SAINT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
The port of Saint Petersburg was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation, the busiest commercial terminal on the Gulf of Finland, feeding into the Baltic Sea.
At some sixty million tons of cargo a year, Saint Petersburg was also one of Russia’s busiest ports, but with a variety of Western embargoes in place, that wasn’t saying much these days. Rotterdam—Europe’s busiest port—serviced nearly seven times as much. Saint Petersburg hosted all kinds of shipping traffic, including big cruise liners, tankers, and RoRo ships. But container ships and their standardized intermodal containers made up the bulk of operations.
The big steel boxes had revolutionized commercial shipping traffic, expediting loading and unloading from ships to trucks by many orders of magnitude. That was the reason more than twenty million containers were in service around the globe.
Thousands of them were neatly stacked and organized according to ship destination in the first cargo area of the Saint Petersburg harbor. But tonight there was only one intermodal container that Officer Sergei Burutin was worried about.
The one right in front of him.
Burutin was perched on top of a rolling ladder. The container in question was the second of three in a stack eight meters high in one of the four orderly rows demarcated by a numbered yellow line. The thousands of multicolored stacks of steel containers all across the first cargo area were similarly organized and all precisely arranged like a giant English garden maze. Each intermodal container bore an ISO code—the international standardized letter and numbering system identifying country of origin, container type, owner/operator, serial number, and check digit.
The still night air was chill and damp, the stars hidden behind a bank of low clouds bathed in the yellow glow of the port’s blazing sodium lamps. Men shouted over the din of rumbling cranes, clanging steel containers, and revving diesel engines at the busy facility.
The anti-smuggling inspector checked his handheld RFID reader again and cast yet another glance back up at the overhead security camera—out of order for more than forty days now, according to the maintenance report he checked earlier.
Strange.
The camera covered operations for a thousand square meters of the staging area, an absolute necessity for his department, always seriously understaffed by the pencil pushers back in Moscow. He was new to this side of the port—in fact, this was his very first day of duty as a newly commissioned inspector—but he had a hard time believing they were any less concerned about the illegal transportation of chemicals, weapons, or persons in Saint Petersburg as they were back at the training academy.
“Is there a problem, tovarich?” a man asked from down below.
Burutin turned around. A large, bearded man in beige maritime coveralls and a light winter coat smiled broadly at him as he approached. A slightly built Asian man, ten years younger and half a head shorter, followed right behind him, similarly dressed.
Burutin climbed down the ladder and shook the older man’s extended hand, lowering the pistol-gripped RFID reader by his side.
“Name’s Voroshilov.” The bearded Russian threw a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at a rusty blue-and-white freighter docked a hundred meters behind him. It rode high in the water, its first container not yet loaded. “I’m the captain of the Baltic Princess.” He nodded to the Asian. “And this is my chief mate, Mr. Wu.”
Wu nodded with a forced smile.
The smooth-faced young inspector’s small hand was crushed in Voroshilov’s iron grip. He returned the same as best he could. “Sergei Burutin, at your service.”
“We haven’t met before,” the captain said.
“It’s my first day on the job.”
“In Saint Petersburg?”
Burutin squared his shoulders, trying to hide his insecurity. “Anywhere.”
“Congratulations. It’s an important job.”
“Thank you.”
“Where is Oleg? He’s supposed to be on duty tonight.”
“Officer Konev called in sick earlier. I’m his substitute.”
“Oleg is a good man. Keeps things moving around here.”
“I’ve never met him.” Konev was out with a hangover, according to one of his comrades back at the office. Not an unusual thing.
The burly Russian captain wagged his head, thinking. Finally, he pointed up at a red steel container. “It looked as if you were having a problem with that container.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
Burutin climbed back up the ladder. The lockbox on the double doors was padlocked, but the four vertical lock rods were not, as was customary. But one of the lock-rod handles was shut tight with an anti-terrorism supply chain device known as a CTPAT bolt. The certified bolt seal was embedded with an RFID chip and set through the catches. The RFID chip contained all of the data needed to identify the interior contents, content origin, and destination.
In most cases, the cargo shippers themselves installed and removed the CTPAT bolt seal in order to ensure accuracy and security in transit. But containers subject to legal inspection could be resealed only with new bolt seals and identified as such.
Burutin flashed the RFID gun at the bolt seal again, then came back down and showed it to the Russian and chief officer. The RFID readout flashed another error message.
“You see? The contents of this container don’t match my database.” The three of them were standing at the foot of the ladder.
“What do you mean?”
“This container was inspected by my department yesterday and bolt-sealed by us, but this is not the bolt seal that was attached yesterday, according to the reader. That’s illegal.”
The chief officer pointed at the RFID device. “Perhaps your reader is malfunctioning.”
“The error message indicates a problem, not that the reader is malfunctioning.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation. But I assure you, the contents are legally registered and the container was inspected by Oleg—excuse me, Officer Konev—and myself just yesterday.”
“I’m sure you did. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the bolt seal has been changed.”
“It couldn’t have been changed. I’m in charge of all cargo operations. I would know about it.”
The inspector smiled thinly. It was just possible this was a test. He had heard of such things at the academy.
“Yes, you would know about it, wouldn’t you? Still, I must insist we open the container and reinspect.”
