Red Heat

by Nina Bruhns

  She climbed.

  “What do I do when I get to the top?” Julie asked, her limbs actually starting to shake. From the torment up ahead, she told herself. Not because of the man climbing after her.

  “I sent Starpom Varnas ahead to clear the cockpit for us,” he said. “He’ll clip you to the rail and help you up.”

  She searched her memory and recalled the young executive officer from when she’d first come on board Ostrov. He’d been the one with the disapproving glare when Nikolai had ordered Misha to put her in the captain’s quarters. Great.

  Her life would be in the hands of one man bound and determined to expose her as a foreign intelligence officer, and another who thought she was the captain’s bed warmer.

  Or, God help her, maybe Nikolai had already told the XO of his suspicions about her being a spy. Wow. Even better.

  She reached the top of the ladder and found an outstretched hand waiting for her. Behind it was a ruddy, smiling face. “Welcome to top of world, Miss Severin.”

  “Thanks. I think.” Had he changed his mind about her? Or was that a spider-to-the-fly kind of smile . . . ?

  She took his hand and her pulse pounded madly. She barely resisted squeezing her eyes shut as he helped her up into a postage stamp–sized observation well sunk into the forward sail. Right behind her, Nikolai passed him the end of her harness and he clipped it to a toe-rail. A breath of relief whooshed out of her lungs.

  Even in socks she had to fight to keep her balance at the more pronounced pitch and roll of the vessel at this higher point of gravity. She kept her gaze firmly on the ribbed metal floor that was digging into her feet through the socks. The cockpit floor was awash, and she felt the cold, wet bite of seawater soaking into the soft wool.

  She sucked down several deep, calming breaths. The briny scent of the wide open sea filled her lungs and slapped her senses awake after the dull, cloying diesel smell inside the confines of the submarine. In that sense, it was refreshing to be up here.

  Nikolai climbed up, and his arm banded around her middle. “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, still not daring to peel her gaze from the deck below her feet. Not daring to be reassured by his protective gesture. “Yeah.”

  The wind clawed viciously through her coat, cold as stinging icicles, and the waves kept her off balance, although she’d thought she’d grown used to the boat’s rocking motion by now. Sea legs, the submariners called it. Apparently she didn’t have them.

  The prow hit a big wave, and she reeled as the cigar-shaped submarine heaved up over it, then down again like a child’s seesaw. Thankfully, the solid steel walls of the cockpit came up to her waist, and she reached out to grab on to the edge with desperate fingers. She noticed that neither of the men were clipped onto safety harnesses. Did they feel that secure, or were they just being macho?

  Nikolai tightened his hold on her, impervious to the motion. “Easy,” he said in her ear. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just a little swell.”

  She nodded again, steadied her stance, and blew out the breath she was holding. In front of her, the starpom’s boots adjusted position, reminding her of his presence. She forced her gaze up the XO’s legs to his chest, then made the leap to his eyes.

  He was still smiling, his dark brown hair whipping in the wind beneath a black Persian lamb ushanka. She managed to smile back. Sort of.

  “Nice day for phone call,” he said in a cheerful, unspiderlike voice.

  “If you say so.” She cleared her throat. Some freaking spy she was. Being so wimpy was downright embarrassing. But not enough to tell Nikolai to let go of her.

  None of this had been her idea, she reminded herself in her own defense. She was good at her job. Very good. But field ops wasn’t her job. She was an analyst. Not a case officer.

  She scrabbled in the deep pocket of the long coat to get her satellite phone. She wanted to make this quick.

  “Nyet.” Once again, Nikolai’s hand stopped her. “Not yet,” he told her. “You must look first. Really look, down into the depths of the sea, and show her you are not afraid.”

  Julie made a desperate noise of protest. “But I am afraid” slipped out before she could stop it.

