Polar Star (8 page)

6
Usually Arkady didn’t enjoy amusement rides, but he liked this one. Nothing fancy. The transport cage had a chain for a gate and a tire on the base to cushion its landings, but it lifted off the deck of the
Polar Star
with a satisfyingly taut jerk of the crane cable, swaying as it rose, and for a moment, in midflight, felt like an oversized birdcage that had taken wing. Then they cleared the side and began dropping toward the
Merry Jane
. Next to the looming hull of the factory ship any catcher boat looked diminutive, even though the
Merry Jane
was forty meters long. It sported the characteristic high bow of a Bering Sea trawler, a forward wheelhouse and stack, a mast hung with antennas and lamps, a wooden deck with a side crane of its own, and a stern ramp and gantry with three neatly reeled nets. The hull was blue trimmed white, the wheelhouse white trimmed blue, and the boat looked bright as a toy as it rubbed against the black sea fender of the
Polar Star
. Three fishermen in slickers steadied the cage as it descended to the deck. Slava unhooked the chain and stepped out first. Arkady followed; for the first time in almost a year he
was off the factory ship. Off the
Polar Star
and onto an American boat. The fishermen vied with one another to pump his hand and ask enthusiastically, “Fala Português?”

There were two Diegos and one Marco, all short, dark men with the soulful eyes of castaways. None of them spoke any Russian or much English. Slava hurried Arkady up the wheelhouse stairs to meet Captain Thorwald, a pink-faced, bear-sized Norwegian.

“Crazy, isn’t it,” Thorwald said. “It’s American-owned, that’s all. The Portuguese, they spend ten months of the year fishing here, but they have families in Portugal. They make a fortune here compared with what they could at home. Same with me. Well, I go home to shovel snow off the walk, they go home to fry sardines. But two months on land is enough for us.”

The captain of the
Merry Jane
wore pajamas open to gold chains nesting on a chest of red hair. Russians supposedly traced their ancestry back to Viking raiders; “Russ” meant red, for the hair of the invaders. Thorwald looked as if nothing less than Viking pillage would wake him up.

“They don’t seem to speak English,” Arkady said.

“That way they don’t get into trouble. They know their jobs, so there’s not much need for conversation. They may be little fuckers, but next to Norwegians they’re the best.”

“High praise,” Arkady said. “Beautiful boat.”

The luxurious bridge alone was a revelation. The chart desk was teak lacquered to an agate gleam; the deck bore a carpet thick enough for a member of the Central Committee; and at each end of the wide, padded console was a wheel with its own high upholstered swivel chair. The chair on the starboard side was surrounded by the color monitors of fish-finders, radar screens and the digital readouts of radios.

Thorwald reached inside his pajama pants to scratch.
“Yah, this is built solid for the Bering. Wait till you see us in the ice sheet. To bring a boat like the
Eagle
up here, to me that’s really crazy. Or to bring women.”

“You knew Zina Patiashvili?” Slava asked.

“When I fish, I fish. When I fuck, I fuck. I don’t mix them up.”

“Wise,” Arkady said.

Impervious, Thorwald went on, “I didn’t know Zina and I didn’t go to the dance because I was in the wardroom with Marchuk and Morgan trying to show them where to trawl. Sometimes I don’t think the Russians and Americans are after fish at all.”

Slava and Arkady descended to the galley, where the crew had assembled for a meal of salt cod and wine, hardly the midday fare on a Soviet ship. Fishing was arduous work, but again Arkady was struck by the amenities on the
Merry Jane
: the big range with sliding bars to keep food from flying in heavy seas, the table covered by antiskid pads, the cushioned banquette, the coffee machine with its pot strapped in place. There were homey touches: hanging from a lamp cord, a wooden model of a sailing boat with eyes painted on the bow; a poster of a whitewashed village on a beach. Very different from the galley of the inland trawler Arkady had served on off the coast of Sakhalin. There the crew ate with no room to take off their coats, and everything—groats, potatoes, cabbage, tea—tasted of mildew and fish.

As they ate, the Portuguese watched a videotape. Aside from a polite nod, all interest in their guests was gone. Arkady understood. If someone was coming to ask them questions, he should speak their language. After all, when Russians were mucking around in rowboats the Portuguese had an empire that circled the world. On the screen was the hysterical narration and languid action of a soccer match.

