Halfway back to Kobuleti, after crossing the Supsa River, I took the Land Cruiser off-road, heading inland, headlights off. It was closing on two in the morning, the moon beginning to move toward setting, but there was more than enough to see by as long as I drove slow. I followed the river-bank for four kilometers, passing farms and their distant houses, before reaching woodlands. Then I turned the nose of the car to the river and parked. When I moved to get out of the car, I realized that my shirt had stuck to the seatback as well as to me, and when it came free I felt my back start bleeding again.
I opened the doors and the rear, then found a rock big enough to weight the accelerator, put the car in gear, and let it go into the water. The Land Cruiser did pretty well for itself, got about six meters into the Supsa before stalling out, and it was already turning slowly in the current, beginning to drift, when I turned away and headed for home on foot. I followed E &E procedure as I moved, staying away from the roads and anything that advertised people, going through the woods.
It required concentration, and that was good, because it meant that I didn't think about Bakhar, and who he was, what he had done, what he had been. It meant I didn't think about Tiasa, what had happened to her, what was being done to her right now.
It was dawn when I reached home, and Miata came to meet me, licking my hands and following close to heel when I went indoors. Alena hadn't returned yet, and even though that was expected, it was also profoundly disappointing. I needed her.
I checked the security, rearmed the system, then went to the gun locker and reloaded my gun. I put everything I'd gathered on my trip in Bakhar's go-bag-the money, the two knives, and the BlackBerry, along with its battery, which I'd removed before leaving the road. Then I went into the bathroom and started the shower. I stripped down at the mirror, twisting around in an attempt to catalogue my injuries. There were bruises and scrapes acquired from the fistfight and the desperate motion before and after. Most of my blood was from the grenade, minor shrapnel mixed with pebbles and dirt that had carried enough velocity to penetrate cloth and skin, but none too deep. I picked what I could out of my body, got my legs clean, but there was a spot on my upper back that I just couldn't reach. Fresh blood leaked out of me where I reopened my wounds.
Then I got under the shower and watched as blood, mine and others', spiraled down the drain. After a couple of minutes I got the shakes, and decided that sitting might be a better idea, so I slumped down in a corner and tried to ride it out. Then I got the dry heaves.
It was to be expected. The only thing that surprised me was that it had taken this long for everything to catch up.
I was asleep when Alena returned home, deep in a bone-tired coma, and she woke me with a touch, saying my name. She was sitting beside me on the bed, a hand on my back, and I had a vague sense that she had been there awhile, but perhaps it was only a dream. The lamp was on, but otherwise, the room was dark.
“Welcome home,” I said.
“I'll get the kit,” Alena told me. “Stay still.”
She rose and left the room, and I decided that staying still didn't mean I couldn't reach for my glasses. I had them on when she came back carrying one of the two homemade first aid kits we had in the house. They were closer to the jump bags you'd find on an ambulance than the kind of thing you could buy in a store, filled with bandages and tape and gauze, even two liters of Ringer's solution. Alena opened the kit and came out with a clamp and a set of forceps, set them aside and went to work dumping Betadine on my back.
“Tell me,” she said.
I told her.
When I had finished, so had she, smoothing the last of the tape down across the bandage. The three fragments of shrapnel she'd dug out of me sat on the open gauze wrapper, black and sharp. She scooped up the paper, crumpling it before setting it aside, then checked my legs, her fingers careful as she examined the rest of my wounds.
“Superficial,” Alena said. “Fortunate.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes. You should drink something, try moving around.”
She took the kit, rising, and I got myself off the bed, feeling muscle-sore but unimpaired. The ringing was gone from my ear but my head still ached, though it might have been dehydration as much as anything else. I pulled on a shirt, feeling the tape on my back pull and flex, then followed after her, down the hall.
In the kitchen, Alena handed me a glass of water, then put the kettle on. She avoided looking at me.
“How was Nicholas?” I asked.
