The Accidental Existentialist (4 page)

Without hesitation, Masterson stepped
forward and stood by Chris. “Mikhail, allow me to introduce you to
our broker. Mark O’Reilly.”

Khrenikov lowered his eyes to examine
Chris, as though he were trash to be taken out. “Yes. It has taken
some coordination, but finally, we meet.” He removed his black
leather jacket and tossed it at Yuri. “Everyone, sit.”

Chris took a seat between Yuri and
Masteron, while Khrenikov took the head of the table.

With a handkerchief, Khrenikov dusted
the surface of the table. He put it back in his pocket, then set
down his drink on a round coaster with a gold trim. Scrutinizing
Chris with his eyes, he said, “Mister O’Reilly. Please. Remove your
hat.”

“
Of course.” Chris did so,
but felt even more uneasy. This was the man responsible for
countless murders, tortures, and a list of atrocities as long as
the Verrazano Bridge. And the man responsible for Ben’s
death.

“
You look like someone…”
Khrenikov scratched the back of his head.

“
I get that everywhere I
go. It’s part of my success as an international weapons
dealer.”

“
Shall we begin?”
Masterson said, a hint of irritation in his tone. “We’ve got many
plans waiting to be executed, all of them waiting for this deal to
go through.”

Khrenikov shot an annoyed glance over
to the Colonel. “I am not in rush. Why are you?” He turned back to
Chris. “You remind me of that person in the news recently. What was
his name…that soldier…?” He banged his fist on the desk and his
eyes lit up. An ugly tobacco stained smile slipped through his fish
lips. “Da! Connor. Christopher Connor.”

“
That’s amusing.” Chris
said, but feared his voice might betray him.

“
And they say my people
did it. I say: If they would like to believe it, that is
fine.”

In the periphery, Masterson leaned
over and whispered something to Yuri. Chris however felt his face
heat up. He was gripping the arms of his chair so hard, the shaking
alerted him.

Calm down.

A few more seconds and he would excuse
himself to use the restroom. And carry out his plan. He smiled back
at Khrenikov but wanted nothing more to leap onto him and break his
neck. But not before he made the Rushkie Kingpin painfully aware of
who it was that was repaying him. “Connor should be familiar, to
you. After all, you ordered the kidnapping and drowning of his
son.”

Masterson cleared his throat.
“O’Reilly, I really think—”

Khrenikov slapped his heavy hand on
the table to silence the Colonel. “Wait!” To Chris: “What did you
say?”

“
You killed Connor’s son.”
He almost said,
my son
. Chris could barely contain his rage now. Behind his placid
mien, his teeth gnashed in blazing anguish. Eyes sharpened like
spears, he flexed his fingers, tensed his legs in preparation to
launch at the bastard.

But Khrenikov shrugged, his massive
shoulders bouncing as he laughed. He stood and strode with
elephantine steps over to Masterson. “Can you believe this? He
thinks I killed the Connor boy.”

Masterson made an incredulous face but
didn’t look to Chris.

“
Isn’t that ironic,
Masterson?”

The Colonel tugged on his cuff and
slid a finger under his collar, as though his necktie had become a
noose. “Mikhail, don’t you think we should—?”

“
Nyet, nyet!
Why should I take the blame? For once, set the
record straight, Masterson. Tell Mister O’Reilly the truth. After
all, you are the man that whores himself out to the highest bidder.
You are the one who would betray your own people.”

Masterson stood up.
“Mikhail!”

“
I get bad enough
reputation for things I did. You tell him what you did.”

Chris’ head was spinning now. Whether
for sea sickness or the overwhelming revelations, he could not
tell. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them. Somehow everything
made sense, and yet it made no sense. Chris anticipated Masterson’s
response to Khrenikov’s goading. But he could not have predicted
what happened next.

“
The deal,
Mikhail!”

Khrenikov seemed genuinely amused at
Masterson’s sudden loss of composure. “Tell Mister O’Reilly about
how it was you who murdered the Connor boy!”

A muffled crack. Shattering glass. A
heavy thud.

Chris lifted his eyes and found
Khrenikov on the floor, his eyes and mouth agape, still smiling
with twisted fish lips—a look of surprise that was perversely
comical and at the same time sickening, thanks to the blackish-red
hole in the center of his forehead, and the blood oozing from
it.

The door opened.

The guards in purple and blue stepped
in. They glanced over to Yuri who nodded. They nodded back, and
bent over to pull Khrenikov’s body out of the room. Each of them
took turns straining and grunting as the hissing sound of wool
sliding against the bright red carpet faded out the
door.

“
Why?” Chris said, an
angry tear escaping his eye and rolling down the side of his face.
He turned and glowered at Masterson.

“
Chris, you have to
believe me. It was all part of the plan to infiltrate Khrenikov’s…I
never meant for it to happen like that. The person I hired to
kidnap Ben just couldn’t—”

“
You killed my boy, you
filthy sonofabitch!” Driven by rage that had for years been
contained, compressed and superheated, Chris rushed over and coiled
his fist back. But before he could strike Masterson across the
face, a rock hard blow hit him in the gut. Knocked the wind out of
him.

Yuri grabbed his arm and threw his
knee into his gut again.

Doubled over in pain, and barely
breathing, Chris straightened up and launched his elbow into Yuri’s
face.

There.

The nauseating crunch of nose bones
followed by a whimper.

Still holding his stomach, Chris
staggered over to Masterson. But the click of his gun, its muzzle
adorned with a silencer, stopped him in his tracks.

“
Chris. Listen to me. It’s
not too late. I can’t bring Ben back and I’m sorry. But we can
still make something good come out of this all.”

Between breaths, Chris said, “Would
you just listen to yourself?” How long had Masterson been so
delusional? When did he get sucked into the event horizon such that
there was no turning back for him?

