So focused was he on Vekua, so absorbed in the contest, that he had forgotten Natela. He sensed movement at the corner of his eye, saw her stand up from the bench and lunge at Vekua. In her hand she had a heavy earthenware jug that had been on the table, and as she moved past Vano she swung it hard at Vekua’s head, shouting in Georgian.
Vekua was no more prepared for it than Hammer, but reacted quickly enough to raise an arm, so that her thick coat took the force of the blow.
“Natela, no!” shouted Hammer.
She didn’t hear him. With her free hand she reached for Vekua’s throat, and as they struggled Hammer saw Vekua bring her pistol up into Natela’s side. He stood, expecting each moment the dead echoless noise he had heard too many times that night. Vano was on his feet, his carved face helpless. The guard moved his gun from one to the other, shouting in Georgian.
No noise came. Just Vekua’s voice, less certain than it had ever sounded. Something in Georgian, then English.
“I will shoot if she does not stop.”
Vano was next to them, and now he put one hand on Natela’s shoulder and with the other tried to pull her gently away. In the silence he spoke softly, until her grip on Vekua’s neck relaxed and he was able to separate them.
Warily, they moved apart; they stared at each other for a moment, Natela still taut and ready to attack, Vekua filled with adrenaline and menace. Vano said something more to Natela, and after a long, final look at her adversary she began to turn away. Hammer saw something in Vekua’s expression change: menace gave way to viciousness, and with the pistol still in her hand she hooked her fist into the side of Natela’s head. Vano watched her reel away, then turned to Vekua, and Hammer thought his ancient instincts of hospitality and fight were going to get the better of him; but Vekua waved the pistol in his face, and motioned for him to sit down, and after several long moments, he did.
Hammer had his arm round Natela now and guided her back to the table. Blood had started on a bad cut at the base of her ear. Ignoring Vekua, Eka stood and left the room, returning with a clean white handkerchief, which she passed to Hammer. Hammer thanked her, and glared at Vekua.
“You should have kicked her off the mountain,” said Webster.
“I wasn’t sure then.”
“Enough,” said Vekua, her pistol out in front and her composure partly restored. “We go. All of you.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Out of the village they marched, all six of them, with the guns leveled at their backs and Vekua’s flashlight playing over the ground at their feet. Hammer walked beside Natela, who lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it in the cold; Irodi helped Webster along, and behind them came Vano and Eka. Vano looked back over his shoulder from time to time to let Vekua know he hadn’t forgotten her. The sky was clear, and under the moon the snow shone with unnatural brightness, picking out each figure in monochrome.
Hammer fell into thought, but every idea stumbled on an objection. Something had to be done before they reached the helicopter, because as soon as they were in it Vekua’s control would be complete. She could do anything with them. If he only knew what she was planning. If he could be sure that her henchman was an unwitting part of it all. If he’d had the sense to hide his gun.
“You get the chance,” he whispered to Natela, “I want you to tell the pilot that his boss is a traitor. Convince him. I’ll try to keep her attention elsewhere. Tell him she’s the one who killed the people in Gori.”
Natela looked at him and understood.
After a hundred yards they turned off the road through a line of trees into a flat field where the snow was deeper, and Hammer saw a little way off the awkward, drooping shape of an old military helicopter.
“Keep going,” said Vekua, in Georgian and English, her voice stony in both.
She couldn’t shoot them all here. Too much to clear up. And if the pilot was not one of hers, she’d have to shoot him, too. Hammer’s guess was that she would take the pressing problems away to deal with on her own terms, and when she had better resources and more time come back for the villagers. They wouldn’t be going anywhere, after all.
But this was logical, and he wondered whether Vekua was still operating according to logic. Her tight little plan had come loose, and she like Hammer was now making it up.
Still some way short of the helicopter he stopped and turned, planting his feet in the snow.
“I want to talk to you alone.”
Everyone came to a stop.
“Keep going,” said Vekua.
“Not until you and I have talked.”
Vekua held the gun at arm’s length and pointed it at Hammer’s head.
“Go.”
“You know who I am. You know what I can do for you. But I can only discuss it alone.”
As he said the words, he became conscious of movement and sound behind her, a faint disturbance in the darkness. Vekua turned and stepped slightly aside, and past her Hammer saw something bounding through the deep powder at an unlikely speed.
Vano shouted at his dog. Hammer could see its distinctly wolfish look and its bared teeth. Vano shouted again; he could have been telling it to stop or to charge. The dog barked as it came, a terrifying noise against the silence. Off balance, Vekua stumbled backward, her boots caught in the snow, and as she fell the dog sprang for her from a great distance, its jaws open and ready. Another movement, to Hammer’s left; he barely caught it but he heard the gunshot, registered the flash from the barrel of the pilot’s pistol, and saw the dog stunned in its flight as the bullet passed through its neck.
