by K. T. Tomb
Travis had very vivid memories from the last time they had been in Russia, on the inaugural Alpha Adventurers mission a year prior, but he felt a resurgence of his resolve. He had beaten alcohol, rebuilt his body and his mind. He wouldn’t be afraid of a mere country, not when he had walked through his own personal hell already.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll go. But Thyri, you’re buying me a flak jacket for this one. I’ll be back in two hours; be ready.”
With a whistle, Travis called Angelo to his side. He’d pop in to see Savannah on his way home, and entrust the care of the dog to her while he was away chasing gold.
Chapter Two
Travis thought he must have lost the grasp of his senses. Savannah and Adam were alright, smart people who like himself, shared an interest in solving riddles, investigating history and mysteries. He had tried to convince Savannah to come with them on this trip, but her ancient history classes were far too intense at this time of year. He reasoned that the only possible reason why he would decide to once again go to Russia with Thyri and Fiona must be a brain hemorrhage or a remarkable case of dementia. Fiona was a loose cannon in every respect, more likely to cause an international incident than solve a mystery, and Thyri who, while ostensibly in overall charge of Alpha Adventurers Inc. since she held the purse strings, was not an academic nor a particularly impressive athlete or scientist. She was a keen business mind, but she cared primarily about wealth, and not the advancement of knowledge.
I should just call them and say I’m out, he thought to himself.
Travis even took out his phone and was about to dial when he thought again. He couldn’t quite pin the thought down, half formed as it was in his mind. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to go to Russia, but he felt compelled to see what happened there. The very concept behind it seemed ridiculous. He had Googled the company, Multimetal, on the way back from Savannah’s apartment, and it certainly appeared that they had indeed lost an entire freighter full of newly refined gold ore. It seemed impossible. This was 2014 and ships just didn’t disappear anymore. Of course, there was piracy off the African coast, but this was half a world away and, with GPS tracking and most likely armed guards abroad the freighter, it would be foolish to try and hijack such a vessel.
He was still reading Reuters and Russian Times reports in the back of the taxicab as it pulled up outside the office building once more. Thyri rapped on the window, breaking his concentration, which annoyed Travis for a moment before he realized that he had his flight bag on the seat next to him which would have been preventing Thyri and Fiona from getting in. He slid out the curbside door, squeaking across the worn leather seat of the slightly run-down taxi and assisted Thyri with her Samsonite suitcase, placing both his own small bag and the suitcase in the trunk of the car. Fiona carried nothing. Travis wondered if she was just planning on Thyri covering her expenses indefinitely while she trotted around the globe, proselytizing and rabble-rousing for the next flavor-of-the-month environmental issue. If he was honest with himself, Travis agreed with many of the things that Fiona stood for, and at his heart of hearts, was a little jealous of some of the incredible things she had done. In his mind, her courage of conviction was not in question, merely the execution of her methods. Above all else, Travis valued research, logical reasoning and critical thinking, whereas Fiona went with what her heart told her was the right thing to do. He could respect her for that, but her myopic view of cause and effect had, after all, resulted in Travis having a bullet pulled out of him on their first ever adventure.
Who do I blame for getting shot by Monica Chen, then? he thought.
He knew the answer; he had been through the conversation, both internally and with the psychotherapist. He had to take his share of the responsibility for that incident, and therefore, he was also partly responsible for his first wounding in Russia.
Doesn’t mean I have to like her though, does it?
Fiona interrupted his thoughts and he couldn’t quite keep the look of annoyance from his face.
“Are you just going to blank us all the way to Russia? Thyri was just talking about the cargo ship.”
“Yes, I’m aware of the news reports.”
Travis had been so engrossed with his thoughts he had not even realized that he had gotten into the taxi again and that the driver was guiding his vehicle through the mid-afternoon traffic toward the airport across town.
“I was reading them on the way here.” Travis managed to reduce the terse tone of his voice. “The captain failed to make a scheduled report on Monday of last week, and both the ship’s GPS and continuous plotting signal went off line an hour or so later. By the time we get there-” he checked his watch. “-it’ll be ten days since the ship went missing. The local coast guard hasn’t turned up anything so far, so we can probably rule out a sunken ship theory for now. Anything I missed?”
