Kill Cupid: Internet dating just got dangerous (23 page)

‘You are way out of your depth… we could blow your brains out and bury you tonight, and who will know? Huh? Who will questions us? FSB will handle the investigation and it will go nowhere. What did you say, Kangaroo?... I can’t hear you… what do you say about that?’

‘Sasha come on, you’re drunk. So just put the gun down, okay?’ This was serious. At first he thought it had been a drunken boy’s game of blind-man’s-bluff, but suddenly things were looking sinister.

‘That’s all you have to say Kangaroo? You should say your last useless prayer.’ Bronte looked for the one person he’d considered an alibi to assist and defuse the ticking Molotov cocktail of aviation gas standing to his right. But Viktor only seemed like an amused accomplice and looking at him, this sort of thing was normal. Boys will be boys. 

‘Sasha I’m not giving you my watch. Hell, I already gave you a Playstation the other day.’ And with that comment, Sasha marched across the floor to stand in front of Bronte and then press the gun to his forehead.

‘Get out of here… follow Viktor’ he barked. After seconds of swaying with the gun still pressed against Bronte’s forehead, he lowered the weapon and handed it to Viktor.

‘Let’s go,’ Viktor said gruffly. Bronte walked out of the cottage, Viktor indicating with the gun shoved at his back which way he should walk.

Although the girls had been in bed for more than an hour, neither could sleep. Not one of them spoke or asked if the other was awake. They lay there in silence, worrying. Zhana was concerned that all was actually well with Willy and her son. She knew that in the madness of the past days she had neglected both in a manner they were not normally accustomed. Worse than that, she had barely given Willy a thought since the fateful evening three nights ago. Her entire life had suddenly become preoccupied with Bronte and all that his introduction had brought with it. The whirlwind from Australia which swept through her life had sucked all thoughts of Willy into its twisting funnel. It was troubling he might sense something was going on, albeit not necessarily an affair. It wasn’t right she cause him stress, certainly not on the aftermath of purchasing the engagement and wedding rings.

In the quietness of self reflection, she knew she was trying to convince herself about the fate thing. If ever it appeared destiny had put two people together, it was evidenced in that chance meeting with Bronte in the park. What had been the possibilities of that happening? She was thankful that Tanya had not mentioned it during their conversation about fate because she’d have had no comeback. She also considered that she had just been through more drama with Bronte than most wives would experience with their partners in the first fifty years of marriage. Even through it all, they had only grown closer. She wondered if she would ever know Willy’s true character in so many ways manifest in Bronte? What could possibly happen in Willy’s life that could expose such strengths and weaknesses, qualities and virtues? She sighed. Did she rush a hasty decision when she chose Willy? Should she have waited a little longer? Was it divine intervention she met Bronte, or had it been divine intervention Alessiya got involved, things went pear-shaped and she now had Willy? Why did Bronte even appear and why was this happening to her with him and not Willy? Why, why, why? She was so confused sleep would be an impossibility, and perhaps forever. She looked at the time - 1.42 am and her mother would be trying to call at 8:00am - she always did on Sunday mornings. She leaned over and turned her phone off then snuggled under grandma’s quilt.

In the adjacent bed, Tanya’s insomnia was for a different reason, although none the less sleep depriving. Her dilemma was far simpler than Zhana’s - it always is with only one man in your life to contend with. It was her rampant imagination that was causing her sleeplessness. What if she had more time with Bronte? What would they do together? What if he invited her to Australia? What if he asked her to marry him and what direction would her life take then? Why did Sasha, the horrible FSB man, have to take him away these last days? What if they had taken him to a brothel or some place to meet women? What if he had a fall in the mountains or they all got so drunk that something bad happened to him? Oh my God, what if he got hurt or injured? Suddenly feeling hot, she tossed the blanket towards her feet and lay in foetal position. 

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It was so dark outside that the two men frequently stumbled, even though they walked on the roadway. A flashlight would have been a marvel of modern science, the blackness of night only delaying the inevitable. Bronte was attempting to come to terms with the sands of the hour glass tumbling faster and faster towards the short end of his life. Between the condition of the road and the stumbling, drunken state Viktor was in he could be shot anyway, accidentally in the back. Either way it seemed these crazy Russians had decided they needed one less foreigner meeting girls on their shores. Like Stalin’s NKVD, they had hauled him into the night and were whisking him away to unknown parts. When he asked where they were going, Viktor simply replied

‘Down here
’
.
Six feet down?
Bronte wondered.

