The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (33 page)

“A hundred meters,” Bodine shouted.

“At the waterline. Pick your spot.”

“Forward of the propeller guard. The engine room?”

“Sounds good to me,” Madsen said.

The soldier curled into the extended tube. Its open end rose and fell as they closed. Sara saw where he was sighting. Just ahead of the turbulence at the stern; low on the hull, a cagelike contrivance of welded pipe.

She coughed involuntarily, still tasting the acid afterscrape in her throat, the pickle sourness. And something in that taste, like a bite of rancid apple, returned her to the knowledge of herself. Her arms and legs might still feel as if they weren’t her own. But her mind—her conscience—was. She reached forward, arm outstretched. “Stop! You can’t—”

Solid fire burst at that moment from the rear of the tube, changing instantly to a cloud of whitish-yellow airborne powder so hot and choking the first breath overwhelmed her with a cloy of burned rubber, chalk, burned insulation, overheated brakes. Within this fog she stumbled over Bodine and they fell, grappling like wrestlers, yet cushioned by their suits and the gritty sole of the cockpit. The tube, smoking from both ends, thunked down and spun into a corner. “Turn away. Turn away!” Bodine shouted hoarsely past her. Madsen yelled back that he already had.

“D’I hit it? Couldn’t see, this stupid bitch knocked me down—”

“Straight and true, my friend. Straight and true. Not a big explosion—”

“It’s a shaped charge. Penetrates, then sprays molten metal.”

The cloud cleared, falling away as
Anemone
, skimming in a huge circle, moved free. The wind took it off, slowly thinning at the edges, a strange yellow-white against the blue-white and rose-white of ice, the green-white of cold sea. Hideyashi tumbled into the cockpit with them, Eddi a scuffling step behind. Her face was pale as new snow. Her teeth chattered. “You need to get below,” Madsen told her. “Get warmed up.”

“Fuck that,” she gasped. “Nobody said you were going to
shoot
at them. This is a nonviolent organization!”

“Greenpeace is nonviolent,” Bodine said, picking up the tube, examining it, then tossing it overboard. It sank immediately. “Sea Shepherd’ll bust up equipment, but they won’t hurt people. And does it help? Does it? Anyhow, you call what
they’re
doing out here nonviolent?”

“No. No, but we’re not them. The Japanese, I mean.”

Bodine heaved a sigh. “You got an opinion too, Hy?”

Kimura looked shocked too, but maybe not as much. “I did not know you were going to do a thing like this.”

“Would you still have jumped ship if you had?”

He looked from one man to the other, but did not answer.

Bodine shrugged and bent to the duffel again. Was pulling out another tube when Sara slammed her boot down on it. “No more, Mick.”

“Take your fucking boot off my hand, Sara.”

“I will if you put that away. Eddi? Hy?”

“She’s right, guys. This stops now.” Auer beat at herself with stiff arms, breath panting out in white puffs. “No more.”

“Coming up again,” Madsen said, above them. When Sara looked up from where Bodine was still bent, hand pinned, she saw they’d completed a great circle and were coming up behind the factory ship again. From which, when she shaded her eyes, a plume of smoke was rising, along with the pulsating warble of an electronic alarm.

Dorée hadn’t moved from her stance on the bow during the attack. The actress clung there still, one hand shading her eyes as she stared ahead, the other wrapped around the jury-rigged braid of nylon and wire that now held up the mast. “Tehiyah!” Eddi yelled. She waved, but didn’t turn.

“This isn’t a voting situation.” Bodine looked up. “Let me go, Sara. I’m warning you.”

“
Number Three
’s dropping aft,” Madsen warned at the same moment. Past Tehiyah’s erect slim silhouette Sara saw the killer leaning into a turn, positioning itself between them and the massive ship from which smoke was now coming up more strongly, black and thick as blood in the water. “Watch out, Mick. That’s Crunch, on the bridge.”

Eddi turned back as Bodine bowed, almost politely, and head-butted Sara in the midriff. As she staggered back he pulled his hand from under her boot and a second tube out of the duffel. He rolled over prone, into the same position as before, and slotted the tube into firing configuration with a cheap-sounding clack. His face was flushed and he moved in a different way, not longer slumped or simian but tensed, graceful, nestling into the weapon as if into an embrace long missed. “Target: kill ship. We’ll put this one into her bridge.”

