by Bill DeSmedt
Knox was sorry to see her go. There had been considerable entertainment value in watching Naomi keep Sasha on his toes. Why hadn’t they gone with an enclosed-bow design like everybody else? What’s with all the bearskin rugs and ponyhide upholstery—couldn’t they at least try to be a little PC? One tough customer. If this kind of grilling was what you got with a walk-through, it’s a sure bet Sasha wasn’t looking forward to the impending “full treatment.”
“So, Sasha, the corporate offices are up on salon deck?” Marianna asked on their way down to the lab. “I’d think you’d want the guest cabins up there for the view.”
“The problem is roll, Marianna. Placing VIPs such as yourselves lower down on main deck minimizes discomfort.”
“Roll? Oh, of course, the way the ship rocks from side to side. I keeping forgetting we’re on a ship; Rusalka’s just so huge!”
Sasha winced. “ ‘Yacht’ or, possibly, ‘boat,’ Marianna. Never ‘ship,’ please. ‘Ship’ refers only to merchant or military vessels.”
“But, ship or boat or whatever,” Knox said. “Is seasickness really a problem? I’d have thought a vessel like this would have God’s own stabilization system.”
“Not one system, Dzhon—two. First, Intering tank stabilization down in the hold, like on the biggest cruise ships. Conventional stabilizer fins on top of that. Except these are not so conventional: Old ones used gyroscopes; Rusalka’s are next-generation Trac digital stabilizers from American Bow Thruster. Two sets. You know about this?”
Knox shook his head.
“State-of-the-art: solid-state sensors embedded in the hull, constantly monitoring vessel’s roll and pitch, and feeding data to microprocessors that optimize fin angles in real time. Rusalka feels the water she moves through.”
“Sounds very cool.” Knox loved technotoys.
Sasha turned to Marianna and smiled. “Between Trac and Intering, Rusalka guarantees you smooth sailing, Marianna. Dramamine not necessary.”
“I’d really like to see that Intering system too sometime,” Knox said, as they came to a halt before a watertight double door marked “Oceanographic Laboratory” in Russian and English.
“Just big U-shaped tanks filled with seawater, Dzhon.” Sasha shrugged. “Pumps transfer water into the arm of the tank on the side opposite to the vessel’s roll, and the counterweight damps movement. Nothing much to look at, and the hold is dark, dirty, hardly fit for sightseeing.”
Off limits, in other words. Could they be hiding something down there?
“In any case,” Sasha was still talking, “I think you will find what we have here much more interesting.” With that, he punched digits into a keypad set in the jamb and the panels slid open to reveal Rusalka’s ocean sciences lab.
But for its lack of windows, Knox would’ve been hard put to tell the lab from the salons and skylounges they’d just left. No Bunsen burners or Bakelite-surfaced workstands for GEI’s researchers: late-model workstations were scattered about the vast, high-ceilinged space with all the artful randomness of tables at a sidewalk cafe. The lighting was subdued throughout, save where a spot illuminated yet another Ourobouros crest, inlaid in the center of the far wall above an unmanned reception desk.
Sasha followed the line of Knox’s gaze. “Jorgamund, the Midgard Serpent,” he said. “In Norse legend, Odin released a snake into the sea, where it could thrive. It grew so great that in time it encircled all of Midgard, the world of men, and bit its own tail. Most appropriate here: our researches also help the ocean, and its creatures, to thrive.”
Knox frowned, trying to recall the Elder Eddas as filtered through the prism of Marvel Comics. “Um, I thought Jorgamund was one of Loki’s three monstrous children. And Odin hurled it into the sea to keep it from devouring the Earth.”
“Must not read too much into legends, Dzhon,” Sasha said.
They walked past ranks of neat and tidy lab benches. Too neat and tidy. None of the real engineers and researchers of Knox’s acquaintance would have lasted a day in such an antiseptic environment. Where was the clutter of a working lab, the Slavic equivalents of empty Jolt Cola cans and half-eaten pizza slices?
