The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(48)

“And you’ve done this before?” Jenkins asked.

“No.” She slowly shook her head. “I have had no reason to go before this.”

“Please tell me you have, at least, scuba dived before.”

“Yes. I am trained. But I must tell you that a three-hundred-meter swim is about the capacity of the tanks.”

“No, you didn’t have to tell me that.” He sat down, feeling his anxiety calm but not his concern. He tried to gather his thoughts. “How do we find the boat if we’re underwater?”

“I will have the coordinates of the ship and we will follow a compass.”

“A compass? What about currents? What if we drift, or the boat drifts?”

“The ship will not drift. He is experienced. We will follow our compass and, once in place, I will inflate a buoy with a beacon to alert him to our presence.”

“And if we’re off, then we’ve swum three hundred meters and what?”

“We will not be off.”

“But if we are?”

“If we are off, then we will be up the shit creek, I believe is how you say it.”

“Terrific.” Jenkins blew out a breath of air. “How long does the tank of air last?”

“That depends on how much you are breathing. You are big man and your anxiety will not help, but if you remain calm and follow me, then the tank will last approximately thirty to forty-five minutes, but perhaps longer since we will not be diving deep. No more than three meters. Remain calm and you will be fine.”

“What about sharks?” Jenkins asked.

“Only the kind like in your movie Jaws. Nothing to worry about.” Anna paused. Then she smiled. “It is joke. No sharks.” She checked her watch. “It is dark at 4:20. I will look for his response. One light and we go half an hour after sunset. That gives us a few hours to check the equipment and make you more comfortable.”

“If you want me more comfortable, I’d suggest you find a way to put a cruise ship in that equipment box.”





27



Using Matveyev’s personal car, Federov drove the gravel road, the car pitching and bouncing with each pothole. To his right, in between bushes and paralleling the beach, he saw the train tracks and power poles leading to the natural-gas refinery. He drove slowly up an incline, the road just wide enough to accommodate Matveyev’s car. Shrubs on each side threatened to engulf the road. Federov looked for shrubs that had been knocked down or otherwise disturbed—a possible place to hide a car.

At the top of the slope he came to a series of expensive, and more recently built, homes. He slowed and looked through fences, but he did not see any cars or any place to hide one.

As he continued along the road, now driving inland, the quality of the homes decreased significantly. Piles of construction materials overflowed the lots to the edge of the road—rusted pipes, blocks of cement, and other materials. Men stood in the road loading materials into the back of a lime-green flatbed truck. Federov stopped and exited the car. He approached the men with a picture of the Hyundai and a picture of Charles Jenkins. The photographs fluttered and flapped in the breeze off the sea.

“Izvinite za bespokoystvo. Ya ishchu etu mashinu. Vy videli eto?” I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for this car. Have you seen it?

The first man considered the picture, then shook his head. The two other men walked toward Federov, studied the picture, and also shook their heads.

“Nyet,” they said.

“What about this man? Have you seen him?”

Again, they shook their heads.

Federov believed them honest, but Russians had once again become distrusting of their government and those who worked for it. “How long have you been working on this street?” he asked.

“A couple of hours,” one of the men said. “We are just finishing.”

“Spasibo,” Federov said. He got back into the car and continued along the road, looking left and right and asking himself, What would Jenkins and the woman want more than anything?

“Privacy,” he said.

He stopped outside a house with a vacant lot on its left and across the street. A six-foot wrought-iron gate attached to a fence made from aluminum siding protected the home. Federov parked the car and stepped out, peering over the top of the fence. He did not see the car or a place to hide it. He walked to the gate and pulled on a chain, rattling the padlock, which appeared to be rusted shut. He looked again to the house, but he did not see any lights. No smoke came from the chimney.

He returned to the car and continued down the street, noting houses in various stages of construction and of various quality. He considered cars in driveways, and when he could not see over walls, he got out to look. At a fork in the road he noted a one-story home with a sloped red roof and, to its right, a shed made from sheets of corrugated metal. Federov parked on the gravel, got out, and walked to the shed. The doors did not have exterior handles, though they were hinged. A stone on the ground kept the doors shut. Federov heard wind whistling through cracks in the metal siding. He removed the stone and pulled on the bottom of the door, which remained stubborn, scraping dirt as it opened. The lack of any marks in the dirt almost caused him not to bother, but he persisted and managed to create a gap wide enough to slip his hand inside and grip the door’s edge. With a better hold, he lifted as he pulled. When he’d opened the door enough to step inside, he held up his phone and turned on the light, illuminating a gray Hyundai.