The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones Page A

We’ve traveled all over but this is our first time out here. May be our last, too. Shame. It’s so quaint. It’s like there’s a war on in Fairyland. You staying on?”
    â€œI’ve got business here.”
    â€œYou need to get out of here. No business is worth getting caught up in something like this. I’ve spent the last hour trying to find a flight out but everything’s all messed up.” He looked at his wife. “Our guide, he told us we could get a bus to Yerevan, fly out from there, but it’s twelve whole hours and you should see the bus. It’s not what I’d call a bus. We’re going out to the airport this morning, see what we can get.”
    â€œGood luck.” Hammer backed away.
    Witt shook his head and whistled a low note. “Got to watch these things. Remember the riots in LA? Broad daylight, everything’s calm, next minute there’s dead people on the corner. And that’s Los Angeles. California, for heaven’s sake. The civilized world. This place may be pretty but these things escalate. That’s what they do.”

TWO
    D ownstairs at reception the wan girl had gone, and in her place was a young man with heavy black glasses and a bowl of thick hair. Hammer greeted him cheerily, and explained that his wife would be arriving later, around six, and they would go straight for dinner, he imagined, and afterward she, being tired, would probably come straight back to the room but he had plans to see some friends, although they weren’t yet set in stone. The plans, that was. The upshot being that it would be good, to be on the safe side, to have an extra key card for the room.
    Charmed or baffled, the young man was sweetly, incuriously eager to help, and to practice his English, and in a minute or two Hammer had a key to room 27. That was easy, at least: had he been asked his name he would have had to go down the messier route of tricking or bribing the cleaners.
    â€œGmadlobt,” he said, trying out his second Georgian word, which was odder even than the first. The “g” was silent. “You’re most kind. This is for you.” And he handed him a twenty-lari note. “What’s your name?”
    â€œRostom.”
    â€œI’m Isaac. Pleased to meet you, Rostom.”
    By leaning out from the balcony of his room and peering down, Hammer could see that the doors leading onto the terrace of number 27 were open and could make out no movement inside. Chances were they’d have shut the doors before leaving for the day, which meant they were either still asleep, or showering, or at breakfast.
    His room and theirs were set apart from the main body of the hotel and occupied an annex with its own staircase. He propped his door open so that he might hear any noise from the little stairwell, sat on the bed, and lookedat his phone. The police, or whoever Vekua worked for, had had ample time to clone it while he was in the cell, and in any case he should assume that any calls he made would be intercepted. His e-mail was encrypted and secure enough. The hotel phone was no better, because they knew where he was staying and by now in which room. He needed a local cell phone.
    From downstairs he heard people coming back from breakfast and the click of a door closing. He’d give it till nine for them to leave.
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    F or twenty minutes Hammer sat on his bed and answered e-mails with the absent attention of someone whose mind is occupied by more important things. Responses to clients he liked and clients he didn’t, letters of instruction to his bankers, polite refusals to unlooked-for invitations, and a late reply to his sister in Connecticut about his next trip to New York, now very much on hold. He wondered when he would see the city again. He missed it, especially this time of year when the leaves were turning. He wrote a note to Dr. Levin postponing their next session and finally one