A Death on The Horizon

by Mark Ellis

  Viktor had picked up some rudimentary computer skills at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and so was able to start the laptop, which fired right up. Most of the file content proved to be just what might be expected in a journalist’s field computer. There were published articles, draft articles, favorite links, including Imbroglio, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times. Deathknell was bookmarked, and a pornographic site, lesbianfetish.com.

  Viktor found two files of interest under My Documents. The one marked Imbroglio Piece-Rainier Policy Institute had only the vaguest of outlines, proof that Lara had only just started working on the magazine assignment. It was in another file, Northstar Journal, that Viktor found what Barb Stamen had bequeathed to him from his beloved daughter.

  He noticed right off the date of the first entry, June 28, 2008, and imagined his beautiful baby girl as she was when she’d scribble on the free paper found in the hotels they’d frequent on his summer runs.

  6/28/08. You’d think, given all I’ve gone through in the last year that it would seem a relief to get on any ship. Not this one. Personal problems are one thing but being here with the kind of people I’m talking about, these hard-core Republicans, is so, so much worse. I feel like a stowaway on the Death Star. I feel like Borat in the house of the Jews!

  These people are insane! Unbelievably, there are murmurs that McCain might consider abortion Nazi Sarah Palin as his running mate, and these people, the women especially, are ecstatic about it. What kind of mind celebrates the idea of this Alaskan hyper-breeder being anywhere near the White House? I need a shower every time I think of it.

  My skin crawls when I think about this nest of imperialists, these corporate apologists who pollute the earth. The talk-show Goebbels clones like Grant Sharpe, fanning the flames of the redneck, flag-waving jingoists. And they are all right here on the ship with me. For God’s sake, it was Karl Rove himself who delivered the crypto-fascist send-off on a widescreen TV. He looked like some doughboy automaton sent to announce the beginning of war without end.

  The first night at sea summed up everything I hate about the capitalists, the opulence, the greased money. The interconnected circle that nobody without the proper way of looking at things ever gets into. Their stolen elections and heartless system that keeps the human race trying to score against itself and holds a permanently oppressed multitude under the yoke of obscenely distributed wealth and Faustian bargains kept with mega-death weaponry.

  I spent the night listening like an Alcatraz lifer. I ate the vegetarian dishes—delicious, I must say—and made my way around the circles of power, trying not to seem like an enemy reporter. I need to relearn the technique of deep breathing and skip the second cup of morning coffee. I need to awaken that skill I so often used in Russia, the skill to manufacture a persona that is not afraid.

  These people, this party, actually think they can continue their reign of injustice against workers, people of color, immigrants, women, my gay, lesbian, and transgendered brothers and sisters. They are bad for the environment, bad for the planet, the people, and bad for the airwaves, like poison, poisoning the populace against policies that make all the sense in the world. Policies that if enacted would help the very people being propagandized to resist them.

  It just shows the absolute critical importance of getting Senator Barack elected.

  Need to start thinking in terms of my Imbroglio story. That’s why I’m here.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was an economic catastrophe wreaking havoc across the land, but the Northstar’s magnificence as she floated in the Port of Seattle on this pristine morning put the lie to it. People across the globe could look on the ship’s presence alongside a sunlit pier and think that never—never—could anything be amiss. But Captain Squier knew things were amiss, despite the swell of pride and duty that washed over him as he looked down from the windows of the captain’s suite. The classically appointed command berth just beneath the bridge featured a panoramic view of the Northstar’s foredeck and the open seas to be conquered before her.

  Those well-to-do and politically connected souls just now waving from the bannered deck rails clashed with what Rad knew about vanished fortunes and the newly unemployed. The sweeping lines of Trans Oceanic’s flagship contrasted sharply with the jagged downward trend of all leading economic indicators. News had come of a major cruise cancellation. A Washington State municipal government—identity as yet classified—had backed out of a million-dollar junket to Cancun, leaving Rad’s colleague, Captain Ashford “Torpedo” Simmons, without an early-summer assignment. Rad guessed that the cruise-canceling municipality would be back. They’d get their Cancun gala and more. Government was ascendant now, and nothing short of citizen revolt would stop Obama’s fundamental transformation—at least, that’s how this new “Tea Party” storyline went. Rad had not yet factored the rising tide of patriot opposition into his thinking about the Party’s future. He’d wait and see, wait and see, a phrase that seemed to be the mantra of the moment.

