by John Yunker
“Not this time.”
He sighed. “Very well, then.”
Aeneas piloted the Zodiac with Angela and her penguin seated at the front. She looked up at him, but his eyes were fixed above her head. When the Zodiac reached the pier, Angela lifted herself up. Aeneas handed her the carrier. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“I guess we were only meant to sail together for a short while.”
“I guess.” She turned away.
“You forgot this,” he said. When she turned back, he tossed her a necklace, and she caught it. It was her penguin tag, the sharp indentations of the punched numbers catching the sun. Zero four two two nine. She had come to believe that it had brought Aeneas luck as he sideswiped the icebergs, and she could not imagine him not wearing it as he did the same while chasing the Japanese.
She tossed the necklace back. “Return it to me when you’re finished.”
“It might be awhile. It might be a very long time.”
“I’ll wait. You’ll know where to find me.”
“In absentia?” he asked, his eyes coming alive again.
“Right. In absentia.”
Angela wanted to return to him suddenly and hold him, prevent him from leaving. Why couldn’t she take him back home with her? Why did they both have to be so stubborn, so independent? She didn’t want to regret this moment, and yet she knew she would. She already did.
Aeneas put the boat in reverse, backed out a few feet, then spun around. Within minutes he was back at the vessel. Thick wires drew the Zodiac up out of the water and onto the deck.
Robert
Through the Gerlache Strait, past Palmer Station. Past the Adelaide Islands, through an ice-choked, slow-going passage known as the Gauntlet. Finally into the Amundsen Sea. Twenty-one hours to reach Aeneas.
When the Argentine cutter finally came within sight of the Tern, they were, as Robert predicted, too late. The battle was well underway, the Tern in close pursuit of a Japanese whaling ship, and, following well behind, a Greenpeace ship.
Robert, in the bridge with Lynda, was reminded of the days of being Jake. He now found it hard to play the role of bystander; he wanted to be a participant. But this was not his battle. He could only watch and wait it out. Wait for his opportunity to board the Tern and arrest Aeneas.
The Japanese whaler, the Takanami Maru, was a large-hulled ship painted blue and black. It was nearly twice as long as the Tern, its deck a good fifteen feet higher. Seeing the Tern chasing after the Maru reminded Robert of a Chihuahua making a run at a Mastiff; it would have been comical if it weren’t so tragic.
Over the radio they could hear Aeneas: “This is the captain of the Arctic Tern. Acting under full authority of the Antarctic Treaty, we demand that you cease your whale slaughter immediately and leave these waters. Failure to do so will result in a direct action. This is not a protest action. Repeat: This is not a protest action.”
The Maru was silent, seemingly indifferent. Instead of running in a straight line, the Maru was moving diagonally, tacking ever so slightly, as if the Tern did not even exist. When Robert raised his binoculars, he realized the reason for the ship’s trajectory—it, too, was in pursuit of something.
A whale.
A misty cough erupted from the water just ahead of the Maru, then the gray bulge of a humpback. Robert panned back to the helm of the Maru, where a man stood at attention behind a harpoon mounted in what looked like a rocket launcher. Robert remembered what Aeneas told him once: If a harpoon hits you, pray that it goes straight through you. The tip of a harpoon contained twenty grams of penthrite, one of the world’s nastiest explosives, designed to detonate a foot or two within the body of the whale. Yet despite the explosive, the harpoon rarely killed them.
A cloud of smoke suddenly enveloped the man at the harpoon. By the time Robert heard the explosion, the damage was done. He didn’t see the harpoon in the air, but he saw the impact, the explosion of blood, a sudden curvature of a black body in the water. A wire drawn taught began to pull in its prey. Blood gushed as if from a fire hose.
Through his binoculars, Robert watched the whale, helpless, bleeding from all orifices. And then he noticed a smaller whale, a baby, following close behind. He glanced at Lynda, who was watching wide-eyed and silent. “The pup always stays close to its mother,” he explained. “So they kill the mother first. They take their time with the second.”
