by Nina Bruhns
Jetting out a breath, she hunched down and stepped gracelessly over the shin-high threshold of the round opening. The top of the door ended at her chin. She was only five foot six, but she felt like an afghan hound climbing through an agility hoop—all long limbs and ten kinds of awkward. Kvartirmyeister Kresney was a gentleman and pretended not to notice. She decided she liked him.
They went through two more watertight doors, passing several instrument-filled side compartments, a galley with attached open dining room, and a dozen coverall-clad submariners busy at various tasks, before slip-sliding down another vertical ladder to the deck below.
“Three decks,” Misha explained. “Control room is on main deck. Now we are on lower deck, where are living quarters. Small deck below has batteries and such things. Not so nice.” He made a face.
Here they traversed a very narrow section of passage, the wall of which was punctuated by three real doors. The doors were made of metal, as was everything else on board the submarine, and painted yellow, which seemed to be the Ostrov designer’s favorite color besides dingy or rusty beige. Metal signs labeled each of the three doors in red Cyrillic lettering.
“Officer country,” Kresney explained. He opened the last door and gestured her in. “Here. Where you sleep.”
She stepped into the compartment. Good Lord. She’d seen bathrooms that were bigger! Into the microscopic room they’d somehow crammed a narrow bunk, a row of built-in cupboards above it, two tall lockers, a fold-down desk, and a pull-down aluminum sink, along with a wall safe and several communication devices attached to the scant inches of bare wall space left over.
On the plus side, most of the furnishings were done in honey-colored wood instead of metal. It was tiny, but nice. Nothing like what she’d expected.
“You make comfortable,” the quartermaster said, his r’s and l’s rolling like thick ocean swells, punctuated by the dip of throaty extra y sounds. “Officers’ head is down passage.” He pointed back the way they’d come. “We serve welcome lunch after two hours, but coffee always in mess for everyone. Okay. I go now to find . . .” He made blow-dryer motions with two fingers. “You need anything, you ask me,” he said. “Da?”
She nodded. “Yes. Thank you, Kvartirmyeister Kresney.”
She must have mangled the pronunciation of his rank because his grin popped out again. “Please. Call me Misha. You most welcome, Gospozhá Syev’ryin.”
“Julie,” she said with an answering smile at his two-syllable-with-extra-y’s-stuck-in-there pronunciation of her name. She kind of liked it.
“Julie,” he repeated, his hazel eyes merry. “Beautiful name for beautiful lady. Kapitan very lucky man.”
She blinked. What?
Before she could correct any mistaken notions the quartermaster might have gotten about her relationship with his commander, he was gone, closing the door behind him.
Whatever. She let out a sigh and looked around the minicabin. Nice that she’d have it all to herself. She’d been warned how cramped submarines were, and to expect to share a cabin with two or three others, possibly sleeping in shifts. Maybe the crew had been instructed to give the best cabins to the passengers.
Last night she’d still been too shell-shocked about being sent on an actual field mission to meet with the scientific expedition team she was supposed to be covering as a reporter. She’d seen them gathered at a table in the hotel bar. She’d gone down there thinking a shot or two would calm her frazzled nerves and allow her to get some much-needed sleep . . . instead of staring at the ceiling all night struggling to get her irrational terror of the ocean in check before having to face it in the living, breathing flesh. But the only thing the alcohol had effectively deadened was her judgment—proven by her imprudent behavior with Nikolai Romanov. It hadn’t done a damn thing for her jittery sense of impending doom. Nor her ability to get to sleep.
At breakfast this morning she’d finally introduced herself to the others on the team and established her cover. They were an eclectic bunch, a mix of young and old, five men and two women, formidable academics and environmental scientists from a half dozen countries. There were even two retired U.S. military men among them. Several knew each other already, from previous expeditions, she presumed. They’d treated her with casual politeness but no real interest. She was merely there to observe their important work and inform the world of their findings.
Or so they believed.
And boy, did she ever wish that were true. But no. Julie’s presence on Ostrov was a bit more complicated than that.
Two days ago she’d been innocently delivering a report to James Thurman, her section chief at Langley, along with his boss, when he’d gotten a phone call about the undercover officer who’d originally been assigned to this mission. A car accident had put the man in the hospital. Thurman’s boss had taken one look at Julie and pointed his finger at her, and less than twenty-four hours later she’d been on a terrifyingly small charter plane taking off from Nome, Alaska, to some godforsaken place on the Russian coast across the Bering Sea, posing as a reporter writing about the international scientific team that was studying the effects of global warming on the Pacific Arctic. On a Russian submarine.
Wrong place, wrong time. Insanely wrong mission.
She’d never been to the Arctic, knew nothing about global warming other than what Al Gore had taught her, and hell, she’d never even seen a real submarine before now, let alone ridden in one. Okay, yeah, she’d had the standard CIA field ops training for undercover case work, but she’d opted out of that end of things after being sent on her first mission. Hel-lo? They’d started shooting at her! Didn’t matter that it had only been warning shots aimed over her head. Okay, over the head of the guy she was supposed to be meeting. Who could blame her for skipping the meet?