  A brass ensemble of US Coast Guard Band retirees, the Ensigns, had set up on a low stage. When they struck up a Sousa-esque version of the Rolling Stones hit “Start Me Up,” it sounded like old times, good times, which seemed so distant now, only months into the new Democratic administration. The song ended and the hurrahs notched higher when Newt Gingrich’s visage of midterm rebirth filled a mega screen stationed on the pier.

  Here was a possible savior—he’d done it once before—offering boarding passes for a battered but worthy vessel. But for every fortunate on the pier that day, there were countless more of the great unwashed—including plenty of Republicans—who were not onboard. Underlying all, a demographic shift was occurring, eroding like a sinkhole under the pillars of society. In Rad’s worried viewpoint, too many people were latching onto the flawed promise of progressivism. The opulent and privileged view from the captain’s suite could be a doomed one, like some depressing linotype of a Russian landowner standing in his cabbage field before the revolution.

  Newt continued his remarks on the big screen, reaching the patented Gingrich summation, merciful in its soft-edged logic. Only a few months into the new regime and leftist threats of redistribution had installed him as potentate redux, a starched-collar exemplar in the face of socialism’s hectoring witch.

  The ship’s horn gave a stupendous hiccup, and those not berthed began to disembark down six gangplanks. People turned back for fond looks and blown kisses, and the Ensigns began, in a booming rumpus, “Anchors Aweigh.” Rad would soon be expected on the bridge.

  Niggling down where the unthinkable gets processed was the inevitability of parties, societies, and ideologies vanishing into the runes of time. Empires fall. Life goes on. Rad could end up working for the government. The IRS audit tickled at the fringes of his brooding. William Ward, financial planner, had been impeccable with his recordkeeping over the decades, from Bush to Bush. “You’re as clean as Mike Huckabee’s police record,” Ward had assured Rad.

  There was a sharp rap at the captain’s suite door.

  There would always be a need for skippers. But Rad wondered, as he returned the crisp salute of the young staffer sent to escort him to the bridge, would there always be a need for Republicans?

  Melissa could not believe it. The Yellow Cab she’d called to take her to the waterfront had shown up a good twenty minutes late. And as her cabbie took the busy off-ramp from Port Rachel, they found the downtown arterials to be maddeningly stop and go.

  “Mariners, Yankees,” was the Arabic fare jockey’s explanation for the traffic cluster.

  “Can you turn on the air-conditioning?” Melissa asked.

  “Sorry, not working,” he replied through white teeth. She felt sweat trickle between her breasts, her chai sweating out in a backseat malodorous with ineffectual cleaning agents. Damn. Scrimshaw had offered her a town car. She had declined, wanting to be on her own clock, a decision that now threatened to ruin everything.

  There wa
s always the Trans Oceanic helicopter she’d read about—available, for a considerable fee, to ferry latecomers up to fifty miles out to the Northstar’s pad. But even if Charon could afford such an extravagance, the worst thing an undercover investigator could do was to draw that kind of attention right off the bat. The last thing she needed was to gain notice by being an hour-late reporter flying in on her boss’s dime.

  In fact, and Scrimshaw had briefed her about this, to blend in as Pioneer Log correspondent Sue Ross, Melissa would have to subtly fake being more liberal than she was. When questioned or in conversation, she had been directed to wax moderate to the point of indecipherability about her political leanings. Ideally, she should present herself dovish on same-sex marriage, shrug agnostically about global temperature change, and play respectful devil’s advocate on both sides of abortion.

  Downtown was hopelessly snarled. Even under the bane of the Great Recession, the sports teams could still fill stadiums and cluster city streets.