  Nikolai’s voice in her ear was deep and low. “The sea is our mother, dorogaya. She is our father. The place where all life was born.” He put his cheek against the soft fur of the hat his own mother had made for him. The one he’d placed on Julie’s head like a halo of protection. “How can you fear your mother, milaya moya?” he murmured. “Come. Be brave and she will reward you. I promise.”

  Julie thought about her own mother, how brave she’d been when Dad hadn’t come back from his last Company “business trip.” How she’d found a shit job so they wouldn’t lose the house and had silently, heroically, kept a heartbroken little girl’s world from falling apart when her own had been shattered in a million pieces. That was brave. Opening one’s eyes and facing a bunch of stupid water, that was child’s play.

  She groped for Nikolai’s hand. It found hers and squeezed. Swallowing, she nodded at Starpom Varnas. He stepped aside so his body no longer blocked her view.

  The vast ocean spread out before her in an endless, undulating expanse of frigid, ugly gray. There wasn’t a sliver of land in sight.

  The old panic instantly hit, sucking the breath from her lungs. The choking, the nausea, the helplessness of nearly drowning flooded back over her as vividly as when she was a child going under the water certain she was about to die. Her fingernails dug into Nikolai’s palm.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “Say it,” he said. “Aloud.”

  “What?” she croaked.

  “Tell her you are not afraid.”

  She shook her head. It would be a lie.

  “Tell her,” he ordered firmly.

  She hesitated. “I’m not afraid,” she mumbled. It sounded pathetic even to her own ears. She let out a laugh of embarrassment. But . . . amazingly, the nausea was ebbing.

  “Again,” he said.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. And saw nothing but deadly water all around. Oh, God.

  “I’m not afraid!” she said, louder this time, and clearer, though still not convincing.

  “Better. Again,” he ordered.

  The water isn’t deadly, she told herself. She’d survived that childhood trauma. It hadn’t gotten her then, and it wouldn’t get her now, either.

  “I am not afraid. I am not afraid,” she shouted, each syllable more forceful than the last. Finally, the words sounded like she meant them. And felt like it, too.

  She felt Nikolai smile as he hugged her, his broad chest pressed securely against her back. “Good,” he praised. “Good!”

  Miraculously, the feeling of helplessness dissolved. She couldn’t believe it. She’d done it!

  But it would never have happened without Nikolai’s help.

  She turned in his embrace, and before she knew what she was doing, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

  After a second of surprise, his throat rumbled, and then he was kissing her back. His breath was warm and his lips were hot. One big hand slid behind her nape and held her with powerful fingers as his mouth covered hers and demanded she open to him. How could she refuse? She felt the deep stroke of his tongue down to her freezing toes . . . and all the places in between. Especially the places in between.

  He kissed her and kissed her, until she was a mindless pool of need, swimming in the taste of him, caught in a whirlpool of desire. She was drowning in passion for a man she should never, ever want like this. But, oh, she couldn’t stop if she tried.

  He lifted his lips at last and murmured, “Still afraid of the ocean, dorogaya?”

  “What ocean?” she asked on a shuddered sigh.

  And from behind her, the starpom observed dryly, “Kapitan, I think you have surely cured her.”

  9

  Kissing Julie in front of Stefan Mikhailovich and the lookout posted at the rear o
f the sail was perhaps not the wisest of moves. Okay, it definitely was not. But Nikolai didn’t regret it. Not for a single second. Not even as he saw the look of intense concern flash across his starpom’s face when the man thought he wasn’t looking.

  “Don’t worry,” Nikolai told him in Russian when he had released Julie to make her call, “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you?” Stefan Mikhailovich asked, skepticism ringing in his voice. “Perhaps when it comes to curing phobias. But you should not get personally involved with this woman, Kapitan.”

  “Believe me,” he said. “It’s not what you think.”

  “She’s an American!” Stephan warned, as though Nikolai hadn’t spoken. “Probably an intelligence officer sent to spy on us!”

  Nikolai stifled a wince.

  Julie glanced up at them as she waited for the satellite phone to connect, perhaps recognizing the word “American.” Nikolai gave her a wink.

