II

The gun dealer wasn’t due until that afternoon, so Boris took Davit into town after breakfast to buy supplies. The two-man tents on offer in the camping store weren’t designed for people the size of Davit; he could only fit diagonally. They took one each, added it to the growing mound by the counter, then returned to look at sleeping bags. ‘Damned things,’ muttered Davit, stepping into one and pulling it up to his waist. ‘It’s discrimination, that’s what it is. It’s tall-ism.’

His good humour needled Boris. He’d been this way all morning. ‘So how’s the girlfriend?’ he asked.

‘I really like her,’ grinned the big man. ‘I’m thinking maybe of staying on a few days after we’re done with Knox.’

‘I wouldn’t make any promises,’ advised Boris. He didn’t know quite how, but Claudia had got beneath his skin. The evening before, he’d offered her fifty euros for a quick roll. The little bitch had turned him down flat. ‘A job like this, we may have to leave in a hurry.’

‘I’d just like to do something for her, you know? Show her a good time, buy her some nice clothes. She’s had such a hard life, and they treat her like shit at that hotel.’

Claudia turning him down had only aggravated Boris’s itch. He’d lain awake last night listening to the two of them going at it like pigmy chimps next door. There was only one thing to do when a woman got beneath your skin this bad, and that was to fuck her until the sight of her made you sick. ‘Why don’t you ask her to come with us?’ he suggested. ‘She can cook for us, translate, even scout out Eden for us.’ This was a genuine problem that had been weighing on his mind. He and Davit shone like beacons in this place; they’d be spotted in a heartbeat as they approached Eden. But no one would look twice at Claudia if she went to their free clinic complaining of a toothache.

‘I don’t know, boss,’ said Davit. ‘I don’t want her tangled up in this.’

‘We won’t ask her to do anything risky. And we’d pay her well. Five hundred euros, say. That’s a hell of a lot of money in this place. It could change her life.’

‘She’d have to give up her job at the hotel.’

‘Make it a thousand, then. I don’t care.’ It was Sandro’s money, and he wouldn’t exactly miss it. And if Boris couldn’t manage to get Davit out of his way for long enough for him to scratch his itch good and proper, he wasn’t the man he knew himself to be.

‘Great,’ grinned Davit. ‘I’ll ask her when we get back.’