              They trundled and stumbled onward towards more empty blackness, detouring across a paddock he thought must surely become his final resting place. The choice of a plot seemed particularly unimportant or irrelevant, the entire place tailor made for discreet murder and a trail leading to nowhere. Occasionally he felt the blunt jab of the revolver in his back or ribs, as Viktor stumbled holding the thing in his projected jacket pocket. When Bronte protested or tried to stop, Viktor nudged him and told him to keep walking. After he stumbled and almost fell again, Viktor exclaimed,

              ‘Wait, stop… I need to take a piss,’ and the two men halted. Bronte waited, listening in the absolute dead of night to the sound of Viktor’s zipper descending then the splash as his urine hit the frozen ground. He was probably 2 or 3 metres away when Bronte decided to creep off as stealthily as possible - a ludicrous act, given the deadly silence, incredible blackness and the slippery, obstacle strewn terrain.

              ‘Hey, where you going? Stop man. Stop! I don’t want to start shooting! Don’t make me shoot.’ Despite the threat, he knew Viktor couldn’t see him. If he could, he’d be able to see Viktor which of course he couldn’t. He tried to distance himself as silently as possible, only moving when he heard Viktor move. Each time Viktor stopped, Bronte crouched and held his breath. The thumping of his heart, the heaving of his chest seemed deafening out there. He heard the drunkard stop for a third or fourth time, rummaging in his pocket for something. Bronte took off but quicker this time with larger strides. Viktor called, again threatening to start shooting. Bronte broke into a run only to crash straight into a barbed wire fence at waist height. He screamed as he jagged his arm, shin and thigh and after efforts to stay silent was flung back, slipped in a pot hole behind and crashed on his backside. The force of the fall impacted his damaged shoulder. The pain was excruciating. He wanted to swear and curse and scream and sob and stomp his feet all at the same time, it hurt so much. Viktor heard the wreck and suddenly he had him, the giant flame from his gas lighter throwing daggers of light across the paddock on a forlorn Bronte, only six metres away after all. Viktor roared laughing as he helped him to his feet.

‘Come on’ he said chuckling. ‘We’re wasting time.’

‘Whale Oil Beef Hooked’ Bronte replied through grit teeth. Those words made perfect sense now.

Some minutes had passed since Sasha had drawn the original bead on Bronte in the hut. It started with the momentary panic and sudden blast of adrenalin when the gun was aimed at his head. In those moments, he felt fear and a horrible confrontation with the unknown. Like a nightmare he’d had as a kid where he was standing at the lookout of life staring over an unfamiliar, dark landscape. Below lay the bottomless pit, and he could do nothing to stop himself falling over the edge and into it. If Viktor held the gun to his head and shot him at point blank, the fall would be fast. But as minutes dragged on resignation to the seeming inevitable brought about a quiet calm. Whether he became the dearly departed by accident, design or simply old age, Bronte figured that getting out of this place and all the disappointment and drama his trip to Zhana had brought might actually be a welcome relief. The numerous stumbles, the cuts and bruises and tired and wanting sleep were finally too much. He was beyond caring anymore. Now, this episode was just another unthinkable event in a long string of the absurd. At wits end Bronte stopped, turned and faced Viktor. When the clomping of their shoes on the roadway ceased, he was struck again by the deathly silence.

              ‘So are you going to shoot me Viktor… or you’d prefer to walk us both to death?’ It was too dark to see any reaction from the Russian.

              ‘Just keep walking, we’re nearly there’.

              ‘NO! I am tired of walking and drinking and all your bullshit. I want to go to bed. So if you wish to shoot me, please do it now… Otherwise, I’m going home.’

              ‘Keep walking Kangaroo… we’re nearly there…’

‘I’m not moving another centimetre… so come on, just hurry up and get it over with you drunken bastard.’ The darkness of the night sky was so oppressive that Viktor could have already had the gun positioned 20 millimetres from Bronte’s head and he wouldn’t have seen it. Suddenly Viktor laughed loudly and with it, leaned forward and hugged Bronte with what felt like genuine affection.

