The Searcher

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  “Do it,” said Hammer, raising the gun and pointing it at the guard’s face. With a final insolent look the guard squatted by Webster and began to pull halfheartedly at the knots that bound him. There were three, at his ankles, knees, and wrists, which were behind his back. Webster twisted his body into position, and Hammer crouched down out of the smoke.

  “Quickly.”

  From above him came a wrenching, tearing noise, and he looked up to see a length of beam, about two feet, snap free and fall, still burning, between him and the guard. In that instant of distraction the guard turned and struck out at Hammer’s hands, connecting hard and sending the gun rattling across the floor. Hammer lost his balance, and as he tried to right himself felt the guard’s fist like a metal weight drive into his cheek, cracking bone and throwing him onto his back, gasping at the toxic air, thoughts disordered, pain uppermost. The roof of the house was all flame. Somehow in his bewilderment he held on to one idea: that while he was struggling to compose himself the guard was scrambling across the floor toward the dropped gun. He didn’t see it but he knew it.

  His left hand reached almost automatically for his pocket and found there the strange, cold, heavy form of Vekua’s gun. He gripped the barrel, pulled it out, wrestled with it as it snagged against the loose material, then brought it out into the air, hearing the guard sliding for the gun just beyond him, perhaps three yards away, praying for time. His right hand took the pistol from his left, and raising his head he found his target; saw the guard spinning round with Koba’s gun in his hand; and fired.

  Two shots sounded, and for a second the two gunmen looked at each other, like duelists waiting to see a spreading patch of crimson on their white shirts, before the guard’s look turned inward, in pain and dismay, and with an odd steadiness he settled back onto the earth, feeling with an outstretched hand for balance. Hammer kept his head lifted and his gun up, watching.

  But the guard had nothing left. His last action was to hold a hand to his side, and there it rested, helpless against the flow of blood that pulsed through his fingers. The pulsing stopped. The man lay still. Smuts of dead plastic floated in the air.

  Hammer closed his eyes, dwelled briefly on the images he found there, and got to his feet. Without relish, he stood over this second body and made sure that it was dead. By the light of the burning roof, he inspected the still bulk of the guard. The bullet had gone right through him, and blood leaked from a small exit wound in his back.

  A corpse. It was a dishonest word—cold and final, but also remote. Distancing. These weren’t two corpses. They were men that had lived and now were dead.

  NINETEEN

  A deep quiet filled the place, like soft rain after a long peal of thunder. The tarpaulin had burned out, and beyond the wrinkled iron roof the night looked down. In the darkness, Hammer heard a muffled cry. Taking his flashlight and his knife he knelt down and with delicacy cut the cloth by Webster’s hair. It was indescribably comforting to see his face. An old bruise covered one eye.

  “You hurt?” said Hammer. He took his knife and began cutting at the three strands of rope.

  “Ike. What the fuck?”

  “Elsa called. I said I’d find you.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “My leg. Is it just you?”

  “Just me.”

  “Jesus, Ike.”

  Hammer had ripped Webster’s trousers and was inspecting his calf. A bullet had sliced through the muscle, cutting an inch into the flesh. It was pouring blood.

  “How did you . . .”

  “Wait,” said Hammer. Crossing to a window, he opened one of the guards’ rucksacks, rummaged about in it, and pulled out a T-shirt, which he proceeded to rip with the knife. Then he tore Webster’s trouser leg until the wound was exposed, and tied the strip of material tightly just below the knee.

  “Are you hungry?” From his pack, which, absurdly, had been on his back throughout, he started to retrieve the food that Eka had given him.

  “Ike. Jesus. How are you here?”

  Hammer closed his eyes and sighed. He couldn’t look his friend in the eye.

  “I can’t stop. Not yet.” He paused. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We need to get you fed.”

  “I’m not hungry. How’s Elsa?”

  “It’s one hell of a walk.”

  Hammer helped Webster to sit up.

  “Elsa’s fine. Fucking worried. Furious with you. So am I. Here.” Hammer passed him an apple. “You’ll need it.”

  Still he carried on. In the guard’s rucksack he found a pair of trousers and flapped them out to gage their size. There was a large bag of food in there, too, and he spread out its contents on the ground.

  “Pass me that bottle,” said Webster.

  Automatically, Hammer did.

  “Here. Have some,” said Webster. “It’s chacha.”

  “Theirs?”

  “You need it. You’re in shock.”

  Hammer shook his head. “It’s not good, in the cold.”

  “Would you stop? Just a slug.”

  He took the bottle, an old water bottle two-thirds full of amber liquid, and sniffed it. Medicine from his victims; but he drank it nevertheless, and felt part of himself return as the liquid burned his throat and spread warmth through his chest. For half a minute he sat, Webster watching him, as a tremendous tiredness came, a chemical dryness in his limbs, a tiredness of the last minutes and hours, weeks and years.

