From Russia Without Love

by Stephen Templin

  Not knowing where else to go, Chris continued forward until he reached Park Bulvar. The mall was six stories tall and its architecture was Eastern, but when Chris stepped inside, its interior design was Western. He quickly surveyed a map of the mall’s layout. There were movie theaters, a supermarket, and restaurants that served Turkish, Russian, and Azeri food, among fast-food places Chris recognized—McDonalds, KFC, and Sbarro. He recognized a Nike shop, too, but didn’t know the other retailers.

  He ventured deeper into the building. While the shopping mall was dying out in the US, it seemed to be alive and well in Azerbaijan. He continued through the mall, trying to spot Xander or pick up his tracks again, but he’d lost him.

  Chris stepped out of the mall and scanned the area closest to him—nothing. As he searched farther out, he spotted Xander seventy-five meters away, walking through a park. Chris hurried into the park, but Xander didn’t stay put, strolling off the grass and along a pier that jutted out into the Caspian Sea. Tied to the pier was the cruise ship Chris had seen when using Marine Finder to scope out the bay: the M/S Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

  How did he plan to get aboard? Chris had personally searched Xander, and Xander hadn’t had a boarding ticket. Chris neared the pier, where he could see through the windows of a security booth. Inside, passengers showed their passports and tickets to a security officer, who seemed to be checking them against a passenger manifest on a laptop. A line of passengers proceeded through an x-ray machine before continuing to the gangway where a crew member greeted them for boarding. No Xander.

  Chris looked aft to see if he might have boarded posing as a dockworker or ship’s crew member. Contrasting the orderliness of the passengers, a gaggle of dockworkers loaded the Tchaikovsky with luggage and palates of boxed food and beverages. A chef inspected a container of vegetables. Still, there was no Xander in sight. He must have boarded already.

  Chris continued forward without a plan to get aboard himself, searching for a weakness to exploit. With each step, his gut twisted. The Azeri Coast Guard had confiscated his ID, so he’d need a passport from someone who looked like him, but most of the passengers were older. Even if Chris’s doppelganger was present, Chris wasn’t as skilled at pickpocketing as Hannah, and lifting both a passport and a ticket from the same person seemed impractical. He could try to gain access as a visitor, but he’d still need his passport.

  The controlled access for the dockworkers and ship’s crew was guarded by a darkly tanned security officer who was paying more attention to what was going on inside his area of responsibility than outside. Chris’s best shot at boarding the ship still seemed to be to pose as one of the dockworkers or ship’s crew, so he headed in their direction, ignoring his first obstacle, the tanned security officer. Without slowing his stride, Chris ducked under the yellow security tape meant to restrict access. He needed a cover—fast. His mind spun feverishly: supervisor, galley hand, forklift operator, dockworker… Posing as a supervisor might be a problem if he ran into the actual supervisor he was impersonating. If he attempted to act as a galley hand, the chef would probably recognize him as an imposter. As for the forklift, there was only one, and the operator was running it. A common dockworker seemed the ticket, but the guys loading the luggage wore matching blue overalls, and Chris had none. His gut continued to wind around itself, but he didn’t let it show on his face. Confidence was key.

  Without moving his head around like a lost passenger, he covertly searched the area for something he could use as part of his dockworker guise—uniform, hard hat, soft hat—anything. He thought posing as an electrician might be a good cover, but there was no utility belt around, either. Damn!

  After he reached a stack of boxes of vegetables, he picked one up, carried it over to the chef, and placed it on top of the other boxes in front of him. The chef looked like he was about to ask a question, but Chris passed him, maintaining a busy pace. He worried the chef saw through him, but he didn’t dwell on it. He just kept going.

  He passed an abandoned suitcase with a clipboard balanced on it. Chris snatched up the clipboard and took it with him. Maintaining his forward momentum, he stepped into the ship’s cargo hold, careful not to get run over by the forklift as it transferred a load of boxed provisions to the ship. His guts unwound a bit now that he was onboard, and he wanted to give a victory shout, but, again, he couldn’t show his emotions.

