The Russian Takedown: Chapter 14

The rest of the day passed unevent­ful­ly.  Krislov and Osmenov returned to their boat by noon, imme­di­ate­ly went inside and, I sup­pose, got to work on their plan.  I con­tin­ued to watch them off and on, and even though I could plain­ly see them mov­ing about, it was impos­si­ble for me to tell exact­ly what they were doing.

Evening drew near.  I snacked on some of the things I had bought ear­li­er and main­tained my watch. Darkness arrived, and the lights on their boat came on as they con­tin­ued their activities.

Finally, about sev­en o’clock I saw the lights go out and watched the two of them once again leave, head to their car and dri­ve away.

Time to put my plan to work.

I quick­ly changed into a black cov­er­all, donned some black crêpe-soled shoes, and picked up the bag that Armin had deliv­ered to my hotel room, sans the padlock.

All the docks were dim­ly lit, just enough light to keep some­one from stum­bling in the dark. There was no one about in the mari­na as I walked along the dock where my boat was berthed, crossed over, and down the adja­cent dock to slip 107.

I stepped onto their boat deck and tried the door to the inte­ri­or.  It was locked.  Rather than try to pick the lock — which I could have done — I moved around the side of the boat and checked the port­holes to see if any were unlocked.  None on the port side.  I cir­cled across the back deck to check the star­board side. 

The third one I tried opened.  Pretty slop­py, Krislov, I thought.  You lock the door and don’t even both­er to check to make sure oth­er means of access are secure.

I lift­ed the port­hole — it was rec­tan­gu­lar and opened out­ward, hinged at the top — and pushed the bag through.  The port­hole was bare­ly large enough to allow me to work my way through, but I man­aged to snake my way in, head­first, and found myself in a rather plush cab­in with mul­ti­ple lap­top com­put­ers spread about. 

The place was some­what disheveled and, as I moved about, I was care­ful not to move any­thing out of place. I searched briefly for a place to leave the bag.  Typical of most of these types of boats, stor­age space is at a pre­mi­um, and those spaces are usu­al­ly locat­ed as over­head bins or in enclosed spaces beneath bench seats. I went through all the spaces I could find.  I want­ed to see if there were some in which Krislov or Osmenov might have placed things. I would pre­fer not to put my bag in any of those loca­tions for fear that one of them might have to access some­thing and come across a strange bag.

It appeared that only a cou­ple of the bench stor­age spaces had been used, so I select­ed one that was emp­ty and pushed the bag as far in as it would go after mak­ing one final adjust­ment to the contents.

I looked around once again to make sure I had­n’t dis­turbed any­thing and, notic­ing noth­ing, pulled the open port­hole closed and locked it.  Wouldn’t want some­one sneak­ing in and steal­ing all those computers.

The door to the cab­in had the type of lock which auto­mat­i­cal­ly locks when the door is shut, but still allows egress, so I left that way.  No sense in crawl­ing through a win­dow when a door is available.

Just as I was exit­ing the cab­in I noticed car head­lights mov­ing through the park­ing lot.  I watched for a few more sec­onds and real­ized that it was Krislov and Osmenov return­ing.  Crap!  They sure had a short meal tonight.

It was going to be impos­si­ble for me to go down the dock and cross over to the next one with­out them see­ing me. Some guy all in black wan­der­ing around desert­ed docks in the night was not going to go unnoticed.

They were already walk­ing toward the dock.  In a moment, they would be back at the boat.  I could­n’t afford to try to hide at the back of the deck while they went inside; any sub­se­quent move­ment by me while they were inside would cause the boat to move, even just a little.

Crouching as best I could, I moved over to the port side of the boat and low­ered myself into the water just as they came aboard.  I hung there for a moment wait­ing for them to go inside.

Damn, the water was cold!  I need­ed to get under­way quick­ly but did­n’t want to give myself away with the noise of swim­ming until they got inside.

Once the cab­in door closed behind them, I began swim­ming, slow­ly so as to keep my noise to a min­i­mum.  It was­n’t too far to the oppo­site dock where my boat was tied, but I was feel­ing the cold and cramp­ing by the time I got there, swim­ming to the side away from their boat.  I had to grab onto a looped rope attached to the side in order to hoist myself out of the water.  It was an effort; the cold was work­ing on me, but I final­ly man­aged to roll myself onto the deck, lying there for a moment to catch my breath before enter­ing the cab­in to get out of my wet cloth­ing and wrap myself in a cou­ple of blan­kets to get some warmth back into a shiv­er­ing body.

I brewed up some cof­fee which helped a bit and slow­ly got con­trol of the shiv­er­ing, work­ing myself into dry clothes.

After fif­teen or twen­ty min­utes and two quick cups of cof­fee, I felt rea­son­ably nor­mal.  I checked their boat once more with the binoc­u­lars.  Their lights were on, and I ver­i­fied that both of them were aboard.

It was time for me to make a phone call.