SOKOLOV HAD A moment’s irrational fear that he was never going to strike the water, but he mastered the urge to look down, since this would have led to getting punched in the face by the ocean. He wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. He kept his toes pointed and his ankles together, not wanting any water hammer effects on his testicles either, and then suddenly there was a shock in his legs and a searing whoosh immediately snuffed out by a deep mechanical throb: the screws of the freighter, churning away just behind him. An old habit told him that he should begin swimming now. But he was zipped up from ankles to neckline in an orange survival suit that knew how to find the surface. He waited. The frigid water, churned into a foaming sluice by the screws, streamed over him.