The Death of a Torpedo

G.S. Gerardo

The Death of a Torpedo

Chapter

The Death of a Torpedo

By

GS Gerardo

© 2026 GSGerardo. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews or scholarly works.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Cover design by Violetta Korobkova

Printed in the United Kingdom

First Edition, 2026

Dedicated to my family

Contents

Chapter 1: The Macedonian

Chapter 2: Tired of Running

Chapter 3: Two Guns

Chapter 4: The Case

Chapter 5: Two Cognacs

Chapter 6: The Deadman's Apartment

Chapter 7: Bullets in Broad Daylight

Chapter 8: A Resume Written in Flesh

Chapter 9: Sins of the Father

Chapter 10: Nikitskaya

Chapter 11: The Man with No Face

Chapter 12: Puzzle Pieces

Chapter 13: Said the Spider to the Fly

Chapter 14: Meeting the Lawyer

Chapter 15: Step into My Office

Chapter 16: Spitting Blood

Chapter 17: Meet Anatoliev

Chapter 18: Too Deep

Chapter 19: This is Professionally Inappropriate

Chapter 20: A Day at the Office

Chapter 21: An Ivory Tower

Chapter 22: Red Snow

Chapter 23: Bleed Some More

Chapter 24: Russian Roulette

Chapter 25: Fair Exchange

Chapter 26: The Macedonian's Pay Day

Chapter 27: The Call

Chapter 28: Meeting The Macedonian

Chapter 29: A Classic Moscow Hit

Chapter 30: Old Timers and Shotguns

Chapter 31: Waking…

Chapter 32: Ratchet

Chapter 33: The Standoff

Chapter 34: Moscow Never Sleeps

Chapter 1: The Macedonian

Under the relentless fall of white snow, Moscow's monolithic gray apartment blocks loomed like silent sentinels in the darkness. The city's streets were cloaked in winter's finest, a cold, heavy duvet. In frozen this city, secrets hid behind frosted windows, and every shadow carried a whispered promise of danger.

The snow sparkled when hit by the rays of jaundiced yellow, that emanated from the many streetlights, which stood watch over the city's streets. The air reeked of crisp, chilled snow and damp concrete, and soon, the smell of gunpowder from a freshly fired gun would be added to the mix.

A cold wind whistled through the streets and alleyways of the city, carrying with it the scent of the crisp, chilling snow, and damp concrete. It also carried something long forgotten, perhaps it was the weary and restless spirits of its many inhabitants who strived for the dream of a comfortable life in a city that, in recent years, could no longer provide such comfort. A city that had become a warzone for the warring factions of its criminal underground.

Bullets flew and bodies dropped, that was the order of the day and tonight would be no different.

One citizen marched alone through the snow. He wore a black ushanka that was perched on his head, complemented by a long, sleek black coat and matching trousers. His worn winter boots showed scuff marks from many journeys. The only burst of colour was a crimson-coloured scarf he wore tightly around his neck, like a hangman’s noose, adding a stark contrast to his chiaroscuro outfit—like bloodstains on the pallid snow.

The figure marched through the snow like a transient phantom caught between the gritty reality of life on the streets of Moscow and the allure of the darkness that threatened to smother the city during the night. The shadowy figure stopped when he reached Nikitskaya’s bar.

The bar was a wreck of a building located on the first floor of an old Soviet apartment block that had seen better days, years, and decades. The once bright yellow paint had decayed like a body left to rot in the open air. Old pipes hung from the wall. It was like the skeleton of a body on show for everyone to see.

One door provided access at the front, located under a metallic arch that painters had coated in lime green, but the hue had faded, yielding to a rusty brown. A changeable sign for "OPEN" or "CLOSED" was part of the glass panel on the door. The only part of the bar that looked like it was less than fifty years old was the neon sign advertising a western beer that had become all the rage since the fall of the Soviet Union. The garish red colours of the neon sign flickered on and off with each blink of an eye, both inviting and ominous, as if giving all those who entered a welcome and a warning.

The door under the steel arches looked like it was barely hanging on by its hinges, and when the lone figure opened the door, it emitted a high-pitched shriek, like it was in pain.

The interior of the bar was just as unattractive as its exterior, and the place reeked of cigarette smoke and booze. The wallpaper looked as worn out as the building itself and was peeling off. No matter the effort the owner made to put a new patch of wallpaper, it still looked awful and was about as helpful as putting a plaster on an amputated leg.

Square wooden tables covered the floor with matching chairs that looked about as comfortable as sitting on the ground. The only chairs that had some type of cushioning on them were the tall stools parked in front of the wide bar table where drinks were served.

The owner stood behind the bar, counting money from the till. He was a middle-aged man who wore his age on his face, whilst there were still a few dark hairs on his head to remind himself of the young man, he once was, they had given way to the dreary grey colour of the elderly. His craggy face and his calloused hands earmarked him as a man who, in his five and a half decades of life, had always been fighting and scurrying to eke out an existence.

