by Ian Slater
Twenty-Three
Henricks received the message just as the President rose before the glittering assembly of distinguished guests.
Sutherland took up the sparkling glass of amber catawba juice—the sheik, being a Moslem, naturally drank no alcohol—and smiled graciously at his guest and briefly at the Arab leader’s entourage. He coughed slightly. “Your Excellency,” he began, “on behalf of the people of the United States I would like to welcome you to our country. I know that you studied here in your university days and are no stranger to our customs—or, I might add, to our problems. Your earlier association with us is, I’m sure, a…”
The speech was the usual official address, full of sugary platitudes and punctuated by polite, intermittent applause, ending in a toast to the visiting head of state. Sutherland found it much easier than usual, for in spite of his worries he had been relieved to discover, during the brief, pretoast chatter, that he liked the sheik. It was a pleasant change from the usual diplomatic pretension, which he would have found particularly trying this evening. He was pleased now that he had insisted on keeping the long-planned engagement.
Nearby, Henricks had hesitated long enough. He tapped the President on the shoulder and passed him the cable. The sheik, immaculately bearded and resplendent in flowing white gown and gold-braided burnous, rose to respond to his American host. “Mr. President, distinguished guests…”
Sutherland heard nothing the sheik said. Clara turned to him as he finished reading the cable and took his hand. It was icy. Still smiling courteously at the sheik, she moved her other hand across her lap and cupped it about her husband’s. The sheik continued his speech, pausing now and then to smile at the President and the First Lady. Finally he stopped and looked down at the President, whose gaze was lost upon the rows of indistinguishable faces that crowded the ballroom. The sheik’s eyes darted towards Clara, who smiled back, wondering just what the cable had said. She reached for her glass with one hand and squeezed the President’s unresponsive fingers with the other, desperately cueing him to rise. There were a few embarrassed coughs from the audience. Henricks stepped forward into television range. “The toast, Mr. President.”
Sutherland’s eyes met his blankly in a fog of non-recognition. Henricks was close to panic; this had the makings of an international incident. He knew for sure that that bitch from United Press was here. After what seemed to Henricks an interminable silence, the President rose slowly and clinked glasses, robotlike, with the sheik. Jean Roche, meanwhile, had hurriedly convinced the TV director to focus on the guests in the far comer of the room.
Immediately after protocol had been satisfied, the President stood up again. Placing both hands on the table’s edge and holding on with all his strength, he began in an almost inaudible voice, “Ladies and gentlemen. I have a very grave announcement. I have just received a message informing me—”
Henricks pushed forward and placed a hand over the microphone. “Mr. President.”
Sutherland turned slowly. “Yes?”
Henricks lowered his voice. “The Canadians haven’t been notified as yet.”
By this time the audience was alive with the murmur of speculation. The President continued to look at Henricks. The aide added quickly, “We should call a press conference, Mr. President—in half an hour—an hour. Ottawa will have been informed by then. We should make a joint announcement. There were over eighty Canadians.”
“Killed?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Sutherland nodded slowly, then left the table. Clara quickly followed. At the same time, following Jean Roche’s instructions, waiters streamed out of the kitchen and rushed to refill glasses.
Inside the gloomy study there was silence. Henricks withdrew. Beyond the window overlooking the lawn, the red and blue lights still flashed and a policeman’s voice could be heard nasally echoing from a bullhorn.
Clara sat down beside the President. “I love you,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Walter.”
“I know,” he said and went to the window to be alone.
After making love, Fran Lambrecker flicked on the TV to watch the late show, went back to bed, started to munch the potato chips Morgan had brought along with the mix, and began drinking her second martini, having disposed of the olive in decadent Roman style, sucking it down into her mouth like a spider swallowing a trapped fly. Morgan was soaking in the bath, accompanied by a tall gin and tonic.
After the news flash that all hands aboard the sub had been lost, Fran put her glass down and sat still for a long time against the plush headboard, idly picking at her teeth. She felt she should cry, but she could not. She had never been the crying type. She knew the proper thing to do, the decent thing to do, was to cry, to pack up immediately, to go back to Victoria, to dress in black, to arrange a service, and to stop seeing Morgan for a while. But the truth was that her deepest emotion on hearing the news account was a vague sense of loss—like having been unexpectedly informed that a onetime friend who’d stopped writing for no apparent reason had died some weeks before.
Suddenly she called out, “Morgan!”
There was no sound. She yelled out again, “Morgan!” adding in a low tone, “you pig.”
There was a splashing like that of a startled seal, and soon Morgan, still dripping, a towel round his stomach, shuffled to the door.
“Yeah, Fran—what’s up?”
“Turn off the TV.”
He shrugged and moved over to the TV, trying to kick the long, tripping towel away from his toes.
“Yeah?” he said, ready for the next order. She looked over at him. “How did you ever become an officer?”
Morgan grinned. “Personality, I guess.”
Her laugh was half sneer. “Come here,” she said. As he reached her, she put her right arm about his shoulder and pushed her left fist slowly into his groin.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “not again?”
She looked at him fiercely. “Why—can’t you do it, wittle man?”
“Well we just … sure, I guess—”
“Come on,” she commanded, and flung the blanket aside. After a time, when they began moving together, she closed her eyes and pulled at him. “Come on!”
She knew it was wrong. Everyone would say it wasn’t normal. But she didn’t care and she wasn’t going to pretend. She was going to be herself. What she felt was an enormous and quite overwhelming sense of relief.
