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

The other three stared at him. It was Gury who broke the silence. 'So why did Bukovsky want you?'

Arkady didn't know how to explain. Each man had his past. Gury had always been a bizness man, dealing inside and outside the law. Kolya had gone from academe to labour camp, and Obidin zigzagged from drunk tank to church. Arkady had lived with men like them ever since Moscow; nothing broadened acquaintanceship like internal exile. Moscow was a drab hive of apparatнchiks compared to the diverse society of Siberia. All the same, he was relieved to hear a brusque knock on the cabin door and to see Slava Bukovsky's face again, even if the third mate did step in with a mock bow and address him with scorn.

'Comrade Investigator, the captain wants to see you.'
Chapter Three

Viktor Sergeivich Marchuk needed no uniform or gold braid to announce he was a captain. Outside the Seaнman's Hall in Vladivostok Arkady had seen his face among the giant portraits of the leading captains of the Far East fishing fleet. But the picture had softened Marchuk's face and propped it on a jacket and tie so that he looked as if he sailed a desk. The live Marchuk had a face with angles of rough-hewn wood sharpened by the trim black beard of an individualist, and he commanded his ship wearing the wool sweater and jeans of an outdoorsman. Somewhere in his past was an Asian, somewhere a Cossack. The whole country was being led by a fresh breed of men from Siberia Ц economists from Novosibirsk, writers from Irkutsk and modern mariners from Vladivostok.

The captain seemed at a loss, though, as he pondered the confusion on his desk: a seaman's dossier, a codebook and cipher table, scrap paper covered with rows of numнbers, some circled in red, and a second page of letters. Marchuk looked up from them as if trying to get Arkady into focus. Slava Bukovsky took a tactful step away from the object of the captain's attention.

'It is always interesting to meet members of the crew.' Marchuk nodded at the dossier. ' "Former investigator."

I radioed home for details. Seaman Renko, these are some details.' A heavy ringer thudded on the deciphered letters. 'A senior investigator for the Moscow prosecutor's office dismissed for lack of political reliability. Next seen in the lesser metropolis of Norilsk on the run. No great shame, many of our finest citizens came east in chains. As long as they reform. In Norilsk you were a night watchman. As a former Muscovite, you found the nights brisk?'

'I'd burn three oil cans of tar and sit in the middle of them. I looked like a human sacrifice.'

While Marchuk lit a cigarette, Arkady glanced around. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, a sofa built into the corner, a nautical library on railed shelves, television, radio, and an antique desk the size of a lifeboat. Over the sofa was a photo of Lenin addressing sailors and cadets. Three clocks told local Vladivostok and Greenнwich Mean Time. The ship ran on Vladivostok time; the log was kept on GMT. Altogether, the captain's dayroom had the look of a private study that merely happened to have lime-green bulkheads for walls.

'Dismissed for destruction of state property, it says here. The tar, I assume. Then you managed to sign on at a slaughterhouse.'

'I dragged reindeer on a killfloor.'

'But again it says you were dismissed for political instigation.'

'I worked with two Buryats. Neither of them underнstood Russian. Maybe the reindeer talked.'

'Next you show up on a coastal trawler in Sakhalin. Now this, Seaman Renko, really amazed me. To work one of those old trawlers is to be on the moon. The worst work for the worst pay. The crews are men on the run from their wives, from child support, from petty crimes, maybe even manslaughter. No one cares, because we need crews on the Pacific coast. Yet here it is again: "Dismissed for lack of political reliability." Please tell us, what did you do in Moscow?'

'My job.'

Marchuk brusquely waved blue smoke aside. 'Renko, you've been on the Polar Star almost ten months. You didn't even leave the ship when we returned to Vladiнvostok.'

When a seaman disembarked he had to pass the Border Guard, frontier troops of the KGB.

'I like the sea,' Arkady said.

'I am the leading captain of the Far East fleet,' said Marchuk. 'I am a decorated Hero of Socialist Labour, and not even I like the sea that much. Anyway, I wanted to congratulate you. The doctor has revised his estimate. The girl Zina Patiashvili died the night before, not last night. In his capacity of trade union representaнtive, Comrade Bukovsky will naturally be responsible for preparing the report on the matter.'

'Comrade Bukovsky is no doubt equal to the task.'

'He's very willing. However, a third mate is not an investigator. Besides yourself, no one on board is.'

'He seems a young man of initiative. He already found the factory. I wish him luck.'

'Let's be grown men. The Polar Star has a crew of two hundred and seventy deckhands, mechanics and factory workers like you. Fifty of the crew are women. We are like a Soviet village in American waters. News of an unusual death on the Polar Star will always find an interested ear. It is vital there be no suggestion of either a cover-up or a lack of concern.'

'So the Americans already know,' Arkady guessed.