The Searcher (14 page)

T
hey had coffee at the café where Ben had bought lunch, and when Hammer showed Ben's photograph to the old woman who ran the place she remembered him instantly because he had spoken Russian to her in an accent that was not quite Russian, and they had talked for a while about her nephew who had gone to study, not in London but in Bristol, which she thought was nearby. He had ordered khachapuri and coffee, and no one else was with him. She was certain about that. Hammer thanked her, left a tip good enough to draw a look from Koba, and then they set off for Batumi.

Once Hammer had politely explained that he didn't want to see the country's most beautiful national park, much as he would have liked to, or the splendid old church, or the even older church, or any of the other places that Koba suggested they visit along the way, it took only another three hours or so to reach the city. The more of these offers Hammer declined, the quieter Koba became, and the faster his driving, until it became important for Hammer to give him an explanation.

Though he might look like one, Hammer told him, he was not a tourist. He was in Georgia to find a friend of his, who had come here on holiday and had gone missing several days ago, and whose wife was beginning to be concerned. Sticking to an old maxim that the best lie was as close to the truth as you could make it, Hammer obscured a fair amount and embellished only a little, so that by the end of the journey Koba was alternately cursing Webster for abandoning his wife and children for the fleshpots of the East, and forgiving him for what was by all accounts an unusual lapse of character. All men must be allowed some time to themselves, he explained, to let off steam. This, too, was normal.

“Is good friend?”

“He was once.”

“He do this for you?”

Hammer considered it. There was no doubt. “Yes. Yes, he would.”

Half an hour short of the city Hammer's phone rang. His UK phone, a withheld number. It might be Hibbert, or Elsa. He hoped Elsa.

“Ike Hammer.”

The line was poor and the road loud and he struggled to hear what the voice said, but something in it jogged an indistinct memory.

“I can't hear you. Tell me again.”

The voice repeated what it had said, and in the mess of sounds he made out four words:

“We have your case.”

Concentrating now, his ear pressed to the phone, Hammer gestured to Koba to wind up his window.

“You have what?”

“Case. With computer. And paper.”

“You found these things?” But he knew the answer to that; this was the voice of the rioter who had pulled him from the taxi.

“Yes. We find. We give back. Tonight, you come, we give.”

“I can't do tonight.”

“Tonight. Only tonight.”

“And you're just going to give them to me.”

“We need reward.”

“I thought so. OK. Listen closely. You want to give me my things today, you take them to the US embassy and I'll pick them up when I get back to Tbilisi. OK? How does that sound?”

The line was quiet.

“Two days ago you were a revolutionary hero, now you're just a thief. OK. Listen closely again. Those things aren't worth anything to anybody else, so I'm the only game in town for you. Right? You phone me again tomorrow and we'll fix a time and a place.”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

Hammer laughed. “You guys are hopeless. Call me tomorrow. Not before.”

He hung up. Koba wound down the window, looked over at him.

“You have trouble, Isaac?”

“Motherfuckers, Koba. Just some motherfuckers.”

 • • • 

I
t was a little after one when they arrived, and Hammer was keen to go straight to the restaurant where Webster had eaten, despite Koba's insistence that they eat at his friend's place a little out of town that served the best khinkali in Georgia, whatever they might be. This looked like it might cement his disappointment, but Hammer reminded him that their search was urgent, and that there was always dinner, and at last he rallied.

Batumi was all color and light. They drove along the seafront past grand old pink hotels and shining new casinos and neat municipal gardens full of red and yellow flowers. Couples strolled in the sun, and the wind inland had become a breeze. The whole city had a restful, end-of-season air. After the night he had had, Hammer felt a strange comfort in being able to smell the sea.

Restaurant Tamar, when they finally got there, turned out to occupy its own short pier that jutted thirty yards out into the water. A few tanned bodies splashed in the waves on either side. Hammer and Koba crunched over the stony beach, Koba complaining that this place would be no good, too touristic, bad khinkali. If they were quick with their questions, though, they might still make his friend's in time. He brightened instantly when they tried the door and found it locked.

“End of season,” said Koba, studying a sign in the window. “Dinner only.” He checked his watch. “This is good.”

“Let's go to the Sheraton.”

Koba was indignant. “No, Isaac. Sheraton very bad. We must eat.”

