“And Kirov—he’s back aboard the submarine?”
“Yes, General. After diving down and implementing the repairs, he remained aboard, decompressing.”
Ignoring Elena, the military counterintelligence chief addressed his counterpart, “Borya, this news is incredible. Kirov has pulled off the rescue despite the odds. How do you recommend we bring them home?”
The SVR director did not share his colleague’s enthusiasm. Spiriting out three dozen men without detection would be a monumental undertaking. If the effort failed, it would be his head mounted atop a pike pole on a Kremlin wall.
“What do you propose?” the SVR chief asked, redirecting his colleague’s question to Elena. If the rescue mission turned sour, he would have some insulation from the aftereffects by blaming a subordinate.
“Well, sir, if we can charter an aircraft that has . . .”
* * *
Kirov remained inside the escape trunk. He’d been decompressing for about fifteen hours yet he didn’t dare leave the steel cylinder. His body tissues and blood remained partially saturated with helium. Exposure to surface conditions for even a few minutes would be lethal. Expanding helium bubbles would turn blood into froth and vital organs into slush.
The cold hadn’t been a problem, as he’d feared. An external heater warmed the gas feed line to his breathing mask, which maintained his core temperature.
Yuri continued to inhale a mixture of oxygen and helium with the blend periodically adjusted to compensate for the reduction in the trunk’s pressure. But he had no control over that process. A nineteen-year-old sailor monitoring the gas panel had that duty, which troubled Yuri.
Yuri’s greatest concern, however, was thirst. With no freshwater in the escape trunk he could no longer salivate.
He had another critical decision to make. His original plan called for him to remain in the escape trunk for the entire fifty-eight-hour decompression process. But he toyed with an alternative.
The Neva was equipped with a recompression chamber. Located at the base of the aft escape trunk, the 1.5-meter-diameter by 3-meter-long steel cylinder might be his lifeboat. Although not an option when Yuri first entered the escape trunk, he’d decompressed enough that it might be possible, albeit risky, to make a swift surface ascent. That would allow Yuri to climb out of the escape trunk, transfer to the chamber, and recompress.
The lure of the Neva’s recompression chamber tempted Yuri. He would be able to lie down on a bunk, read a book, and eat a meal. Most important, he would have water.
There would be a price for this luxury. If Yuri made the transfer now, he would have nearly sixty hours of additional decompression to endure—the consequence of subjecting his body to ultra fast decompression. However, should he elect to continue his current decompression schedule, he would be free of the escape trunk in about forty-three hours.
With the Neva’s precarious operational characteristics, the pending crew transfers to shore, and Captain Borodin’s decision to deep-six the Neva in an underwater junkyard, Yuri’s decompression had become a burden to everyone aboard.
He decided to stick with the original plan.
The prospect of another day and a half plus of thirst troubled Yuri. It would be especially tough when he started breathing pure oxygen. Hydration would be essential at that time.
Without water, he might not survive.
* * *
The afternoon sun started its retreat over the peaks of Vancouver Island. The trawler yacht Explorer lumbered along at five knots about four nautical miles south of Point Roberts. Both crew members were in the main cabin. The female stood behind the helm; the male sat at the galley table.
Captain Duscha Dubova turned away from the steering wheel and eyed her charge. He stared at his laptop screen. “What is it?” she asked.
Lieutenant Grigori Karpekov looked up. “Looks like boulders to me.”
“Are you sure?”
“They’re strung out over the bottom for a hundred meters. I increased the resolution on the second pass. You can see some of them—stacked a couple of meters high.”
“Chërt voz’mí!”
After spending most of the day in a fruitless search, the side scan sonar revealed one tantalizing reflection. The gray-black smudge on the screen indicated a potential bottom target in the range of the Neva’s length: 110 meters. They continued mowing the lawn via a GPS navigation system, towing the sonar-emitting fish over the bottom in overlaying transects until mapping the entire area. Only then did they return to the one promising target of the day.
But now, after lowering the fish for a close look, the results were in—rocks.
Dubova had been certain they’d found the derelict submarine. She next said, “Why would there be boulders out here? There’s nothing geologically around here to account for them.”
“They were probably dumped. We’re in the northbound shipping lane. A barge could have turned turtle, dumping its cargo.”
She conceded defeat.
For most of the early morning, the FSB special operators searched for the Hercules, expecting to transfer the underwater surveillance gear to the larger workboat. Dubova repeatedly called and texted Elena’s cell but received no response. Finally, after waiting at the rendezvous point just north of Lummi Island for ninety minutes, they reverted to the original work plan.
Karpekov faced his boss. “So what do we do now?”
“It’s time to head back to Bellingham.”
“Fine with me.”
“Reel in the fish.”
“Okay.”
It would take only forty-five minutes for the Russians to motor north to Point Roberts where they could rent an overnight berth at the marina. But the mission orders were explicit: Conduct all search operations from Bellingham. They had at least a two-hour voyage ahead of them.
* * *
Ken Newman’s headache was replaced by a tepid, all-too-friendly buzz. So far, he’d downed three double whiskeys and had just poured his fourth. Ken’s current slide started after he’d spied on Laura and her new companion while they tinkered with gear on the workboat.
