Polar Star

by Martin Cruz Smith

  'Did Zina know anything about ships?' Arkady interrupted. 'Did she understand terminology, what different parts of a ship are called?'

  Natasha couldn't believe her ears. 'Zina? Again?'

  'What would she mean by "fish hold"?'

  'She's dead. That's all over.'

  'The hold, or anything near to it?' Arkady asked.

  'Zina knew nothing about ships, nothing about her work, nothing except her own self-interest, and she's dead,' Natasha said. 'Why this fascination? When she was alive you cared nothing about her. It was one thing when the captain ordered you to carry out an investigation. Now your interest is morbid, negative and disgusting.'

  Arkady pulled on his boots. 'You could be right,' he said.

  'I'm sorry, Arkasha, I shouldn't have said any of that. Please.'

  'Don't apologize for being honest.' Arkady reached for his jacket.

  'I hate the sea,' Natasha said bitterly. 'I should have gone to Moscow. I could have gotten work in a mill and looked for a husband there.'

  'The mills are sweatshops,' Arkady said, 'and you'd have lived in a dorm with a curtain between your bed and the next. It's too cramped; you'd hate it there. A big flower deserves a lot of space.'

  'True.' She liked that.

  Below decks in the bow it sounded as if the Polar Star weren't breaking ice so much as ploughing through an unseen landscape, overturning houses and trees, unearthing boulders. Arkady wouldn't have been too surprised to see beds or branches puncture the rusty skin of steel. What did the rats think? They had left land generations before. Did this din evoke memories and odd dreams in rodent sleep?

  Zina had said "fish hold", but what she must have meant was the chain locker next to the hold. The lowest and most forward point of the ship, the locker was an angular, catch-all space usually stuffed with hawsers and chains, a dark corner that might be visited twice on a voyage by a scrupulous bosun. Only a recessed peephole in the watertight hatch suggested that this door might be different from any other. Before he could knock, the hatch opened with a pop of air, like a bottle. As soon as he stepped in and the hatch closed behind him, he felt his eardrums compress.

  A red overhead bulb lit Anton Hess, sitting in a swivel chair. In the light, his towering hair looked all askew. He had turned from three monitors that were tapped into the bridge's echo-sounder; on the screens, three green seas flowed over three orange sea floors; he looked like a magician hovering over vats of fluorescent colour. Stacked on one side were two loran monitors with luminous crosshairs that marked latitude and longitude on glowing charts that matched the paper plotters Arkady had seen on the Eagle and that far outstripped anything on Marchuk's bridge. On the other side was a blank oscilloscope and what looked like a sound engineer's acoustical mixer, complete with headset. Above this was a screen showing in grey half-tones the passage between the locker and the fish hold, where Arkady had been standing a moment before. There was a small mainframe computer and racks of other equipment he couldn't make out clearly in the red haze, though all the gear, plus chair and cot, were crammed into an area not much larger than a closet. For a submariner, it must be just like home.

  'I'm surprised it took you this long to find me,' Hess said.

  'Me, too.'

  'Sit.' Hess indicated the cot. 'Welcome to this little station. I'm afraid there's no smoking allowed because the air circulation is non-existent, but it's like the paratroops: you pack your own parachute. I designed it, so I have no one else to blame.'

  One reason the space was so snug, Arkady realized, was the heavy soundproofing on every surface; there was even a false deck over insulation that muffled the grinding of ice and steel plate. As his eyes adjusted, he saw another reason: built into the deck where the bulkheads met was a white hemisphere a full metre across. The dome seemed to be the lid of something much larger built into the bottom of the ship itself.

  'Amazing,' Arkady said.

  'No, it's pathetic. It's a desperate resort to redress the unfirmness of geography and the burden of history. Every major Soviet port faces a choke point or is icebound six months of the year. Leaving Vladivostok, our fleet has to pass through either the Kuril or the KoreaStraits. In a war we probably wouldn't get a single ship out. Thank God for submarines!'

  On the three screens Arkady watched an orange tracery mounting like a wave, the signals of groundfish rising to feed. Why fish enjoy foul weather no one knew. Hess held out something glittering to Arkady, a flask; brandy at body temperature.

  'Underwater we're equal?'

