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Chapter Twelve

Destroyer Kerch

Barquentine Loredana, Black Sea

Natalya was the de facto skipper of the ship now. A bright lass, she’d paid close attention to ship’s handling and seamanship under Vraciu. Whatever his myriad other failings, Bogdan Vraciu had been a competent seaman. Now, the crew followed her orders, those orders backed up by the frightfully ruthless set of Russian demons striding the decks.

Progress wasn’t appreciably slower under the reduced crew than it had been with a full crew, at least it wasn’t after Mokrenko clubbed one of them with a belaying pin and tossed his body to the deep. After that, little Natalya’s commands were obeyed with stunning promptness. Notwithstanding this, though, the moon had set just after ten in the morning. It was, if calm, the most pitch-black night Mokrenko could even remember.

Because of the darkness, the Loredana had only three sails set on the top three yardarms of the foremast and was creeping ahead under sail power alone. It might as well have been a fish underwater for all the noise it made gliding across the now glasslike sea. Because it didn’t make any noise, the passengers were able to hear everything around them quite well. What they heard . . . 


The Kerch was no longer, “His Imperial Russian Majesty’s Ship,” which prefix the Empire, in fact, didn’t use. Neither had the Bolsheviks whose side the crew had taken yet gotten around to coining naval titles. Perhaps they never would. Nonetheless, though painted gray, the ship was redder than a party banner.

This was why the crew of the Kerch had taken some sixty-three officers, most from the Four-ninety-first (Varnavinsky) Regiment, though the Forty-first Artillery Battalion and the Twenty-first Caucasian Mountain Artillery Battalion had their representatives there, too, then tied them, attached iron weights to their legs and threw them overboard to drown.

Not a one of the officers so treated was in any sense nobility, either.

A few of the men were shot off the side by the crew, and that was a series of sounds that was very plain. Most, however, were simply tied, weighted, and dumped. Generally speaking they sank quickly. At least one, however, either preternaturally strong or just lucky in partially slipping his bonds, still struggled, more than half panicked, calling for a help that, of course, the only ship he knew of in the vicinity, the Kerch, was most unlikely to give.


“Shit, they’re murdering somebody,” said Mokrenko, “a lot of somebodies.”

Lieutenant Turgenev, standing with the Cossack on deck, nodded, unseen in the darkness. Turgenev was, while still a little weak from hunger and loss of fluids, otherwise completely recovered from his seasickness.

“Do you see their running lights?” the lieutenant asked.

Mokrenko strained for a bit before answering, “Ye . . . yes, sir. I see them.”

“One’s still struggling, at least one. Keep the crew and our men quiet. Have Natalya steer just to the left of the running lights; I think that man is to the left.”

A fresh spurt of calls for help seemed to confirm this.

“Yes, sir, but . . .”

“I’m going in,” Turgenev said. “I’ll save him if I can.”

“Sir, you’re being an idiot. You don’t have to do this.”

The lieutenant sighed. “Sergeant, if I don’t, I’m never going to be able to sleep at night again without hearing that in my head. Maybe I’ll fail, yes, but I have to try.”

“Well . . . shit!” Mokrenko exclaimed. “Fine, then, if you think you fucking must. But tie yourself off to a rope, before you go in. Be a better chance for you and for him. Hell, if you’re not attached to the ship you’ll never catch up to us . . . and we can’t afford the noise of furling the sails.”

“Right.”


Turgenev lowered himself over the side, with a length of rope looped around his waist, trailing by nine or ten arshin a life buoy from the running end. He started with a kick off from the hull, then assumed an Australian crawl stroke to eat up the distance.

The problem with that was two-fold. In the first place it made noise and, while Turgenev didn’t think the ship could hear, he didn’t want to take a chance. The second problem was that the noise prevented him from hearing, where the sounds of the victim or victims were his only guide.

“Shit,” he muttered, then took up a breaststroke, which was not only quieter, it better allowed him to keep his head above water.

