Polar Star

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Chapter Thirty

  * * *

  Arkady ran the few steps to the shadow of the shelter deck. He could no longer see the bridge, but the bridge could no longer see him. Behind, Karp came up the ramp with the sure foot of a deckhand.

  Arkady slipped into the wheelhouse through a wet room that opened into the galley of the Eagle. He removed his glasses to see in the dim light that filtered through two portholes crusted with ice; it was like visiting the murk of an underwater ship. A banquette curved around a table with anti-skid mats. Pots leaned on the sea rails of the stove top. Forward were two cabin doors, stairs up to the bridge and down to the engine room.

  The port-side cabin had two bunks, though only the lower one looked used. Immediately, Arkady saw that there was no Soviet-style wardrobe where a body could have been stowed. On the bulkhead was an empty rifle rack. Arkady felt under the mattress for a handgun, a knife, anything. Under the soiled pillow was a magazine with nudes. Under the bunk was a drawer with dirty clothes, more magazines of nudes and of firearms and of survival tactics; a sock with a roll of $100 bills; a well-carved whetstone; a carton of cigarettes; an empty box of shotgun shells.

  'Coletti's,' Karp said as he came in. He looked like a woodsman who had set off into the taiga for a vigorous morning of felling trees. No jacket or lifevest, just an extra sweater, heavy gloves, boots, cap and dark glasses resting against his brow. Not even out of breath.

  'You make it so easy,' Karp said. 'Getting rid of you on the ship was a little difficult. Out here you just disappear, and no one will know I was ever gone.'

  The axe was probably from the wide selection of firefighting equipment on the boat deck of the Polar Star, and Arkady suspected that Karp had brought it for a practical reason – to break through the ice and dispose of a body. As usual, the trawlmaster's plan had the virtue of simplicity. From outside came sounds of the ongoing war on ice, more the hammer blows of a foundry than a boat. The Americans still didn't know anyone else was on board.

  'Why did you come?' Karp asked.

  'I was looking for signs of Zina.'

  There was a flare gun in Arkady's jacket pocket; that would be a dazzling sight in a small cabin. As he moved his hand, Karp flicked it aside with the axe.

  'Another investigation?'

  'No, just me. No one else knows. No one besides me even cares.' His wrist where the axe hit it was numb. This, he thought, is what it would be like to be cornered by a wolf.

  Karp said, 'Whenever someone is dead, you usually accuse me.'

  'You were surprised when she came up in the net. You could have tried to pour her with the fish into a bunker and dumped her later. Instead you cut her out. You didn't know. Last night on the ramp you still didn't know.'

  Casually, the axe nudged Arkady's hand from the pocket again. It wasn't fair to die feeling quite so helpless, yet panic was shutting the brain down.

  'You're stalling,' Karp said.

  Arkady had been too scared to stall. 'Don't you want to know who killed her?' he asked. Now he was stalling.

  'Why should I?'

  'You brought her,' Arkady said. 'I must have been smarter back in Moscow. For a long time I couldn't even understand how Zina got herself assigned to the Polar Star. It was Slava, of course. But who pointed him out to Zina when he was sailing on the bay? Who'd shipped with Slava before?'

  'A whole crew.'

  'But only three coming on the Polar Star: Marchuk, Pavel and you. You saw him from the dock.'

  'Daddy's boy on his toy boat. His father was the only way he'd get on a real ship.'

  'With Slava she acted the innocent. That's why she never took him to your apartment.'

  Karp peeled off his sunglasses. 'You knew that was me?'

  'Someone with money, rifles, the nerve to run drugs.' Arkady spoke quickly; it was wonderful what adrenalin could do for the ability to add two and two. 'The only man on the Polar Star who fits that description is you. Since she was making money at the Golden Horn, she would have come only for something better than rubles. You kept away from each other on board, but not as much as you claimed. You said you never saw her except in the mess, but every time the Eagle brought in a net you saw her on the stern deck. Before she knew any men from any boat, she was at the rail waiting for the Eagle. She was yours.'

  'That's right,' Karp said proudly. 'You're not so dumb.'

  Arkady imagined the Americans overhead, surrounded by the abrasive static of the radio, the anvil-hammering on ice. He and Karp were conversing as quietly as conspirators; no one knew they were on board.

