During their flight from Paris to Istanbul, they decided they would be widow and widower who had met and married while working in Paris. This Black Sea voyage was their honeymoon. Other than that, their ostensible backgrounds would be the same as their actual ones. To get ready for their shipboard experience, they decided to converse in English rather than French, since English was the working language used on the ship. From the Istanbul airport they went directly to the ship’s embarkation port where, after running the usual gauntlet of officials and officious civilians, they were allowed to board the ship.
The Athenia was two thousand nine hundred tons of well-used steel built as a combination bulk cargo and passenger ship in 1955. Although it was freshly painted, its age clearly showed. Maxim and Lila were escorted to their cabin by a young man in a rumpled white uniform who introduced himself in Liverpool-accented English as Nigel Turner, their purser. Their two pieces of heavy luggage were carried for them by an unusually large Chinese lad who handled them like two small briefcases. It appeared that most of the officers were English, but the crew was a worldwide collection of colors, sizes, and languages.
Since Maxim and Lila had boarded early, they could lean against the railing on the main deck and watch the loading operation taking place on the dock. A thin, redheaded young man introduced himself as Mark Greeley, the ship’s radioman, and offered to explain the activity going on on the pier below.
“All cargo is secured to pallets — those flat wooden platforms — so the forklifts can get under them to carry them to the side of the ship. It’s not a job for raw muscle. Those pallet loads can weigh over a ton. The dock workers secure the bridles from our cranes to a pallet, lift them over the side of the ship, and lower them into the hold.”
“How do you know where all this material is supposed to go?” inquired Lila.
“All the pallet loads are coded,” Mark told her. “Do you see that pallet being swung over the hatchway now? That bundle is going to a certain factory in Odessa. I can tell by the red squares painted on the tarp covering the cargo. The next pallet is going to a warehouse in Constanza. That pallet has a blue-square label. The load with a red triangle is also going to Constanza, but to a different consignee. Each consignee has his own code design.”
“How clever,” Lila said.
“It’s simple, but it works.”
Maxim was watching the red-square coded pallet being slowly lowered into the forward hold. Fernet had told them that the cargo code for Para Clothing was a red square. It was those pallets that had to be particularly watched.
Lila and Maxim met their fellow passengers and the rest of the ship’s officers at dinner that evening. The dining room was small but nicely appointed, with one long table placed in its center. There were six other passengers besides Maxim and Lila. An American couple, about the same age as Maxim and Lila, were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. They seemed to find it very important to convince everyone that they could really afford much more of a ship than the Athenia but they wanted the adventure of traveling with “real” people. There were also a pair of middle-aged English schoolteachers out for a fling and two young Scandinavian backpackers spending their summer on the way to anyplace.
The captain, a ruddy, yellow-bearded Scotsman who looked every inch the British seaman, gave what was probably his standard welcoming speech. Between witticisms that were dutifully laughed at by passengers and officers, he introduced his first mate, Arthur Stevens, and some of the other officers.
After dinner, a small bar was opened up at one end of the dining room. Maxim and Lila tried not to get involved with any of the other passengers, even though the American couple seemed to be trying to attach themselves to them. Instead, Lila cornered the purser, Nigel.
“I must have that dessert recipe,” she told him cheerily. “Do you think I might visit your kitchen and speak to the cook?”
“You will be touring the ship in three days, madam, right after we leave Constanza,” Nigel said. “The tour will include the galley, but it might be difficult to get a recipe from Feador, our cook. He is a Russian, and his English is extremely limited.” Nigel tried to edge to the side, but Maxim stepped in to block his escape.
“That’s no problem,” Maxim smiled. “I’ve been away from Russia for a long time. It would be great to have a chance to practice the language again.”
Nigel realized that there was no escape. “I will introduce you to Feador then,” he said.
The American couple were the first to leave the party at eleven thirty. Although he was getting tired, Maxim found himself reluctant to suggest to Lila that it might be time for them to go to their cabin, but at eleven forty-five she took Maxim’s hand in hers, as if it were something she had done for years, said goodnight to the remaining passengers, and steered him to the dining room door.
When their own cabin door was locked behind them, Lila sat down on one of the narrow beds. “Thank you for helping me get to the cook,” she said. “I think Nigel would have gotten away otherwise.” She leaned back against the bulkhead and wiggled her toes. “I think you’d better use the bathroom first,” she smiled. “If I remember correctly, it takes a lady a little longer to prepare for bed than a gentleman.”
It was a warm evening. Normally Maxim would have slept naked under the thin sheet, but this situation called for pajamas. After some time, Lila came out of the bathroom wearing a nightgown and slipped under the sheet of her bed. “I’ve left the bathroom light on and the door open a little as a night light. Goodnight, Maxim.”
Maxim turned on his side and mentally slapped himself. You are sixty years old, and this is a work assignment, he thought. Get those adolescent fantasies out of your head. Aloud he said, “Goodnight, Lila.”
The trip from Istanbul to Constanza took two and a half days. There was not much that Maxim and Lila could do during that time except to continue to play the older honeymoon couple. The American couple and the two English schoolteachers had asked Maxim if they would like to join them in an exploration of the city of Constanza when they arrived there, but Maxim explained that he had been to Constanza and that he and Lila would prefer to lounge around the ship for the short time they would be in port.
On the day of their arrival, they rose at six A.M. to have an early breakfast and watch the harbor pilot steer the Athenia to her assigned berth at Pier 23. It was one of the smaller piers, since the Athenia needed no special loading facilities. She would load and unload using her own on-board hoisting equipment. They watched from the railing of the passenger deck as the forward hatches were opened and the unloading began.
Arthur, the first mate, stood on the main deck with a clipboard in his hand, noting each consignment symbol as the pallet loads were removed from the ship. On the dock, three forklifts scurried back and forth, taking the cargo from where the hoists dropped it on the dock to an area farther back where it was stacked, two high, in neat rows, awaiting trucks to transport it to its destination. The only people on the dock beside the longshoremen were a group of three workers repairing a hole in the concrete surface of the dock. They moved with the languid motions of the dispirited workers Maxim remembered seeing when he was stationed in Odessa many years ago. He smiled as he watched one of the workers move a wheelbarrow half filled with sand from a sandpile to a mixer at a speed that guaranteed a four hour repair job would take all day. He noticed that Lila was also watching the dock repairman. Suddenly she laughed.