The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

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