“Sasha? What goes on in here? Anything?”
“Seismometry, Dzhon. All quiet now. You should have been here six-seven years ago, before we finished our North Atlantic survey. We still keep a few seismologists on staff—there are always seaquakes and volcanic eruptions to investigate—but the focus of our work has shifted to the other three sections. Come.”
Sasha steered them around the reception desk toward one of two glass doors set in the interior wall. Through the tinted glass, Knox could see a second room lined with more workstations, but this time sporting the bric-a-brac of lab apparatus too. Like the first lab, this one was all but uninhabited at the moment—precious little for an oceanographer to do in port, Knox guessed—but at least it had that lived-in look.
“And here, our piece de resistance.” Sasha pointed to the left as the party entered.
They turned to see a floor-to-ceiling aquarium occupying most of the inboard wall. Behind a giant slab of acrylic, in a luminous blue the color of the sky at dusk, there floated an armada of jellyfish, glowing iridescent in the ultraviolet-tinged light. The huge jellies—a plaque identified them as sea nettles, Chrysaora fuscescens—drifted like strange, amorphous extraterrestrials. The aliens were accompanied by flotillas of their smaller cousins, exquisite miniatures blazing like gems in the UV illumination.
“Specimen tank, for marine biologists,” Sasha said. “A big brother of the aquarium up in our skylounge.”
Knox peered into the tank’s depths. It looked as if . . . yes, through the glowing water, he could trace the contours of another dim-lit laboratory, a mate to the one they were in. The sealed tank must go through the dividing wall into the other lab, so researchers on that side could observe its goings-on too.
Speaking of researchers, he could just make out someone in there, outlined against the light of a computer screen as he—she?—rose from behind a workstation and walked up to the other side of the tank. The whitecoated figure stared at the visitors for a long moment, probably having no better luck making out individual features through the layers of thick glass and twilit seawater than Knox’d had. Behind him, Sasha lifted a hand to wave. A whitesleeved arm waved back from the other side, then pointed to a door on the left.
“Come,” Sasha urged Knox and Marianna toward an exit opposite the one they’d come in by. “Someone you must meet!”
He herded them out and into yet another lab, in time to see . . .
She was just emerging from another door further down the room. Then she was running up and throwing her arms around a startled Knox.
Galina!
“Ah, Dzhon! Skol’ko lyet? skol’ko zim!” How many years has it been?
“Galya . . . it’s been a very long time indeed. Far too long!” He pulled back to look at her.
The years had etched character into the face he remembered, but could not dull her innate vivacity. In the joy of this meeting, she fairly glowed, her green eyes alight and sparkling with barely held-back tears.
Her honey-colored hair tickled his neck as she hugged him yet again. Simply no comparison with the woman whose image Marianna had showed him his first day on the assignment, that bleach-blonde ringer captured in CROM’s drive-by snapshots.
Knox sobered at the thought of CROM, remembering there was an ulterior motive behind this happy reunion. Remembering that standing right behind him was . . .
“Marianna, I’d like to have you meet Galina Mikhailovna Postrel’nikova, an old, old friend from Moscow. Galya, this is Marianna Peterson. Marianna’s my, uh . . .”
“Companion,” Marianna filled in smoothly, holding out her hand, “Never mind about Jon; I can see you’re not ‘old, old.’ ” She sounded friendly enough, but there was something of the cat who ate the canary in the smile playing about those lovely lips.
“Very pleased.” Galina took Marian
na’s hand in hers, oblivious to any dire consequences her unexpected appearance might bear with it.
They were clear enough to Knox: Galina was the smoking gun. With her presence aboard Rusalka confirmed, CROM had Grishin dead to rights. Interdiction would swoop in, impound the vessel, and frogmarch the lot of them off to jail.
Knox experienced a flash of relief. He was off the hook, no need to go through with the rest of it now. They’d be back in Chantilly closing out the GEI file by nightfall.