  'Ignoring the fact that they carry twice as many warheads. And that they can keep 60 per cent of their missile boats on patrol while we can barely manage 15 per cent. Also that their boats are quieter, faster and dive deeper. But this is where irony comes in, Renko. I know you appreciate irony as much as I do. The only place where our submarines can safely hide is under the Arctic ice, and the only way the Americans can come after us from the Pacific is across the Bering Sea and through the Bering Strait. For once we choke them'

  Host and guest drank to geography. As Arkady sat back the cot squeaked and he thought of Zina on the same blanket. There hadn't been any lectures then. 'So you have a quota of fish too, in a sense,' he said.

  'Not to catch, just to hear. You know that the Polar Star was in dry dock.'

  'I did wonder what work was done. No one has noticed any improvements that have to do with fishing.'

  'Extra ears.' Hess nodded towards the white dome set into the deck. 'It's called a towed array sonar. This is a passive system, a cable with hydrophones that plays out from an electric winch in that pod. On submarines we mount the pod over the stern. On the Polar Star we've mounted it near the bow to avoid getting it tangled in an American net.'

  'And you pull in the cable before a net is brought on,' Arkady said. That was why Nicolai had time to dally with Zina, because a bag of fish was coming in.

  'It's not a very effective system for deep water, but this is a shallow sea. Submarines, even theirs, hate shallow water. They race for the strait and the faster they go the louder they are and we hear them. Every boat sounds different.' Hess swivelled towards a rack with a computer, monitor and a file of floppy disks. 'Here we have the signatures of five hundred submarines, theirs and ours. By matching, we sort out their routes and missions. Of course, we would do the same on one of our submarines or hydrographic boats, but they hide their subs from those. The Polar Star is only a factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea.'

  Arkady remembered the map in the cabin of the fleet electrician engineer. 'One of fifty Soviet factory ships along their coast?'

  'Exactly. This is the prototype.'

  'It seems rather sophisticated.'

  'No,' Hess said. 'Let me tell you what is sophisticated in terms of electronic intelligence gathering. The Americans place nuclear-powered monitors off the Siberian coast. Those containers hold six tonnes of reconnaissance equipment and a supply of plutonium so they can transmit indefinitely right under our noses. Their submarines go into Murmansk harbour and place hydrophones right on our submarines. They like coming out with trophies. Of course, if they could get hold of our cable it would be displayed in Washington in one of those news events they do so well, as if they had never seen a can on a string before.'

  'That's what your cable is, a can on a string?'

  'Microphones on a three-hundred-metre string, essentially.' Hess granted himself half a smile. 'The software is interesting; it was originally programmed in California to track whales.'

  'Do you ever mistake a boat for a whale?'

  'No.' Hess's fingers reached out and touched the round screen of the oscilloscope as if it were a crystal ball. There was a handcrafted quality to it, as there often was to the high technology produced by the Ministry for Electrical Apparatus. 'Whales and dolphins sound like beacons in deep space. You can hear some whales for close to a thousand kilometres, deep bass notes with the long waves of low frequencies. Then there are the other sounds of fish, of seal
s pursuing the fish, of walrus digging up the floor with their tusks. It's all like the sound of an orchestra constantly warming up. Then you hear a certain hiss that shouldn't be there.'

  'You're a musician?' Arkady asked.

  'When I was a boy I thought the cello would be my career. Such innocence!'

  Arkady looked at the monitors, at the repeated image of orange fish rising in an electric-green sea. The white dome had clamps; it was removable; if the winch had to be serviced, what else would Hess do, send down a diver?

  'Why do you think I had you taken off the slime line?' Hess continued. 'I heard something wrong: that this dead girl, Zina Patiashvili, went to the stern every time the Eagle delivered a net. To wave at a native boy? Let's not be silly. The only possible answer is that she was signalling Captain Morgan whether we had played the cable out or not.'

  'Is it visible?'

  'Not during tests, but she must have seen something besides Morgan's net.'

  'They say Morgan is a good fisherman.'

  'George Morgan has fished the Gulf of Thailand, off Guantanamo and Grenada. He should know how to fish. That's why I supported an investigation. Better to dig up the truth, to shake a traitor out of the tree sooner rather than later. But, Renko, I must tell you that too many bodies have been hitting the ground. First the girl, then Volovoi and the American. And you snake in and out, in and out of all this.'

