The Tourist Trail

by John Yunker

  Then the high-pitched sound of a small engine filled his ears, and a Zodiac emerged from behind an iceberg, moving full speed. And there was Aeneas, alone at the controls in his bright yellow jacket, his hood down tight against the wind and sea spray. Robert fumbled to start up the engine of his Zodiac to give chase, to catch Aeneas before he boarded the Tern. But just as the engine came to life and Robert began to gain momentum, he realized that Aeneas was not headed for the Tern.

  His destination was the Maru, and he went at it headfirst. He did not stop, did not turn. He picked up the prop fouler and held it up, and as Robert watched, in one horrifying and sickening moment, both man and boat were consumed under the bow of the Maru.

  The Maru lurched to a halt as if it had struck an iceberg. Alarms sounded on the top deck. Robert frantically began searching for any sign of life, but he already knew the outcome: Like Noa, Aeneas would rather die than go to prison.

  And, once again, Aeneas had taken Noa with him.

  Angela

  Even after disembarking at Ushuaia, Angela could still feel the waves under her feet, the phantom ocean not yet releasing its grip on her body. Along with most of the Narwhal’s passengers, she boarded a plane to Buenos Aires. From there, she headed south again, catching a flight to Trelew. While those around her chatted and read from books and magazines, she kept her eyes out the window.

  In Trelew, she stopped into an Internet café and prepaid an hour. It had been ten hours since she’d last tracked Aeneas, and she felt nervous as she logged into the satellite portal and entered the transmitter number. The blue pixels assembled themselves, and she waited for the red dot to appear. It never did.

  Angela stared at the screen, thinking that maybe her eyes were tired, the screen failing. She reentered the number. She refreshed the browser window. She switched from map view to chart view, scanning a long list of coordinates and dates and times.

  According to the log, Aeneas’s transmitter was last heard from eight hours and twenty minutes ago. Angela forced a deep breath and began to talk herself away from the precipice of fatal thoughts. The satellite simply hadn’t detected the signal. Perhaps Aeneas was working down below in the engine room. Or maybe he’d finally put his yellow jacket into a washing machine; it would be just like him to leave everything in the pockets.

  Angela felt her heart pounding. She stood and paced the room, then refreshed the map one more time, still hoping. But the red dot was gone, yet another in a long string of red dots gone missing from her life. Her computer time expired, and she stood and exited the café. She started toward the bus station but then reversed herself.

  Back in the café, she purchased another hour.

  She brought up the CDA web site and was redirected to a black screen with nothing but a photo of Aeneas in the middle. Under it were the words Rest in Peace.

  “Oh no,” she heard herself saying. “Please, no.”

  She could feel her insides crumbling, her lungs seizing. She braced herself at the table, then she tried a search engine. She refused to believe it. He had died before, he used to tell her. And he’d always risen from the dead. In the search window, she entered Aeneas and was handed back 21,459 results. She switched to news entries only and the list condensed to 137 entries. She found an article in The New York Times, dated the day before. The headline was Whale Warrior, with a quote from Aeneas: “We’re doing what the rest of the world apparently does not have the stomach for—protecting its wildlife.”

  Another article, with the headline: Japanese Whalers Meet Resistance, also featuring an Aeneas quote. Angela began to feel her mood rising. The CDA site was just a ruse, another device to throw off the authorities and nothing more.

  Then she found a Reuters headline: Tragedy in Antarctica. She followed a link to a video clip credited to Greenpeace. She waited for the video to load, seconds that felt like forever, and then it was playing, the video screen shaky and hazy with mist. The scene was a familiar one—icebergs and low-lying clouds and Zodiacs skipping across the waves. Then, in the distance, an aging blue whaling vessel, a Zodiac headed for its bow. A man, alone, in a yellow jacket. She tried to make out the face, but the screen was too small, the video blurred.

  She went to the Greenpeace web site, then to other news sites, other search engines. She played the clip again. She tried full screen. A man in a yellow jacket. A man in a yellow jacket heading for the bow of a whaling ship, then falling under.

  The video was too bleary to be believed, or maybe it was her eyes. But she would not accept it. There was simply not enough data. She arrived at the home page of The Sydney Morning Herald. Angela saw only headlines about taxes, fires, cricket. She began to exhale, until she scrolled down the page and saw: Anti-whaling Leader Confirmed Dead.

  In the article, Lauren Davis of the CDA confirmed his death by radio. Aeneas had been sucked underneath the Japanese whaling vessel Takanami Maru, she said. She credited Aeneas for saving the lives of three hundred whales by disabling the vessel. “The battle continues,” she was quoted as saying. “We have only just begun to fight.” Greenpeace reported hauling in the remnants of a Zodiac along with a shredded, blood-stained yellow jacket.

  Angela closed her eyes. He was gone, truly gone—and this was how she had to learn about it: satellites and computer screens. A century ago, months would have passed before she learned the news, months spent going to sleep hopeful. Now the facts arrived too quickly. How she hated technology.

  She opened her eyes and read his obituary, which, given the risks he liked to take, had probably been ready to go for years. He had tempted death long enough for every newspaper to have an obituary on hand.

