Polar Star

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Arkady gave his answer thought because he knew Natasha had lived months for this one day's excursion, yet would stay loyally on board with him if he gave her any reason to. 'I think it's rash to write a suicide note. I'd refuse to, myself.' He pointed to the lifeboat. 'Hurry, you're going to miss your ride.'

  'What can I get you?' Natasha's brow was clear again.

  'A complete set of Shakespeare, a video camera, a car.'

  'I can't get those.' She was already on the steps leading down to the deck.

  'A piece of fruit will do.'

  Natasha elbowed her way to her friends just as they were going down the gangway. They were like children, Arkady thought, the kind of Moscow children you see stamping their feet outside school on dark December mornings, bundled up to their hard little faces until the warm door is opened and their eyes light up. He wished he was going with them.

  The lifeboat looked like a surfaced submarine; it could seal up forty passengers fleeing a sinking ship and was coloured that crayon hue called 'international orange'. For this holiday jaunt, the hatches were open so that the helmsman and passengers could stand in the fresh air. Natasha waved again before assuming a pose of resolute Soviet sobriety. They cast off, and the entire party appeared in their drab clothes on their orange boat to be headed for either a funeral or a picnic.

  The Merry Jane was approaching to take more people ashore, and a whole new line had formed along the rail. Among those waiting was Pavel from Karp's deck team. Looking at Arkady, he drew a finger across his throat.

  Land did smell, Arkady thought. Unalaska smelled like a garden and he wanted to walk on dry land and leave the scow on which he'd lived for ten months, if only for an hour.

  So far, he hadn't told anyone about the attack. What would he say? He hadn't seen Karp or the other men. It would be his word against six politically reliable and socially responsible seamen first class. The only provable fact was that he had been inhaling fumes and inducing hallucinations. And attempting to set fire to the fish hold.

  Smoke smudged the air above where DutchHarbor must be. How large was the town? Cleaner wisps hung from the sides of the mountains. That's where they were, mountains that rose directly from the ocean floor. He imagined soaring over them and descending into a green valley, close enough to see those precious bog orchids of Kolya Mer's, close enough to pick up earth in his hand.

  The lifeboat was now traversing the water in front of the Aleut houses; a pretty picture, the orange boat put-putting by the white church. He imagined Zina on it.

  'It's ironic,' Hess said as he joined Arkady.

  The fleet electrical engineer was resplendent in a shiny black parka, jeans and Siberian felt boots. Arkady hadn't seen him since yesterday morning. Of course Hess was small; maybe even small enough to move invisibly around the ship through funnels and ventilator shafts.

  'What is?' Arkady asked.

  'That the only member of the crew who ever could have defected, the only man whose loyalty has really been tested, is the only one not allowed off the ship.'

  'In irony we lead the world.'

  Hess smiled. His stiff hair leaned in the breeze but he stood with the wide, solid stance of a sailor as he gazed around.

  'A handsome harbour. During the war, the Americans had fifty thousand men here. If we'd had DutchHarbor there'd still be that many, instead of a few natives and fishing nets. Well, the Americans can be choosy. The Pacific Ocean is an American lake. Alaska, San Francisco, Pearl Harbor, Midway, the Marshalls, Fijis, Samoa, the Marianas. They own it.'

  'You're going ashore?'

  'To stretch my legs. It might be interesting.'

  Perhaps not to a fleet electrical engineer, Arkady thought, but to an officer of Naval Intelligence, yes, a stroll around the major port of the Aleutians might be informative.

  Hess said, 'Let me congratulate you on resolving the case of that poor girl.'

  'Your congratulations should go entirely to Slava Bukovsky; he found her note. I searched the same place and never saw it.'

  Arkady had examined the note once Slava had stopped flourishing his discovery. It had been written on half a lined page that appeared to have been torn from Zina's spiral notebook. The handwriting was hers; the prints were hers and Slava's.

  'But it was suicide?'

  'A suicide note definitely is evidence of suicide. Of course, being fatally hit on the back of the head and being stabbed after death is evidence of something else.'