  'Volovoi's fear,' Arkady said. 'The theme of his life was smuggling. He had to inspect every package, even one thrown from one Soviet boat to another. The watchword is what?'

  'Vigilance.' Karp smiled in spite of himself. He lifted the axe, shouldered it. 'Keep your hands where I can see them.'

  'The one thing he couldn't stop was the net going back and forth. How did you know when a package was coming?'

  'Simple,' Karp said. 'Ridley waved if they were delivering something besides fish and Coletti waved if they weren't. I looked to see where Zina stood at the rail, starboard side or port. Then I told the men on the ramp the net looked heavy or it didn't.'

  'If it was, they found a waterproof package on the headrope of the bag?'

  'You'd be good at this. Pavel would cut it off, slip it in his lifevest. Then we signalled Ridley if we were sending a package back. Renko, what's the point? You're not getting away alive.'

  'When you don't worry about that, you can learn a lot.'

  'Yeah.' Karp saw merit in the concept.

  'And I'm interested in Zina,' Arkady added.

  'Men were always interested in Zina. She was like a queen.' Karp's gaze wandered up towards the percussive chorus of hammers on deck, then dropped back. Arkady had never felt eyes so attentive.

  'Could you have caught up with me on the ice?' Arkady asked.

  'If I wanted to.'

  'You could have killed me a minute ago, ten minutes ago.'

  'Whenever.'

  'Then you want to know what happened to Zina, too.'

  'I just want to know what you meant on the ramp last night about Zina being thrown into the water.'

  'Simple curiosity?'

  Karp had the metallic stillness of a statue. After a long pause he said, 'Go on, Comrade Investigator. Zina was at the dance...'

  'Zina went and flirted with Mike, but she didn't say goodbye to him when he transferred back to the Eagle because she had gone to the stern deck forty-five minutes before. She was seen there by Marchuk, Lidia, Susan. Thirty minutes before Mike transferred, Zina wasn't seen on the Polar Star again. By the time he transferred, she was dead.' From his jacket, Arkady slowly took out a piece of paper that he unfolded for Karp. It was a copy of the physical examination. 'She was killed by a blow to the back of the head. She was stabbed so she wouldn't float. She was stowed somewhere on this boat, bent and crammed in some small space that left these regular marks on her side. That's what I came to find – that space. A wardrobe, a closet, a hold, a bin.'

  'A piece of paper.' Karp shoved it back.

  That space is here or it isn't. I have to look in the other cabin,' Arkady said but he didn't dare move.

  Karp rolled the axe handle thoughtfully. The single-edged head turned reflectively, like a coin. He pushed the door open. 'We'll look together.'

  Passing through the galley Arkady heard hammers taking full swings, as if the Americans were trying to carve their way home. He felt the axe cocked at his back and sweat rolling down his spine.

  Karp prodded him into the starboard cabin. A real blanket covered his bunk. A railed shelf displayed books on philosophy, electronics and diesel mechanics. On the bulkhead hung a holster and a picture of a man sticking out his tongue. The man in the picture was Einstein.

  'Ridley,' Arkady said in answer to himself.

  'She disappeared from the Polar Star... then what?' Karp demanded.

  'Remember, yo
u pointed out Slava to her when he was sailing.' Arkady spoke faster. Ridley's bunk drawer held clean clothes neatly folded; leather wristbands and silver ear studs; photos of himself skiing with two women, touching wineglasses with a third; books of Hindu prayer; playing cards; an electronic game of chess; a lapel pin of Minnie Mouse. Arkady turned the cards face up, flipped through them and spread them on the bed.

  'I wanted her on the ship, and Bukovsky had the connection. So?'

  'She liked to visit men on their boats, and it must have seemed easy for a swimmer as strong as she was to take a few strokes to the Eagle when it was tied up to the Polar Star. She simply stepped off the stern ramp of the ship, Comrade Malzeva's shower cap on her head, her shoes and a change of clothes in a black plastic bag tied to one wrist. From the rail she was probably invisible.'

  'Why would she do that?'

  'That was her method. She moved from man to man and boat to boat.'

  'No, that doesn't answer my question,' Karp said. 'She wouldn't have taken the chance just to visit. So, Comrade Investigator, why would she do it?'

