Russian Amerika (2 page)

"Yes," Grisha replied in English. "Are you my charter to New Archangel?"

The man casually threw his tackle kit over the gunwale. When Grisha caught it, he nearly collapsed with the surprising weight of the locked metal box. The man climbed on deck and looked around.

"You have vodka on board?"

Grisha glanced at the chronometer in the console, it was half past eight of the morning. Stale sweat and bowel gas eddied around the large man, who dropped into the other seat bolted to the bridge deck.

Grisha watched the man look around at his nautical surroundings, obviously for the first time. So what was in the tackle box? This was obviously a smuggling run and would provide much more money at the end of the trip than previously agreed.

"Yes, and beer, even some California whiskey."

The man regarded Grisha with baleful, piggish eyes. "That is against the Czar's law, unless you have paid the duty, of course."

"Of course!" Grisha suppressed a grin while stowing the tackle box, which he estimated at ten kilos, with his own fishing gear.

Like this walrus ever worried about duty taxes
!

Maintaining a professional mien, he slipped over the side onto the dock. "We're late. I'll get us underway." Quickly, he untied both lines and stepped back aboard.

Grisha edged the boat into gear and eased the throttle forward. "Do you have a name?
Other than Pig-eyes?"

The boat gently left the slip and angled toward the channel. A warm breeze rippled the water and the sky stretched bereft of clouds as far as the eye could see. A charter skipper couldn't ask for better omens.

"I am Karpov. How long does it take to get to T'angass?"

"Depends on how much fishing we do on the way and how fast we go." Grisha snapped his head around and stared at Karpov. "Wait a minute, I thought we were going to New Archangel."

"There has been a change of plans. I wish to go to T'angass."

Karpov said. "We will fish on the way back. At maximum speed, how long will it take us to get to get there?"

"Today and two more days if we don't run into bad weather. If you're in a hurry, why don't you fly?"

"I enjoy the sea air. Where is the vodka?"

"In the galley." Grisha motored slowly past the harbor patrol, careful not to show any wake. So far he wasn't making all that much on this run, and a fine would put him in the hole, as well as add stamps to his license. Collect enough stamps and the license disappears; he loved the symmetry of Russian law.

Karpov disappeared into the cabin. Grisha decided he had a smuggler on his hands. Smuggling paid a lot better than charter fishing trips, so he would patiently wait for the proposal.

A ruble was a ruble, what the hell. His wife's face flashed through his mind and he slapped the wheel.

No time for that now.
It's either better when I return or it's over
. Small angry teeth bit inside his gut. They chewed at him a great deal these days. He felt pissed at himself.

"Sorry I slapped you," he murmured to the wheel, "I was aiming for someone else."

"Do you
Creoles
talk to yourselves all the time?" Karpov asked as he clumped up out of the galley. The bottle of vodka looked small in his wide, beefy hand.

"I talk to my boat when the notion strikes me," he said, edging his words with a glint of steel. Grisha forced himself calm. This wasn't the old days, even if Kazina didn't want him anymore. But if this tub of suet kept up this "
Creole
" crap there would be trouble.

"You need some diversion on your boat for your passengers. Perhaps a
Creole
woman, heh?" Karpov laughed and drank from the bottle.

Grisha ground his teeth. It was going to be a long trip.

The boat burbled past the breakwater and into Akku Channel. He pushed the throttle forward,
Pravda's
cutwater surged up onto the step, that portion of the boat where the vee of the hull flattens into a plane for moving at high speed, and raced cleanly toward the distant tip of Douglas Island.

Grisha thought it humorous that an island in Russian Amerika bore the name of an English religious leader. But custom in the old days of exploration decreed that all nations would honor the wish of whomever named it first. British Captain George Vancouver had accurately finished what his former skipper, Captain James Cook, had started, and charted the entire southeast Alaska coast in the 1790s before Imperial Russia completely dominated the region.

The constant rumble of stamp mills faded behind
Pravda
. They passed the whaling station on the island, scaring up part of the large flock of seagulls scavenging scraps. The station's stench caught them for an instant before the boat burst through the invisible miasma.