“Koba, I don't have time.” He put a finger on his watch. “Every minute is important.”

“My friend, he is good guy, knows everyone in Batumi. Is good for you. He help, I help, your friend OK.”

“Is it close?”

“Ya, very close.”

Hammer sighed inside at the needless delay and set off back up the beach.

Koba's friend's place didn't look like a restaurant. And it wasn't close: it sat about three miles outside the city, set back from the road in what appeared to be a private house. There were no signs anywhere, nor any entrance: they simply drove into a courtyard, parked, and took one of the plastic tables that sat on a square of grass under an apricot tree. They were the only ones there.

A woman appeared, with two menus, and set a jug of water down in front of them. Koba consulted his menu for all of thirty seconds before closing it and making his order, with the confident air of a man who has made up his mind long before. An apricot fell from the tree onto the ground by Hammer's feet.

“I decide for us,” he said, pouring himself a glass of water. “This for me. For you, you have wine from Kakheti. Very good. Just one liter.”

One liter. That should be enough. Hammer thanked him, and with an apology called Mr. V.

It rang and rang.

“Allo.”

“Vladimir?”

“Who is this?”

“Isaac Hammer, Vladimir. From Ikertu.”

“Ah, Isaac! The great detective. It has been too many years. How is life? You are saving the world, I hope?”

“Not right now, no. I'm trying to save a friend of yours.”

“Of mine?”

“I'm in Georgia. Ben's gone missing. You were the last person he called before he left.”

“That is not good.”

“So he called you?”

“He called me, yes. I told him and I tell you. I know nothing more. Whole thing is above my level, Isaac, you understand?”

“I understand. Did he tell you why he was asking?”

“Isaac, this is not a safe line.”

“Whatever you can tell me.”

There was a pause. “He sent me a fax. I sent him a fax. Then he called me, a week ago. Friday. He wanted to know what more I could tell him. Nothing. I ask him why he is interested, he told me that a friend had given him the name, and now it was very serious. That was all he said. That is all I know.”

“What was the name?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“If I came to Moscow?”

“I would say the same. Isaac, find Ben. He is a good friend. But it is better you do not call me again.”

He hung up. Koba had leaned across the table to pour, a cigarette in his mouth.

“Delicious wine. From Kakheti. We go there, too. After Batumi. Drink.”

Hammer took the little beaker and drank. It was good, resinous.

“That's got some punch.”

“Ah, best wine. Thousands years old. Drink.”

Koba topped up Hammer's glass with a look of pride and childlike regret.

“Ah, you lucky. First Kakheti wine.”

Hammer smiled and sipped again, his thoughts still elsewhere.

The waitress brought plates of food—salads and bread and grilled meat and ghostly white dumplings—and in his hurry to clear a space Koba knocked over the jug of wine. Hammer watched it drip onto the grass with relief.

“Dedamotknuli!” he shouted. “Shevetsi. Now we must toast. In Georgia, you spill wine, you must toast the dead.” He gestured for Hammer to finish what he had left.

“To the dead of Gori,” said Hammer, raising his glass to Koba.

Koba looked grave, but pleased.

“You are good Georgian,” he said.

H
otels held no pleasure for Hammer anymore, he had stayed in so many, but as an investigator he loved them: so much information, and no real determination to keep it private. There was a reason why Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade were forever finding themselves in hotels, talking to the house dick.

Now he was called the head of security, and at the Sheraton he was most obliging, once he and Hammer had agreed on terms (a hundred dollars, taken without shame). He hadn't noticed Webster, no, but then he wouldn't have. There were two hundred rooms and guests coming and going, and he tended only to pay attention to the high rollers, and they got quite a few of those. Mr. Webster had stayed in an executive double, facing the sea. Just the one night, with a bottle of champagne on room service, ordered at around six o'clock, and two glasses of cognac at one in the morning. Koba, who had been translating, remarked that it looked like Isaac's friend had had a good time.

And yes, it had definitely been him, because they had taken a copy of his passport. It was his, for sure, even in the poor photocopy they produced. So either Ben really had been here, or whoever had stolen his card had stolen his passport, too. Hammer asked if he could speak to the receptionists who had checked Webster in and out. One person had done both, it turned out, but she was off duty today. How about the maid? Who had turned down the bed that night?