The Tlingit village was no more. Unable to find a boat or to attract Sitka’s attention through the dense smoke that had blown ahead and enveloped them on the east coast of Kruzof Island, the Indian band had burned to death on the southern perimeter of Mud Bay.
Nothing could stop the fire’s advance, not even the dynamite charges bravely thrown from the armada of small boats or tossed by pilots further up the sound as they made their final runs out.
The mass of burning oil had slid through the maze of green islands, setting them ablaze, and was now closing in on the town of Sitka.
From the north, the red black spill had moved quickly on the tide down through Neva Strait and Sukoi Inlet, meeting and slowing in the wider waters of Krestof Sound, pushing on through Mud Bay, picking up speed in Hayward Strait, and slowing again as it flowed into the northern reaches of Sitka Sound, spreading out as one arm in the spill’s pincer movement against Sitka. From the southeast, the fire’s southern flank had sealed off the passage between Kruzof and Baranof islands, blocking the only other entrance to the sound.
Most terrifying of all to the last of the evacuees waiting for the helicopters to return was the speed with which the flames leapt onto the Bieli Rocks and the other small islands dotted across the sound. The fire flowed up to them, licked tentatively at their shores for a second, then swallowed them as if they had never been there.
By now most of the four thousand people of Sitka had been evacuated during the frantic air shuttle to Petersburg, ninety-three miles eastwards on Mitkof Island, and to large evacuation centers on
Wrangell Island and Hyder on the mainland.
The last ones out silently watched as the two arms of the fire joined in common invasion. Even above the noise of the aircraft, the evacuees could hear the chain reaction of explosions from the clustered fishing boats in Crescent Bay as they disintegrated like so many toy models in the bright orange blanket that was now racing across the mouth of Indian River, leaping ashore, and spreading rapidly through the summer-dried timber. Soon the onion dome of St. Michael’s was engulfed in the flames which danced hundreds of feet into the air from the ruins of the nave as if in obscene celebration. Along the streets, power cables that had been kept alive to provide light for the last evacuees writhed across the road, sparking and jumping amongst the debris, while burst water pipes sprayed impotently.
Within an hour the fire, fanned by its own wind system, had completely gutted the city, covering the charred but still-burning skeletons of buildings with a cloud reeking of oil fumes, burned fish from the crumpled cannery, and the heavy, sweet stink that floated up from the ashes of the pulp mill.
And still the fire kept burning, moving now towards the steep, timbered slopes behind the chaired ruins of the town, riding on the stiffening north wind.
Traveling at around fifty miles per hour at five to seven thousand feet, the warm air, laden with billions of fine oil particles driven skywards by the firespill, had taken sixteen hours—till past midnight—to reach the cold front that now lay across the dark blur of Vancouver Island. As the warm air began to cool and moisture rapidly condensed about the nuclei of oil particles, Sarah was still sitting alone in the kitchen. The phone, which she had not replaced properly on the cradle, was giving out the dull, persistent burr of the dial tone, its mechanical droning insectlike in the silent bungalow.
A gust of wind howled through the close-leafed rose garden and banged a swing window shut. Instinctively, she got up and locked the window securely. She stood there, not knowing where else to go or what to do. She dimly recalled that the admiral—it had been he who had rung—had said something about sending someone out first thing in the morning to arrange things and to give her a hand. She had no idea how they thought they could help her. Several more gusts tore into the garden, shaking the bushes with such ferocity that Sarah’s attention was finally arrested by the sound. She moved slowly to the kitchen door and switched on the porch light. It struck her that if the floodlight went out, she wouldn’t know how to fix it. There was something you had to unscrew, some wire mesh or shield you had to take off, before you could change the bulb, and she didn’t know how to do it.
Soon she could hear the rain drumming on the roof, and panic took hold. She raced out to the covered porch, pulled on her long rubber boots, picked up the pruning shears, and ran towards the garden. They had done this before—rescued the garden together, goading each other in happy competition to save as many flowers as possible before the squall smashed them.
But now, in the garden, she was confused, expecting him to be there, not knowing which bed to attend to first. She started towards the Nocturnes. A strong gust temporarily blinded her with a rush of rain and she slipped and fell heavily on the border.
When she could see again, she reached for a small Nocturne rose, but it was already in tatters, its velvet-soft petals disintegrating even as she held it gently between her fingers. Not only was it tattered almost beyond recognition, but it was as black as the night about her. It was only then that Sarah realized that the rain was black and stank of crude petroleum. She did not understand why, for she could not see the long crimson line advancing southwards through the night. Suddenly she realized that she would never see him again. Standing alone in the storm, she began to sob helplessly at its unfathomable fury.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following for their help in the preparation of this book:
At the University of British Columbia, my gratitude is extended to Robert Macdonald, an old oceanographic shipmate of mine in the Department of Geology, and in particular Dr. K. L. Pinder of the Chemical Engineering Department.
I am grateful for the information and courtesy given me by both the United States Air Force and the Canadian Armed Forces, specifically by Major D. M. Ryan and Captain W. R. Aikman of the Department of National Defence’s Office of Information, Esquimalt, British Columbia; and submarine Sub-Lieutenant M. A. Dunne, also of Esquimalt. Special thanks must go to submariner Lieutenant Gary Davis, Canadian Armed Forces (Navy), for his patience and expertise.
Most of all I am indebted to my wife, Marian, whose typing and grammatical skills have augmented her invaluable support to me in my work.
Ian Slater
Vancouver, B.C.
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