  A wiry worker gazed at Chris’s clipboard, then him.

  I hope this isn’t your clipboard.

  Wiry said something in Azeri, but Chris didn’t understand. He could continue walking deeper into the ship and risk raising suspicion or stay and try to engage in a conversation that might raise suspicion. He paused and stared at the man.

  “Your paper empty,” Wiry said in broken English.

  Chris looked down at his clipboard. Wiry was right; the page was blank. Chris answered in Russian with a smile, but Wiry didn’t understand, so Chris said in English, “You’re right, the paper is blank. And that’s the least of my problems.” Confidence. Breathe. He took a shot of oxygen straight to his lungs and walked past Wiry.

  Now he had to switch identities from worker to passenger, and he needed to ditch the clipboard. He climbed one of the ship’s ladders to the main deck and found himself in the reception area. A crowd was lined up at the counter to show their passports and tickets to the ship’s purser, who checked each passenger’s data on his computer before he handed out cabin keys.

  “I don’t know who he is,” a large woman said loudly in Russian.

  Surprise was etched on the purser’s face.

  “He’s not with me,” the large woman said.

  “Sir, where is your passport and ticket?” the purser asked.

  The woman chuckled. “I’m kidding.” She nodded at the skinny man beside her. “This is my husband.” Then she handed his passport and ticket to the purser.

  The purser smiled uneasily. “I almost thought you were giving me more work to do. Part of my job is to catch stowaways.”

  The passengers laughed, but Chris showed no expression as he passed the mob of people, avoiding the purser. Traversing the central passageway, he found sick bay and noticed the numbers on the doors of guest cabins that lined the port and starboard sides. Sitting in the passageway was a maid’s cart, and there was a clipboard on top. The maid was inside a cabin with her back to him, making a bed, so Chris slipped his clipboard underneath the maid’s as he walked past. When he reached the end of the passageway, a couple descended the stairs, appearing lost.

  The woman spoke in Azeri, gesturing erratically as she glanced between him and her companion.

  Chris thought he’d been discovered, and his stomach jumped.

  Then she turned to her left and pointed at the sauna, directing her companion’s attention to it.

  Chris was relieved not to have been busted, but a voice came over the PA system, causing his gut to tighten up again. Maybe they were announcing that a stowaway was onboard and that passengers should report him.

  I’ve got to find where the restrooms are, so I can hide out.

  The announcement was repeated in Russian and then English. “All visitors must depart the ship now.”

  This was the critical moment when he still had a chance to abort the mission, but he’d come too far to give up now, and he was taking Xander down, dead or alive.

  He ascended the stairs to the middle deck, which was similar to the deck below, with numbered guest cabins port and starboard, with one exception at the stern of the ship, where the Tatiana Restaurant was. But it was closed.

  The PA system came on again. “All visitors must depart the ship now.”

  He spotted a restroom and made a mental note of its location so he could hide out there later. Other passengers milled about, and Chris blended in with them, climbing the stairs to the next deck.

  Seeing the pool up there put a smile on his face, and he imagined going for a swim. He took a relaxed breath. Near the pool was a bar and another res
troom—hideout number two. The cabins on the deck were junior suites, double the size of the other rooms, and toward the bow was a lounge.

  Although Chris was getting thicker and thicker into this situation, he had no visual confirmation that Xander was actually aboard the ship. He’d seen Xander go in the ship’s direction, but he didn’t actually see him board, and he still hadn’t spotted him on the ship, either. But Chris’s instincts told him Xander was here. He heard Hannah’s voice in his head, pushing him on: You’ve got better instincts than any shooter I know.

  He climbed the steps to the sun deck, the top deck of the ship. It was deserted. It would be ideal to catch Xander here at night. Because Xander was so slippery, and the situation so dangerous, this kill-or-capture mission had become a kill-or-be-killed mission. Eliminating him here and tossing him overboard seemed the best option. But Chris had to find him first.

