Everyone has a weakness. Lukov’s was women. Enslaved to his cock – to which he proved himself a devoted and unaccountably successful servant – he was an internationally notorious skirt-chaser. He roared with laughter again and then as quickly as it flared up his face dropped.

‘Are you buying, or selling?’ I went to answer but he cut me off. ‘And don’t think Sergei is going to be cheap. You, here – this is a problem, my friend. A big fucking problem. You understand?’

I told him I did and lowered my hands, looking around for somewhere to sit. He pointed to the table and I drew up a chair. I sat down and folded the tan overcoat I’d bought on the way tightly across my chest. Lukov reached up to a cupboard over the sink and produced a bottle and two little Duralex glasses, into each of which he poured an ounce or so of clear liquid.

‘Rakia,’ he said. ‘For the cold.’ I hesitated. ‘Relax,’ he smiled. ‘Guaranteed one hundred per cent Bulgarian grape poison.’ We lifted our glasses and banged the rims together loudly. Lukov looked me straight in the eye. ‘Nazdrave.’

‘Sláinte,’ I replied, holding his stare.

I took the grappa at a gulp and clenched my throat before breathing out. My guts burned. Lukov sat down and lit a Gauloise and then pushed the packet and a lighter towards me. I lit one too, and held the smoke down. It tasted good. We both exhaled into the room. The tobacco smoke smothered the tang of shit, the grappa, the biting cold.

‘Selling,’ I said.

‘Bad luck for you,’ he smiled. ‘Buyer’s market. Seems like everyone has something to sell these days.’ I took another drag on the Gauloise and he fixed his marble eyes on me through the smoke. No smiles now. We stared at each other for a moment over the empty glasses. ‘What are you offering?’

I dropped my cigarette into the ashtray. Then, slowly, so as not to incite his trigger finger, I removed the hundred-dollar bill from my ticket pocket, careful all the while to keep his gaze. I unfolded the note and placed it face up on the table between us.

‘Benjamin Franklin,’ I replied.

The laughter erupted again. Lukov’s face warped into a mass of unshaven creases. His body rocked; his left hand slammed the table like a tag-wrestler desperate to climb out of the ring. But his right hand never strayed more than a second from the pistol in his belt. It was a talent of his that you never knew if he was genuinely amused or just hamming it up; likewise, his bouts of gravity were equally inscrutable. But Lukov’s real talent was not as an actor, but as a broker.