It landed heavily on Vekua; Irodi ran to it as she struggled to pull herself clear. The pilot shouted at him to step back but Irodi ignored him, holding the dog’s head and talking to it softly. Vekua stood by and stared as if in shock. Then he looked up at her and issued a command, in a cold hard voice Hammer hadn’t heard him use before, and she raised her gun. Irodi said some final words, stroked the dog’s ear, and stood, stepping back. He nodded to Vekua and she pulled the trigger.
For an instant, no one moved and no one spoke. Then it was over, and Vekua’s gun was up once more.
“Go. You three, move.” And then to Irodi, who went to stand by his mother: “Sad aris is? Where is the old man?”
Hammer looked around. Vano was gone.
• • •
Vekua had the pilot stay with Eka and Irodi, and marched the others the last fifty yards to the helicopter. Hammer watched her calculating: forget the old man. Get out of here before he can do any damage.
“You need to listen to me, Elene. You could do well out of this.”
She waved her gun at Webster, who was struggling to get into the helicopter. “In. Now.”
“His leg’s hurt.”
“I will shoot the other if he does not get in.”
Hammer did his best to help Webster in through the sliding door, but he had left his gloves on the table in the house, and the metal was icy on his skin. Scanning the field, he could see no trace of Vano, not even his footsteps in the snow.
She shouted something in Georgian, and the pilot slowly walked away from Irodi, backward at first, then looking over his shoulder, then purposefully ahead to the cockpit.
“Now you.” Vekua gestured to Natela, who hesitated.
“The thing is, Elene,” said Hammer, leaning in to her and not quite whispering, “if it’s money you like, I can make you rich. If it’s something else, that same money could accomplish a lot.”
She smiled, relaxing a touch, and then her face started at a sudden noise and she turned at the same time as Hammer to see the pilot sprawled in the snow not ten yards from them, and Vano barely visible against the outline of the village with a rifle at his shoulder. Irodi swept his mother to the ground, shielding her body; Hammer tried to get himself between Vekua and Natela, but Vekua had her, gripped by the sleeve, the pistol at he
r throat.
“Vano! Don’t shoot!” screamed Hammer, and prayed he’d be understood.
Vekua looked about her, began to back away, shouted something behind her.
“Tell them. I will shoot.”
“Niet!” shouted Hammer, waving his hands. “Ara! Don’t shoot!”
Vekua walked backward now, away from the helicopter and toward the road, her gun still pressed into Natela’s neck. More helpless than he had ever felt, Hammer watched them go in the eerie light. He had nothing left.
“What do I do?”
Webster shook his head. “Follow at a distance. That’s all you can do.”
“She’ll shoot.”
“No she won’t. Not until she’s sure she can get away.”
“You have faith in her sense of logic.”
“What else have we got?”
Irodi had his arm round his mother; Vekua passed them and continued steadily on.
“When?” said Hammer.
“When they get to the road.”
Moving as one creature, Vekua and Natela passed through the trees that lined the road and turned toward the village. At a wary jog Hammer set off, and when he reached Irodi, beckoned for him to follow. Irodi looked at his mother and Eka waved him on.
He felt better with Irodi. A little. Together they went swiftly to the road and then slowed to Vekua’s pace, creeping as softly as they could in the snow, waiting for her to turn and sweep the flashlight behind her. But her mind was on the village, and escape, and she kept it shining ahead.
Irodi’s 4 x 4 was parked by the first house. Vekua went straight to it, let go of Natela, and opened the door. With the flashlight in one hand and the gun pointing as best she could back at Natela, she searched, sending the beam flashing about the dark cabin. Hammer felt Irodi’s hand on his arm and looked up to see him holding the key.
Even at that distance Hammer could sense Vekua’s anger when she eventually stepped out, and it sent fresh cold through him. He didn’t want her desperate. She raised her gun hand at the car, shot one of the tires, and disappeared with Natela into the blackness between the houses.
Irodi began to run and Hammer followed him, feeling slow and old and out of ideas. Where they should have been there was only the sound of his boots going clumsily in the snow and the burn of his lungs as they struggled to take in enough of the frozen air.
Between the houses of the village there was barely any light, so Hammer followed the sound and sense of Irodi, just making out his form, which now stopped still to listen. Above the sound of his breath and his heart Hammer heard a rhythm that he recognized but couldn’t place. It grew louder, until Irodi’s hand pulled him sharply from the middle of the track and the dark weight of a horse thudded past them, already going at speed.
Irodi shouted at him, pressed something into his hand, and slapped him with urgency on the shoulder. Go. Hammer went, back the way he had come, slipping and staggering toward the car, yanking the door open, and scrambling in. Fumbling, he found the ignition, turned the key, found the lights, and drove in a wide arc away from Diklo and out onto the road, the beams picking out Vano as he helped Eka back across the great field of white.
On the snow, with one tire out, the car was wayward, tugging first right then left, and Hammer worked hard to respond. Carefully, he picked up speed and watched the furthest point of the headlights’ reach for any sign, concentrating so hard that when Irodi’s horse moved past him it made him start. He hadn’t seen him ride like this, pressed forward in the saddle, head down, improbably fast. A rifle was slung across his back.
Hammer did his best to keep up but Irodi’s horse pulled away. So sure it was on the road. And then he saw them: at the limits of the light, a strange dark shape.
