The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

^{CHAPTER 34} BOK

Radovan parks the car in a rough parking area next to the road and the silence of the land takes over. I try to keep my cool as Niko gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He makes some quick modern dance moves, showing the surroundings to his great gun. Yeah, man. You better watch out for those White Hats. I casually bend forward and manage to pick the small gun up from the floor, without the driver noticing. I mean to do him right away, but when Niko shouts for me to get the hell out of the car, I fucking hesitate. Discretely, I pocket the piece and exit the car with my heart playing all kinds of music, like a radio gone haywire.

I’m fucked.

The bright spring night is freezing cold. Niko orders me to walk ahead of him, away from the road, and then shouts at Radovan, still inside the car. I make my way across the harsh, uneven lava surface. Here and there are patches of light green and gray moss, and we have to step over some oblong, narrow openings in the lava floor, which look like miniatures of the Grand Canyon. Clefts, you might call them. I try hard to walk naturally while doing my best to conceal the loose sole of my right shoe. I hear Radovan get out of the car. The car door slams, filling my ears with sound. The last door of my life… I could just as well turn around now, grab the gun, and ice them in a flash.

No. Won’t do. Niko is fast enough.

Finally he tells me to stop. I get it. They’ve really done their homework. We stop at the edge of a lava cleft that’s big enough to serve as my coffin. Iceland will swallow me up like an unlucky tourist.

I turn around to face my friends and executioners. We all shiver with cold. It must be around two degrees Celsius. Not a car, a bird, or a plane can be heard, and the air is completely still. The silence is absolute. I think about Gunnhildur. She must be in the car by now, driving around aimlessly, desperately. Or maybe they’re still at the house, held hostage in the sofa by the Ukranian entry, thinking I must have gone out with an old buddy from Mob School.

Niko orders Radovan to give me a cigarette. Actually, I’d almost forgotten about it. The blockhead brings out the packet and throws me one. It’s a Pall Mall. There is absolutely no limit to the strangeness of this guy. Though he looks like a white Hulk in a suit, his favorite artist is Celine Dion. He’s watched Titanic thirty times, he once told me. I ask for a light, and the bald one searches his pockets without success. Niko keeps his Desert Eagle pointed at me. I keep my eyes glued on the barrel, while he uses his free hand to fish a lighter from his pants. He throws it at me. I pretend to catch it, while allowing it to escape my hands. It lands on the lava floor. I excuse myself before bowing to get it. It’s from the Zagreb Samovar. I hesitate a moment before picking up the lighter, giving Niko a quick look. He’s as tense as a bound eagle. “Don’t fucking fuck with me!” Obviously, he can’t wait to bomb my face with a long bullet from his big black gun. Still, he promised I could have a final smoke. For old times’ sake.

This could be my moment, I say to myself as I grab the lighter. But no. I hesitate again. Without doing anything, I get up and light the cigarette. It shakes in my mouth like a tractor’s gear-shift. My heart repeats the same beat over and over again, with the sound of a CD stuck on a scratch.

I remove the cigarette from my lips and give it a good look, those 3.5 inches of paper and tobacco. I’m 3.5 inches from the grave. I’ve got 3.5 inches to work from. Now, 3.41, to be exact.

I started smoking in the war. In those crazy days, every cigarette you could get your lips on represented seven minutes of cease-fire, a glimpse of heaven in the midst of hell. After the war it became the opposite: every cigarette brought back seven minutes of shooting and bombing. So I quit. This one here can only bring back my scattered memories: my mother cursing in the kitchen, Hanover fucking Hauptbahnhof, the Winnipeg guy and his bloody wallet, Gunnhildur’s stick-red smile. I smoke it as slowly as possible.

“But why kill me? What’s the purpose?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve quit. I don’t even travel anymore. I’m just…”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Sorry. Let me just finish this and then you can…”

As before, we speak in Croatian. You have to picture bright white subtitles flickering across our dark chests.

Once again I inhale, watching the low blue mountains ahead. They must have witnessed a thing like this before. The sky is empty. No cloud, no plain. Somewhere behind me, Reykjavik spreads out in the distance, the fourth city of my life, and further out, at sea, the bright spring sunset must be well underway. Goodbye world. Doviđenja svijete. I exhale and look at the butt. There is about one puff left; less than 1 inch left of my life. My two visiting friends are getting restless. I lift the small cigarette up to my lips and inhale.