His relief mixed with melancholy as he looked into the smiling faces of his soon-to-be incarcerated friends. Galina’s joy at seeing him seemed as unalloyed as Sasha’s had last night.
Why? he asked Sasha mutely. Why did you just hand her to us on a silver platter? Where are the secret rooms and shoot-outs, the poison pellets and plans for world domination—all the melodramatics his imagination had been conjuring up ever since this damn assignment began?
Why did you make it so easy for me to betray you?
Though it was all anticlimax now, they continued to go through the motions. Playing their parts as VIP tourists, Knox and Marianna let Sasha show them around the rest of the lab, beginning with the section they’d first seen Galina in.
Knox read the sign on the door. “Seafloor tectonics? What were you working on in here, Galya?”
“Was not working, Dzhon. Not as member of Rusalka’staff. Sasha lets me use workstation for email, and to edit articles, and for monitoring experiments left running back in Akademgorodok. Otherwise, am just like you—passenger aboard most beautiful yacht.”
“Great! Marianna and I could use some company while Sasha’s off charting the course of Grishin Enterprises.” Knox suppressed a grimace as he said that; no telling where Sasha would be twenty-four hours from now, but it wasn’t likely to be the commodious GEI corporate suites up on salon deck.
Rather than risk letting his chagrin show, he turned his face away. And found himself looking at the other face of the specimen tank he’d first spotted Galina through. The jellyfish swirled in the artificial currents, their carefree drifting mocking his preoccupations.
Through intervening layers of water and glass and Chrysaora fuscescens he could just make out the seawater-chemistry apparatus in the room they’d left moments ago.
Knox hung back as their little tour group walked out the lab’s forward door and down a short connecting corridor. He was getting that feeling again. The one he got when something wasn’t adding up according to his subliminal calculus. Something about the way the space was laid out back in the lab. He glanced back over his shoulder but the glass door was already sliding shut behind him.
Looking around, he saw they were headed back to the same reception lobby they’d come in by some two and a half hours ago. And on their way back out to the helipad.
Where a tall, dapper figure in navy-blue blazer and white linen slacks was standing with his back to them, waving a farewell to the departing helicopter.
“Ah,” Sasha said. “I thought we might find him here. Come say hello to your host.”
Arkady Grishin turned toward them as they approached and smiled questioningly, icy blue eyes peering out of a tanned, genial face.
“Arkasha,” Sasha switched to Russian, “I would like to have you meet my friend Dzhonathan Knox. I knew Dzhon in graduate school, in Moscow. By luck, his consulting agency has posted him to an assignment in London starting next month. I have taken the opportunity to invite him and his friend Marianna Peterson to accompany us on the Atlantic crossing.”
A shadow seemed to flit across Grishin’s face.
Sasha didn’t notice. In English he said, “Marianna, Dzhon, please permit me to introduce to you Arkady Grigoriyevich Grishin, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Grishin Enterprises International.”
“Ms. Peterson, Mr. Knox. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Grishin’s English was quite passable, but he didn’t seem comfortable speaking it. Releasing Marianna’s hand, he turned to Knox and asked “Moscow, yes? You speak Russian, then?”
Receiving a nod, he continued in that language, “I would have greeted you sooner, had I known you were aboard. But I confess not to have foreseen any guests at all on this summer’s cruise.” Grishin flashed Sasha an enigmatic look.
Sasha swallowed. “Only for the run to the continent, Arkasha. Two weeks, three at most.”
Grishin turned to Knox. “If you have known Sasha for so long, then you must know how impetuous he can be. In this case, I regret that it is impossible . . .”
All at once Grishin’s eyes hardened. Though their surface affability never wavered, sparks of cold fury now churned in their depths. What could Knox have done to merit all the bad vibes from a man he had only now met? Short of setting him up to be clapped in irons, of course, but Grishin couldn’t know that, could he?
Then Knox realized that the arctic glare was aimed, not at him, but over his shoulder. He turned to see what Grishin was looking at. And saw Galina just emerging on deck.