They moved closer; Hammer could see Natela’s green coat and her hair in the wind. As Irodi drew near he left the road and started to flank the other horse, heading out wide up an incline until he was riding level and higher. Vekua turned to look at him, waved her gun but kept riding. Now that Hammer could see her, she looked less than steady in the saddle.
Slowly, Irodi came down the bank, keeping slightly ahead now, so that the other horse was forced left, off the road, and across the field that sloped gradually away into darkness. Hammer’s mouth was dry again as he followed, acrid with fear.
“What the fuck is he doing?”
The pace slowed in the deeper snow. Irodi continued to push the horse from the right, and signaled now for Hammer to move up on the other side. Where was this leading? He must have something in mind. Surely. As he drew nearer he saw that the horse Vekua had taken was Shakari.
Abruptly, she slowed, turned to her left, and pulled up, her breath pluming in the headlights. Vekua drove her heels into her flanks but she had had enough. Angrily, she threw her head back and neighed, a mournful sound.
Behind her the snow finished in a stark line, and beyond there was only black. Hammer knew where they were: at the top of a long ridge that curved round back to the village and fell away in a scrubby drop of fifty feet at least, not quite sheer.
Vekua looked down, looked back at Irodi and the car. She had nowhere to go.
Hammer turned off the engine, breathed steadily to compose himself, and opened the door. This was his time. He could make this work.
Shielding her eyes from the headlights, Vekua pulled her gun from the pocket of her coat, twisted around, and pushed it into Natela, who looked to Hammer with fearful eyes. The horse had no saddle, and seemed too small to support the two of them.
Irodi reached for the rifle on his back but Hammer raised a hand to tell him to leave it. All was silent except for the panting of the horse.
“Give me the key,” shouted Vekua. “I will get down, you will stand back.”
“The key’s in the ignition, Elene. It’s all yours. You go. You leave Natela here.”
“I need her.”
Hammer took two steps toward them, his palms up, ever so slowly.
“You don’t need her. Take the car. The road down there, it leads to the river, and from there you can walk to the border. Cross the border, Elene. That’s the country you serve. They’ll look after you.”
He took another step. Vekua swung the pistol away from Natela, who turned in the saddle and grabbed at it, knocking Vekua’s hands away and sending the shot off over Hammer’s head into the night. The loud dead crack sounded through the night; Shakari shied and backed away, swinging her head from side to side, her hooves scrabbling at the snow and then at air. She sank first, then slipped away, and with a single scream Natela and Vekua went with her.
Hammer saw the empty space and felt that he was tumbling, that he had fallen with them.
Before he could move, Irodi had jumped from his horse and was running to the edge. Hammer went to him, barely conscious of his movements, and together they stood hopelessly searching the blackness.
“Light,” said Hammer. “We need light.”
Irodi understood and left him.
“Natela!” In his mind he heard her voice, so clearly. The shape of it. It was the shape of her. It couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t finished. “Natela!”
Irodi was by his side again, flashlight in hand. He put a hand on Hammer’s back and played the beam over the bone gray of the wiry trees and brush that covered the sheer slope. Where the horse had fallen the snow had been disturbed, and at the bottom by the road Hammer thought he could make out three dark shapes lying still.
“Oh God.”
There was hardly enough light to see. He took the flashlight from Irodi and searched every foot, forcing himself to be systematic as the thundering grew louder in his head.
A noise. A rustling. Close, something settling. Irodi heard it, too, and guided the flashlight toward it. In among the gray and the white of the scrub was a patch of green, about twenty feet down, almost obscured.
Irodi tied the knot for him, checked that it would hold, and with a grave nod of respect and hope stepped back, bracing himself and paying out the rope as Hammer took his first step backward into space.
At first the slope was clear and he hung against Irodi’s weight, and then he was in thick brush, and it was as if the world had been flipped on its side and he was climbing backward through the woods he had left just an hour before. The dry wood gave and cracked as he went down. Wedging his feet against a sturdier trunk, he took the flashlight from his pocket and turned to shine it below. He could see her now, suspended in a tangle of branches denser than the rest, as if they had come together to catch her as she fell.
“Natela,” he said. She was so close. Her face was turned away from him, her head pushed into her body at an angle that caused the fear to start in him afresh. “Natela, it’s OK.”
But she didn’t answer, and, putting the flashlight in his mouth, Hammer leaned against the rope once more and took the last few steps down, until finally he was beside her, searching for a hold, his breath blooming in the shaking light. He watched it, his heart beating hard, and wished it was hers.
“Natela.”
She was so still. The branches that had caught her now seemed to claim her.
He shone the flashlight full on her face, which was pale but for a gauze of thin scratches. The light found no breath; not a wisp. A great emptiness took hold of him, as if the world had just changed.
“Natela,” he said once more, in a different tone, and reached out to brush her hair from her cheek. For a moment he held his hand there, feeling the warmth of her, willing it to hold.
And then he knew that it would. Even before she opened her eyes he knew that there was life in her.
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