“He was fine. It was a short meeting.”
“No trouble?”
“With him? Is there ever?”
“I meant on the trip.”
“I was stopped on the M1, outside of Gori, by the Russians. They wanted to search the car, but it was a shakedown. I had to pay twice, going and coming.”
“Money.”
“Yes.” She looked up from where she'd been watching the kettle. “You think something else?”
“Nothing you would give them,” I told her. “Doesn't mean they didn't want it.”
She shrugged. “The same everywhere.”
I finished my water, watching her. She was right, it was the same everywhere, all around the world, first to third, and certainly here in the former Soviet states. At almost every border crossing, at almost every checkpoint, someone, always male, had his hand out. Most of the time, money would do it, because most of the time, the people manning such checkpoints and crossings were desperately poor, despite their uniforms. But if you were traveling with a woman, or if you were a woman alone, most of the time it wasn't money they wanted.
“You're thinking about Tiasa.”
“Trabzon's maybe two hundred and fifty kilometers,” I said. “We take the car, leave by midmorning, we should be there before evening, even with all the stops.”
“No.”
“The other option I'm thinking is to go back to Batumi, take a boat. It'll take longer, though, and I don't want to lose the time. And we'll need to arrange transportation on the other end.”
She shook her head. The light in the kitchen turned her copper-colored hair orange, turned her complexion sallow. “I'm not talking about the route. I'm saying no, we're not doing this.”
“Tiasa-”
“I know.” She held her look on me for a fraction longer, then reached for the canister of tea, began digging a spoon out of the utensil drawer.
“If this is because you think the information is-”
She cut me off. “I doubt he lied to you.”
“Then Trabzon-”
“No.”
I tried again. “She's fourteen, she's-”
“I know,” Alena said, sharply, spooning too much tea into the pot.
“I can't abandon this,” I said.
The utensil hit the counter with a clatter. “Tiasa is gone. Like her family. We have to forget them.”
“You trying to convince me or yourself?” I asked, after a second.
“Yes, both of us, yes.” She straightened, squared her shoulders, fixing her posture, all her little tells that I knew meant she was struggling with her emotions. When she was ready, she looked at me again. “Those men in Batumi, they will have friends, friends who found Bakhar. They can find you. They can find us.”
“All the more reason for us to go.”
“This is our home. I will not leave it.”
“You know what's happened to her, what's going to happen,” I said. “Someone has to find her.”
“Then let someone else do it. Not us.”
My frustration finally broke. “I don't understand. You liked Tiasa. Forget about the rest of them for now-Bakhar, who he was, what he did, it doesn't matter. This is about Tiasa. You adored her.”
“I love her.”
She said it softly, without hesitation. Considering that “love” was hardly a word she was ever willing to speak aloud to me, it was surprising.
I said, “There's no one else. You know that. We can't just sit here and hope some NGO is going to discover her, free her, and we both sure as hell know some Good Samaritan won't come to her rescue.”
“I know.”
“I can't forget this,” I insisted. “I have to go after her. I can't let this sit.”
She inhaled, and her eyes shifted aside for a moment, pained. Her eyes were hazel, and beautiful, and since I'd first met her had become more and more expressive. There'd been a time when reading her was next to impossible, quite deliberately so on her part, something she'd been taught that had turned as autonomous as breathing. Survival had hinged on being able to hide not only her thoughts but her feelings. While I'd become better at it, she'd become worse; it was another of the trades we had made by joining our lives.
“You'd leave me here alone?” she asked.
“It's not like you can't take care of yourself.”
“Don't. Don't go.”
“Come with me.”
“I can't.” Behind her, on the stove, the kettle began to rattle, spilling steam. “I can't.”
“What aren't you telling me?” I asked her. “What's going on?”
She shook her head, brushing past me as she left the room. I heard the back door open, then close, hard.
I stood in the kitchen alone, listening to the chattering kettle.
After a minute, I went to the bedroom and began to pack.