Polar Star

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Veterans of the north knew the stages of exposure. He was shivering; shivering was good. The body could actually maintain its temperature for a while by shaking to death. Still, he lost a degree every three minutes. When he lost two degrees he would stop shivering and his heart would start slowing and shutting off the flow to skin and limbs to maintain core heat; that was the cause of frostbite. When he lost eleven degrees his heart would stop. Coma came midway. He had fifteen minutes.

  There was another problem. He had the classic first signs of poisoning he'd seen in sailors who had imbibed vapours: blinking, dizziness, intoxication. Sometimes they howled like hyenas; sometimes they danced off the walls. He couldn't help laughing. He'd gone to sea to die in this ice? That was funny.

  His arms jerked spasmodically as if a maniac were bending his bones. He'd worked in this kind of cold before – granted in quilted coveralls, felt boots and fur-lined hood. Frost made its own white fur over his shoes and cuffs. He swayed, trying to keep his balance and not step into the narrow space between the cases; he was sure if he slipped he wouldn't get his leg out again.

  At his chest level was a plate that covered the thermo-coupler, a coil of copper-constantan wire. He couldn't get the plate loose with his fingernails; it was another good example of the sort of emergency for which a fisherman should carry his knife at all times.

  He jiggled the matches out of his pocket and dropped them. Since he was trying not to tip over, he picked up the book painfully with the sort of graceful bow a French dandy might execute as he swept a lady's handkerchief from the ground. Again he dropped the matches and this time went down on all fours to retrieve them. The flame was a tiny yellow ball overwhelmed by the cold, but a precious dew formed on the thermocoupler plate as it warmed. The problem was that his hands were jerking so badly he couldn't keep the flame to the plate for more than a second at a time.

  There was a certain cunning to killing him this way. Freezing him and, he assumed in thinking it through, moving his body one place to thaw, then taking him to another site to be found. It was now well established that Vainu was not the most expert of pathologists, and the most obvious evidence he would find would be signs of sniffing fumes, the tragic vice of petroleum-age man. With official approval, they'd slap his body back in the same cold store until they reached Vladivostok. He saw himself riding a block of ice back home.

  These were excellent matches, wood tipped with phosphorus and wax especially for the foul weather that seamen encountered. On the box cover was the design of a ship's prow splitting a curling wave. On the ship's stack was a hammer and sickle. His whole body was shaking so badly that it was hard to even aim the flame at the plate. For no reason he suddenly remembered an even better case of suicide than the ones he'd cited to Marchuk and Volovoi. A sailor had hung himself in Sakhalin. There was no investigation because the boy had secured the rope to the hammer and sickle on the smoke stack. He was put in paper slippers and buried in a day since no one even wanted to ask questions.

  At least he'd stopped shivering and could hold the match steady. Looking down, he saw that both his pants legs were covered in fleecy frost. A big fish like a halibut could be frozen rock solid to the core in an hour and a half. The box squirted from his fingers. They were turning from white to blue and moved so slowly. When he knelt to pick the box up, his hands fumbled like a pair of hooks. As he struck another match, the box dropped, bounced off the crate and fell between it and the wall. He heard it ticking off crates on its way down to the deck.

  With all his concentration he brought the cool, little glow again to the thermocoupler, marvelling at how the dim heat spread visibly like breath upon the metal plate. It was his last match now. He held on while flames burned on his fingernails. There was still some gasoline left on his hands from taking the rags from his mouth. Secondary flames lit like candles on his palms. They didn't hurt. He stared because they were so remarkable, like a religious experience. Slowly his eyes moved to the rags. Was this how slowly fish thought? he wondered. As the match flame sank to a nub, he thrust it and his hands into the rags, which burst into a beautiful flowerlike fire. He kicked the burning rags closer to the planks beneath the plate.

