perhaps, his god.
'You seek to buy me off,' the Georgian said. 'How American.'
'There is no price on this dagger,' Bravo said. 'It is yours.'
Kartli shook his head, as if at something infinitely sad. 'No, Keeper, where you travel you will need it.'
Bravo lowered the dagger.
'Go now,' Mikhail Kartli said.
Bravo turned, saw that Khalif made no move to go with him. The circle of the Georgian's sons parted as he neared it.
Just before he stepped outside the ring, leaving the Georgian's aegis forever, out into the streets of Trabzon, Mikhail Kartli said, 'Pray to whatever god it is that moves you, for without him you are truly lost.'
Chapter 25
Bravo sat in the same cafe' on the hill in the Ortahisar quarter where he had first met Adem Khalif, hoping that if he stayed long enough the Turk would come. The cafe smelled of burnt cigarettes and cat urine, but the coffee was thick and strong. From his tiny table he had an excellent view of the main arteries of the Old City, the ravines in which all light was absorbed. He realized that he could not bear to be in any section of the new city, grown like a gross shell around the jewel of long-lost Trebizond. He wanted to recapture that fabled city, wanted to walk its streets, hear the regal sound of Trapazuntine Greek being spoken, watch the stately round ships sailing in from Florence or Venice, Cadiz or Bruges, ready to take on the exotic cargoes waiting for them in Trebizond's bursting warehouses. And on the horizon, the sinister slash of the black sails, the threat of the Seljuk pirates. He pulled out his cell phone. In the middle of dialing Jordan's number, he stopped. Jordan was his closest friend in the world. Bravo had already asked him for help and Jordan had generously agreed, but now it was too dangerous to involve him further. Bravo knew he didn't want to endanger anyone else, especially his friend.
He put his head in his heads. He wanted another life, or at least to roll back the clock. He pictured himself standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue in New York, watching his father walk away. If only he'd gone after him. But, really, what good would it have done? Delayed what was already set in motion, nothing more. It was dispiriting, the idea that he'd been helpless, trapped like a cog in a huge machine, grinding forward with inexorable precision…
'It's time to see your grandfather, Bravo.'
He looked up, saw his father's weather-beaten face. They were in their house in Greenwich Village and he was nine years old.
'I know you don't want to go.'
'How d'you know that?' Bravo said.
'Because you just asked Mom if you could help her dry the breakfast dishes.'
Bravo set down the dish towel. He knew his father had made a joke, but just then it didn't seem all that funny.
Dexter put a hand on his son's shoulder. 'Your grandfather wants to see you, he asked about you specially this morning.'
'Doesn't he want to see Junior?' Bravo asked, thinking misery loves company. Emma was far too young to be brought to the nursing home.
'Junior's not feeling well,' Dexter said.
That wasn't it at all, and Bravo knew it. He'd overheard his parents talking about it several weeks before. They'd deemed Junior too young to go, a decision that only added to Bravo's resentment.
The drive to the nursing home wasn't short, but to Bravo it seemed to take three minutes. Fleets of semis rumbled, factories belched smoke, and he had to roll up the window so as not to be overcome by the reek of chemical waste that smelled like burnt tires and cat piss.
The nursing home, somewhere in the unfathomable hinterlands of New Jersey, was a large Georgian redbrick building that seemed like one of those thoroughly unpleasant London institutions Dickens so brilliantly described. Bravo sat in the car, listening to the hot engine tick over like a mechanical heart, waiting for it to slow and, finally, stop. He stared straight ahead even after his father had clambered out, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
'Bravo?' Dexter opened the passenger's-side door and held out his hand.
Bravo, in his own way resigned, took it, and together they went up the cement walk to the front door. Just before it opened, Dexter said, 'You love your grandfather, don't you?'
Bravo nodded.
'That's all you need think about, okay?'
Bravo nodded again, not trusting himself to reply.
The smell inside the nursing home was unspeakable. Bravo tried to hold his breath, just as he always did, but it was no use. He inhaled and felt himself gagging before he was able to settle his system down.
They found Conrad Shaw in the solarium, amid bright sunlight and the unnatural humidity of hothouse flowers and potted plants. As usual, he'd ordered his wheelchair to be set as far away from the other patients as possible. He was bald now, though up until ten years ago he'd had a thick shock of white hair of which he'd been inordinately proud. His thin flesh, speckled as a robin's egg, was carved by age and disease so close to the skull that it had taken on the color of the bone beneath. Once, he'd been a big man, robust and reckless, dapper and possessed of a raucous laugh he dispensed with great generosity.
The pity was that these gifts had been snatched from him all at once. The stroke that had felled him had been a serious one. Now his heart was damaged and he wore a pacemaker. His legs were useless, as was the right side of his body. His features sagged horribly, as if he was subject to a gravitational force of extraterrestrial virulence.
He had not adjusted well to his altered circumstance. It was as if all joy had been squeezed out of him. If he was pleased to see his grandson there was no way for Bravo to tell. His grandfather fixed him with his one good eye, gripped him with his one good arm in what Bravo came to think of as a death grip, as afterward he regarded the bruise.
'How are you, Grandpa?' Bravo asked.
'Where's my pipe, boy? What did you do with my pipe?'
'I haven't seen your pipe, Grandpa.' Bravo wiped a bit of spittle from the flaky corner of his grandfather's mouth.
'Don't do that!' Conrad let fly the back of his good hand. 'Broke it, did you?' He pinched Bravo's arm hard, his fingers like steel pincers. 'Deliberate disobedience, knowing you.'
'Dad, Bravo didn't take your pipe. You lost it last year,' Dexter said, gently extricating his son.
'Lost, my ass,' Conrad snorted. 'I know when something of mine's been stolen.'
Dexter closed his eyes for a moment, and Bravo could almost hear him silently counting to ten. 'Forget the pipe, Dad, you know you can't smoke anymore.' Dexter affixed a smile to his face and using his most diplomatic voice, said, 'I know you're happy to see Bravo, you asked for him this morning.'
'I asked for coffee with half-and-half this morning,' the old man said irascibly. 'If you think I got it you don't know a damn thing about this hellhole. It's a toilet masquerading as a hotel.'
Every time Conrad saw Dexter, he begged his son to end his life. This was why Dexter had taken to bringing Bravo with him. The old man would never consider voicing his request while Bravo was around.
Bravo didn't react so much to the frighteningly swift decrepitude that had come upon his grandfather as to the terror, unvoiced but felt as only a child can feel it, of the old man's death wish. He deeply hated being dragged here against his will, having to see the waste that disease inflicts on even the strongest, most capable of men, of being hauled into close proximity with death when he did not even understand what death was.
'I don't want to go back there ever again,' he said on the way home.
'That's what you say every time.' Dexter's voice was deliberately light, as if they were bantering about some beloved topic.
'This time I mean it, Dad,' Bravo said as forcefully as he knew how.
