She was a twenty-six-year-old bookkeeper with the Russian Amerika Company. Her extraordinary beauty lured him. Her intelligence hooked him. She made it plain she was on her way up and had no interest in a has-been.
He pointed out that he worked for himself and made a good living. They married when he was thirty-two, still the master of Pravda, a ten-meter fishing boat. He rigged the boat for sport fishing, which had turned into big business along the Inside Passage. Financial opportunities also occurred for skippers who knew how to lade cargo quietly and get out of port quickly.
At thirty-nine he could pass for a man ten years younger. Wiry and lean, with the exception of a slight paunch, he stood almost two meters and possessed open good looks that still attracted women who appreciated adventure.
Now, after six, almost seven, years of marriage, Kazina seemed distant. Grisha’s past attempts to interact with her friends always came off stiff and wooden. None of them were Creoles. He detected or expected their silent racism and ceased his efforts.
The marriage had been on the ebb for some time before tall, blond, Kommander Fedorov knocked on their door with an “Imperial Order for Lodging an Officer of the Czar.” Grisha’s small chart room became the sacrifice for the officer’s comfort and fanned the embers of his anger at the government. But the sudden animation he perceived in Kazina proved the heaviest burden. Until Fedorov arrived, Grisha entertained hope that he could find compromise with his beautiful wife. But she hadn’t even said good-bye when he left for this charter. As a commander of troops he had learned the necessity of cutting one’s losses. But this was much harder. The tiny teeth bit so hard in his stomach that he groaned aloud.
“Go ahead, talk to your boat,” Karpov said with a slur in his voice.
“I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when the evening meal is prepared.”
As the burly man staggered down the steps into the cabin, Grisha steered sharply around imaginary flotsam, knowing the Cossack would lose his balance in the narrow passageway. He heard Karpov crash into the companionway bulkhead.
“Damn your black ass!” Karpov’s voice was muffled by distance and engine noise. Grisha smiled, trying to make it a victory.
Two days later, after pounding south at his top speed of twenty-four knots, Grisha still waited for enlightenment about the nature of his character. Maybe they were going to acquire contraband tomorrow in T’angass?
Much smaller than Akku, Fort Dionysus claimed to be the second oldest settlement in Southeast Alaska, after New Arkhangel. Grisha had fished out of the small town in his youth and still had friends there.
He pulled into the fuel dock, clicked the throttle back, and switched off the engine, letting the boat glide alongside the wooden dock. He grabbed the bowline, and nimbly jumped onto the bobbing dock to deftly loop two turns around a cleat.
As soon as he dropped the line he grasped the boat rail to keep the stern from yawing away from the slip. The station worker came out of his small shack as Grisha snubbed down the stern line.
“What ya runnin’?” The man said, and then blinked with surprise.
“Grisha? That really you?”
“Alexi! By God, you’re working a real job.”
Alexi’s face sported new lines and old scars. A limp now slowed him. He looked thinner than ever.
“Whose boat you workin’ here?”
“Mine,” Grisha said.
“So that’s why you quit drinkin’ with us, you were savin’ your money.”
“You got it, Alexi. How have you been?”
Alexi’s grin dampened down to a polite grimace. “Getting by. You know, job here, job there, working as crew when the Chinook are running, or the czar krab fishery gets good. That don’t happen much no more. Dimitri offered me a day job running his fuel dock, so I took it.”
The suddenly diminished man ran an expert eye over Pravda. “Nice boat. Your home port is Akku these days?”
“Yeah. Even got a marriage that’s going sour.”
Alexi stepped back into the shack, professionally looked over his shoulder at Grisha. “Diesel or mix?”
“Diesel.”
“So,” Alexi said when fuel gurgled through the hose into the boat. “You got any kids?”
“No. All I have is my Pravda, here.”
“Why’d you name it after something that doesn’t exist?” Alexi asked with a flash of bitterness.
“She’s the only truth I know,” Grisha answered.
The boat rocked and Karpov came out on deck. “What is this place?”
Alexi grinned up at him. “Welcome to Fort Dionysus, home to promyshlenniks since 18—”
“I care nothing about fur hunter dens. Is food to be had here?”
“There’s a lodge just up the street from the end of that dock,” Alexi said, jabbing a thumb toward the shack.
Karpov gave Grisha a sour glance. “You will come and tell me when you are ready to leave, Captain Grigorievich.” Then he stomped up the ramp to solid ground.
“Thought you was done with the military,” Alexi stared at him under raised brows. “What you doing with a fucking Cossack like that?”
“If I knew, I’m not sure I could tell you, old friend.”
After Grisha paid for the fuel, he moved Pravda to transient moorage, then found his way up to the Canada House Lodge. Despite the late hour, the sun barely touched the mountains on Zarembo Island. Diners laughed, drank, and ate on the screened-in deck.
Grisha found a table, ordered, and had just swallowed his second mouthful of beer when Karpov loomed over him.
“When do we leave this place?”
“I’d like to get underway at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow, if you can be on board that early.”
Karpov stalked into the lodge.
Why was the man pretending to be thicker than he really was? If they were smuggling something in the tackle box, when would Karpov broach the subject? Did the Russian plan to set Grisha up as a dupe, or think he could endanger boat and captain without a cut of the profits?
The next morning he glanced at the cloudless horizon, sucked hot tea through the sugar cube clenched in his teeth, and eyed the brass-cased chronometer on the console. The sharp, iodine-tinged smell of tidal flats filled his nostrils. At 0658, just as he allowed his tongue to seek out the final sweet granules, Karpov plodded down the steep ramp.
Fall and break your neck, Pig-eyes. I’ll tell your keeper you didn’t know what a low tide was.
Karpov did not fall.
Without a word Grisha untied the boat and pushed off. He wanted to make T’angass by early afternoon. One day of no clouds and bright sunshine was good. Three days of sunshine unnerved seamen in this part of Alaska—after a time it felt natural and if one took good weather for granted one would pay for it.
Grisha had attended ten funerals where the coffin was merely for showthe men, and one woman, lost to fierce storms on days that began this promising. The Alexandr Archipelago was legendary for its sudden bad weather.
Karpov again disappeared below and Grisha relished the solitude. Once he saw a humpback but didn’t radio in the information. He enjoyed watching the huge, sleek mammals, and those whaling bastards never paid the spotter’s fee anyway.
Twice he switched on the weather channel to ensure the high-pressure cell still held as expected. The air remained crisp and fresh, adding to his edginess.
For the rest of the six-hour run into T’angass the smooth wood of the steering wheel constituted his only connection with here-and-now reality. Despite himself, everything reminded him of Kazina’s body on their wedding night. The texture of her skin had seeped into the steering wheel. The heavy, rounded console jutted toward him like her generous, gravity-defying breasts.