"Just get out of here . . . kid."
Ouch! That hurt.
Once in the hallway, Hansen dug out his passport, which had been heavily stamped and dog-eared by one of Third Echelon's document engineers, a man known only as Perez. He was a Mexican national sent to prison for making fake credentials to help illegal immigrants cross the border. He'd been serving the last few years of his sentence when he'd been offered an early release if he came to work for Third Echelon. Perez was an artist--the best forger the agency had ever employed.
And, at the moment, Hansen wished Perez had chosen the cover name instead of Grim, because the woman had a cruel sense of humor.
Hansen was now Vyacheslav Zamolodchikova.
Say that three times fast.
4
FUSHIKI, JAPAN
HANSENhad flown from Baltimore to Tokyo; then he had traveled by taxi for six hours to the port city of Fushiki, walled in by majestic mountains whose summits were now veiled in fog.
Dressed like an ordinary businessman in suit and overcoat, and clutching a duffel bag with toiletries and a garment bag with a few changes of clothing, Hansen walked along the dock, where ahead lay the MV Rus, a thirteen-thousand-ton ferry whose dark blue hull glinted in the neon floodlights strung along the walkway. Although it was just 4:00 P.M., the shadows had already grown long as vehicles rumbled up the gangways and into the hold.
The ferry was primarily an auto transporter, with new and used cars from Japan being exported to Vladivostok by individuals and Russian businessmen. There were 114 cabins to service four hundred passengers and crew, and, surprisingly, the ferry was equipped with phones and air conditioners in every cabin, though at the moment Hansen could use a good blast of heat, as his breath came thick in the frigid February air. He had learned from the taxi driver, who spoke a little Russian (Hansen's cover language), that the restaurants were good and that he should definitely visit the veranda casino.
Hansen mounted the aluminum gangway and ascended upward with a throng of other passengers, mostly middle-aged Russian men, with a small number of Japanese and one family with small children that might've been from the Netherlands or Belgium, as they scolded their kids in Dutch.
At the top of the steps Hansen was ushered into a waiting area, where he was asked to produce his passport, and his nearly unpronounceable name, Vyacheslav Zamolodchikova, was checked against a list. He was then permitted into the reception area, where a friendly if not cherubic Russian woman handed him a card with his cabin number and some brief instructions on how to find it. Before he left, he gave a furtive glance around, quickly studying the other passengers, trying to pick out a tail, if he had one, but the others paid him no attention.
For the next few minutes he ventured through the halls, grinning at the dark veneer paneling and orange carpets, wondering if he'd just been transported to the 1970s. There were yellowing pictures of other ferries on the walls and lots of faded warning signs in Cyrillic.
Third Echelon had booked him cabin 4456 on the starboard bow--a very nice room, really--and had paid handsomely to ensure that he did not have to share that room with any other passengers, as that was not uncommon.
He found his cabin, opened the door, and collapsed onto the small bed, finding the blankets cold and slightly damp. He activated the OPSAT on his wrist and sent off a highly encrypted signal to Grim, notifying her that he was on board the ferry. Now all he had to do was sit back and relax for the forty-hour ride to Vladivostok.
If his father could only see him now, on a ferry, heading toward Russia to eavesdrop on a conversation between Chinese and Russian intelligence agents. That sort of drama rarely occurred back home, where his town's population barely hit eight thousand and Dad was still a high school science teacher. The only remarkable thing that had ever happened to Harold "Buck" Hansen was back in 1974. During his first year as a teacher, he had witnessed a boomerang-shaped UFO hovering over the school. Hansen had heard the story a thousand times, and his mother had dismissed the tale as many had. Dad had waited more than twenty years before he'd shared the story with "authorities" and expert "UFO hunters," for fear of being labeled a crackpot and losing his teaching job. Since then Dad had become a UFO nut, and Mom was the sane wife of the UFO nut, who tried to keep him in line while she kept the books for the Comanche Springs Truck Terminal. They were pretty comical and were planning a big trip to Nevada, to the famed Area 51, next year, when Dad finally retired after, as he put it, "more than a hundred years of service with the school district." Hansen was glad his colleagues would never get a chance to meet his parents. He wasn't sure they could handle that much weirdness in one sitting.
Hansen had no siblings, but he did have a cousin who had once stolen a bass boat and served time for it. Other than that, the rest of his family tree was painfully boring, and he was the only apple that had rolled away, as it were. But as far as they all knew, he worked a desk job at the NSA, analyzing pieces of computer code, which was "watching the grass grow," according to Dad. Hansen drove a Corolla, lived in a two-bedroom condo with a strict homeowner's association that prevented him from planting flowers other than those found on the approved-colors list, and he rented so many movies from Blockbuster that his late fees had become legendary among the college kids working at his local store.
These bogus facts, or similar ones, he detailed every year in his Christmas newsletter, which was as painful to read as any of the others that slipped into mailboxes crowded with overpriced holiday cards and junk-mail flyers.
He wished he could buy a postcard in Vladivostok and mail it to his parents--just to blow their minds--but he knew better. He was doing the business of his country, and nothing would ever compromise that.
With a sigh, he rose from the bed, worked the little thermostat, and finally got the heat to come on. He heard some talking outside his door, so he opened it. Far down the hallway stood two Japanese coastguardsmen, one holding a German shepherd. Well, no surprise. There were drug dealers on board, probably returning to Russia from a run into Japan. In fact, Hansen watched as a Russian emerged from the room, his hands held high, and one of the coastguardsmen immediately cuffed him. Hansen grinned to himself. If those coastguardsmen really wanted to clean up the ferry, they'd have to arrest more than half of the Russian businessmen, who were undoubtedly connected to the mob. He waited until the group left, then decided to go to the restaurant to complete a more immediate mission: filling his grumbling stomach.
5
VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
APPROXIMATELYforty hours after leaving Fushiki, Japan, the MV Rusreached Vladivostok, at 8:17 A.M., and Hansen congratulated himself for two small accomplishments: He had not become seasick nor had he contracted food poisoning, even though the ferry had crossed into some rough seas and the sanitary conditions in the kitchen were undoubtedly questionable.