He’d risen early, before dawn, after only a couple hours of sleep, to be on the bridge when the first morning watch under Third Officer George Novak came on duty. He had stayed up there until an hour ago, when he’d returned to his cabin, and ordered a lunch tray to be brought up from the galley.
In the past few days he had started to get worried. He could bring up a picture of bin Laden in full detail in his mind’s eye. That was easy. But he was losing the details of Jillian’s face. His wife had been a small woman; her features round, her dark hair usually cut short, bangs across her forehead; she’d looked like a pixie.
He knew all that intellectually, but he couldn’t see her, and he was afraid that he might be losing his mind.
He opened his eyes when someone knocked at the door. He got up, flipped the bedcover over his Steyr, the .22 caliber pistol he’d used to kill Slavin, and the Heckler & Koch M8 baseline carbine, and went out to the sitting room, closing the door to his bedroom before he answered the outer door.
The Russian steward, Irina Karpov, was there with a tray. “Your lunch, Captain,” she said, smiling. She was a small girl, with narrow shoulders, dark eyes, and short dark hair that framed a round, pixie face. She was dressed in dark trousers and a crisp white jacket.
For just an instant Graham was struck dumb by the similarity between this girl and his wife. He hadn’t noticed the resemblance when he’d seen her for the first time yesterday. But her face was the same.
He stepped aside for her and she came in and set the tray on the small table. She took the covers off the dishes. “Cook has made borscht just for you, and some smoked salmon with creamed cheese, onions, capers, and corchinons, and toasted bagels.”
“It looks good,” Graham said. “Please thank Mr. Rassmussen for me.”
“We didn’t know if you wanted wine, beer, or mineral water, so I brought all three,” Irina said. It seemed as if she were stalling, for some reason, a sly look in her wide eyes.
“Very thoughtful of you, Ms. Karpov.”
“Spassibo bolshoyeh,” she said. Thanks very much.
Graham suddenly understood what she was trying to do. She was suspicious of him. He let his expression darken. “I hope that I do not have to continually remind you that the language aboard this vessel is English.”
She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“If it happens again, I’ll leave you ashore at Long Beach and hire another steward.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand this perfectly?”
She nodded. “I just wanted to thank you for your compliment, sir.”
And test my Russian. “I know,” Graham said. “Now return to your duties.”
“Sir,” she said, and she went past him to the door.
“Ms. Karpov,” Graham said, before she went out.
She turned back. “Sir?”
“Pazhaluystah,” he told her. You’re welcome.
She was startled. It wasn’t what she’d expected. She said something else in rapid-fire Russian that Graham didn’t catch, then nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said. She gave him a final, searching look and left.
Graham’s jaw tightened. It’d been a mistake to speak Russian to her. Even one word. He’d seen the immediate understanding on her face that she knew he was an imposter. He turned away from the door, his mind in a dark turmoil. He wanted to lash out; strike something; destroy someone; shatter them, drive them to their knees, kill the bastards who were responsible.
He slowly came back from the brink, unclenching his fists, willing his muscles to relax.
The stupid bitch had no proof. And in twelve hours she and the others would be dead.
No one was using the officers’ mess this noon, but Irina stopped by to make sure that the coffee and tea service was clean and filled. She busied herself loading the few dirty cups, glasses, spoons, and tea bags and wrappers onto a tray, and replacing the stale lemon wedges with fresh ones from the small refrigerator under the counter.
She didn’t want to think too hard about the captain, because that would lead her into places she did not want to go. But for the life of her she couldn’t understand why Captain Slavin was pretending to be a Russian, when clearly he was not.
Ever since she was a child in Moscow, her father, who had been a brilliant physicist, encouraged her to be an independent thinker. “Do not be shy,” he would say. Her mother, on the other hand, was a typical Russian who loved to quote proverbs to get her messages across. Her favorite for Irina was that once a word was out of your mouth, you couldn’t swallow it again. And another was, all the brave men and women were in prison. Her father wanted her to speak up, while her mother wanted her to keep her mouth shut. She’d been torn between the two all her life.
Only a couple of stragglers lingered in the crew’s mess room when she brought the tray of dirty cups and glasses to the galley. She rinsed them off and loaded them onto the dishwasher belt. She was confused.
Rassmussen was busy rolling out piecrusts for this evening’s dessert. He looked up, a sloppy grin on his broad Norwegian face. He always seemed to be in a jovial mood. “Son of a bitch, what’d the captain say about my borscht?” he boomed.
Irina was startled. She spun around. “What?”
“My borscht. What’d the captain say?”
“He said thank you.”
“Thank you!” Rassmussen shouted. His grin widened. “Son of a bitch, wait’ll he has my pumpkin pie tonight.”
“Russians don’t eat pumpkin pie,” Irina said absently.
“This one does, he asked for it. Son of a bitch.”
Irina turned back to work, rinsing the rest of the lunch dishes, loading them onto the belt, and starting the dishwasher. The galley was clean, as were all but one table in the mess room. Alicia had tided up before going off duty.
“I’m going to my cabin for a couple hours,” she told the cook.
Rassmussen nodded. “Be back at four. I’m roasting turkeys with all the trimmings. You’ll serve the wardroom.”
“Yes, sir,” Irina said tiredly. She dried her hands and went up one deck to her cabin in crew territory. She’d been up since four thirty to help with the morning meal for the change of watch standers, and she wanted to rest for an hour or so. Sleep. Shut her mind down. But she couldn’t stop from thinking about the captain. The man was pretending to be a Russian, and she could make no sense of it.
Alicia had just gotten out of the shower, and she was in her robe in front of the mirror drying her spiky hair. She looked around when Irina came in. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, smiling. But then she lowered the hair-dryer. “You looked bushed. Are you okay?”
Irina took off her jacket and tossed it on her bed. “I’m just a little tired, is all.”
“Nope,” Alicia said. She put down the hair-dryer and came out to Irina. “What’s the matter?” she asked, concerned. “Is George hitting on you again?” The third officer had been trying for three months to have Vasquez talk Alicia into setting him up. He wanted the same arrangement with Irina that Vasquez had with Alicia.
“No,” Irina said. “It’s the captain, he’s an imposter.”
Alicia was surprised. She shook her head and laughed. “That’s rich,” she said. “Would you mind telling me how you came to such a brilliant conclusion?”
“His name is Grigoriy Slavin. He comes from St. Petersburg.”
Alicia laughed again. “Don’t Moscow girls get along with guys from St. Petersburg?”
“He doesn’t speak Russian,” Irina blurted. “When I tried to talk to him yesterday, and just now when I brought his lunch tray to his cabin, he told me that we had to speak English.”