  Hess seemed to be studying the trawler as it swung alongside the Polar Star. Was he a line officer? Arkady wondered. Considering the slow promotions that Germans got, he might be no more than a captain second rank. If he stayed near Leningrad, though, close to Naval headquarters, maybe taught at one of the officers' academies, he could have the title of Professor. Hess looked professorial.

  'The captain was relieved to hear that you agreed with Bukovsky's conclusions. You were sick in bed or he would have asked you himself. You seem better now.'

  The shakes had chased Arkady back to his cabin, it was true, and he was better now, well enough to light a Belomor and start poisoning himself again. He tossed the match away. 'And you, Comrade Hess,' he asked, 'were you relieved?'

  Hess allowed himself another smile. 'It sounded too convenient for you to have anything to do with it. But you could have corrected Bukovsky and gone to the captain.'

  'And stopped this?' Arkady watched as a Portuguese crewman helped Madame Malzeva off the gangway onto the trawler deck. She stepped down daintily, shawl over her shoulders, as if onto a gondola. 'This is the reason for their whole voyage. I'm not going to ruin their two days here. Is Volovoi ashore?'

  'No, the captain is. You know the regulations: either the captain or the commissar has to be on the ship at all times. Marchuk went in on the pilot boat to make sure the merchants of DutchHarbor are ready for our invasion. I hear they are not only ready but eager.' He looked at Arkady. 'Murder, then? When we're back at sea, will you start asking questions again? Officially the inquiry is over. You won't have the support of the captain, you won't even have the assistance of Bukovsky. You'll be entirely alone, one factory worker in the bottom of the ship. It sounds dangerous. Even if you knew who was responsible for the girl's death, it might be better to forget.'

  'I could.' Arkady thought about it. 'But if you were the killer and you knew that I knew, would you let me live until we returned to Vladivostok?'

  Hess considered the idea. 'You'd have a long voyage home.'

  Or short, Arkady thought.

  'Come with me,' Hess said.

  He motioned and Arkady followed into the aft house. He assumed they were going to some quiet spot to speak, but Hess led him directly out to the boat deck on the port side of the ship. A Jacob's ladder hung from the rail to another lifeboat already in the water. A lone helmsman waved up. Not for a fleet electrical engineer on the crowded deck of a trawler.

  'Ashore,' Hess said. 'Come with me to DutchHarbor. Everyone else is enjoying a port call, thanks to you. You should have some reward.'

  'I don't have a seaman's first-class visa to go in, as you know.'

  'On my authority,' Hess said lightly, but also as if he meant what he said.

  Even thinking about going ashore had the effect of a glass of vodka. Perspective changed, bringing houses, church and mountains closer. The wind freshened on his cheek and water lapped more audibly against the hull. As Hess pulled on black calfskin gloves, Arkady looked down at his own bare hands, stained canvas jacket, rough pants and rubber boots. Hess caught the self-scrutiny. 'You've shaved,' he reassured Arkady. 'A man who's shaved is ready to go anywhere.'

  'What about the captain?'

  'Captain Marchuk knows that initiative is the new order of the day. Also, trust in the loyalty of the masses.'

  Arkady took a deep breath. 'Volovoi?'

  'He's on the bridge watching the other direction. By the time he sees you going ashore you'll be there. You're like a lion who finds his cage door open. You hes
itate.'

  Arkady held the rail as if for balance. 'It's not that simple.'

  'There is one little thing,' Hess said, and brought from his parka a sheet of paper that he spread on the bulkhead. The page bore a two-sentence acknowledgement that defection from a Soviet ship was a state crime for which an offender's family would suffer in his absence. 'Everyone signs it. You have a family? A wife?'

  'Divorced.'

  'She'll have to do.' When Arkady signed, Hess said, 'One other thing. No knives, not in port.'

  Arkady took it from his jacket pocket. Up until yesterday that knife had lived in the closet. Now he and his knife felt inseparable.

  'I'll keep it for you,' Hess promised. 'I'm afraid no foreign currency has been allotted for this unanticipated port call of ours. You don't have American dollars?'

  'No, nor francs nor yen. There hasn't been the need.'

  Hess neatly folded the paper and slipped it back inside his parka. Like a host who enjoys impromptu parties most, he said, 'Then you must be my guest. Come, Comrade Renko, I will show you the famous DutchHarbor.'

