The yacht had been anchored offshore for over a week. Julian Tusk could see it from the terrace of his rented bungalow. Normally he wouldn’t have paid much attention to a pleasure boat here, among all the comings and goings at the marina just down the coast. But this one was big, three decks high and at least 100 feet long with a helipad on the forward deck and a small crane for deploying a tender. A tycoon getting some quiet downtime between hostile takeovers perhaps. But then it didn’t move from its anchorage for several days and Tusk got curious.
One evening, after his usual swim off the beach, he was toweling off with a local AquaLion lager in hand when he saw movement on the yacht. After getting over the guilty feeling of being a stalker, he swept the 600-millimeter telephoto lens of his Nikon across the length of the boat. He couldn’t make out the name emblazoned across the transom. In fact, it appeared to be in… Cyrillic? In the blood red light of the setting sun, he saw a beautiful woman lying on the aft deck in a lounge chair, face hidden by the brim of an oversized hat. He resisted pressing the shutter. A barrel-chested, shirtless man emerged from within the boat’s interior. A gold chain glinted against his sunburned torso, a matching watch on his beefy arm. He was holding what looked like a satellite phone. He paced around, gesturing animatedly. The woman rolled over lazily on her cushion. Movie star? Heiress? Tusk pulled back from the camera. It felt like an invasion of privacy.
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