he did so he slowly became enchanted by the spareness of the house and the sureness of her touch around it. Eka seemed sanctified, somehow, whether by the air or the work he couldn’t say, and when she looked up occasionally to smile at him he felt his heart lighten, as if it had received a blessing. This lifted him, but there was regret in it, too. How natural were her routines, and how artificial his own. Everything he had ever accomplished had been communication—finding stories, checking them, telling them. Words upon words, endlessly; here in the mountains, next to Eka’s quiet activity, they felt like not much more than noise.
They ate in silence together, or near silence; Hammer couldn’t prevent himself from thanking her, in Georgian, or telling her as best he could that the food was good. Her hair was thick and fair, her skin an even brown from the sun and the wind, and she served the food with rough, calloused hands. When Hammer was done she offered him chacha and he declined.
Irodi came shortly afterward and greeted the stranger in his house with a noncommittal nod that was again neither friendly nor unfriendly. Eka’s short explanation drew another nod as he sat down to eat. Like all the villagers Hammer had met he was dressed in well-worn Western clothes—a sweatshirt and baggy trousers—and throughout his lunch he kept an old white sun hat on his head. Under it were the sharp eyes of his father and the softer face of his mother and the golden brown skin of them both. There was no hurry about him. He ate and drank with appetite but no haste, and from time to time his eyes rested on Hammer as they might on a bird or a dog or some other beast under his charge: calmly, with the curiosity one creature might show another. Twenty-five, Hammer guessed, not much older, but despite the round face and the patchy stubble and the boyish clothes there was little of the boy left in him.
Hammer checked his impatience—here it would get him nowhere—until eventually the priest came, and the three men agreed to a plan. This afternoon Irodi would take Hammer around the eastern side of Tusheti. Where they saw people, Irodi would ask them if they had seen a foreigner who matched Webster’s description, or a car of the kind he had been using. Along the way they would stop at the place where the truck had been left by the bombers, a prospect that seemed to alarm Irodi much less than it did the priest, who argued with Irodi about it in Georgian but eventually held his hands up in concession. This would take all afternoon, probably longer. The light would fail before six.
Because it was detective work and not tourism, Hammer agreed to pay double Irodi’s usual rate. Irodi signaled their departure by simply getting up and walking outside, where he told Hammer to wait. Hammer looked to the priest for an explanation but received none, and for a while they stood by the house, warm in the sunshine, not saying anything.
“You are in good hands,” said the priest, after a time.
“I won’t abuse it, Father. Your trust.”
The priest looked up at the sun and then back along the road.
“Here is your friend.”
Hammer followed his gaze and saw the distinctive white shirt and heavy urban tread of Koba just rounding a house at the end of the village. Twenty yards off, he raised his hand and bellowed a greeting.
“Isaac! I find room. In Shenako. Old man, he has place, not so good, but one night, two nights, is OK.”
He was pleased with himself, but not happy. With a cigarette burning in his fingers and his arms crossed he came and stood next to the priest, reasserting his primacy.
“So. Now we look.”
Irodi and Koba would not get on well. That was clear, and would make at best for a tedious afternoon and at worst a pointless one. What was less straightforward was why Koba insisted on staying. The more time Hammer spent with him, the less he knew this man.
“That’s great, Koba. Now we look.” Hammer managed a stiff smile, failing to come up with an idea that might get rid of him.
At that moment Irodi returned, sitting on a horse and leading another by a rope. Both were chestnuts and compact, with slightly bandy legs that seemed shaped by the mountain slopes, and Irodi rode his slightly askew in the saddle, like a cap set at a jaunty angle. He had an old rifle slung across his back. Laughing at the alarm he saw in Hammer’s face, he said something to the priest and jumped down.
“He says it is the only way. By car you will not see anything. He needs to look.”
Hammer’s first thought was that it would take weeks to cover this vast landscape on these two. Neither looked quick.
“Really?”
“He knows this country,” said the priest.
Koba said something in Georgian, in the blunt tone he used to address his countrymen, and for a minute he and Irodi argued.
“There are only two horses,” said the priest to Hammer while they went at it.
“Thank heaven for that.”
Koba, realizing that his opponent was at least as stubborn as he was, with great reluctance was backing down.
“I no ride horse,” he said, drawing firmly on his cigarette. “Dangerous. You go on this, Isaac?”