  'I asked myself the same question.'

  'And?'

  'I don't know.'

  Karp used the axe like a long hand to push Arkady to the wall. 'See, where you went wrong, Renko, is saying that Zina would ever leave me.'

  'She slept with other men.'

  'To use them; that didn't mean anything. But the Americans were partners; that's different.'

  'She was here.'

  'Now that I look around, I don't see any space like you said she was put in. Not a sign of her.' Karp glanced at the open drawer. 'If you were hoping to find a gun, forget it. On this boat everyone carries their guns all the time.'

  'We have to look around more,' Arkady said. He remembered fighting the trawlmaster in the bunker; the last place he wanted to dodge an axe was in the confines of a trawler cabin.

  Karp's attention fell on the playing cards spread across the bunk. Still holding the axe high, he scanned the cards back and forth. 'Don't move,' he warned. He set the axe down to pick up the cards and painstakingly thumb through them. When he was done, he squeezed them back into a pack, which he replaced in the drawer. His small eyes receded into a stricken white face of love. For a moment Arkady thought Karp would actually drop to the floor. Instead, he picked up his axe and said, 'We'll start in the engine room.'

  As they opened the door to the galley another furious assault on ice began overhead. The trawlmaster only glanced upward as if at the sound of heavy rain.

  The Eagle's two diesel engines throbbed on their steel beds, a six-cylinder main and a four-cylinder auxiliary. This was Ridley's domain, the warm innerboat beneath the deck where it took manoeuvring to walk safely around layshafts and pulleys, generators and hydraulic pumps, wheel valves and convoluted piping. Low pipes, belt guards and every other dangerous possibility were painted red. The path between the engines was cross-hatched plating.

  While Karp prowled Arkady went into the forward space, a repair room with tools, hanging belts, a table with a threader and vice, a rack with saws and drills. There was also what appeared to be the door of a refrigeration unit, though since the Eagle delivered its catch to the Polar Star, why would it need refrigeration? When he opened the door he had to laugh. Stacked to waist level were mahogany-brown, resinous one-kilo bricks of Manchurian hemp, anasha. Well, it was the way the major companies worked. Because the ruble wasn't hard currency, international business was always done by barter. Soviet gas, Soviet oil, why not Soviet anasha?

  In the narrow bow end of the refrigerator were crammed a table and chair, headphones and oscilloscope, amplifier and equalizer, mainframe, dual console and a file of floppy disks. It was much the same as Hess's station except that the hardware was shinier and more compact, with names like EDO and Raytheon. Sure enough, below the table was a fibreglass dome. He picked a disk from the file; the label read, 'Bering Menu. File. SSBN-Los Angeles. USS Sawtooth, USS Patrick Henry, USS Manwaring, USS Ojai, USS Roger Owen.' He nipped through the other disks; their labels read 'SSBN-Ohio', 'SSGN', 'SSN'. On the table was a clipboard with a paper divided into columns that listed 'Date', 'Boat', 'Position', 'Transmission Time', 'Duration'. The last transmission had been of the Roger Owen yesterday. Arkady opened the desk drawer. Inside was an assortment of manuals and schematics. He flipped through the pages. 'Acoustic simulator...' 'Polyethylene-covered tow cable with acoustic section and vibration isolation module...' 'Winch drum traverses axially...' There was a book titled in red letters: 'You Cannot Take This Book From This Office.' The subtitle was 'Reserve, Decommissioned, Dismantled Status – 1/1/83.' Under submarines he found that the USS Roger Owen had been dismantled a year ago, and that the USS Manwaring and the USS Ojai had been removed from service.

  The outline of a wonderful joke was taking shape. The electronics were similar to Hess's with one difference: at the end of Morgan's cable wasn't a hydrophone for listening; instead, there was a waterproof acoustic transmitter trailing sounds like a lure. The disks were recordings, and all the submarines on them had been decommissioned or dismantled. Morgan and Hess were circling the Bering Sea, one spy sending false signals for another spy to collect in triumph. Hess must think that American subs were swarming like schools of fish. Arkady replaced the book, but he pocketed the disks. From the engine room Karp paid no attention, as if nothing Arkady did at this point could matter.

