Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

in mind of birds than of a squadron of bombers lifting off.
    The VCR was a Panasonic, a prize of the ship’s last visit to Dutch Harbor, and had been adapted to Soviet frequencies. There was a flourishing black market for Japanese VCR’s in Vladivostok. Not that Soviet VCR’s like a top-of-the-line Voronezh weren’t good—they were fine for Soviet videotapes—it was just that Soviet machines lacked the ability to tape shows. Also, just as Soviet railroad tracks were a wider gauge than foreign ones in order to prevent an invasion by train, Soviet VCR’s took a larger tape to prevent an influx of foreign pornography.
    “Women!” Slava was disgusted. “To reduce a subject of such importance as restructuring to so trivial a level. And I’m sick of you asking questions and going off in different directions. I have my own ideas and I don’t need assistance from you.”
    Olimpiada looked over her shoulder to see Slava stormout of the cafeteria. Natasha half turned from the television and fixed her black gaze on Arkady.
    When he was a boy Arkady had little lead soldiers, the heroic General Davydov’s saber-wielding cavalrymen, the sly General Kutuzov’s artillerymen and the scowling grenadiers of Napoleon’s Grand Army, all kept in a box beneath his bed, where they rolled together in a melee as he took the box out, played with the pieces and then slid them back home. Like casualties, they soon lost their original coats and faces of paint and he daubed them afresh, less carefully each time.
    Skiba and Slezko looked like a pair of those grenadiers toward the end of their careers: fierce, with mottled pink-and-gray chins, spots of gold in their teeth, identical except that Skiba had black hair and Slezko gray. They were on the midship deck, the same place they had been during the dance when their duty had been to watch the transport cage that carried the American fishermen from and to their boats.
    “The
Merry Jane
was tied up to the
Eagle
, which was tied up to our starboard side?” Arkady asked.
    “We prefer answering the third mate,” Skiba said.
    “I can tell the captain that you refused to answer questions.”
    Skiba and Slezko looked around the deck and then at each other until a telepathic decision was made.
    “More private,” Slezko said. He led the way inside, downstairs, around a machine shop and through a door into a dank, badly lit room with sinks and stalls. The sinks were brown from the ship’s water; the stalls had concrete benches with holes. In Moscow, informers always wanted to meet in public toilets; in a desert, an informer would unearth a toilet to talk in.
    Skiba folded his arms and leaned against the door as if he were temporarily in the hands of the enemy. “We will answer a question or two.”
    “The arrangement of boats was as I described?” Arkady asked.
    “Yes.” Slezko closed the porthole.
    “Chronologically, by our time, when did the Americans leave?” Arkady opened the porthole.
    Skiba consulted a notebook. “The captain and crew of the
Alaska Miss
returned to their boat at 2300 and immediately cast off. One crewman of the
Eagle
returned to his boat at 2329; then two others and the captain returned at 2354. The
Eagle
cast off at 0010.”
    “When the trawlers cast off, how far did they go?” Arkady asked. “A hundred meters? Out of sight?”
    “It was too foggy to tell,” Slezko said after much consideration.
    “When the Americans left, did any Soviets see them off?” Arkady asked.
    While Skiba referred to his notebook Arkady’s eye fell on the newspapers stuffed in baskets by the stalls; crumpled headlines on top announced, BOLD REFOR —and NEW AGE O —. Skiba cleared his throat. “The head rep Susan came out on deck with them. Captain Marchuk shook hands with Captain Morgan and wished him good fishing.”
    “No undue fraternization,” Arkady said. “There was no one else?”
    “Correct,” Skiba said.
    “From 2230 on, who else did you see on