He stood in front of shelves which were filled with glass bottles of varying alcoholic drinks favoured by the clientele, the locally produced vodka—at a time in which prices for most products were spiralling out of control, the only constant was that cheap vodka was still affordable for anyone desperate to find relief from their constant sorrows at the bottom of a bottle.

“Can’t you read the sign on the door?” the bar owner said. “We’re closed.”

“No, you’re not,” the man replied before dishing out an order. “I’ll have a shot of whiskey. No ice.”

“I said we’re closed,” the bar owner repeated in a tone of voice that showed that he was losing patience.

The man opened his jacked and flashed two pistols he kept on his waist resting in holsters.

The bar owner froze and raised a hand to his mouth.

The guest smiled before going back to the door and turning the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

“Is this a robbery?” The bar owner asked.

“No, I’ll tell you why I’m here,” the guest answered. “But first, I need a drink.”

The unwanted customer didn’t just walk through the bar; he seemed to glide through the room. He was brisk, with only the faintest footsteps.

The figure parked himself on one of the tall chairs in front of the bar, and opposite the owner, who now had a better view of the man. He could see his face, which looked freshly shaved yet unblemished, which gave him an appearance that suggested he was in his late twenties. He had a spectral, pale complexion and a long mane of straight black hair that went down to his shoulders. He had piercing blue eyes that looked grey when hit by the light, but the eyes looked vacant.

“Any particular whiskey?” The bar owner asked, hoping the unexpected guest would have his drink and leave. He didn’t care about the drink being paid for; he just wanted this man to disappear like an apparition. If he left some coins on the table, that would be a bonus.

“Surprise me,” the unwanted customer said with a smile that had about as much warmth as a corpse in a morgue. The owner scanned the whiskey section of the shelf. His hand lingered over the bottles as he decided which one was less likely to offend his armed customer. He picked one and grabbed a glass before setting it down on the table that stood between him and this mysterious figure.

“What’s your name?” The armed customer asked. The bartender only answered with a nervous sound. “Your name? What is your name?”

“Why?” he asked, trying to keep himself composed, failing as his hands shook like brown coloured leaves hanging limply from a tree branch in the autumn. He tried to pour the whiskey into a glass without spilling a single drop. When trying to placate an armed man, even the smallest and most trivial of tasks became harder.

“Why?” the man asked, mimicking the bartender. “Your name. You have one, right?”

“M-M-Mikhail,” the barman answered. He had to force the answer out of him as his lips quivered.

“Is this your bar, or do you just work here?” The guest asked, ignoring the glass of whiskey that sat in front of him.

“Huh?” Mikhail blurted out. The shaking in his hands was getting worse the longer this man stayed. He wanted him gone, but his fists going up against a gun were useless.

“Do you own this fine establishment?”

Mikhail nodded, not wanting to say his answer. Maybe keeping the conversation as short as the day in winter might cause the man to get up and leave. When the visitor looked at him, Mikhail felt that the man wasn’t seeing him as another human being, but maybe an irritating fly that he might decide to swat.

“W-What’s the idea h-here?” Mikhail asked, choking on his words as if an invisible pair of hands were wrapped around his throat.

“There isn’t one,” the man replied, letting a long pause hang in the air like a body swinging from the gallows before speaking once more. “There isn’t an idea.”

The door of the bar screeched open once more. A cold gust of wind filled the room like ennui at a funeral. The man didn’t flinch, but Mikhail looked up to see one of his regulars, Vova, a baby-faced university student, who wore a long navy winter coat that went down to his knees, enter the bar. The young man stamped the snow off his boots on the mat at the door, each footstep a loud stomp.

“The bar is—,” Mikhail started the question, but he didn’t finish it. The man shot his sentence stone dead.

“Open,” the man declared, as if he owned the place, not just by the way he made himself at home, but also by the way he now seemed to control the opening and closing hours. Any minute now he’d be choosing which drinks to sell, Mikhail thought.

“What are you doing?” Mikhail asked the man, who only smiled at him.

“The young boy’s dry, give him a drink,” the visitor said, as young Vova stomped his way to the bar, his boots leaving a trail of wet footsteps on the floor.

“I didn’t know you were open so late,” said Vova.

The man didn’t look at Vova. He only kept his eyes on Mikhail. They were like daggers, the way they pierced the body and cut to the soul. Even when the man picked up his glass, his eyes remained fixed on him.

“Change of policy,” Mikhail said, trying his best to sound natural and to give nothing away. It wasn’t just his life that was now on the line, but also the life of the young man who had just entered the bar, not knowing the situation he was in, like a blind man walking into a lion’s den.