  Yet even in death, Aeneas managed to surprise her. Neil Patrick Cameron had been born in Port Townsend, Washington, inherited a fishing boat, spent a year in college before dropping out, was married and divorced three times—this she now knew. What she did not know was that Aeneas was survived by a son, Neil Jr., age eighteen, residing in Seattle. A son from his first marriage.

  Her Internet time expired. She stared at the blank screen, until someone tapped her on the shoulder. A young tourist waiting in line.

  * * *

  Angela caught the last tour bus to Punta Verde, arriving in the evening. The research office was empty, her former colleagues most likely at dinner. She started toward the dining hall, then stopped. Her mind had gone blank. What story would she tell them? The narrative no longer made sense. She ran away with a man, like a schoolgirl, had her heart broken, and then ran away again. And now she was home, no more secure than when she’d left, haunted by indecision and not fully whole, a part of her still down there eluding ships, hiding behind icebergs.

  She made her way to her trailer and stopped at a small wooden cross placed where Diesel used to live. On it was inscribed:

  Diesel

  Rest in Peace

  Angela heard a noise and turned to see Shelly standing behind her. Her hair was streaked with emerging sparks of gray, a reminder of how long Angela had been away. Angela wasn’t sure what to say, so she let Shelly speak first.

  “Doug suggested Molt in Peace,” Shelly said. “I overruled him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How was your leave of absence?”

  Angela avoided Shelly’s eyes and stared at the cross. “I’m sorry I lost the transmitter.”

  “At least you returned.”

  “You don’t mind if I stay?”

  “Mind? Of course not. I need you to take Doug off my hands. He’s rather clingy.”

  * * *

  The next day, Angela took Doug to the Back Bay, a flat stretch of land near the water. She watched him remove a juvenile from its burrow with one fast-moving hand. He weighed and measured the bird before returning it to its agitated mother.

  “Nicely done,” Angela said.

  “I had a good teacher,” he said. “Listen, I’m sorry I pr
essured you about Aeneas.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “It’s natural to feel protective of this place.”

  “Had I known who he was, I would have helped. We all would have. I should have just kept my mouth shut. Next time, I will.”

  “Don’t worry. There won’t be a next time.”

  They found a red-dot bird, and this time Angela let Doug do everything on his own.

  “How old is this one?” he asked.

  Angela did the math in her head, “Twenty-nine.”

  Doug laughed. “Wow. He’s older than I am.” He looked up at Angela and caught himself.

  “No offense taken,” she said. She wanted to laugh along with him. She wanted to rejoice in the accomplishment of this small animal, surviving so long under such conditions, so many predators and risks. There was a time she would have. But not today.

  Robert

  When Robert entered the windowless conference room at FBI headquarters, Gordon and Lynda were already seated around a table with three others.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Robert said.

  “I thought you were on vacation,” Gordon said.

  “Not yet.”

  Robert took a seat next to a rotund man that he recognized from the Pentagon. Across from him was a woman who had the look of some sort of analyst, bookish and cold. The overhead lights were dimmed, and a video was projected onto the wall.

  “Is this the Greenpeace footage?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Gordon said. “They were the only ones filming and the quality is for shit. You’re going to see several versions of the clip. The first is original footage, followed by a close-up, and then another close-up in which we ran a sharpening filter.”

  Robert looked up at the screen, watching a man in a yellow jacket standing alone in a Zodiac approaching the bow of the Japanese ship. The man, with his back to the camera, held aloft the prop fouler with one hand, the steering bar of the Zodiac with the other. It was rather cinematic, Robert had to admit, and it was just like Aeneas, as if he’d known a camera was on him the whole time. The camera began to shudder, and wisps of fog blurred the scene. The yellow jacket disappeared into the water, and the bow consumed the Zodiac without pause.

  “No body was recovered,” Gordon said. As the scene iterated, the ending remained the same.

  “Probably wrapped around the propeller along with the barbed wire,” the large man said.

  “I’d expect them to find nothing, given the circumstances,” someone added.

  “Body or no body, we’re confident this was Aeneas,” Gordon said. “We had documented every crew member of the Tern in Puerto Madryn, and we did so again after this incident. Everyone was accounted for. Only Aeneas was missing.”

  “Looks more like he jumped in than fell,” the large man said.

  “What’s the difference?” Lynda said. “The result’s the same.”

  “An interesting case study,” the woman said. “He had come to view the human race as some sort of invasive species, like weeds.”

  “That just goes to show that we can’t overlook the potential of the homegrown ecoterror movement in this country,” the large man said. “This is no different than a suicide bombing.”

  The meeting droned on, and Robert tuned them out until lights came up and the room emptied. Robert felt Gordon looking at him as Gordon walked past on his way out, but Robert didn’t acknowledge him. Although the wall at the front of the room was blank again, Robert continued to stare at it, then noticed Lynda standing over him.

  “You know, you’re not getting any overtime for being here,” she said.

  “Do you really think Aeneas jumped?”