“Heellllpppp! Heeeellllppp meeee . . .”

Turgenev altered his direction slightly to aim more closely for the sound.

“Hellll . . .”

There he is, less than a dozen feet from me, I think, but I cannot see a thing.

There came some vigorous splashing then, uncoordinated, spastic, as if panic had taken over completely. Turgenev thought it would be enough sound cover for him to take up a more energetic stroke. He did, with furious, calorie burning reaches and even more powerful kicks . . . 

Only to reach . . . nothing. He couldn’t even tell if the water was disturbed by anything but his own swimming.

If he’s not here then he’s . . .  Turgenev took a deep breath, then another, and dived down, then circled around, his feet propelling him as his hands reached for . . . nothing. Shit.

Oddly enough, it was the victim who found him, not he the victim. Just as the lieutenant reached the last of his oxygen, a single hand locked into a death grip on his left arm. There was nothing to do but go up, pulling himself with his one free arm while pushing with the kicking legs.

Turgenev broke the surface and only just managed to explosively exhale and draw in about a quarter of a breath before that dead weight on his arm pulled him under again.

Now it was Turgenev’s turn to panic. He knew he didn’t have much air left and he felt his body demanding it with a pounding heart and aching lungs. He struggled, he kicked, and just when he thought his fight was over that death grip on his arm loosened.

I’ll be damned if you’re going to die now, you son of a bitch, after all you’ve put me through.

Twisting once again, under water, with nearly the last of his strength and endurance, the lieutenant aimed back down again, once again feeling around for . . . 

I’ve got him, he exulted. Now how do I save him?

Swimming is a miserably inefficient way of getting around, really. Pulling oneself along with a rope is much, much better. With one hand firmly on whoever the hell it was who’d nearly drowned him, he moved his other hand to the cord looped around his waist, and from there made his best guess of which cord ran to the life buoy. Once he’d made his determination, he looped the fingers of the other hand around the cord that ran to the life buoy, closed them, and began to pull, dragging himself and his charge upward, praying that he’d have enough oxygen and strength left to make it.

Ouch, the lieutenant thought, when he hit his head on the lifebuoy, which wasn’t as soft as all that, really. In a half second, he was gratefully breathing fresh, salty air, even as he dragged the other man upward into the air, then threaded one of his arms through the buoy.

There came a series of wet, gagging coughs, accompanied by spasms as partially filled lungs forcefully emptied themselves.

“You’ve got to be quiet, friend,” Turgenev advised. “I don’t know if that ship can hear us.”

Around more coughs, slightly suppressed, a weak voice said, “Thank you . . . whoever . . . you are. I’ll . . . try to be . . . as quiet . . . as I can.”

“Who are you?” Turgenev asked.

“Lieutenant . . . First Lieutenant . . . Sergei Babin . . . Four-ninety-first Infantry Regiment . . .”

“We’ll talk later, Sergei, because I think . . . right about now . . .”

And with that, the cord from the Loredana to Turgenev snapped up through the water, then began to drag him, the life buoy, and Lieutenant Babin through the cold water with a startling speed.


Babin sat in the galley, nursing a cup of not very good tea with a healthy dollop of not very good rakia added to it. His uniform was drying so, for the nonce, he was wrapped in a couple of blankets. Despite this, he looked utterly miserable. Mokrenko and Turgenev sat with the rescued man, while the medical orderly, Timashuk, checked for temperature and pulse.

The rescued lieutenant spoke without emotion, deadpan, exhausted, and distantly, as if what he was describing had happened to someone else.

“There were forty-eight of us,” said Babin. “Well, forty-eight from my regiment, the Four-ninety-first Infantry. I don’t know how many were from the artillery units with us.

“We’d been sent on a transport to demobilize at Novorossiysk, together with the enlisted men. When we got there, the sailors of the fleet—the red fleet—demanded the men go and fight the anti-Bolshevik Cossacks on the Don. They refused but they were still on the transport ship. The Kerch then threatened to torpedo the transport, which would have killed a lot if not all of the men, unless they turned their officers over to the Reds. So they did.

