MORNING SERIAL
HE cocked a look at me and said, “How’s about a Guinness there, fella?”
I thought it was some kind of trite promotion, but he said it again and then leaned across to me, cutting through the loud music that seemed to be coming in through the open frontage from a bar across the street.
“I’m just saying you look like a civilised chap,” he said. He was already pouring it without me saying a word.
“You know, it’s cheaper to wash your car with Cypriot lager than it is using water. If you want your car even dirtier than when you started out, that is.” And he put the pint at my wrist. I didn’t want it, but I paid for it.
“Do you know Furkan?” I said, baulking at the price of the drink.
“You mean Furkan Balaban? Yeah, sure. Everyone knows Furkan. You a friend of his?”
I felt as though I was heading down an avenue with no goal in sight. What was the attraction to this Furkan? I had seen something in him when he broke up that fight in the square, something I had only ever seen in the criminal fraternity back home. An authority that held something beyond the governance of law. I strongly suspected he would know the Russians on the island. Few people commanded the kind of presence I had seen from Furkan without being crooks.
“Do you know Illiarion Prostakov?”
“A Russian? There’s a lot of them about, although not as many in Napa as rumour has it.”
He seemed to warm to his subject. “They tend to be in the north of the island, away from the barracks. Not that the soldiers would care about that sort of thing, but the Russians are…” he searched for a word, “…discreet.” “Discreet?”
“They don’t see the need to get into trouble if it can be avoided. Why are you asking about Russians?”
I sipped my beer, and decided to follow my own version of discreetness. “A friend of mine is doing some work for him and I wanted to check he’s legit,” I said.
“Ha!” said the Irishman, and it was not a laugh but a blank straightforward exclamation. “He’s not.”
“So you do know him.”
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks. com