Arch Patton

by James Strauss

“St. Lawrence Island is our last touch point before we encounter the Russian shore. We have to return to one, or more, of those ports behind us. I want to avoid legal entanglement if I can. We’re traveling toward the Chukchi Peninsula light. We’ll be returning heavy.”

  I was tempted to turn on the CD player and play his song, but I restrained my fingers. Don rubbed his jaw.

  “Those terms, ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ … those are nautical transport terms. I thought this was your first transit by ship.”

  I didn’t acknowledge. He mulled something over for another moment.

  “What’ll we be ‘heavy’ with?” he finally asked.

  I froze. A male knocker rapped on my door. Or at least I prayed that it wasn’t the iron fist of Benito. I waited for the person to come in, but he didn’t.

  “German,” I whispered to Don, then opened the door.

  Günter stood there. I motioned him in.

  “He’s in on everything for a full share,” I said, pointing needlessly at Botany Bay. I spoke in German, since I knew that about the only English Günter was any good at were the words to the Mickey Mouse song.

  Don took the express package from Günter’s limp hand. “This can’t be good,” Don murmured, hefting the large thick envelope.

  I read Kessler’s name across the front of it, then the name of the ship right under it. The envelope looked like it had been forced open and re-closed about a dozen times. I lifted the package from Don’s hands and opened it. I kicked the cabin door closed behind me. Then I extracted the papers and started to read. The Alaskan Archaeological Survey, out of Sitka, was extending to me authorization to file a site on Aguiak Island with the Office of History and Archeology. The papers were site location, identification, event chronology and definition of the site. Another of the great balls up in the air on this mission was descending upon me like a yoke upon the shoulders of an ox. I put the papers on my dresser. Hours of work, and a bit of research, were going to be required to fill out those documents.

  “Want me to do the preliminary?” Don asked, holding out his big hand.

  I nodded and then handed the envelope over. Don was a botanist, but I was willing to bet that he knew his way around a dig.

  “Captain wants to see you,” Günter announced. “This minute,” he went on, when I didn’t say anything.

  I finally nodded, fingering the CD player. I clicked it on in the silence while Don read the paperwork and Günter waited for me to do something. I pressed the button for number two on the disc player. It began to play.

  “… The lights in the harbor don’t shine for me. I’m like a lost ship adrift on the sea….”

  I hit the off button. I had never heard the song before, but it was like the first one I played earlier: very, very apropos to my situation.

  “Where did you get the songs?” I asked Don.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t get ’em anywhere. I thought that was yours,” Don muttered.

  I sighed. My life had evolved into a succession of unsolvable mysteries, which I did not have the time to investigate. I noted, however, that both tunes were damn good songs. I motioned to the door and then followed Günter out. He halted abruptly, pestering me when the Mouseketeer Club meeting was going to be.

  Don yelled out from my cabin. “After the lectures on the lido deck.”

  I translated into German and then staggered down the corridor, drifting side to side with the movement of the ship’s motion.

  When Günter opened the captain’s door, I saw Hathoot sitting in the one visitor’s chair. I walked to the porthole while Kessler played with his unlit pipe. He knocked it on the desk to break the silence. I held onto the wall and the porthole support to keep from falling. Another great swell had gone under us. Kessler and Hathoot barely moved, as if their chairs were both riveted to the deck.

  “You received the papers, ja?” Kessler said, with a phony, but hopeful look.

  I nodded.

  Kessler went on, “Commander Hathoot spoke to you earlier. It appears that he … ah … spoke out of hand about things you probably have no interest in.”

  I still said nothing, so he continued. “That is correct, is it not?”

  He put the pipe back in his mouth. I looked at the smiling Hathoot.

  “He’s one of us, you know?” the captain finished.

  “There is no ‘us,’” I declared. “I’m going to file for the dig, then make some decisions later on. You can’t access anything until the dig is approved — and I lead the expedition.”

  While the captain said nothing, Hathoot chimed in. “Of course, of course, we understand perfectly. But it will be better for all of us if we can finish this cruise with a minimum of, shall we say, disturbance.”

  Both men sized me up.

  Hathoot continued. “You can have your way with the woman. I have no interest in that.”

  I didn’t change expression. I wanted to ask the man if he was gay, since he had no “interest,” but I refrained from talking. A moment later, when nothing further was added, I left through the door, on the downside of a tilting swell. The door slammed behind me.

  I stood on the catwalk outside the captain’s suite. I looked up from my “ship adrift on the sea,” as in the last song from the CD.

  “So here I am, Lord, on a gold hunt with Humphrey Bogart as my partner. What’s next, ‘no stinkin’ badges’?”

  I made my way to the lido deck. Very few passengers were gathered for the lectures. I sat at the bar alone. Nobody was drinking. Marlys was there in her first night’s wrap. No doubt her idea of the shroud I had mentioned earlier. She gave me a Navy bowl of coffee, already creamed and fake-sugared.

  “Thanks,” she whispered and then disappeared to her storeroom.

  Thanks for what, I truly wondered.

  Benito prepared the little stage, just as she did every night. Marlys had conveyed one word to me and Benito did the same. Hers was more of a threat, however.