  Together they returned to the wet room's intermediate damp and pegs of slickers and boots, then went back outside. Under the cover of the shelter deck lay rolls of mesh laced with ice, net bags of buoys, a welder's table with vice, storage lockers and oil drums of shovels and grappling hooks. The hammering overhead was quiet, but there was no stopping Karp now. The Eagle had fish holds it had never used since it began transferring nets to factory ships. With his axe, the trawlmaster chipped away the ice covering the holds. As it split it flew up in prism-like flashes. He had to use a grappling hook to lift the hatch. After all his effort, the hold was empty.

  Arkady hastily concentrated on the storage lockers under the shelter deck. From the first one he emptied loose rope and blocks; from the second, rubbery legs of coveralls, gloves, torn slickers, tarp. At some previous point the box must have held wire rope, because the bottom had a mixed residue of lubricant and rust. A coffin. He could clearly see the marks where Zina's knees and forearms had rested. On one side was a row of six nuts, about five centimetres apart, that had bruised her side.

  'Come and look,' Arkady whispered.

  Karp leaned in and came up with a tuft of hair, blond with dark roots. As Arkady reached for it, he felt something brush his neck.

  'What are you doing here?' Ridley pressed the gun's cold muzzle more firmly against Arkady's head as Coletti came through the wet-room door with a double-barrelled shotgun.

  'This is an unofficial visit?' Morgan stood halfway down the wheelhouse ladder.

  Ridley and Coletti looked inflated by the parkas under their slickers. Their left hands were huge with heavy gloves, their right hands bare to fit in trigger guards. Their mouths were raw and frosted by their breath, proper faces for a boat draped in white. In contrast, with his down vest and cap Morgan looked as if he'd stepped out of a different climate. Except for his eyes; they had facets in them as crystalline as ice. Slung over one shoulder was a stubby automatic weapon, a military piece, its ammunition clip longer than its barrel.

  'Looking for vodka?' Morgan asked. 'You won't find it there.'

  'The Polar Star sent us,' Arkady said. 'Captain Marchuk would probably appreciate a call that we made it.'

  Morgan pointed to the mast. For all Ridley's labour, the radar bar was, still locked in place, the antennas still sheathed in ice. 'Our radios are down. Besides, you two don't look like an official rescue party.'

  'Here we are, freezing our asses off to de-ice this tub and we hear this banging on the deck and come around to find you two going through gear like a pair of bag ladies. You understand "bag ladies"?' R
idley twisted the barrel into the back of Arkady's head.

  'I think so.'

  'I have the feeling,' Morgan said, 'that no one on the Polar Star knows you're gone. And if they do, there's no way they can know you and the trawlmaster made it here. What were you looking for?'

  'Zina,' Arkady said.

  'Again?' the captain asked.

  'This time we found her, or the only evidence that's left of her here.'

  'Like what?'

  'Some hair. I took a sample from the muck at the bottom of the box, and I think I can match that with the marks on her pants. I'd prefer to have the whole storage box, of course.'

  'Of course,' Morgan said. 'Well, we'll have the box clean before you get back to the Polar Star and as for the hair, you could have gotten that anywhere.'

  What Arkady could see of Ridley's weapon was the cylinder of a large revolver, a cowboy gun. The approach to the back of the skull was the same style used on Mike and Zina, but whoever killed them was a knife artist. There was no help from Karp; the trawlmaster stood immobilized, his eyes desperately chasing a foreign conversation, the grappling hook hanging limply from his hand.

  'Consider the situation,' Ridley said to Morgan. 'We have a lot to lose and you have a lot to lose.'

  'You mean the anasha?.' Arkady asked.

  Ridley paused, then told Coletti, 'They've been below.'

  'This is where I draw the line,' Morgan told Ridley. 'I'm not going to let you kill someone in front of me.'

  'Captain, my captain,' Ridley said, 'we're trapped in the fucking ice. Renko goes back and reports what he's seen, the next thing you know we've got fifty more Soviets traipsing over for an interested look. This is a case of national security, right?'

  'You just want to protect your drugs,' Morgan said.

  'I could get personal, too,' Ridley answered. 'At Dutch Harbor, Renko was balling your woman. He took her right away from you. He's probably been balling her on the big ship ever since.'

  Morgan looked at Arkady. The moment of denial came and went.