              ‘Oh man, I was not going to kill you - that was never the idea… not at all. You really believed we wanted to kill you? Ha! We were only messing with you.’

‘Give me a break Viktor…’

‘We just wanted to test your mettle, see what you were made of… see if you had balls, and hey, Kangaroo has balls!’ Bronte was speechless. And he couldn’t see Viktor’s face to just sock him. Besides, he still had a gun.

‘Most guys go to pieces when you pull that one, you know beg and plead and all that grovelling shit. But not you… you are cool Bronte; Class, all Class…

‘Viktor get real… you can’t be serious?’

‘We’re out here to get more vodka, that’s all… but hey, it was really funny seeing you sitting on your ass back there, stuck on that fence.’ Viktor was still laughing when they arrived back at the cottage with the vodka procured from people farther down the road. Sasha laughed loudly,

              ‘Kangaroo, good joke eh? You agree? We had you going didn’t we? Come, let us drink.’

              ‘Piss off Sasha… give me the key.’ Dirty, sore, cut and bruised, Bronte went to bed, his beloved watch still on his wrist.

Somewhere in another place, a man sat with head in hands, distraught. He could not feel any lower; impossible that he could sink to any greater depth of depression and isolation than he now was. His head was already dissolving into his palms, his heart descending by the second into the pit of his stomach, his thinking into the gutter. On another day he might find the strength to walk in front of a train or jump from a bridge into the Rhein but right now, Willy could not even find the strength to get up from his computer.

His breathing was that of a drowning man. He found himself holding his breath then gulping for air. He was awash with the hollow feelings and turbulent emotions of frustration, anger, hurt and self pity, known only by those who have tasted betrayal. His universe had collapsed on him in one conglomeration of a moment. Now, burdened with the weight of his world swept from under his feet, he felt quadriplegic. It was that indescribable, horrible emptiness that only those cheated by their most trusted companion can know. As if sick in pregnancy with the offspring of deception, he considered throwing up. He was quite simply a broken, shattered wreck of the individual he had been an hour before reading the letter still open on his screen.

Dear Willy. This is an anonymous friend of your fiancée, Zhana Lycherovna. Forgive I write to you, we do not know each other, although I know all about you from Zhana. You should think carefully before you commit to marriage with her. She has other men behind your back. Right now she entertains an Australian man. He stays at her house. Please do not be upset with me, I only think for the best and she should be stopped. It is not right that she does this to you. Good luck.

Eventually he managed to extract his head from his hands. Sitting motionless his mind paced the floor incessantly, searching for the best way to shift from this bruised reaction state to one of constructive action. He picked up his phone, knowing he had no reasonable alternative other than to have it out with Zhana. Had he been so wrong about her? He really believed their relationship was true and honest. Now the contents of this letter seemed out of character. He believed she was not a good liar so he would ask her straight up if the Aussie was with her. He’d know from her reaction and tone on the phone. He pulled up her number then glanced at the time. It was 12:40am in Germany and too late to call. Already 2:40 in Russia, she would be asleep – but with him, the Australian bastard!! Damn, if this was true he had to know, had to catch the little bitch out. He pressed dial and waited. ‘
The mobile you are trying to call is either switched off or out of radio range’.
He hung up stunned, empty and angry. That never happened. Her phone was always on, even at work.
She was with him and had turned it off. Bitch, damn bitch!

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Not much was spoken between Sasha and Bronte during the course of the three and a half hour drive back to Krasnodar. Sasha did his best to pretend all was as it had been driving there. It wasn’t, not as far as Bronte was concerned. He couldn’t wait to see the tail end of the Audi and Sasha. Where Bronte came from, only boys played with guns, and when they did, they usually wore headdress with feathers, hero costumes or gunslinger belts. And the guns were made of plastic. When they went bang, it was because the assailant made the noise with his mouth or the powder cap went off. Sasha and Viktor hadn’t acted out any of these familiar scenarios while playing with him and from what he could see, the weapon wasn’t plastic. Nor were the men under the age of ten.