“We weren’t too worried at first. Some of the officers were even willing to go fight; after all, not a single one of us was even minor nobility. But the Reds weren’t interested in that. They disarmed us, tied us, tied weights to our legs, and threw us over the side. Well, most of us; a few were shot over the side.

“I was lucky, just lucky, that they made a mistake when they tied my hands behind my back. I was able to get them free, and then one of my legs. If not”—here Babin showed just enough life to nod at Turgenev—“even your best and bravest efforts would have been too late.”

“Not a one of us even from the minor nobility,” Babin repeated, a tone of incredulity creeping in. “So . . . why? Why kill all those officers? What good did it do them?”

“Terror,” answered Turgenev and Mokrenko, simultaneously.

Babin shook his head, closed his eyes, and leaned forward to rest his head on his arms, above the table. Both Turgenev and Mokrenko had the good grace to look away, not wanting to see Babin’s shoulders shaking.


They were nearing land. There wasn’t a lot of time left to waffle over important matters. In this quiet time before sunrise, in their shared cabin, which was both guarded and sealed from eavesdropping ears, Turgenev and Mokrenko sat under the flickering light of a gimbaled lantern. The lantern was now fed by kerosene lifted from the late captain’s cabin.

“Speaking of murdering people at sea, Sergeant, what are we going to do about the crew?”

“Kill them, of course,” Mokrenko answered, “even though I don’t like the idea. Still, what else can we do? We can’t let them into port to raise a ruckus about the ones we killed or the captain’s chest we took all their money from. We can’t leave them here. It’s not even a good idea to leave the ship still floating, really. Besides, they’re all pirates.”

“But kill them in cold blood?” Turgenev objected. “C’mon, Sergeant; there’s got to be another way.”

The sergeant shook his head doubtfully. “We can put them in a ship’s boat with some food and water but no oars, sir. Then what happens when they get picked up by another ship? What happens if it’s that Bolshevik ship that murdered all of Babin’s comrades? The Kerch, was it? Think those cutthroats won’t be able to put two and two together and come up with at least some questions about us? We’re too military, too much a team even though we tried—not especially well, in my humble opinion—to hide it. And not under their authority, hence a threat to that authority.

“Or maybe,” Mokrenko continued, “we try to put them ashore somewhere deserted. They can walk, still, so about the time we get to, say, Yekaterinburg, there’s a battalion of Bolsheviks waiting for us with our descriptions.

“Or we leave them chained below, they get found and . . .”

A light and gentle knock on the door stopped Mokrenko mid tirade. It could only have come from one person aboard ship. This was confirmed when she asked, “You sent for me, Lieutenant?”

“Come in, Natalya,” Turgenev said, gently, then added, to Mokrenko, “There are some questions we need to ask her before we do anything rash.”

The girl entered, then closed the door behind her. She’d dispensed with her dress and put on some clothing taken from the chest of one of the deceased sailors, killed in the attempt at murdering the Russians. She was tall for her age and sex and the sailor had been short, but she still had to cinch her belt tightly, while rolling up the trousers and sleeves.

“Sit, girl,” Mokrenko said. “The lieutenant has some questions for you.”

“Natalya,” began Turgenev, “first off let me say you’re doing a fine job of captaining the ship. Could you do it if we left it to you?”

The girl snorted with derision. “The crew would have me on all fours within the hour. They have before, after all. If you gave me a gun, they’d wait until I was asleep and do the same. Or they’d ambush me when I came out of my cabin.”

Mokrenko scowled while Turgenev’s face began to look mildly ill.

“Not just Vraciu, then?” the Lieutenant asked.

“All of them but the two queers,” she answered, “Zamfir and Vacarescu, and they didn’t try to help me, either. Vacarescu was the one the sergeant had bludgeoned and dumped over the side.

