Lana rushed a message to Galina: “Where are you?” Cutting to the chase.
Galina must have been on edge waiting to hear from her because she fired right back: “I need to get out of here before daybreak.”
“Stay put. We’re coming to get you.”
“How soon? Oleg is very close.”
“Do you think he’s close or know that he is?” Lana asked, worried that he would get his hands on her. Just hours ago, Jensen had tracked Dernov’s data to Sochi, where he presumably had spent the night.
“You and I both know he’s close,” Galina replied. “I need to leave before daylight. Where are you?”
“I can’t say.” She looked at the officer. “How long till daylight?”
He checked his watch. “An hour fifty.”
“We won’t be there by daylight,” she texted Galina, seeing no point in mincing words.
“How long?” Galina asked. Lana could almost hear her impatience. “You must have an idea of how far away I am.”
She pulled up Jensen, who had been the second person she’d planned to contact once aboard the Clinton, and asked him if he had any notion of where Galina was.
“She’s been very quiet,” he reported. “No data streams, but if I had to guess, I’d say she’s north of Sochi, but not too far.”
I could have guessed that.
“What’s the problem?” the officer asked.
She told him.
A young woman’s head popped up from behind a partition. “Whoever you’re communicating with is 110 kilometers north of Sochi in what appears to be a small seaport town. I can’t get a name for it. It might not have one, at least on any map we have.”
“Thank you.” Though it concerned Lana that Galina’s position had been sniffed out so quickly; at least it was by friendly forces.
She turned to Don: “From Pitsunda, how long will it take us to get up there?”
“We’ll be moving fast in these conditions. A half-day’s sail at worst. What’s the latest weather?” he asked the room at large, perhaps hoping for another head to pop up. One did:
“Strong winds, near gale force, till tonight,” a male sailor said, looking up from his computer.
“She won’t wait a half day,” Lana told Don. “She sounds like she expects us to be there in the next ninety minutes.”
“What choice does she have?” he asked.
Lana, more diplomatically, asked Galina that question.
“Can’t say, but I can’t wait,” she replied.
Lana relayed that reply to Don.
“It seems to me she’s got one good option, and that’s to go to sea and head south. She’s already said something about chartering, right?”
Lana nodded.
“I can give her captain coordinates for a rendezvous at sea,” said Don.
“That could look very suspicious,” said the officer who’d been by Lana’s side. “A busy Russian navy might miss that, but satellites are hardly going to.”
“I don’t see any option but to take the risk,” Lana replied. “You said yourself there are lots of boats out there.” She messaged Galina with Don’s suggestion of a rendezvous.
No response came from her.
“Galina? Did you get that message?”
Still nothing.
“Galina? I need to know if you’re okay.”
Good question, Galina thought, shutting down her connection with Lana Elkins. She was worried sick that Oleg might have located her, though the only activity she spied from her perch above the village was the house lights flicking on.
She considered rushing down to the dock just long enough to make contact with a boat captain, but could not bring herself to leave her daughter alone. Neither could she bear waking the sleeping child to another day of leukemia and pain.
Instead, she drove the expensive Porsche SUV into the village of perhaps a dozen run-down homes and a handful of cars and pickups older than she herself was.
Galina parked near the dock and stuffed PP’s cash into her shoulder bag, then shoved the derringer into her pocket so she could grab the gun easily if she had to.
Donning a headscarf out of respect — and dark glasses out of fear — she stepped from the car as a man jumped to the dock off a trawler. She wondered if he’d slept on it. But when she approached him in the dim light, his eyes looked bright, as if they were reflecting the last of the night’s starlight.
He didn’t appear at all surprised by her appearance, asking gruffly who she was, as he might have demanded of anyone else at any other time of day. He sounded like a man who did not suffer distractions easily.
“I need to charter a boat.”
“A fishing boat?” He shook his head, maybe in disbelief, then peered closely at her. “Take off your glasses.” When she hesitated, he removed them so swiftly she had no time to react. “I know you,” he said. “You are the ‘Porn Star Spy.’ I’ve seen naked pictures of you on TV.” He shook his head again, this time in obvious disapproval.
Porn Star Spy. That’s what they’re calling me? Oleg, that son of a bitch. He’d made a mockery of her. She knew it was easy to do: Russians loved their “news” tawdry and tabloid, just like the Brits and Americans.
“Please, listen to me,” she begged. “He was someone I loved. I didn’t know he took those pictures. I never would have done that. He’s horrible.”
She sounded desperate. She was. But even then she knew she’d rather deal with a Muslim man’s indignation — and from what she’d observed yesterday afternoon, this was a Muslim village — than Oleg’s murderous revenge. That the captain had taken offense only over the sex photos, not the spy allegations, had not escaped her notice, so she went on: “But it’s true, I’m a spy trying to stop this Russian criminal from bombing Antarctica. That’s what’s making the oceans rise.”
She glanced at the hull of his trawler; the bottom was now pressed against the top of the dock. The water had risen at least half a foot since last night. Soon there would be no dock.
“Who do you say is doing this to you?” he asked. His gruffness had not eased.
Now she saw that she would have to take the biggest risk of alclass="underline" “A very rich Russian man. He’s bought influence with the Russian police. He’s doing this to me. He’s afraid of what I can do to him.”
The captain stared at her. He said nothing.
She played her last card — cash — pulling out a fistful of rubles. “If I don’t get out of here, they will kill me and my little girl. She’s in the car. You are a man of faith. I saw you coming from your prayer yesterday. You know what the Russians did to your brothers and sisters in Chechnya. They will do that to me, too. And then they will kill me. Help me, please.”
He eyed the money. “How far?” he asked.
“Out of Russian waters. A rendezvous at sea south of here. I can get the coordinates.”
“Your daughter, they say she’s sick. They say she needs help. That you’re a bad mother.”
“She is sick. She does need help. But not their help.” Galina stared into his eyes. “She needs yours.”
Oleg woke early in his luxurious suite in Sochi. He splashed water on his face and headed down to the kitchen, finding the lazy cooks sitting around a television and smoking.
“Not open till seven,” a swarthy man in chef’s whites said. He sounded surly as a hangover.
Oleg flashed his FSB identification, conveniently provided for this foray to the coast. “You’re open now. Eggs, potatoes, bread. Coffee. Spit in it and I’ll have you arrested and beaten senseless.”