  “All the more reason to keep her close,” he returned, keeping his face pleasant so she wouldn’t suspect they were talking about her. “Besides, why would CIA send an agent onto this outdated diesel boat to spy on a scientific expedition where half the members are already North American? Or maybe you think she’s here to contact someone on our crew, a traitor?”

  They were questions Nikolai had asked himself more than once since his meeting with Comrade Cherenkov back at the Kursk Hotel. But he didn’t think that was why she was here. He had little doubt she was searching for something. Why would a traitor hide something on board for her to find if he could just hand it to her in person? Which meant the traitor was no longer on board. Her search and the photographs would make no sense if he were. But Nikolai wasn’t about to share any of those insights. He needed to solve this himself.

  Stefan Mikhailovich looked uncomfortable, but he did not have any answers. “The men will be resentful,” he said forcefully, “that you so blatantly have a woman in your bed.”

  “Captain’s privilege,” Nikolai said with a smile and a shrug. In a way it was flattering that everyone believed he was flouting every navy regulation in existence and was actually sleeping with her.

  “You are a Russian naval officer!” the starpom exclaimed reprovingly. “Not some high seas pirate!”

  Nikolai barked out a laugh. “Funny, that’s exactly what she said. And yet, if you will recall, it was she who kissed me just now, not the other way around.” Stefan Mikhailovich looked so horrified that he felt sorry for his starpom and said, “You needn’t worry. She hasn’t seduced me and she won’t get the chance. I don’t plan to sleep in my quarters.”

  Julie looked from Stefan to him, clearly unsure about the intensifying exchange.

  Stefan Mikhailovich looked downright skeptical.

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Starpom Varnas grumbled, “I see that my watch is over. If you no longer need me, Kapitan, permission to quit the bridge?”

  “Granted,” Nikolai said. “Tell your relief to stand his watch from the flying bridge.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Stefan, thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime, sir. Miss Severin.” He gave a stiff little bow and disappeared down the ladder.

  Nikolai was now alone in the cockpit with Julie.

  “What was that all about?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. He reached out and smoothed the unease from her brow with his thumb. “Are you getting a signal on the phone?” he asked.

  “Mm-hm, finally,” she said and started to press buttons. She made no attempt to hide the number. “Hello?” she said a few moments later. And she proceeded to hold a completely normal, noncryptic conversation with the person on the other end regarding the article she was uploading. The only possibly suspicious thing about the entire conversation was that she never used the other person’s name.

  This would not do at all.

  Just as she was about to hang up, Nikolai whisked the phone from her hand.

  “Hey!” Julie exclaimed and tried to grab it back.

  Nikolai easily blocked her. “Hello?” he said into the unit.

  Julie looked like she wanted to strangle him. “What are you doing?” she demanded furiously.

  On the phone there was a pause, then, “Julie? Are you all right?” It was a man’s voice. He sounded concerned.

  Nikolai stifled a completely irrational spurt of something that felt dangerously close to jealousy. Which under the circumstances was patently absurd. The man was eight thousand kilometers away. “This is Captain Nikolai Kirillovich Romanov,” he said in his most commanding voice. “With whom am I speaking?”

  “James Thurman,” the man said and indignantly rattled off a high-level position and the name of a well-known Washington, D.C., newspaper. “What’s going on, Captain Romanov? What are you doing with—”

  “Miss Severin is fine,” he interrupted, holding up a warning finger at Julie, who was still trying to grab the phone. “I just wanted to express my appreciation for your newspaper’s interest in this important scientific expedition. Having a reporter along to write about it will do much to raise public awareness of critical environmental issues in the Arctic.”

  Julie’s expression relaxed somewhat.

  “Ah. Well. You’re very welcome,” said James Thurman—if that was really his name. “Miss Severin is an excellent journalist. I’m sure she’ll do a great job with the articles.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Nikolai agreed amicably. “But my question is, what is she really doing on Ostrov for you? I mean, of course, for CIA.”

