Arch Patton

by James Strauss

  “He has another anthropologist he can call, when we get back to the American mainland. After this trip we sail to Antarctica, but upon our return, he can have a replacement all ready.”

  Then he moved so close to my ear that I felt his breath.

  “If you are not around. If you are not able serve….”

  He stepped back. He had delivered his message.

  I grasped the mortal threat embedded in his words.

  “Why did you, of all people, join the Mouseketeers?” I asked.

  He straightened. His expression was frozen on his pale white face. In fact, his expression gave him away.

  “It’s Marlys, is it not? You’re in love with Marlys.”

  His about-face and departure could have been imitated on any Marine Corps barracks parade ground. It was fast, sharp, and flawless.

  “Don’t be late for the club meeting tonight!” I shouted after him.

  I was confident, however, that he would not be a second late.

  The lido was half-filled with passengers. My spot was taken at the end of the bar. So I went to the rail near the piano, which was never played. I expected to hear someone sit down and play “As Time Goes By,” but nobody stepped up. Where were the Sams of this world when they were truly needed? Marlys worked the bar, which was busy. She wore the micro-mini I just loved with some kind of brownish-black nylons. Old world. My world.

  “She’s a child,” I preached to myself, as I took in the Chukotka shoreline.

  The Providence Bay shoreline was a sight to behold. It reminded me of a more sterile version of the cliffs, crannies and heights of Tierra del Fuego, another place I loved. Marlys appeared at my side, tapping my left shoulder. She pinched the arm of my sweater, like I remembered the Maryknoll Nuns doing when I was a kid, and led me to the bar.

  The passenger who had been in my seat was gone. My Navy bowl of coffee was already steaming atop the bar. I had achieved some small status aboard ship, however fleeting it might be. The gun hurt my butt when I settled in, but I ignored the mild pain. Instead, I thought of Kessler. What might the man throw at me before the trip was over? Would I see, whatever it was, coming? The more I thought, the less the gun hurt.

  The passengers nearby were drinking heavily, even at mid-day. I marveled over how much life on a ship differed from life on the mainland. Some rigidly kept land-based rules simply did not apply aboard the Lindy. Marlys came over to where I sat sipping her coffee. She checked out the length of the bar and then sidled up to me.

  “What do you want of me ashore?” she asked, her face open.

  I sensed that she was just curious, not fearful and not hesitant. I liked this woman a whole lot.

  “I want you as part of the ground party,” I answered. “I want you to wear exactly what you’re wearing now. Men are men, and they will respond to you, well, as they always respond to you.”

  I checked the nearby passengers to make sure they weren’t listening. They weren’t.

  “I’m to be a diversion?” she inquired.

  I nodded. I didn’t add “and what a helluva diversion,” but I thought it. We didn’t smile at one another much, I realized. I frowned at the admission, rotating on my stool to look about the interior of the lido lounge.

  Hathoot had showed, claiming a table in a far corner. His uniform was bright and spotless, his epaulets gleaming. He put his cap down on the table in front of him and then acknowledged me. Our eyes locked, very briefly.

  Predators, I thought to myself. Predators do not attack other predators. Predators go after prey. Attacking other predators, except to establish turf, is an exercise in stupidity. Why get hurt over nothing? Surreptitiously, I watched the man look all around the lido deck, sizing up his prey.

  I finished off my Navy bowl, preparatory to heading for Don’s cabin. With the Basque there, Don spent almost no time anywhere else, unless he had shipboard duties. The thought of an aging professor having the ultimate fling of his life tickled me. I did not regard myself as an aging professor, even though I had sat in that chair for a time. I was something else entirely. My lip curled at the very notion. A team of therapists could only arrive at what I was, after they had spent a lot of time and effort and then compared notes. Maybe.

  I flung the door open, wishing to catch somebody naked. Fair was fair. But nobody was. The Basque smiled at my entrance, as if she had read my thoughts about Marlys’ lack of smiling, only a few minutes earlier. Don lounged, as always.

  “Tell me about Doctor Khromov,” I demanded, sitting on the foot of his bunk, waiting impatiently.

  Don took his time. I felt like it would be appropriate for him to say “Take the pebbles from my hand, grasshopper,” but he didn’t.

  “I don’t know him, but I know the type. The museum is actually well thought of, for being in such a shithole. He’ll, no doubt, be the typical overbearing Russian professor type. It’s best, if you want something, to get him away from the museum. Use booze. They all love American booze. You can get all you want from Marlys, on your account of course.”

  I considered his recommendation.

  “Where should we meet him then?” I asked.

  Don rubbed his jaw before speaking; “The cemetery. The cemetery out on the north end of the spit was actually a very important area in the community. Everyone goes there, from time to time. Russian orthodoxy.”

  I thought about what he had underscored, fully understanding his point. Old world religions were different. They were not at all easily understood by Americans, even ethnologists.

  Don held forth again, “I’ll go to the museum and draw him out with Marlys. The power of that woman and a bottle of Vodka? The world pivots on such combinations.”

  He kidded, of course, yet I noted that the Basque had lost her smile.