The injured whale was still moving, its tail slapping against a pool of its own blood. But the whale could not keep itself from being dragged to the side of the ship, where men in bright blue uniforms reached out of an opening in the hull with metal prongs. They began sending large doses of electricity through the whale. The body convulsed for a few seconds, then went limp.
“Jesus Christ,” Lynda said, cringing.
Aeneas accelerated the Tern, and it became clear that the two ships were on a collision course, with the Japanese cutting across the Tern’s path.
Finally, the radio sputtered to life, and Robert heard a man’s voice speak in halting English. “Leave us alone. You are in our path.”
“We will not leave you alone, sir,” Aeneas responded. “Only when you stop killing whales in blatant violation of international law will we leave you alone.”
“You are terrorist.”
“That’s your opinion. Would you care to ask the whales what they think of me?”
Robert watched the crew of the Tern ready themselves on the deck to hurl a grab-bag collection of stink and smoke bombs. At the front of the Tern, a crew member manned the fire hose and began spewing out a steady stream of ocean water. The whaler’s horns began to blare, and the Tern fired its horn back, creating a cacophony of noise as the two ships headed for a collision.
From Robert’s point of view, the impact appeared to be nothing more than a glancing blow, the Japanese hull passing by like the side of a bus. But the Tern’s crew told a different story—crew members upended, neatly stacked and strapped Zodiacs strewn about. It was if an earthquake had struck, and Robert half expected to see the fragile Tern split in half.
Instead, ever so slightly, the Tern began to veer away from the Maru and then stabilize. Robert could hear shouts from the crew, could see objects being thrown. The fact that the Tern could have gone down in an instant, bodies drowned, did not appear to mean anything. Even the weather, which had turned ominous—an overcast sky spraying mist, the wind gathering strength—did not slow anyone down. More Zodiacs were dropped into the water, and they pursued the Japanese ship like flies. But like the ones before, they were just as ineffectual. Above the clouds darkened, and rain began to spit.
Robert turned to check on Lynda. Her face was red, her eyes still glued to the bleeding, convulsing whale hanging from the Japanese ship’s hull.
“It’s tough to watch, I know,” he said.
“My husband wanted to become a sport fisherman when we moved to Florida,” she said. “I didn’t think anything of it until he took me out one day to catch marlin. That poor fish was dragged kicking and screaming for miles—I’d never seen such a display of courage. And for what? To be strung up and photographed. I told the hubby if he wanted to stay in Florida, that would be the last fish he caught.”
“Was it?”
She forced a smile. “He was never any good at it anyway. I think he was relieved. I wonder if the whalers would feel the same way, if we sent a warning shot or two.”
“I wonder,” was all Robert could muster in response. He was ready to give the command, to blow that Japanese ship out of the water, if she were willing to translate. But he knew that Lynda was speaking from anger, from empathy, and that there was no sense in taking any more lives than necessary. This was not yet their war.
He followed Lynda’s eyes back to the ships. They were approaching a wall of fog, and soon everyone would be enveloped in susp
ended moisture. Maybe this would be enough to give the whalers pause.
“Let’s get this over with and go home, okay?” Robert said.
“Okay.”
Ethan
Annie used to say: Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward. This was the dilemma that Ethan faced. He didn’t fully understand what he was about to do; he only knew that, unlike a computer keystroke, it could not be undone.
He boarded the Zodiac and lowered himself to the water. Nobody noticed him, which formerly had annoyed him but which served him well now. He started the engine and left the Arctic Tern behind, standing alone at the stern, tiller handle firmly in hand, his eyebrows dripping icy salt water. The boat hopped across the waves toward its target, the Takanami Maru.
Moments before, Ethan had been just another crew member, futilely hurling stink and smoke bombs at the Japanese whalers. Off starboard, Ethan had watched the hull of dark blue steel approaching. Fifty feet to go, then twenty, then ten, then the sound of steel grinding against steel. The Tern shuddered, and Ethan grabbed the opposite railing.