  “Tonight!” came flying out of her.

  I was proud of not cringing. I got up when it was my turn and gave my feeble little talk to almost no applause. I went back to the bar to finish my cold coffee. Marlys had not returned. Everyone cleared out, so I headed down to the “Mickey Mouse Club,” which was what a small, glued-on sign over Don’s door now read.

  Don was pouring, as before. Everyone was drinking his brew greedily, except me. Marlys, the Basque, Günter, Don, Dutch, and Filipe were all present. They toasted, grinned at me, and then sang the signature song. Our song, they called it. They cheered, then drank some more, and repeated the tune. Their laughing proved contagious.

  For the first time in days I relaxed. We hung together and then apart as the ship dived and twisted into a night that was, admittedly, not a night at all. Unable to fund, finance, or properly man this mission, the Agency had sent me. The Sandy Koufax of impossible missions, except I was well ahead of that man’s best winning percentage. I sang with the ground assault team I had caged together from the dregs of the Lindy’s crew. Now, all I had to do was get them trained and ready, while we still rocked back and forth through the huge swells off the Chukchi Peninsula.

  I called our small meeting to order, introducing them to what lay ahead. We needed to put a small team ashore, then move inland to a selected coordinate, initiate operations, move back to the ship, and ultimately get clear of Russian waters. We had to assure that the ship would remain at the dock during this operation, as there was no alternate plan of egress. Finally, we had to do all that with assets we found at hand, while keeping the rest of the passengers and crew from having any idea of what we were doing. I laid out the plan over the course of nearly an hour. Then I waited for the questions.

  I really feared only one question. It came from the Basque, as I had presumed it would. She was the only person on my team who was a member simply because her lover was on my t
eam. The rest had some sort of investment, something to gain, or simply believed that I was someone worth following.

  “What’s the goal of this ‘mission’ you have?” she asked.

  The cabin grew quiet. It was the only question I had decided beforehand that I would not answer. I had to have their trust, loyalty, and disciplined cooperation and I had to get that without their knowledge of the mission. I would only reveal that when we were ashore.

  I answered her question the only way I could. With the truth. I would not tell them yet. She did not want to accept that. I knew she would not. I had, however, thought a lot about her potential performance, or lack of it, on the mission.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” I relented, “what we’re doing is a good humanitarian thing. It is also something that is going to anger your stepfather. And we are going to do it in the name of the Mouseketeers.”

  It was risky to make such a statement. If the Basque bolted, the entire mission could be blown before we ever hit the dock. But she didn’t. I sighed deeply, for about the thirtieth time that day. We were going to be a team. The only member we lacked was the doctor, whom we would need. But he also needed me. I would see to him later. I went about instructing them in more detail on how we would go about preparing for the ingress into Provideniya, and then later how we would take time upon arrival to plan our ground and shipboard moves. My assault team then drank to the Russians, the wild Bering Sea, and the Chukchi itself.

  I left them for the doctor’s cabin. The doctor was not there, however, so I diverted to the infirmary.

  When I got there, I ran right into Borman. His visage was angry. I turned to the side and prepared to defend myself, glad that the man’s boatswain’s knife was still in my cabin. I relaxed a bit as I noted that his anger was not directed at me. The doctor cowered behind a stainless steel table.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked, quietly, not wanting to set Borman off further.

  I noted that he had thrown on one of those little blue knit caps real sailors often wear. Unsanitary, for his head wound, but much better for his appearance.

  “This scum neglected to stock up on seasickness medication. We have nothing. Half the passengers are puking their guts out. The captain is going to be in a rage.”

  I was immediately relieved. Borman had no memory of our recent run-in, at least no memory yet. His shipmates might change all that soon, I suspected. But I decided to take what I had while I had it.

  “I’ll see to it First Mate,” I promised. “The doctor just lost track of the medications, that’s all. He’s very old.”

  Borman snorted, but seemed somewhat mollified.

  “You tell the captain that things are in my care. He’ll understand.”

  Borman nodded, ever so briefly, then moved to scratch his head but winced with the pain. I made believe that I did not even notice. Borman stomped out. I crept back to the steel hatch, looked up and down the empty corridor, then closed and dogged it.

  “We really have nothing?” I asked the poor old man. He shook his head.

  “I did forget. I didn’t mean to. There was just too much to do.”

  I sympathized, then went over to our wall of medical supplies and started searching. The key was sticking out of the narcotics door. I opened it, then exclaimed.

  “Jesus Christ, Doc!”

  I counted at least twenty bottles of morphine. At ten shots to the bottle, that was two hundred doses. Big solid doses.

  “What does morphine do for seasickness?” I probed the old man.

  “I don’t know,” he responded. “Put them out for the night, I guess.”

  I opened the door adjacent to the narcotics and unloaded handfuls of syringes.

  “Load ’em up, I’ve got rounds to make,” I announced, and then went out to discover who, among the passengers, needed the latest in seasickness medication.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:

  Into the Breach

  Dr. Murphy was in his cabin. In spite of the shipboard informality I was becoming accustomed to, I knocked.

