Polar Star (29 page)

Or a stroke, Arkady thought, and put his fingers inside the mouth to clear the tongue. He touched something that felt improbably hard, and when he pulled his hand out, his fingertips were smeared red. He opened Mike’s mouth as wide as he could, looked in with the flashlight and found a point emerging from the tongue like a silver thorn. Gently he turned the boy’s head to the side and brushed the thick black hair at the base of the skull away from two steel ovals that looked like an old-fashioned lorgnette tangled in the hair. American males had affectations: earrings, heavy finger rings, leather cuffs on long braids. But these two bright ovals were embedded in the head, the handles of a pair of scissors that had been neatly driven like an ice pick, with hardly a drop of blood, halfway through the cranium. They were what Mike’s medal had been hitting. One hand doesn’t clap; one medal doesn’t click. The body sagged gratefully as Arkady let it down.

Volovoi stepped into the bunker. After him came Karp.

“He’s dead,” Arkady said.

The first mate and trawlmaster seemed more interested in the bunker than in the body. “Another suicide?” Volovoi asked as he looked around.

“You could say so.” Arkady stood. “It’s Mike from the
Eagle
. I followed him, and he was in here no more
than a minute before me. No one came out. Whoever killed him could still be here.”

“I’m sure,” Volovoi said.

Arkady flashed the beam around the second room of the bunker. Except for the generator all it contained was bare walls scribbled with graffiti. There was a pool of water in one corner, and above it a shaft russet-striped with stains that led up through the bombproof ceiling to a closed hatch. The hatch was out of reach, though there were two broken flanges that had once supported steps.

“There must have been a rope here or a ladder,” Arkady said. “Whoever got out probably pulled it up with him and then closed the hatch.”

“We were following you.” Karp took the rifle off the bed and admired it. “We didn’t see anyone leave.”

“Why were you following an American?” Volovoi asked.

“Let’s look outside,” Arkady said.

Karp blocked his way. “Why were you following him?” Volovoi asked again.

“To ask him about Zin—”

“The inquiry is over,” Volovoi said. “That’s not a permissible reason to follow anyone. Or to leave the ship against orders, to disappear from your compatriots, to sneak alone at night out of a foreign port. But I’m not surprised; I’m not surprised by anything you do. Hit him.”

Karp jabbed the barrel like a spear into Arkady’s back between the shoulder blades, then took a measured swing, like a farmer with a scythe, and drove the side of the barrel into the back of his knees. Arkady dropped to the floor, gasping.

Volovoi sat on the cot and lit a cigarette. He plucked a well-thumbed magazine from the bookcase, opened the centerfold and tossed it aside, a flush of disgust spreading over his pink face.

“This proves my point. You’ve killed before, according
to your file. Now you want to defect, to go over to the other side, to dishonor your shipmates and your ship the first chance you had. You picked the weakest of the Americans, this native, and when he wouldn’t help, you killed him.”

“No.”

Volovoi glanced at Karp and the trawlmaster swung the rifle down onto Arkady’s ribs. His jacket absorbed some of the force, but Karp was a powerful man and an enthusiastic assistant.

“The suicide note that Zina Patiashvili wrote,” Volovoi said, “was found in the dead girl’s bed. I myself asked Natasha Chaikovskaya why you didn’t search there. She told me you had, yet you didn’t report a note.”

“Because it wasn’t there.”

In spite of the bunker’s dank cold, the first mate was sweating. Well, there was the climb, and Arkady had noticed in the past how interrogation was hard work for everyone involved. In the glare of the lamp, Volovoi’s crew cut was a crown of radiant spikes. Of course, Karp, who was doing all the heavy labor, perspired like Vulcan at his forge.

“You followed me together?” Arkady asked.

“I’m asking the questions. He still doesn’t understand,” Volovoi complained to Karp.

Karp kicked Arkady in the stomach. So far it was all routine police work, Arkady thought, a good sign, still just intimidation, nothing irreversible. Then the trawlmaster pinned Arkady’s neck to the floor with the rifle stock and landed a more serious kick, one that endeavored to enter the stomach and come out at the spine.

“Stop,” Volovoi said.

“Why?” asked Karp. His boot was cocked for a third go.

“Wait.” Volovoi smiled indulgently; a leader could not explain everything to an associate.