He felt his lungs convulse and lunged across the deck to the crate of ammunition. He grabbed a rescue flare, but the Tern arched up and heaved to the left, tossing him onto the deck. Finally, the Tern began to veer away from the Maru and then stabilize. While the ship idled and the others cheered their victory, Ethan had descended to the water.
He didn’t notice the fog rolling in until the Maru faded into it. When he looked back, he saw only fog behind him. He slowed the engine. Seeing a white patch amidst the sea of gray, he headed for it until he realized at the last moment that it was not the Tern, that he was about to run straight into an iceberg. He killed the engine and listened for a ship, any ship. He hadn’t brought a radio.
He rummaged through a supply box and found an emergency flare, but he hesitated to use it. He could imagine Aeneas right now, kicking himself for entrusting a rookie with the Zodiac. Yet this only made Ethan more determined.
He heard a loud exhale and looked down to see a whale piercing the surface of the water, barely, just enough to be noticed. He wished he could identify the breed, to know what Aeneas knew, what Annie might have known, as he watched the whale descend below the surface, a shadow merging into the indigo water.
He took a seat on the floor of the boat and rested his eyes. Seeing the whale had put him at peace, as if he were alone but not truly alone. Although he knew little about where he was or why he was here, he felt that everything was working according to plan. Not his plan, despite his best efforts. But a plan. He was a player in a larger script, God’s algorithm, a purpose not yet clear to him but unfolding without bugs or buffer overflows, a seamless string of code.
Robert
By the time Aeneas made the distress call, Robert figured it was too late to find the Tern’s missing Zodiac, let alone rescue its passenger. Yet when he heard Aeneas’s voice on the radio, asking for help, Robert wanted to help, and he hoped he could. He also knew that if he could locate that Zodiac before Aeneas did, that he might have the leverage he needed to bring this chase to an end.
Robert stood in the bridge staring into the fog. Zamora guided the Roca slowly, mindful of the dozens of icebergs surrounding them. The radar screen would be of no help for the Zodiac, and the thick fog rendered binoculars useless. The best they could do was assemble as many pairs of eyes around the ship as possible.
After a while, Robert left to find Lynda, who was on the lower front deck.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Nada,” she said. “I’m just curious here, but what’s your grand plan for when we do get to the Tern? You think Aeneas is just gonna pull over so we can board?”
“If we find this Zodiac first, Aeneas will have no choice,” he said.
“And if we don’t?”
Robert said nothing. He had no backup plan. He only knew he didn’t want another slalom race. And if the Roca did get close enough to deploy its own Zodiacs, he also knew Aeneas would be waiting with water jets, smoke bombs, and railings lined with barbed wire.
“You know what we need to get on that ship?” Lynda said.
“What’s that?”
“A Trojan horse.”
“One that floats.”
“Okay, then. A Trojan seahorse,” she said, then laughed at her joke. Robert looked at her thoughtfully. Her smiled faded. “What is it?” she asked.
“You just gave us our plan,” Robert said.
“I’m joking, Bobby.”
“I’m not,” Robert said.
* * *
The plan was simple: If Robert could not locate the missing crewman, he would impersonate him. Suddenly, those days spent spying on the Tern back in Argentina were paying off. Robert knew the color of the immersion suits the Tern kept on hand, which would help him craft a disguise that would get him rescued by the Tern—lifted, Zodiac and all, onto the deck, arrest warrant in hand, before the Tern’s crew discovered he wasn’t one of their own. It was a plan that even Aeneas might appreciate, had he not been the target of it.
There was still the chance that Aeneas had already located the errant Zodiac. But the fact that the Tern was still hovering a few miles away in the fog instead of pursuing whalers was a sign that they were still searching. Either way, it was worth the risk.
Robert and Lynda were lowered to the water in a Zodiac. Lynda had instructed the captain to head in the opposite direction so as not to draw attention to the Roca. They needed to be truly alone if they were to trick Aeneas.