Thyri fiddled with her hair, quite an incongruous tic for her. Travis thought it suggested unease, but perhaps he was being overly analytical.
“No, I agree that it’s not likely the freighter has gone down. There would have been discernible wreckage, distress calls and such. Therefore we must assume that either; ‘A’, the ship has been stolen through piracy, or ‘B’, the ship has been diverted to another destination by the crew, which would suggest some kind of fraud plot.”
Fiona snorted.
“Seriously, who would be a pirateer in the Sea of Okhotsk? Its waters are crawling with shipping, and you’ve got the Chinese, the Russians, both Koreas and Japan dicking around with their navies… polluting it to all hell as well, I might add. Do you know what the carbon footprint of an aircraft carrier is? Not to mention all the submarines that must be buzzing about under there.”
Thyri raised her hand to cut Fiona off before she moved on to the evils of the global military industrial complex.
“Stay on topic, please, Fi. While yes, it is unlikely that anyone would be dumb enough to hijack the freighter, that doesn’t mean someone hasn’t done it anyway. We’ll just have to wait and see what we find out on that one. Travis, while you were out, I dug up some details about Multimetal. They’re legitimate, as far as I can tell, which under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be surprised at, but, if you’ll forgive me for being culturally insensitive, this is the Russian mineral market here.”
Travis raised an eyebrow.
“Your implication being that no one in Russia is clean, right? At least, not amongst the wealthy elites?”
“Correct. I’ve dealt with enough oligarchs through my own business dealings to know that the free market, post-glasnost, didn’t leave any room for people who couldn’t fight and keep their corner. Bar none, they’re tougher than the iron curtain ever was, and if they’re not directly benefiting from corruption, they still subscribe to a very different code of ethics than we ‘cultured’ Europeans and you ‘civilized’ Americans.”
Thyri had a wry smile about her. Travis couldn’t help but laugh at the implication.
“Sounds to me like you admire them,” he said.
“Admire them? They’re raping the planet for all it’s worth. If they had their way, there wouldn’t be a resource untapped from the Caspian Sea to Okhotsk. Bastards and earth-rapists, every one of them,” Fiona said.
Travis could see that this would be a rather long and excruciating ride to the airport, especially as the taxi had slowed to a near crawl as they drove through Atlanta’s center. The roads were congested with SUVs and luxury cars. Fiona similarly noticed the lethargic pace their cab had been forced to adopt, and launched seamlessly into what would, no doubt, be a fascinating exposition about the evils of the combustion engine. Travis felt no guilt in ignoring Fiona completely while Thyri attempted to engage her in conversation related to the case. Instead of pursuing that avenue to futility, he took his phone from his pocket and Googled their destination. He didn’t have much of an idea of where they were flying to, so he had to interrupt Fiona – whose voice was rising ever so slightly in pitch as she
got into full flow – to ask Thyri the name of the city they were headed to. Suitably informed, he returned to his phone and looked up the average November temperature for Magadan.
Perturbed to see that the temperature was likely to be sub-zero already – and with the proximity of Magadan to the Sea of Okhotsk itself – there was bound to be some serious wind chill. He considered the contents of his flight bag. He had packed sweaters and thick socks, but he knew these would be insufficient. Maybe he could pick up some brandy or something. No. No, he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t do that anymore. To keep his mind focused on the job, he looked up Multimetal’s owner, apparently a man in his fifties by the name of Anatoly Zeitsev. From the images, Travis thought he looked like quite a severe man; thickly bearded and steely eyed. The resolution on his phone was reasonable, so Travis was able to see the weathered skin of one who had spent decades in harsh environments. There was limited further information about the man outside of his career as founder of Multimetal in the early 1990s. From what he could gather, Zeitsev had been a minor government official under the old USSR, but moved quickly during the perestroika period to take control of vast areas of mineral extraction.
An opportunist, then, and quick to act.