After the pair retreated to the cabin, Ken moved on. Still hungover, he drove to a local store where he purchased a fifth of bourbon. He next returned to the beach house, confident that he’d be alone for a while. Laura had cleaned out the drawers and closets of the bedroom and bathroom. That’s when he started self-medicating.
Ken slouched on the living room sofa, his feet propped on the coffee table and glass in hand. He’d been hashing it out, running from one scenario to the next. The advancing alcohol in his bloodstream fueled his rising bitterness.
No matter how he cut it, Laura’s filing for divorce offended the most. He no longer had any hope that she’d take him back.
He considered Laura’s admirer—the gimp bastard who had ambushed him. It wasn’t as if Ken had caught them naked in bed together, but he sure had imagined it.
Laura’s stock awards were another worry. She would be due another colossal payout in the form of company ownership. Laura’s divorce attorney would certainly try to screw Ken out of his share.
And what about the Russian connection? Ken had eavesdropped on Laura and the other man. But with his brain now awash in booze, none of what they said made any sense to him. He was confident, however, about one underlying fact: No one was going to steal his wife.
Ken slugged down the whiskey. He sat up, reached down, and removed the bludgeon from the bag at his feet. He brought it from Bellevue. He used it to bash salmon after reeling them into a boat; it also made an ideal billy club.
Ken tapped the working end of the fourteen-inch-long oak baton against one of the glass panels in the coffee table. He once again pictured Laura in bed with her lover; his blood pressure spiked. He raised the billy above his head and slammed it down onto the table, smashing the panel into shards.
“You two-timing bitch!” he roared.
CHAPTER 70
After testing the
rental equipment, Laura and Nick returned to the galley for coffee. While sitting with Nick at the mess table, Laura dozed off. Nick shook her awake, led her to Captain Miller’s cabin, and ordered her to rest, promising that he’d wake her at five o’clock—a couple of hours away.
She lay on the bunk, fully clothed and covered with a blanket from the locker. After an hour’s sleep, a wave of nausea woke her; then the queasiness passed. Although partially refreshed, Laura remained antsy, especially over Captain Miller’s injury.
Laura turned on her side and focused on Yuri’s decompression—another worry. She pulled the blanket over her shoulders but was not ready to sleep again.
Her ordeal would soon be over and she’d be able to rest. Once Yuri and his crewmates were safely ashore, Laura would arrange for both Captain Miller and the Hercules to return to Seattle. She planned to return to her Redmond home and collapse.
Laura smiled as she recalled the news about the singular uncertainty that had consumed her for the past day.
While in Vancouver, she’d asked Nick to stop at a pharmacy. She needed a few personal items. He waited in the Suburban; she purchased three different brands.
Before napping, she’d tested herself in the privacy of a shipboard lavatory.
Laura closed her eyes. She caressed her abdomen with a hand and whispered, “Are you a boy or a girl?”
* * *
Nick Orlov stepped into the head located off the main cabin. About the size of a phone booth, it contained a toilet, a miniature sink, and storage lockers. After three cups of coffee, he needed to relieve himself.
Finished, he zipped up and faced the sink.
Nick washed his hands and looked at the mirror mounted above the sink. He rubbed his right hand across the two-day-old chin stubble. He needed a shave.
Nick turned his torso to open the door when Captain Miller’s .45, stuffed in the small of his back, snagged a locker handle. He sucked in his belly to clear the obstruction. He turned the knob and stepped out.
In the passageway next to the head he noticed movement to his right side.
A blinding flash seared his eyes and everything went black.
CHAPTER 71
Laura hovered on that fine line between awareness and apparition. The dream had faded and with it, any memory of that seemingly real-life encounter. For eight minutes, but what seemed like hours, she’d been back in a Caltech classroom agonizing over a physics examination she hadn’t prepared for.
Laura turned over in the bunk and faced the cabin’s interior. Now that the sun had set, the stateroom was dark.
Laura settled into her new body position, not yet asleep, when she sensed an environmental shift. Her nostrils twitched, detecting the alien odor.
Her eyes opened. She stared into the blackness.
What is that? It took a few seconds. Booze!
She sat up. That’s when she heard it: a telltale creak in the mahogany deck boards.
“Who’s there?” she called out, her voice quavering.
No response.
Her heart rate spiked; her arm and leg muscles contracted.
She fumbled for the bunk-side light.
She flipped it on.
“No!”
Ken Newman stood three feet from the bunk. He gripped the fish billy with his right hand, smacking its kill end into his left palm.
His eyes focused onto Laura’s; he fed on the terror she radiated.
“You two-timing bitch, I’m going to beat the crap out of you!”
He stepped forward, the oak club cocked and ready.
The first swing whacked Laura’s right forearm; she’d managed to lift her hands in defense.
Ken raised the club for another swing, but Laura initiated a preemptive strike of her own. She pulled her knees to her chest, and then thrust her legs outward. The heels of her stocking feet slammed into Ken’s belly.
He reeled backward, crashing into a locker.
Laura sprang out of the bunk and rushed for the door. She almost made it through when Ken counterattacked. He lunged forward and his left hand snagged an ankle.
