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

'Did you know her?'

'I only saw her around here. She served food.' Karp's interest was growing all the time. He tried Arkady's name like a bell. 'Renko, Renko. Where are you from?'

'Moscow,' Slava answered for Arkady.

'Moscow?' Karp whistled appreciatively. 'You must have really fucked up to end up here.'

'But here we are, all of us proud workers of the Far East fleet,' Volovoi said as he joined them, and with an eye to another newcomer, an American boy with freckles and a bush of springy hair who was coming warily down the hall. 'Bernie, go in, please,' Volovoi urged him. 'It's a spy story. Very exciting.'

'You mean we're the villains, right? Bernie had a sheepish grin and only a slight accent.

'How could it be a spy story otherwise?' Volovoi laughed.

'Think of it as a comedy,' Arkady suggested.

'Yeah.' Bernie liked that.

'Please, enjoy yourself,' Volovoi said, although he had stopped laughing. 'Comrade Bukovsky will find you a good seat.'

The first mate took Arkady down the hall to the ship's library, a room where a reader had to slip sideways between the stacks. In such a limited collection it was interesting to see who was represented. Jack London was popular, as were war stories, science fiction and a field of literature called tractor romances. Volovoi disнmissed the librarian and sat himself at her desk, pushing to one side her tea cosy, pots of glue and books with broken spines to make room for a dossier he had brought in his briefcase. Arkady had tried to stay out of the political officer's way, hanging back at meetings and avoiding entertainments. It was the first time the two of them had ever been alone.

Although Volovoi was the ship's first mate and habituнally wore a canvas fishing jacket and boots, he never touched the helm or a net or a navigational chart. The reason was that a first mate was the political officer. There was a chief mate for more mundane matters having to do with fishing and seamanship. Very confusнing. First Mate Volovoi was responsible for discipline and morale; for hand-painted signs in the corridor that proclaimed 'Third Shift Wins Gold Pennant for Socialist Competition!'; for announcing the news every noon on the ship's radio, mixing telegrams to proud crew memнbers about babies born in Vladivostok with items from revolutionary Mozambique; for running movies and volleyball tournaments; and most important, for writing a work and political evaluation of every member of the crew from the captain on down, and delivering that judgment to the maritime section of the KGB.

Not that Volovoi was a weakling. He was the ship's champion weightlifter, the kind of redhead whose eyes were always pink, whose eyelids and lips had a crust of eczema, whose meaty, well-kept hands had golden hair. Crewmen called political officers 'invalids' for their lack of real work, but Fedor Volovoi was the healthiest 'invalid' Arkady had ever seen.

'Renko,' Volovoi read, as if familiarizing himself with a problem. 'Chief Investigator. Dismissed. Expelled from the Party. Psychiatric rehabilitation. You see, I have the same file as the captain has. Assigned to labour in the eastern section of the Russian Republic.'

'Siberia.'

'I know where the eastern section is. I notice also that you have a sense of humour.'

'That's basically what I've been working on for the last few years.'

'Good, because I also have a more complete report.' Volovoi placed a thicker dossier on the desk. 'There was a murder case in Moscow. Somehow it ended with you killing the city prosecutor, an unexpected twist. Who is Colonel Pribluda?'

'An officer of the KGB. He spoke for me at the inquiry, which decided not to charge me.'

'You were also expelled from the Party and kept for psychiatric observation. Is that the fate of an innocent man?'

'Innocence had nothing to do with it.'

'And who is Irina Asanova?' Volovoi read the name.

'A former Soviet citizen.'

'You mean a woman whom you helped to defect and who has since been a source of slanderous rumours about your fate.'

'What are the rumours?' Arkady asked. 'How far off?'