Robert pulled on the reflective orange survival suit and donned an oversized black hooded sweatshirt.
“I’ll pull the hood up when we get within view,” he explained. “And when I give the word, you’ll hide under this tarp.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And there’s one more thing.” Robert pulled out his handgun. “Stand over here,” he said, motioning her to his side.
“What?”
Just as Lynda moved over, Robert quickly fired a shot into the rubberized wall of the boat. The gunshot was echoed by the sound of air escaping.
“What the hell!” Lynda said.
Robert watched the wall implode slowly, lowering what little barrier there was between them and the choppy water. The Zodiac began to list, and Lynda’s face had turned crimson with anger.
“Bobby, what the hell are you doing?”
“I had to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because if they look close enough they’ll know I’m not one of them. This way, they’ll see a boat in distress and they won’t hesitate to pull us up. We have to appear close to sinking.”
“We are close to sinking.”
“We’ll be fine. Besides, did you notice the Argentine flag on the outer wall of this Zodiac? That’s what I pull a bullet through.”
“Oh.” Lynda quieted down as the logic sunk in. Holding his gun, smelling the exhaust of the spent cartridge, made Robert feel like an agent again. He realized he’d needed the push to get back into character. Then he wondered why he needed to get into character at all. Had he only been playing an agent all these years? Had he truly been more like Jake all along? He forced the thoughts out of his head.
Robert could see, through the fog, the white shadow of the Tern becoming sharp around the edges. He heard voices, people shouting. Perhaps they were calling out to Robert, thinking he was the missing crewman. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and motioned toward the tarp. Lynda laid down on the deck and pulled the plastic over her.
“Figures it would be a guy driving that missing boat,” Lynda said, her voice muffled from under the tarp. “You men always have to be the ones at the wheel. And no wonder he got lost. Men never ask for directions.”
“Quiet. We’re getting close.” The Tern was less than fifty yards away. Robert kept his he
ad angled toward the water to prevent anyone from getting a good look at him. He waved at the ship and he heard more voices, the volume increasing. He glanced up quickly and saw the while hull overshadowing him, until he was alongside the ship. He heard a mechanical sound and looked up to see a crane swinging into position.
A wire was lowered. Robert grabbed it and attached it to his Zodiac. The crane emitted a whine and the floor began to wobble as it left behind the water. Robert grabbed onto the wire and reached inside his jacket for his gun.
“You ready?” Robert mumbled to Lynda, face held down.
“Just give the word.”
They were hovering above the deck now. The crew were silent. Robert held his breath until he felt the bottom of their boat becoming one with the deck of the ship.
“One, two...” he said.
Robert stood, pulled the hood back, and revealed the gun. The dozen or so crew members who surrounded them stood motionless. Even Aeneas, who hadn’t aged a day since Robert last saw him, appeared surprised. Robert cautiously stepped out of the Zodiac and took a step toward Aeneas, who looked back at the crew members behind him.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Aeneas said.
Angela
Angela sat in the wood-paneled lounge of the Narwhal as waiters in red vests took drink orders. Glenn, the expedition leader, stood at the front of the room, next to the bar, and foreshadowed the next day’s events. A tour of grounded icebergs. A lecture on the leopard seal. A landing on Aitcho Island to view gentoo and chinstrap penguins.
Angela stared out the window, her mind elsewhere. Earlier that day, she’d stood on the rocky shore near Palmer Station and opened the makeshift penguin carrier. The bird had stepped out gingerly, unsure of his surroundings. He was thoroughly cleaned and ready for reentry, but though the water was only ten feet away, he approached it cautiously. Angela told herself that he would quickly find his way back to his colony, though researchers still had little clue as to how penguins navigated the oceans and returned to their homes year after year. Some speculated that they used the moon and the stars, floating on the surface in the darkness. But what about the Southern Ocean, where the night skies were elusive? These were the questions that Angela asked herself, and even asked the penguins when no one was looking.
