Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

the deck, they foundVainu jackknifed over the rail, his lab coat smeared with blood and slime. The ax lay at his feet. He held up two fingers.
    “… more,” he blurted and turned his face back into the wind.
    A void or a well of too much life. Take your pick.

5 Arkady happily followed Slava toward the stern. He could almost breathe in the view: a lone figure at the rail, a catcher boat in the middle distance, black sea folding into gray fog. It was a change from claustrophobia.
    “Look around,” Slava said. “You’re supposed to be an expert.”
    “Right.” Arkady stopped on command and turned, not that there was much to see: winches and cleats lit by three lamps that even at midday glowed like poisonous moons. In the middle of the deck was an open stairwell that led to a landing directly over the stern ramp. Stern ramps were a feature of modern trawling: the
Polar Star
’s ramp began at the waterline and tunneled up to the trawl deck on the other side of the aft house. All he could seeof the ramp was the part below the well, and all he could see of the trawl deck were the tops of the booms and gantries beyond the smokestack. Around the stack were oil barrels, spare cables and hawsers. On the boat deck, lifeboats hung on davits. On one side was emergency gear: fire axes, a pike, gaff and spade, as if fire could be fought like foreign troops.
    “Well?” Slava demanded. “According to the girl this is where Zina was headed. Like someone in a fairy tale.” He stopped in mid-stride and whispered to Arkady, “Susan.”
    “Soo-san?” Arkady asked. Now, there was a name that lent itself to Russian pronunciation.
    “Shh!” Slava blushed.
    The figure at the rail wore a hooded canvas jacket, shapeless pants and gum boots. Arkady had always avoided the Americans. They rarely came down to the factory, and above deck he felt he was watched, that he was expected to try to make contact with them, that he would compromise them, if not himself.
    “She’s taking a net.” Slava stopped Arkady at a respectful distance.
    Susan Hightower’s back was to them as she talked into a hand-held radio. It sounded as if she were alternately answering the
Eagle
in English and giving instructions to the bridge of the
Polar Star
in Russian. The catcher boat approached, putting its shoulder to the waves. A rattling came from below. Arkady looked down the well to see a cable of scarred red-and-white buoys spill down the grooved, rust-brown slope of the ramp. “If she’s working,” he said, “we can talk to the other Americans.”
    “She’s the head representative. As a courtesy, we must speak to her first,” Slava insisted.
    Courtesy? Here they were shivering and ignored, but Slava was in the throes of social embarrassment.
    On the water, the cable straightened as it played out twenty-five, fifty, a hundred meters, each buoy riding itsown crest. As the line spread to its full length, the American boat approached on the port side and kept pace.
    “This is very interesting,” Slava announced heartily.
    “Yes.” Arkady turned his back to the wind. At this longitude there was no land between the North and South Poles and breezes built quickly.
    “You know how in our Soviet fleet we come so close to transfer fish,” Slava went on. “There are battered hulls—”
    “Battered hulls are a signature of the Soviet fleet,” Arkady agreed.
    “This system the Americans taught us, the ‘no contact’ system, is cleaner, but it is more intricate and demands more skill.”
    “Like sex between spiders,” Susan said without turning her head.
    Arkady admired the technique demanded. From the American trawler a fisherman with a strong arm threw a gaff over the trailing line. Another fisherman ran the line along the gunwale to the stern, where a full net of fish covered the trawler’s narrow deck. “They’re connecting,” Susan told the radio in Russian.
    Like spiders having sex? An interesting comparison, Arkady thought. A buoy line