Arkady rose to one elbow. It was important not to be totally inert.

“I expected something like this,” Volovoi said. “Restructuring may be necessary in Moscow, but we’re far from Moscow. Here we know that when you move rocks you stir up snakes. We’re going to make an example.”

“Of what?” Arkady asked, trying to hold up his end of the conversation.

“An example of how dangerous it can be to encourage elements like you.”

Arkady dragged himself against the workbench. He didn’t sit up; he didn’t want to appear too comfortable. “I don’t feel encouraged,” he said. “You were thinking of a trial?”

Karp said, “Not a trial. You haven’t seen him in front of a judge, the way he twists words.”

“I didn’t kill this boy,” Arkady said. “If you didn’t, then whoever did is walking down the hill right now.”

He ducked because he saw the rifle stock coming, so instead of crushing his face it swept the cans off the workbench. Now he was frightened, because while he could tolerate an officially authorized beating kept within certain rough bounds, this was getting out of control.

“Comrade Korobetz!” Volovoi warned Karp. “That’s enough.”

“He’s just going to lie,” Karp said.

Volovoi said to Arkady, “Korobetz is not an intellectual, but he is an outstanding worker and he accepts the direction of the Party, something you never did.”

Except for a white seam across the middle of his narrow forehead where the skin had been removed, Karp’s face was red.

“Your direction?” Arkady hunched closer to a whittling knife that had fallen with the cans.

“We caught him running, we caught him killing someone,” Karp insisted. “He doesn’t have to be alive.”

“That’s not your decision,” Volovoi said. “There are
hard questions to be asked and answered. Such as who, knowing how dangerous and unstable a personality Renko is, persuaded the captain to set him loose in a foreign port? What was Renko planning with this ring of Americans? New Thinking is necessary to increase the productivity of labor, but in terms of political discipline our country has become slack. A year ago he never would have been allowed ashore. That’s why an example is so important.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Arkady said.

Volovoi had thought about this. “There’s your provocative investigation, your attempt to sway the trusting captain and crew of the
Polar Star
, your defection as soon as your feet hit foreign soil. Who knows what else you’ve been involved in? We’ll tear the entire ship apart, rip out every bulkhead and tank. Marchuk will get the message. All the captains will get the message.”

“But Renko’s not a smuggler,” Karp said.

“Who knows? Besides, we always find something. When I’m done the
Polar Star
will be in small pieces.”

“You call that restructuring?” Karp asked.

Volovoi lost patience. “Korobetz, I’m not going to debate politics with a convict.”

“I’ll show you a debate,” Karp said. He picked up the knife on the floor before Arkady could grab it, turned to the cot and stuck the blade up to the hilt in Volovoi’s throat.

“That’s how convicts debate,” Karp said, cradling the back of Volovoi’s head and pressing it forward against the knife.

While Volovoi struggled a jet of blood sprayed the wall. His face swelled. His eyes inflated with disbelief.

“What? No more speeches?” Karp asked. “Restructuring answers the demands of—what? I can’t hear you. Speak up. Answers the demands of the working class! You ought to know that.”

A man lifts weights, keeps himself in shape, but it’s
not the same as real labor, and it was obvious that Volovoi’s muscles were putty compared with Karp’s. The first mate thrashed, but the trawlmaster kept the knife tight in his throat as lightly as a hand on a lever. This was how they did it in the camp, when the urkas discovered an informer. Always the throat.

“Demands for more work? Really?” Karp said.

As Volovoi’s face became darker, his eyes grew whiter, as if all the lectures still inside him had been choked off and the pressure of them was building up. His tongue unrolled.

“You thought I was going to kiss your cock and ass forever?” Karp asked.

As Volovoi’s face went black he rocked the cot against the wall and his hands shot out. His eyes looked full of wonder, as if he had to be watching someone else, as if this couldn’t be happening to him.

No, Arkady thought, Volovoi’s not surprised any longer. He’s dead.

“He should have just shut up,” Karp said to Arkady and jerked the knife first one way and then the other before pulling it out.

Arkady wanted to fly through the door, but the best he could do was push himself to his feet with a can of epoxy to swing in defense. “You got carried away.”

“Yeah,” Karp admitted. “But I think they’re going to say
you
got carried away.”

