Kerikov opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk. “I happen to have something here that is very pertinent to that.”
The accountant leaned forward in his chair, eyes bright with anticipation.
There was only one round in the Makarov semiautomatic pistol, the one round Kerikov had planned to use on himself if the need ever arose. It blew a perfectly round hole through the accountant’s forehead, then splattered the contents of his skull onto the wall and door behind his slumping body.
Kerikov rummaged through his desk until he found a flimsy cardboard box of ammunition. He loaded one round into the pistol and slipped it back into the drawer. He pressed the intercom button on his black telephone.
“Yes, Mr. Kerikov,” his secretary answered.
“There has been a slight change in my plans, Anna.” Kerikov lit another cigarette. “Inform Evad Lurbud that I want him in Cairo as soon as possible; I believe he is still at my dacha. Also, I want you to get me the earliest flight to Bangkok. I’ll travel on the Johann Kreiger passport.”
“What about the KGB accountant?” Anna asked. Kerikov assumed from her tone that she had heard the shot.
“He’ll be resting here for a while. As soon as you’ve reached Lurbud and booked my flight, leave the building. When you’re questioned, tell them that you took an early lunch and know nothing. Good luck, Anna. And good-bye.”
“I understand.” If she was disappointed that their four-year affair was ending, she gave no indication.
Kerikov took some time going through the secure files in his wall safe, pulling out a select few that might one day prove useful or profitable. He knew after he boarded the flight to Bangkok, he’d never again return to Russia.
The Pacific
Valery Borodin bolted upright in his bed, a muffled gasp clutched in the base of his throat. His lean body was slick with nervous sweat, his dark hair plastered to his neat head. His chest heaved and his heart pounded as he fought to regain control of himself.
It took nearly two minutes to realize he was no longer the frightened six-year-old boy of his dream, being told by faceless uniformed men that his father had died in a laboratory accident. He was a man now, a respected scientist in his own right. Yet the haunting sobs of his mother still lingered in the quiet of his cabin aboard the motor ship August Rose.
That dream had tortured him since the day those events actually occurred. It woke him most nights, but he had always remained silent, because his mother was grieving in the room next to his in the small Kiev apartment that the Department of Scientific Operations had allowed them to retain as recompense after the accident.
To Valery, that had been the worst, stifling the scream that always rushed through him, suppressing it, crushing it so he would not disturb his mother. To Russians, grief was something to be worn openly, passionately, yet he could not express it. He did not believe that his pain was worth encroaching on his mother’s. Years later, retelling this story always evoked sympathy from the listener, but never understanding. Somehow he got the feeling that people thought there was something wrong with him, some flaw.
It wasn’t until last year, in Mozambique, that Valery found someone who finally understood, an American girl who was herself a victim of losing a parent young.
He swung his legs off the narrow bunk of his private cabin. Had the Soviet government not developed a keen interest in his mind, Valery surely would have found a career in the ballet. There was not an ounce of extra flesh on his frame; muscled plane blended with supple joint in the perfect symmetry that comes not from hours spent in gyms, but the blessing of genetic inheritance.
He raked his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his forehead, and at once a thick cowlick sprang up and hung over his right eye.
The dream which had haunted his childhood had returned just last year in the office of Ivan Kerikov, a man whom Valery had never heard of, but who seemed to know everything about him. Valery learned that this man was the current head of the department that had employed his late father. Kerikov calmly explained that Scientific Operations had watched Valery with interest over the years and in fact helped him along at times. As Valery incredulously tried to digest this piece of information, Kerikov dropped another bombshell.
He pressed a signal buzzer on his desk and a man walked into the room. Valery barely heard Kerikov introduce Dr. Pytor Borodin. Thirty years had aged his father, filling out his body and silvering his wild hair and beard, but he was still the man who stared from the photograph hanging over the dinner table in his mother’s apartment.
That night Valery had the dream for the first time since his early teens.
It wasn’t until their next meeting that Valery had recovered enough to actually listen to the things his father and Kerikov were discussing.
The elder Borodin had faked his own death so many years ago as a security precaution. His work at the time had been so secret that only such drastic measures would ensure protection. After most of Borodin’s coworkers were summarily executed in the summer of 1963, Borodin had worked alone monitoring his secret project, nurturing it along to its now fast approaching conclusion.
Kerikov explained that they needed a new staff of scientists to see the project concluded. Would Valery be interested in joining as second-in-command?
At the time Valery was working for the State Energy Bureau, investigating the potential of Russia’s tremendous methane hydrate reserves, which were locked in the permafrost of western and central Siberia. His background in geology was as strong as any of the new breed of Russian scientists, men and women whose worth was valued by results rather than the ability to regurgitate party dogma.
Valery only agreed to join after being assured that his consideration was based on his merits, not on the family connection. Pytor Borodin’s casual dismissal of such a notion was terribly painful, as if Borodin wasn’t even acknowledging his own son.
Two weeks after those early meetings, Valery was given a holiday in Mozambique under the cover of a marine biology mission, a chance to defrost his body after so many months in Siberia and prepare himself for the work ahead.
Since then, the work had been nothing short of incredible. Kerikov had managed to assemble some of the sharpest minds in the Russian Federation and place at their disposal the latest cutting edge technology.
Valery pulled on a pair of American denim jeans and a military green T-shirt. It was just past midnight, but he knew trying to go back to sleep would be futile.
The ship’s galley, one deck below his cabin, was deserted, but a large urn of coffee was kept warm on a side table. Valery filled a white mug and took a cautious sip of the strong, bitter brew. He nodded to the kitchen hand noisily cleaning pans in the scullery before leaving for the nerve center of the August Rose.
Built as a bulk carrier designated UT-20 by Hitachi-Zosen in 1979, she had been converted to a refrigeration ship in 1983 when she had been bought by Ocean Freight and Cargo. The 1.13 million cubic feet of bulk storage area had been reduced by nearly thirty percent to make room for massive Carrier refrigeration units and the special cargo-handling equipment needed to transport frozen goods.
That refitting was well documented by the Japanese shipyard that carried out the work, by Continental Insurance, and by the Finnish bank which floated most of the loans held by Ocean Freight and Cargo. The August Rose’s next refit was kept much more secret.
She spent seven weeks in a secure drydock in Vladivostok in the spring of 1990. Cosmetically she still resembled the vessel she had always been: 20,000 deadweight tons and 497 feet long, with a sharply raked bow and an aft-positioned superstructure that resembled a four-story steel box. But within her steel-plated hull she was transformed into the most unique scientific vessel ever built.