His attention was drawn by a sudden lurch of the taxi as the driver, a pale-faced whippet of a man in his forties with a thick, south Georgian accent, stomped on the accelerator as the heavy traffic cleared. The cab flew onto the highway in a screech of rubber and muffled grumbling. It seemed to Travis that either this driver really hated traffic, in which case an alternate career path might be advisable, or he had had quite enough of Fiona’s loud soapboxing. The three passengers were flung left and then right as the surprisingly powerful cab was given a beating by its operator. Fiona cursed, and Travis and Thyri who sat by the doors flanking her, both banged their heads on the windows. Fiona took to berating the driver, who responded in equally blue tones. Travis and Thyri exchanged wearisome looks. If this was the tone for the rest of the journey, which was likely to be a long one, and then it would be undoubtedly more than just the Russian winter that would be frosty before long.
Travis hunkered down in his seat, fished for his iPod and turned on some music. John Coltrane. Relaxing. Free spirited. Despite having the volume up full, Fiona’s shrill London accent could still be faintly heard over the lush tones of Coltrane’s saxophone, and Travis wished he had loaded some death metal onto his device. His jaw clenched involuntarily. This was clearly a huge mistake.
Chapter Three
Fiona must have spent the vast majority of her time in prison in solitary confinement. It was the only possible way that another prisoner had not shanked her to death long before she’d gotten out, and Travis himself had lost patience with her during the three hours spent at the Khabarovsk Navy Airport waiting for the twin engine turboprop airplane that would take them on to Magadan. As a result of his desperation to put some distance, however temporary, between his own mind and Fiona’s incessant prattling, he found himself actually enjoying shopping in the airport. Skipping the entirely Russian bookstores, he acquired a cup of coffee, thick, black and sweet and with a caffeine content that would keep the sleepiest of bears awake through winter. Suitably powered, Travis left Thyri again to handle Fiona and set off on his own. He had no qualms about this, as Thyri allegedly was Fiona’s friend and confidant. Travis had no such ties to the annoying British woman.
Travis had expected that the airport would be run down and bleak, a Stalin-era flattened bit of tarmac with a departures board. He reprimanded himself for his Western presumptions. The architecture was indeed basic and functional, but the airport interior was filled with brightly lit stores, selling everything from designer clothing and iPods to Japanese and Indian cuisine. Travis found several stores selling winter gear and spent a fair amount of Thyri’s money on a modern, military-style M4 Parka, thermal underwear, heavy down trousers, thick gloves and, realizing he was looking rather too sensible for his own liking, a large, army-style, faux fur winter hat. He had been a little disappointed to not find one bearing a hammer and sickle pin, but he reasoned that they were probably a faux pas, so he settled on a hat with bright red trim.
Not eager to carry his new purchases, he put on the coat and trousers, stashing the hat and gloves in the coat pockets, and bundled up the multi-pack of thermal underwear in his light bag. The airport was kept at a reasonable temperature, so the winter wear quickly built up heat on the inside. Despite this, the quality was fine enough that Travis felt very little discomfort or undue levels of sweating, although he did attract a few odd looks from the other travelers at the airport, who were by and large indigenous Russians and could clearly spot a silly Westerner playing dress up when they saw one.
By the time he returned to Thyri and Fiona, the plane to Magadan was ready to be boarded. Travis thought Fiona was being particularly blasé considering she was traveling illegally, but nonetheless, the trio boarded the plane with no incident. Taking the window seat, with Fiona in the aisle seat and Thyri across the aisle on a single chair, Travis noticed that Fiona was at times slurring her words. She spoke thoughtlessly about the human rights record of the modern Russian government in the middle of a plane packed with Russians, some of whom surely spoke English well enough to understand her, judging from the poisonous looks people were casting in their direction. Without warning, Fiona’s head fell back onto her head rest. She was fast asleep, with an opened can of Coca Cola in her hand.
“Thank Christ for that.” Thyri seemed unconcerned while Travis checked Fiona’s pulse, despite his personal dislike for her.
“I put four Valium in that can of Coke half an hour ago, but she talks so much, I thought we’d be in Magadan by the time they kicked in.”
Travis gasped, and removed his fingers from Fiona’s jugular. It seemed to him that he wasn’t the only one with a limited amount of mental space for Fiona’s rambling.
