AS VITALIY HAD PREDICTED, his charters didn’t drink vodka. He’d purchased four full liters to stock his own cupboard, but though they all smoked, they didn’t drink. It only confirmed what he suspected about them. Not that it mattered one way or another. Their money spent the same as anyone else’s.
He’d beached his landing craft on a gentle gravel sloping shore, what passed for a beach here. The landing ramp he kept in the up position, lest a bear wander aboard. They were even heading toward prime hunting country, though the hunting season was now closed. While his charters had firearms, they were not of the type fit for big game. He’d thought about shooting one for his own purposes. It would make a good decoration for his wheelhouse, something for clients to remember him by. But he’d never found the time.
The charter party was camped out in the cargo area. Vitaliy had set out plastic mattresses and some folding chairs. They sat there and smoked and talked quietly among themselves, not bothering him much at all. They’d even brought their own food. Not a bad idea. Vanya was not a gourmet cook by any means, and mainly fed himself on Russian Army rations, which he bought for cash from a supply sergeant at Arkhangel’sk.
It was eerily quiet here. Airplanes flew too high to hear them, and even seeing their anticollision lights was difficult and rare enough, so remote from civilization was this part of Russia, home to the occasional adventurer or naturalist, as well as the local fishermen trying to wrest a meager living from the sea. To call this part of Russia an economic backwater was generous. Except for the moribund Russian Navy, there was nothing here for men to do, and half of that was cleaning up a mess or disaster that had gotten sailors killed, the poor sods.
But that, he remembered, was what had brought him here, and for some reason he liked it. The air was always fresh, and the winters were beyond brisk, something a true Russian had in his blood, what made him different from the lesser European breeds.
He checked his watch. The sun would rise at an early hour. He’d shake his charter party loose in five hours or so, let them drink their wake-up tea and eat their buttered bread for breakfast. He had bacon to supplement it but no eggs.
In the morning he’d go out to sea and watch the merchant traffic. There was a surprising amount of that. It made more economic sense than either trucks or the rail line into the new oil fields and the gold-mining complex at Yessey. And they were building an oil pipeline to transport the oil into European Russia, funded by mostly American oil concerns. Locals called it the “American invasion.”
Call it a day, he thought. He took a last slug of vodka and settled down on the mattress he’d laid on the deck of the wheelhouse, anticipating five or six hours of sleep.
Save some extra scrutiny at Dallas customs, which Shasif had been told to expect, given his name and face, the plane change had gone smoothly. As instructed, he’d booked a roundtrip flight and was carrying luggage commensurate with a week’s stay in the United States. Similarly, he had arranged a rental car, booked himself into a hotel, and was well armed with brochures to local attractions, as well as e-mails from friends in the area. Shasif assumed they were real people; either way, it was highly unlikely that the authorities would check.
All the red-flag issues had been covered. Still, the inspection had been nerve-racking, but in the end, it was uneventful. He was waved through the checkpoint and beyond to the gate.
Seven hours after leaving Toronto, he touched down at Los Angeles International Airport at 10:45 in the morning, a little more than two hours’ difference on his watch, having essentially traveled backward in time as he crossed the country.
After clearing customs once again, this time under the even unfriendlier eyes of LAX’s TSA agents, Shasif made his way to the Alamo counter and waited patiently in line for fifteen minutes. Ten minutes after that he was in his Dodge Intrepid and heading east on Century Boulevard. The car came equipped with one of those navigation computers, so he pulled over at a gas station, punched the address into the computer, then pulled back out and started following the arrows on the computer’s screen.
By the time he pulled onto the 405 heading north it was nearing the lunch hour, so the traffic was getting heavier. By the time he reached Highway 10, the Santa Monica Freeway, cars were moving at a sporadic thirty miles an hour. How people lived in such a place, Shasif couldn’t imagine. Certainly it was beautiful, but all the noise and commotion… How could anyone hope to hear the quiet voice of God? It was no wonder America was in such a state of moral confusion.
The Santa Monica Freeway was moving at a steadier clip, so he reached his turn onto the Pacific Coast Highway within ten minutes. Another seven miles brought him to his destination, Topanga Beach. He pulled into the parking lot, which was three-quarters full, found a spot nearest the beach trail, and pulled in.
He climbed out. The wind was brisk off the ocean, and in the distance he could hear the cawing of seabirds. Over the dunes he could see surfers, five or six of them, carving their way through the surf. Shasif walked through the parking lot and over a small rise covered with scrub brush and onto the service road. Fifty feet down the dirt tract a lone figure stood, staring out over the ocean. The man was of Arab descent. Shasif checked his watch. On time. He walked over to the man.
“Excuse me,” Shasif said, “I’m looking for the Reel Inn. I think I may have missed it.”
The man turned. His eyes were shielded by a pair of sunglasses. “You did,” he replied. “By about three hundred feet. If you are looking for chowder, though, I would try Gladstone’s. The prices are higher, but the food’s better.”
“Thank you.”
That done, Shasif didn’t know what else to say. Just hand him the package and leave? The man made the decision for him, holding out his hand. Shasif drew the CD-ROM case from his jacket pocket and gave it to the man, noticing as he did the scars on his contact’s hands.
Fire, Shasif thought.
“You’re staying for a while?” the man asked.
“Yes. Three days.”
“Which hotel?”
“The Doubletree. City of Commerce.”
“Stay by your phone. We may have something for you. You’ve done well. If you’re interested, we may ask you to play a larger role.”
“Of course. Anything I can do.”
“We’ll be in touch.”
And then the man was gone, walking back down the road.