She smashed onto the deck.
CHAPTER 72
His head throbbed, the coppery bite of blood flooded his mouth, and his right eyebrow was swollen to twice its normal size. Nick Orlov lay facedown on the hardwood deck in Captain Miller’s cabin. He smelled the polish. His hands, bound behind his back, were knotted to his ankles and cinched up into a hog-tie position. His joints screamed.
Voices broadcast somewhere to his left. He turned his head toward the closed cabin door. Its louvered vents still transmitted.
He concentrated on the male voice.
* * *
“What a crock, Laura. Do you think I’m gullible enough to believe a fairy tale like that?”
“But it’s true.”
Ken Newman towered over his wife. The fish billy remained in his right hand.
Laura cowered at the base of the galley table, her lower legs tucked under her buttocks and her bound wrists resting in her lap. Blood stained her blouse, spillage from a lip tear. Besides the deep ache inside the arm walloped by the billy, Laura’s right knee throbbed; she’d slammed it on the deck when Ken tripped her. Her hands and outstretched arms absorbed much of the impact, but not all.
Ken set the bludgeon on the table and grabbed a bottle of Redhook from the refrigerator. After removing the cap, he took a healthy swig and turned back toward Laura. “Who is this other jerk, the gimp?”
“His name is Yuri. He’s the one who jumped overboard from the freighter.”
“So how many times has he screwed you?”
“It’s not like that!”
“Oh, sure. What was that little love nest down at the beach all about?”
* * *
My God, that must be her husband, thought Nick.
He knew bits and pieces of Laura’s past; Yuri had told him about the beatings.
He strained to pick up Laura’s voice.
* * *
“I rented the house—to get away from you!”
“Is that what your shyster lawyer told you to do—so she could serve the divorce papers on me?”
“Yes.”
“So this Russian guy washes up on the beach and you take him in like a stray dog!”
“Not exactly.”
“Well, be exact.”
“He broke into the house, thinking it was vacant. He took me prisoner.”
“Oh, come on, Laura, that’s pure bullshit. I saw you with him.”
“No, just wait. He was hurt and didn’t know what to do. After he’d recovered some, he asked for my help—to defect.”
“Why didn’t you just call the cops?”
“That’s what I wanted to do—call the FBI. He insisted on contacting the State Department. He wanted nothing to do with the FBI or the police. He thinks they’re all thugs.”
* * *
Orlov was dazzled with Laura’s seamless mix of fact and fiction. If he weren’t already part of the storyline, he’d believe her, too.
* * *
Ken said, “The Russian wants to defect to the good old U S of A, and the bozo hog-tied in the cabin is a CIA agent who is supposed to help him?”
“Yes, except he said he’s with the State Department, but that might be just a cover—I’m not sure who he works for.”
“I see,” Ken said. He dropped his nuke. “So what’s this stuff about chartering a plane to Finland?”
“What?”
“I heard you talking with your so-called State Department guy—back at that beach house.”
“You were there?”
“That’s right. I heard everything. You were talking about planning a charter flight from Vancouver to Finland. Now that doesn’t fit very well with your defector bullshit, does it?
“Oh,” he continued, “I almost forgot, what’s the story about the sub?”
* * *
“Súka,”—bastard—mumbled Nick, now horrified at Ken Newman’s
disclosure about the Neva.
He strained to move his bound hands around the small of his back. Captain Miller’s .45 wasn’t there.
Nick worked at the bindings.
* * *
Laura stared at the deck, devastated by Ken’s revelation. Near panic, she tried to recall what she and Nick had discussed: Flying from Vancouver to Finland—Passports—the Neva. Oh no! What else?
“Come on, Laura, no more BS. What are you really doing with these people up here?”
He leaned against one of the galley counters a couple of steps away, beer in hand.
“What do you want, Ken?”
“Just the truth, babe, just the truth.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Sure you can. But if you don’t I’m sure there’s a couple of guys up at the Point Roberts border station that would really like to have a little chat with you and your friend.” He gestured toward Miller’s stateroom and grinned. “He’s not with the State Department—I heard him speaking Russian. He’s from Russia!”
Laura bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“Come on, Laura, what’s the real story here?” He took another swig.
She looked up. “I’ll sign over half my stock—right now, if you’ll just get out of my life and forget about all of this.”
Ken said, “I don’t care about the damn stock. Now, what’s really going on up here?”
Laura’s trump card had failed. She turned away, devastated.
“Come on, Laura, fess up.”
Desperate, she again faced her husband. “Ken, I’m preg—” But she stopped in mid word, instantly sensing it would be a horrible mistake to reveal her secret. Ken would never believe the child was his—it would be an excuse to beat her again.
“What was that?” he asked.
Laura changed tactics, now in pure survival mode. “I’m a Russian agent, Ken. I’ve been passing secrets from the company to Russia for a year.”
“Wa—what?”
“I’m helping the Russians.”
“You really are a Russian spy!”
“I work for them.”
“They’re paying you?”
“No, of course not. I volunteered.”
Ken’s eyes ballooned. “You what?”
The Good Spy Page 26