26

True or false: rare earth minerals are neither rare nor mineral.

At 5:15 a.m. on Saturday, I pull into the near-empty parking lot at Aquatic Park, strip off my sweatshirt and sweatpants, struggle into the wet suit I rented yesterday at the surf shop in Burlingame, and walk over to the beach behind the Dolphin Club. I dip a toe in and shudder. I detest the cold.

George’s friend Timofey turns out to be a fit, muscular Russian guy in his sixties. His two friends are younger Americans, one bald, one bearded. Timofey wears two rings on his left hand. I suspect one ring represents a family back home, abandoned though not forgotten. Next time, I’ll ask George how they met. The few other agents with George’s rare talents refer to their counterintelligence sources as targets, recruitments, even conquests, but for George, they are all simply friends.

“You are as lovely as the picture George painted for me,” Timofey says. In the thick wet suit, “lovely” is a stretch, but I thank him anyway. Russian men of his age, in our business, have a natural ability to charm.

I hold up the long fins I rented with the suit. “Is this cheating?”

“Not if they keep you alive, my dear.”

His friends and I exchange brief, silent nods. I struggle into my fins, and we wade into the freezing water. The three men are smiling, enlivened by the cold. My feet and hands are instantly numb. When I put my face to the water and plunge in, the water shakes my brain awake, and I lift my head, gasping as the salt water burns my nose. We swim and swim and swim, farther than I’ve ever gone before into the bay. The water is choppy. I struggle to keep the pace. I fall behind. I catch up. I’m nervous about drowning, more nervous about sharks and boats. My legs are aching, my face freezing. Every stroke is a challenge, and I’m tempted to turn around and go back when I raise my head and see the three of them treading water, waiting for me.

As I swim in closer, arms burning, I take a moment to get my bearings. I kick myself up higher to get a view over the swells, lungs tight with the cold. I see Alcatraz in front of me, the Golden Gate Bridge on one side, the Bay Bridge on the other. I try to focus on why I’m here: Gray. Is it possible that he did some of the swimming himself while the swimmer with the red cap towed him through the water? He was a star athlete before the kidnapping. In his condition, would he have been able to kick and hold his head above water? When he was found, he was naked. But surely the kidnappers didn’t throw him into the bay naked. How could he have survived the cold? The Polar Bears do it, of course, and so do many of the experienced open water swimmers who brave the journey from The Rock, so it’s possible, but Gray was already in such a weakened state.

I swim up beside Timofey and his friends, panting, trying not to panic, trying not to think of the billion gallons of water that pour straight out of the bay twice a day underneath the Golden Gate and into the wild Pacific. I hope low tide isn’t anytime soon.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” the bearded guy says to Timofey, as I join their circle.

“These are my old friends Bobby and Luther,” Timofey says. “And this is my new friend Lina.”

“What was unfuckingbelievable?”

“The shark. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Shark?” I echo. The two friends burst out laughing, and I realize they’re messing with me.

“You’ll pay for that,” I shoot back, grinning.

We tread water. My lungs fill with cold, clear air. “So, how do you like it?” Timofey asks. “Swimming so early in the morning in this beautiful bay. Is good for the soul, yes?”

“I’m not sure that’s how I’d describe it,” I pant. But the icy water does make me feel strangely alive, shocked to alertness. I see how you could get addicted to the swim, the smell, the weight of the water against your legs.

Timofey motions back toward shore. “Let’s introduce Lina to the Dolphin sauna.”

The return swim feels endless, each stroke more difficult than the last. I keep looking up, expecting to see the shore fast approaching, but it never seems to get any closer. I fall into a rhythm of exhaustion, the pain giving way to numbness, my vision adjusting to the murky water splashing against my goggles. This is a thousand times harder than cycling.

I feel it before I see it—the sandy bottom brushing against my legs. Relieved, I drag myself up onshore.

Timofey extends his hand to help me stand. “Good workout, yes?”

“Wonderful. Now how about that sauna?”

I follow them up the beach. Bobby and Luther exchange hugs with Timofey before disappearing through the back door of the clubhouse. Timofey leads me toward the women’s locker room. The same woman who turned me away a few days ago is standing outside the door, ruddy cheeked after her swim. “Good morning, Margaret,” Timofey says. “I realize it’s members-only day, but this is my dear friend Lina. I’m sure you’ll make her feel welcome.”

Margaret beams at Timofey. It’s a total transformation from her surliness the first time we met. “Take as long as you like. Wander around. Clean towels over there. No bathing suits in the sauna, please.”

I thank her. My legs are still jelly, struggling to hold me upright.

Timofey pats my cheek with the palm of his hand. His attention feels paternal, comforting. “Please, make yourself at home. We swim every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Same time, same place. Join us anytime. If you would like to become member of club, I make this happen. For you, no waiting period.”

“Thank you, Timofey. You’re a doll.”

He takes my hand, holds it between both of his, as if we are old, dear friends. “Until next time, Lina.” I imagine that whatever he did before he met George, in whatever capacity he worked for his country, his natural charm paid off in spades and made him dangerously good at his job.

The locker room is clean and smells of chlorine and shampoo. The blue metal lockers and tile floors probably haven’t changed since the 1920s. There’s still a pay phone on the wall outside the locker rooms. Old San Francisco is getting harder and harder to find these days, but this club is a reminder it still exists. I hang my wet suit on a hook, wrap the thin towel around me, and wander into the empty sauna. I love the smell of the sauna—cedar and heat. I scoop some water onto the rocks and the room fills with steam. The bay has frozen me to the core, and the heat feels like heaven. As my body slowly thaws, I drift off, thinking about Gray, the woman in the red bathing cap, the trawler, trying to fit the puzzle pieces together in my mind.

I don’t know how many minutes have passed when I hear a hiccup. I open my eyes to realize a woman is sitting on the lower bench opposite me, legs and arms splayed, staring at me unabashedly. How long has she been here? How did I not hear the door? She’s ginger-haired, blue-eyed, attractive in a sturdy Viking way. The thin layer of fat covering her from head to toe and those broad shoulders tell me she’s a competitive swimmer.

“The boys sure worked you out this morning. I saw you out there. Awesome. A shark too? You should become a member. We need more women.”

“So there really was a shark. I thought they were messing with me.”

She winks. “There are always sharks.”

“I’m Lina.”

“Christine.”

Christine is thirty-eight, a dermatologist at Kaiser. I ask about the club, the swimming, and eventually steer the conversation in the direction I want it to go. It takes a lot of conversational gymnastics to get us there, but eventually I ask, “Does anyone in the Dolphin Club wear a red bathing cap?”

“That’s random,” she says. “I have a bunch of them in my locker. You can always borrow one.”

“You have red ones?”

“No. They do have some neon-green ones at the commissary, though. Safer, more visible to the sailboats. It gets crowded in the late summer.”

“A college friend of mine had a red one. She told me it was a special Dolphin Club thing.”

“Hmmm.” She studies me with her frank expression. “Did she? I haven’t seen that. We did sponsor a swim team from Half Moon Bay for a while. They wore red. That was years ago, though. Funding has been sparse lately.”

I make a mental note to check out the Half Moon Bay swim team. Maybe it’s nothing, but maybe it’s something.

After the sauna, I stand on the deck and take in the view one last time, enjoying the cool air on my skin. Out in the bay, cargo ships move along the shipping channel. The kayakers bobbing in the waves look so small, so vulnerable. And this is only the bay. I think of Gray Stafford in the open ocean. I think of the woman in the red bathing cap. I think of what Gray told Rory in gym class: There will be others.