“Zina Patiashvili?” Slava asked. “Does anyone here
know Zina? Does … do you … have you?” He turned to Arkady. “This is a waste of time.”

“Football,” Arkady said as he sat down.

The Diego next to Arkady poured him a tumbler of red wine. “
Campeonato do Mundo
. You?”

“Goalie.” Twenty years ago, Arkady realized.

“Forward.” The fisherman pointed to himself, then to the other Diego and Marco. “Forward. Back.” He aimed his finger at the television. “Portugal white,
inglês
stripe. Bad.”

As all three fishermen winced, a figure in a striped jersey broke away and scored. How many times had they already seen the tape of this game, Arkady wondered—ten times, a hundred? Over a long voyage, men tend to tell the same tale over and over. This was the more refined torture of high technology.

While Diego averted his eyes from the television Arkady showed him the snapshot of Zina and Dynka.

“You stole that,” Slava said. “Zina.” Arkady watched the fisherman’s eyes slide from woman to woman equally. He shrugged. Arkady showed the picture to the other two crewmen and got the same reaction, but then the first Diego asked to see the photo again.

“No baile,”
he told Arkady.
“A loura da Rússia. A mulher com os americanos.”
He became passionate.
“Entende? Com americanos.”

“She danced with the Americans. That’s what I thought,” Arkady said.

“Beba, beba.”
Diego refilled his glass.

“Thank you.”

“Muito obrigado,”
Diego instructed him.

“Muito obrigado.”

“Meo pracer.”

Arkady held on to the center bar as the transport cage swung down to the second trawler. Slava was looking more and more miserable, like a bird caged with a cat.

“This is upsetting the work schedule.”

“Look on it as a holiday,” Arkady said.

“Ha!” Slava soberly regarded a gull hovering outside a bilge hole of the
Polar Star
waiting for slops to drop. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“What?” Arkady was mystified.

“That since I was onstage I could see who Zina was with. Well, you’re wrong. When you’re onstage playing, the lights are right in your eyes. Ask the other members of the band; they’ll tell you the same thing. We couldn’t see anyone.”

“You ask,” Arkady said. “You’re in charge.”

The
Eagle
was smaller than the
Merry Jane
, red and white, lower to the water, sporting a side crane and a gantry with a single reel. Another difference was that not a single fisherman was on deck to greet them. They stepped out onto wooden planks empty except for the dregs of the boat’s last tow: limp flatfish, skeletal crabs.

“I don’t understand,” Slava said. “Usually they’re so friendly.”

“You feel something, too?” Arkady asked. “A certain coolness. What language will we be speaking, by the way? Swedish? Spanish? What kind of Americans will these be?”

“You’re going to embarrass me, aren’t you?”

Arkady looked Slava over. “You’re wearing your jogging shoes, your jeans. You’re the picture of a Young Communist. I think we’re ready to face the captain.”

“Some assistant I have, a regular fugitive.”

“Worse, someone with nothing to lose. After you.”

The
Eagle
’s bridge was smaller than the
Merry Jane
’s and had no carpeting or teak, but otherwise was more what Arkady had supposed an American bridge would be like: a veritable space capsule’s array of color monitors banked around and behind the captain’s chair; a circle of radar screens and the cathode-green of fish-finders that targeted schools of fish as shifting orange clouds. Radios
hung from the overhead, their ruby numbers floating in the static of open channels. The chrome hoods of the compass and repeater were polished to shine like crystal. In all, glitter without clutter.

The man in the captain’s chair fit in. Fishermen were usually scarred by exposure to knives, spines and frayed ropes, and coarsened by cold air and brine, but Morgan seemed to have been abraded by something sharper. He was lean to the point of gaunt, with prematurely gray hair. Although he wore a cap and sweatshirt, there was about him and his ship’s bridge a sense of monkish order, of a man who was happiest alone and in control. As he unwound from his chair Slava gave him a nod of obeisance, and it occurred to Arkady that the third mate would have made a good dog.

“George, this is Seaman Renko. Or you can call him Arkady.” To Arkady, Slava said, “Captain Morgan.”

The captain gave Arkady’s hand a brief squeeze. “We’re sorry about Zina Pishvili.”

“Patiashvili.” Slava shrugged as if either the name was ridiculous or it didn’t really matter.