Volovoi still sat upright, as if he could rejoin the conversation. From neck to chest he seemed to have burst under the weight of blood.

Arkady asked, “Have you ever spent any time in a psychiatric ward?”

“Have you? See?” Karp smiled. “Anyway, I’ve been cured. I’m a new man. Let me ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“You like Siberia?”

“What?”

“I’m interested in your opinion. Do you like Siberia?”

“Sure.”

“What kind of a fucking answer is that? I
love
Siberia. The cold, the taiga, the hunting, everything, but most of all the people. Real people, like the natives. People in Moscow look hard, but they’re like turtles. Get them east, out of their shells, you can just step on them. Siberia’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Like home.”

“Good.”

“Just the hunting.” Karp wiped his blade on Volovoi’s sleeve. “Some guys go out in helicopters and blast away with Kalashnikovs. I like the Dragunov, a sniper rifle with a scope. Sometimes I don’t even bother shooting. Like, last winter a tiger wandered into Vladivostok killing dogs. A wild tiger in the center of the city. The militia, naturally, shot it. You know, I wouldn’t have killed it; I’d have taken it back out of town and let it go. That’s the difference between you and me: I wouldn’t have killed the tiger.” He propped Volovoi against the wall. “How long do you think he can stay like that? I was thinking of making a matched set. You know, symmetry.”

Symmetry was always an interesting fetish, Arkady thought. There was a padlock hanging on the bunker door, he remembered; if he could get outside he could lock Karp in.

“But it wouldn’t look right,” Arkady said. “You don’t want to leave three murders here. It’s a matter of arithmetic. I can’t be a victim too.”

“This wasn’t my first plan,” Karp confessed, “but Volovoi was such a prick. All my life I’ve listened to pricks like him and you. Zina—”

“Zina?”

“Zina said words freed you or fucked you or turned you inside out. Every word, every single one, was a weapon or a chain or a pair of wings. You didn’t know Zina. And
you
didn’t know Zina,” he added, turning to Volovoi. The political officer, his head tipped, seemed to
be listening. “An invalid doesn’t want to debate with someone from the camps? I could tell you about the camps.” He turned to Arkady. “Thanks to you.”

“I’m going to send you there again.”

“Well, if you can,” Karp said and spread his arms as if to say, Now we’ve finally come to the point, a point past words and into his domain. He added, as his personal conclusion, “You should have stayed on the boat.”

When Arkady threw the epoxy, Karp casually lifted a forearm and let the can bounce off. In two steps Arkady was across the room and pushing open the door, but Karp’s hand reached out and dragged him back in. Arkady ducked under the knife and grabbed Karp’s wrist in the “Come along” grip he had been taught by a militia instructor in Moscow, which brought an appreciative laugh from Karp. He dropped the knife but swung Arkady into the bookcase. Paperbacks fluttered out like birds.

As Arkady started for the door again Karp lifted him and threw him over the baidarka into the opposite wall, rattling shark jaws and iridescent shells onto the bunker floor. He swept the boat aside. For all his power, he crouched in the favorite urka stance, with two fingers extended toward the eyes, a style Arkady had seen before. He moved inside the stabbing hand and hit Karp flush on the mouth, which didn’t stop the trawlmaster’s forward motion, so Arkady hit him in the stomach, which was like probing concrete, then brought an elbow back to the chin and dropped Karp to one knee.

Roaring, Karp tackled Arkady and drove him into one wall and then another, until Arkady reached up and clung to the fishnet hanging from the ceiling. As Karp ripped him down, Arkady brought a fold of net with him, smothered the trawlmaster’s head in it and kicked his legs out from under him. Going for the door a third time, Arkady tripped on the open ribs of the boat, and before he could rise Karp had him by the ankle. On the floor,
he had no chance against the trawlmaster’s weight, and Karp climbed up his body, ignoring blows until Arkady brought a barrel of shackles down on Karp’s head.

Arkady twisted free. He was trying to open the door when the barrel shot by his ear and slammed it shut. Karp tore him off the handle and threw him on the cot next to Volovoi. As if to commiserate, the dead man sagged against Arkady’s shoulder. From his jacket, Karp took his own knife, the double-edged one that fishermen were urged to carry at all times in case of emergency. On the cot, Arkady found the knife that Karp had dropped earlier.