“Mick,
no.
” She threw herself at him, but a hard hand grabbed her shoulder and dragged her back. Madsen threw her down. When she tried to get up he shoved her down again with a boot on her rump. The wheel creaked as the bow steadied on the kill ship, now nearing rapidly as they overtook.

Auer kicked his leg off Sara and hauled her up. Past her along the killer’s rail Sara saw a solid line of yellow-slickered men flourishing objects, shaking their fists, and from the deck above the plumes of fire hoses swaying this way and that. Bodine raised the muzzle slightly, settling it on a stocky figure which stood alone on the outthrust wing of the other ship, high above the sea.

From the kill ship, a small flash, a tiny burst of smoke whipped away instantly by the wind. Then another, a few feet forward of the first. In the water between the racing vessels white bursts of foam fountained up. The yellow slickers scattered, leaving only the shooters at the rail.

“They’ve got rifles,” Dorée screamed back. “Guns! They’re shooting at us!”

“Please. Don’t do this.” Sara braced herself to lunge again, but once more a hand dragged her back. She sat down hard on the bench seat.

“Mick?” Madsen said, from the wheel. Another duality of pops; two more fountains of white ripped open the jade-green sea.
Anemone
raced toward them, swept over them; the opening circles on the translucent green vanished beneath her outstretched stem.

Bodine yelled, “Warning shots. They’re not aiming at us.—Film this, Eddi. Auer!
Film this
!”

“Those are the guns they kill the whales with,” Tehiyah shouted.

“Keep closing, Lars. Keep closing.”

As Eddi reluctantly lifted her camera Sara lunged. When Madsen grabbed for her again she ducked under his hand and kicked out. Her heavy sea boot caught the tube and it flew over the side, tumbling end over end, hit the bow wave, and vanished. At the same moment Eddi gave a full-throated scream. When Sara turned, her shaking camera was pointed forward. “Tehiyah!” she shouted again.

On the bow, a suited figure sagged from the stay.

“Oh God,” Madsen said. “Not—”

Sara pushed past them and clambered over the turtleback onto the long flat tapered wedge forward of the mast. Her boots slipped and she almost fell, but recovered and got to the bow just as Dorée’s arm slipped free and she slumped over the pulpit.

Sara eased her down. When she saw the blood, she rolled her onto her side. Dorée’s eyelids fluttered; she breathed in shallow gasps. Sara unzipped and yanked the suit down, pulled the sweater up, reached for her knife. The bra fell away, revealing Tehiyah’s chest.

And a wound that pumped bright scarlet in spurting arterial jets. This blood, which felt extremely hot, ran over her fingers, steaming, and soaked the actress’s long tangled black hair. She shouted, “The kit. Bring the first-aid kit!”

Dorée opened the lionine eyes that had fascinated millions and looked into the sky. They took on a glossy shine. Her lips moved, but formed no word Sara could decipher.

Then she closed them, and ceased breathing. That quickly, and, it seemed, peacefully, though a single, questioning frown line remained.

Eddi and Hideyashi knelt. Auer said, “CPR?”

“I’m on it.” Sara cleared the airway and positioned the actress’s head, then lowered her face to Tehiyah’s.

The lips beneath hers were still warm. They seemed to quiver, though perhaps she imagined this. She breathed into them, raised her face for a breath, and lowered it again. Beneath hers the full lips quivered again, very faintly. Then stilled.

Auer leaned her locked fists into Dorée’s sternum. The body bucked and a new pulse of blood jetted, but more slowly than when it had been driven by the heart’s force. Hideyashi stood over them, swaying, moaning. Sara lifted her head between breaths and saw
Anemone
had turned away, was headed now, at low speed, away from the ships.

Bodine came crawling along the deck, scuttling crablike from stanchion to stanchion. “Is she okay?”

“She’s
dead
, Mick.” Auer sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on her suit. The smears looked like a child’s first attempt at finger painting. “They shot her in the heart.”

“I do not think they were aiming at us,” Kimura said, wringing his hands. “They were pointing the guns into the water. That seemed very clear to me.”

“Ricochet,” Bodine said. “But even a ricochet, from a high-velocity bullet…” He frowned, seemed about to add more information, but Sara’s look must have stopped him. He coughed and dragged himself upright. “Can one of you open that hatch? I’ll get down below, then we can—”

“No. Leave her,” Sara said, surprising herself as a coherent thought finally dislodged itself from the icejam. “She’ll be better off up here. Well? Are you happy now? Satisfied? I tried to stop you, you assholes.”

