4
‘Room 258, sir.’ The concierge handed me my room card.
I thanked him and turned away, but he hadn’t finished.
‘One moment.’ He searched under the counter top. ‘This is for you.’
I took the bulky envelope. On the back was written: ‘From C.T.’
I bent to pick up my carry-on, but a young bellboy beat me to it. He guided me the four paces to the lift. I hardly needed the help, but I didn’t want to upset hotel protocol and get myself noticed. Besides, there was no way he was going to let go of the bag, or the tip.
He pressed the call button. ‘You have travelled to Tbilisi before, sir?’ The accent probably came from watching American TV shows. So did the grooming; he had hair so clean and sculpted he could have auditioned for The OC, and there wasn’t a zit or hint of stubble on his cheek.
I smiled and made all the right noises as we let a briefcase-toting American major in BDUs get out of the lift before taking it to the third floor. ‘No, but it looks very nice to me.’
He nodded and agreed, but treated me to the sort of look that said he doubted I was in any position to judge, if my choice of outfit was anything to go by.
When we got to the room, he showed me how to work the air conditioning and TV, and even took the trouble to explain that the two-litre bottles of Georgian mineral water beside it were complimentary. I knew, but I didn’t interrupt his patter. I wanted to be the grey man; or as much of one as I could be in an orange-, green-, brown- and blue-patterned jumper.
After he had completed his routine, he took a bow and gave me a very big smile. I pushed a five-dollar bill into his hand before he had a chance to go for an encore. I didn’t have a clue how much that was in local hertigrats or whatever they were called, but he left a very happy bunny. Like almost anywhere, in Georgia the US dollar was king.
I took in the thick plush curtains, furniture and fittings. It made a welcome change from the shitholes I’d normally had to put up with when I was on a job. Then I peeled open Charlie’s envelope.
The Motorola pay-as-you-go cell phone was fresh from its packaging. It would have been the first thing he bought after arriving. I sparked it up; there was only one phone number in the display for me to ring, so I pressed it at the same time as I hit the TV remote. I always liked seeing if other countries had to suffer their way through the same shit programmes that I watched.
Charlie answered immediately, tearing the arse out of his Yorkshire vowels like one of the Tetley tea folk. ‘’Eh oop, how art thou, lad?’ He sounded as though he’d swallowed a fistful of happy pills.
‘Shut up, you nugget. I’m in 258. You?’
‘One-oh-six.’
‘I’m going to sort my shit out – see you in about thirty?’
‘Okey-dokey.’ He killed his phone.
RTV1 was the default channel. It was good to see that today’s Russian housewife wore the same gently exasperated expression as her Midlands cousin when she watched her boys covering themselves with mud on the footie pitch, and that Tide washed away all her problems too.
I shoved the two-pin charger plug into a socket and checked the bars. Charlie would already have done it but there was no harm in a top-up, especially in the power-cut capital of the world.
I flicked channels again. Russia’s Weakest Link looked exactly the same as the American show (which looked exactly the same as the Brit version) except that the woman asking the questions had brown hair and no facial tics.
I checked out the room safe, though I had nothing to put in it. All the US dollars I’d drawn from an ATM in Istanbul, about fifteen hundred of them in fives and tens, would stay with me. My passport would stay with me too. I only did it out of habit, in case the last guest had left me some valuables. I had probably been doing it since I was a kid checking out the coin return in phone boxes and cigarette machines. I’d never found anything then either, but you never know.
I scanned the minibar too. All the normal miniatures, but not as much vodka as I’d have thought. Coke. Fanta. A local beer covered in paperclip writing and a bit of Russian. A couple of small mineral waters with the same label, Borjomi, as the litre bottles by the TV, but without the nice little card telling me it was the pride of Georgia, and an arrow on a map pointing to a town somewhere to the west of the city. The rest were berry and fruit drinks.
I settled for a can of apple juice.
Sitting on the bed and feeling totally exhausted, I flicked through the remaining twenty-two channels. Most were Russian; a couple seemed to carry local news, and of course there were CNN and BBC. I left it on a Paperclip channel and glanced outside as I headed for the shower.
The weather was still miserable. It had stopped raining, but it was a gloomy, cloud-ridden dawn. The street directly below me was already clogged with a mixture of Western cars and trucks, and old square Ladas straining under the weight of too many sacks of spuds lashed onto their roof racks.
Beyond it were a lot of grand buildings a couple of hundred years old, which I knew from my map housed the government. A few museums, domes and church spires from even further back rubbed shoulders with the tightly packed brick cubes that lined the narrow, steeply climbing streets.
At least the communist planners had had a stab at preserving the grandeur of the centre, and built most of the crap far enough away from city hall that they didn’t have to see it. By the look of things, when their work was done here, they’d probably gone and had a crack at Hereford.
The green hills that surrounded the city soared above the rooftops, and seemed close enough to reach out and touch.
I put my fluorescent nylon socks over my hands, jumped into the shower, and used them as flannels to give both them and me a wash.
My first glimpse of the foyer had told me I should have hit some local fashion websites before I came; market gear just didn’t cut it here. But f*ck it, Charlie’s job was tonight, so I’d be out of here by tomorrow . . .
Well, that was if I did it.
I wanted to know exactly what it was first.
And coming here was the only way I’d find out.