  Agonizingly, Melissa caught sight of dappling water down one of the simmering scraper canyons. They were getting close but were still blocks from the pier. It would be hopeless to get out and run with two travel bags. This was a perfect example of a situation where having a man she could depend on would make all the difference. With such a love interest, she and her guy could have come into Seattle the night before, gotten a room, made a night of the night before her departure.

  Her swarthy driver showed his teeth no more. Melissa soothed her angst with circular motions of hard-pressed fingers on her temples until finally, at the right turn that led to the pier, a motorcycle cop parked with his motor running held up his uniformed arm.

  He dismounted and came to the cab’s back window after nodding to the driver, as if they’d met before. “Just be a couple of moments, ma’am.”

  “I’m late for a Trans Oceanic cruise,” she pleaded.

  “Please be patient. We have to get a motorcade through to the waterfront.”

  Seconds later, two of the officer’s cohorts barreled through the red light, shortly followed by a squad car. After a score of hushed urban seconds, a funereal-gray stretch limousine glided soundlessly across the intersection.

  “Bigwig,” guessed the cab driver with Americanized correctness.

  “Grant Sharpe, actually,” said the cop.

  Melissa had disengaged from politics of late but knew enough to know that Sharpe was second only to Rush Limbaugh in the conservative radio-sphere. It was a sure bet he was headed to the Rainier Policy Institute’s floating think tank.

  “Officer, please,” Melissa strained. “I’m a reporter. I need to be on that ship.” She flashed her boarding pass, which depicted a montage of Northstar images. An idea popped into her head. It was based on a Blythe family legend that had evolved around the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan. “I hope you’re all Republicans,” the president had quipped to the surgical team as he lay on the operating table. Melissa hoped the same about the cop who held her fate in his hands.

  “Officer,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to meet Grant Sharpe. If I miss that ship, I may never get another chance.”

  The policeman watched as the gray limo’s brake lights flashed red, a full stop. Like a saint sent to rescue Melissa from her own foolish independence, one of the downtown homeless had wandered into the street, blocking the motorcade’s path. Ironic that one of those dispossessed wanderers might be her ticket onto the Republican flagship.

  “Please get me to that ship,” said Melissa.

  The Sharpe limo was in motion again. “Follow me,” the officer told the cabbie, who seemed to suddenly wonder if his cab also held a luminary. Straddling again his motorcycle, the cop fired it up and thundered around his corner of the stalled intersection. As the talk star left Seattle sports traffic to fester and suppurate, the conservative cop caught his considerable draft.

  Melissa breathed through her lips.

  They won’t leave without Sharpe.

  On his way from the captain’s suite to the bridge, Rad caught sight of his reflection in an observation deck window. The blue-and-gold piping on his uniform reflected the bold strokes across the ship’s smokestack, and his cap bore the insignia of the cruise line, with four stars, one for each decade of service. But the day of departure never got old.

  Any turn-of-the-last-century frigate commander could appreciate the nautical history re-created on the Northstar’s expansive bridge. The patina-burnished teakwood consoles and pewter handrails belied a vast computerized circuitry.

  Rad greeted his cocaptain and navigator, Nathan Briggs and Tim Holdren, familiar friends and veterans of past political cruises. They shook Rad’s hand in such a sympathetic way as to suggest they were noticing that for the first time since 2001, Nancy was not along for the ride.

  “Flying solo, this time, eh captain?” said cocaptain Briggs.

  After acknowledging his command team, Rad turned to a bank of navigational equipment where a contingent of Rainier Policy Institute operatives was standing by. The oldest, a Republican whom Rad recognized but could not name, spoke for all of them.

  “This is an important cruise for our party, Captain,” he said. “We couldn’t be happier about having you at the helm.”

