Their conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door. Le Docteur opened it cautiously and saw Fatima and Yuri standing there with large smiles. Yuri said, "If this is my last voyage on the face of the planet, then it is certainly the way I would like to join my family in heaven."
Fatima added, "Yuri had seen the choice of restaurants on board and their specialties. He wants to go to a different one every day, perhaps even two a day if we have lunch and dinner on board."
Lara, always practical, jokingly said, "I hate to disappoint you, but according to the itinerary we have seven days before we reach St. Petersburg, so you may have to return to the same restaurant twice." In a serious tone she added, "Our next stop after leaving Kiel is Klaipeda, that used to be called by its German name, Memel, and is the third largest city in Lithuania although few people outside that country have ever heard of it. Then we stop at the small town of Visby, on the island of Gotland, Sweden. Our next two stops are at the capital cities of the two remaining Baltic states — Riga in Latvia and Tallinn in Estonia. After St. Petersburg the ship will call at the ports of Helsinki and Stockholm before returning to Kiel. If you look at the map, you'll see that this is zig-zagging across the Baltic Sea, but the organizers claim in their ads that the ship visits seven countries, including four capital cities in eleven days."
Le Docteur cynically said, "I am sure that most of the passengers won't know, and probably won't care, which country they are visiting. When the ship docks, they will disembark, get on a bus with the other passengers and be driven from site to site, and told they are in one country or another. The only difference will be the language on the road signs, because they will speak in English or German to the people they meet — mainly in the tourist stores they are taken to and will use their credit cards to pay for whatever tourist knick-knacks they buy. Then their credit cards will be charged in Euros or dollars and they won't be able to figure what they bought and where."
Lara said, "Don't be so cynical. They will have their passports stamped in seven countries and will proudly show their grandchildren what world travelers they are. Have you seen the other passengers? It looks as if they were brought here straight from the old-age homes to which they were sent to spend their last days. The only young people I have seen are the caretakers of the older passengers."
Yuri said, "Now, you are both being nasty. It's not true. I have always dreamt of going on a cruise like this and I think it appropriate that it will be my last trip in this life." Fatima hugged him fondly and patted his head gently.
She said, "I don't know what your plans are, but Yuri and I are heading straight to the Chocolate Bar. Come, Yuri, let's gorge ourselves on something good and sweet, before having some other good and sweet things in our cabin."
They all enjoyed the luxurious treats the cruise ship offered. Music and dancing in the evenings, good food all day — starting with a breakfast fit for kings, continuing with lunch and having a great meal with plenty of wine for dinner. In between meals they spent hours sitting and chatting in the bars. None of them wanted to join the herds of elderly passengers in the bingo games or participate in the shore-trips which were offered by the cruise line.
Lara participated in the music lesson that were accessible to the passengers, and to everyone's surprise, including her own, showed great musical talent with the guitar. Le Docteur went to a couple of drum lessons but felt that he was making a fool of himself when he kept dropping the sticks, so he quit the course. Fatima and Yuri left their cabin only to eat and drink. They made sure to visit the Chocolate Bar at least once a day. They both put on some weight, of course, but while the excess weight made Fatima look overweight, not to say fat, Yuri's hollow cheeks were filled out and he looked younger and younger every day. Fatima could tell that his libido must have received its fair share of the energy provided by the chocolate, which doubled their incentive to go directly from the Chocolate Bar to the cabin.
On the sixth evening of the cruise, the foursome gathered in Le Docteur's verandah cabin to discuss the final details of the plan. Yuri and Fatima were holding hands, when Le Docteur said, "Tomorrow is the big day. Our original plan was, as you recall, for Yuri to disembark and leave the cruise ship. He will make sure that the coffin is unloaded and that the friendly customs inspector, whom we have paid handsomely for his services, allows it to leave the docks area in the hearse that has been arranged. It will be taken to the funeral parlor and stored there until the day the ship leaves St. Petersburg on its way to its next port of call, Helsinki. Then Yuri will take the coffin to the famous Tikhvin Cemetery and have it buried there in a shallow grave. This is one of the landmarks of St. Petersburg and in it many of the most famous Russian poets, authors and composers are buried. Among them are Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussorgsky, and of course right nearby is the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Seeing this symbol of Russian pre-communist culture going up in a mushroom cloud, together with the entire center of the city will be a resounding demonstration of our power."
Yuri said, "Let's not forget that St. Petersburg, or Leningrad as it was called after the 1917 Communist Revolution, is Putin's hometown. I'll take up residence in the city until the time of Putin's next visit. Then I'll travel to the cemetery and set off our little device. The atoms from my body will thus mingle with atoms from the remains of all the famous Russian luminaries you mentioned, as well as with the modern Czar of Russia, Vladimir Putin."
Le Docteur said, "Yuri, I hope you will get early notice about Putin's visit. Timing is everything if we want to get the reaction from Putin's successors, whoever they will be. This is beyond our control and we can only hope for the best results."
Lara added, "Perhaps we can leak information that the fissile materials were manufactured by the United States. This will point the Russians in the direction we want and start a nuclear war."
"Lara, you are right, but releasing this information prematurely could expose our hand. We must do this shortly after the explosion — not a minute before."
Yuri looked at Fatima and said, "Would you like to join me? I know this isn't the plan, but I would very much like to spend some more time with you. You can accompany me when I set off the nuke, or, if you wish, you can leave the city hours before and be at a safe place to watch the mushroom cloud from a distance."
Fatima was taken aback, "I haven't thought of this option. Let me sleep on it." She saw that Le Docteur and Lara were watching her closely without indicating what they thought about Yuri's proposal. She added, "This is a surprise and I need to think about it."
The next day the cruise ship arrived at the port of St. Petersburg. Almost all the passengers went on one of the shore-trips offered by the cruise-line company. Many selected the tour of the State Hermitage Museum and were then divided into sub-groups of 25 or 30 people. Some of the groups, especially the true art lovers, intended to spend the whole day in the museum, but most of them just wanted to get a glimpse of the museum, and mark it in their diaries and tell their grandchildren that they, too, must visit the Hermitage. These were ushered directly into the museum, ahead of the 'regular' tourists who had to stand in line for over an hour before being admitted. The cruise-ship groups had priority tickets, for which they paid handsomely, of course, because their time was more valuable, and more expensive, than that of the 'regulars'. Each group was steered through the rooms which displayed the highlights, by a museum guide holding a small flag on a thin pole. The guides spoke English or German, or in some cases French or Spanish, and worked on a tightly controlled schedule, knowing exactly how much time to spend in each room. The elderly tourists, started to lose interest after 30 minutes, or the first five rooms, and the art treasures soon became a blur of impressions. They knew they had seen some of the greatest paintings and sculptures that had been created by some of the greatest artists of all times, as well as some of the finest ornaments and high-ceiling ballrooms ever constructed.