The captain steered the ship through the winding channel and around fog-shrouded boats as easily as a porpoise using its natural radar. Years of steaming between Odessa and Constantinople had engraved the route in his brain, and he knew without resorting to charts or channel markers how many turns of the wheel to make.

The Star's French owners had purposely neglected her maintenance for years, hoping one good storm would send the ship to the bottom and payout its insurance. Rust dripped from the scuppers like bleeding sores and streaked the blistered hull. The masts and cranes were splotched by corrosion. The ship listed drunkenly to port, where water from a leaky bilge had settled. The Star's engines, worn and long in need of an overhaul, wheezed as if they suffered from emphysema. The choking black cloud that poured from its single smokestack stank as if it were sulfur emanating from Hades. Like a terminal patient who somehow existed in a wasted body, the Star continued to plow through the seas long after she should have been declared clinically dead.

Tovrov knew that the Star was the last ship he would ever command. Yet he strove to maintain a spit-and-polish look. He buffed his thin-soled black shoes every morning. His white shirt was yellowed but clean, and he attempted to keep a crease in his threadbare black trousers. Only the cosmetic skills of an embalmer would have improved the captain's physical appearance. Late hours, poor diet and lack of sleep had taken their toll. His sunken cheeks gave even greater prominence to the long, red-veined nose and his skin was as gray as parchment.

The first mate went back to sleep, and the crew settled in their bunks while the first shift of stokers fed the coal into the boilers. The captain lit up a potent Turkish cigarette that triggered a coughing fit that doubled him over. As he got his fit under control, he became aware that cold sea air was coming in an open door. He looked up and saw he was no longer alone. A huge man stood in the doorway, dramatically framed by wisps of fog. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“Lights,” he said in a baritone voice that identified him as the figure who had been the first to come aboard.

Tovrov pulled the cord for the bare bulb that hung from the overhead. The man had thrown back his hood. He was tall and lean and wore a white fur hat known as a papakha at a rakish angle. A pale dueling scar slashed his right cheek above the beard line, his skin was red and blistered with snowburn and sparkling drops of moisture matted his black hair and beard. His left iris was clouded from an injury or disease, and his staring good eye made him look like a lopsided Cyclops.