  Rad extended his hand as he wondered if these insiders knew about the letter asking him to consider a run for 7th Congressional District. They probably did. The Northstar represented Republican power and influence. A subtler power emanated from the captain’s suite, evoking stewardship, safe passage, and continuance. After the party emissaries took leave, Rad surveyed his complement on the bridge, men and women who represented the spectrum of political ideology. Cocaptain Briggs and Navigator Holdren were perfect examples, Briggs a birthright Democrat and Clintonian and Holdren a Reaganite and diehard supporter of George W. Bush.

  Due west from the Port of Seattle, the Olympic Mountains were bare of snow, odd for late June. That morning with the TV news on before leaving Arbor Glen, Rad had seen through a swirling dervish of clouds that Mount Rainier’s top was above freezing and granite-gray as a cliff in Yosemite.

  “What do we make of this weather?” Rad asked Briggs.

  “Definitely climate-change related, sir.”

  “I thought it was global warming,” Holdren quipped.

  Looking from the bridge’s storm shield of inch-thick glass, Rad saw that passengers had clustered around the One World Pool and now held champagne glasses aloft. It was customary for the captain to blow a last resounding blast, meant to signal to other ships and the entire harbor that the Northstar would soon be underway.

  Melissa heard the ship’s horn like a dinosaur’s burp. She was slip-streaming the penultimate name in conservative talk and panicking, but as Sharpe’s motorcade took a sharp left, she caught her breath. Magnified exponentially beyond the image on the Trans Oceanic website was the berthed Northstar. Her navy-blue hull dwarfed the pier. Her white main deck gleamed in glorious Seattle sunshine, and her shoreward decks were alive with waves of streamers.

  At a cyclone-fenced Port Authority checkpoint, several uniforms and a gaggle of reporters waited. Melissa’s motorcycle-riding policeman hung a tight U-turn, just perceptibly raising his front wheel in a wheelie.

  “Say hi to Mr. Sharpe for me,” he called toward her open backseat window as he revved back into the noon-hour traffic jam.

  “Will do,” Melissa called after him.

  As Sharpe’s long limo sailed through the checkpoint gate, Melissa found her boarding pass in her purse. It was not needed. The gatekeeper waved his professionally listless wave, as if her being in the radio icon’s draft were proof positive of her credentials. Closer to the ship, a Port Authority officer halted the motorcade at a smaller gate. After slowing to a stop, the cabbie turned to offer Melissa a high five. She smiled, slapped his steering-calloused hand, and then forked over the fare with a day-changing tip from her Charon expense account. He retrieved her two bags from the trunk, saying, “Smooth
sailing,” before returning to the upholstered perpetuity of his trade.

  A Port Authority jeep appeared, and Melissa figured that its purpose was to transport Sharpe to the ship. As the radio host emerged from the limo, she was struck with how svelte he seemed in person. His early career had been marked by a certain physical rotundity—fodder for his vociferous critics. She remembered reading about his efforts to drop the poundage, efforts that had apparently paid off. His sandy-blond hair captured tufts of gravitas at the gray temples. Though by no means slender, his torso was large in the way of a pleasing maturity, and his arms and legs, free of fat, were actually quite shapely.

  Flanked by two AM-radio bodyguard types, Sharpe walked over and got into the passenger seat of the jeep. An entourage consisting of two well-dressed corporate types followed him into the rear seats, leaving room next to Sharpe on the bench-style front seat. A Trans Oceanic associate had loaded Melissa’s suitcases onto a luggage cart and was now standing by, apparently assuming she’d be relegated to riding in the cart. Impulsively, Melissa took two steps toward Sharpe and, like Scarlett O’Hara asking Rhett Butler for a ride back to Tara, channeled an info-babe.

  “Got room for a shipmate, sir?”

  Sharpe appraised her with seat-of-power approval. “You’re with the press,” he stated as a fact.

  “Why, uh, yes, sir.”

  At once Melissa sensed Grant’s situational smarts. He knew all about the mysterious death on the 2008 cruise and was already factoring the omen quotient of a young scribe asking for his help. Yet she was bolstered to know that her cover had apparently convinced him. In his eyes, she was a reporter, and from that moment on, her assumed identity carried the weight of his perception.