  “Somebody jumped,” she said. “Aeneas is the only one missing. So, yeah, I think he jumped.”

  “He would never have done that.”

  “Then who did, Sherlock?”

  Robert wanted to suggest someone else, anyone else, but who else was there? So he kept his silence. If he were to start asking questions, he would only disrupt her life along with his.

  “How’s your husband?” Robert asked. “Glad to have you back?”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “He was so bored and lonely he actually fixed the leak in the bathroom. Another week and he might have actually painted the garage.”

  Lynda reached into her purse and removed a manila envelope.

  “Here. Since you didn’t bring a camera, I made extra copies. Something to remember me by.”

  After she left, Robert opened the envelope. Inside was a photo of him staring over the railing of the Roca, looking terse, before everything fell apart. A photo of a whale—a small dot on the horizon, and photos of penguins in Punta Verde, icebergs, the Japanese ships. A photo from the Tern when they first boarded her, with Lauren standing defiantly in the background. A picture of the crew, taken after Aeneas had disappeared, faces vacant, shoulders slumped.

  “Case closed.”

  Robert turned. It was Gordon. He stood and looked his boss in the eyes. “It doesn’t feel closed.”

  “It never really is.” Gordon leaned against the table and folded his arms. “There is something we picked up on the wire taps that I didn’t share with the group. Care to speculate who the new leader of CDA is?”

  “Lauren Davis.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “It’s just a matter of time before you’ll be arresting her.”

  “What makes you think I’ll have to?”

  “Aeneas’s death has been a boom for fundraising and volunteers. They’re going to purchase a second ship.”

  ***

  Later, Robert left his musty apartment and went for a jog. The air was warmer than usual, and he found himself running for more than an hour, his mind circling the events of the past two weeks.

  Back home, after a shower and a meal, he eyed his luggage, still sitting in the corner, packed. Oddly, there was a part of him that didn’t want the trip to end. As if he could go back and change things.

  He emptied his bags onto the bed. Clothing and toiletries, passport and files. He noticed a photo that had slipped out of one of the files and picked it up.

  It was a picture of Ethan Downes, from Emperor of the Seas. The cruise ship passenger gone missing. Robert sat on the bed, his heart suddenly pounding, and studied the photo. He had seen this face before, but where. He closed his eyes, picturing Ethan’s face, searching for a match, for context.

  His eyes flew open as he realized he’d seen the same face aboard the Tern. He was sure of it. Through his binoculars, watching the crew members throw bombs at the Maru, he’d seen Ethan Downes, somehow, among the deckhands. But it didn’t make sense.

  He opened the packet of photos from Lynda, removed the group picture of the Tern, taken after Aeneas had died, and focused on each and every person. Ethan was not among them.

  But Robert knew he was right. At some point in time, Ethan had been on that boat.

  Angela

  Days passed, then weeks. She tried to forget him, but Aeneas was like Diesel: every day in the field triggered a memory. The way Aeneas would yank on his end of the rope, pulling her toward him so he could kiss her. The spontaneous whistling behind her as she hiked through the brush. The sound of his breathing, heavy as they climbed up the dried riverbeds. Now there was just the sound of wind.

  On a drizzly morning, Angela set out to visit a crèche near the tourist trail. When penguin chicks reached a certain age, they congregated together in large flocks, still dependent upon their parents to emerge from the water and feed them, but only a few weeks removed from entering the water themselves.

  When Angela arrived, two caracaras were fighting over the carcass of a chick and she waved them off. The safest part of the crèche was the middle, protected from predators, the weather, and the occasional aggres
sive adult. The chicks on the outer edges were the weaker birds, or the sick, or maybe just different.

  It occurred to Angela, standing there watching them, that she too had been on the outer edge of the crèche when Aeneas washed ashore. Voluntarily, she had isolated herself from the group, living in a trailer instead of the cueva, eating alone, walking alone so many nights. By the time Aeneas had arrived, she was vulnerable, and perhaps she left too soon, without knowing fully how to swim.

  Up over the hill, she heard the honking of horns. The gate had been lifted, the tourist trail opened. Dust and smoke clouds billowed. She turned and walked in the opposite direction. She decided that it was time she completed a few other circles that she and Aeneas had left unfinished.

  She headed north. She passed guanacos on the hill, standing between her and the ocean, watching her with one eye as they nibbled on scrub grass. She angled toward the water, toward the place she’d first found Aeneas, the shells crunching underfoot. She stopped and looked out over the water, hoping for a vessel of any kind.

  “What happened to you?” she asked aloud. She could still see Aeneas standing on the bridge, nose to the front window, hair falling over his ears, eyes focused on the icebergs ahead.

  She finished the circles, then sat on a hill and nibbled on a peanut butter sandwich. This would be the last time she traveled this far north this season. The penguins would be gone soon, headed north themselves, following the food. She would worry about them but remind herself that they were exactly where they belonged, in their comfort zone. The land was always a temporary diversion for them, as the sea had been for her.

  A glint caught her eye and she poked her head into a burrow in search of a band. Could this be a red dot? she wondered. She opened her notebook.