Cracking of the Mask, Chapter One
2015
The no-smoking and fasten-seat-belts signs lit up. The flight attendants took their seats. The engines roared and the Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong accelerated down the runway.
As the plane flew away from JFK Airport, Zenon McClow looked out the window, watching the New York City skyline shrink beneath him. He said a final, mental farewell to the city, to his old life, and to his old self before easing his window shade down and closing his eyes.
He was leaving New York a very rich man. He didn’t trust the security of the plane’s wi-fi network, so he restrained himself from pulling up the encrypted banking app on his phone and looking at the number again. But it was hard not to look. His balance could have been a Social Security number. He had been more successful than he’d allowed himself to hope for. And he’d gotten away with it. No one had even suspected that his promises might have been hollow, that the slice of cake he’d served had contained a barbed hook.
The image of Evmondia sitting at the seminar flashed through his mind. Did he regret that he would never see her again?
Oh, come on, Zenon. She’s gone. Move forward.
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Zenon had left everything behind, or so he thought. He’d abandoned most of his belongings. He’d brought a few changes of clothes, his laptop, and a few mementos from his past he couldn’t part with.
Sitting comfortably in first class, he took a deep breath and considered his first destination: Macau, China. He had already decided on taking the ferry from Hong Kong to the former Portuguese colony. His meeting with the man who would deliver everything he’d ordered was roughly fifty-one hours in the future.
He was glad he had kept in touch with some of the rougher types from his days working on cruise ships. A former cook he knew had connected him with someone who could provide a fake Ecuadorian passport, a fake Australian permanent residency card, and all the necessary paperwork to accompany them. He had already paid fifty percent and would hand over the rest upon delivery.
Back in New York, ‘Johnny’, a hired goon, was going to keep the store going for a few more months, sending ‘trading reports’ to investors, keeping them on the hook and their money flowing in.
He looked at his watch again: a Chopard Alpine Eagle, the last thing he’d bought before leaving the city. In fifty hours and forty-five minutes, Zenon McClow would cease to exist, and Enrique Sanchez would enter into the world.
“Zenon McClow,” he murmured to himself. He liked his name. He was grateful to his parents for coming up with it and giving it to him. He felt a pang of sadness at the thought of never using it again but quickly suppressed the feeling, reminding himself that he needed to keep his emotions under control as he made his moves, otherwise the whole thing could fall apart. Emotions were weak points.
He thought about Phil. It had been only a few hours since they’d parted. Phil had insisted on driving him to the airport, probably just to show off his brand-new Ferrari. They had agreed that Zenon would ‘return’ to Hong Kong to jumpstart the ‘trading’ with the investors’ funds. And in a month’s time, he was to return to the States and give another presentation. But ‘Zenon McClow’ would vanish long before then.
When he finds out, how far will he go to track me down?
