Jakob Arjouni - Kismet

‘Come on out, let’s talk sensibly!’

I peered round one tyre and saw the two of them looking my way through the empty window frame, which was rimmed with jagged shards of glass. Their right hands, and what they were holding in them, stayed below the level of the sill.

I had to find out if a peaceful settlement was at all possible. Perhaps Ahrens really had sent them with instructions to negotiate or to bribe me. Perhaps he was finally getting sick and tired of shoot-outs. So I took off my muddy jacket, now spiked with splintered glass, and held it briefly out from behind the tyre. A peaceful settlement was not possible. Next moment what had recently been a garment on my back was a pile of rags riddled with holes lying in front of me in the mud, graphic evidence of what our lads understood by ‘talking sensibly’.

I turned my head and saw what I already knew: I couldn’t get away from the shelter of the car. They could see the whole forecourt from the window, there was no cover except for the Mercedes, and after my panic-stricken burst of fire at Gregor’s legs I had no ammunition left to shoot back with. Although they didn’t know that yet, and they obviously hesitated to harm the gleaming, brand-new metal of their vehicle

I crawled round to the side of the car facing away from their window, and saw that the driver’s door was half open. They’d been in such a hurry and they liked to put on such airs that I hoped the key might be in the ignition. As I crawled on I called, ‘I thought you wanted to talk? Doesn’t look like talking to me! Apart from the fact that that was my favourite jacket — and always assuming you know what a jacket is.’

‘Oh wow, man, is Krap ever witty!’

I reached the open driver’s door and saw the picture of the Croatian president welded into a key tag hanging from the driving column.

The car was about three metres from the entrance to the hostel. The swing door and thus the corridor beyond it looked to me a little wider than the bonnet of the car.

‘Seemed like it was just some old rag!’

There were barely ten metres between the visitors’ room and the swing door. That would take them three or four seconds, less if they ran. Or they might jump out of the window — in which case all I could do was throw mud at them.

‘Hey, lads, what next?’

‘I said we talk sensibly, OK?’

‘What about?’ I peered cautiously across the driver’s seat. The car was an automatic. ‘About what’s next.’

I thought I heard a suppressed splutter of laughter. They thought themselves such a superior force, and indeed they were. If I’d suddenly begun weeping or praying, they’d only have seen it as further confirmation of their superiority. That was my chance.

‘You mean that?’

‘Sure we do.’

‘I’d like to talk sensibly to Ahrens.’

‘Ahrens? Why not? We can drive you there.’

That suppressed splutter again.

‘But we have to agree on something first.’

‘Oh yeah? What?’

‘Everything’s nice and peaceful from now on.’

‘Why, sure. Word of honour.’

‘OK… then I suggest we meet here outside the entrance, unarmed.’

A pause, one of them cleared his throat, then my partner in the negotiations spoke up again. ‘Why not just come out from behind the car? Like we said, it’ll all be peaceful now.’

‘Well, let’s say as evidence of your goodwill. Down here we’ll be on the same level, and I can see if you’ve really put your pistols away.’ I stopped for a moment, and then went on in an increasingly defensive tone, making it sound as if I was making a great effort to stay cool. ‘I mean, boys, believe me, I’m sick to the teeth with all this violence! Normally I just go looking for dogs and husbands and so on. Honest, I’d like to be well out of this. So what I think is, it’d be best for us to look each other in the face here, and then sit down around a table with Ahrens like grown-ups and discuss the rest of it. I could have one or two other things to tell you that I’m sure would interest Ahrens. About the Albanian and what the police are planning. We Turks have a proverb: if you soil a stranger’s carpet, you must shear your own sheep for him. Understand?’

‘Sure. Sounds real good. How about your gun?’

‘But I said I want to negotiate.’

‘Sure, shear your carpet and all that, but.’

‘If you agree to my proposition, I’ll throw my pistol down outside the front door — call it the first step in negotiations. Then I could only run away from you. How’s that for an offer?’

‘Not bad! Go on, then!’

There was such outrageous amusement in his voice that it wasn’t hard to imagine them splitting their sides with laughter. Just so long as they didn’t jump out of the window…

‘OK!’ I raised my hand with the pistol in it above the roof of the car, and still it wasn’t shot away at once. ‘I trust you!’

‘Sure thing, Krap! Trust means a whole lot!’

I straightened up, levelling the empty pistol, and we looked into each other’s eyes across the car and a few metres of muddy forecourt. They were both making the grim faces of people who are trying not to fall about laughing at a funeral.

I pointed my pistol at the swing door and smiled with restraint. ‘See you, then. Nice and peaceful, right?’

They nodded, and their eyes looked down at me, sparkling with anticipation of a wonderful bloodbath. If only they came to the door…

I swung my arm back a little way and threw the pistol down on the mud between the Mercedes and the entrance. Then I looked back at the window, and my blood was roaring in my ears. They were still there, looking back. For a moment I thought it was all over. They were young, fast and strong, and presumably had enough ammunition to turn me into something like my jacket ten times over. I felt old and fat, and I had nothing.

We stood there like that for two or three seconds, and if they’d simply climbed out on the window sill and jumped down, I probably wouldn’t even have tried to run for it. The attempt would have been plain ridiculous. But suddenly, as if years later, one of the two made a brief gesture in my direction, grinned again as if he couldn’t understand such stupidity, and next moment they had both disappeared from the window frame.

Ten metres, three to four seconds. Less if they ran. I flung myself behind the wheel of the car, turned the key in the ignition, and shifted the automatic gear-change to Drive. When the engine came on so did the stereo system, with Janet Jackson belting a song out from six or eight loudspeakers. Once I saw the shaved heads appear in the corridor behind the glass of the swing doors, I stepped on the gas. The car leaped, and our lads opened their mouths wide. Of course they hadn’t put their pistols away, but before they could raise them to the right height the Mercedes was crashing through the door. All they could do was retreat, fast. So far everything was going smoothly. Only the walls of the corridor appeared to be a problem for a split second. About three metres beyond the swing door they narrowed, and the car wouldn’t really fit between them any more. But the walls were plaster, the Mercedes was a Mercedes, and I had no choice anyway. As I drove the car down the corridor with a grating sound, chasing our lads before me, plaster panels and polystyrene linings were scraped off to left and right. Meanwhile Janet Jackson was singing, ‘Whoops now’, and as far as I was concerned we could have gone on like this indefinitely. Once or twice the pair of them swerved towards doors on both sides of the corridor, but in the kind of hostel where the dilapidated chairs were screwed to the floor of course nothing was left unlocked. As a bonus, they dropped their pistols when they grabbed at the door handles.