The Aleutian Portal

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The passenger studied the face in the old American passport.

He bit his lower lip as his eyes locked onto the photo. It looked distant, almost forgotten, yet familiar too. Like a relative he’d once known well, who had passed away when he was just a child. He’d been living a lie so long he’d almost forgotten how to distinguish it from the truth. He read the name along the bottom line out loud, Ryan Balmain. That too, seemed familiar to him, yet somehow aberrant and grotesque — because for nearly twenty years he’d lived in Russia under the name of Sergei Orlov.

Hearing the sound of his real name brought back a flood of memories. Some good, some not so much, and one in particular he’d spent that entire time trying to forget. He sat on the portside observation deck looking out as though he was a passenger on a cruise ship without a care in the world. But like everything else about him, that too was a deception. He was neither a paying passenger, nor was he on a cruise ship, and despite his outwardly calm appearance, he was terrified. He was on board the Russian owned, Gordoye Dostizheniye — a five-hundred-and-sixty-foot cargo ship.

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