The entry wound was behind her right ear, the pale skin blackened and puckered from the point-blank shot. Pieces of her stuck to the wall from the exit wound.

They'd made her watch, I realized. They'd made her watch as they mutilated her husband.

Then they'd forced Ia Lagidze to her knees, and taken her fear, and everything else, away from her.

Koba asked me to teach him English.

“You're not learning it in school?” I asked.

He bobbed his head from side to side, not quite shaking it to say no. His shoulders raised and lowered in time, making him look like a gangly marionette. He was tall for his age, or at least I supposed he was, and very thin, and at the age of seven he already needed glasses, which we both took as a symbol of unity.

“Not much.”

He kicked a pass to me, sending the soccer ball bounding over the uneven ground of what passed for our backyard. It was summer, and I'd been surprised when he'd shown up, accompanying his sister for her biweekly lesson. This time of year, this time of day, most of the kids his age would be down at the beach, playing in the water or trying to scam treats from the tourists. But the request served as the explanation.

The ball took a bounce at the last second, nearly hitting me square in the crotch, but I got my thigh up and managed to trap and land it.

“I want to play in England,” Koba told me, by way of confession. “I'll have to know how to speak it.”

I tried to remember what it had been like to be seven and fearless and a dreamer.

“Sure,” I told him. “If it's okay with your parents.”

I left Ia and Bakhar in their bedroom as I'd found them, turned the corner, passing the bathroom. Koba's room was on my left, but I didn't need to look inside it to find him.

He was lying in the hallway, facedown, just outside his sister's room, one hand extended, as if reaching out to her. His glasses, broken at their bridge, rested a few inches from his head.