  The rags unfolded in hues of violet and blue that turned to rich black smoke. Around the fire, on the planks and on the crate, grew a ring of wet glaze, of ice melting, re-freezing and melting again. Arkady sat at the edge of the flames, arms out to cup the heat. He remembered a picnic he'd once had in Siberia of frozen fish whittled into shavings, frozen reindeer sliced into strips, frozen berries formed into patties and Siberian vodka that had to be constantly turned, first this side and then that, towards the fire. The year before, an Intourist guide had taken a group of Americans into the taiga and laid out an even more splendid lunch but had forgotten to turn the bottle. After many toasts with warm tea to international friendship, mutual respect and closer understanding, the guide poured glasses of nearly frozen, almost congealed vodka and showed his guests how to drink it in one go. 'Like this,' he said. He tipped the glass, drank it and fell over dead. What the guide had forgotten was that Siberian vodka was nearly two hundred proof, almost pure alcohol, and would still flow at a temperature that would freeze the gullet and stop the heart like a sword. Just the shock was enough to kill him. It was sad, of course, but it was also hilarious. Imagine the poor Americans sitting around their camp-fire, looking at their Russian guide and asking, 'This is a Siberian picnic?'

  It was an unequal battle between a mere rag fire and the glacial cave of a fish hold. The flames subsided to eyes of light, to a nest of wrestling glow-worms, then to a last black gasp of smoke above a shell of ashes. The crate and planks were smudged, not even charred.

  Gasoline was a bit like Siberian vodka. Moment by moment he felt more Siberian. Finally, sailing off the coast of America, he had achieved that blissful distinction. Frost advanced up his pants and sleeves again. He blinked to keep his eyes from icing shut and watched his breath explode into crystals that rose up, then eddied down in fine drifts. How else would a Siberian breathe? Wouldn't he have made a good guide? But who for?

  Time to lie down. He tugged the tarp off the crate to use as a blanket. It slid off stiff with ice, revealing Zina Patiashvili in a clear plastic bag. Clear but covered within by wonderful patterns of crystalline frost like a coat of diamonds. She was white as snow and her hair was dusted with ice. One eye was open, as if she wondered who was joining her.

  Arkady curled up in the corner farthest from Zina. He didn't believe the wheel really was turning until the door cracked open. Natasha Chaikovskaya filled the doorway, eyes and mouth agape at the remains of the fire and at Zina and then at him. She rushed into the hold and lifted Arkady, gently at first so his skin on the ice wouldn't tear, then like a weightlifter starting a press. He'd never been lifted by a woman before. Probably Natasha wouldn't take that as a compliment.

  'I made a fire,' he told her. Apparently it had actually worked. He had dropped the temperature at the thermo-coupler and finely tuned monitors had sounded. 'You heard an alarm?'

  'No, no. There aren't any alarms. I was just walking by when I heard you inside.'

  'Shouting?' Arkady didn't remember.

  'Laughing.' Natasha shifted, getting a better grip to angle him out the door. She was frightened, but also disgusted, as anyone is with a drunk. 'You were laughing your head off.'

  Chapter Fourteen

  * * *

  While Izrail Izrailevich gently massaged Arkady's fingers and Natasha ministered to his bare toes their patient responded with hypothermia spasms. The factory manager looked with scorn and disappointment at Arkady's eyes, which were a brilliant pulpy red from gasoline fumes.

  'Other men I expect to be drunkards or sniffers, not you,' Izrail said. 'It serves you right to wander into a fish hold and almost freeze to death.'

  The trouble was, feeling returned as a sensation of skin burning, of capillaries bursting and waves of shakes. Fortunately none of his cabinmates were home when
Izrail and Natasha laid him out on the lower bunk. Buried in blankets when touch itself was torture, he felt as if he were wrapped in broken glass.

  Fish scales glittered on the factory manager's sweater and beard; he had run from the slime line to help carry Arkady to the cabin. 'Do we lock up all the gasoline, the paint and thinner as if they were expensive foreign liquors?'

  'Men are weak,' Natasha reminded him.

  Izrail gave his opinion. 'A Russian is like a sponge; you don't know his true shape until he's soaked. I thought Renko was different.'

  Natasha blew her warm breath on each naked, individual toe and then tenderly kneaded it, which felt like having red-hot needles stuck under the nails. 'Maybe we should take him to Dr Vainu,' she suggested.

