I was doing this for Charlie; he was doing it for Hazel. I couldn’t let him down. He was in the hotel at the moment, probably flapping a bit about whether or not I’d noticed that there were times when he couldn’t even pick his own nose. Maybe he was flapping big time, not knowing if he was going to be able to keep his shit together long enough to see the job through. The thing he most needed right now was to know that he could depend on me, and that made me feel good.
Maybe I’d also be doing my bit to save a young squaddie or two on the pipeline. I’d seen what happened to a family when their much-loved son was zapped, and I realized I didn’t like it one bit.
I had a shrewd suspicion that I was really trying to concentrate hard enough on Steven and Hazel to allow me to avoid thinking about Kelly and me, but I just didn’t have the bollocks to admit it to myself. So I thought of Silky instead and that felt much better. I knew I’d rather be on a beach with her than fucking about in a Georgian politician’s backyard.
I crossed the road and passed an English bookshop/cafe/internet joint. A high-pitched American female voice screeched through the open door: ‘Oh-my-
I felt myself smiling. The fact was: I missed Silky. Months of sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch hadn’t cleared my head anywhere near as effectively as bumming around for a few months with a freewheeling, freethinking box- head.
Maybe I’d just get back to her and crisscross the continent in that van for years to come. Maybe this job would be my swansong as well.
I passed the city’s newest landmark. No doubt about it, the new McDonald’s was the glossiest, brightest building on the main drag. Its brown marble walls were extra shiny this morning after their coating of rain. New converts lined up with their kids for a Georgian McBrunch.
There weren’t too many Ladas parked up outside. Being the new thing in town, it was the domain of dark- windowed Mercs, and even a Porsche 4x4. You didn’t get cars like that by working for a living in this part of the world. Their drivers-cum-bodyguards were gathered under a nearby tree, dragging on Marlboros and pausing occasionally to flick ash off their obligatory black leather sleeves.
An old man in an even older black suit jacket pointed at parking spaces with a small wooden truncheon, as more shiny cars full of rich kids came to stuff their faces with American imperialistic calories. I was even thinking about getting supersized myself.
It wouldn’t be long now before I turned off the main; it was easy to tell because McD’s was featured big- time on the map. Just as well, because I couldn’t read the street names in Russian and Paperclip.
My plan was simple. If possible, I would do a full 360 of the target house, until I’d seen as much of it as I possibly could. My priorities were defences and escape routes. That was if I didn’t get picked up by one of the VW blue-and-whites. They buzzed around the city like flies, or just sat there, lurking in lines of parked cars while their passengers watched and smoked.
I turned left on the second junction and walked uphill into a swathe of narrow roads and cramped houses that hadn’t had their wash and brush-up. Suddenly I was in the real Tbilisi, the part that was poor and decaying, and I realized that I felt at home in it, away from the land of fresh paint and shiny new tarmac.
Small bakers sold bread and cakes from a hole in the wall. Cars swerved round potholes and pedestrians who’d stepped into the road to avoid craters in the pavement. Abandoned vehicles and bulging bin bags littered the kerbs. Maybe it was garbage day. Or maybe it was just a hangover from the communist era: the belief that anything inside your four walls was your responsibility while anything outside was the state’s had come hand in hand with the hammer and sickle.
It was easy enough finding the house numbers; they were stuck to the wall on two-foot-square plastic panels that also carried the street name in Paperclip and Russian. It felt like another depressingly uniform throwback to the old days, but I guessed at least it meant the postman wasn’t going to make a mistake with the Christmas cards — unless you lived in one of the fancier places. They seemed not to have to advertise themselves.
Electric cables ran in every conceivable direction above my head, emerging from what looked like home- made junction boxes stuck on trees. Maybe they were; when the electricity supply is as erratic as it was here, people will always come up with ways of making sure they get their share. Rainwater dripped from gutter pipes that disgorged their contents straight into the street. I was starting to get an uncomfortable film of sweat down my back as I climbed.
I carried on uphill, the sweat now flowing freely. After navigating three crossroad junctions I got to what I hoped was Barnov Street. The target house was along here, on the left somewhere.
Old, once-elegant buildings stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the odd modern lump of glass and steel. Without exception, they were protected by high walls, some plastered and painted, some just rough concrete blocks.
I passed the French and Chinese embassies. A small hut stood outside each of them, complete with bored- looking security guard reading the morning paper. Despite appearances, and the holes in the road, this was obviously the upscale end of town.
Ladas weren’t the limo of choice up here, either. The only badges I’d seen blocking the narrow pavement in the last few minutes were VW and Mercedes. But strangely, not many of the drivers were wearing black. A lurid Hawaiian number went past in a Saab, smoking a cigar and shouting into his mobile, but still finding the time to check his slicked-back hair in the rearview. He didn’t look like he was en route to an ambassadorial reception.
This had to be mafia land. Good for them, but not good for Charlie and me. There was going to be an unhealthy amount of protection around this neighbourhood.
2
I didn’t know its number, but I could tell I was at the target house from what I remembered of the bag-fit video footage.
The top of the ten-foot-high wall glistened with broken glass. Not a problem to climb over if we had to, just a little bit time-consuming. And I was right, no number boards for the posh houses up here.
I passed the rusty sheet-steel gates on my left. So far I hadn’t seen any more on this recce than the film had shown me, except some fresh Paperclip and Russian graffiti had been daubed on the gates. The keyhole was a simple three-lever device that Charlie’s bits and pieces would defeat in seconds.
I caught a glimpse of a blue vehicle in the gap between the gates. There were two inches of clearance at the bottom, and a bolt at the base of each was rammed into the ground on the inside. Unless there was another exit, chances were Baz was at home.
The high wall continued for about three or four metres before it turned left at the junction. I followed it, and immediately saw that I still wasn’t going to learn any more about the target than I already knew.
On the other side of the road was a nightclub/ restaurant/bar called the Primorski. The neon was dead, but pictures outside its big black doors showed dancing girls straight out of Las Vegas, feathers in their hair and hardly any other kit on.
The rendered wall gave way after a few metres to bare concrete blocks, before turning once more onto a new road. I didn’t follow it left. A blue-and-white was parked up. I headed right instead, towards the cemetery. In any case, Charlie would be coming up that parallel road and would see exactly what I could from where I stood: that the crumbling buildings were crammed together so tightly, the target might as well be a terraced house with another row behind it.
If we fucked up and needed to do a runner, the easiest escape route was going to be up onto the high ground, towards the telecoms mast. There was no habitation up there. We might even be able to move along the higher ground under cover of darkness until we got level with the Marriott, and then down to get a taxi for the airport.
I now had to check the cemetery DLB, which was up on the higher ground ahead. We might even be able to see inside the target’s yard from there. I walked past a parade of shops that seemed to sell nothing but shoes. I texted Charlie:
I got back an
