Kolymsky Heights

14

On 28 August Porter arrived at Narita airport, picked up his bags, negotiated Immigration and Customs, and descended to the train. A car was waiting for him outside, as he knew. He had no intention of taking it. The airport express could get him where he wanted, which was Tokyo central station.

He made it by five o’clock, to find the rush hour in progress. This was the second rushawa of the day, the homeward-streaming one, and the familiar riot was in progress. He spent some minutes getting his bearings, and located the Lucky Strike. It looked no different from the other Business Efficiencies round the station but it stood on a corner and had two entrances. This was its attraction, and he remembered it. They wouldn’t remember him.

‘How many nights?’ the Lucky Strike clerk asked him.

‘I’m not sure, say four.’

‘Say four you pay up front four.’

‘Okay,’ Porter said, and gave him a credit card.

The man looked at it and turned it over.

‘You American, Australian, what?’ he said. He had been shouting in slow Japanese himself.

‘Canadian.’

‘Ah. Sorry. Thought Korean,’ the clerk apologised.

Porter was pleased about that. ‘Give me some telephone tokens,’ he said. ‘Give me ten. I’ll pay now.’

‘Sure. Canadian is all right,’ the man said. He gave the tokens and Porter waited while his card was checked out. It was very hot and steamy and he was sweating under the wig. His pigtail was fixed tight inside. ‘Isn’t the air conditioning working here?’ he said.

‘Sure, everything working. Only it gives me a cold so I turn it off. And if you want service,’ the clerk said, ‘service is extra.’

‘I don’t want service.’

‘Okay. Room 303. The elevator’s round the corner.’

‘Where are the stairs?’ Porter said.

‘Past the elevator. Next to the coffee bar. Go round the corner, you’ll see.’

Porter went round the corner and found the stairs, also the coffee bar. Also the other entrance. It was as he remembered. It wasn’t necessary to go through the lobby to get in or out of the place.

He skipped the stairs and rode up to 303. It was a neat small Efficiency. Compact kitchen and shower room. European bed, not a futon for the floor. Normal furniture. Phone. He switched the air conditioning on, and used the phone. Then he unpacked and had a shower. He took the wig off in the shower.

He was resting in a towel, with his wig back on, when the doorbell went.

‘Excuse me,’ murmured the Jap outside. He was a neat individual with tortoise-shell glasses and a briefcase. ‘I don’t know if it’s right. I am looking for a Mr Peterson.’

‘Okay, come in,’ Porter said. They were both speaking Japanese.

The Jap came cautiously in.

‘You drink rye?’ Porter asked. He was drinking some himself already.

The man did not disclose what he drank. He carefully looked the Efficiency over, and then he looked Porter over. ‘Maybe you have something to show me?’ he said.

Porter reached for his jacket, and took the headed letter out. It introduced James B. Peterson of New Age Technology, Vancouver to Makosha Microchip KK of Tokyo.

The man carefully examined the letter. ‘Some other details? Some details you have to say yourself to Makosha?’

‘Oh, well, shit … ’ Porter said, but he gave the details.

‘Hey,’ the man said. He seemed nonplussed. ‘We were waiting with a car at the airport. What are you doing here?’

‘I thought I’d come here,’ Porter said.

‘This isn’t good. We don’t make changes.’

‘I’ll remember,’ Porter said, and gave him his drink. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Just Yoshi. On the phone also you just say Yoshi. You don’t say all the things you said.’

‘Okay,’ Porter said. ‘What have you brought me?’

Yoshi was looking round the room. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘There’s a place waiting for you. You have to wait in that place. I’ve brought the material but I can’t leave it.’

‘Just show me what you’ve got,’ Porter said.

Yoshi opened his briefcase and took out a passport and a seaman’s pay book. Both were South Korean and in the name of a Sung Won Choo. Porter had a look at them. They were well-thumbed and greasy. His photograph was slightly different in each but the same bug-eyed seaman stared out, bushy-moustached. His pigtail was over his shoulder in one and up in a bun on the other.

‘And the ship blueprints,’ he said.

Yoshi took a transistor radio out of his case and turned it on. ‘You don’t need them,’ he said, over the row. ‘There’s better material. It’s waiting for you. In the place where you have to be.’

‘Where’s the ship?’

‘At Nagasaki. It’s still in dry dock.’

‘What’s the sailing date?’

‘The thirty-first. You’ll learn all this.’

‘That gives me only two days in between.’

‘It’s a week before you’re needed. You’ll be briefed on it. We have to keep to plans.’

‘Okay,’ Porter said. He took a cigarette, and offered Yoshi his pack.

‘I shouldn’t, it’s not healthy,’ Yoshi said. But he accepted a cigarette, and blew out a stream of smoke.

‘What’s the stop-off schedule?’ Porter asked.

‘You do not need this,’ Yoshi said, mouthing above the din. ‘Not here. It’s not finalised, anyway.’

‘What have you got?’

Yoshi put down his cigarette and took out a map. A sheet of scrawled Japanese was attached to it. He opened the map out on his knee.

