“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.