Laura drove at a cautious pace to the docks. She had never been there before. Her phone was clipped into a bracket on a dashboard heater vent, and plugged into an auxiliary cable for sound. The dash above it was faded and cracked from the sun. What sun they had in Seattle, at least.

A cheerful, robotic GPS voice guided her over a bridge. Below it lay a crisscross of railroad lines and beyond them the Puget Sound. A jumble of camouflage and olive green National Guard vehicles sat by the tracks.

She turned at a sign labeled ‘Cruise parking,’ and was routed through a warren of streets below the bridge. She turned in at a faded, weather beaten guard station. She turned down her music and grabbed the hand-crank to roll down her window. She shifted into neutral and coasted to a stop.

A bored looking, middle aged guard pointed at her through the window. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Sure. Constantine, for seven nights.”

He paused to consult a clipboard. A pen dangled from a string. As he flipped the pages, they rustled in the slight breeze.

He checked off her name and turned. “Driver’s license.”

She pulled her license out of her purse in the seat next to her, and showed it to him. The gate was buzzing upward before he even saw her ID. She nudged her stick shift into first, eased up the clutch, and rolled through.

A moment later, she hefted her aluminum carry on out of her trunk. Her purse was stacked neatly on top of it. A shuttle arrived, and she stepped on board. The ride was short.

As the Cecaelia came into view, she felt a hitch in her breath. She had seen cruise ships before, at least from a distance. And in pictures. The scale was something else in person. The design was sleek, smooth, and long. The shape was simple, but writ large and in impeccably clean white. The sides were covered in balconies and a field of glass windows. The prow was decisive and purposeful. It looked fast standing still. The stern gracefully curved out of the water and sailed back toward the front of the ship.

To her left, a small group of protesters was busy with a megaphone and homemade signs. One read “No nukes in our waters!” The megaphone blared, “Don’t board that ship! Don’t support the pollution of our oceans with nuclear waste!”

To her right, a metal walkway zigzagged toward the ship. A woman in a neat, nautical uniform greeted her. “Amulet, if you please.” She held a small tablet with a small platform attached to it, which was glowing amber. Her accent was crisp and vaguely british. She smiled patiently with bright red lipstick. Laura held up a finger to mime the universal sign for ‘one moment,’ and fumbled in her purse. She pulled out the cream colored lanyard, attached to a small metal disk. The disk was heavy, machined out of what looked like a single chunk of aluminum. She held it out, and the platform pulsed green with a gentle chime.

“Ah yes, Mrs. Constantine. Right this way.” She held her hand, pointing with all five fingers, toward the metal walkway.

“Ms., actually.”

“My sincerest apologies, Ms. Constantine. I hope you find your stay on the Cecaelia to be splendid.”

Laura began her walk. The breeze carried a heady mix of saltwater and kelp. She could hear the lapping of small waves against the ship, and feel their vibration carried through the steel. At the top, a man in a crisp white uniform stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He was a hair over 40, stocky, and standing upright with an easy formality. His hair was closely cropped, and his face was handsome, in an avuncular way.

“Ms. Constantine, the captain has requested your presence on the bridge. My name is Rohit, the Staff Captain. If you would join me, we can bypass the security screening. I understand you have the trust of the ship in advance.”

“Good to meet you, Rohit. But, I was asked to be here as a security consultant. I can’t do that without observing your process, can I?”

“Fair enough. Can I join you?”

“Sure. I could use the company.”

They walked forward into an open door set into the hull. A wooden platform covered in red carpet had been unrolled over the gap between the walkway and the ship. Ahead of them, a group of passengers was feeding through a bag x-ray and a metal detector. They were emptying their pockets into gray plastic bins. For all the luxury of the ship, the experience looked like any airport Laura had ever seen.

Rohit smiled. “What do you think of the ship so far?”

“I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting it to be so impressive up close. Does that sound terrible?”

“Not at all. You might know, but the Cecaelia is about 80,000 gross tons. There are cruise ships nearly twice the size in this port. But what she lacks in size, she makes up in presence. She has a length of about 975 feet. That’s over three Statues of Liberty.”

“I didn’t know that. To be honest, I don’t know the first thing about ships. Aside from the research I did before today, of course.”

“I think it will be a quick adjustment. This ship feels like a five star hotel, but on the water.”

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“Five stars is adjustment enough. I’m a two star girl at heart.”

As they stepped forward, Laura nodded to the x-ray operator. She placed her Glock and holster into a gray tray, and handed him a letter. It was on Blue Peter letterhead. It was signed by the captain, authorizing her to be armed on board.

Rohit’s eyes flashed a brief surprise.

—---------

Oleg Ivanov walked in the cold dawn. It was only four o'clock in the morning, but the sun was already rising in Provideniya. It was just above freezing. He could see his breath gathering around his face, and being whisked away by the briny maritime air.

Oleg was about fifty years old. He was graying and balding. He was thin, with a severe clean shaven face. His light blue eyes were sharp and moving constantly, set in a pair of steel gray metal glasses. He was wearing blue jeans, sturdy brown leather boots, and a worn black down jacket buttoned to his neck.

Oleg was a habitual chess player. He was proud of his ELO score of 1,623. This made him better than his friends, which was important. It made him better than his employees, which kept him alive. He was sure the pieces in his plan had fallen into place well. He never assumed they were perfect, but he believed they were sufficient.

