10. Alexei
Alexei
Quantum Drift is smaller and faster than my or Lars’s superyachts and is already waiting at Marseilles.
Instead of heading there, though, I send Lars a message from an internet café on the outskirts of Paris, using the private code we devised during my years in captivity with the Orlovs, giving him a longitude and latitude to send the yacht.
Then I dye my hair black in a truck stop just outside Paris, swap my eye patch for dark glasses, and buy a shirt and jeans.
I pay a homeless guy outside the truck stop twenty euros for his dirty Barca football cap, then buy dinner for a Spanish truck driver heading home to Barcelona.
He talks almost nonstop during the eight hundred plus kilometers to the border and only falls quiet in the early hours as we cross the Pyrenees into Spain.
From a bus stop just outside the city, I take a bus down to Tarragona, then board the ferry out to Palma island. I spend an uncomfortable night curled up beneath a boardwalk, my hand tightly clasped around the square box in my pocket that has somehow survived the chaos to here.
In the early hours of the morning, I hit the fish markets and buy a large foam box of freshly caught bluefin tuna packed on ice. At the marina, I bargain with a local charter operation.
“It is for some rich man on a yacht,” I tell him, layering my Spanish with a heavy Russian accent. “My boss asked me to take it.” I shrug, as if I were any other immigrant worker doing whatever I need to for a cash rate. He rolls his eyes but casts off readily enough when he sees the roll of cash.
Quantum Drift is anchored in a small patch of international water between Palma and Sardinia. The crew drop the ladder down the side and take the foam box of fish. “The boss wants you to come on board too,” the crewman orders me.
I feign confusion. “Why?”
The crewman rolls his eyes. “Wants you to tell his friends exactly where the fish was caught or some bullshit. I don’t know. Hurry up.”
The charter guy snorts. “Rich people,” he mutters, shaking his head. “Rather you than me,” he says dryly as I mount the ladder. “If you want me to pick you up again, just let me know.”
“Doubt it,” says the crewman over my head. “We’re heading for Greece in the morning. But thanks.”
I climb over the railing to stand on the deck. The crewman waits until the charter boat is out of sight to drop the act. “Welcome aboard, sir,” he says, grinning as he shakes my hand. “Almost didn’t recognize you for a moment there.”
“That’s kind of the point.” I return his smile and turn to the captain, who is tall, extremely brawny, and grinning even more widely than the crewman.
“Good to see you again, Andrew.” The captain is an Australian guy who’s worked for both Lars and me for several years now.
He and Lola, his Spanish wife, are both ex-navy in their respective countries and double as very effective security as well as run an extremely tight ship.
Best of all, they know not to ask awkward questions.
“Phone,” Andrew says, handing me a box. “We keep several of them on board in case of emergencies. It’s as secure as phones get.
And you’re familiar with the cyber room,” he adds.
It isn’t a question, since he knows Lars and I designed the secure room together.
“You have your own code for the door, obviously.”
“Yes.” I look around at sea, but there’s only the vaguest blur of land in the distance. “Where are we heading?”
“South, currently, but we can change course if you wish.”
“No.” I turn my face up to the sun. “South is good. I’ll let you know more later.” I yawn. It’s been a long couple of days. “For now, I’m heading for the shower. When I get out, I’ll take a bottle of vodka and some of that bluefin tuna I brought with me.”
Andrew grins. “Nice choice. I’ll get Chef to make up a plate of sashimi. And we’ve got Graf vodka in stock, of course.”
Of course. I return his smile. Graf isn’t just my family’s favorite vodka. It’s part of our family legacy, the means by which my father once smuggled the Naryshkin treasures out of Russia.
My father. Fuck. I promised we’d spend time together in Paris.
I pull out the phone and stare at it, then reluctantly put it back down.
No matter what Andrew says, I’ve been deep enough in tech my entire life to know there is no such thing as a secure phone.
Unlike my cyber room, which has a sophisticated scrambling system not even the best hacker could follow.
And by now, I guess my father knows someone is trying to kill me.
It doesn’t make me feel any better about letting him down.
Again.
Not to mention Masha, who doesn’t like broken promises at all.
And both of those crimes, no matter how bad, pale into insignificance beside that of leaving Ofelia’s half-naked body on a hotel bed with no explanation at all.
Christ.
I emerge from a very long shower and shave, then dress in shorts and a V-neck.