  “You really going to lay everything out tonight?” Don asked, his gaze drifting away.

  I lied. I would give them what they needed to know to accomplish their part of the objectives. The less they knew, the better for them if everything went south.

  “And the gold mine?” Don went on.

  I inhaled. Gold was on the mind of everyone aboard the ship. It was a viral infection and it would not be cured by anything but actual gold or blood. It might take both.

  “There is no mine, Don. There’s a vein. It’s on extremely protected land which is only accessible during the summer months. And the accessibility is a big issue. Anything that’s taken out, if it comes to that, has to be taken out illegally, and in total secrecy. The gold is one big future problem, and, what’s more, you know it.”

  I finished, my breath coming out in exhausted puffs. I feared the gold, and all the problems it portended. A moment of dead silence blanketed the cabin.

  “So, you going to get it?” Don finally asked, his expression dead serious.

  My body fidgeted. First, I shrugged, then I looked down, but finally I brought my eyes up and told him: “Yes.”

  Don and the Basque both said “Yes” together, following my one word response, then we all clapped together.

  I had conveniently left out my mental reservation “if we live.”

  I decided to return to my room, catch a nap, and then head down to the Filipino mess for chow. I would not attend the formal dinner with the passengers. I’d prepare instead for the Mouseketeers’ meeting.

  Günter caught me in the corridor, just as before. This time he did not have to whisper.

  “The captain wants to see you,” he stated, and once more marched off.

  I now had control of some of the balls up in the air, but so many remained beyond my reach, or even my imagination.

  I got up and checked the CD player as soon as I arrived back in my cabin. “Way beyond my imagination,” I whispered and then clicked the on button. The next song should give me an idea, I thought, like a reading of my horoscope. The song began
to play.

  “… All the burning bridges that have fallen after me.”

  I used an expletive, then switched it off. I decided that the player was an instrument of mental torture, installed in my cabin by some omniscient power.

  I showered and shaved again, before throwing on my cashmere coat. I placed the Kel-Tec in my breast pocket. While rotating in front of the mirror, I assured myself that no telltale sagging of my jacket betrayed the weapon’s lethal presence. I was ready for the captain.

  As I locked my door, I speculated as to what the punishment was for shooting a captain at sea.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight:

  Line of Departure

  I rapped on Kessler’s door before barging in without an invitation. We were alone. He sat at his desk as before. I filled the seat Commander Hathoot had occupied the day before. His salutation of “Professor” lacked goodwill. As he played with his dead pipe, I hunkered down to wait.

  Whatever this articulate man wanted to say, I knew I didn’t want to hear it. As far as I was concerned, his only saving grace was the Basque — and she did not seem to consider his relationship with her a positive asset. I had not pushed Don about what was going on between the captain and his stepdaughter. I wasn’t aboard to do family counseling, unless it was essential to accomplish my mission.

  “If that Mouse flag goes up on my mast again I’ll leave you right here in Russia and you’ll have hell to pay to get out before winter sets in.” He banged his pipe on the edge of his desk.

  I shifted position. His listen-to-me-accentuate-my-words gesture was beginning to annoy me. I didn’t care about the Mouse flag. That he thought I was behind it simply revealed a gaping hole in his data collection net.

  The captain continued on, “There are rumors aboard the M/S World Discoverer. Rumors of you doing something important while we are docked in Provideniya.”

  I was impassive, still not speaking. The gun in my inner coat pocket felt good. While I didn’t like the captain, I had, as of yet, no reason to kill him. Without cause, I would not add him to those creatures that continuously inhabited my dream world. In killing people, you get selective, after a while. Post-traumatic stress causes men of violence to go to sleep with, and wake up with, those they thought they had put behind them. I smiled, ever so slightly to myself, as I gazed on the Germanic throwback in front of me. If it became necessary to insert the captain into my dreamscape, it would be done.

  “You think this whole cruise is some sort of humorous game, don’t you?” he inquired, having detected my faint, revealing smirk.

  I was feeling like a sophomore in high school again, sitting in front of the dean, or the vice principal. I should have said “Get on with it” but I knew it would be a mistake. I held back.

  The captain blasted away. “You screw up here, in any way at all, I’ll leave you marooned. You won’t see your passport for months. You cause me embarrassment, an international incident, and I’ll have you locked up here. They have a Gulag outside of town, you know, and I know the Commissar well.”

  I had to chuckle at that. Finally, I engaged him.

  “The gold?” I asked.

  Kessler put his pipe on the desk. He braced forward, like he had done the first time we’d met.

  “It would be easier to get the gold with you, but it can be done without you. You don’t have to come back from this god forsaken place at all.”

  And there it was. I could not remember being threatened that directly before, at least not by someone who had lived very long afterward. I let the smile fall from my expression, as if I was now surprised and worried about such a warning. I was not, but I could not let either my experience or my perverse sense of humor betray me. The mission ranked first and foremost. I replied to him with all the subservience I could muster.

  “I understand. I, too, want to have the benefits that might accrue from the dig. I have the paperwork ready to be filed when we hit the American mainland. We’ll be a team.”

  I impulsively stood up, and then stuck out my hand across his desk.