  'I can find out about Zina.'

  'And our roasted first mate? No, we'll leave it to Vladivostok, there are too many questions now. Including, how are you involved?'

  'Someone's trying to kill me.'

  'That's not good enough. Zina-Susan-Morgan, that's the chain I want. Fit into that and you justify my interest. The rest is none of my concern.'

  'You don't care what happened to Zina?'

  'By itself, of course not.'

  'Would you be interested in evidence of smuggling?'

  Hess laughed in horror. 'My God, no. It's an invitation to the KGB to stick its nose into the affairs of intelligence. Renko, try to lift your eyes above petty crime. Give me something real.'

  'Like what?' Arkady wondered.

  'Susan. I watched you in DutchHarbor. Renko, you must be irresistibly charming in a wounded sort of way. She's attracted. Get closer. Serve your country and yourself. Find something on her and Morgan and I'll order an off-loader just for you.'

  'Incriminating notes, secret codes?'

  'We'll re-wire her cabin or we can put a transmitter on you.'

  'We can do it any number of different ways.'

  'Whatever you're comfortable with.'

  'Well, no, I don't think so,' Arkady said after consideration. 'Actually I came for something else.'

  'What did you come for?'

  Arkady stood for a better view of the corners of the locker. 'I just wanted to see if Zina's body was stowed here.'

  'And?'

  The light was dim, but the space was close.

  'No,' Arkady decided.

  The two men looked at each other, Hess with the saddened expression of a man who has sung confidences and aspirations to a deaf ear.

  'Petty crime is my passion,' Arkady apologized.

  The hatch popped open.

  'Wait,' Hess said as Arkady started to go. The little man searched in a drawer and came out with a shiny object. This time, it was Arkady's knife. He handed it over. 'Property of the state, right? Good luck.'

  Arkady glanced back on the way out. Under the black-and-white screen, Anton Hess was an exhausted man. The other, coloured screens seemed inappropriately gay, tuned into some happier wavelength. Behind their glow the dome nesting in the insulated floor resembled the tip of a vulnerable egg that the fleet electrical engineer was shepherding around the world.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  * * *

  Rain beat the Polar Star with sharp, horizontal drops that beaded into soft, spongy ice. The crew worked under lamps, hosing the ship off with live steam from the boilers so that the trawl deck smoked as if it were on fire. Ropes stretched across the deck and men clung to the lines, slipping as the deck rolled. Wearing their hard hats under fur-lined hoods the team looked like a Siberian construction crew, all but Karp, who was still in a sweater as if the weather meant nothing to him.

  'Relax,' Karp grandly offered a hand as Arkady approached. A radio hung from a strap on his belt. 'Enjoy the refreshing Bering weather.'

  'You haven't been after me.' Arkady counted the deck team to be sure they were all in sight. On either side of the deck, pollack overflowed the bunkers. Surrounded by steaming mist, glazed by the freezing rain, the fish sparkled like silvery armour in the lamps.

  'It's not as if you had some other place to go.' Karp pulled a block down by its rope to hammer ice from the sheave with the butt of his knife. The gantry operator was out of his cabin. With the ice sheet, no catcherboats were alongside. The entire deck was obscured by steam. 'I could probably throw you overboard right now and nobody would notice.'

  'What if I hit the ice and didn't sink?' Arkady said. 'You have to think things through. You're too impulsive.'

  Karp laughed. 'You have brass balls, I'll give you that.'

  'What was it Volovoi said that made you stick him?' Arkady asked. 'Was it that Volovoi swore he'd take the ship apart when we got back to Vladivostok? Knifing him didn't help. The KGB is going to be all over us when we return.'

  'Ridley will say I was with him all night,' Karp picked out the last ice with his blade. 'Say anything about Volovoi, it will come right back to you.'

  'Forget about Volovoi.' Arkady shook out a papirosa, a cigarette that could stand up to rain, sleet or driving snow. 'Zina is still who interests me.'

  Waist-high in a roar of clouds, Pavel worked his way along the rail with a hose of steaming water. Karp waved him off. 'What about Zina?' he asked Arkady.