They said nothing, and she turned away. Madsen looked dazed. Eddi, tears streaking her cheeks, went aft. She came back with the camera. The lens stared here and there, recording, as Sara arranged Dorée’s clothing, wiped up blood with handfuls of snow, rezipped her suit. Auer resnapped the fasteners of the life preserver, and made up Tehiyah’s safety line into a neat coil.

Engines barely audible,
Anemone
rose and fell through a quieting sea. Nothing disturbed its heaving, glossy, faintly oily-looking surface. In the distance, the departing ships were specks in a roseate mist as the sun declined, once again. Not to set, but only to half-light a shadowy underworld of eternal twilight.

16

Snow and Wind

They pitched into a switching wind that pried up the greasy sea in long swells. Bergs, white on white in the falling snow, had closed between them and the fleet, which had stood off to the eastward. The snow had resumed after they departed the killing grounds. It fell ceaselessly through the dusk, so there were no stars. A subdued Madsen had directed the careful hoist of the main, fully reefed, then shut the engines down. Sara steered from the dome, though its plastic was scratched now and hard to see through.

But she could make out the tarp-wrapped bundle lashed to the lifelines. They’d discussed what to do with Tehiyah’s body. This decision was unanimous. They had to take her home. Otherwise, no one would believe she’d died from a whaler’s bullet. That settled, there was only one place for the remains. Out in the weather, where the freezing temperatures and dehydrating wind would slow decomposition. They’d laid her along the gunwale and lashed her to the chainplates, but that evening Sara had noticed spray running off the tarp. Too dark by then to do anything, but she’d put it aside to address when the light came again.

The radar was gone; the screen blank. The wiping away of the stay and near collapse of the mast had sheared off the antenna housing. Sara didn’t want to talk to anyone, interact with anyone, do anything but grip the wheel like a human autopilot.
Anemone
was her body; matching the compass was all she required of her mind.

Without direction, without order, she’d gradually brought their course around to north, then northeast, threading amid drifting bergs. At last, when it grew too dim to see, she’d sheeted the main out and let the boat drift to a stop, lifting and falling to the swell. The others must have noticed, but no one said anything. She braced her knees against the dashboard and dozed, waking only now and again to scan the dark horizon.

*   *   *

As the light returned the smell of coffee perked the air. Bodine tottered aft and sat at the salon table. Pans clattered in the galley as Hideyashi, who seemed to be growing into the job of short-order cook, fried cheese-and-onion omelets.

Suddenly she was very hungry. Dru and Tehiyah had died. So be it. The mission of those who remained was simple: to make it home. She made a last inspection of the falling snow, salmon-pink in the direction of the sun, and climbed down. Shook her legs out, splashed her face, combed and pinned up her snarled hair. It was greasy and the ends were split, but who cared.

“Milk?” The Japanese offered canned Nestlé. “The water system has frozen. I had to melt ice with the stove to make coffee.”

“Thanks, Hy.”

Madsen came in from aft and slid into the place Dru Perrault had once occupied. He’d shaved carefully around his beard, making a goatee, and his blond hair was tied back. He moved silverware around, making each piece parallel to each other one. It seemed strange to be able to do this, but the motion of the boat was so gentle that the forks and knives did not even shift. She caught a whiff of aftershave. He nodded, giving her an ingratiating smile. She nodded back, but didn’t feel like smiling. Not after basically having been ignored and beaten into submission the day before, and being made an accessory to an armed attack.

“Ice heavy, Sara?”

“We’re in an open patch. But I still had to stay alert.”

“We’re hove to? Safe?”

“Or I wouldn’t be down here, Lars. Would I?” she said savagely. “We need to do something about Tehiyah. She’s getting wet.”

His mouth tightened. He turned to Bodine. “We also need to get a message out. Tehiyah Dorée dead of a whaler’s bullet—that’s going to make news all over the world.” He must have caught some warning in her face, or maybe Eddi’s, because he added, “I mean—does that sound callous? It’s what she would have wanted. And you know it.”

“Maybe,” Sara mumbled. “Probably.” What did it matter now?

“That’s gonna be tough. We lost the shortwave antenna, along with the radar. And we’re way out of phone range.” Bodine smacked his lips as Kimura slid an omelet onto his plate. Cut into it, and mumbled around the first mouthful, “I can receive, though. Getting a lot of traffic from the fleet. Hy, maybe you can come translate, after we eat.”