“When the captain was done with me, any given night, he’d turn me over to his son. When the son was done, I was sent to the crew.”

“There’s your cold blood gone, Lieutenant,” Mokrenko said. “I hate the bastards already. They’re all fucking rapists and deserve to hang, except the one who is guilty by silent consent. But even he is still guilty.”

“That’s not the only question,” Turgenev said. “Natalya, I’m not too sure about actually going to port, but can we get this ship into port without them? I mean the sails . . .”

“Sure, sir; the engine is fine and there’s plenty of fuel for this short a trip. Let me know and we’ll be in Rostov-on-Don before tomorrow morning. Or someplace else if you prefer.”

“How about docking?”

She shook her head. “We’d need the deck hands if we were going to tie up at the pier, yes, but there’s no need to dock. We drop the anchor in the harbor, then you can row ashore in the two ship’s boats.”

“Too many questions of an empty ship in port,” said Turgenev. “I think we sink the ship well away from port, and find our way there on foot.”

“Yes, sir,” Mokrenko agreed. “And there goes the last argument for sparing any of them. Now how do you want them killed, sir?”

“Natalya?”

The girl thought about that a moment, then said, “Drowning’s as good as hanging. Just throw them overboard.” Natalya’s face when blank then, and when she spoke again her voice was like something from beyond the grave, creaking and lifeless. “Once, early on, when I wouldn’t cooperate, the captain had two of the men hold my head under water until I passed out, then revived me and did it again . . . and again . . . I don’t know how many times. Eventually, I cooperated.”

“Including . . .” Turgenev didn’t want o think about that. Instead, he struggled for the unfamiliar name, “Zamfir, was it?”

The girl’s voice returned to normal, though her face remained blank. “The sergeant said it, sir, he’s guilty by silent consent.”

Turgenev went silent for a bit, looking down at the deck. Finally, he said, “Sergeant, this court, having heard from sufficient witnesses to establish guilt for rape, conspiracy to commit rape, and conspiracy to commit piracy on the high seas, sentences the prisoners to death. No need for any ceremony; just take a large enough detail and drown them, please.

“Oh, and send Sapper Shukhov to me, if you would.”

Mokrenko stood and saluted, pleased that his officer was not only doing the smart thing, he wasn’t dilly dallying about it anymore. “Natalya, you want to witness this?”

Life returned; the girl smiled grimly, answering, “Absolutely, Sergeant.”


“Go up on deck, Natalya,” Mokrenko said, “and order the sails furled and the men in the rigging to come down. Tell Visaitov to guard them carefully. Then meet me by the foremast, below. When we bring out the crew stand back out of the way. They may get violent?”

“Okay, Sergeant.”

Once she was gone, the sergeant mustered everyone but Timashuk, the medic, now at the wheel, the lieutenant, Shukhov, Babin, and Visaitov, now guarding Timashuk and the few of the crew working the rigging.

He ordered Shukhov, the sapper, to report to Turgenev. The remainder he assembled—Corporal Koslov, Novarikasha, Lavin, and Sarnof—around the forward mast by the passenger cabins. “This has to be quick,” he warned, “without any warning, forceful, decisive, and final. A cornered rat will fight, desperately. Koslov, Novarikasha; you’re the seizure team. You bring them out one at a time. Club them if you must. Lavin, you’re the binder. When the prisoners are brought out, you tie their hands fast and tight. Don’t worry about discomfort; they won’t feel it for long. Sarnof, you and I will be armed, watching over the other three. Got it?”

“Sure, Sergeant . . . yes . . . seems kind of cold blooded to me . . . still . . . didn’t like the bastards anyway.”

“Back here in five minutes with everything you need. Go!”


“So, Shukhov,” the lieutenant began, “we need a way to burn or explode the ship, with a longish delay, maybe two or three hours, to give us time to get away. It would be better if it looked spontaneous, an accident. Can you do this? How?”

