“You’re coming to the right place,” he said. “The United States is home to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and hundreds of other computer and software companies. You won’t have a problem. It’s good pay; you can make a good living with your background.”
Paulina smiled but looked pensive.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wish Ivan had this kind of a chance.” She spoke of her brother, whose dream to dance for the Bolshoi had ended in suicide. “He would have been a great dancer.”
“I’m sure he would have.”
They returned to the metal door they used to enter and exit the deck. “I will go back to the cabin so you can call your family,” Paulina said.
It had become their routine to circle the stacked cargo containers four times. Jenkins used the time alone on deck to call Alex on a secure phone and update her on their progress. She would tell him about the kids, whom he missed. He’d also talk to CJ about school, but mostly about soccer, and anything else the boy wanted to discuss.
Jenkins pulled the encrypted phone from his pocket and dialed Alex’s burner phone. It was early morning in Seattle. She answered on the third ring.
“Hey. Where are you?” she asked. “I’ve been worried.”
“Leaving Poland and heading to Denmark. After that it’s Norway. Then home.”
“How many more days until you get to Norway?”
“Three.”
“Anything going on?”
“Nothing so far. I’m looking forward to steaming for home.”
“Don’t drop your guard. Not just yet.”
The cell phone buzzed in his hand and Jenkins read the screen, though the caller could only be one other person. “Hang on. I’m getting a call from Matt Lemore.”
“You need to take it?”
“I’d better. I’ll call you back.”
Jenkins answered the call but didn’t get out a word after “Hello.” He listened, quickly becoming sick to his stomach. He shoved the phone in his pocket and rushed to the metal door, yanked it open, and stepped into the inner lock. He opened the interior door and hurried down the metal steps, the sound of each footfall echoing.
Paulina passed the diagram of the C deck floor plan hanging on the hallway wall. It identified the multitude of rooms off the narrow corridors. Fluorescent lights illuminated pale walls and the linoleum floor. The walk in the cold was something she now looked forward to. The pain in her ankle, which she had swallowed boarding the train in Moscow, had improved, her limp no longer so pronounced. So, too, had her stamina. She turned a corner, nearly walking into a crew member traveling in the opposite direction. He wore a white helmet and kept his head down, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his light-blue jumpsuit.
Out of politeness, Paulina apologized, but the man ignored her. Bantle had told her the crew members might be reluctant to engage them; that they knew enough not to ask questions and to keep to themselves.
She stepped to her cabin door and looked down the hall. The man glanced back over his shoulder at her before he turned the corner. She punched in the room access code and pushed open the door. When she stepped inside, she detected the smell of mint. A metal teapot and two cups rested on a brown food tray on the computer desk. On the tray was a small note.
Thought tea might help you sleep more soundly.
Paulina smiled. Martin Bantle had gone out of his way to make them feel welcome. He had provided meals, medical attention, and medicine. Tea would remove the chill from the nightly walk. She reached for the pot but then decided to first change out of her coveralls. In the process of doing so, she caught sight of the picture of Charles Jenkins with his daughter that she had taped above her bed, and she smiled at the thought of a little girl sharing her name. Maybe, in some small way, it was a chance for her to live on. With her parents and her brother gone, it gave her hope for the future. Far too often she had considered her life not worth living, but now, having just been out on the deck of a ship that would carry her one step closer to a new home and to new opportunities, she realized she had an obligation to her parents, who had lived under the oppressive communist regime, and to her brother, who had taken his life when his dreams were stolen from him.
She let the coveralls drop to her waist, then sat on her bed and slid out of her shoes to pull off the coveralls. Underneath she wore borrowed pants, the cuffs rolled, a white T-shirt, and a gray wool sweater, the sleeves also rolled. She stood and hung her coveralls on one of the hooks by the door, then looked again to the tea. Charlie would be at least half an hour.
Cold tea was never as good as hot. She decided to drink the first cup without him.
Jenkins swung around the bright-yellow painted handrail, feeling it rattle from his weight and momentum. He dropped onto the B deck landing, the noise resonating in the stairwell. Below him a door opened, then slammed shut. He peered over the railing, hoping to see Paulina. A crew member in a white hard hat descended the staircase, likely headed to the engine room or the main control room. The man looked up at Jenkins, then ducked his head and quickly continued down the stairs.
Jenkins gripped the handrail and descended to the C deck. If someone stepped from their cabin at that moment, there was going to be one hell of a collision. He turned a corner, his momentum carrying him into the wall, pushed off, and rushed to their door at the far end. He banged on it as he fingered the numbers on the keypad and pushed the door open.
Paulina reached for a metal teapot. A cup on the table in front of her.
“Don’t!” Jenkins yelled, startling her. She pulled back her hand. “Did you drink any of the tea?”
“No. I was just about to—”
“Step away from the desk.”
“What is wrong?”
“Step back.”
Paulina did so. Jenkins pulled her out into the hall, telling her in a hushed voice the gist of his conversation with Matt Lemore. Then he said, “Come with me.”