  'No,' Arkady managed to say. His lips were rubbery, another effect of the fumes.

  Izrail said, 'I let you off the line because you were going to perform some sort of investigation for the captain, not so you could go crazy.'

  'Zina was in the hold,' Natasha told Izrail.

  'Where else are we supposed to keep her? Did you say he started a fire?' Izrail was concerned. 'Did he thaw any fish?'

  'He didn't even thaw himself.' Natasha attended to a toe that remained blue.

  'If he damaged any fish –'

  She said, 'Fuck your fish, excuse me.'

  'All I'm saying is, if you want to kill yourself, don't do it in my fish hold,' Izrail told Arkady. Vigorously he rubbed Arkady's other hand.

  A thought occurred to Natasha and spread on her brow like a furrow on virgin snow. 'Does this have to do with Zina?'

  'No,' Arkady lied. Go away, he wanted to say, but he couldn't slip more than one word at a time through a chattering jaw.

  'You were looking for something? Someone?' she asked.

  'No.' How could he explain about a lieutenant who might or might not exist? He had to stop shaking and rest his traumatized nerve endings a little; then he could start asking questions again.

  'Maybe I should get the captain,' Izrail said.

  'No.' Arkady started to rise.

  'Okay, okay, that seems to be the only word you remember,' Izrail said. 'But if this was an attack, I'm not surprised. I don't share their attitude, but I can tell you that the crew is unhappy about this rumour that you've put DutchHarbor off limits. What do you think they come on this stinking barrel of shit for? Fish? You want to jeopardize all their months of work to find out what happened to Zina? This ship is full of silly women. Why do you care so much?'

  As his shakes receded, Arkady burrowed into a comatose state. He saw that he had been changed from his frozen clothes into dry ones, a task that must have been performed by Izrail and Natasha, an act about as erotic as dressing a fish. He had a vision of himself on a conveyor belt moving towards the saw.

  Obidin and Kolya came into the cabin, fumbled quietly for one thing or another and left without paying any attention to Arkady or the fact that he was in the wrong bunk. It was etiquette on a ship to let other men sleep.

  When he surfaced again, Natasha was sitting on the opposite bunk. As soon as she saw he was awake, she said, 'Izrail Izrailevich wondered why you cared about Zina. Did you know her?'

  He felt comically weak, as if his body had been beaten and badly sunburned while he dozed. At least he could talk now, in a rush of words between the shakes. 'You know I didn't.'

  'I thought I knew you didn't, but then I wondered why you cared.' She looked at him, then away. 'I suppose it helps to care, in a professional manner.'

  'Yes, it's a professional trick. Natasha, what are you doing here?'

  'I thought they might come back.'

  'Who?'

  She crossed her arms as if to say she wouldn't play games. 'Your eyes are red slits.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Are all investigations like this?'

  He burped in his sleep and the entire cabin reeked like a garageful of gasoline fumes. When Natasha opened the porthole to clear the air, a song mournfully crept in from outside.

  'Where are you, wolves, ancient wild beasts?

  Where are you, yellow-eyed tribe of mine?'

  Another thieves' song, again about wolves, rendered in the most sentimental fashion by a hard-handed fisherman. Or, just as likely, by a mechanic in greasy coveralls, or even an officer as prim as Slava Bukovsky, because in private everyone sang thieves' songs. But especially workers sang. They strummed their guitars, always primitively tuned D-G-B-D-G-B-D.

  'I'm surrounded by hounds, feeble relatives,

  We used to think of as our prey.'

  Westerners thought of Russians as bears. Russian men saw themselves as wolves, lean and wild, barely restrained. To see them standing in line hours for a beer was hard to understand unless you saw the inner Soviet man. The song was another one by Vysotsky. To his countrymen much of Vysotsky's appeal lay in his vices, his drinking and wild driving. The story was that he'd had a 'torpedo' implanted in his ass. A 'torpedo' was a capsule of Antabuse that would make Vysotsky sick whenever he had alcohol. Yet still he drank!

