Who's on First (27 page)

It was dawn in Stockholm when after twelve hours the Constellation eased down over the calm blue-black bays and grassy estuaries approaching the city. Blackford had not slept, and although he had selected a book advertised as a “page-turner”—horrible expression, he thought—and had dutifully turned the pages, reaching the last chapter he could not recall what it was that happened in the first chapter—which was something like finding the key after losing the lock. Especially inasmuch as the last chapter provided the key to what had happened in the first. He didn't feel particularly tired—it was after all only 10
P.M.
at home—but even in Stockholm there wasn't much action at dawn; so he went to the Lord Nelson Hotel, where they had his reservation. In his room, he showered, reread Chapter One of his thriller, and went to sleep.

He woke at noon, ordered coffee, put on khaki pants, and sat at the desk, where he wrote:

Dear Tamara:

I cannot predict your reaction to hearing from me. It seems another age when I picked you and Viktor up in the taxicab. I was, in a way, instrumental in causing you and Viktor terrible pain and misery. I have, in a way not by any means honorable (given the priority of my official concerns) attempted to make it up to you and Viktor, with whom I feel a great need to talk. I can tell you upon my honor that I have advised not a single person that I came to Stockholm. My visit is entirely unofficial. I shall wait at the hotel until I hear from you.

Yours faithfully,

Julian

P.S. You will infer, correctly, that I got the address of your sister-in-law from Vadim. When you hear why he broke his word in giving it to me, I think you will not reproach him for it.

He called the concierge and asked him to send up someone who would deliver a letter, and he gave the street address. “How far away is that?”

“Oh, about fifteen minutes, not more.”

“Thank you.”

Ten or fifteen minutes. He rang for the floor waiter to order lunch as he worked out the possibilities. The first was that she would receive the letter, pick up the telephone, and call him back right away. A second was that she would read the letter and resolve not to reply to it. A third was that she would be out, returning at the end of the afternoon, resulting in the same possibilities as above. A fourth possibility was that she and Viktor would devote a day or more to deciding whether to acknowledge the letter. He resolved, accordingly, that he would wait in his room against the first contingency; that he could safely leave his room if she did not telephone before two, until, say, six; stay on until eight, and then go out for the evening, and come back in the hope that there would be a message for him.

There was no call, so at two he went to the lobby and got a map of the city from the concierge. The hotel was a dozen blocks from the waterfront. He opened the main door and went out into the bright sun and air which, he could feel, was not many weeks away from achieving arctic temperature. He walked with pleasure, observing the sanitized, blond, husky, healthy, solid people who inhabit Sweden. The colors, with the uniform stress on the dark yellow, were brilliantly lit by the afternoon sun, and when he arrived on Slottsbacken he could see the water, a Prussian blue; the background to what seemed like a traveling boat show, huge luxury cruise boats, tankers, freighters, sailing yachts, dinghies.

He quickened his step and reached the long quay, which rounded gently on the two-mile-long waterfront, ending in the protective mole on the northeast side. Every kind of boat was there, stern-to at the quay, European fashion; and he walked by, examining them as he went, large schooners, medium and small sloops, yawls, ketches, motor launches of every size. On most boats there was activity. A blond boy, fourteen or fifteen, oblivious to the wind, in shorts and T-shirt, sanding down the guardrails; an old man, stitching a torn sail; a young woman sorting out groceries. There were boats from a hundred foreign ports, flying a dozen foreign flags. He saw a trim American racing yawl. A boy of college age lay on the deck, his head bent over the stern light, with pliers and a screwdriver in one hand. His head was only inches away from the quay. Blackford paused:

“Are you American?”

“Yep.” The boy didn't look up, concentrating on the elusive wire he was patching.

“Is your boat”—Blackford saw that it was called
Esmeralda
—“wintering here?”

“Nope.”

“How long have you been here?”