“There is no time for that. We’d have to wait for a forklift—if we can even find one; they’re all busy right now—take the stack apart, and pull out crates of machine parts that would each have to be inspected. It would take hours, and we’re due to begin loading in thirty minutes.”
“I’m sorry, but the law is quite clear. That, or you leave the container behind.”
“That wouldn’t be possible, either.” Voroshilov chuckled. “I see you have been well trained. And I respect that. I’m a licensed professional myself, and I take my cargo security seriously. Here, let me show you my credentials.”
The Russian reached into his coat and pulled out a thick leather billfold and handed it to the inspector. Burutin opened it. On one side of the billfold was Voroshilov’s maritime license, with photo and rank and ratings. On the other side was a thick wad of large-denomination rubles. About a month’s worth of Burutin’s wages.
“Everything look in order?” Voroshilov smiled broadly.
The inspector glanced back at the wallet. He was newly married, living in a cramped one-bedroom apartment with his mother-in-law, who slept on the couch. The cash was very tempting, and no doubt more would follow if he cooperated on this occasion. Konev must have worked a sweetheart deal with this man a long time ago. Mafia, maybe? It didn’t matter. It’s not the way his father had raised him.
The inspector shook his head as he handed the billfold back to the barrel-chested mariner. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must do my duty.”
“I understand completely,” Voroshilov said. “And I’m truly sorry.”
Burutin’s eyes flashed blinding white as the wrench slammed into the back of his skull. The white-hot agony crashed his central nervous system, dropping him to the cold, wet asphalt.
The gentle rocking woke him. His eyes fluttered open.
Burutin’s throbbing brain ached unbearably, each beat of his heart another nail driven into the deepest recesses of his skull. He was just one step removed from unconsciousness. The rocking motion stirred him like his wife’s gentle hand on a cold, frosty morning, easing him out of bed.
As his mind opened further, his nose filled with the stench of chemicals. The rest of his body protested, too—aches and pains everywhere. His wrists especially. Tied, perhaps? He glanced down at them, but it was too dark to see.
A slight twist of his battered head revealed a series of jagged patches of dim light. Holes. Stabbed into the wall in front of him. Another twist of his aching neck showed holes above as well.
Now he felt the contours of his body—he was twisted up and nearly fetal, his shoulder pressing hard against a smooth, curved surface. His legs? Numb and bent beneath him.
He tried to reach up with his dominant left hand, but it was weighted down, zip-tied to his other hand. He lifted his bound hands together with a groan and touched the oily, round surface with the holes in front of him. Cold, like metal.
He was inside of a steel drum.
Panic shot through him like an electrical current. His breath came in short, sharp gasps.
“Calm yourself, idiot,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Think!”
The rocking motion told him he was being transported. How? A car? No. Too small. A truck. He glanced back up. His blurred eyes couldn’t make out the distant shapes passing through the holes.
Why the holes?
Air holes.
“Good,” he told himself. They didn’t want him to suffocate. That was something. But where were they taking him? To kill him? No, they would have already done that. “Good,” he told himself again.
But he couldn’t just lie there, cramped and broken in the dark. What should he do?
He reached up toward the holes above him with his bound hands. Perhaps he could push the lid off? He pressed as hard as he could, shooting pain throughout his torso. Nothing. His numbed legs and back robbed him of any leverage. He raised his hands again toward the holes—
“Damn it!” The jagged steel sliced through the tips of his fingers. His hands jerked back, the sudden movement shooting even more pain through his cramped and injured body.
“Hey! HEY! Can anybody hear me?”
The steel barrel suddenly tipped forward as it clanged to a stop, his head smashing perilously close to the jagged air holes in front of him.
Burutin pulled his face away from the steel wall. He suddenly realized the barrel had been tipped at an angle before, and now it was vertical.
And still.
What did that mean?
The sound of scraping metal screeched beneath him as the barrel jolted forward a few inches, then came to rest again.
“HEY! HELP ME! GET ME OUT OF—”
The drum pitched forward again. Burutin’s entire body fell against the steel wall, as if laid down to bed. A heartbeat later a tingling sensation ran down his spine and exploded in his gut as his body floated away from the steel wall, weightless.
What the hell?
His battered brain suddenly understood. He opened his mouth to scream—
WHAM!
The curved steel wall smashed Burutin’s face like a hammer blow, breaking his nose. Cold water poured through the air holes, seeping in from the sides, gushing in from the top, filling the barrel quickly.
Not air holes, he realized in his blind panic.
Burutin cried and mewled, kicking his bound feet uselessly against the drum floor, which was layered in rough concrete for added weight. He slammed his hands against the lid, shredding his fingers like a serrated knife. All wasted effort. Nothing budged.
Water poured in faster. What shadowy light remained melted away. The drum righted as the ice-cold sea flooded in, leaving an air pocket at the top, just enough for Burutin to scream his last in the dark before the barrel finally slipped beneath the waves.
Burutin’s death was slow. His last cries were baffled by the frozen seawater sucking into his lungs, burning his sinuses. Trapped in the blinding dark, mindless terror crushed his chest as his spasming throat locked up, pushing iron-blue salt water deep into his belly. His eardrums burst as the barrel plunged deeper into the watery abyss.
The drum finally settled in the rocky slime some nine hundred feet below the surface of the merciless sea, his lifeless mouth opened in a perpetual, silent scream.