Quiller Balalaika

'Don't fiddle with your hat, Yuri.'

The man looked down at his hands, stilling them, bringing his head up again with his face crumpling. This new role-playing – of parent and child – began to fascinate me as I was shown yet another side to Vishinsky's psychotic character: from a blaze of explicit rage he was capable of getting himself back under control, of driving his emotions inwards and holding them there with the potential of an unexploded bomb. And there was something appropriate in the parent-child relationship – the Russian word 'sobri' was as close as the mafiyosa could get to the Al Capone title of 'boss', but it also had a suggestion of 'father' about it, as in the French 'patron'.

'Two of them were cops, boss. You wouldn't have wanted me to make a hit in front of the cops, I knew that, I was sure of that.' His small mouth hanging open, his breath fluttering, his eyes pleading now.

'Was it snowing, Yuri?'

'Snowing? Yes. Starting to come down quite a bit. The cops – '

'How was the street? '

'The street, boss?'

'The surface. Try and understand what I'm saying, Yuri. And straighten your collar.'

The man's hands fumbled with it, then he looked up again – was this better, was this pleasing to his sobri? 'The – the surface,' he said, lost, then made a try. 'The surface had got some snow on it. Not much, just a little.' Was that the right answer?

'So you could have made an immediate getaway,' Vishinsky said, his tone light, chiding, 'as soon as you'd got the shots in. Isn't that right?'

'Boss, I -'

'Isn't that right?'

'With the cops there, I -'

'Vitali,' Vishinsky said to the guard near him. 'Bring me that imbecile's revolver.'

'Boss,' the man against the wall said, 'Boss, I did what I thought was right -'

'Shut your mouth.'

Moskolets unbuttoned his coat and the guard took his gun and brought it over to Vishinsky, presenting the butt with deference, his eyes uneasy. This had been enacted before, then, this little charade; it had its own traditional choreography, and every man in the room was familiar with it, and on edge.

Moskolets: 'Boss, don't do this to me. Don't -'

'Shut up, you stupid son of a whore! You know that fucking judge is going to be in court tomorrow, and he's got my brother up on a charge? Didn't you know that?'

'Yes, boss, but I -'

'Shut the fuck up!'

Vishinsky's hands were trembling as he hit the chamber of the gun open and shook five of the bullets out, scattering them onto the carpet and snapping the chamber back and giving the gun to the guard.

'Boss' – the voice of Moskolets, high-pitched now, a small boy's whimper – 'Boss, I didn't mean to -'

'Vitali, give him the gun.'

'Sure, boss.'

'Don't make me do it, for the sake of the holy Christ -'

'I'm giving you a chance, Moskolets. You do this or they take you to the forest, don't you understand? You spin that thing six times. Do it right and you can get out of here with your fucking skin, don't you know charity when you see it?'

'Boss, please, boss, for the sake -' his voice cracking.

But he took the gun, looked at it as if he'd never seen one before, silent now, his mouth shaking, his eyes wide, such are your typical hit men, put them on the wrong side of their favourite toy and this is what you see, call it a jelly-fish, not good to look upon without a sour rush of contempt into the mouth.

'Play,' Vishinsky cut across him, 'play!'

The guard Vitali stood away from the man quickly, perhaps bearing in mind how far a jet of blood will reach when an artery's hit, and there was a click as Moskolets pulled the trigger, another click as he pulled it again, wanting suddenly to get it over, know the worst, was that it?

I watched Vishinsky's face, the eyes of the Cougar, as he stared at the roulette-player, unblinking. Behind him the guard had his own eyes narrowed, his mouth compressed, his head jerking a degree as Vishinsky's voice came.

'Play, you fucking clod, come on, three – fire!'

Another click, the man's finger moving as if to the force of the other man's voice, the face of Moskolets now bright with sweat, his hand shaking as he kept the gun held to his temple, his eyes no longer registering anything as his mind passed beyond terror and beyond despair, dwelling in oblivion, already -

'Play, Moskolets, you -'

Crash of the gun and the guard jumped forward to catch the man as the blood bloomed crimson across the skull and the thick squat body jack-knifed into Vitali's arms.

'Mind the carpet, don't get blood on the carpet!'

'Okay, boss,' cradling Moskolets' head against his jump-suit as he lowered the body, two of the other guards moving in to help him.

'Get a bag.' Vishinsky's voice quiet now as the cordite fumes curdled in the air below the lamp. 'Put him into a bag and give me his gun.'

'Sure, boss.'

One of them left the room, his feet quick, bouncing in their fancy Nikes across the carpet. Vishinsky didn't move, sat with his legs crossed and the revolver on his lap as he stared at the mottled face of Moskolets, his body propped against the wall, a guard holding the palm of his hand over the bloodied cavity in the skull.

It was a black bag the other man brought back, the standard model. It must, I suppose, have been tempting for the Cougar to have his escutcheon printed on it in gold – he must have kept a supply of these things, for God's sake. The Russian-style syndicates, Croder had said, make the Italian and Sicilian operators look like harmless amateurs, yea, verily, in all sooth.

A dull musical note sounded, long-drawn-out and with a tone of finality in it as a guard pulled the zip-fastener shut on the bag.

'Two of you, take him to the forest.'

'Sure, boss.'

They lifted the body together, one at its shoulders and the other holding its feet. A third guard opened the door for them, closed it again, its sheet steel booming faintly like the echo of a prison gate. The fumes of the cordite hung on the air, bitter-sweet.

Vishinsky picked up one of the bullets from the carpet and slipped it into the chamber of the revolver and slapped it shut and threw the gun across to me.

'Now you,' he said. 'Play.'

11: SPIN

Sweat of a dead man's hand, chilling and intimate, on the butt of the gun as I caught it.

It was short-barrelled but heavy, a Taura 44 chambered to take a man-stopping shell, the scent of its last shot lacing the air.

It's no good pretending he was taking a risk, the Cougar. Yes, I could swing the chamber open and line up the cartridge and hit the thing shut and take aim and fire, drill him accurately between the frontal lobes, watch his surprise in the instant before the head snapped back under the impact. But they'd be on me like wolves, the three remaining bodyguards: he knew that, and also that I hadn't the slightest interest in ending his life and then my own in some kind of personal gotterdammerung.

I laid the gun on the floor.

'Pick it up,' Vishinsky said softly.

'One day,' I told him, 'you're going to look back to the time when I came into your life and showed you the royal path to great riches. You need to think ahead a little. You need to realize that I don't hold my life cheaply, and I'm ready to pay.'

He leaned forward an inch. 'Pick up the gun.'

I couldn't quite tell from his eyes whether the crystalline glitter was the lingering excitement of Moskolets' death or the anticipation of my own. But I could see that he was beyond linear thinking, oblivious to logic. He was all emotion now, with the forebrain shut down, the death of the hit man taking him into what we would call a feeding frenzy in a shark.