For a moment I debate whether or not to put the eye patch back on, but in the end, I keep the sunglasses.
It’s probably wiser to keep the disguise in place for now.
Back up on deck I pour a stiff measure of Graf over ice and savor the sashimi, which is almost good enough to make up for the trials that brought it here.
After polishing that off I lie back for a moment, enjoying the sun before I need to go inside and face the screens in the cyber room.
Closing my eyes is a mistake, of course.
The minute I do, all I see is Ofelia’s face.
Liar.
I see her face and her body. Every delicious crevice of it, not to mention the tantalizing imaginings of the parts I haven’t yet seen.
Yet?
That makes it sound like I’m planning on seeing those other parts.
Sure, asshole. Because obviously there’s nothing idiotic about the thought of asking Ofelia to come and hang out with a fugitive from international justice. It’s just the kind of safe, low-risk activity that any parent would approve of, right? Particularly Roman fucking Borovsky.
You need to park that particular fantasy, idiot.
Except I can’t rid my mind of the thought of having Ofelia here, with me, on the open sea.
I can already imagine her long limbs growing tan in the sun, wearing nothing but a bikini that I can pull off at every available moment.
I imagine the long summer days slipping away between one Mediterranean port and another.
Waking with her next to me in the vast master cabin, as the sun rises over Ibiza.
Slipping my arms around her lithe waist as we lean against the railing, watching the sun drop behind the sea.
Making slow, luxurious love to her out here on the deck beneath a carpet of stars.
Fuck.
I sit up abruptly, willing my throbbing hard-on to subside.
I need to get my shit together.
Reality is having black hair instead of blond.
Of being on the run from at least two, and possibly more, intelligence agencies.
Not to mention whatever private contractors are currently hunting me in search of a decent fee.
Reality is being unable to stay anywhere for longer than it takes to resupply and expecting guns to greet me every time we pull into a marina.
It’s losing my own name and having a passport that reads—I open the offending document, scanning my new name again—Ken Thompson.
Seriously, Mickey?
I glare at the name. “I sound like a fucking insurance agent,” I say aloud.
I read it again, wondering why it sounds so damned familiar. Then, as the penny drops, a slow grin spreads over my face. I raise my glass to Ofelia’s brother.
“Nice geek joke, Mickey,” I say aloud and down the vodka. Ken Thompson was the primary creator of the original Unix operating system, back in the ’60’s.
Ironically, I feel oddly cheered at the thought that despite Mickey’s less than subtle hostility, he still found a way to make me laugh.
Still grinning, and with my extremely inappropriate Ofelia fantasies safely filed, at least for the moment, I make my way down to the cyber room and open up a secure line.
Barely a minute later, Lars’s voice crackles down the line. “Motherfucker,” he greets me. “How’s Cuba?”
So this call is for listening ears, then. That means no discussion of John Owens or my current location.
“So far, blissfully shark-free.”
“Good to hear, though I have a feeling they’ll be circling soon enough.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Lars sounds convincingly annoyed. “That piece of shit Darkside site just published a story about your Cuban business deal.”
Since I don’t have a Cuban business deal, I grin to myself, but aloud I make a frustrated noise like the experienced bullshit artist I am.
“And you should brace yourself,” he goes on. “It looks like the paparazzi got word about your chopper landing on the Guapa somewhere out in the Caribbean this morning, so expect a lot of cameras when you get to the Havana marina.”
“Damn.” Since I’m currently several thousand miles from both the Caribbean and the Guapa, that suits me just fine.
“After Havana, I’d take the Guapa down to the Caymans for a while,” Lars continues. “Miami’s a little hot just now.”
Better if they think I’m properly scared off.
“Shit.” I swear as if I actually mean it. “Copy that.”
“In other news,” he says, “Mickey and I decided to move that new start-up you’re backing to Paris, take advantage of the new wave of government funding. We’ve leased a network of offices. As partner, you’ll need to sign some of the documents. They’ll be waiting for you in the Havana office.”
“Fucking paperwork,” I say gloomily, suppressing the urge to laugh. Since there is no deal, no paperwork, and no Havana office, Lars’s games will have the John Owenses of the world chasing nothing around Cuba and Paris for weeks.
“Mickey and I have even relocated to Paris, for now, at least,” Lars goes on. “I put the apartment in your name as well as mine, so you’ve got a base when you come to town.”