He tempered his disfavour for the two, Sasha in particular with the certainty that the outcome of the game had resulted in winning their respect and at least terminated the Kangaroo nomenclature. More important, Viktor - who’d stayed up all night drinking after Sasha had fallen asleep on the couch - came looking for him early the next morning, cutting a slightly tragic figure. When he approached asking could they speak privately, Viktor’s eyes said he could have been crying - or crying drunk, they were so red. Whatever, he needed the sunglasses Bronte had given him. They sat in the morning sun by the partially frozen river, Viktor perched on a rock outcrop a metre or two from shore.

‘I hope you can forgive me for last night… I had too much vodka. Today… well I am not proud of my actions toward you.’

‘Yeah, well you both did a pretty convincing job of it. I really wasn’t sure what you had planned… A gun at the head and feigning a gang style execution is hardly the way to gauge a man’s mettle… at least not where I come from.’

‘And not where I come from either. I should have had nothing to do with it and known better… I never thought about injuring you, honest. I never wish to harm anyone. God knows… I’m sorry Bronte.’ He noticed a tear break and run a twisted course through the stubble on his face.

‘Hey, it’s okay Viktor… I understand you had a lot to drink, too much in fact… but I’m okay… really.’

‘No it’s more than that Bronte… and now, I swear I will never do such stupid things again… I deserved to be smacked in the mouth… it’s honourable you didn’t…’

‘I think you’re forgetting you had a gun…besides, I’d have probably missed. I couldn’t see shit out there’ Bronte laughed. The miserable Russian looked up from playing with a stick.

“I swore myself an oath once that’ I’d never point a gun at anyone again… okay it was in jest… but I still did.’

‘Seriously Viktor its okay, I accept your apology and frankly, I’m glad I’m still here and able to do that! I had no bloody idea where you were leading me in the dark out there. But what do you mean by again? This sort of pantomime was common?’

‘I served with the Russian army in Chechnya for five years as a sniper. It was terrible… I shot more than fifty men - and some women. In the end I was discharged… I couldn’t rest from the nightmares… I left the army…’

Unlike Viktor there was absolutely no need for remorse or apology as far as Sasha was concerned. And the only reason he hadn’t punched Sasha in the mouth had been his large frame and his FSB badge. Bronte knew it was not in his best interests to get offside with a member of the Heavy Boys’ Club, a strapping lad quick to play with his weapon. Besides, he might come in handy again, the five hundred in his pocket a decent reminder he’d come in handy already.

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It is common knowledge to all inhabitants of earth, excluding females, that man has only two basic causes for stress throughout his life. These are women and money. The two are inextricably linked as the prime motivators of the male species. It matters not whether single or married, the root cause remains the same. If a man has woman problems, he can not think about making money. If he has money problems, he can not think about being with his woman. Now, Willy had woman problems, and he could not think about getting to work on time, getting on with his roster and what it would entail to get the jobs done. It was impossible to think about his daily source of income which was not ideal, considering he was on call in the morning, Sunday at 8am. He might manage to get through his day on a degree of auto pilot, but he was sure he’d do a mediocre job at the installations or repairs he’d encounter. It would be too hard to disguise that he felt suicidal or that his world was about finished. He had been thoroughly convinced Zhana was genuine and sincere, although he was the first to admit - at least to himself - that she’d never told him she loved him. His head told him that was
just Zhana
and that it was quite acceptable after actually spending only one week together. But now his guts argued another case entirely.

All the warnings and third hand horror stories about misleading and mismatched foreign marriages haunted him since that email. He desperately wanted to believe that the letter was a hoax or a set up or even a practical joke, but its nature and content were altogether too sinister to genuinely consider those possibilities. Unless Zhana had a damned good excuse or rather explanation for this one, he would jump a plane and go shove those rings where the sun didn’t shine – and that wasn’t a hard place to find in Russia. He was considering doing that anyway just to have it out with her. But that would mean taking time off work which would require telling at least Lauren at the office and then the cat would be out of the bag. And besides the embarrassment of it all, he really couldn’t afford the ticket after blowing his savings on Zhana’s bloody ring!

At this phase of his life and amid so many warnings from family, he could not even consider losing face and looking the sucker he would if everything fell over now. That was when he decided to bite the bullet and call in sick for work. And to hell with the cost! He called the airline and booked a flight to return the following day. Then he called Zhana’s landlords, the old couple who lived adjacent. He wasn’t able to ask or comprehend anything they said, but he knew they understood her name repeated often enough and that, as he guessed, got her to the phone.