The Russian Takedown: Chapter 15

The explo­sion was horrific.

Immediately fol­low­ing the noise of the det­o­na­tion, my boat began sway­ing against its moor­ings, bump­ing the boats on either side and ris­ing up and falling again with the tide that was cre­at­ed.  Holding onto what­ev­er I could grasp, I peered out the port­hole and saw that the boat at slip 107 had van­ished, a ris­ing col­umn of smoke in its place with uniden­ti­fi­able debris rain­ing down.

Unfortunately, sev­er­al crafts on either side were either total­ly wrecked or dam­aged.  I regret­ted that my solu­tion had result­ed in inno­cent vic­tims, those who would have to deal with insur­ance com­pa­nies or pay for their own repairs or replacement.

The bag I had left on Krislov’s boat con­tained a good amount of C4, a mil­i­tary plas­tic explo­sive.  C4 is high­ly sta­ble, mak­ing it safe and easy to trans­port.  It is vir­tu­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by tem­per­a­ture and can only be set off by shock from a det­o­na­tor insert­ed into it.  In my case, I had a cell phone wired to the det­o­na­tor.  When the phone received a call, a small elec­tric cur­rent was sent through the wire set­ting off the det­o­na­tor and caus­ing the explo­sion.  Of course, there might have been some greater sat­is­fac­tion had I been able to con­front Krislov direct­ly and ter­mi­nat­ed him with his Makarov, which I had brought along for just that pos­si­bil­i­ty.  But bul­let holes would have raised far more eye­brows among the Toronto con­stab­u­lary than an “acci­den­tal” explo­sion, pos­si­bly self-inflicted.

My hope, indeed my expec­ta­tion, was that when Canadian author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ed, they would sur­mise that the occu­pants had been up to some­thing nefar­i­ous and that they had mis­han­dled explo­sives they were work­ing with.  I would have to wait to see how that played out.

For now, it was time to get some sleep.

The next morn­ing, as I walked out onto the deck with my usu­al cup of cof­fee, I could see police offi­cials swarm­ing over the area where the boat had dis­ap­peared, exam­in­ing the near­by slips as well for any poten­tial clues, and net­ting float­ing debris.  I was far enough away that they paid no atten­tion to me. Going back into the cab­in, I tidied up as much as I could, packed the few things I had brought aboard, and head­ed over to the clubhouse.

“Is Mr. Willows in?” I asked the first per­son I encoun­tered.  The place was in a bit of tur­moil, with numer­ous peo­ple rush­ing about, seem­ing­ly with­out purpose.

“Yes, but he’s quite busy right now,” was the response from a har­ried staff member.

“I don’t care how busy he is,” I stat­ed emphat­i­cal­ly, with feigned indig­na­tion.  “I’ve rent­ed a boat here and have no inten­tion of stay­ing con­sid­er­ing what has just hap­pened.  I need to see him to arrange some rec­om­pense for hav­ing to cut my stay short.”

“He’s in his office, I expect.  Second door on the right down the hall.”

“I know where it is,” I said as I start­ed toward his office.

Willows was on the phone as I entered.  He actu­al­ly seemed some­what relieved at see­ing me as he hasti­ly con­clud­ed his con­ver­sa­tion and cra­dled the phone.

“Mr. Tallent!  Good to see you, sir.  I was just try­ing to get a few things under con­trol here and was plan­ning on com­ing to see if you were okay.”

“Yes, I’m quite alright,” I said, “but I’m going to have to can­cel my stay.  With things like this going on, I think I shall be much safer in a hotel.”

“Well, I can assure you that we don’t have boats explod­ing here all the time, but I com­plete­ly under­stand your posi­tion.  I’ve got a lot to do here to deal with this unfor­tu­nate event, but you under­stand that the con­tract stip­u­lates that there are no refunds of rental fees.”

“No, that won’t do at all,” I inter­rupt­ed, dis­play­ing my best ren­di­tion of hau­teur.  “If the ear­ly ter­mi­na­tion of my stay were a result of a deci­sion by me, I would cer­tain­ly have no prob­lem with hon­or­ing the pro­vi­sions of the con­tract, but since this event is of no fault of mine and threat­ens my phys­i­cal well-being, I shall expect a full refund of my rental fee less, of course, the per­cent­age equal to the time I actu­al­ly spent here.”

“Well, I’m not sure I can do that, Mr. Tallent.  After all, the contract…”

“Damn the con­tract, Mr. Willows!  If I don’t see a pro­por­tion­al refund on my next cred­it card account, you’ll be hear­ing from my attor­ney.  And I’m sure the cost of lit­i­ga­tion over some­thing like this will be far more than the refund.  I came very close to being killed last night.  If the author­i­ties wish to ques­tion me, you can let them know that I shall be at the Hazelton for a short peri­od of time.”

With that, I turned and left his office.  I felt pret­ty sure that I had left the prop­er appear­ance of dis­sat­is­fac­tion of an aggriev­ed ten­ant.  It would have been high­ly sus­pi­cious to have sim­ply walked away from the rental with­out doing so.

Leaving the furor behind, as well as a dis­mayed Willows, I drove back to the Hazelton.

I elect­ed to stay on at the Hazelton for a few days, not only to avoid being seen as some­one who had been in the vicin­i­ty of the explo­sion and left so sus­pi­cious­ly soon after the fact, but to try to find out how the police clas­si­fied the disaster.

During the day, I called “Mr. Panda” and advised him that my busi­ness had been con­clud­ed, but that I would be stay­ing over for a short peri­od.  After a brief dis­cus­sion, I asked him to send my fee to my Cayman account.  He assured me that it would be deposit­ed with­in the next few days.

“I guess this con­cludes our busi­ness, Michael.  I want you to know it’s been a real plea­sure work­ing with you.  I shall adhere to my promise to you, but if you ever need any­thing, please know that you can call on me anytime.”

“I appre­ci­ate it Ar … er, Andy,” I replied, almost using his real name.  “You take care of your­self.  And stay out of trouble.”

“Not bloody like­ly, ol’ boy.  Take care.”

With that, our con­ver­sa­tion end­ed and, I ful­ly expect­ed, so did our association.