“It has to be done,” Sandecker said.
To his surprise, Pitt found himself agreeing.
TWENTY-NINE
After a stop in the mess hall, and a change of clothes, Kurt sat in a dingy cabin with gray-brown walls lit by a single incandescent light.
A chessboard sat in front of him on a small table. The game was in mid-progress, the pieces already in motion. A quarter of them stood on the side, fallen soldiers already taken by the other player.
To the left was an almost empty bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and two shot glasses, which Anton Gregorovich had just finished topping off for the seventh time. To the right — easily within both men’s reach — sat the Makarov pistol that Gregorovich had given Kurt.
Kurt had been in there for most of the night. This was their third game. Occasionally, Gregorovich asked him questions, which Kurt did his best to deflect. More often than not, he sat silently brooding.
Kurt figured it was some kind of test to see if he could hold his liquor or his tongue.
Eyeing the board stoically, Gregorovich finally moved, sliding a bishop into Kurt’s section. The move created options, forcing Kurt to choose between saving a pawn or a rook or making an offense move and letting both pieces go.
Done with his move, Gregorovich pushed one of the overflowing shot glasses toward Kurt and lifted the other to his mouth.
He knocked it down and then turned to the bottle for a refill. As he did, Kurt dumped the contents of his shot glass in a planter with a dying fern in it and quickly brought the glass back to his mouth.
He finished the last sip as Gregorovich turned back to him. “I wouldn’t do that,” Kurt suggested, putting the glass down firmly.
“What?” Gregorovich asked. “The bishop or the vodka?”
“You leave yourself open to check,” Kurt said.
“Only if you give up one of your pieces,” Gregorovich said and then downed the shot.
Kurt studied the board carefully. He moved the rook to a spot next to the pawn, protecting them both, instead of threatening Gregorovich with check, which the Russian could have easily escaped.
“You don’t understand this game, I think,” Gregorovich said. “You play defensively, protecting your pawns. This game, like life, is all about attacking.”
Gregorovich took another of Kurt’s pieces, moving his queen recklessly into danger.
“What would you know about life?” Kurt said. “Except how to end it.”
This time, Kurt reached for the bottle and poured the shots. He allowed his hand to shake and appear unsteady.
Gregorovich snickered. “I know that life is about finding your place in all of this madness,” he said. “Some of us find it easily, maybe you did. My path was more complicated. When I was a boy, my mother left us. My father’s temper and the back of his hand were too much for her. So, naturally, he took it out on me. When he drank, everything was my fault. When he didn’t drink, everything was my fault.”
Gregorovich shook his head. “Somehow, I always failed him. And when I did, he would beat me. His favorite game was to force me outside and make me stand in the ice water of the bog. It came up to my thighs and it numbed my legs, and then he would whip me with a belt until the water turned red or until my knees buckled and I fell in it. I couldn’t feel my lower half, but I could feel every inch of that belt on my back with heightened awareness.”
Kurt looked up from the board.
“One day,” Gregorovich said, “I decided I would stay up. Stay up until he killed me, and then I’d be free. I stood as he thrashed me and I kept myself from falling. It infuriated him more until eventually he charged into the water and tried to force me under. This triggered something in me. Something I had never felt. I had forced him to change. And so instead of letting him drown me, I fought him. For the first time ever, I raised my fist to him. And when I’d beaten him to a bloody mess, I took that belt and strangled the life from the miserable bastard.”
Kurt remained silent.
“The look in his eyes,” Gregorovich continued. “The look in his eyes as he died. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t fear. It was pride. For the first time in my life, and the last time in his, I had impressed him.”
Kurt tipped back another shot of vodka. “Why are you telling me this touching family story?”
“Because from that day on, I knew who I was,” Gregorovich said coldly. “From that day on, I understood life. It revealed what I was meant to be. An assassin. A killer. It is my gift. I have
“Except for Thero,” Kurt guessed.
Gregorovich seemed to brood at the mention of the name.
“Come on,” Kurt said, “it’s not that hard to figure. Thero’s facility was blown to bits. Somehow, he survives, and now Russia ends up on his hit list. It was you guys who blew him up. Seems you got everything except the head of the snake. I’d say you failed pretty badly on that one.”
Gregorovich lunged across the table, his hand blasting the chess pieces all over the room as it plowed through them on the way to the Makarov. He reached the pistol before Kurt could react.
Kurt had made a different choice. His left hand went for the vodka bottle, grabbed it, and smashed it against the bulkhead wall and brought the shattered stub up to Gregorovich’s neck like a blade. It met the Russian’s neck at the very instant the barrel of the Makarov lodged against Kurt’s gut.
The safety was off, Kurt’s liver unprotected. But so was his opponent’s jugular. Either man could have ended the other’s life in a blink, but it was a standoff. If Gregorovich fired, Kurt’s body would convulse, and the jagged glass of the bottle would slice his artery. If Kurt flipped the edge of the glass, he would mortally wound the Russian, but death would not come quick enough to stop the 9mm bullet from blasting through his liver and tearing apart his internal organs.
They stared into each other’s eyes. Two men on the brink.
“In chess they call this blood,” Gregorovich said. “A piece for a piece, an even trade. But our trade wouldn’t be even, would it? End my life and I end yours, but Kirov will have your crew shot before dawn. The pawns you fight desperately to protect will die along with their king. And I sense you have no stomach for that kind of outcome.”
“That may be true,” Kurt said. “But if you kill me, you lose your only chance to find Thero, your only chance to erase your one big failure. And your pride won’t let you give that up. No matter how badly I’ve angered you.”
The Russian began to laugh. “At least we understand each other.”
Gregorovich released the pistol and dropped it into Kurt’s lap. He then pulled slowly away from the glass.
Kurt grabbed the pistol and tossed the broken bottle away.
“I will find and destroy Thero,” Gregorovich said matter-of-factly. “Whether it happens before or after he obliterates Australia, Russia, or the rest of the world matters little to me. I will hunt him down and kill him because it is personal to me. And I will do so if I have to drive every man and woman on this ship to their deaths in the process.”
Kurt nodded. He recognized a modern-day Ahab when he saw one.
“Why would you need to drive your men so hard,” Kurt asked. “Don’t they have the same orders as you?”
“Orders, yes. But they lack my zeal. They’re uneasy and have been since we determined what happened to your ship. Like the men with Columbus, they’re afraid we’re sailing off the edge of the map.”
“So that’s why you gave us the guns,” Kurt said.
“You and your men are quite an effective counterbalance against them,” Gregorovich said. “Now they have
