‘That his Audi?’
‘Yep, blue and in shit state. I even have the plate for later on. If he’s on the take like Whitewall says, you’d think he could afford a decent motor.’
He was right about the lighting; the corner nearest us had CCTV and arc lights mounted on both front corners of the house. Under each arc light was a black plastic cylinder that we’d have to assume was a proximity detector. We hadn’t seen any of it during the walk-pasts because they were at first-floor level, hidden by the wall.
One camera on the right-hand corner was angled in the direction of the gate and another covered the side of the house, aiming towards the rear, just like the camera on the left-hand corner. There’d be another one at the back, no doubt. I studied the gates.
‘I still think the bolts are manual.’ I lowered the binos. ‘Did you see them on your walk-past?’
‘No. What do you reckon about the two outhouses?’
The binos went back up. The only windows that would get any light into the ground floor would be the ones by the front door. There was a gap of no more than two metres between the wall and the house at the sides and rear. Maybe the building had originally had a fence and no neighbours.
Two small brick outbuildings faced the house, about ten metres across the cracked concrete courtyard. If we came in through the gate, they’d be down to our right, the Audi dead ahead and the front door to our left. ‘Good place to hide while we sort our shit out? If he’s in, at least we’d have somewhere to sit and think.’
The front of the house was flat. Three steps led up to a recessed porch. The door was solid natural-coloured wood, with two lever locks on the right, one a third of the way up, the second a third of the way down, and a handle in the middle. From this distance I couldn’t tell if the handle also had a lock. The floor was lined with cracked, blood-red quarry tiles and a coir mat.
I felt a few specks of rain on my face. Mist was rolling in from the other side of the city. Three young guys walked past. They had their hoods up on their multicoloured nylon shell suits, and they were trying hard not to look furtive, but failing.
Charlie grinned. ‘Looking for somewhere to try out a bit of home-grown poppy from the north, I fancy.’ He wiped the moisture from his cheek. ‘So the house — piece of piss, or what?’
‘Don’t know yet. I need to give it some thought once we get back to the hotel. You?’
‘Easy. Chances are, any motion detectors down there are just for the lights, maybe they even kick off the CCTV as well. Why rig them up to the alarms? They’d go off every time a bat flew past. Poor Baz’d be up all night, wouldn’t he?’ He took the binos from me. ‘Know what, lad? I think we should just go for it. Street lighting is shite. Through the gates, do the old anti-detector crawl, up to the main door. I’ll get that open, do the business, and then we’ll get our arses up here and DLB the lot. Then it’s back to the hotel in time for breakfast. A nice early one, mind, because I’ve got a very important appointment with Air Georgia.’ He brought down the binos and grinned at me. ‘That sound like a plan?’
‘Sounds like a fucking nightmare.’
He pulled open his jacket and shoved the binos inside. ‘Give me a few. I can walk past that nightclub for any escape routes round the side.’
I picked up the paper again. ‘OK, I’ll follow in fifteen.’
Charlie stood up and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘Listen, lad, I want to say thank you…’ He paused, and seemed to have difficulty swallowing. ‘For a while there I thought you weren’t coming. That worried me. I really do need your help, so thanks.’
I didn’t know what to do. My head sort of froze. Fucking hell, what was he going to do next? Kiss me? ‘I hope you remember the way back, you silly old fucker…’
Charlie smiled; he knew it was just a bit too much for me. Man to man, my comfort zone with emotions didn’t extend much further than the message on his glass tankard.
‘Maybe, maybe not. If I get lost, I’ll ask a nice policeman. Fucking enough of them about, aren’t there?’
He walked away and I instantly regretted not telling him how I felt. He was my friend, and of course I would never have left him. But that was another of my many problems. I only ever knew what to say after the event.
I looked at the paper for another ten minutes, my mind full of what-ifs. What if Baz was in the house? What if he met us as we were trying to go up the hallway? What if there wasn’t even a safe?
To me, three hours of planning for three minutes’ work was always time well spent. But maybe Charlie was right. What was I worried about? We would go through the plan, and all the what-ifs, at the hotel.
I found myself thinking of Silky again, and concentrated hard on all the positive stuff. It took about another five minutes to realize it wasn’t working. Try as I might, I couldn’t overcome my biggest concern: that Charlie might forget what the plan was once we were on target.
I got up from the bench and started walking down the slope, past row upon row of the young smiling faces of the 1956 dead. They all looked about the same age as Steven was, when he, too, became a good lad fucked over.
4
The rain had stopped, and there were even a few stars pushing their way through the breaks in the cloud.
I made my way past the opera house, taking the same route as earlier. It was my job to clear the area from the direction of the hotel; Charlie was doing the same from the other side of the Primorski.
The streets and pavements were still busy, even half an hour before midnight. Most of the shop lights were on, and McD’s was heaving. I’d hoped Tbilisi wasn’t a city for late-night people so our life would be easier, but no such luck.
I’d left the hotel at about 8.30, after asking the concierge for a couple of suggestions for places to eat. It sounded perfectly normal, as the hotel was jammed with the Gore-Tex version of the UN. The BP Georgia conference had ended and the restaurant and bar boasted even more European languages than polo shirts.
Not that I was in any position to take the piss. Charlie had been in charge of buying us both some oilman kit to change into for the flight. We’d be getting wet and shitty later on, trying to make entry, so would need to smarten up a bit before we exited the country. I had a rather fetching blue sweatshirt with matching Rohan trousers and a slightly padded khaki jacket to come home to. With that on tomorrow, I should be close to invisible.
I had checked that the screechy American had left Prospero Books, the English bookshop, cafe and internet place, and went and logged on with a hot chocolate and sticky bun. It seemed to be a general meeting place for Brit and US expats working on the pipeline, and at their respective embassies. Or it might just have been the only joint around that had its own generator, so when the power failed they could stay online.
My first big question for Google was Baz’s date of birth. With luck there’d be a list of Georgian politicians somewhere, with personal information; whatever, I’d just get in among the web and find it.
One approach to cracking the combination of a safe is to crack the psychology of the owner. Surprisingly often, combination locks are left on their factory settings — usually 100, 50, 100. I wasn’t too up on eastern bloc defaults, but Charlie would be.
If you bin the default and choose a new combination, chances are you’ll spend the whole time flapping in case you don’t remember it; it’s the same as it is with PIN numbers. So people tend to use numbers they know, like their birthday, car registration or phone. If they choose random numbers, they are almost certain to write them down somewhere. An address book is usually a good place to start looking.
It was easier than I could have hoped. The Georgian government had a website, and they published personal details. Baz was only forty-five; he was born on 22 October 1959. He must have had a hard life, though; his picture showed a balding man with a few wisps of grey hair, skinny as a rake. He could have done with a few of the sticky buns I was getting down my neck.
The small sign above every PC kindly reminded users that they must not erase their history. Maybe the shop had to hand a printout to the police every twenty-four hours, or perhaps they checked it after every user. Trying to cover up my history as comprehensively as possible, I wiped it clean then had a quick look at today’s helping of
