“They were our friends,” I said, holding her.

“Yes, they were,” she whispered. “And now they're gone.”

We spent the rest of the day going about our routines. I made my daily check of the security arrangements, the alarms, did yoga for an hour with Alena, then went for my run, leaving her to work out in the studio.

I covered eight miles, down to the water, along the beach. It was hot and growing humid, even by the waterfront, and the beach was beginning to fill. It was tourist season, and the influx had easily doubled Kobuleti's population, though that was down from the previous years. Another by-product of Russian pressure on the economy.

I passed the Gio, a café that, like so many others in town, turned into a bar-slash-nightclub after dark during the summer months. One night, the summer after we'd returned to Kobuleti, Iashvili had been dining there with a couple off-duty members of the force, celebrating a junior officer's impending marriage. A group of laughing teenagers attracted the policemen's attention. Iashvili thought he and his fellows were the source of amusement. The fight that followed ended with the chief shooting three of the boys in the foot. There was no official record of the event. Even the hospital where the boys had been treated refused to document the case.

Democracy was wheezing its way into the Republic of Georgia, but it still had a very long way to go. The Russian Army still maintained a presence in both Poti, further north on the coast, and in Gori, restricting traffic to Tbilisi. In the open land between the Black Sea and the capital, brigands still lurked the roads. The declaration of independence in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia made Moscow's shadow fall long and cold throughout the country.