The security chief found the maid, a Turkish woman with poor Georgian called Irem, who looked at the photograph on Hammer's phone and shook her head and then decided that maybe she had seen the man. She
would start turning down the beds at seven, and one night recently, she couldn't be sure of the night, she had knocked as always and gone into one of the suites only to be shouted at by a man in a dressing gown who had emerged from the bathroom. He might have been that man. Was she sure? She wasn't sure. How many people did she think might have been in the room, Hammer asked her. Were there two suitcases or one? That, she couldn't remember.

No one remembered much more at the bar where Webster had drunk that night, or at the café at the airport, which was a couple of miles out of town. The bar owner thought the man in the photograph looked familiar. The short gray hair, almost silver, was distinctive. But perhaps not. It was the end of the season but still, so many people. The bureau de change showed no inclination to help. But Hammer did manage to charm the young woman at the ticket desk of Turkish Airlines into telling him that Webster had bought two tickets, one for himself and one for a woman called Galina Umov, a Russian, and that they had sat next to each other on the flight to Istanbul three days earlier. Again, Webster's passport number matched. For what it was worth, he called Katerina and gave her the new name.

Hammer returned to the city in low spirits. Ben was closer, but it gave him no pleasure. Was it possible? That he'd come all this way to catch a paltry cheat?

He owed Elsa a call, but couldn't bring himself to make it.

God, Ben didn't seem the type. He wasn't the type. Hammer had worked with him for eight years, traveled with him, been to his home, played with the children he so obviously adored. It was unimaginable, but then these things were. Men did this. They harbored some fantastic notion that there was a better future elsewhere, and invariably that future came in the form of a woman. It was a powerful and treacherous thought. He had known its power himself.

The skeptic in him resisted this conclusion, in spite of the plainness of the facts. There were other, hopeful interpretations, however tenuous: the woman was helping him, she was part of the plot, he was leaving a deliberate trail of some kind. Why else use his credit card?

But the balance had shifted, and now it looked as if this would be Hammer's last night in Georgia. Some people would be pleased.

 • • • 

H
ammer felt like he had been chasing a man in a crowd, only to tap him on the shoulder finally and see the face of a stranger as he turned. The urgency went from him, and tiredness took hold. The last flight to Istanbul had left; the next was at eight the next day. All he could do was call one of his people in Turkey, a private detective called Talat, and ask him to check all the hotels in Istanbul for a Benedict Webster, who would have arrived three days earlier and might already have moved on. After that, he booked two rooms at the Sheraton, showered, changed, and waited outside the hotel for Koba, who was late.

When he arrived, Koba again argued the case of the six or seven restaurants in the city that were better than the place on the beach, and though Hammer was tempted to hang everything and have a decent dinner, to forget this sorry episode and start planning the next leg of his journey, he was too stubborn not to check this final lead. Promising Koba that from this point on he would bow to him on all matters of food, he insisted on Restaurant Tamar.

They were among the first, and were shown to a table at the end of the little pier. The sun was warm and low, and beneath their feet, through the boards, they could see waves breaking and dragging on the beach. Koba inspected the menu sternly.

“Let's have some fish,” said Hammer.

Continuing to read, Koba shook his head.

“No fish?”

“Not good. Not so good. You ask questions, we go to other place. Good place.”

“Koba, we're here now. Let's have a drink.”

“I will get car.”

“Koba.”

“OK, OK,” said Koba, with an air of frustrated martyrdom.

A waiter came and Koba ordered, bearishly asking questions and pushing out his bottom lip.

“And a bottle of their best wine,” said Hammer.

“Is not so good,” said Koba.

“Get it anyway. I want them to like us. And tell him I'd like to talk to the manager.”

After five minutes a tall man in a black shirt and trousers came to the table carrying a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. He had the even, deliberate tan of someone who spends his spare afternoons lying in the sun. Koba, with an ill grace and a jerk of his chin, indicated that Hammer was the man to talk to.

“Gamarjobat,” said Hammer, half standing from his seat to shake the manager's hand. “Gamarjobat. Do you speak any English?”

With a look of regret the manager shook his head.

“Then my friend will translate.” Koba raised his eyebrows and nodded, and Hammer began. “You have a lovely place here.” Koba delivered the compliment flatly, and the manager acknowledged it with a little bow. “Listen. I'm a detective. A private detective.” He made sure Koba knew what he meant. “I'm here to find a man who has run away from his wife. OK? He was here four nights ago. This man.” He unlocked his phone and showed him the picture of Webster. “Do you remember him?”