  They stood in the open hatches and breathed the sharp fumes of the water that was silky with oil. Arkady hadn't ever been so near the surface of the water in ten months, let alone on land. As the lifeboat drew across the harbour he saw how the Aleut houses edged between mountain and bay, and how proudly they all seemed to march behind their white church with its onion dome. There were lights in the windows and human forms in the shadows, and the very existence of shadows seemed miraculous after a year's staring into fog. And the smell was overwhelming: the briny tang of the beach's grey sand and, powerful as gravity, the sweet breath of green grass and mosses. There was even a graveyard with Orthodox crosses, as if people could be buried without sinking directly to the ocean floor.

  The lifeboat was built with a miniature bridge, but the helmsman, a blond-haired boy in a heavy sweater, used the outside wheel. Behind him, from a short pole, a Soviet ensign fluttered like a red hankie.

  'Built for the war and then allowed to fall apart,' Hess said and pointed to a house on the crest of a cliff. Half the house had fallen in, exposing stairs and rails like the inner workings of a seashell. Looking around, Arkady saw half a dozen more Army-grey structures on other hills. 'That was the war when we were allies,' Hess added for the sake of the young helmsman.

  'As you say, chief,' the helmsman said.

  Protected by encircling land, the inner bay was calm. A mirrored, inverted ring of undulating green surrounded the lifeboat.

  'That was before you were born,' Arkady said to the boy. He recognized him now, a radio technician named Nicolai. He looked like a recruiting poster – cornsilk hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and the big shoulders and indolent smile of an athlete.

  'That was my grandfather's war,' he said.

  Immediately Arkady felt ancient, but he pressed the conversation. 'Where did he serve?'

  'Murmansk. He went to America and back ten times,' Nicolai said. 'Two boats were sunk under him.'

  'But it's hard work, too, what you do.'

  Nicolai shrugged. 'Mental work.'

  By now Arkady recognized the voice of Zina's lieutenant. He could see Nicolai confidently navigating among the waitresses at the Golden Horn, the stars on his shoulder boards glittering, his cap askew. It occurred to Arkady, not for the first time, that he hadn't been attacked until he'd gone searching for Hess's assistant.

  'Such a handsome harbour.' Hess's eyes wandered from the tank farm to the mile-long concrete dock to the radio tower on the hill, as if he were reviewing the charms of an uncharted tropical isle.

  Perhaps no one had seen him climb down to the boat, Arkady thought. How simple it would be to dispose of him. It was a common enough practice for ships to dump their weighted garbage as they entered port. There was an extra anchor and chain inside every lifeboat.

  But the lifeboat continued to slide over the iridescent surface, past the wet, primary colours of catcherboats that Arkady had never seen before, near enough to watch men hosing decks and hoisting nets to repair, and to hear shouts from docks previously hidden behind the slate-blue hull of the cannery ship.

  As the hills closed in and the harbour narrowed to an inlet, Arkady glimpsed pinpoints of Arctic flowers and seams of snow hidden in the grass. The air carried the throaty taste of woodsmoke. As they cleared the cannery ship, the inlet trailed into a stream and he saw docks of smaller boats, including purse seiners no bigger than rowboats, a couple of single-engine sea-planes and the unmistakable orange of the first lifeboat from the Polar Star. Slava Bukovsky was on guard, watching with surprise that turned to dismay as the second lifeboat approached. Beyond Slava were dogs nosing around refuse heaps, eagles roosting on roofs and, most miraculous of all, men walking on dry land.

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  Forgotten were Siberian orchids. Kolya stood at the end of the aisle like a traveller faced by three signposts. To his left was a stack of stereo receivers with digital tuning and chrome, five-band graphic equalizers and black hi-tech speakers. To his right was a tier of twin-deck, Dolby-equipped cassette players that could not only play but could propagate tapes like rabbits. Straight ahead was a veritable tower of suitcase-sized receivers with cassette decks in a variety of pink, turquoise and ivory high-impact plastics for recording Western music right off the air. Kolya dared not look behind because there were racks of pocket cassette players, key chains that beeped when you clapped, cassette-fed toy bears that talked, calculator watches that recorded your mileage and took your pulse, the dizzying and proliferating armoury of a civilization based on the silicon chip.