  The Tchaikovsky’s horn sounded, signaling that the ship was getting underway. It pulled farther and farther away from the Azeri pier. Chris looked around, realizing how conspicuous he must’ve appeared standing alone on the sun deck, and he headed below to mingle with other passengers, but most of them were gone. The ship’s library, TV room, and souvenir shop were all vacant. Even the mob of passengers at the reception area had cleared out.

  They must all be checking in to their cabins.

  As Sonny would say, Chris stood out like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah. His stomach twisted at the thought of Sonny, and with him, Hannah. When Chris escaped the Azeri Coast Guard and went after Xander, he hadn’t noticed whether or not they had escaped, too. Whatever happened to them, he hoped they were okay. But he had to keep his eye on the prize.

  With the majority of passengers off in their rooms, it was time to hide out. He descended the steps to the deck below and pulled on the restroom door handle, but the door was locked. When he checked the other restrooms, they were locked, too. Apparently, he wasn’t the first stowaway with the bright idea to hide out in the restroom. His plan on the fly had crashed and burned. He could try to duck out in some inconspicuous place, like somewhere in the engine room, but if he was spotted, he’d suddenly become suspicious. The best place to hide was probably in plain sight.

  He made his way to the lounge, where the Azeri couple he’d seen earlier was now seated at the bar. He took one of the low-backed stools next to them, and they seemed to be in their own little world, oblivious to him, and he was fine with that. Chris was a teetotaler, and he thought about ordering vodka for appearance’s sake but figured it would be odd to order a drink and not drink it, so he’d just get a water.

  Now, if Chris was going to successfully hide out in plain sight, he was going to have to engage in conversation, but he needed to figure out his cover story before he did anything. As a frogman, he was used to planning on the fly—literally while riding in a plane or helicopter to the target area—and he was used to the fluidity of changing situations, but this stowaway fluidity was worse than diarrhea.

  “What would you like to drink?” a bartender in a black-and-white crew uniform said in Russian with a smile. He had a laid-back way about him that helped Chris unclench.

  Without thinking, Chris answered in Russian, “I’ll just have a water, please.”

  “Drinks are free,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Chris said.

  As the bartender turned to get his drink, Chris scoped out the area. The bar was unremarkable with shelves of bottles of various shapes and sizes filled with liquor, standing against a mirrored wall. A Coca-Cola refrigerator unit sat off to the side—a sign that capitalism hadn’t totally died in Russia—and the stainless steel counter was clean and shiny. He swiveled in his seat to scope out the rest of the lounge. Quartets of plush burgundy chairs surrounded small drink tables scattered throughout. Except for the bartender and the couple at the bar, there were no customers in the lounge, making it appear large and open. The air smelled clean, and one side of the space was mostly windows. Sunlight provided most of the light in the lounge, and outside the Caspian Sea sparkled.

  An unpardonably pretty young lady appeared in the doorway to the lounge. Her hair was carnelian in color, red as she passed through the sunlight and brown when she walked away from the sunlight and sat down on the shady seat next to Chris.

  The bartender placed Chris’s water on the counter, and Chris thanked him. When the bartender asked the woman what she wanted to drink, she looked at Chris’s water and said in Russian, “I’ll have a vodka, too. No, make that a Bubble Gum Vodka.”

  “Certainly,” the bartender said.

  The woman looked at Chris and said, “I love this river cruise.”

  “This is my first time,” Chris said.

  The bartender brought the lady her vodka, and she took a sip. “Oh, you’ll love it, too, especially Saint Petersburg. It’s lovely this time of year.”

  “Looking forward to it.” Actually, Chris didn’t look forward to it, and he hoped he finished his mission before the ship got that far. The deeper he traveled into Russia, the more difficult it would be to escape.

  “I work at a bank here in Baku,” she said.

  Chris smiled. “That sounds like a good job.”

  “Do you live in Baku?” she asked.