  His door opened. The aging man let me in. He waved me to recline on one of his unmade bunks. I looked around briefly, wondering if the Filipinos ever entered his place. It wasn’t dirty, but the room was unkempt everywhere I could see. He sat in his single small chair, identical to the one in my own cabin. He peered at me over the top of his tri-focal glasses. I thought about what I needed to say for a moment.

  The doctor might be totally unnecessary, with respect to the mission, or he could determine, like in the song, “who went free or who to blame.” Earlier, we had worked well together as a team. I had acted as the doctor, however, and he as my assistant. We had administered more than fifty morphine injections to seasick passengers as well as to the Basque and Dutch, who more likely suffered from hangovers from the Mouseketeer blowout, rather than seasickness. In many ways, we had left legality behind when we departed St. Lawrence Island.

  The highlight of the services we performed had involved the strange antics of a beautiful female passenger. She had demanded to strip naked in front of us in order to receive the injection in one of her buttock muscles. Afterward, outside her closed cabin door, both of us had taken some deep breaths. If we’d been smokers, we’d have lighted up right there and then.

  “I have some business in the part of Russia we’ll enter tomorrow morning. The kind of business that it is, well, that could end with one or more people suffering trauma. One of them could be me. I need you aboard, standing by, in case that happens.”

  The doctor fiddled with some small items on his dresser. I noted that there were none of the native carvings present. Finally, he took his glasses off entirely, setting them aside.

  “You’re Agency material, aren’t you?” the doctor remarked.

  My eyes widened for an instant. I had not expected such an accurate observation. I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent, attempting to give nothing away.

  “I’ve been around, you know,” he went on. “I’ve been around the horn a time or two myself.” He laughed, obviously relishing the memory of earlier exploits, when he was much younger. “They call you Indy, after that Hollywood character. Didn’t much like the movie, myself. But you’re no make-believe joker like him. You know how I know?”

  I was nonplussed. I signaled for him to continue.

  “I know because you look like the others. The others I knew. Not many. There’s not many of you. You guys don’t look like what you are. And you don’t act like it either. In fact, you act like the nicest guys in the world. All heart. But your heart is totally owned by the Agency. Isn’t it?”

  He finished, probably not expecting an answer, and replaced the glasses back onto the bridge of his long thin nose. Again, I had nothing to say. I could not honestly answer his question, and I didn’t want to lie to wise old gentleman. I didn’t really know the answer anyway, and I surely didn’t like the feeling it gave me thinking about it.

  “I’ll stand by,” he said. “God knows we’ve plenty of morphine left. Should buy some more, but I’ll stay on board. Whatever you’re doing, I’ll support you. You thought you helped me out. I appreciate that.”

  He held out his gnarled bony hand. I took it. We shook firmly, like real men. I just was not at all certain that I was a real man, not his definition of one, anyway. As I was leaving, I doubted about his choice of tense. He had said that I “thought” I had helped him. Why he had not thanked me for actually helping him, I didn’t know. But I didn’t like it.

  Another series of huge swells swept under the hull of the Lindy. I had to stop outside in the corridor and hang on to a railing support stanchion, before I could go on. I realized that very soon I would sorely miss this tossing deck, the smell of the wild sea, and, quite possibly, the whacked-out people I had met since boarding the ship.

  I made it to my cabin. I had left it unlocked, bu
t my deadbolt was thrown. I checked my pockets. I didn’t have my key. I was locked out of my own cabin.

  “Jesus Christ,” I swore in anger.

  I tried knocking. I heard the sound of the deadbolt, and the door opened. There were no lights on. The porthole was taped over. I stepped in and hit the light switch.

  Benito sat on my bunk. I would have said Jesus Christ again, this time even louder, but I was too afraid.

  “I gave up,” the big woman said, looking a little less like Mussolini, maybe a little more like Washington up on that cliff at Rushmore.

  I elevated one eyebrow, sending the message of surprise across the room to her.

  “I brought my bag. I decided that the only real way to spend time with you was to sleep in your cabin. You have an extra bunk. I’ve decided to settle in.”

  My breath sagged out of me, more air coming out each time, than went back in. I didn’t know what to say to my uninvited guest.

  Benito did not ask questions, even when she ended sentences with a question mark. She simply declared, and that was it. If I slept this night, in my cabin, then I would do so with Benito in, at the very least, my adjoining bunk. Under the circumstances, I did the only thing I thought possible at the moment.

  “I’ll be right back,” I vowed.

  Then I fled. I noted that she was playing my newly acquired CD player. The song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by a Hawaiian singer named Izzy something. Another great song and, again, so very appropriate, I thought.

  I careened down the corridor to Don’s cabin. This one I went right into. Don was lounging on his extra bunk. An indistinguishable shape lay under the sheets of the other. The Basque, like Dutch in his own cabin, would likely be out until morning. I’d hit her with ten milligrams and Dutch with fifteen. I wouldn’t have used the morphine on either if I’d had a choice. I needed them both clear-headed in the morning. Dutch, at the very least. Don had been insistent that they get the shots, however, once he found out what I was giving them.

  “Thanks for putting her out. She’s been an emotional mess for days. She needed the break,” he said, holding out his hand.