The manager shrugged. He thought so. He saw so many customers.

“Koba. Explain to him that I know exactly how much he spent. A hundred and seventy-three lari exactly. I need to find that bill, and speak to the person who served him.”

Koba translated, and the manager laughed as he uncorked the wine.

“He says impossible,” said Koba.

“Ask him if it's still impossible if I leave him a hundred-lari tip.”

Koba frowned. “Is too much.”

“It's fine.”

Koba translated and the manager, pouring Hammer's wine, considered the offer before responding. Koba looked affronted, and they argued for a moment.

“I said fifty. He wants two hundred,” said Koba, as if it was the most ridiculous notion, and took a deep drink.

“Tell him one fifty.”

“Wine is terrible.”

Finally a price was agreed on, and the manager went inside to see what he could do.

Food came, and Hammer was pleased to find that very little of it was meat, and that most of it was pretty good.

“This is OK,” he told Koba, who made a face that didn't quite concede the point.

When the manager returned he had with him two small pieces of paper and a young waitress, whose pale, serious face was tense with worry.

“This is bill,” said Koba, passing the papers to Hammer. One was the credit card slip, with a signature on it. At a glance it looked like Ben's. The bill was in Georgian, but the script was roman, and it seemed to show that two people had eaten.

“What's this?”

“Beer.”

“And this?”

“Champagne. Two bottles.”

“You don't remember two bottles of champagne?”

The manager shrugged.

“And this is her name? The waitress?”

Koba nodded.

“Tell him thank you very much. That's all for now.”

The manager hesitated for a moment, but Koba repeated himself and he left. The waitress shifted on her feet.

“Nino. Thank you for talking to me. I won't be long.” Hammer smiled. “Do you remember, a few nights ago, Tuesday, there was a man here, a foreigner, young but with gray hair. This was his bill. Do you remember him?”

Nino said that she thought she did.

“Where did they sit?”

She pointed to a table in the corner.

“Was he alone?”

No. He was with a woman.

“What did she look like?”

Koba translated as best he could. The woman was blond, young, pretty. Russian.

“They spoke Russian?”

Nino nodded.

“Only Russian?”

And some English, she thought.

Hammer asked her what the couple had eaten, how long they had stayed, whether they seemed to know each other well, and to each question Nino gave nervous answers that smacked of the truth. The couple had come late and seemed, in Koba's word, close. They hadn't seemed that interested in their food. They had held hands across the table. No, neither had smoked.

His questions almost at an end, Hammer thanked her and held up his phone for her to see. He had saved four photographs there, corporate mug shots downloaded from the websites of lawyers and consultants, all of men in their thirties with short gray hair. Webster's was in among them.

“Is this the man?”

Nino peered at the phone from a distance, as if she didn't want to come too close to it. She shook her head. Hammer swiped across the screen and showed her the next.

“This one?”

“Ah-rah.” She shook her head again.

She said no to the third, and to Webster's, and to the last. Hammer went through them again, encouraging her to make sure of each. She was. None of these men had been to the restaurant that night.

Shyly, she began to say something in English, and then hesitated.

“What is it, Nino? Tell my friend.”

The man she had seen was handsome, very handsome. But his hair was different. She had noticed it when she had stood by him to pour his wine, a bald patch at the back of his head. She remembered thinking that he was unlucky, to be losing his hair so young.

“Happens to the best of us, Nino. You're certain about this?”

“Diakh.”

Hammer quizzed her a little more, but Nino was sure.

“Gmadlobt. You've been very helpful.”

His mouth open, Koba watched Hammer hand her a hundred-lari note.

“You are crazy, Isaac. Is too much.”

“We need to leave.”

Koba put his glass down, triumph on his face.

“I tell you. Place no good.”

“We need to leave Batumi. I have to be back in Tbilisi tonight.” Standing up, Hammer pulled some more notes out of his wallet to cover the bill. “Let's go.”

“But, Isaac. I cannot drive.” Koba turned his empty wineglass upside down.

“You've had one glass. Come on.”

But Koba shook his great head. “In Georgia, is same as ten glasses.”

“I'll drive.”

“You drink also. No, Isaac. Tonight we must stay.”