rapidly out of sight.
Numb lassitude spread over him, and he relaxed for the first time in three days. Suddenly Valari pressed against him, her hands moving over his face, chest, groin.
“I need you,” she said. “Right now.”
With a tired smile he pulled her into the cabin.
The bright sky held no wind when he woke. For a long moment he lay in the bunk beside the woman and collected his thoughts. He tried to figure out how he could have changed the outcome.
This charter was set up by the government, even he knew that. Would the Okhana believe their concocted story about the loss of one of their agents?
“What’s the matter, Captain Lover?”
Grisha turned his head and looked at her. The now-familiar mouth smiled, lips parted slightly as if anticipating a kiss. But Valari’s eyes held a hardness unaffected through murder and sex.
He’d seen eyes like hers only a couple of times. They had belonged to desperate men whose only hope lay with the legal benediction of the Troika Guard. Both had finished badly, one shot for cowardice and the other killed in a barroom brawl.
He had let this situation get out of his control. With this woman he had helped murder a man and finally cheated on his wife. Too much, too fast. He knew nothing about her, yet she held his life in her hands. Amazing how an orgasm could clear the mind.
“What are we going to do now?” he asked.
“He got drunk and fell over the side during the storm.” Her eyes searched his. “Isn’t that what you said last night?”
“Yes, but…” Grisha licked his suddenly dry lips, “You must attest to what I say, no matter what. Agreed?”
“
“I can do that. But you worked for him, or with him, isn’t there someone you could talk to, and make this be all right?”
Something deep in her eyes shifted and for a moment he thought he saw triumph before they became veiled. “Just who do you think I am?”
“I know you’re an agent for the government. I know Karpov was someone you reported to. There’s much that I don’t know.
“Why did they hire a boat to bring you to New Arkhangel when flying would have been much more expedient? Why did Karpov hire me?” He felt angry.
“Why, at my age, is everything in my life suddenly out of control?”
“I cannot tell you more than I already have. If you do not wish to face the Okhana we have two options. We can turn ourselves in and tell the truth, which would mean the gallows for both of us—”
“For stopping him from raping you? For saving us all from drowning because he imperiled this craft?”
“They rarely believe survivors who do not bring back a corpse.”
“He fell over the side. We were in a storm, right?”
“Or we can go to California, ask for political asylum, and start our lives over.”
“Political asylum? Who are we to ask for that?”
“I’m an espionage agent for Imperial Russia, you are my lover. They would give us asylum.”
He allowed himself to think about it, to savor the idea like a bite of potato salad or a mouthful of good ale. His marriage was finished and he didn’t want to be in the same small town where Kazina would be showing off her new Russian husband. He would forfeit the house but if the authorities refused to believe them he would also forfeit his life.
He had to depend on Valari. Of course, she already said she owed him, but he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. A small part of his brain pointed out that this would be a new adventure, something he had sorely missed since leaving the Troika Guard.
He couldn’t go on smuggling forever.
“We’ll need money,” he said.
“Do you have any?”
“Yes. I’ve put away half my earnings for three years now. At first it was for my children…” He turned his head and stared toward the overhead, focused on an image infinitely far away. “Then it was for my escape.”
“How much?”
“Enough to live on for a year.”
“It’s on the boat?”
“No. It’s in my workshop behind my house at Akku.”
“Where your wife is,” Valari said.
“And her lover,” he agreed.
“Check the weather,” she said, smiling.
“I don’t understand it,” he said, staring at the high cloud cover where blue peeked through in spots. “Yesterday the radio said it would be worse by this morning.”
She laughed behind him. “How often are they correct?”
He grinned and snapped on the radio. The low-pressure system had inexplicably shifted far to the north and west where the storm now pounded from Kodiak Island to sprawling St. Nicholas, the huge military bastion of Russian Amerika on Cook’s Inlet.
They ran north as fast as he dared push the boat. Grisha settled into an apprehensive anticipation. Something about his feelings struck a chord in his memory.
Suddenly he was again a frightened five-year-old, watching his drunken father beat his mother. His mother grunted with the blows, trying to cover her face and chest. Grisha’s fear for his mother finally overcame selfpreservation and he attacked his father.
He pounded on his father with small fists. The next thing he knew, his mother was bathing his face with cold water. Pitr Grigorievich had knocked him out, realized the monstrousness of his actions, and fled into the night.
They had waited together, fearful and expectant, for the man to return and for it all to begin again. Which it did.
Grisha shook his head at the vividness of the memory. He knew he still harbored old anger for his father, but he thought the fear long vanquished. And how was this like that?
They spent the night at transient moorage in a small settlement on Mitkof Island. Fuel cost more there, but Grisha didn’t want to run into anyone he knew. Not that Valari let him get that far from the double bunk in the bow and her insatiable needs.
By 0900 the next morning they were on the last leg of their trip. The fair weather held for the entire day and they made good time. Akku Channel lay quiet and empty in the late evening when they rounded the south end of Douglas Island.
The stamp mills sat silent, something that only happened on Christmas Day and the Czar’s birthday. The last glow of light reflected on the water. Suddenly fireworks shouted across the sky as they neared town.
“What are they celebrating, a local holiday?” Valari asked.
?Grisha thought hard. “No. There’s no holiday in early July. I don’t know what’s going on.”
He slowed as they passed under the bridge, but no patrol boats lurked in their usual spots. They idled up to the fuel dock, and he tied the boat while she stepped into the office.
“There’s nobody here.”
Laughter and music drifted down from the Harbor Hotel. Fireworks popped and whistled above them, the acrid stink of gunpowder drifted on the air. Grisha shrugged and filled the fuel tanks.
“This bothers me,” Valari said. “I want to know what’s happening.”
He moved