  “Ich verstehe!” I said, my face more serious than that of Benito’s at her toughest. I should have added, “Mein Führer,” but that would have involved losing control of my sense of humor.

  The captain was amazed. He slowly came to his feet. Then he accepted my hand and my sentiment.

  “I’m counting on you,” he said.

  I shook his hand, stiffly, did an about-face and marched out of his cabin. My contrived respect for the captain might just pass, I mused. Not for a while, though.

  I went straight to Doc Murphy’s cabin. The doctor answered my knock.

  “I thought we weren’t going in until tomorrow morning,” he said, backing up to his desk.

  “That’s correct, but I need some supplies.”

  He didn’t even shrug as he stepped aside. I found another of the small canvas sacks in a cabinet. I emptied out some old sewing equipment, went to the narcotics door, opened it, and loaded a bottle of the morphine. I threw in some syringes, bandage material, two rolls of tape, and some suture kits.

  “Be ready from when we go ashore until when we sail.”

  The old man surprised me by generating a huge smile.

  “I’m with you,” he assured me, with much more enthusiasm than I would have imagined.

  For good reasons, I now realized clearly, Murphy’s support was crucial to me.

  The lido deck was nearly empty when I got up there. The passengers were changing, I knew, in preparation for our afternoon lectures and dinner. I approached Marlys.

  “I need you for fifteen or twenty minutes, right now,” I said.

  She stepped to the end of the bar. The necklace was around her neck. I looked down to see the glitter of silver girdling her ankle.

  “Of course,” she said, smoothly, as if she had been waiting for just such an interruption.

  I led her to Don’s cabin and then held the door open for her when we got there. The Basque and Don were in their usual positions. I absently wondered if Don went over to her for sex or if she went to his bunk. I shook my head to get rid of such images. The Basque pointed at the bunk, but Marlys ignored her. I caught the one look that passed between them. I didn’t shiver, but I wondered why I didn’t. I motioned to Don.

  “I want you to go find Günter. Marlys needs to have a word with him. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll come.”

  Marlys’ face remained expressionless. Don put on his shoes and left.

  “Either of you been to Provideniya before?” I asked.

  Both women indicated they had. The Basque now spoke up.

  “This is our third, and last, trip of the summer. We’ve both been twice. I wasn’t here last year, but maybe she was.”

  The young girl jutted her chin in Marlys’ direction, but didn’t focus on her directly.

  I turned to Marlys.

  “Sit on the bunk,” I said, pointing.

  I didn’t need her to be seated, but I had to know she would do what I told her to do. Marlys quickly sat, then gave me a look that told me that she was pleasing herself by sitting, not giving me more than my due. I nodded, curtly, giving her that. God, but I loved women who were self-directed and stood up for themselves.

  “I need to get this,” I took out the Kel-Tec automatic, “into the city, as well as 48-ounces of gold, some morphine, and three radios.”

  I perused the Basque. As expected, her eyes were glued to the small, steel automatic.

  “Are you going to shoot someone?” she stammered, finally sounding like a young girl for the first time since I’d encountered her.

  “Most probably, somewhere along the line,” I said, and then turned back to Marlys, whose eyes were flat.

  And her question was just as flat.

  “Hathoot?” she asked.

  “Quite probably,” I responded.
>
  She reacted with almost undetectable glee. It was mostly in her eyes. I thought, right then, that Marlys would probably make a better agent than I. Something cold, yet warmly capable, lay deep inside the woman, waiting, patiently, like the Earth rotating under a storm. Or rotating into it.

  “What’s customs and immigration like?” I repeated. I replaced the automatic back into my coat pocket while I awaited her answer.

  “There aren’t any,” Marlys said. “We meet the jeep they send to the dock. We pay the money and give them our passports. They go away for an hour and return with the passports. We’re all cleared.”

  I checked with the Basque for confirmation.

  “The vodka,” the Basque reminded us.

  Marlys caught herself. “Oh yes, they get three bottles of Swedish Vodka. They come back drunk, every time.”

  I made a mental note. How very, very Russian.

  “Are there ever any exceptions? Do they ever deny entry, or search anybody?” I probed.

  Both women shook their heads.

  “Tomorrow morning we cross the Line of Departure. Be ready,” I cautioned.

  They just stared at me with perplexed expressions.

  “What?” I said, my hands spread.

  “What’s a Line of Departure?” the Basque asked.

  I appreciated the honesty of her question.

  “The Line of Departure is that line we draw for the start of the physical ‘assault.’ It will be an imaginary line on that dock tomorrow morning. After we cross it, there is no coming back, until the mission’s accomplished, and not necessarily in the same condition we left in, anyway.”

  I waited for my clarification to sink in. Eventually, it did.

  The door opened and Don stepped into the cabin. I stopped Günter with one hand, with which I also pointed to the corridor.

  “Come,” I requested of Marlys, leading her out to join Günter.

  I closed the cabin door. I looked at both of them, as they looked everywhere but at each other.

  “I’m going to tell him that you’ll go out with him for one evening when we hit the mainland of the U.S. again. Do you understand?”