The younger man reached the bar. He couldn’t quite know what was wrong, but he knew something wasn’t right. He looked at Mikhail’s face, the same one he always saw behind the bar, but something about his eyes and the way they twitched from side to side told him something was up.

“Is everything okay?” The young man asked, unsure of the reply he would get to his question.

“Everything is okay,” Mikhail replied, a long second after the question had been asked.

“Are you sure?” Vova asked, ignorant of the fact that the man sitting on the stool next to him had two loaded guns on him, and that soon he would use them.

“He said everything is okay,” the man spoke. His voiced carried the weight of authority in the way it seemed more like a command, rather than a verification of Mikhail’s answer.

Mikhail swallowed spit. He got the feeling that the armed man was a grenade without a pin.

Vova looked the mysterious man in the eyes. It was like staring into a void.

The man in black stared right back into his.

Please, kid, don’t do anything stupid, Mikhail thought, desperately hoping the younger man would somehow get the message that this was not a moment to be brave.

“I’m sorry, what?” Vova asked.

Here we go, Mikhail thought.

“He doesn’t hear so well, does he?” the shadowy figure asked Mikhail, as if Vova wasn’t there.

Mikhail’s heart was thumping inside his chest. He swore he heard it beating, like he was listening to it through a stethoscope. Sticky sweat was dripping down the back of his neck and trickling down his spine. Mikhail got the feeling that this living shadow, that had crept in through the door of his bar, was doing this for its own amusement.

Vova turned to Mikhail, like he was being confronted by an otherworldly entity—a malevolent demon that had crept out of the pits of hell and taken the form of this thing that Mikhail was loath to call a man, or even a human. It was not just the way he held the place down, or the guns he claimed to be concealing; it was the way he was enjoying himself, like a boy peeling the wings off a fly.

“Hmmm,” the figure said. “Now I have an idea. You, young man, get behind the bar.”

“What? Why?” Vova asked. He started to shake as the fear seeped into his body like a downpour of rain through a hole in the roof.

“You’re too close to me. I don’t want to get my jacket dirty,” the man said.

“Please, just do what he says,” Mikhail pleaded, desperate for the night to end with his head in one piece.

The young man stumbled around the bar with his heart beating against the back of his throat. There was a loud thump as his foot bumped into one of the stools, which came crashing down to the ground.

The shadow only watched with his expressionless chess player’s face, the master moving pawns as part of a grand strategy that was yet to reveal itself.

As Vova reached the end of his little journey around the bar, the silence was like a loud death rattle.

The shadow reached into his jacket. Both men stood behind the bar and assumed death was coming, and were about to face it head-on, like a punch to the face.

Vova began to mutter a prayer in a whisper. He stuttered and stumbled over the words to the point that it became hard to tell which one he was reciting as a ticket to heaven.

Mikhail could feel his heart in his throat. If it beat any harder, he would be spewing his heart out onto the bar table in front of him.

The man in black pulled out a carton of cigarettes; he removed a cigarette from the cardton. He kept his eyes fixed on the two men behind the bar.

“Is there anyone else here?” The shadow asked. He placed the cigarette between his lips.

“Just the cleaner, she's in the kitchen washing the dishes,” Mikhail muttered.

The shadow ordered him to bring the cleaner out and join the party, as he struck a match. The flame flickered, like the last breaths of a dying man, as he placed the tiny flame against the end of the cigarette.

Mikhail called out for the cleaner. He stumbled over his words and had to try again to force them out. A short and overweight, older woman with gray curly hair and a wrinkled face staggered into the bar wearing an all-white uniform with a stained apron.

“What's going on?” she asked.

The shadow got up and removed his hat and held it against his chest as he looked at the older woman.

“I'm sorry to say, ma'am, that you are in danger of becoming an extra in a tragic play, if you or any of your co-stars decide to go off script.”

“What is this all about?” Mikhail asked the man, as his nerves had got the better of him. If he was going to die, he at least wanted to know why and whether it was worth it in some way.

“I'll tell you in a few minutes,” he replied. “But first, you, young man, and you, my dear lady, you're both going behind that door with me.”

The shadow got off the stool that he had been sitting on like an eagle on a branch, waiting for its prey to reveal itself. He removed a pistol from the inside of his jacket and began walking the length of the bar. He pointed at the door behind the bar and gestured for both the old lady and the young man to go through it.

The old woman was pale and looked like she had aged another ten years in a few minutes. The shadow placed an arm around her shoulder.

“Don't worry, ma'am, I'll try to make things comfortable for you,” he said, in a voice that seemed to mimic compassion. He even held the door open for her. “You remind me of my own mother.”

Before the shadow walked in through the door with them, he turned to face Mikhail; the attempt to mimic compassion had disappeared from his face like smoke into the night.

“I'll be back in a minute.”