  'I smile at the enemy with my wolfish grin,

  Baring my teeth's rotten stumps,

  And blood-specked snow melts

  On the sign: "We're not wolves any more!" '

  As Natasha closed the porthole, Arkady came fully awake. 'Open it,' he said.

  'It's cold.'

  'Open it.'

  Too late. The song had ended; all he could hear through the open porthole was the heavy sigh of water as it slid by below. The singer had been the same as on Zina's tape. Maybe. If he sang again, he could tell. Arkady started shaking, though, and Natasha closed the porthole tight.

  As the cabin door opened, Arkady sat bolt upright, knife in hand. Natasha turned on the light and regarded him with worry. 'Who were you expecting?'

  'No one.'

  'Good, because in your condition you couldn't scare a doormouse.' She uncurled his fingers from the knife handle. 'Besides, you don't need to fight. You have a brain and you can out-think anyone else.'

  'Can I think myself off this ship?'

  'The brain is a wonderful thing.' She put the knife aside.

  'I wish the brain were a ticket. How long have I been asleep?'

  'One hour, maybe two. Tell me about Zina.' She wiped the sweat from his brow and eased him back on to his pillow. His hand was still cramped from holding the knife, and she began massaging the fingers. 'Even when you're wrong, I like to hear how you think.'

  'Really?'

  'It's like listening to someone play the piano. Why did she come on the Polar Star, to smuggle those stones?'

  'No, they were too cheap. Natasha, I want the knife.'

  'But just for herself the stones might have been enough.'

  'A Soviet criminal rarely operates alone. You don't find a Soviet criminal alone in the dock. There are five, ten, twenty in the dock at a time.'

  'If it wasn't an accident, and not for one second am I saying that it was anything but, maybe it was a crime of passion.'

  'It was too clean a murder. And planned. For her blood to pool the way it did she must have been stowed for at least half a day before she went into the water. That means moving her to hide her, then moving her again to throw her overboard. We were fishing harder then, people were on deck.'

  Arkady stopped for breath. A therapeutic massage was not easy to distinguish from torture.

  'Go on,' Natasha said.

  'Zina fraternized with Americans, which she only could have done with the permission of Volovoi. She informed for Volovoi. There wouldn't be any reprimand from the galley staff because they were told to let her roam, and she probably kept Olimpiada happy by feeding her chocolates and brandy. But why did Zina always go to the stern deck when the Eagle delivered fish? And only when the Eagle delivered fish, not any other boat? To wave to a man she might dance with one night out of every two or three months? Is Slava's band that good? Maybe the question should be asked the other way. What were the Americans looking for when
they delivered fish?'

  Arkady didn't mention the possibility that there was an intelligence station on the Polar Star. On the tape the lieutenant invited Zina into the station when fish were coming on board. Did the station only operate between incoming nets? Was it a matter of nets or Americans?

  'Anyway,' he said, 'Americans, various lovers, Volovoi – a lot of people used Zina or were used by her. We don't have to be brilliant, we just have to see the pattern.'

  He remembered her voice on the tape: 'He thinks he tells me what to do. A second thinks he tells me what to do.' Arkady counted the 'He's. Four significant men, one of whom even she knew was a killer.

  'What people?' Natasha asked.

  'An officer, for one. He could be compromised.'

  'Which?' She was alarmed.

  He shook his head. His hands were pink, as if they'd come out of boiling water. They felt that way.

  'What do you think?' he asked her.

  'About First Mate Volovoi, I don't agree. About the Americans, they must answer for themselves. About Olimpiada and the chocolates, you may be right.'

  When he awoke again Natasha had returned with a giant samovar, a silver urn with a spigot for a nose and cheeks shining with good-natured heat. While they took tea, each drinking from a steaming glass, Natasha sawed a round loaf of bread.

  'My mother drove trucks. Remember how we built trucks then, when the factories fulfilled their plan according to gross weight? Each truck weighed twice as much as trucks anywhere else in the world. Try to steer one of those in the snow.