“
Don’t you see? We did it.
Khrenikov’s dead. And now we can take over all his trade channels.
But we can do it cleanly. No more cruelty, rapes, or torture. Just
clean business.”

“
You hypocrite! You were
in it for the money all along.” Chris motioned to their
surroundings, the yacht itself. “But you got greedy. You wanted all
Khrenikov’s blood money could buy.”

“
We can do good. Why
shouldn’t we profit from it?” Masterson’s tone softened. “Look,
you’re already dead to this life, to your family. Come with us to
Moscow and join us.”

Taking the moment to evaluate his
situation, Chris pretended to consider the offer. Then he took a
deep breath, faked a smile and shook his head. “I’d rather
die.”

“
That’s too bad.” Still
aiming his gun, Masterson looked over to Yuri. “Tie his hands. It
was too much to hope for.”

Yuri fished through his pockets and
took out a white nylon tie-wrap. He fastened Chris’ wrists behind
his back. Then he took out his own gun, put it into the back of
Chris’ neck and urged him out the door. As they climbed the steps
to the main deck, he called out in Russian to Rayshkin and Boris.
Within moments the Yacht was moving.

Yuri brought Chris to the
aft section of the main deck, where he watched The
Potemkin
grow smaller
and smaller into the distance. The two guards who had taken
Khrenikov’s body now pushed it over to the edge of the deck. With
one good kick they shoved it overboard. It splashed into the white
foam of the wakes.

“
You should have chosen to
work with us,” Yuri said, with the affectation of sincere regret.
“It would have been much better than ending things this
way.”

“
If you say
so.”

He kept his gun aimed at Chris’ head,
but shrugged and made one of those aloof Russian frowns. “I really
liked you. You made me laugh.”

“
Go ahead and laugh all
the way to Hell, Stogorsky.”

Masterson arrived. He pointed his chin
to the edge of the deck and Yuri prodded Chris over to it. “It’s
tragic, Chris. But for the record, I want you to know this. If
you’d come with us to Moscow, Ben’s death might not have been
completely in vain.”

Right now, he would do anything to
exact upon Masterson the justice he so deserved. “You should worry
more about your own death.”

“
Considering our relative
positions, I find that hard to comprehend.” He gave Yuri a
throat-slashing hand signal. “Okay, that’s far enough. Cut the
engines.”

Shouting up to the bridge in Russian,
Yuri gave the command. The boat stopped. He then pushed Chris back
to the edge of the boat with his gun.

“
Well, my friend. It’s
time.” Masterson sighed. “If it makes you feel any better, I won’t
tell Marlena about Ben, next time I see her.”

If his eyes were lasers, Chris would
have burned a pair of holes into Masterson’s chest. But now, words
failed him. He could only snarl and glare with the most hateful
look he could muster.

“
Good bye, Chris.”
Masterson flipped off a callous salute and went below
decks.

Yuri gestured for Chris to turn
around.

“
No. I want to face my
killer. Look you in the eye as you pull the trigger.”

“
I’ll shoot you right now,
you
hooy morzhovy
! Now turn the hell arou—!”

Just then, with his hands still tied
behind his back, Chris leapt up and drop kicked Yuri in the head.
But this didn’t stop him from firing his gun. As Chris toppled into
the water, a dull pain went through his arm.

He splashed into the cold waves. Red
streams floated up over him from his wound. Bubbles floated from
his lips. Sinking, he struggled to bring his knees to his chest,
and ankles as close to his hands as possible.

This attempt caused him to invert and
sink head first. Panic seized him as the water around him grew
darker. Finally, he righted himself and brought his hands under his
feet and around in front.

Another couple of seconds and he would
lose his breath. He reached down to his ankle and pulled out the
mini blade he took from Evgeny Rayshkin before boarding Yuri’s
boat. With one quick flick, he cut the tie wraps, dropped the blade
and swam back up towards the large shadow that was the
yacht.

From above he heard muffled shouts,
bullets whisking thought the water. Pulling as close to the hull as
possible, he stuck his face out of the water just long enough to
exhale and take in another deep breath.

Now, he would carry out plan C, which
along with plans A and B (though they never panned out), he’d
rehearsed over and over in his head, weeks before he went
dark.

Chris submerged himself again. The
shouting and shooting continued. Now with rapid, sustained
automatic fire. But he clung to the submerged hull of the ship
where no bullet could reach.

From his breast pocket he pulled out
the package, still tightly wrapped in plastic. Thank God the hull
was made of steel. The magnets inside the package did the trick and
it stuck.

Just then, the engine
started.

The blades of the propellers spun,
sending streams of bubbles out into the emerald expanse. Chris swam
up the side of the boat to the surface one more time and took a
deep breath. Then pushed away and swam down.

The gunfire continued, but faded as
the Yatch pulled away.

He waited until the boat’s shadow
seemed far enough for him to stick his face out of the water and
not be spotted easily.

Treading water, he watched to make
certain they didn’t see him. He then reached into his other breast
pocket and unzipped it. In his hands, he held a small remote
detonator, sealed in a Ziploc freezer bag. Pressing his thumb
through the folds, he found it difficult to push the switch into
the “on” position.

“
Come on, come on!” The
boat would soon be out of range.

Finally, the switch clicked into
place. A green LED lit up.

With his thumb on the detonation
button, Chris took a deep breath.

And pressed it.

But nothing happened.

Chris swore and pressed it again. And
again. “No!”

Either the boat had indeed sailed out
of range, or the package of C4 had dislodged. Only one way to find
out. He began to swim towards the boat. But he didn’t have to do
that for long.

Like a bandolier of firecrackers, gun
shots resumed and crescendoed. Chris ducked under the water. The
boat was turning around and coming at him.