It happened sometimes that in the early part of one of these projects, it felt as if you were going up hill into a headwind. Everything was against you; luck was always bad; nothing fell together, nothing worked out right. But beyond a certain point it changed and it was all easy, everything went your way. Thus here. He had rid himself of Olivia, who was an alluring and yet highly inconvenient person to have in his life. He was no longer in the PRC, no longer in the crowded city center of Xiamen, and, to boot, shrouded in dense fog and being assisted by a peppy boatman who, if he had been impressed or scared by the three gun-toting agents who’d commandeered his boat, must have been even more so by the way Sokolov had vaulted aboard and machine-gunned them. Since he seemed to have passed over that watershed, it had not really surprised him when he had found himself, only a little while later, ascending a rope ladder toward an open hatch near the stern of a big containership bound for the open Pacific. He had easily come to terms with its Filipino crew and bought passage, and even a bunk of his own, using the remaining cash in his pockets. The next two weeks had been a sort of vacation on a steel beach, and a welcome opportunity to rest up and heal from various minor injuries suffered during the events in Xiamen. Only during the last couple of days had he really stirred himself from his bunk and begun to exercise again, practicing his falls and rolls on the ship’s deckplates to the great amusement of the crew.