  Kolya dealt with this alien situation with time-honoured Soviet technique, stepping back and with snake eyes examining each article as if it were a tub of rancid butter, an excellent attitude in the Soviet Union, where the shelf for items 'broken when bought' was sometimes fuller than the display case; no experienced Soviet shopper left a store with his purchase until he'd taken it out of its box, turned it on and made sure it did something. Soviet shoppers also searched for the date of completion on the manufacturer's tag and hoped for a day in the middle of the month, rather than at the end, when the factory management was trying to meet its quota of TVs, VCRs, or cars with or without all the necessary parts, or at the beginning of the month, when the workers were in a drunken stupor from having met the quota. Here there was no shelf overflowing with defective goods, nor any dates on the manufacturers' tags, so having finally reached their destination, Kolva and a hundred other Soviet men and women now stood numbed before the foreign radios, calculators and other electronic exotica they had dreamed of.

  'Arkady!' Kolya was overjoyed to see him. 'You've travelled before. Where are the clerks?'

  It was true there didn't appear to be any. A Soviet store is amply staffed because a shopper must buy in three stages: securing a chit from one clerk, paying a second, exchanging the receipt with a third – all of whom are far too interested in personal conversations or the telephone to take kindly the interruption of some stranger who has come off the street. Besides, Soviet clerks hide any quality stuff – fresh fish, new translations, Hungarian bras – under the counter or in the back of the store, and they're people with pride, who are in no hurry to sell inferior goods. The entire business is distasteful to them.

  'Try her,' Arkady suggested.

  A grandmotherly woman smiled from a counter. She wore a mohair sweater as white as an Arctic fox, and her hair was an astonishing silver-blue. Spread out on the counter before her were sliced oranges, apples and crackers smeared with pâté. A card on an electric urn said in Russian, 'Coffee'. There was also a cash register, and she was taking money from some sophisticated seamen who simply carried their stereos to her. At her back a large sign announced, again in Russian, 'Dutch Harbor Welcomes the Polar Star!'

  Kolya seemed relieved until another thought struck him. 'Arkady, what are you doing here? You don't have the right visa.'

  'I
have special dispensation.'

  Arkady was still trying to get his land legs. There was roll and pitch even on a factory ship and after ten months his body didn't trust level, motionless ground. The fluorescent lights and shiny colours of the store displays seemed to swim around him.

  'I thought you were a factory worker, and you become an investigator,' Kolya said. 'I thought you couldn't go ashore, and suddenly you're here.'

  'I'm confused myself,' Arkady admitted.

  Although Kolya had more questions, his eyes had lit on a rack of blank, low-bias cassette tapes which held a magnetic attraction for him. Arkady had caught a few other astonished glances in his direction, but everyone was too busy in this brief paradise to ask questions. One figure did stop; from the end of an aisle, the informer Slezko gawked in alarm, a gold tooth brightening his grey face. In his hands was a box of electric rollers; evidence that somewhere there was a Mrs Slezkova.

  'Ugggh.' A machinist recoiled from his first bite of a cracker. 'What kind of meat is in this pâté?'

  'Peanuts,' Izrail told him. 'It's peanut butter.'

  'Oh.' The machinist took another nibble. 'Not bad.'

  'Renko, you're a regular Lazarus,' Izrail said. 'You keep popping up. This business with Zina, it's not over, is it? I see your look of determination and my heart sinks.'

  'Arkady, you came!' Natasha seized his arm as if he had appeared at a ball. 'This proves it. You are a trustworthy citizen or they wouldn't have let you. What did Volovoi say?'

  'I can't wait to hear,' Arkady said. 'What did you buy so far?'

  She blushed. The only purchase in her net bag was two oranges. 'Clothes are upstairs,' she said. 'Jeans, jogging gear, running shoes.'

  'Bathrobes and slippers,' Madame Malzeva butted in.

  Gury had strapped on a heavy safari watch with a compass built into the strap. He turned in different directions as he moved to the counter, like a man dancing alone. 'Apple?' the woman with blue hair offered him a slice.

  'Yamaha.' Gury tried his English. 'Software, programmes, blank disks.'