"Smells like the
Creole
part of town," Karpov said.

Abruptly Grisha pulled the throttle back to neutral and
Pravda's
bow dipped with the sudden loss of power. The boat drifted.

"Why do you stop?"

"There will be an understanding before I go any farther. I am the captain and owner of this boat. You are my passenger.

"Despite the fact that my father was a poor Russian laborer and my mother was a Kolosh, you will show me the respect you would for any citizen, especially a boat captain. If you do not, I will return you to port so you can find a different charter to take you south."

"That would not be a smart thing for you to do. You would miss making a great deal of money. Also, your license might be forfeit."

"And your superior might ask many questions why I brought you back. Perhaps he has relatives who are
Creole
, or works with them. The Czar's ukase of 1968 said there would be no more prejudice because of one's birthright. That's nineteen years also, you should have heard about it by now. I don't want any more bigoted shit from you."

Karpov's squinting eyes receded even further into his face as he took another long drink.

"Drive your boat, I will say no more about your unfortunate station in life." As the beefy Russian lifted the bottle to his lips, Grisha pushed the throttle forward.
Pravda
reared like a Cossack’s horse and charged across the water. Karpov rocked back in his chair and vodka spilled down his neck and jacket front.

"You dung-eating Cre-, you ass!" Karpov shouted. "I would punish you for that, but for the fact I need to get to T'angass as soon as possible."

Grisha ignored him; a smile flickered at the edge of his mouth. More bullshit; if he wanted to get south as soon as possible he wouldn't have hired a small boat. His practiced eyes swept over the instrument panel and his mind ticked off the levels, amperage, RPM, and hull speed without actually thinking about them.

Kazina's face occupied his thoughts. Her dark hair framed the high cheeks and nearly jade eyes. Lilacs always attended her.

When they married just under six years ago he knew fortune had finally smiled on him. She epitomized the crowning accomplishment of his climb back from the lowest strata of the Czar's American possession.

The illiterate son of serfs, his father married a Kolosh woman of the Kootz-neh-wooH people from Admiralty Island. As a
Creole
, a person of mixed race, Grisha found himself equally shunned by the children of low-caste Russians as well as by the children of the Auk and Taku Kolosh, including his own cousins.

At an early age he learned the three essentials of survival: a quick mind, lightning fists, and fast feet. After leaving the priest's school at fourteen, he crewed on a fishing boat. At seventeen he developed into a handsome combination of the ethnicities he represented.

Grisha's virginity went to a pretty barmaid during an equinox party. Women in every port of the Alexandr Archipelago watched for him. His other idea of a good time usually involved a drunken fight after which his opponent had to be carried away.

One night the fight was with his own skipper. Grisha won the fight but lost his berth. The next morning he joined the Troika Guard, the "Russian Foreign Legion."

Originally all the officers were Russian, but that had slowly changed over the years. However, all the enlisted were either minority races from the vast Russian Empire or foreigners. Never before had he been challenged on every level of his being, nor felt the degree of camaraderie, as he did in the Guard.

The Russian Army was a political beast complete with intrigue whose genesis went back centuries. The Troika Guard was tough, demanding, and received all the hard, dirty jobs. In essence, they were mercenary troopswhich suited Grisha just fine.

He loved the Troika Guard. Starting as a sub-private he learned quickly and rapidly made his way upward to command sergeant in less than five years. His men loved him.

At the age of twenty-five he received a battlefield commission as well as the Imperial Order of Valor, the second highest decoration the Russian Empire awarded her soldiers and sailors. Four years later came French Algeria and dishonor.

His loathing of the Russian government began then and grew steadily over the years. Dealing with the day-to-day officiousness of Russian Amerika gnawed at him, but, like all other non-Russian residents, he endured.

The mustering-out money bought him his home and his boat but cost him his self-respect. He started over, going back to the things he had learned before he had killed his first man. He returned to the life he knew before the Troika Guard, fiercely holding onto the freedom of being his own boss. After a couple years fishing, smuggling, and building up a charter business, he met Kazina at a party.