  Julie gasped. There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the phone. “I don’t know what you mean, Captain. Miss Severin is a legitimate journalist working for—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure her cover is impeccable. But you and I both know that’s not why she’s here. I’m giving you fair warning, she will not complete her mission. And if she does, she will be arrested.”

  “You speak English very well, Captain Romanov,” Thurman said. A clear attempt at dissemblance. “Did you learn it as a spook with the FSB? Perhaps you’re still on their payroll?”

  “I spent my senior year at an American high school as an exchange student,” Nikolai said smoothly. Which was the truth. Right after graduation and before being admitted into the navy as a candidate to the elite submarine service. His first assignment for the FSB had been to get to know the teenaged children of influential Washington movers and shakers. It had paid off with several useful contacts, though his own ties with the kids involved had been severed long ago. Those were the days before social media and limitless e-mail. “As I’m sure you’re already aware,” he added. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to interrogating your operative.” He pushed the “off” button and handed the phone back to Julie.

  She stuffed it in her pocket. “You are completely insane, you know that?” she ground out.

  “I’ve been called worse,” he said, slipping the micro storage card, which he’d surreptitiously ejected from its slot in the phone, into his own pocket.

  “I can’t believe you said those things to my boss!”

  “Look on the bright side,” Nikolai said with a crooked smile, as he tapped the end of her nose with a finger. “Even if this mission of yours is doomed to failure—and trust me, it is—at least you aren’t afraid of the ocean anymore.”

  She snorted. “Says you,” she muttered.

  And from the look on her face, he knew she hadn’t been referring to her fear of the sea.

  Julie flushed at her own inane comeback. Wow. What was she, like, twelve?

  Cripes. More like sixteen. Because that was exactly how old she felt whenever she was around the astonishingly insightful Captain Romanov.

  “We’ll see,” he murmured with a knowing curve to his lips.

  The way he was regarding her now made her heartbeat kick up. It was a very male look. Assessing. Hungry. He was remembering their kiss, she could tell. His lids had gone to a sex
y half-mast and he was scorching her lips with his stormy gaze.

  She couldn’t believe she’d kissed him earlier. What had she been thinking? Unfortunately, she knew just what she’d been thinking.

  It was like some obsessed hormonal teenager had taken over her body, making her think and do things that were totally crazy and out of character. She was so not this person she’d become after stepping onto this damned submarine! She didn’t go around wanting to kill a man one minute, then wanting to rip off her clothes and drag him to bed the next. And then turn around and want to kill him all over again.

  Oh. My. God.

  She had to get hold of herself!

  Though admittedly—and she really did hate to admit it—he was right about the ocean thing. She wasn’t afraid anymore. Well. Not terrified, at any rate. She still didn’t like it, but the sight of all that deep, lurking water no longer made her dissolve into a trembling puddle of abject panic. She could stand here and gaze out over the sea without being convinced she would die any second. Yes, she still felt an edge of unease that was too imbedded in her bones to exorcise quite so easily, but looking out over the undulating blue-gray expanse, she also had to admit that it possessed a beauty unlike anything else she’d ever seen. Powerful, savage, and unforgiving, but beautiful nonetheless.

  That truly was progress.

  She met Nikolai’s gaze and couldn’t decide which part of their increasingly complicated relationship to address first.

  “What?” he asked, his voice dipping an octave, when she just stared at him for a long time.

  His conversation with her boss had been even more upsetting than the kiss. Nikolai’s parting threat had been like a dash of cold water, reminding her of their true relationship.

  “Would you really arrest me?” she asked him.

  “If you are a spy? Of course I would,” he said; then, after a nanosecond’s hesitation, he added, “I’d have no choice.”

  “So all these kisses, they really mean nothing? They’re just part of your personal counterintelligence kit?”

  His eyes narrowed. “There have been no kisses since the hotel, dorogaya. Not until you kissed me just now. So perhaps it is I who should be asking that question.”