Nope. Everyone agreed, she just wasn’t cut out for the danger of case work. Or the subterfuge. Good grief, she even blushed every time she told a lie. Some 007 she’d make. Not.
Unfortunately, as her boss had pointed out when she’d balked at this assignment, she had been a reporter in her former life as a civilian. Her beat had been Asia, as it still was. It had been her insightful, in-depth articles that had caught the attention of the CIA and prompted them to invite her to join the China desk a few years back.
Which meant she also knew how vital it was to U.S. national security to recover the tiny data storage, or SD, card that, through an unlikely series of events, had been stashed somewhere on Ostrov by a desperate, now-deceased Russian double agent—a Rybachiy submarine naval yard worker based in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy—leaving only a one-word clue: crown. The SD card held top-secret plans for a breakthrough long-range guidance system for China’s newest unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV. Information that was crucial the United States acquire, for the protection of the North American coastlines. UUVs were fast becoming the new submarines out there in the world’s coastal waters—except they were smaller, cheaper, more maneuverable than their big manned brothers, and therefore much deadlier. The government didn’t like talking about it, but they were becoming a huge security threat. This guidance system would put China in the front lines.
To find the miniature storage card hidden on Ostrov, all she had to do was figure out what this mysterious “crown” was. Something on the sub. Maybe even part of it. It should be close by. But good grief. She’d had no idea what a chaotic maze of confusing equipment, pipes, wires, and control panels made up the interior of a submarine. Finding the microcard would be like seeking out a particular, small seashell at the bottom of the vast ocean.
Talk about mission impossible.
She puffed out a breath and turned her attention back to the cozy cabin she found herself in. At least this part wouldn’t be so bad. The inside of the sub was surprisingly warm and toasty, so she’d finally stopped shivering. But she was still freezing in her wet clothes. And dripping all over the floor.
Kicking off her heels, she removed her sopping raincoat and hung it up
to dry on a hook she found on the back of the door. Thank God she wouldn’t be needing a coat anytime soon. After securing the door lock so Misha wouldn’t accidentally walk in on her when he returned with the hair dryer, she slipped off her skirt and peeled her blouse off, looking around for a clothes hanger. She opened one of the tall lockers, figuring that was what passed for a closet.
She was right. Several dark uniforms hung neatly from the rod. Okay. That was weird. Had she taken someone’s room?
Behind her, the door handle rattled. Damn. It must be the kvartirmyeister returning already. “Hang on, Misha,” she called, casting about for a towel, or anything to cover herself with.
She heard a click, and the door opened. She swung around with a startled gasp. She felt her face go instantly hot. It wasn’t Misha.
“Nikolai! How did you—?”
The handsome captain stepped into the compartment, his large frame filling the space. “Miss Severin.” His gaze brushed over her nearly bare body, raising a whole different kind of goose bumps on top of the goose bumps she already had from the cold. He held up a key.
She jolted out of her inertia, grabbed the first uniform jacket she touched in the locker, and jerked it in front of her body. “What are you doing here? Get out!”
At the sound of approaching footsteps, he leaned his head backward to check who it was, then shut the door, locked it, and propped a negligent shoulder against the door frame. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, this is my stateroom.”
“What?”
He tossed his large black captain’s hat, along with a small hair dryer, onto the bunk. “And this is my bunk. However”—he lifted a shoulder—“I am happy to share both with you.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “It’s called hot-bunking. You sleep while I’m awake, and vice versa. Not together. Unless, of course . . .” This time his brow lifted.
Her jaw dropped. Was he serious? Suddenly his easy capitulation last night—and the stir his orders to Misha had caused earlier—made perfect sense. It was obvious what he had in mind.
Outrage swept through her. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll— Hell, no! Give me a different cabin. Now.”
“Stateroom,” he corrected, stepping away from the door and opening one of the cupboards above the bunk. “This is not a cruise ship.”
“Cabin, stateroom, I don’t care what you call it. I need to be somewhere else.” Pronto. She started to shiver again.
He pulled out a towel and handed it to her, then slid his uniform jacket from her fingers. “Well, we only have half a crew, so there are several empty racks around the boat,” he said, inspecting the jacket and brushing stray drops of water from the front of it.
The towel was too small to cover her whole body, but she did her best. “Good. Now please leave while I—”
“In the forward torpedo room, for instance,” he continued as though she hadn’t ordered him out, “since we’re not carrying any live ordnance on this patrol. Of course, you’d have to share the space with two of the male scientists.”
She scowled. “There has to be somewhere else.”
He pursed his lips. “Sure. Several racks on the lower deck—but, again, with the crew. And the engines.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not very pleasant down there. Diesel fumes.”
“I meant another stateroom,” she gritted out.
“Yes, well, that poses a bit of a problem,” he said. “There are only three other staterooms, and they’re all full.” He ticked off on his fingers. “My senior officers have one, the male expedition leaders another, and the last is assigned to the two scientist ladies. Everyone else is in general berthing.”
“Why wasn’t I put in with the other women?” she demanded, starting to worry.
“Only two bunks in that one. Until yesterday we were expecting a male reporter. I’m still not sure why he was replaced. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. But this is the only remaining bunk on the boat appropriate for a lady.”
