Ghost Ship

At the end of the line Sam could see a ticket checker in a glassed-in booth. Before it was a man in uniform screening the arriving tourists. Sam inched forward, steeling himself to submit to inspection. He glanced around him. Everything seemed normal. He thought of Catarina and wondered where she was. How she was. He wondered if she knew he would come for her.

He hoped Tom, Elise and Genevieve had gotten in.

A man said, “Next.”

Sam jerked out of his reverie. The guard beckoned again. “Sir?”

Sam stepped forward and presented his credit card. “One ticket, please.”

The man made the exchange and handed Sam back his card. Sam tucked it in his wallet and his wallet in his pants. As he took the ticket, three men approached from the sidelines with friendly smiles and cold eyes. “Mr. Reilly?” the first said genially.

Sam turned to them, taking a breath and pushing away his fear. Underneath their shirts he saw the outline of guns. “Yes?”

The man touched his hip. “You’re to come with us. Special tour.”

Sam glanced at the ticket checker, but the man had ducked on to the next in line as if he were scared of the entourage.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you so much. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

Sam’s eyes swept the entrance. He spotted Tom, Elise and Genevieve loitering in the wings, admiring tapestries as if they were merely tourists enjoying the spectacle of all the ancient history.

They turned casually and watched Sam being led past the guard and off down the halls. They grinned at each other.

“Show time.”

When Sam and his entourage had traveled far enough that their footsteps couldn’t be heard, Elise checked her phone. A little light blinked on it, tracking Sam’s phone in case they got separated in the labyrinthian interior.

“Okay, folks. Let’s hit it.”

Sam marched behind the mafia men through the corridors. The halls loomed around them covered with tapestries. As they walked, the corridors grew increasingly dilapidated and the walls became crumbling and damp. Sam kept a sharp eye out and followed in their wake. “Where are we going?” he asked.

Their steps just marched. They didn’t answer. Sam watched their backs.

“Not much for talking, are you?”

Still no reply.

They walked until they reached a bolted wooden door with rusted hinges in the crumbling section of the fortress. Though Sam knew he’d be going in alone, the fact that no one knew where he was made his blood cold and hot at the same time.

Not no one, he reminded himself. Tom, Elise, and Genevieve know.

That he didn’t know who they were didn’t comfort him at all.

Still. There was a certain comfort in being a man with no past. It gave him a certain liberty for what he was about to do. Sam let his morals go. He was a man on a mission, and he gave himself to it completely.

The men in front of him knocked on the door, a series of coded raps. Sam memorized them but knew it was useless. There was no way he could pass the information on to the others. He just hoped they were following close enough to hear. Or that whatever cache of firepower they’d brought with them didn’t care about secret codes.

A voice spoke in Russian from behind the door. One of Sam’s escorts responded in kind. He smiled at Sam with all of his teeth. There weren’t that many. The ones he did have were gold.

Sam smiled back.

The door opened.

He stepped inside, wedged between a massive man built like a wall and a tiny wisp of a girl with a semi-automatic- the same kind of gun Sam had found in his bag on the train to The Hague — just above his spleen.

The light in the room was dim, but Sam could make out old furniture covered in dusty drop cloths, ancient relics tucked out of the way for storage, old power tools, their cords wrapped carelessly around unused bodies. No one had been in here for a long time. It seemed the Russian government suffered the same problem as everywhere else: funds for restoration always took a back seat.

But that wasn’t what caught his attention.

What Sam saw was the woman sitting bound and gagged on the chair, the gun trained on her, the way her short hair stuck to her skull with sweat and the fire that still burned in her eyes despite her predicament.

An older looking man with a barrel chest and a mulish grin said, “So good of you to join us, Mr. Reilly.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Sam recognized the man’s voice as the same one he’d spoken to on the cell phone. “Did I, Igor Mihailovich?”

Igor smiled. All bullies liked to be recognized, as though it was a secret to their power.

Sam gestured to Catarina. “Now that I’m here, I suggest you let her go.”

Igor nodded. “Yes, that was the deal, no?”

“Yes.” Sam kept a level gaze on the men in the room, gauging the distance. He could take out two, he thought. Maybe three. If he was quick and if he took them by surprise.

He couldn't take them all.

The boss shook his head. “What is that phrase you use, you Americans? Ah. Russian Roulette.”

Without warning he raised the gun and fired at Catarina.

Sam flinched and screamed.

So did she.

Nothing happened.