Morning, August 18th, Embarkation

Laura drove at a cautious pace to the docks, scanning the map on her phone clipped into the heater vent above her dashboard. 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,' navigated a warren of streets below the bridge, and turned in at a faded, weather beaten guard station. She turned down her volume knob, grabbed the hand-crank to roll down her window, shifted into neutral, and coasted to a stop.

A bored looking, middle aged guard with a receding hairline pointed at her through the window. "You have a reservation?"

"Sure. Constantine, 12 nights."

He paused to consult a clipboard, its pen dangling from a string. As he flipped the pages, they rustled in the maritime breeze. He checked off her name and furrowed his brow. "Driver's license," he grunted.

She pulled her license out of her purse in the seat next to her, and held it in the open window. The gate buzzed 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, attached to the telescoping handle. A shuttle slowly pulled up and stopped with a wheeze of brakes, and she stepped on board for the short ride.

She felt a hitch in her breath as the shuttle rounded a corner and the MV Cecaelia came into view. The ship's sleek, long, and impeccably clean white shape seemed to go on forever. Balconies punctuated long fields of windows. The stern gracefully curved out of the water and then sailed back toward the purposeful, sharp prow. It looks fast standing still, thought Laura. How did they do that?

The shuttle stopped again with a wheeze of brakes at the embarkation station and Laura rolled her suitcase off. To her left, a small gaggle of protesters waved homemade signs reading "No nukes in our waters!" One shouted through a megaphone. "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 said in a crisp, vaguely British accent. She held up a tablet with a small pulsing amber light attached to it. She smiled patiently with bright red lipstick. Laura held up a finger to mime the universal sign for 'one moment,' and opened her purse. She fished out a cream colored lanyard, attached to a small metal disk machined out of a single chunk of aluminum. She held it out, and the light pulsed green with a gentle chime.

"Ah yes, Mrs. Constantine. Right this way." She held her slender hand with bright French polished nails, pointing with all five fingers, toward the metal walkway.

"Ms., actually."

She nodded contritely. "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 aromas. Small waves lapped against the ship, and their vibration carried through the steel of the walkway. 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?"

He paused to think. "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 covered the gap between the walkway and the ship. Ahead of them, a group of passengers trickled through a bag x-ray and a metal detector. They emptied their pockets and nestled expensive watches and belts into gray plastic bins. A security guard stood behind the x-ray machine and watched quietly.

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 displacement 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."

"Five stars is enough adjustment. 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 on Blue Peter Cruise Lines letterhead. The x-ray operator scanned the letter authorizing Laura to be armed on board, signed by their Captain.

Rohit's eyes flashed a brief surprise.

—---------

Early morning August 18th, Provideniya Russia

The first glow of the sunrise filtered through the small window in the quiet cement apartment block. Oleg Ivanov stared intently at the chess board on his laptop screen, alone in the dark room. In a few clicks, he forced his opponent into the Lucena position, and won the rook and pawn versus rook endgame. His favorite. A small counter in the corner of his screen turned green and ticked upward to 1,623, his new ELO score. He smiled slowly, closed the laptop screen, and slid it into his duffel bag.

He rented the room for a few weeks with an envelope of cash and a handshake. Oleg stood from his chair, stretched, and yawned. He adjusted his sweater and wool cap and walked over the threadbare rugs, past the broken refrigerator and the old electric oven propped open for a small promise of warmth, and to the windowsill. A hunk of cheese and a small remnant of bread loaf sat waiting in the cold air. Breakfast thought Oleg. What kind of shitheap town doesn't even have a restaurant? He shook his head at the memory of buying the bread between racks of boots, tools, and everything else, at the only store in town.

He tore the bread and cheese apart and ate them, then wiped his hands on his pants. He pulled two passports from his duffel bag and flipped open the first. 'Mikhail Kuznetsov' smiled back with Oleg's 50 year old, thin face and severe blue eyes behind steel gray metal glasses. He smiled. A good fake, my man in the Ministry of Internal Affairs is keeping his standards up, he thought. Good enough for Moscow to Anadyr to Provideniya. He carried the passport to the kitchen, started the gas cooktop with a click-click-click-thwump, and lit Mikhail on fire. Then he swept the ashes into the trash.

He pulled out the second passport. 'Lev Volkov' smiled back with the same picture. He flipped to the endorsements, and nodded his approval at the forged exit stamp from Russia and an entry stamp for Anchorage, Alaska.

Oleg closed and locked the door of the small apartment. He checked his watch, a small black Casio, and saw it was four o'clock in the morning. He walked three floors down the central staircase, the walls peeling flakes of paint. He propped open the building's metal door, and stepped into the dawn light. His breath gathered a cloud around his face, then the freezing maritime air whisked it away.

A man walked by with a small dog on a leash and nodded curtly. Oleg kept his head down and nodded, partially hiding his face. Small towns are the worst, thought Oleg. Everyone recognizes your face. Give me ten busy border crossings before I come to a godforsaken small town again.

Oleg kept walking. He passed by two more apartment blocks. The gravel road crunched under his boots, loud in the still and quiet of early morning. To his right, rusted cranes for unloading ships. Beyond them lay the calm and gray Bering Strait, and beyond it Alaska.

At the thought of the country, Oleg shook his head. Americans think they are free and independent, he thought. No one is independent, and no one is freer than a rich Russian.

To his left, a barren grass hillside stretched pastorally onward into mountains. The margins of the town were scattered with crumbling houses and tangles of razor wire. The next apartment block sat empty, the windows dark holes or boarded in battered plywood, the cement streaked with mildew. The next space between apartment blocks was covered in shattered glass. Oleg turned to his right, to walk to the shoreline. The port sat silently, built by a distant Soviet central plan and now thrown into disuse. He threaded across the concrete, between stacks of rusting shipping containers, and around 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?" He smiled broadly below a greasy mustache and above a disheveled mess of clothing.

"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 a loud, wheezing laugh that echoed over the port and bounced between the shipping containers.

"Whatever. Let's get moving, anyway. I'd like to be in Dutch Harbor while it's still light out."

"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 belched into his closed elbow. He extended a hand, bobbing up and down as the plane floated.

Oleg shrugged off the help, and stepped into the plane. The interior smelled like body odor and cheap vodka. He threw his black duffel bag inside, and buckled himself in the seat.

Anton 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?"