The Searcher by Christopher Morgan Jones

He couldn’t talk to the man, to reason with him or threaten him or humiliate him, as youmight a cocky schoolboy in front of his friends. He had no money to buy him off, and no leverage: he didn’t know him, what he wanted, what secrets he needed to keep. An expert opponent in his own world, Hammer found himself in a different arena. And if he didn’t find a way round, others would sense his weakness.
    Force seemed disproportionate. It was only somewhere to sit, after all. Then his memory jogged him with an idea, and from his shirt pocket he took the driver’s cigarette.
    â€œHere,” he said, offering it to the man with a friendly hint of a smile. “Something to save face.”
    The rat considered it, then reached out a hand. Hammer looked down, and when he finally drew up his legs, gave him the cigarette.
    â€œObliged to you,” said Hammer, and sat carefully down in the space.
    The air was warm with the smell of old alcohol and tobacco smoke and sweat accumulated over days. Some men slept; some talked and smoked; some stared ahead. Over everyone there was a settled lethargy, as if no one expected anything to happen for a good while yet.
    In among them, Hammer’s thoughts raced. If the Georgians weren’t about to deport him they might leave him in here for a few days while they dealt with more pressing problems. How to get out? Feign illness? Surely that didn’t actually work? Bribe a guard. That was more like it. Except without actual cash he had no means of explaining his offer. There wasn’t a prison guard anywhere who’d free a prisoner at the sight of him grinning meaningfully and rubbing his fingers together. His watch might do it. But that would be a gross overpayment, and chances were would only see him out of this cell.
    Hammer looked around at all his new companions—impassive, contained, unknowably Georgian—and wondered how in the world he was ever going to make himself understood.
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    I t was late now, air was in short supply, and despite the bright lights most slept, heads bobbing on their chests. No one took any notice of Hammer, except for a new arrival who perched on the end of a bunk next to him. Hehad a shaved head and a dry trickle of blood from a gash on his temple, and every so often he lazily switched his gaze to Hammer, kept it on him for a while, then turned his head again. He had forced someone further down the natural order from his precious spot. Hammer did his best to ignore him.
    It wasn’t the best environment in which to think. Apart from the heat, and the stale air, all the shifting and sighing, his neighbor was making him feel conspicuous. It didn’t take a detective to see that Hammer stood out. Ten years since he had last been in the field, fourteen since his last stay in a cell, and in that time he had become respectable. And rich, by anyone’s standards, least of all those of a Tbilisi police station. The fine leather shoes said it, and the linen jacket, bloodied though it was, and the neatly rounded nails that hadn’t ever seen manual work. He wasn’t so much from a foreign country as from a foreign world. Fourteen years ago he had felt, if not at home, then at least as if he and the jail occupied the same universe. Not now.
    Now he had money, and a reputation, and people he hadn’t met knew his name. A hundred and ninety-three people relied on him for work. Private bankers competed in vain to look after his fortune, invited him to days of golf in the countryside, persisted in the face of his increasingly impolite refusals. As he had once called important men, journalists now called him for comments and tips and leads, some of which he was happy to give. People listened to him. And though he never spoke of it, nor really thought of it, the money he gave away—to his faith, to protect journalists, to the boxing gym that he wouldn’t allow to bear his name—was