“Well, I’m sure I can, sir, but without nosing around I’m not sure yet exactly how. Can you give me a little time, to see what I can come up with?”

“Sure. Once you figure it out, let me know what will work.”


The crew, when not on duty, were kept in a cargo hold below, filthy, wet, and rat-infested. Mokrenko, is his most forcefully guttural Russian, gave the orders while the girl translated.

“All right, you filthy swine, we’re going to scuttle the ship. With you, we’re putting you into a boat to row to shore. Or, if you don’t like that, you can try to swim or stay here and just drown. Don’t like either of those ideas? Good. Come up one at a time.”

The first one out, first by virtue of having the sheer bulk to force his way to the ladder, was the ship’s cook. As soon as he had his feet on deck, standing under the unwavering pistols of Mokrenko and Sarnof, Lavin spun him about, pulled his hands together, and bound them firmly at the wrist. Then the cook was pushed to the nearest ladder leading upward.

“Do we need to put a rope around your neck to keep you upright?” Natalya asked sweetly. The cook merely snarled and began climbing the steep ladder without any aid.

“Next!”


When all nine members of the crew who still remained were up on deck and bound, Natalya translated, “On your knees and pray to God. We’re going to kill you now.”

Naturally, this raised something of a ruckus among the condemned men. One man shouted, “You said we’d have a chance at life if we performed for you.”

“A chance is only a chance,” the girl replied, “not a certainty.” She hadn’t bothered to translate any of that.

“What did we do to deserve this?” that same sailor asked of Turgenev. “It was the others who attacked you?”

“It was not the others who attacked me,” Natalya said. “That’s actually what you’re to be executed for, rape, over and over and over again. Don’t you remember?”

“You said we’d be put in a boat and allowed to row to shore.”

“We lied.”

Zamfir stumbled over to kneel in front of the girl. “I never touched you, not so much as the lightest finger. Tell them, for the love of God tell them, to spare me.”

“Silence is consent,” she replied. “When you were on watch did that not free another man to rape me?”

“Please, Natalya?”

She shook her head, without showing the least sign of pity.

“Start tossing them,” Mokrenko ordered. He’d considered cutting their throats first, but had his doubts the men would consent to be mere butchers. The four men of his detail, by twos, began lifting and tossing the captives overboard. Some struggled; some wept. Most begged. The cook stumbled to his feet and ran across the deck.

For the nonce, Mokrenko ignored the cook. Natalya concentrated on watching the doomed men splash overboard, then their short struggles before they sank beneath the waters.

“Okay, let’s get fat boy,” said the sergeant.

“Nooooo!” shrieked the cook as four men surrounded him.


Hmmmm . . . wonder what that big splash was, thought Shukhov, puttering through the galley for material he could use to blow up or burn the ship.

The engineer found a full-sized barrel, loaded with sugar. Not caring much for the niceties, he found a hammer belonging to the cook and began to beat in the wooden top. Well, that’s a start. Now let’s see . . . 


“I can do it, Lieutenant,” the sapper said. “I’ll be working a good deal of the night setting it up, but I can do it.”

“How?”

“Well, sir, I’ll set it up—except for a couple of key steps—before we drop anchor. Water drip into a bucket that tips a pot. The pot will contain lye; there’s plenty aboard. The pot will tip into one of the big ceramic bowls in the galley. That will be surrounded by four bowls with gasoline from the fuel tank, and all of it will be by the fuel tank. Last minute, I pull the batteries from the engine and pour the acid into the central bowl, then pull out the stopper to get the water drip going.

“When enough water has dripped, the lye in the pot gets tipped into the battery acid. That starts a fire—big fire, really—hot enough to set off the other bowls containing gasoline. Those, between them, torch off the fuel tank—I’ll puncture the tank to make sure there’s plenty of gasoline for the purpose. That all causes a . . . hmmm . . . this is more complex to explain.”

