Polar Star (34 page)

24
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 freezing rain, the fish sparkled like silvery armor 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. Because of the ice sheet, no catcher boats 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 he 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 and 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?” He 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, he inched along the rope like a toddler. From Karp’s radio came Thorwald’s throaty voice announcing that the
Merry Jane
was approaching with a bag. The trawlmaster sheathed his knife and at once the 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 want 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 onto 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 clove 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.

“Have you ever heard of Kureyka?” Izrail asked in turn. A smile hid in his beard. “It’s where Stalin was exiled by the czar. Then when Stalin ruled, he sent an army of prisoners to Kureyka to nail his old cabin back together and build around it a hangar filled with lights that shone twenty-four hours a day on the cabin and on a marble statue of himself. A giant statue. One night years after he died, they secretly dragged the statue out and dropped it into the river. All the boats detoured so they wouldn’t sail overhead.”

“How do you know about this?” Arkady asked.

“How do you think a Jew becomes Siberian?” the manager asked in turn. “My father helped erect the hangar.” He bit into the bread. “I won’t report you right away,” he told Arkady. “I’ll give you a day or two.”

On his way to the radio shack, Arkady heard a voice that sounded like the one on Zina’s tape. The voice and guitar, resonantly romantic, emanated from the infirmary door. It didn’t sound like Dr. Vainu.

It was an old camper’s song, though a camper had to be fairly drunk and probably incapable of walking around a tree to enjoy such weepy lyrics.

When Arkady entered the infirmary the song stopped.

“Shit, shit, I thought it was locked,” Dr. Vainu said, rushing to block Arkady’s way. At the far end of the hall Arkady saw the broad borscht-red backside of Olimpiada Bovina running into an examining room. The doctor was in a leisure suit and slippers and looked only slightly rumpled, slippers on the wrong feet. Arkady would have thought that Bovina and Vainu made a pair like a steamroller and a squirrel.

“You can’t just come in,” Vainu protested.

“I’m in.” Looking for the singer, Arkady led the doctor down the hall to the operating room, where a sheet covered the operating table. Arkady noticed that the box with Zina’s effects was still on a counter.

“This is a medical office.” Vainu checked his zipper.

Beside the table was a steel tray with a beaker and, from the taste of varnish in the air, glasses of grain alcohol. Also, a half-eaten chocolate with a cream center. Arkady laid his hand on the sheet. Still warm, like the hood of a car.

“You can’t just break in,” Vainu said with evaporating conviction. He slumped against a counter and lit a cigarette to calm himself. On the counter beside the box was a new Japanese cassette player with its own miniature stereo speakers. Arkady pressed the player’s “Rewind” button, then “Play.” “… 
Roger flaps in the breeze
.” Then “Stop.” “Sorry,” he said.

The voice really wasn’t like the other singer’s anyway.

Colonel Pavlov-Zalygin’s sonorous voice traveled the telephone path and airwaves all the way from Odessa. His unhurried rich baritone reminded Arkady that while the
ice sheet might be moving south in the Bering Sea, in Georgia they were still pressing grapes, and on the Black Sea ferryboats were still filled with the last tourists of the year.

The colonel was happy to aid a colleague far at sea, though it meant digging through old files. “Patiashvili? I knew the case, but lately the bosses are sticklers about the law. Lawyers are getting into everything, accusing us of violence, appealing perfectly good sentences. Believe me, you’re better off at sea. I should study the case and call you back.”

Arkady remembered that if they happened to be monitoring the Soviet channel, other ships could hear the incoming half of the conversation. The fewer calls the better, even assuming he had a chance for another one. Nikolai studied the dials on the single sideband; the needles swayed aimlessly. “It’s the weather,” he told Arkady. “Reception is deteriorating.”

“There’s no time,” Arkady spoke into the receiver.

“Criminals are having their letters printed in the newspapers,” Pavlov-Zalygin said. “In the
Literary Gazette
!”

“She’s dead,” Arkady said.

“Well,” the colonel said, “let me think.”

There was a four-second gap in each transmission that only added confusion. Instead of a microphone, the radio had a telephone receiver with a daisy pattern on the mouthpiece as an old-fashioned nicety. It struck Arkady that all the modern technology on the
Polar Star
was at the bottom of the ship with Hess.

“The trouble was we had no real case against her,” Pavlov-Zalygin said reluctantly, “nothing we could take to court. We searched her apartment, we held her in custody, but we never had enough to charge her. Aside from that, the investigation was a great success.”

“Investigation of what?”

“This was in the newspapers, in
Pravda
,” the colonel
said with pride. “An international operation. Five tons of Georgian hashish shipped from Odessa on a Soviet freighter to Montreal. Very high-quality goods, all in bricks, inside containers marked ‘raw wool.’ Customs discovered the narcotics here. Usually we make the arrests and destroy the illegal shipment, but this time we decided to collaborate with the Canadians and to make arrests at both ends.”

“A joint venture.”

“Just so. The operation was a great success, you must … …. it.”

“Yes. How was Zina Patiashvili involved?”

“The ringleader was a boyfriend of hers. She had worked six months in the galley of the freighter; in fact, it was the only freighter she ever really worked on. She was seen on the dock when the ship was first loaded, but … ….”

As static increased it pushed the needle in the radio’s wattage meter.

“… …. to the prosecutor. Nevertheless, we ran her out of town.”

“The others involved are still in camps?”

“Camps of strict regimen, absolutely. I know there’s been an amnesty, but it’s not like the Khrushchev amnesty when we let everybody go. No, when … ….”

“We’re losing him,” Nikolai said.

“You said that she worked on that freighter for six months, but her paybook shows that she worked in the Black Sea Fleet for three years,” Arkady said.

“Not as a galley worker exactly. She … …. with … …. recommendations and the usual titles … ….”

“Titles? What did she do?” Arkady asked again.

“Swam.” Suddenly the colonel’s voice was booming and clear. “She swam for the Black Sea Fleet at meets everywhere. Before that she swam for her vocational school. Some said she could have tried for the Olympics if she’d had any discipline.”

“A small girl, dark hair bleached blond?” Arkady couldn’t believe they were talking about the same woman.

“That’s her, except then her hair was just dark. Attractive in a cheap … …. foreign … …. Hello? … …. Re … ….”

The colonel’s voice faded like a boat sighted in a storm, moving from one fogbank of static to a thicker one.

“He’s gone.” Nikolai watched the needle bounce out of control.

Arkady signed off and sat back while the lieutenant watched him anxiously. With good reason. It was one thing for a virile young radioman to slip an honest citizen into a secret intelligence post to seduce her; it was quite another to reveal the post to a major criminal.

“I’m sorry.” Nikolai couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. “I wanted to get you up here to the radio shack earlier when the transmission was better, but there was a lot of fuss about the trawl we lost, with calls to Seattle and the fleet. It was the last net from the
Merry Jane
.”

“Thorwald?”

“The Norwegian, yes. He blames us, but we blame him because he tried to transfer more than the maximum load. He lost his trawl and gear. There’s no way of grappling for it in this ice apparently, so he has to return to Dutch Harbor.”