She ground her teeth. Of course. She hadn’t thought about the injured field officer being a man. Irritated, she wondered if her boss had made the switch deliberately . . .
She didn’t know what to do. She certainly didn’t want to bunk in an open area with a gang of Russian sailors. But this arrangement was unacceptable. “You’ll have to sleep somewhere else, then,” she told him briskly.
Instead of answering, he reached for another towel from the overhead cupboard. “Turn around,” he said. When she didn’t react, he did it for her with a firm hand to her upper arm.
“What on earth do you think—”
From behind, he toweled up the cold rivulets of water from her shoulders. The protest died on her lips. His hands were strong and gentle as they moved up and started to rub her hair dry. It felt . . . really nice.
So nice, she almost forgot she was standing there practically naked.
Almost.
When he started on her back, she said, “Nikolai, I’m serious. I’m not sleeping in your bed, with or without you.”
“We’ll see,” he murmured. She could feel his warm breath on her neck. It raised the fine hairs on her nape to attention. His fingers began to push her damp bra straps off her shoulders.
Frustration swept through her. Why wouldn’t he listen? “Stop! This is not some pirate ship where the captain can do as he pleases with his female passengers!” she said in exasperation, turning to face him. She clutched the towel to her breasts, determined to keep him at bay.
He looked down at her, his expression unreadable. Her pulse jumped madly. Unfortunately, her own body wasn’t listening, either.
“You are welcome to make other sleeping arrangements, and I will undoubtedly rack out elsewhere for the most part,” he said evenly. “But . . . isn’t being in my stateroom an ideal situation for completing your assignment? Always knowing what the boat’s commander is up to?” He tilted his head. “Perhaps I’ll forget to lock up some important documents. Who can tell what state secrets you might discover?”
Her heart nearly stalled at the implication of his statement. Oh, God. He did know about her! But how?
She gathered her wits, praying she was just being paranoid. “My assignment is to write articles about the expedition,” she said as forcefully as she could, “not about you or the secrets of the Russian navy.”
His gaze met hers, lit with subtle challenge. “But what else are you here for, dorogaya moya?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she insisted. What had he just called her?
His icy blue eyes seemed to pierce right through her. “I have been a submariner for many years,” he said. “On every patrol without exception there has been a zampolit, an FSB political officer, hidden among the crew. Not to spout doctrine, as in the old days, but to spy on navy missions.” He stepped closer to her. Their bodies were brushing now, the fine wool of his uniform scraping erotically against her bare skin. “Trust me, I know a shpion when I see one.”
Shock went through her. Even she didn’t need a translation for that word. Her heart pounded in her throat.
She forced a scoff. “Are you really accusing me of being a spy, Captain Romanov?” Lord, she didn’t know what she’d do if he actually said yes.
He leaned in, putting his lips to her ear. “Think about it. Stay here and seduce me. No one has to know. With such an incentive, I might voluntarily tell you everything you’ve been sent to find out. Hell, I may even want to defect to your country. Imagine what a coup that would be for you, back at Langley.”
So much for any doubts that he knew exactly what she was and who had sent her.
For a second she was too stunned to speak. More bait. Obviously for a trap. But cripes. Talk about getting nailed! And not in the good way, either.
Somehow she found her voice, and she picked the easiest part of his dangled bait to address. “Defect? Don’t be absurd. Russia is a democracy now. If you want to move to the United States, just get yourself a passport.”
He chu
ckled, his breath caressing her cheek, stirring stray hairs against her skin. “Ah, milaya moya. You seem to be a worthy opponent. I believe I shall enjoy our upcoming game of matching wits.” His jacket grazed the tips of her breasts, zinging them to painful attention. “And I especially look forward to the part where you seduce me.”
She swallowed.
Ho-boy. This was so not good.
“But, in the meantime . . .” He reached behind her, opened the tall locker, and pulled out a dark blue coverall. He pushed it into her hands. “Get dressed.” He gave her a drowning look. “Or I may forget that I am not a pirate captain after all.”
Unable to form a comeback—for any of it—she watched him grab an old, Hogan’s Heroes–style pilot’s cap from a peg on the wall, tug it on, and leave the stateroom.
The door snicked shut.
With a long, unsteady exhale, she fought a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Oh. My. God.
She was in such big trouble.
4
There was much to do to steer podvodnaya lodka B-403 Ostrov safely out of Petropavlovsk Harbor, through Avachinskaya Bay and past the Three Brothers rock formation that guarded the narrow mouth of the bay, and into the open waters of the North Pacific. But Nikolai did it all with a smile on his face.
He could see his men wondering at the change in him. For the past month, since being assigned as Ostrov’s commander, Nikolai’s behavior had been reminiscent of the snarling Russian wolves that stalked the family’s winter dacha. He resented his demotion, was mortified by the charges of negligence and rogue hotheadedness that had landed him here, and frustrated by a political system that condemned good, loyal men without a fair hearing. Чёрт возьми. Devil take it. With no hearing at all.
But the arrival on his very doorstep of an enemy shpion had given him new hope to redeem a career that had just yesterday seemed more than a shade beyond salvage. And what a shpion!