“Don’t give me that look, Travis,” Thyri said, but looked a little guilty as she did so. “You’re not the only one she’s been annoying with all this ‘right on’ environmentalist crap. I got her over here as a favor. She may be a pain, but she’s still one of the team. Unlike you, I might mention.”
Travis had been about to put Thyri in her place as to why he had quit the company, but was drowned out by the incredible din of the propellers. He had quite forgotten how loud these engines were in comparison to the modern jet they had flown in on from Atlanta. The plane had taxied and taken off, steadily climbing and with plenty of subtly and not so subtly gripping of armrests before the volume inside the passenger cabin had decreased enough for Travis to be heard easily. But by then, he found that he was no longer irritated by Thyri’s barb. It was typical of the archetypal industrialist to have such a grim view of Fiona’s core beliefs. Travis wondered how they had become friends in the first place, seeing as they were diametrically opposed on so many issues. What Travis also learned, the thought slowly forming in his mind while accompanied by the thrum of the rotors, was that, despite her appearance as the well-mannered, impeccably-styled head of a Scandinavian oil firm, Thyri was not above drugging her own friends for a few hours of peace. What else would she be capable of doing to people who were not so close? People who had perhaps decided to drop out of her pet adventuring project? He eyed his own can of lemonade, momentarily wary. He decided that the drink was uncontaminated as he had opened it himself. That didn’t mean that Thyri couldn’t have spiked it using a sleight of hand, but it seemed unlikely. In any case, if there was Valium in the drink, he’d at least get some good sleep in before Magadan. Thyri seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts.
“Don’t worry, you’ve not annoyed me. Your drink is clean. But then, if I wanted you to drink it, wouldn’t I say that anyway?”
Thyri stuck her tongue out playfully. Travis frowned.
“Very droll, very droll. I do wonder what you do to people you actively dislike as opposed to those you just want some peace and quiet from. Ho
w many skeletons are in your closet, Miss Ragnarsson?”
“All of my skeletons, darling, are buried so deep, you’d need to borrow one of my drilling rigs to get to them. Enough about me. What’s your take on this Multimetal lot? Do you reckon they’ve got anything to gain by stealing their own gold?”
Travis considered the hypothetical balance of finance in his head.
“It’s not just the gold. If the company deliberately lost their own gold, they also lost their own ship, which has got to be worth almost as much as the cargo itself. I mean, it’s not unheard of for ships to be registered again under a false name, but who benefits from it? There might be agencies at work within Multimetal that are pulling a fast one on the company as a whole, but I can’t see the Board of Directors sanctioning this. It’s mighty risky, for a start. What if one of the board turned whistle blower? I know the gulags are ancient history, but I can only imagine the lengths the Russian Duma would go to make an example of the culprits if they discovered corruption on that scale.”
“So, if not the board, then who?” Thyri had a far off look in her eye. “The ship’s captain at least must be involved if the ship has not sunk or been hijacked after all. I don’t think he could have acted alone either, so the executive officer and the pilot, and probably the navigator too. We are dealing with a well-organized group of people, that’s for sure.”
“Are we so sure it’s not piracy? It’d be unlikely, granted. What if the North Koreans are involved?”
The conversation was interrupted by another spell of whining engines as the small plane broke through the cloud cover. Travis felt his stomach plunge. He could see Thyri’s lips moving, but couldn’t hear her over the din, and had to mime for her to wait and repeat her words.
Thyri eventually expounded a theory on why it was unlikely to be intervention from another nation. Travis had to cede that his knowledge of international relations was inferior to hers, and felt it was logically sound that the international incident caused by hijacking another nation’s shipping would be too risky, even for the North Koreans, who have really managed to maintain relatively cordial relations with Moscow. It was, Thyri believed, simply counterproductive for a government so dependent on trade from Russia to turn around and bite the hand that feeds them. What they needed was more information, and that would only be available once they were disembarked from the flying death trap they were in and safely on the ground in Magadan. The conversation sputtered out, and eventually Thyri herself seemed to go to sleep. Travis had meant to stay awake himself, despite having already been awake for almost twenty hours, but found his eyelids disobeying his mental commands, and he dreamed a strange vision about being stuck underwater inside a giant engine, being pushed and pulled through giant tubes.