They hurried down the hall and climbed the stairs to the A deck, entering the large mess hall with the ship’s kitchen. Jenkins rummaged in the cabinets and drawers, then pushed through a door at the back of the kitchen to a storage room.
“What are you looking for?”
“Rubber gloves. And a mask.”
He found them on a shelf and pulled out two sets, handing one to Paulina. They put on the protection and hurried back to their cabin. He told Paulina to hold the door for him.
Jenkins did not know what was in the tea. Lemore had mentioned polonium-210, the poison used in the attack on a former KGB and FSB agent living in London. The man had ingested the polonium-210 after it had been poured in his tea. Jenkins did not know whether the poison could be absorbed by touch or by smell, but he was taking no chances.
He walked to the desk and opened the top drawer, finding paper clips, pens, and pencils, but no tape. He looked through the other drawers, also without success, and eventually used toilet paper to fashion a cork and stuff it in the spout. It would have to do.
He picked up the tray and slowly walked to the open door. Stepping through, he said, “Get the stairwell doors for me.”
Paulina did so, and Jenkins carefully ascended three flights of stairs, Paulina in front of him to ensure no one got in his way. About to open the inner lock leading to the door to the deck, Paulina stepped back suddenly when the door pushed in. She nearly collided with the tray behind her, which caused Jenkins to step back. He lost his balance, stumbled, but managed to keep the tray, and the teapot, upright.
The crew member gave them an odd look but otherwise did not ask questions.
Paulina held the door open for Jenkins, looking in both directions, then nodded for him to proceed. He carefully stepped over the lip at the bottom of the door into a gusting wind. He turned his back to serve as a wind block and walked backward to the deck railing.
Beneath him, the boat churned, the engines emitting a loud humming noise and vibration. Whitecaps rolled atop gray waves. Jenkins did not want to throw
the tray for fear the lid would pop off the pot and the wind would blow the tea back in his face.
He reached over the railing as far as his arms would extend and let the tray drop, stepping back and crouching behind the boat’s steel edge. After a moment he stood and looked over the side at the churning water illuminated in the boat’s lights.
If poison had been put into the tea, it was now gone.
But there was a more imminent problem. The person who had planted it remained on ship, and that meant Jenkins and Paulina were no longer one step ahead of Efimov. They were one step behind.
50
Jenkins waited in the hallway outside their cabin with Paulina and Chief Mate Martin Bantle. Bantle confirmed that neither he nor any other officer had sent tea to their room.
Inside their cabin, a ship engineer in a decontamination suit analyzed the room inch by inch with a Geiger counter. With increased terrorist threats, the equipment had become standard on US-flagged ships carrying sensitive cargo. Bantle had confined all nonessential crew to their quarters, and he dispatched ship security officers to search for the man Ponomayova had seen walking down the hall just before she found the tea. Jenkins told Bantle he had seen a man descending the staircase from the C deck.
After forty-five minutes, the engineer emerged from the cabin and removed his protective headgear, his hair damp with perspiration. “I’m not getting any readings, but that doesn’t mean the cabin is safe.”
“I don’t understand,” Jenkins said.
“It has to do with the different forms of radiation,” the engineer said. “Beta radiation consists of both electrons and gamma radiation—which are a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation detectable on a Geiger counter. The fact that I’m not getting any hits is a good thing for the two of you, because beta and gamma radiation can penetrate skin tissue and be absorbed into the body.”
“What’s the alternative?” Jenkins asked.
“Alpha particles, radiation given off by chemical elements like polonium-210. They produce no signs of radioactivity when tested with a Geiger counter. That’s the bad news. The good news is alpha particles don’t travel far before losing all their energy, centimeters at most, which limits contamination to drinking the tea or inhalation at a close distance. It cannot penetrate the skin unless there is an open wound.”
“But it can be inhaled?” Jenkins asked, worried about Paulina.
“We all have low levels of polonium in our systems, especially those who smoke cigarettes or eat a lot of fish. So long as polonium, or any other element giving off alpha particles, is not ingested or inhaled in sufficient amounts, it poses little danger.”
“What amount needs to be ingested?” Jenkins asked.
“No way for me to know that. All I can tell you is if it is ingested or inhaled in a sufficient amount, the damage to internal organs is extensive and death is certain.” The engineer looked to Bantle. “We’re going to need to watch the crew for nausea and vomiting, hair loss, diarrhea. Since we can’t be one hundred percent certain if this room is contaminated, given the equipment available, we need to seal it, probably this deck as well, and deal with this when we arrive in Norway. Tell the crew to pee into vials and seal them. We can have their urine analyzed when we dock. I’m going to check the kitchen since we can assume that’s where he made the tea.”
“We’re fortunate the kitchen was closed,” Bantle said. “And I assume this guy would avoid being seen by any of the crew for fear of being confronted.”
“Just the same, you might want to seal the kitchen as well, at least until we get to Norway and can get hazmat in here to go over the ship and have medical personnel check out the crew.”
“How did you find out about this?” Bantle asked Jenkins.