His journey had been complicated. Three days ago, he started in Moscow. His apartment there was modest, and small. It was only two of the windows in a concrete block, painted yellow. It was nearly empty. It suited his needs, because he moved often. Staying in the same place, in his business, was an operational risk.

He had taken a commercial jet to Anadyr, which took eight hours. Anadyr was a backwater town of about 35 thousand people. He didn’t care for the East, and it was the easternmost city in Russia. He had booked the flight with cash, under an assumed name and passport. He had many friends in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Some were on his payroll. Others were earned through deeds and favors, both good and bad. But mostly bad. Some more unsavory than others. They kept him supplied with a steady stream of identities and passports. He had landed in Anadyr as Mikhail Kuznetsov. Mikhail’s passport and boarding pass were now somewhere in the Anadyr sewer system, after being torn and flushed down the drain in his hotel room. His hotel room had been sad and shabby. The carpet was worn thin. Striped and dated bedding was set over a pine bed frame and a crooked dresser. A small table had held a tube television with an antenna. Breakfast in the hotel was a slice of black bread with butter, and a chipped mug of tea from a samovar. Not like Moscow.

Things got more complicated after Anadyr. There were small towns and an international border to contend with. People assumed the international border was the most difficult thing. Oleg knew better. For someone with Oleg’s abilities and connections, it was really just a line on the map. Small towns were the real risk. People remembered any visitors, because there were so few. They remembered your face, and your name. They remembered everything.

Oleg had found a float plane captain in Anadyr who serviced the small villages in the area. He was easily paid a little extra, in cash, to keep no logs. He was sworn to secrecy. Even if he wasn’t, he only knew the next in Oleg’s stack of identities. To the float plane captain, he was Igor. A traveler from St. Petersburg trying to visit family with no fuss. They both knew this was a lie. But it was a useful lie. Oleg knew that in his line of business, even the dirty people wanted to feel legitimate. In a way it was nearly true. His best men were already in place. Some were in Dutch Harbor. They were more loyal than any family he had known.

The float plane captain had left after they landed in Provideniya. He said he was in search of aviation gas from some unofficial sources. Oleg assumed he was also in search of vodka. The pilot was a shabby man, with a greasy mustache and rumpled clothes. He could only imagine what he did when he wasn’t flying.

Oleg had spent the night in Provideniya. The town had a population of about fifteen hundred. There were no real hotels to speak of. There were only two real shops, and no restaurants. One was cramped and sold everything from rubber boots and luggage to appliances and food. He had slept in a small apartment he rented for this plan. He had rented it for a month, with another envelope of cash. His dinner and breakfast was a loaf of bread, jam, and cheese. He had left the cheese on the windowsill. The fridge was broken, but there was no need for one. The windowsill was just one in a concrete block, a little like his apartment at home. This apartment was completely empty, save for a bed. This building was painted blue, with a mural of a fishing boat across one side.

He passed by two more apartment blocks, making easy progress. The road was gravel, and crunched under his boots. It felt loud in the still and quiet of early morning. To his right, he could see rusted cranes for unloading ships. Beyond them, the Bering Strait was calm and gray. Just a narrow strip of water separating the Chukchi Peninsula and Alaska. The United States.

At the thought of the country, Oleg shook his head. He knew that Americans considered themselves free and independent. He knew better. No one was truly independent. You only had the value of your connections to others. And no one was more free than a rich Russian. Nothing was out of reach.

To his left, a barren grass hillside stretched onward into mountains. He had to admit there was a beauty to the natural environment. The margins of the town, though, were scattered with crumbling houses and tangles of razor wire. Many of the apartment blocks sat empty, with dark holes where windows once were. They were covered in mildew. The town had been much larger during Soviet days, but now after the collapse had a fraction of its original population. The spaces between apartment blocks were covered in shattered glass. Oleg turned to his right, to walk to the shoreline. The port was once a key Soviet military port, but now mostly served the northern sea shipping lines. He threaded across the concrete port, between stacks of rusting shipping containers, and around and a small shack with a green metal roof. He leaned against the shack and waited.

A few minutes later, he heard the drone of a small propeller engine. The Cessna 182 slowly took form, and grew louder. It splashed into the gray-blue water and rocked front to back as it slowed. The pilot saw Oleg and inched toward the edge of the concrete. He threw the door open and shouted.

“Good morning, weary traveler! How are you, Igor my friend?”

“Please, Anton, would you keep it down? I’m sure someone is trying to sleep here.”

“I doubt I’m louder than this old thing!” He slapped the side of the float plane with a hollow thunk, and then laughed. It was a loud, wheezing laugh that echoed over the port and bounced between the shipping containers.

“Fair enough. But let’s get moving anyway. I’d like to be in Dutch Harbor while it’s still light out.”

“My friend, you know it’s only a five hour flight. A little over 1,300 kilometers. We cruise at almost two seventy. We should be there before lunch.” He laughed again. He extended a hand, bobbing up and down as the plane floated. Oleg shrugged off the help, and stepped into the plane. As he buckled himself in the seat and threw his small black duffel inside, the pilot turned to him. “Why the hell is it called Dutch Harbor anyway? It’s American, not Dutch.”

The plane’s engine revved, with a small cloud of blue smoke. They began to gain speed. Oleg smirked. “Who the hell knows?”