At this point the young man looked up, with that distinctive wariness of youth. He would, or he would not, was the clear expression on his face, encourage a continuation of the dialogue. His beardless, even-featured, light-skinned, golden, tanned face was distorted by the prsence between his teeth of a screw; hair tumbled over one of his eyes. Having decided, apparently, that Blackford was at least inoffensive, he removed the screw from his mouth and said, “I've been crewing for my dad. Sailed across in June, after the Bermuda race. Took in the Fastnet, and he decided to do some cruising in the Baltic. We're headed back to the Antilles but don't want to push off from England until after the hurricane season. We'll be leaving here tomorrow, should make it to Southampton in six, seven days. I'm taking the semester off. Want to come aboard?”

“Yes, sure.” Blackford bounced over the after pulpit and sat down in the cockpit. “Thanks. Go ahead with the stern light. Do you need any help?”

“Tell you the truth, I've forgotten how this damned voltmeter works. Usually Dad handles it, or Danny, and they're out shopping. Have you ever used one?”

“Sure. What's your power supply?”

“Twelve volts.”

Blackford got up, adjusted the knobs, pointed out the relevant dial, and extended the crocodile clips to the young man. “What's your name?”

“Peter. Peter Briscoe. My father is Stephen Briscoe.” There was just the slightest suggestion that Stephen Briscoe was a name one might be expected to recognize. Blackford didn't.

“My name is Blackford Oakes.”

“Hi.” Blackford, at thirty-one, was just old enough to cause hesitation in an eighteen-year-old's feel for whether he should be addressed by his first name, or mistered. Safer the unadorned salutation.

Peter tested the electrical connection, found it active, and pulled a knife from the battered leather sheath on his belt, the marlinespike jutting out, and, still lying on his stomach, cut off a few inches of electric tape and wound it around the wire splice.

“There,” he said, sitting up and smiling with some satisfaction. The wind ran through his lanky brown hair. His skin was evenly bronzed by a long summer of sun.

“Want a beer or anything? Coke?”

“No thanks,” said Blackford. “Tell you what I'm looking for. I just got here, I have a couple of weeks of unexpected vacation. I'd like to charter a boat.”

“Sailboat?”

“Yeah.”

“Bareboat?”

“No. I'd like a hand.”

“Why?” Peter smiled. “You can work a voltmeter.”

Blackford returned the smile. “Somebody who knows some of the good cruising spots, who speaks a little English or German, and can wash the dishes.”

“You won't have any trouble. Not now, not mid-September. You need to speak to the harbormaster, name's Olaf, as in King Olaf. He knows every boat, the works.”

“Do most of the hands speak English?”

“Yah, vee speek da English some bit.” The boy did the imitation with natural enthusiasm. “Tell you what, I'll come with you. I can spot Olaf. We've been dealing with him all summer. Dad took him out one evening, and we carried him ashore three hours and two bottles of aquavit later, nice guy, even when he's zonked.”

“That would be great.” Within the hour it was arranged: The
Hjordis,
a forty-four-foot chalk-white cutter, with roller reefing, a full set of sails; a Dutch steel boat, snugly fitted out, with two berths in the forecastle, two in the main saloon, and a pipe berth aft of the icebox. Peter spent an hour on the local charts, indicating anchorages, inlets, stretches of water he and his father had especially taken to during their month's exploration. Sam, the mate, was uneasy in English but fluent in German. He was a widower at sixty, a retired fisherman. The simple papers were executed, and Blackford put down a fifty-dollar deposit, against the daily rate of fifty dollars. He could have the boat, Sam said, as long as he liked. Blackford told him he would come around in the morning and, followed by Peter, sprang onto the wharf, and headed back toward the
Esmeralda
. Impulsively Blackford said, “I'll have that beer now, if it's still available.”

