From Russia Without Love (18 page)

“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.

Kisa arrived and spotted him before he could slip out of the dining room. She waved him down.

“Where are you sitting?” she asked excitedly.

“I’m not really hungry,” he said. “I’m going back to the lounge to have a drink.”

She smiled. “Drinking without eating, you must be part Russian. But you should really eat.”

“I’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll grab a snack later.” He talked to her for a little bit more before excusing himself.

He returned to the lounge, and he was happily surprised to find others there, too. If he was going to do his passed-out-drunk act, he better get started, so he ordered a vodka and chose an area to sit with a view of the lounge and easy access to the exit. He sat down on a chair next to a table partly covered with empty glasses, hoping passengers would think the glasses were his. On the other side of the table was a tipsy man who spoke to Chris, and during the course of their conversation, Chris gave the man his vodka. The man asked where Chris’s cabin was and he tried to avoid answering, but the man insisted, so he gave a random number and told him dinner was being served in the dining area. The man thanked him before standing and making a slightly unsteady walk through the exit, leaving Chris with all the empty drinking glasses next to him.

“Thank you,” Chris said, but the man was already gone.

He’d been hanging out in the lounge for about an hour when Kisa arrived and sat down next to him. She had a new glow about her as if she’d freshened up. She was attractive, enjoyable to be with, and her companionship helped him blend in with the other passengers, but she might figure out he was a stowaway. It also occurred to Chris that she might work for Russia’s FSB, hunting for a prospective spouse, so she could obtain citizenship in a country like Great Britain or the USA—or Canada.

She seemed to notice the mass of drinking glasses beside him, and her eyes grew wide.

Chris shrugged.

She glanced at the ship’s itinerary in his hands. “Anything interesting?”

He needed to check the restricted areas for where Xander might be hiding. “I was just looking at the schedule and thinking that after dinner I’d like to go on the ship’s tour.”

“I was thinking about doing that, too,” she said.

“Great.”

“After that there’s a movie playing later tonight in the conference room up on the sun deck,” she said.
“Brat.”

Chris knew
Brat
was Russian for
brother
, but he hadn’t seen the movie. “What’s it about?”

“It takes place right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a young soldier loses his job in the Army so he travels to Saint Petersburg and joins the mafia. The movie received an award nomination at the Cannes Film Festival.”

Chris smiled. “I’d like to see that.” He really did want to see it.

“Would you like to go to my room for a drink?” she asked.

Maybe she was just inviting him to her room for a drink, or maybe this was a booty call, but Chris was a pastor and single pastors didn’t do booty calls. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Maybe later,” she said.

Chris smiled kindly without committing, but he still didn’t really have a place to sleep without sticking out as a stowaway.
Maybe I can sleep on the deck in Kisa’s cabin.

They hung out in the lounge some more before going for a walk around the ship. Still no Xander, but they came upon a small buffet with leftovers from dinner. Chris filled a plate with beef stroganoff and a
bublik
, a Russian bagel with a large hole in it. “Are you hungry?” he asked Kisa.

“I had enough at dinner, thanks.” Instead, she took one of the teacups sitting next to an ornate silver-and-enamel Russian samovar shaped like an urn. From the top of the samovar, she lifted a teapot and poured a small amount of concentrated tea—
zavarka
being the most common—heated from the steaming water at the bottom of the samovar, into her cup. Then she used the spigot at the bottom of the samovar to pour in hot water, diluting the tea to her taste. She sat down with Chris at a small table.

Sautéed beef in a sauce of Smetana, a heavy sour cream, assaulted Chris’s taste buds. He tried not to make a pig of himself as he filled his empty stomach, but afterward, his body felt tired and his mind slow. He needed to rest, if only for a moment. He wished Xander was already captured and he was on a cruise with Hannah, but wishing didn’t make it so.

In spite of Chris’s fatigue, he and Kisa met with the other passengers in the reception area and the tour began. Their guide showed them the bridge, engine room, and other parts of the ship, and Chris closely inspected each area for Xander, but there was no sign of him.

As the tour ended, Chris spotted him. He was walking out of the cabin nearest the sauna and going up the stairs. It jolted Chris to such an extent it felt like his heart had stopped.

The bright sunshine had retreated, and dark clouds rolled in, rumbling with thunder. “Looks like a storm is coming,” Kisa said.

“Could I meet up with you later at the movie?” Chris asked.

“Huh?” she said.

Xander was getting away, and Chris tried to appear nonplussed as he walked in the direction of Xander’s cabin. “Could I meet you later?”

“Is something wrong?”

Everything was wrong, and it was about to get worse. “Everything is fine.” He tried to smile but couldn’t.

“Your eyes, they look different, like something is wrong.”

He wanted to break into a sprint, but there were others in the passageway and he didn’t want to draw their attention.

Kisa looked at the deck as they walked. “Mama says I try too hard sometimes.”

Oh hell.
He felt sorry for her, but he didn’t have time for confessionals, and if that’s what Kisa was doing, he wished she’d hurry up.

She said, “If you don’t want me around, I understand.”

He stopped in front of Xander’s cabin. If he could get inside, he could wait there to ambush him. “I’ll catch up to you in a little bit.”

She smiled awkwardly, as if she wanted to believe him but couldn’t. “Okay. I’ll see you at the movie.”

Chris attempted to smile again, but he didn’t believe in it, and he knew she could see through him. Even so, he said, “See you there.”

There was less bounce in her gait as she left him, disappearing up the stairs.

He frowned, guilt creeping in at hurting her, but Xander could return at any moment. He glanced down the hall. No one was looking in his direction, so he tried the doorknob but it was locked. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the clip he’d broken off the pen he took in Azerbaijan. He inserted the shim into the lock and attempted to pick it, but his tool was too simple and the lock too complex. He cursed himself for wasting time on what he should’ve known was futile.

He checked the hall again. There was a group of people there, but they were focused on talking to one another. Chris kicked the door, hard, near the doorknob, popping the door wide open. The group in the hall turned to see what the noise was as Chris slipped inside, closed the door, and locked it. He gave a tug to make sure the door would stay locked, but it opened freely. Upon examining it, the lock strike in the frame was knocked crooked, as was the lock set in the door. He straightened them before closing the door and trying to lock it again. This time, the lock held.