She was a twenty-six-year-old bookkeeper with the Russian Amerika Company. Her extraordinary beauty lured him. Her intelligence hooked him. She made it plain she was on her way up and had no interest in a has-been.

He pointed out that he worked for himself and made a good living. They married when he was thirty-two, still the master of
Pravda
, a ten-meter fishing boat. He rigged the boat for sport fishing, which had turned into big business along the Inside Passage. Financial opportunities also occurred for skippers who knew how to lade cargo quietly and get out of port quickly.

At thirty-nine he could pass for a man ten years younger. Wiry and lean, with the exception of a slight paunch, he stood almost two meters and possessed open good looks that still attracted women who appreciated adventure.

Now, after six, almost seven, years of marriage, Kazina seemed distant. Grisha's past attempts to interact with her friends always came off stiff and wooden. None of them were
Creoles
. He detected or expected their silent racism and ceased his efforts.

The marriage had been on the ebb for some time before tall, blond, Kommander Fedorov knocked on their door with an "Imperial Order for Lodging an Officer of the Czar." Grisha's small chart room became the sacrifice for the officer's comfort and fanned the embers of his anger at the government. But the sudden animation he perceived in Kazina proved the heaviest burden. _Until Fedorov arrived, Grisha entertained hope that he could find compromise with his beautiful wife. But she hadn't even said good-bye when he left for this charter. As a commander of troops he had learned the necessity of cutting one's losses. But this was much harder. The tiny teeth bit so hard in his stomach that he groaned aloud.

"Go ahead, talk to your boat," Karpov said with a slur in his voice.

"I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when the evening meal is prepared."

As the burly man staggered down the steps into the cabin, Grisha steered sharply around imaginary flotsam, knowing the Cossack would lose his balance in the narrow passageway. He heard Karpov crash into the companionway bulkhead.

“Damn your black ass!" Karpov's voice was muffled by distance and engine noise. Grisha smiled, trying to make it a victory.

Two days later, after pounding south at his top speed of twenty-four knots, Grisha still waited for enlightenment about the nature of his character. Maybe they were going to acquire contraband tomorrow in T'angass?

Much smaller than Akku, Fort Dionysus claimed to be the second oldest settlement in Southeast Alaska, after New Arkhangel. Grisha had fished out of the small town in his youth and still had friends there.

He pulled into the fuel dock, clicked the throttle back, and switched off the engine, letting the boat glide alongside the wooden dock. He grabbed the bowline, and nimbly jumped onto the bobbing dock to deftly loop two turns around a cleat.

As soon as he dropped the line he grasped the boat rail to keep the stern from yawing away from the slip. The station worker came out of his small shack as Grisha snubbed down the stern line.

"What ya runnin'?" The man said, and then blinked with surprise.

"Grisha? That really you?"

"Alexi! By God, you're working a real job."

Alexi's face sported new lines and old scars. A limp now slowed him. He looked thinner than ever.

"Whose boat you workin' here?"

"Mine," Grisha said.

"So that's why you quit drinkin' with us, you were savin' your money."

"You got it, Alexi. How have you been?"

Alexi's grin dampened down to a polite grimace. "Getting by. You know, job here, job there, working as crew when the Chinook are running, or the czar krab fishery gets good. That don't happen much no more. Dimitri offered me a day job running his fuel dock, so I took it."

The suddenly diminished man ran an expert eye over
Pravda
. "Nice boat. Your home port is Akku these days?"

"Yeah. Even got a marriage that's going sour."

Alexi stepped back into the shack, professionally looked over his shoulder at Grisha. "Diesel or mix?"

"Diesel."

"So," Alexi said when fuel gurgled through the hose into the boat. "You got any kids?"

"No. All I have is my
Pravda
, here."

"Why'd you name it after something that doesn't exist?" Alexi asked with a flash of bitterness.

"She's the only truth I know," Grisha answered.

The boat rocked and Karpov came out on deck. "What is this place?"

Alexi grinned up at him. "Welcome to Fort Dionysus, home to
promyshlenniks
since 18-"