"Smith, Martin Cruz - Polar Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

Yet day and night the Polar Star efficiently caught fish. Not caught, that was wrong; smaller trawlers caught the fish and transferred their nets to the factory ship to be processed: headed, gutted, frozen.

For four months now, the Polar Star had followed American catcherboats in American waters from Siberia to Alaska, from the Bering Straits to the Aleutian Islands. It was a joint venture. Simply put, the Soviets provided processing ships and took the fish, while the Americans provided trawlers and translators and took the money, all of this managed by a Seattle-based company that was half Soviet, half American. The crew of the Polar Star had seen the sun perhaps two days in that time, but then the Bering Sea was known as 'The Grey Zone'.

Third Mate Slava Bukovsky walked the processing line while workers sorted the catch: pollock on a conveyor belt to the saws, mackerel and rays into the fishmeal hatch. Some of the fish had literally exploded as their air bladders expanded on the way from the bottom of the sea and soft bits of them clung like mucus to caps, oilskin aprons, lashes, lips.

He passed the rotary saws to the 'slime line', where workers stood in slots on either side of the belt. Like automatons, the first pair slit fish bellies open to the anus; the second pair sucked out livers and guts with vacuum hoses; the third pair washed slime from the skin, gills and cavities with saltwater jets; the last pair vacuumed the fish a final time and laid the trimmed and dressed result on a belt moving towards the freezers. In the course of an eight-hour watch the gutting and spraying spread a mist of blood and wet pulp over the belt, workers and walkway. They were not the usual Hero Workers, least of all the pale man with dark hair loading the dressed fish at the end of the line.

'Renko!'

Arkady vacuumed pinkish water from one eviscerated belly, slapped the fish on the freezer belt and picked up the next. Pollock was not firm-fleshed. If it wasn't cleaned and frozen quickly it would be unfit for human consumption and be fed to minks; if unfit for them, it would go to Africa as foreign aid. His hands were numb from handling fish little warmer than ice, but at least he wasn't working the saw like Kolya. In bad weather when the ship began to roll it took concentration to handle a frozen, slippery pollock around a blade. Arkady had learned to dig the toes of his boots under the table so that he wouldn't slide on the duckboards. At the beginning of the voyage and at the end, the entire factory was hosed down and scrubbed with ammonia, but meanwhile the fish room had a dank, organic slickness and smell. Even the clicking of the belt, the whining of the saw, the deep rhythmic moan of the hull were the sounds of a leviathan that was resolutely swallowing the sea.

The belt stopped.

'You're Seaman Renko, aren't you?'

It took Arkady a moment to recognize the third mate, who was not a frequent visitor belowdecks. Izrail, the factory manager, stood at the power switch. He wore layers of sweaters and a black stubble almost to his eyes, which rolled with impatience. Natasha Chaikovskaya, a huge young woman in oilskin armour but with a femiнnine touch of lipstick, listed discreetly better to see the third mate's Reeboks and unstained jeans.

'Aren't you?' Slava repeated.

'It's not a secret,' Arkady said.

'This is not a dance class of Young Komsomolets,' Izrail told Slava. 'If you want him, take him.'

The belt started moving again as Arkady followed Slava aft, stepping over-sluices where liquid slime and fish-liver oil ran through bilge holes directly out the side of the ship.

Slava stopped to scrutinize Arkady, as if trying to penetrate a disguise. 'You are Renko the investigator?'

'Not any more.'

'But you were,' Slava said. 'That's good enough.'

They climbed the stairs to the main deck. Arkady assumed the third mate was leading him to the political officer or to a search of his cabin, although that could have been done without him. They walked by the galley and the steamy smell of macaroni, turned left at a sign that promised 'Increase Production in the Agro-Indusнtrial Complex! Strive for a Decisive Upswing in the Supply of Fish Protein!' and halted at the infirmary door.

The door was guarded by a pair of mechanics wearing the red armbands of 'Public Order Volunteers'. Skiba and Slezko were two informers Ц'slugs' to the rest of the crew. Even as Arkady and Slava went through the door, Skiba pulled out a notebook.

The Polar Star had a clinic bigger than most small towns could boast of: a doctor's office, an examining room, an infirmary with three beds, a quarantine room and an operating room, to which Slava led Arkady. Along the walls were white cupboards with glass cannisters of instruments in alcohol, a locked red cupboard with cigarettes and drugs, a cart with a green tank of oxygen and a red tank of nitrous oxide, a standing ashtray and a brass spittoon. There were anatomical charts on the wall, an astringent tang to the air. A dentist's chair sat in one corner. In the middle of the room was a steel operating table covered by a sheet. Soaked through, the cloth clung to the form of a woman underneath. Below the edge of the sheet dangled restraining straps.

The room's portholes were bright mirrors because it was black outside. 0600, another hour's work to go before dawn, and as usual at this point in his; shift Arkady was stupefied by the number of fish in the sea. His eyes felt like those portholes. 'What do you want?' he asked.

'Someone has died,' Slava announced.

'I can see that.'

'One of the girls from the galley. She fell overboard.'

Arkady glanced at the door, picturing Skiba and Slezko on the other side. 'What has this got to do with me?'

'It's obvious. Our trade union committee must make a report on all deaths, and I am the union representative. You're the only one on board with experience in violent death.'