a reply or some kind of justification. When Valentin didn’t stir, he went on. ‘But these are different times. We are businessmen, and there is an easy way of compensating us. You continue your work and from now on we’ll be your partners.’
‘We don’t need partners.’ Valentin’s voice sounded calm and measured. ‘We don’t need this business either. You don’t need us. Anyone can sell their goods in the West.’
Konstantine put his hand in his pocket and put a packet on the table. It was about the size of a small envelope.
‘You can be useful in other ways,’ he said. He pointed. ‘Open it.’
Valentin unwrapped the package slowly. It was full of brown powder. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This has been between Victor and me. Now it’s finished.’
The expression on Konstantine’s face changed suddenly, his features transforming in an instant into an angry snarling mask.
‘It finishes when we tell you it’s finished.’ He shifted his gaze away from Valentin, his hot black eyes burning into George’s face.
‘You, chornim.’ George wasn’t sure whether or not the word was meant to be insulting, so he stopped himself from reacting. ‘Look.’
For some crazy reason Konstantine was unbuttoning his shirt. George tensed himself for an attack, but the Georgian simply opened his shirtfront, baring his chest, which was covered with a straggle of longish black hair. He’d have hair on his back and shoulders, George thought. His own skin was a smooth hairless beige colour, and the sight of Konstantine’s sallow and hairy skin gave him a twinge of distaste that he could hardly conceal. The man was pointing to a spot below his prominent nipples, where George could just discern what looked like a tangle of curved white lines which he guessed were scars.
‘I was on my knees in Rustaveli Prospekt when the paratroopers came. They beat us with spades. Grooshya. Grooshya. Grooshya.’ His voice was higher and quicker as he chanted. George was beginning to follow his intonation and he noticed that he softened the G at the start of the words so that they came out sounding almost like an aitch. He pointed to his chest again. ‘These are the marks. Then they sprayed us with cheryomukha.’ He clutched his throat mimicking suffocation, his face contorted. There was nothing funny about the sight. He took his hand down and his black eyes struck at George. ‘Afterwards my sister was dead, suffocated by the gas. And after that they went through the town stealing everything they could put their filthy hands on.’
‘I was not there,’ George said carefully.
Konstantine buttoned his shirt and straightened his collar. Then he looked up at George.
‘But you must pay. Nothing is finished.’
He got up abruptly and George braced himself again.
‘Stand,’ Konstantine said.
George heard Valentin draw his breath in sharply and he saw that there was a gun in Konstantine’s hand. They stood in unison, and immediately George felt the other Georgian come up behind him to begin patting and stroking his body. In a moment he moved on, and when he found the gun in Valentin’s belt he grunted and held it up in the air.
‘We’ll leave you to think it over,’ Konstantine said. ‘You can have a committee meeting. Discuss it like good comrades.’ He smiled. ‘When I come back we can talk about the details.’
The two Georgians walked to the door and went out, their footsteps creaking on the stairs as they climbed down.
As soon as the door closed Victor got up and went over to the corner of the room. He knelt down and began unscrewing the floorboards. As he did this he talked rapidly, his tone urgent but somehow matter-of-fact.
‘They killed Anastas and Mikhail and maybe a couple more. I don’t know,’ he said, ‘and they intend to kill me after they make a deal with you, and after they get what they want they’ll kill you.’
Valentin had got up out of his chair and was standing, leaning against the table, watching Victor intently.
‘Valentin,’ George called. He was struggling with the sense that this was unreal, some kind of practical joke, a performance which would come to an end if he protested. At the same time he knew that this was exactly what he had been expecting from the moment the Georgian had opened the street door.
Victor was levering up the floorboards, and George wondered for a moment whether the idea was that they should somehow escape through the gap. Valentin hadn’t spoken since Konstantine had left the room, and George felt a sudden rush of anger, the urge to demand an explanation.
‘Valentin,’ he called out. ‘What are we doing?’
‘We’re going to stay alive,’ Valentin said tersely, without turning round. ‘We were in Tbilisi. Both of us. These chicken fuckers know that.’
Victor reached inside the hole he’d made in the floor and took out a long parcel wrapped in waxy brown paper. He laid it down behind him and Valentin picked it up and ripped the paper away, revealing the blunt, stubby shape of a kalashnikov.
‘Go to the window,’ he told George. ‘Tell me when they come.’
George moved towards the window, hearing as he went the familiar metallic snap as they loaded the cartridges. Down in the yard Konstantine and the other two Georgians were standing together in a huddle. They were all smoking cigarettes, a faint blue cloud eddying round them like a halo. In other circumstances, George thought, they would look like a group of office workers escaping for a break. Almost immediately Konstantine flicked his cigarette away and turned towards the stairs. George pulled back from the window.
‘They’re coming,’ he said.
Victor and Valentin were sitting on the same side of the table, their hands out of sight.
‘Sit there,’ Valentin told George, pointing with his chin to the corner of the table. ‘When the door opens, hit the floor.’
George sat facing Valentin and Victor. Their faces were impassive, relaxed but focused. His own hand trembled a little, and he took it off the table and gripped his thigh. Listening to Konstantine’s footsteps coming up the stairs he tried to calm his nerves by thinking back to his own days as a soldier, but it had never been like this. Even sitting in a guard tower at midnight he had been part of a routine, a cog in the machinery. This was different.
The door opened slowly, Konstantine peering round it, the gun in his hand outstretched and ready, his eyes swivelling around the room, locating each of them. Gradually he shuffled into the doorway, the other two Georgians out of sight behind him.
‘Stand up,’ he ordered.
George hadn’t moved so far, caught in a moment of indecision by the way that Konstantine had entered the room, but now, in the corner of his eye he saw a flicker on Valentin’s face and, without thinking, he dived for the floor. In the same instant Valentin and Victor fired from under the table. George didn’t realise what had happened immediately, because he’d been expecting the sound that the rifles made on the shooting range or out in the open across a field, the way he’d heard them in the past. Instead of the familiar stutter, the noise sounded like a deafening, percussive roar. Simultaneously, the table crashed over, banging into his calves, and, feeling the impact, he had the shocking sense that he’d been hit. In the next moment there was a whoosh of movement, so that he felt, rather than saw, Valentin hurdling over his body. He turned his head and saw his cousin, erect at the window firing a burst, his arms swinging in a short arc. Victor was kneeling in the doorway firing down into the yard. Then it stopped. George felt a hand clutch his ankle and, startled into reflex, he drew his leg up and kicked out, hitting something soft and heavy. He heard a deep, laboured groan and he sat up on the floor, looking around. The hand belonged to Konstantine. There was blood leaking from his legs and belly, flowing in gentle spurts, like water from a pipe. Victor turned away from the door, got up and stood over the Georgian.
‘Svolach,’