Compared to the launch of her dead owner a thousand miles away, the departure of Argos from the docks of Sebastopol caused barely a ripple. She was a Russian-flagged vessel, a 312-foot carrier of general cargo. The ship’s hull was weathered and her fixtures dated, but there was not a hint of slackness in her rigging, nor any chatter in the hum of her engine. Nearing the end of an unremarkable service life, she’d spent years hauling fertilizer to Syria, a surprisingly profitable niche until civil war brought agricultural production there to a grinding halt. Shifting to more reliable trade, Argos had found steady if marginally profitable work running dry goods and machinery between Black Sea ports and the more sedate corners of the Middle East.
The ship’s recent transfer of ownership had little apparent effect on her operation. Most of the crew had stayed on in a tight job market, including her skipper, a thickset Armenian named Amad Zakaryan. As sea captains went, Zakaryan was a decent sort, with a reputation as a competent if conservative master who held deep familiarity with the routes he plied. Argos was his second command, this for a man who’d been running the Black Sea since he was a teen. He’d started out pulling dock lines and scraping rust, working his way up to master over the course of three decades. In that time he’d seen great change in the merchant marine industry, much of it for the better.
The changes he saw tonight, however, were not to his liking.
Argos maneuvered up the deepest channel in the Port of Sebastopol, a weaving passage through ebony water that did justice to the adjacent sea’s name. On display to starboard, as if lined up for inspection, were bits and pieces of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It was the smallest of that nation’s naval commands, comprised largely of ships that were castoffs from the frontline cold water fleets. The docks had grown marginally busier since the annexation of Crimea, and from the wing of the bridge Zakaryan watched the hulking shadow of a destroyer slide past in the pier’s yellow-sulfur lights. Being intimately familiar with the harbor, he knew this particular warship hadn’t seen open water in five years. Of course he knew why. For an economically struggling Russia, unable to fund major repairs, more of her navy was falling each day to little more than placeholder status. Like mortgaged hotels on a Monopoly board, eye-catching but valueless.
Soon the last wharves slid past, and the channel opened up to greet the black void ahead. Zakaryan issued an order to raise the speed, but he remained on the catwalk. He half turned his head to address the man standing behind him.
“I should know what we are carrying,” the captain said. It was the third time he’d posed the question, and while he didn’t expect an answer, he thought the business of getting under way might be his last rightful chance to ask.
The man standing by the rail, who wore heavy cargo pants and a thick sweater, gave a classically Slavic shrug. His name was Ivan, or so he said, and his accent was unmistakably Russian. A Russian named Ivan. That had been the captain’s first thought when they’d met yesterday afternoon. God help us had been his second.
There had been little interface when he’d first come aboard. Zakaryan had shown the man to his quarters on the upper deck, followed by a cautious exchange as they stood watching the deck crane lift a series of pallets aboard—none of them was particularly large, but they were obviously heavy based on the creaking of the cables and the efforts of the men on the guidelines. That was when the captain had first asked what they were carrying. The second query came around midnight, after Zakaryan had signed what was clearly a dubious cargo manifest—not unheard-of in these parts. Neither query had gotten a response. Now, with the ship plowing toward open water, it seemed his last chance.
“What if we experience a fire in the hold?” Zakaryan pressed. “My men must know what they are dealing with.”
“Don’t let your boat catch fire,” said Ivan. His hair was close-cropped, his manner blunt, and a pair of squinting eyes gave nothing away.
“What speed should we make?”
“We are in no hurry We need to breach the Suez six days from now.”
Breach, Zakaryan thought, as if we’re blasting through a door. To Ivan’s name and nationality, he added a third descriptor: army. It did not bode well.
Indeed, the captain’s orders for this voyage were unique in all his years at sea. When it came to matters of storms, mechanical problems, or trouble with the crew, Zakaryan would be in charge. When it came to anything else—where they were going, what they were carrying, and when they would arrive—a Russian soldier named Ivan was in command. Every crewman’s cell phone had been secured in a locker under his bunk, and even the two-way radios were off limits, to be used only in Ivan’s presence. In Zakaryan’s experience, it was an unprecedented surrender of authority, but there had been little choice. The ship’s new ownership group, which went by the hazy name of MIR Enterprises, was represented by a man named Romanov who had made clear that if Zakaryan didn’t comply, a replacement skipper could easily be found. He’d heard such threats before from owners, yet something told him this new group would go through with it. Whatever cargo they were plying, it wasn’t going to be left stacked on a pier for the honor of one journeyman sea captain.
Zakaryan tried a different tack with his new co-commander. “I checked the arrival schedule in Mumbai,” he said, referring to their ostensible destination. “The port administration there has no record of our sailing—they won’t be expecting us.”
“Good.”
Zakaryan waited, but nothing else came. Frustrated, he stepped to the forward rail and looked out across a dead-calm sea.
“Do not worry, Captain. All will become clear. In two weeks you will be back in Sebastopol with a very nice bonus.”
Knowing defeat when he saw it, Zakaryan bent his head toward the passage to the bridge. “Make speed seven knots,” he called out.
“Seven knots?” queried the man at the helm. It was a decidedly inefficient speed, barely enough to keep steerage.
The captain shot his subordinate a hard look.
“Seven knots it is, sir.”