  Damn. He hadn’t thought of a place of residence yet. “Canada.” He’d used the cover before, and there was no time like the present to resurrect it.

  “Your Russian is good for a Canadian,” she said.

  He’d hardly spoken enough for her to know whether his Russian was good or bad—she was just being friendly. “My parents were diplomats, and we lived in Moscow for a while,” he said. It was true, but his parents worked for the US State Department, not Canada’s.

  “My name is Kisa.” In Russian, her name translated to pussycat, and he had to force himself not to react.

  He smiled politely. “Chris.”

  “I like that name,” she said.

  Chris’s throat became warm and dry, and he took a drink. “Kisa is a pretty name.”

  The ship’s purser entered the lounge then, and Chris’s stomach sank. But despite feeling he was about to be busted, he acted as if everything was normal.

  The purser came to the bar and spoke in Azeri. Not understanding what he said made Chris more nervous. Whatever the words were, it caused the Azeri couple to look surprised. The purser eyed Chris.

  “I’m sorry?” Chris said in Russian.

  The purser spoke Russian back to him. “One of the passengers reported seeing someone sneak onboard.”

  “How?” Chris asked.

  The purser’s face was serious. “The passenger said the stowaway came in where the dockworkers were loading supplies on the ship.”

  Me. Now I can make a run for it and dive off the ship, but will I be able to swim to shore before the Azeri Coast Guard picks me up again? Boy, will they be pissed.

  “What does this stowaway look like?” Chris asked.

  “Tall and fit,” the purser said.

  Chris forced a grin. “Sounds like me.”

  The purser stared at Chris for a moment. “No, this man was older and had a gray beard.”

  Xander. He is here.

  The purser leaned forward. “He should hope he gets caught before we reach Russian waters. Russia doesn’t tolerate stowaways.”

  “How soon before we reach Russia?” Chris inquired.

  “Tonight we’ll sail off the coast of Russia, and tomorrow evening we’ll pull into our first Russian port. At Olya on the Volga River,” the purser said. “One of the oldest fishing villages in that region.”

  The deeper they penetrated Russia, the bigger the chance Chris would be busted, and he wondered what life in a gulag would be like, if he survived to that point. “We’ll let you know if we see him,” Chris said.

  “Bet you didn’t know this cruise would be such an adventure,” the purser said.

  Chris gave the man a wink. “Not a dull moment yet.”

  �
�Sorry to have bothered you. Enjoy your cruise,” the purser said before departing the lounge.

  So Xander is here, but where? He obviously wasn’t using the hiding-in-plain-sight tactic.

  “So what kind of work do you do?” Kisa asked, interrupting his train of thought.

  Chris couldn’t think of a suitable answer other than the cover story his team had come up with when renting the office in London. “I work for Outdoor Mountain Clothing. We’re looking at expanding operations into Eastern Europe.”

  She took another sip of her drink. “So you’re here on business.”

  Chris nodded. He chatted with her for a little while longer before excusing himself to take a look around the ship.

  While he searched the ship bow to stern for Xander, he kept an eye out for a place to spend the night. As he passed through the ship, he stopped by the reception desk and picked up a copy of the cruise itinerary and map. He figured either Xander was hiding in one of the restricted crew areas or he’d somehow acquired a room. As for a place for Chris to stay the night, the TV room seemed like a good option. Falling asleep watching the tube might appear natural, but if Xander found him before he found Xander, he wouldn’t have much space to maneuver and defend himself in the small TV room. Xander could effectively trap him inside.

  Another option for Chris would be to fake like he was drunk and pass out in the lounge, which seemed like his best option, but as a teetotaler, he wasn’t confident he could pull off the drunk act.

  At dinnertime, Chris journeyed to the dining room to search for Xander and get some food, but the seats were assigned to passengers by cabin, and Chris’s belly was shit out of luck. He read the names on the cards at the tables with no-shows, particularly the men. Maybe Xander whacked some poor dude and took his cabin. Chris wished he had a golf pencil and some paper in his pocket, so he could covertly write the names down.