  “Better?”

  At first Hammer didn’t reply. In his mind a hundred images were present, held under tension, a crazed richness, as if his life had occupied a single moment in time. He felt them all, and focused on none: the good, the sweet, the humdrum, the shameful, all there, a dense compression of colors and shapes. He drank again and let them settle, his eyes closed. Elsa was there. And Sander. And Natela, willing him back.

  He opened his eyes and tried a smile.

  “Better.”

  “You will be,” said Webster.

  Hammer had no idea how that could be.

  • • •

  Webster began to eat with the cautious appetite of someone who had been half starved, and as Hammer watched him in the simple act he wondered how things had become so complicated between them. Everything that had pulled them apart seemed so distant—a London problem. A privileged problem. It was good to see him, in this desolate place.

  “You want some of this?” said Webster, as he began to revive.

  “Not with them here.”

  “Drink something, at least.”

  Hammer took the bottle of water from him and sat cross-legged on the ground. For a while neither spoke. Hammer crossed his arms tight against the cold.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” said Webster.

  “Or anyone.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean before. I thought we were through.”

  “So did I.”

  Webster looked gaunt, stretched around the cheeks and eyes. A blackening bruise spread into his hairline from his temple.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Really?”

  But Hammer knew Ben didn’t apologize unless he meant it.

  “I should have found a better way to leave.”

  “It had been brewing.”

  Webster acknowledged the point with a nod.

  “We have work to do when we get back,” said Hammer.

  Webster glanced up.

  “Do you never stop thinking about work?”

  “Just this last week.” He paused, uncertain whether to go on. “This can wait.”

  “What is it?”

  He weighed it up. It felt petty, and irrelevant.

  “We can talk later.”

  “Ike.�
�

  “It’s nothing. The police want to talk to us.”

  “I bet they do.”

  “Not here. In London.”

  “To me?”

  “So you didn’t know?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Two days before I came here fifteen police paid me a visit. All at once.”

  Webster was frowning, clearly confused.

  “What did they want?”

  “Every scrap of paper they could find on Pearl.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Every file. Your old computer.”

  “For what? What did we do?”

  “Hacking. Among other things.”

  Webster shook his head, indignant.

  “That’s bullshit. I never did a thing.”

  Hammer wiped dust off his trousers and made to stand.

  “We can talk about it later.”

  “Is that why you came here? To bring me back for trial?”

  “To begin with.”

  Webster put down the bread in his hand and didn’t respond.

  Let it out, thought Hammer. You didn’t come all this way to say nothing.

  “I came here in a rage. I thought it was going to kill the company.”

  “And that it was all down to me.”

  “They’d been talking to Saber. You’d signed off on their work. But that wasn’t what the rage was about.”

  “There was nothing dodgy.”

  “I came here to show you my way was better than your way. OK? Show you what happens when you charge off with an idea in your head and no thought for anyone else.”

  “Ike, really. Pearl was completely clean.”

  “It wasn’t about Pearl.”

  Webster had the sense to wait for the rest.

  “What you said, when you left, it cut me. You took the one thing I had and killed it.”

  “Jesus, Ike! I didn’t mean . . .”

  “If I hadn’t known it all already I wouldn’t have been upset. You were right. OK? That’s why it hurt.”

  “I hated myself for saying it.”

  “So did I.”

  Smiling a weak smile, Hammer looked around the room at the chaos and the dead man, then up through the ragged roof at the black clouded sky.

  “I needed to wake up,” he said. “I think this may have done it.”

  On Webster’s face now was a look only of concern.

  “Ike, you’re a good man. Think of everything you’ve done.”

  “I’d swap it all for something to care about.”

  Hammer stood, nodding, the words a refrain in his head.

  “All of it.”

  • • •

  Hammer made preparations for their return. He forced himself to eat some of the food, and wrapped what was left; emptied out both the men’s rucksacks and took from them a rope, two ice picks, and a headlamp, which he immediately strapped on. He looked for painkillers—for Ben, though his own cheek and nose could use some—but found none. Finally, with an abhorrence that he knew he had to overcome, he searched the dead men. It was gruesome, but something about its ruthless practicality helped. It might not dispel the horror, but it brought clarity to the moral case.

  Their effects were almost identical to Koba’s: phones, cigarettes, a pair of lighters, some cash—Russian and Georgian—and no identification at all. Two radios. Condoms and a compass, a hunting knife with a serrated edge. One set of what looked like house keys. And their two pistols, of course, with ammunition for both.

  As he worked he asked Webster questions, willing himself to be practical.

  “So why did you come?”

  “I never could resist a trip.”

  “Or a cause.”

  “Karlo called me a week before he died. With a name for me to check.”

  “I know.”

  “This time he was beside himself, even for him. He was scared. The source for the story, he’d found out who she was.”

