NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

PROLOGUE

ODESSA, RUSSIA, 1918

THE DENSE FOG rolled into the harbor late in the afternoon, nudged by a sudden change in wind direction. The damp gray billows washed over the stone quays, swirled up the Odessa Steps and brought an early nightfall to the busy Black Sea port. Passenger ferries and freighters canceled their runs, idling dozens of sailors. As Captain Anatoly Tovrov groped his way through the bone-chilling mists that enveloped the waterfront, he could hear bursts of drunken laughter from the crowded dives and brothels. He walked past the main concentration of bars, turned down an alley and opened an unmarked door. Warm air, heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke and vodka, invaded his nostrils. A portly man sitting at a comer table beckoned the captain over.

Alexei Federoff was in charge of Odessa Customs. When the captain was in port, he and Federoff made it a habit to meet at the secluded watering hole, frequented mostly by retired mariners, where the vodka was cheap and not usually lethal. The bureaucrat satisfied the captain's need for human companionship without friendship. Tovrov had steered a lonely course since his wife and young daughter had been killed years before in one of Russia's senseless outbursts of violence.

Federoff seemed strangely subdued. Normally a boisterous man who could be counted on to accuse the waiter jokingly of overcharging, he ordered a round by silently raising two fingers. Even more surprising, the frugal customs man paid for the drinks. He kept his voice low, nervously tugging at his pointed little black beard, and glanced nervously at other tables where weather-beaten seamen hunched over their glasses. Satisfied that their conversation was private, Federoff raised his drink and they clinked glasses.

“My dear Captain,” Federoff said. “I regret that I have little time and must get directly to the point. I would like you to take a group of passengers and a small amount of cargo to Constantinople, no questions asked.”

“I knew something was odd when you paid for my drink,” the captain said, with his usual bluntness.

Federoff chuckled. He had always been intrigued by the captain's honesty, even if he couldn't comprehend it. “Well, Captain, we poor government servants must exist on the pittance they pay us.”

The captain's lips tightened in a thin smile as he eyed the corpulent belly that strained the buttons of Federoff's expensive French-made waistcoat. The customs man often complained about his job. Tovrov would listen politely. He knew the official had powerful connections in Saint Petersburg and that he spent his days soliciting bribes from shipowners to “smooth the seas” of bureaucracy, as he put it.

“You know my ship,” Tovrov said, with a shrug. “It is not what you would call a luxury liner.”