Here we go.

I bend forward, pretending to put the cigarette out in the stiff moss with my left hand while reaching into my pocket with my right. Niko immediately shouts and steps forward, pointing his gun downwards, toward my head. Quick as a fox on fire, I dive to my right, rolling on the harsh lava floor, and he shoots. The bullet bouncing off lava rings in our ears. And before he even realizes I’m holding a gun, its bullet is buried in his upper right arm. His scream is muffled. Radovan immediately reaches for his tool, but receives a bullet instead, in his right wrist. He screams out loud. As Niko grabs his gun from the wounded arm with his left one, I’m back on my feet, pointing the pistol at them and screaming:

“DROP IT! DROP THE FUCKING GUN!”

Niko looks at me with bewildered eyes. “What the fucking fuck?” He now has the piece in his left hand.

“I SAID DROP IT!”

Blood drips from their wounded arms. Radovan is still wearing his sunglasses, looking quite ridiculous, like some wannabe mobster in a Russian B movie.

“DROP THE FUCKING GUN!”

For some mystical reason I use the English word “gun” here, instead of the Croatian pistolj. It makes me think of Gunnhildur. The thought distracts me and Naughty Niko sniffs out the weakness expertly. Before I know it, he has raised the gun against me. We strike simultaneously, like the spiritual twins we used to be. My bullet lands in his gun-holding left arm. His scream is less muffled now. I try to swallow mine. A streak of strange warmth shoots down my groin, in the direction of my left thigh. The warmth then turns into fire. It’s like when a match is being lighted. First there is the strike and then there is fire.

It’s a typical left-hander. He aimed for my heart but got the bladder. But mine was on target. He’s as good as armless. As well as Radovan, after another one from the PP9. Suddenly I’m aiming for arms only. I’ve fired fucking four shots and still no one’s dead.

My friends’ faces are tormented by pain, as mine must be too. Their hands hang lifelessly beside them, freshly slaughtered piglets, blood dripping from their hoofs. I have my small gun aimed at their heads now and after some more shouting, Niko drops his big Desert Eagle. I order him to give it a kick and then quickly bow to pick it up. It seems to take me forever to get back up, though. The pain in my groin is of groundbreaking proportions. Holy shit.

I put Niko’s gun in my pocket.

I order Radovan to come closer and open his jacket for me, but he can’t, of course, with his hands. I carefully approach him, my eyes going between him and Niko every two seconds, and open his black Armani jacket with my left hand. His weapon rests in the inner pocket. A silver Smith & Wesson. But as I grab it, the stupid Hulk tries to push me away with his elbow. Niko uses the opportunity for coming at me, head first, like some crazy hornless ram. I put him out with a simple “elblow,” something I perfected in Torture training this winter. With Niko down, Radovan doesn’t risk any more tricks, and soon I have two guns in my pocket and the third one in my hand.

I fish the car key out of Radovan’s pocket and then silently wait for Niko to come back to his senses. I order them both to crawl down into the mini-canyon. This takes some time. Still wearing the sunglasses, Radovan looks more and more ridiculous, heading for a comic death. I tell them to lie down, facedown, biting my lips from the pain. Something is leaking down my left thigh. Feels like I’m peeing with my balls.

This is wartime all over again. Shouting at people in Croatian with a gun in my hand and a leaking leg. The driver’s bulky torso takes up most of the space in the lava coffin. Next to him, Niko looks like a slim virgin wife about to be buried with her husband, eyes screaming: “Please, fuck me instead!”

“FACE THE FUCKING EARTH!” I shout, sounding a bit too nervous.

I lower my gun. I’ve got two asses in sight. Two rectums screaming for lead. There is nothing else to do. Munita’s killers will have to face the fridge. On fucking Fridge Island. I’m about to pull the trigger when there is a sudden breeze in the otherwise still spring night. I swiftly look around but see nothing. Nothing coming, nothing going. There’s just this sudden breeze, blowing across the lunar lava field, pushing up the good moon door…

Amen.

I take a long good look at my former buddies, lying face down in the cleft, like two gentlemen overdressed for a mass grave. I then nod a few times before telling them goodbye with a short little Croatian word:

“Bok.”

I turn away and start limping towards the car. My groin cries, my heart shakes, but my soul says hallelujah.