Jenkins gave that question some thought. “I’m not really sure. Maybe a couple of people who still have a conscience.”
“Well, whoever it was, they likely saved your lives,” the engineer said. “If it was polonium-210, you were looking at a long and very painful death.”
Bantle told the engineer to do what was necessary, and the man left. “I’ll find you another room on another deck,” he said to Jenkins and Paulina. “And until this individual is located, I’m confining everyone to their rooms. That includes you.”
“If he’s not caught, he’ll sneak off at the next port,” Jenkins said.
“We’ll find him,” Bantle said.
“I doubt he’ll be armed or will give you any problems. But don’t expect him to admit anything either.”
“There is something else to consider as well,” Paulina said. Jenkins knew what she was about to say, and that it was far more problematic. “The FSB has clearly figured out we left Finland on this container ship.”
“I know,” Jenkins said. “They needed days to plan this attack and get their man on ship at the last port. We no longer have a head start. We might even be a step behind.”
Nearly two hours later, Bantle stepped inside their new room and exhaled a held breath. “We got him. He was hiding on one of the storage decks.”
Bantle looked spent. Jenkins suspected his and Paulina’s presence on board was more than Bantle had bargained for, and the stress had caught up with him.
“Was anyone hurt?” Jenkins asked.
“No. You were right; he wasn’t armed and he isn’t talking. He’s acting like a stowaway. I’ve locked him in a secure room. The question now is: What do we do with him?”
“If we take him to the Port of Aarhus and hand him over to Danish authorities, the wheels in the Kremlin will start turning to get him back,” Jenkins said. “And I don’t like the idea of watching him walk away with a slap on the wrist for something as minor as stowing away.”
“He tried to poison us,” Paulina said.
“I know, but we have no evidence to prove that, do we? We tossed the tea overboard and the engineer didn’t find any Geiger counter readings. Since neither of us drank the tea, there’s no physical evidence we were poisoned. Thank God for that.” He looked to Bantle. “Even if we did have evidence, you saw how the Russians handled the London incident.”
“They denied it.”
“They’ll do the same here. They’ll claim they know nothing and demand that the man be returned to Russia, or that proof be provided that he did what we claim. If we publicly accuse him, the Russians will use the opportunity to point out that you are smuggling two people wanted in Russia for crimes.”
“You have any suggestions?” Bantle asked Jenkins. “’Cause I’m all ears.”
Jenkins did. He’d already spoken to Matt Lemore, and they had come up with an alternative game plan. “Play the same game as the Russians. Play dumb. If they ask, and it’s unlikely they will, deny you have the man on board. Flip it. Tell them to prove that you do.”
“The FSB will not claim him as one of their own,” Paulina said.
To Bantle, Jenkins said, “And you said, your crew knows enough to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. This would be a good time for them to practice that. Don’t acknowledge him and don’t release him at Aarhus or while in port in Norway. Take him back to the United States, to Virginia.”
“I suppose we could do that,” Bantle said.
“There’s still another problem,” Jenkins said. “When the man fails to disembark in Aarhus, the Russians will know he didn’t succeed in killing us, or at least will suspect something has gone wrong.”
“They could still be waiting for you when we reach port at Drammen in Norway.”
“But we will not get off the ship there either,” Paulina said, looking concerned.
Bantle rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin. “That might not matter. The Russians could have international authorities waiting to arrest you.”
Jenkins nodded. “They’ve had time to get things in place and gin up charges against us for crimes we allegedly committed.”
“They could even put out a diffusion to Interpol.”
“What’s a di
ffusion?” Jenkins asked.
“You’ve heard of a red notice?” Bantle asked.
Jenkins had. A red notice was a request to international law enforcement to arrest a person pending extradition to stand trial for his crimes in the country where the crimes were allegedly committed.
“A diffusion is similar, but it isn’t vetted by Interpol before it’s issued,” Bantle said. “You’re guilty until proven innocent, and you’ll never be innocent if you’re sent back to Russia.”
Jenkins gave that some thought. “It would be a risky move by the Russians to make a public claim, not one I’m sure they’d take, but also not a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Nor am I. An arrest could put this entire crew, and this ship, at risk of seizure. The Russians would love to tell the world that a United States–flagged ship was helping a Russian and American to escape punishment for crimes committed,” Bantle said. “And our government wouldn’t be happy about it either.”
“So Paulina and I need to get off the ship before we reach Norway,” Jenkins said.
Bantle shook his head. “Easier said than done. No good options in port, and we can’t stop the ship once we’re underway.”
“Is there any other way you get people off? What do you do if someone is seriously injured or becomes ill?”
“We can airlift them, but if we do that you might as well just send up fireworks to draw attention to yourself. Russian fighter jets would escort the helicopter right back to Saint Petersburg—or the military base at Kaliningrad.” Bantle sighed. He looked at Jenkins but not with confidence. “There might be another way. It’s been used once or twice to get a pilot on board when ships have needed help navigating dangerous waters, like the ice in the Baltic. But I don’t know that it has ever been tried to get someone off the ship the same way.”
The Last Agent Page 33