  “She?”

  “She. He gave me her name, nothing else.”

  “I think I know it,” said Hammer.

  “Go on.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me over the phone. Tell me the name.”

  “Elene Vekua.”

  “Damn you’re good. Who is she?”

  “A colonel in the Georgian intelligence service. She just tried to kill me.”

  “Up here?”

  “She’s still out there. Which is why we should go.”

  Hammer could see him fitting the pieces together. He had missed these conversations.

  “Quite an asset. No wonder Mr. V was nervous.”

  “You think she’s a spy?”

  “Why else would he tell us nothing?”

  Hammer sighed. It helped to talk about this but he was finding it hard to concentrate. Echoes of recent events kept interrupting.

  “So the story Karlo published was bullshit.”

  “What have you always said? The best lie sits next to the truth. Most of what she told him was completely true. A Georgian spy did engineer that bomb. It just happened to be her. And she wasn’t doing it for any Georgian.”

  For a while Hammer simply thought, letting everything he knew settle. Probably she had always meant to kill Karlo. Probably Koba had been working for her.

  “So who’s he?” said Webster, as Hammer went through the dead man’s pockets.

  “He’s a blank. But I think he probably worked for my driver.” He looked at Webster, who frowned, not understanding. “This country is nuts. Let’s go home.”

  • • •

  Webster stood, steady enough on his feet but clearly in pain.

  “Here.”

  Hammer handed him the pistol and a box of bullets. Webster looked at them, raised an eyebrow, and put them in his pockets.

  “Those your only shoes?” Hammer said.

  Webster looked down at the exhausted sneakers on his feet.

  “I was driving. Everything was in my bag.”

  “What size are you?”

  “No. Forget it. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s like climbing the fucking Eiger out there. These look OK?”

  Hammer knelt down by the dead Georgian and started untying the laces. The calf was still warm as he pried off the boot.

  He helped Webster out of his ripped trousers, checked the pockets, and threw them in a corner, giving him the spare pair from the man’s rucksack. Then he looked around the hut. Every part of him needed to be gone.

  “What will happen here?” he said.

  “No one will be here till spring. Probably for years. And if they do come, they won’t do anything. This is Dagestan. There are dead fighters everywhere.”

  Webster started for the door, but Hammer hesitated, still staring at the floor of the place.

  “Let’s burn it.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I don’t want to be thinking about them here.”

  Together they dragged the second body inside and laid the two together. From their rucksacks Hammer took the men’s spare clothes and spread them out in two long piles. Then he found the chacha bottle and sprinkled its contents over each.

  “Give me a hand.”

  They hoisted the bigger of the two and straightened out the smaller, swinging him onto the makeshift bier. Hammer sparked the lighter and touched it to one pile and then the next until the small blue flames grew and turned orange and licked at the limbs of the dead men.

  “Forgive me,” said Hammer, and turned to go.

  TWENTY

  It made a fine, grim sight, the burning house in the empty mountains, touching the snow with fire and lighting up one tiny patch of the blackness al
l around.

  “Very Norse,” said Webster, but Hammer didn’t reply. He had forced his mind to consider the snow, now falling again, and their way ahead, a thin line through the wilderness. There was no other route round the landslide, and he had no idea how they would both cross it, or what he would find when they arrived. If Vekua was still there, she was a problem; if she had gone, she was again a threat.

  Through the night they walked, in the deepening cold. The fresh snow was easier underfoot, and before they left Hammer had found two good sticks to give them balance, so that despite Webster’s obvious pain they went, if not quickly, then at a decent pace, stopping from time to time to rest.

  It took an hour to reach the landslide, and Hammer approached it with growing unease and a quickening pulse. When he finally made it out in the darkness he motioned silently to Webster to stay where he was, crept quietly to the point where the ground fell away, and listened. Just stillness. Turning on his flashlight, he peered over the edge. No one. Just a platform of earth and stone and snow. He shone the flashlight at his feet and tried to separate the footprints, but there were too many for him to make sense of them.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Is that good?”

  Webster sat while Hammer tried to work out how best to cross the gap. He had rope now, but nowhere to tie it—no boulders, no trees, no roots—and his weight wouldn’t take Webster’s, not in the snow. From his bag he took the ice ax, examined its twin blades, and then swung the longer into the ground, where it sank in up to the handle. Tying the rope tightly round the protruding blade, he pulled against it, jerked it, leaned back from it, and watched it hold fast.

  “Here. This is the worst of it. It’s ten feet down and ten feet up the other side.”

  He passed the rope to Webster and stood on the handle of the ax to anchor it.

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve done it before. At speed.”

  They made it easily across. Once Webster was down, Hammer wrenched the ax out of the ground, half climbed, half slid down the steep clay face, and then scrambled up the other side to fix the rope for his friend. At the top Webster lay, panting, on the path.