Accompanied by hand gestures, the engineer explained the mechanics of a boiling liquid-expanding vapor explosion. Two hands, spaced with the fingers and thumbs pointed toward each other provided the core of the diagram.

“When you’ve got a fire going outside of a fuel tank, fed by the fuel in the tank, the fuel inside gets heated.” Here, the fingers writhed, indicating rising temperature and boiling liquid. “The more heated it gets, the more the pressure inside rises.” Fingers and hands spread. “The more the pressure rises, the faster it pushes out fuel, which in turn causes a bigger, hotter fire.” Hands almost joined as fingers interlaced. “At some point in time, the tank can’t hold the pressure. It blows up”— hands and fingers spread widely—“releasing hot, misting fuel to the fire. Then . . . well, the blast is enormous.” The engineer’s hands fell to his sides, with finality.

“Enough to sink the ship?” the lieutenant asked.

“Sir, it’s going to be like thirty or forty tons of high explosive going off; I’m not sure there’ll be enough left of the ship to actually sink.”

“Okay, get it set up.”

“Yes, sir. And thus all but one of my demolition life’s ambitions will be satisfied,” said Shukhov.

“What’s the other one?” the lieutenant asked.

“I want to blow up a safe, a real safe. Preferably in a bank but anywhere will do. I’ve blown down trees and blown up bunkers, houses and bridges . . . and soon a ship . . . ah, but a good safe? That would be something to tell the grandchildren of.”

“You are a criminal in the making, Engineer Shukhov.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir. Sad, is it not, sir?”

Southwest of Taganrog, Russia

With the ship stopped dead in the water, and while the lieutenant led everyone but Mokrenko, Babin, Natalya, and Shukhov through boat drills designed to get them as far from the ship as possible in the shortest possible time, Shukhov prepared the demolition but without either emptying the batteries of acid, filling the pot with lye, or puncturing the tank.

For their parts, Mokrenko and Babin moved everything the team had brought with them, plus the captain’s little treasure chest, plus a few of the things they’d found on the ship that might be useful, up on deck. This formed a growing collection on the side away from the shore.

Watching from the deck, Mokrenko had been, at first, rather disgusted with the obvious cluster fuck that was the ship’s boat. He saw oars being tangled, momentum being lost, and a good deal of instability in the boat as the lieutenant shifted people around.

Shaking his head and thinking, We’re so fucked, he went back below to grab a couple of packs. When he came back, the boat seemed to have regained a degree of stability, but the oars were still a mess. Rather, the oarsmen were.

You would think that, having learned to march in step, they’d be able to pull an oar in cadence, too. Tsk.

Lieutenant Babin came on deck then, dragging one of the cases holding half the rifles and ammunition behind him. He, too, stopped to watch the boat’s progress. He said it aloud, “We’re fucked.”

“Know anything about small boats, sir?” Mokrenko asked, hopefully.

“Not a thing. But you don’t need to, to know that’s not the way to do it.”

“Yeah . . .”


I wish I had two drums and a couple of mallets to beat out the cadence, thought Turgenev.

“All right, people, let’s give this one more try. We don’t know the actual commands, none of us being sailors or yachtsmen, but we can figure out what has to be done and make commands up for ourselves.

“Once again, when I say ‘Ready oars,’ push the oars out until the handle part is right in front of you and all the oars are parallel to the water, with the blade—that’s the thin part—pointed straight down to the water. Got it?”

“Okay . . . ready . . . .oars.”

What actually happened then was that the men, the rowers, lifted their flaccid oars out of the water and held them, stiffly, more or less straight out.

So far, so good . . . .I think.

“Next, when I say ‘Get ready to row,’4 lean forward and push your arms straight out—yes, still holding the oar—so that the oars move up a little and toward the front . . . .now . . . get ready to row.

“Yeah . . . no, Let’s try that one again. First . . . ready oars . . . now . . . get ready to row . . . and once again . . .”