  'Whatever she was doing she wasn't doing alone, that was never the way she operated. I look around this ship and the only one she would have operated with is you. You told Slava you hardly knew her.'

  'She was a fellow worker, that's all.'

  'Just another worker, like you?'

  'No, I'm a model worker.' Karp enjoyed the distinction. He spread his arms. 'You don't know about workers because you're not one, not at heart. You think the slime line's bad?' Karp tapped his knife on Arkady's chest to make a point. 'Ever work in a slaughterhouse?'

  'Yes.'

  'A reindeer slaughterhouse?'

  'Yes.'

  'Slipping around in guts with an oilskin on your shoulder?'

  'Yes.'

  'Along the Aldan?' The Aldan was a river in Eastern Siberia.

  'Yes.'

  Karp paused. 'The director of the collective's a Koryak named Sinaneft, went around on a pony?'

  'No, he was a Buryat named Korin and he drove a Moskvitch with skis on the front wheels.'

  'You really worked there.' Karp was amused. 'Korin had two sons.'

  'Daughters.'

  'One with tattoos, though. Funny, isn't it? All the time I was in the camps, all the time in Siberia, I said if there was any justice in the world you and I would meet again. And all the time, fate was on my side.'

  Overhead, the crane operator carried a mug into his cabin. Across the deck, the American called Bernie made his way aft. Enveloped in a parka, holding on to the line, he looked like a mountaineer. From Karp's radio came Thorwald's throaty voice to say that the Merry Jane was approaching with a bag. The trawlmaster sheathed his knife and at once work tempo changed. Hoses were shut off, cables were dragged to the ramp.

  'You're not dumb, but you never think more than one step ahead,' Arkady said. 'You should have stayed in Siberia or smuggled videotapes or jeans – small stuff, nothing big.'

  'Now let me tell you about you,' Karp said. He brushed ice from Arkady's jacket. 'You're like a dog that's kicked out of the house. You live off scraps in the woods for a while and you think you can run with wolves. But really, in the back of your mind, what you w
ant to do is bring down one wolf so they'll let you back in the house.' He picked a crystal from Arkady's hair and whispered, 'You'll never make it back to Vladivostok.'

  People became winter animals, wearing their jackets while they ate. In the middle of the long table was a pot of cabbage soup that smelled like laundry and was consumed with raw garlic offered on separate plates, along with dark bread, goulash and tea that steamed enough to make the cafeteria as foggy as a sauna. Izrail slipped on to the bench next to Arkady. As usual, the factory manager bore fish scales on his beard, as if he'd waded to the crew's mess. 'You cannot ignore your socialist duty,' he whispered to Arkady. 'You must take your place on the work line with your comrades or you will be reported.'

  Natasha sat across from Arkady. She still wore her factory-line toque, the high, white cap designed to keep her hair out of the fish.

  'Listen to Izrail Izrailevich,' she told Arkady. 'I thought you must be sick. I went to your cabin and you weren't there.'

  'Olimpiada has a way with cabbage.' Arkady offered to ladle soup for Natasha; she shook her head. 'Where is Olimpiada? I haven't seen her.'

  Izrail said, 'You will be reported to the captain, to your union, to the Party.'

  'Reporting me to Volovoi would be interesting. Natasha, you're not having any goulash?'

  'No.'

  'At least bread?'

  'Thank you, tea is sufficient.' She poured herself a dainty cup.

  'This is serious, Renko.' Izrail helped himself to soup and bread. 'You can't go around the ship as if you had special orders from Moscow.' He bit into a dove and reflected. 'Unless you do.'

  'You're dieting?' Arkady asked Natasha.

  'Resisting.'

  'Why?'

  'I have my reasons.' With her hair pulled back inside her cap she was showing more cheekbone, and her dark eyes seemed larger and softer.

  Obidin sat beside her and heaped his plate with goulash, which he examined for meat. 'I understand there is a feeling we should never take fish again where we found Zina,' he said. 'Out of respect for the dead.'

  'Ridiculous.' Natasha's eyes grew hard at the thought of Zina. 'We're not all religious fanatics. This is the modern age. Have you ever heard of such a thing?' she demanded of Izrail.