“Pashvili? Sorry,” Morgan said to Arkady, “I don’t speak Russian. Ship-to-ship communications go through the company reps on the
Polar Star
. Perhaps you should ask a rep to join us, because right now we’re losing trawling time and that means we’re losing money. Can I offer you a drink?” On the chart chest was a tray with three tumblers and a bottle of Soviet vodka. Better than what the Soviets drank at home: export-quality vodka. He lifted the bottle a millimeter off the tray, as if measuring the minimum of hospitality. “Or are you in a rush?”

“No, thank you.” Slava could take a hint.

“Why not?” Arkady asked.

Slava hissed, “First wine, now vodka?”

“It’s like New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?” Arkady said.

Morgan poured Arkady half a glass and, bemused, one for himself. Slava abstained.

“Nazdrovya,” Morgan said. “Isn’t that it?”

“Cheers,” said Arkady.

Arkady drank his in three swallows, Morgan in one that he followed with an even smile of excellent teeth. “You don’t want a company rep,” he said.

“We’ll try to do without.” The last thing Arkady wanted was Susan joining them.

“Well, Arkady, ask away.”

Morgan was so assured that Arkady wondered what would faze him.

“Is this boat safe?”

Slava started. “Renko, that’s—”

“It’s okay,” Morgan said. “This is a seventy-five-foot Gulf boat with a North Sea rig. That means it was originally built to tend oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and then was refitted to come up here for the crabbing boom. When crabs went bust, they put on the gantry for trawling and some extra plating for hitting the ice. The real money went where it counts, into electronics. We don’t have all the amenities of our round-headed friend and his three dwarfs over on the
Merry Jane
, but we do catch more fish.”

“Did you know Zina?”

“Just to see. She was always friendly, waving.”

“And dancing?”

“I didn’t have the pleasure of dancing with her myself. I was in the wardroom going over charts with my good friends Captains Marchuk and Thorwald.”

“Do you like the joint fishery?”

“It’s exciting.”

“Exciting?” Arkady had never thought of it that way. “How so?”

“After Dutch we’re going up to the ice sheet. Soviet captains are intrepid. Last year you people had a whole fishing fleet, fifty boats, iced in off Siberia and almost
lost them all. You did lose a factory ship, and the only reason the whole crew didn’t go down with it was because they were able to cross the ice.”

“Those were Soviet boats,” Arkady said.

“Right, and I don’t want to end up like a Soviet boat. Don’t get the wrong idea; I like Russians. It’s the best joint fishery. Koreans will steal half of every bag. The Japanese are too proud to cheat but they’re colder than the fish.” Morgan was the sort of man who smiled while he reassessed a situation. “Arkady, how is it I don’t recall ever meeting you on the
Polar Star
! You’re a fleet officer or from the Ministry or what?”

“I work in the factory.”

“The slime line,” Slava said.

“And you speak fluent English and investigate accidents? I’d say you’re overqualified for cleaning fish.” There was a candid, glass-blue quality to Morgan’s eyes that told Slava and Arkady what liars he thought they were. “It was an accident?”

“There’s no doubt of it,” Slava said.

Morgan had kept his eyes steadily on Arkady. His gaze moved to the net now idle on the gantry, then to two crewmen in oilskin coveralls coming up the outside stairs from the deck, and then back to Arkady. “Okay. It’s been a delightful social call. Just remember, these are American waters.”

The narrow bridge became crowded as the fishermen entered. These were the Americans he had been curious about since he’d heard Lantz describe them as the “motorcycle gang.” In the Soviet Union, where two wheels chained to an internal combustion engine were the symbol of personal freedom, bikers were called Rockers. The authorities were always trying to channel Rockers into approved motordromes, but the gangs slipped away like Mongols on the loose, took over whole villages, then vanished before a state motor patrol could arrive.

The larger fisherman had a sallow face, hooded eyes
and the strong, hanging arms of someone who has spent time shoving crab pots and nets. Not a smooth man. He looked Arkady up and down. “What is this shit?”

“This, Coletti,” Morgan explained, “is the joint venture. The man with our old friend Slava speaks English well enough to teach you. We’ll make it fast and clean.”

“Renko, this is Mike.” Slava introduced the younger fisherman, an Aleut with fine Asian features on a broad face. “Mike is short for Mikhail.”