Mikhail froze, and the shadow left him to tend to an empty bar alone with dark thoughts running through his head. What was going to happen there? Was he going to kill them? Was he going to kill him too? He might still have a chance to live if he made a run for it while the shadow was preoccupied with the others. He couldn't hear what was happening behind the door; he only imagined what was going on in there, and that made the wait for his turn even worse.

“Alright, done,” Mikhail could hear the man say. He turned back to the door, which swung open as the man stepped back out into the bar. The gun was still in his hand, and he held it at a ninety-degree angle. He aimed the pistol at Mikhail's chest. Despite the distance between them, the barrel of the gun looked enormous, a big black circle that resembled the tunnel of an underground train.

One thing bothered him: he had to know what the purpose of all this was. Why was his life being cut short by this random stranger who had walked in from the shadows of the night? Who was he? Just how unlucky was Mikhail going to be tonight?

“I-I've g-got to ask,” he heard himself say the words, but he couldn't believe they were coming out of him. “I've got to know...you come into my bar...I mean...what is this about?

“I'm here to kill a man, Nikolai Volkov is his name, maybe you know him as Kolya or Chainik,” the man said.

The man was staring at Mikhail but not seeing him. Only looking through him.

"Why? What's he done to you?"

“Nothing,” the man answered. “He hasn't done anything to me. He won't even get the chance to do anything to me.”

“Then why are you going to kill him?”

“I've been paid to, that's why.”

“Is that all it takes for you to kill someone?”

“When I'm paid, I see the job through until the end,” the man said, almost with a sense of pride, like it was a boast. "But before that, I need you for one more question, Mikhail. I need you to confirm that this man, Kolya, lives in this area."

Mikhail thought about what he was being asked to do: he was being asked to be a participant in the execution of another man. He might as well be putting the gun to Nikolai's head and blowing out his brains with his own hands. He swallowed spit; the gun remained aimed at his chest; a simple pull of the trigger would mean a hot led bullet through the heart.

“He lives in this area, right? In fact, this is his favorite bar, is it not?” The man asked, a single eyebrow raised as he studied Mikhail for any possible reaction he may have, or any clue that the older man was going to try to deceive him.

Mikhail didn't answer. He would try to hold out, but he had the feeling that he might not be able to for much longer. He was a fly caught in the spider's web, unable to move, stuck, and the spider that had spun the web was inching closer towards him. Mikhail could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead like the tears streaming down the cheeks of a heartbroken man.

Fear. Pain. Death. This was everything that was in store for him—they didn't make for a good night. He refused to speak, even though he was staring down the barrel of a gun, like he was peering into the abyss of a dark alleyway during the coldest of winters in Moscow.

“Let me make this easier for you. You do want to go home and see your wife tonight, don't you?” The man asked while pointing at Mikhail's ring.

Mikhail nodded in response to the question. He struggled to hold himself together as he battled the urge to speak. He knew this would mean that a man would die tonight.

“You love your wife, don’t you?” The shadow asked him.

Mikhail nodded.

The man in black pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and unfolded it on the table. There was an address scribbled on it. The man shot him a question, asking Mikhail to confirm Kolya’s address. “All you have to do is confirm the address, then and only then, will you be able to go home to your wife for a nice dinner, a hug, and maybe a goodnight kiss.”

Mikhail stared at the crumpled piece of paper on which someone had scribbled an address. He thought about what he was being asked to do: to give another man a death sentence. He thought about his wife and the dinner that she would cook and leave for him when he got home after closing the bar—if he was to go home tonight—he would never take her cooking for granted again.

The shadow studied him, peering at his face and locking onto him with its eyes, the same way a hunter looks through the scope of a rifle when they’re about to take down an elk.

“Do you want to go home and see her?” The man asked.

Mikhail answered without speaking. He nodded his head with the enthusiasm of a man about to be put into a medically induced coma. Warm tears trickled down his cheeks. They touched the sides of his lips.

“You only have one thing to do for that to happen, and I need you to think carefully. Think about the wife you have at home waiting for you. Think about how she is missing you right now, and how she would miss you even more if you never came back home.”

Mikhail knew what this meant. He took a deep breath and wiped away the tears that were pouring out of his eyes like water from an overflowing well. Mikhail relented and nodded. In effect, he had just condemned Kolya to death.

“You’re a good husband,” the shadow said, with a wry smile as he finally concealed the gun back in his jacket. He withdrew a wallet from his pocket and started counting some money.

“Here’s the money for the whiskey,” the man said as he dropped a few roubles on the bar table. He marched towards the door to leave the bar, and then he came to an abrupt stop.

Mikhail’s heart rattled around in his chest in a frenzy as the man approached him once more, whilst reaching into his pocket. He closed his eyes; he didn’t expect to open them again. He took what he thought were his final breaths.

“Buy some flowers for your wife,” the man said.

Mikhail opened his eyes. The unwanted guest had left some notes on the table.