Hammer tried to look resolute and said yes, he was.
“Be careful. Cannot know what horse will do. Has own mind. Like these people.”
“I’ll be careful. What I need you to do is go back to Omalo, and then take the road west from there. In case Ben went that way. Can you do that for me? Ask people, sniff around.”
Koba let his cigarette drop to the ground and rubbed his mustache.
“It would be very helpful to me,” said Hammer.
With a slow, churlish nod Koba agreed, and turned away.
• • •
Hammer hadn’t ridden for twenty years, and then only once, but without allowing himself to voice his countless objections he stepped forward, took the reins of the horse, put his foot in the stirrup as Irodi showed him, and hoisted himself into the saddle. Irodi made sure he was holding the reins properly and then gave Hammer his briefing: kick the heels to go, hold the reins firmly but not tight, pull them back to slow and stop.
“He says you will be fine,” said the priest, smiling at Hammer’s attempts to settle. “She is called Shakari. There are two rules. Be firm with her . . . And if you see dogs, stop.”
“What’s wrong with the dogs?”
“They are sheepdogs. Bred to kill wolves. Or men who come to steal.”
Before getting back onto his horse Irodi collected four good stones, each the size of a baseball, and put them in his pockets.
“For the dogs,” said the priest.
Hammer patted his coat. “What if you don’t have stones?”
“Then you lie down and submit. Show you are not a threat.”
Hammer raised an eyebrow and waited for the priest to smile.
“You’re serious?”
“Vano does this. I have seen him.”
“I like the stones better.”
The priest patted Shakari’s flank and reached up to shake Hammer’s hand.
“Thank you, Father. Will I see you again?”
“Eka has asked me to eat this evening. The last time before the winter. I will bless the house.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
“Do you think your friend will attend?”
Hammer smiled. “I’ll think of something. Don’t worry.”
SIX
All Hammer could remember from his first ride—on a ranch in Texas, covering a story about migrants—was that it was important that the horse knew who was in charge. Now, as then, it was all too clearly the horse.
They set off at a slow walk, back the way Hammer had come that morning. In the fields outside the village they met the dog that had barked at them earlier, a grand creature with thick fur and a
wolf’s face that stood and watched them approach like a king suffering travelers to enter his kingdom. When they were close, Irodi dismounted, holding up a hand to tell Hammer to stay where he was, and crouched down to pat its head and stroke the fur under its chin. Rather you than me, thought Hammer.
“Vano,” said Irodi, pointing. “Vano dzaghli.” Vano’s dog. Of course it was. They had the same bearing, the same stateliness.
Soon they left the road for a track that headed upward to their left through densely planted pines. Rolling in the saddle, Hammer did his best to keep his balance correct but found himself always slightly out of kilter on one side or the other, something that seemed to annoy Shakari, who from time to time would snort and come to a stop. Irodi, who was soon a good fifty yards ahead, continued to ride at a casual lean without his horse making any complaint.
They crested a hill, and came out into the light again in a gentle valley where the grass was thick with wildflowers. The track had run out, and Shakari made her own mind up about which route to take, sometimes more or less following Irodi and sometimes going entirely her own way. The first time this happened, Hammer, as he failed to bring her back in line, imagined with a sense of powerlessness and growing alarm a night spent lost in the mountains with only this obstinate creature for company. But he soon realized that she wasn’t wayward but merely independent: if she was going to suffer a fool on her back she was going to do so on her own terms. Within a little while they were getting on pretty well, in a state of mutual understanding if not respect. Talking to her seemed to help, so Hammer did.
Their way went slowly down, through meadows and birch, and after half an hour they came out at a crossroads of two rough tracks, one of which rose steeply into a dark pine wood. Irodi took this, and for once Shakari was happy simply to do the same. Tightly packed, their lower branches brittle and gray, the trees kept out all but a dim light, and the air between them was still and cool.
Irodi was going more slowly now and closely watching the ground. At a bend in the track he stopped, peered into the darkness to his right and then turned, slowly guiding his horse through the trees, which were set slightly further apart here and allowed a barely perceptible path between them, perhaps eight feet wide. Hammer crouched down to avoid the dry branches that began to scratch and pull at his head. Thirty yards away he could just make out a solid shape, and as they drew closer he saw that it was a truck, battered and olive green and looking like a relic of some long-forgotten war.
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