“Sure.” With one leap, Peter traveled from the quay into the cockpit well, his hand breaking the fall by clutching adroitly the overhanging boom. The next step brought him down the companionway, and ten seconds later he arrived with a beer and a Coca-Cola. As they drank, Peter became voluble. They had had a very frightening dismasting during the Fastnet race. “Son of a gun damn near fell on Dad's head. We had to use the wire cutters to keep it from bashing in the hull. Real mess. Three competitors went right by us, just waved, that's all. Took four hours for the British coast guard to reach us. Real cool. They even insisted on towing the mast to Lands End—‘menace to navigation,' they said. The new one is aluminum, did you notice? They call it an ‘extrusion,' how do you like that? There were eight of us racing, now we're going back just the three of us. Here to Southampton, then the Azores, then the long one, to Grenada.”

“How far is that?”

“2190 miles, from Ponta Delgada.”

“How much water do you have?”

“Hundred and twenty gallons.”

“Fuel.”

“Same. Enough for about 150 hours of power. We won't use that much, we figure to hit the trades beginning a few hundred miles south of the Azores.”

Without knowing what made him ask the question, Blackford suddenly said, “Peter, what would you say if the Russians fired off a satellite before we did?”

“A satellite what?”

“A satellite—something they succeeded in launching high enough and fast enough to escape gravity, and—you know—achieve perpetual motion around the earth.”

“Hm. I'd say somebody's ass in Washington would be in a sling.”

“Why?”

“I'm not a science major. I even have trouble with voltmeters.” He grinned and tilted his head back to empty the Coca-Cola bottle. “But I mean, isn't science sort of
our
thing? I always think of the Russians in terms of lots of heavy tanks and artillery and millions of them dying chasing Napoleon and Hitler out, and freezing to death because Stalin says so. Maybe if they fire off a satellite it's because they stole the secrets from us? That's how they got the atom bomb, isn't it?”

“Well, sort of. But the Russians are pretty bright people.”

“I hope so. Next term, ugh, I've got to read Dostoevski, Tolstoi, and the other guy, what's his name.”

“Gogol? Turgenev?”

“I forget, but my roommate took the course last spring, freshman year, and he practically had to give up everything else, including sex. Everywhere he went you'd see him with a
huge
paperback”—Peter stretched out his arms—“and one day he looked at me, and said, ‘Go ahead and laugh, but it'll be
you
next year.' Maybe I can find a sort of
Reader's Digest
version.”

“That's one possibility.”

“What's the other?”

“That you'll enjoy them.”

And that, Blackford knew instantly, had been a disastrous breach of protocol. He had sounded patronizing. Things could never again be quite the same between him and Peter. In any event it was time to go. He got up.

“Peter, thanks. You were good help and good company. I'll look in on you tomorrow on the way to the
Hjordis
.”

“Good night, Mr. Oakes.” Peter rose, and extended his hand to help Blackford over to the quay, as if Blackford was an old man, like the Russian literature professor at college.

32

He was back in his hotel room at six, and the telephone rang a half hour later. He'd make the preliminaries easier for her:

“This is Julian. Tamara?”

“Yes.”

“I am very glad you called.”

“I have been at the hospital, with Viktor.”

Blackford tensed. “Something … some fresh problem?”

“Surgery. Cosmetic surgery. The right eye.”

“Is he … otherwise all right? I mean … heart, blood, that sort of thing?”

“He will be all right.”

“How long will he be in the hospital?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks.” Blackford's voice betrayed his disappointment. “Can I see you both then?”

“What about?”

“I need to see you and Viktor. It's … personal.”

“We have an agreement with the Swedish Government. We are to report to the Foreign Ministry any attempts by Soviet
or
American agents to communicate with us.”

“I am not here as an agent of any government.”

“I don't believe our hosts would allow us to take your word”—the unintended harshness was quickly mitigated—“or anybody else's on the question.”

“Tamara, what I am telling you is true. I am on leave of absence without pay. I have tentatively tendered my resignation. Nobody knows I am here. I think you can in good conscience consider this a purely personal contact.”

“I shall have to think about that. Anyway, you could not under any circumstances see Viktor before two weeks.”

“I'll return in two weeks.”

“That means you are
required
to see him.”

“No, Tamara. It means that I will adjust my plans so as to make a meeting possible. During the two weeks I intend to cruise.”

“Where?”

“In a sailboat. In this area.”