formed shiny puddles. The last bulkhead was locked with steel wire and the room sealed with a leaden plate.
“According to your bill of lading, you’re carrying nothing but scrap metal,” Leonid said to the ship’s captain. “Why is this area locked up?”
“That’s how the shipowner wanted it.”
“I’m officially breaking this leaden seal.” Leonid told Chevken to approach; the Nivkh was holding a bolt cutter at the ready.
“Without my consent.”
“Your protest is duly noted.” Leonid gave Chevken a sign. One clip sufficed to sever the wire, and the sergeant opened the bulkhead.
“After you,” said Leonid to the captain. The latter made no move to turn on the lights. Leonid asked Chevken for a flashlight and stepped through the doorway. This hold smelled not of iron and oil but of wet newsprint. He switched on the overhead lights. Except for three pallets stacked with cardboard boxes, the room was empty.
“That’s all there is, Comrade,” said the captain, trying to play down the discovery.
“Open them.”
Chevken unclasped his knife and cut through the straps around one of the boxes. He pulled out an illustrated magazine and handed it to the captain. The magazine’s name wasn’t written in the Cyrillic alphabet; a girl lounged under the letters. A quick flip through the magazine left Leonid in no doubt as to its contents. He found a red and blue pennant on the back cover.
“From Denmark,” he said, as if that explained everything.
The ship’s captain reiterated his assertion that he’d had no knowledge of the content of those boxes and that they were the shipowner’s responsibility. Leonid chastised the captain for neglecting his oversight duties and called upon him to follow along voluntarily to the commander’s office; otherwise, Leonid said, he would have to place him under arrest. The contraband would be confiscated. In his secret heart, Leonid regretted not having brought more men with him; in the face of any genuine resistance, he and his team would be seriously outnumbered.
He heard the sound of footsteps on metal, and the officer who was directing the salvage appeared in the hold. Leonid was informed that the cutter had been tied up and made fast, and that the operation must begin at once. Leonid left a man behind to guard the contraband and, accompanied by the captain, left the bowels of the ship.
The sky had cleared, but the wind was blowing as hard as ever. The cutter was surrounded by inflated buoys, and his men were circling it in their rubber dinghies.
“We have to start! The tide’s lifting the ship!”
And in fact, with a harsh, grating sound, the cutter went into motion. Although she seemed at first even closer to capsizing, she quickly righted herself, and her dripping bow sprang out of the water. The dinghy drivers sped toward the cutter’s stern. Leonid saw one of them bellow into his walkie-talkie; three hundred feet away, somebody started the winch. Thick steel cables rose slowly through the sea-spray, winding around the hull from both sides, stiffening, and pulling taut. The cutter was shaken by tremors, there was a shrieking and roaring of metal, but nothing moved.
“Hold that tension!” shouted the man in the dinghy.
“Two more waves,” Chevken said to Leonid. “Look over there—the Brothers are already going under.”
In fact, only the noses of the black, ship-wrecking rocks could still be seen. The cutter settled down, the vibrations slowed and dwindled, and ropes and air cushions produced stability.
“Here she comes!” Leonid heard someone cry out. “She’s climbing, climbing …” The rubber dinghy drove off, made a loop, and approached the stern again. Many voices shouted, “There it is,” and at the same time, the dinghy driver steered his boat back around to avoid being rammed by the upward-lurching cutter.
Chevken came up to Leonid as he leaned on the railing. “We’re afloat.”
“Well done!” Leonid shouted before turning around. Just as he did so, the captain of the cutter tried to make his way to the helm stand. “Where do you think you’re going?” Leonid asked.
Chevken stood in Leonid’s way. “He has to take the helm,” the Nivkh explained in an undertone. “He can use the rudder to help us with the salvage.” The cutter was shaken by a jolt as the winch pulled her in the desired direction. “We still have to get through the Brothers without wrecking the ship.”
“Shall I start the engine?” the sea captain asked. He waited until Leonid took his hand off his weapon.
“Start it,” Leonid said. Then he turned to the rail and cursed the day when