Morgan Stone - The Russian Factor

Hours of frustrating research, free-jacking mercurial open networks, enlightened me to the fact that Anna’s Turkish tourist visa would expire in two months, rather than the three months Turkish immigration had granted me. When that happened, she would either be illegal in Turkey or applying for an extension with a passport that would, by then, undoubtedly have her flagged as a terrorist. Either way, the clock was ticking and it was imperative to reach Canadian soil before time was up. I didn’t need to wait the half hour for Google maps to load to know that between Marmaris and Canada lay a lot of seawater. Not only that, but countries that would deport Anna back to Russia in a heartbeat if she came near them.

Seen head on, our goal was relentlessly straight forward — get Anna to Canada without getting killed or getting caught. I worried that maybe Gavin was right about me. In pontificating emails he’d been sending with increasing frequency, he liked to compare me to, “A climber at the foot of Everest. Her goal, the imagined summit. Her irrational anticipation of success overshadowing any consideration of failure and driving her more so than the reasons for doing the crazy act in the first place!”

Bla, bla, bla, I thought. Then again, having finally gotten us stranded in a down-market Middle Eastern tourist trap, all out of options, I had to think that maybe my kid brother was onto something. I suppressed the niggling insight that all of this had really not been just about Anna, but also about me. It’s easier to risk it all when there’s nothing in it for me, or so I thought.

The few grand I had left in my pocket wasn’t going to get us far. We couldn’t just hop on a flight to Toronto. The Skater had drained Anna’s bank accounts then bought and filed charges against her. Anna’s passport was a Trojan horse. A visa was impossible. Not only was getting away not going to be easy, it wasn’t going to be cheap. Passage, legally on a freighter, would be more cash than I had; illegally, it would be more than that by a long shot and infinitely risky. Of course, I would also have to make the right connections, and if Odessa was any indication, I was less than successful engaging smugglers at that level.

It was dark inside the apartment-hotel and twilight outside by the time I looked up from the computer. We had a ground floor suite with a patio backing onto a canal full of small boats. Mostly wooden skiffs layered with so much colorful paint that they looked like iced cakes. Blood red Turkish flags with white crescents contrasted with lush greenery and raw stone walls. I had a sense of being somewhere very warm, and a long way from home. Brightly hued, delightfully fragrant flowers were everywhere. Birds called out in a last-minute cacophony before being subdued by the night. Not too far away, through a hedge of some plant that only grew indoors in pots back home, I heard what sounded like a hundred gamelan players warming up. Watching the shadow of the horizon climb scrub covered hills outside of town, I found myself thinking of Kiev and its ice and hostility, an infinity to the north and a lifetime ago.

Anna came in the front door with food she had found at little stores willing to take the American dollars I’d hoarded from cash machines in Ukraine. Practicing English, she told me about the ancient town she’d strolled through, and how much she had enjoyed it. I smiled at her effort, knowing how hard it was to function without one’s native tongue. I could only imagine what it was like for a Russian using English to communicate with Turks.

I flipped open the Dell and started in on what I’d dug up with my research. “There’s really no easy way out of this. You aren’t allowed in or over or through any country from here to Canada, and there’s a lot of ocean in the way. Nobody’s going to let you on a commercial plane or boat without a visa, and when your mother gets your passport tagged internationally, and believe-you-me she probably has by now — especially knowing you’re outside the CIS — it’ll become less than worthless in pretty short order.”

Anna pulled closer to me, resting her chin on my shoulder.

“Another thing, unlike the Turkish visa they gave me, yours runs out in two months, not three. Two months, Anna! Then you’re going back to Russia no matter what. Your mother doesn’t even have to look for you. If you’re not out of here by then, she can sit back and you’ll be delivered right into her waiting arms.”

“I see, but what can I do?” She slid her arm between my chair and the small of my back. “I’m sorry for everything you have to deal with, one problem after the other. I cannot believe you are still with me.”

“I’m not looking for apologies or soul-searching. I’m looking for a way out of this, with you, obviously , or there’s no bloody point.”

“But Jess, we’ve run out of road. There is only the sea ahead of us.”

“It’s not over yet, in fact, it’s never over.” The conversational trajectory was veering uselessly off course. I pulled up a spreadsheet on the laptop. “Take a look at this. I’ve been doing a little thinking.”

Anna leaned in closer to the screen.

“I can fly a plane, so I thought about buying something small, putting big temporary fuel tanks in it, and flying from here to Canada. A lawyer and officials would meet us when we landed someplace like Halifax. Then, in Canada, I sell the plane, maybe even pocket a few dollars, and we’ll be home free. Light aircraft are really cheap here for some reason.”

“Okay, so you will buy an airplane and fly us across the oceans with it?” Anna struggled to go on in English, gave up, and said in Russian, “Do I understand?”

“You do, but it won’t work. I wanted to tell you what I’ve been thinking, though. No matter how cheap they are, there’s no aircraft I can afford that’s big enough to carry both of us and enough fuel to get us all that way. We’d have to refuel in Europe and you are definitely not allowed to land there. Second, and this is a much bigger problem than mere engineering, the regulations for buying and licensing an aircraft in Turkey are so complex, I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of doing it in the two months you have left.”

“Great, it’s my fault.” Anna said.

“Blame is unintended and unproductive so, on to plan B!” I minimized the spreadsheet with the light aircraft calculations and opened the browser. A website familiar from Odessa graced the screen — yachtworld.com.

“Look at that! The site Alexi’s friend was showing us in Odessa.”

“You mean the store clerk , but that’s the one. I used it to look for boats here in Marmaris, and there’s one heck of a lot of them. This place is yacht-central.”

“You are thinking of a boat? You seemed to hate the idea in Odessa.”

“Look, I think it’s our only chance. There are people here, professionals who sell boats, not idiots like Alexi, and there are boats here that can cross oceans. People sail boats, yachts, across oceans all the time. Heck, they even sail all by themselves around the world without stopping. I can assure you, more people cross oceans in yachts than in small planes like Charles Lindbergh did.”

“Really? I must take your word for it. I know nothing about yachts.”

I scrolled through boat listings instead of telling her I was just about as unfamiliar with yachts as she was.

“The closest I’ve been to a yacht is here and once when I traveled to Turkey with Mikhail. I could see the masts in the harbor. Ironic, huh? Besides, are they not worth a lot of money? You can afford such an expense?” Anna knocked my hand from the touchpad and scrolled the laptop through the listings herself. Prices were six figures and beyond.