With the glass bowls arranged on the floor, and a convenient can of gasoline waiting to fill up the outer half ring, Shukhov contemplated the fuel tank.

Hmmm, he thought, I’m not going to risk losing my kindjal to a quick retreat once I puncture the tank. Let’s go see what the galley has available.

With that, he left the engine room; a subset, but a slightly higher and much drier one, of the bilges where they’d kept the crew prisoner. Up one ladder and around the rearmost mast, or mizzen-mast, led the sapper back again to the galley. The crew had left most of the ship pretty filthy, but, to give the late cook his due, the galley was spotless, to include the pots, pans, bowls, dishes, and cutlery.

Puttering through one of the drawers, Shukhov thought, I want a steady drip, or two or three of them, not a huge gusher. I think that leaves the cleaver and butcher knives out of consideration. Hmmm . . . wonder if I could arrange something burnable that would not even begin to leak much until the fire from the lye, the battery acid, and the gasoline in those bowls sets it on fire. But what?

A-ha! I can make a good size hole but plug it with a wad of cloth . . . yeah, that’s it. Now, what kind of cloth shall I use? Something tight-woven and heavy, I think. Canvas would probably do nicely . . . 


Mokrenko dropped the last rucksack on the deck, then walked a step to the gunwales, to watch the boat perform. Better, he thought. Maybe the lieutenant used to be a yachtsman.

Babin, after heaving down his load, went to watch. “They’re getting better you know, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir, but if the blast is going to be as impressive as Shukhov expects—thirty to forty tons of high explosive—I’m not sure there’s anything quite good enough or fast enough to get away from it.”

Babin’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed. “I wish I had some way to detonate that inside the Kerch.”

“The world would not be the poorer for a hundred or so fewer Bolsheviks, sir. Speaking of which, what do you intend to do once we reach landfall?”

“I don’t know. No wife—she died, years ago, and I’ve never remarried. No children. Maybe I’ll find an anti-Bolshevik faction and kill the Reds until they manage to kill me.”

“We may have a better offer for you,” the sergeant said. “I’ll bring it up with my lieutenant.”

Destroyer Kerch

The shout came up, “There’s something or someone off the port bow!”

The ship’s skipper—he’d been a petty officer not long before but was Comrade Captain Razin now—gave the orders to investigate. What the object turned out to be, once recovered, was one very fat, white-clad Romanian with his hands, now quite blue, bound behind him and a bad case of hypothermia racing at a snail’s pace to kill him.

Once the man was hoisted aboard, there being no way for him to climb, even though they untied him, the captain discovered that no one could understand a word he said. Indeed, with feeling—agonized feeling—rushing back into his tortured hands, the man could do little but scream and then moan for a long time. The crew had to pour hot, highly sugared tea into him, since he couldn’t even hold a glass or cup for himself. This was not just because of the state of his hands, but also because of his uncontrollable shivering.

“Anybody understand what he’s babbling?” asked the skipper.

Answered the mate, also a former petty officer, “Not a word, comrade, but it sounds . . . mmmm . . . Italian or Romanian, to me. I’ve heard that kind of language before. It’s not French. Not Spanish; he isn’t lisping despite the freezing. Italian or Romanian, most likely.”

“Should we toss him back in, Comrade?” asked the mate.

“Let’s see if we can get some use out of him, first. If he lives. Ask around and see if any of the crew speak either of those languages.”

Barquentine Loredana

“Well,” said Turgenev, as Mokrenko tossed him a rope to tie up the boat, “we’re not very good but we’re as good as we’re going to be in the time we have.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant. No one needed to mention that they were already three precious days behind schedule.

“Have Natalya start the engine and set course for vicinity Taganrog.”

Within minutes, with squeals and groans, a few coughs, several puffs of dense, black smoke, and some disquieting chattering, the engine sprang to life.

* * *

4 The actual command is “Prepare to give way.”


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Framed