The moment passed. By the time Grishin turned back to Knox, his sunny cordiality had returned, rekindled as if by an effort of will. But its warmth never reached the cold blue eyes, nor thawed that wintry stare.
“Well, it is settled then,” Grishin said. “Now that you have been reunited with Sasha and Galina Mikhailovna here, you must of course come with us. Welcome aboard.”
From main deck, Knox watched the weirs and jetties of Baltimore harbor slide by, shimmering in the midday heat. The gray bulk of Fort McHenry was receding minute by minute into the haze of distance, taking the land of the free and the home of the brave along with it.
What was CROM waiting for? Knox turned to his “companion,” looking for signs of imminent action, seeing none. Marianna stood beside him close enough to touch, not touching. Lawyers-in-love was good cover for impromptu working meetings. It was just that he had no idea what was left for them to be working on.
“Uh, seems like we’ve accomplished about all we could have hoped for here, no?”
“Eyeballing our wayward prole?” She grinned. “That part did go quick, didn’t it? Kind of surprising, the way Sasha just trotted her out like that.”
“Maybe not as surprising as you think.”
“Meaning?”
“Didn’t you see how pissed Grishin was when we showed up with Galya? Maybe no one told Sasha he was supposed to be keeping her under wraps. Which means maybe he wasn’t in on that disappearing act back in New York either.”
“Maybe.” Marianna didn’t sound as if she cared much one way or the other.
“So, anyway, about time to call in the cavalry, no?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“Because this is absolutely our best shot at finding out what Grishin’s up to.”
Uh-oh. Where had he seen that kind of gung-ho attitude before?
Knox was beginning to get a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Marianna, don’t take this the wrong way, but . . .”
“But what?”
“But this wouldn’t happen to be your first field assignment, would it?”
“I’ve been mission-rated going on two years now.” A defensive note had crept into her voice. “And nobody’s got as much sweat-equity in this case as me. I earned this.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“And I’m a good enough field agent to’ve saved your ass back in D.C., remember?”
Knox said nothing, just waited for her to settle down.
She sighed. “Okay, yes, it’s my first real field assignment. Not counting that business in New York, of course.”
“Ah!” Her being a woman had kept him from spotting it sooner: the junior-exec-out-to-make-good syndrome . . . and overcompensating for a previous screw-up, to boot.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m still the one Pete put in charge of this mission.”
“I was there too, remember?” Knox thought back on their post-gala meeting with the
Reacquisition Director. Thought back on Aristos’s ill-concealed grin as he’d walked them through their pre-mission briefing. The bastard hadn’t even bothered to pretend this cruise hadn’t been on the agenda from the get-go. But he’d also offered a possible out.
“Pete gave us a specific objective, as I recall,” he said, “Confirm Galina’s onboard and call in the troops, preferably before Rusalka leaves U.S. waters. Well, I’d call what we’ve got here mission accomplished. And we seem to be in process of leaving U.S. waters just now, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
She turned to look aft at the noon-hour traffic crossing Francis Scott Key Bridge. “Galina’s just the tip of this iceberg,” she said, half to herself.
“Look, Marianna,” he said, talking to her back now. “You know better than anybody what Grishin’s capable of. Are you ready to run the risk we won’t make it back with what we already know?”
She turned to face him again. “Given what we do know, what makes you think Grishin’s just going to let us leave?”
“How about calling in, at least? You know, touching base?”
“No way. Feel free to swim back to Baltimore and report if you want, but we break communications silence only at discretion of the agent-in-charge. And the AIC is me.”
“Guess again, Marianna. Last I looked, I wasn’t part of your chain of command.”
“I’d have thought you especially would want to stick it out, Jon. If your friends really are innocent, the only place you stand a chance of proving it is right here on Rusalka.”
He had no ready answer to that.
She smiled sweetly then, her couples-mimicry routines still going full blast for the benefit of any onlookers. “Besides, a transmission right now would have them at our throats a lot sooner than CROM could intervene. Our best option is to lie low and see what else we can find out.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what they’ve got Galina doing.”