‘The west coast — you know it?’

‘No.’

‘No, it isn’t used much by international lines. This is a cheap line. It does cheap business. Here, Nagasaki.’ Yoshi put a finger on it. ‘And here, Niigata — the first stop, about seven hundred miles up. In Niigata it discharges and loads.’

‘It loads what?’

Yoshi ground his teeth a little, but he checked the paper. ‘Fork lifts, agricultural machinery, skates,’ he said. ‘The skates for Gothenburg and Rotterdam, the rest Murmansk.’

‘Containerised?’

‘Containerised.’

‘As deck cargo or what?’

Yoshi blinked. ‘The loading isn’t finalised,’ he said.

Porter looked at him. Yoshi was the man he had to deal with, and he had been told he was a good man. But Yoshi didn’t know this. There would be other things he didn’t know. That was why he was at the Lucky Strike. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What’s the discharge cargo?’

‘Wool. The ship is coming now. It runs there and back from Australia. It drops the wool at Nagasaki and feeder vessels move it on. This one will. First of all to Niigata.’

‘Wool is a baled cargo.’

‘Yes, baled,’ Yoshi said, checking.

‘The ship handles break-bulk and container?’

‘It handles everything, it’s a tramp. It goes to places the others don’t,’ Yoshi said.

Porter thought about this. ‘Okay, Niigata. What then?’

‘Then Otaru. Up here on the island of Hokkaido. The same thing, load and discharge. And final bunkering. It’s the last stop in Japan. It drops the remainder of the wool, then off — up to the Bering Strait and the Arctic’

‘What’s the date for up there?’

‘Nagasaki-Murmansk is twenty-eight days, their speed. They go a slow speed, it’s cheaper. But they allow more for turnaround and delays. The one sure date, they’ll be at Murmansk the first week of October. After that there’s a good chance they’d be iced in.’

‘How about Green Cape?’

‘I don’t know about Green Cape. There’s no consignment yet. There still could be. The Russians always leave it to the end. It wouldn’t be the last word, anyway.’

He explained. On rounding the strait the ship would radio its arrival in Russian waters, and the Russians would radio back if they wanted them to stop.

‘Stop for what?’

‘Fish. They have a small fish business with Murmansk.’ Murmansk was not on the map but Yoshi pointed out where it would be, somewhere near the door. ‘Way out there. That time of year nothing much goes that way. the traffic is all the other way, to the Pacific. Maybe this is the last ship of the season, so they’ll want it.’

‘What if they don’t?’

Two flutes of smoke came out of Yoshi’s flat nose. ‘If they don’t, there’s a plan,’ he said. ‘And if they do, there’s also a plan. You’ll learn all this.’

‘Where do I join the ship?’

‘At Otaru. It happens fast, before they have time to let anyone know. Actually, they won’t want to let anyone know.’

‘Why?’

‘No. Enough,’ Yoshi said. The minimal nose and the shell glasses gave him the appearance of a tough cat. ‘There’s a lot for you to learn, but not here. In the place set up for you to learn. You stay out of sight there till it’s time for you to move.’

Porter nodded. ‘Yoshi,’ he said, ‘do you know what I have to do at Green Cape?’

‘No. I don’t have to know that,’ Yoshi said.

‘It’s not as healthy as smoking cigarettes.’

‘So?’

‘I am the one that’s going, not you.’

‘If you don’t keep to the plan maybe you can’t go.’

‘If I don’t like the plan,’ Porter said, ‘I won’t go.’

Yoshi looked at him, blinking slowly.

‘What’s wrong with the plan?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ Porter said. ‘I’ll find out at Nagasaki.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Yoshi said. His mouth had fallen open and his blinking had accelerated. ‘I told you — you join the ship at Otaru. You can’t go to Nagasaki. You can’t go anywhere. You have to stay out of sight. If there’s anything you want to know, we’ll find it out. What is it you want to know?’

‘What equipment have they got on the ship?’

‘What equipment? I’ve got a man who knows the equipment. He knows the ship. He’ll explain it all to you. Everything is taken care of. I promise you!’

‘Has the man been on the ship during refitting?’

‘He doesn’t have to go on the ship. He’s a — a professional man. He knows these things. I can’t tell you here — it’s confidential!’ Yoshi mouthed over the radio row.

‘Yoshi, I’ve learned these ships have the worst accident record in the world, and a new man gets the shittiest ’jobs. Unless I arrive in one piece at the other end there’s no point in going at all. I have to know about it. Do you understand?’

‘Understand,’ Yoshi said. He was looking troubled. ‘But you can’t get in the yard anyway. We also tried to get in, for information. We got it from the freight forwarders in the end. It’s a private yard, very secure, they don’t let anyone in.’

‘But they have to let them out. Which yard is it?’

Yoshi checked with his paper. ‘Takeshuma. Round the bay, near Mitsubishi.’

‘I know Mitsubishi. You can look into it from the hill. How near there is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Yoshi said. He took his glasses off, and put them on again. ‘Listen, come back with me,’ he said, ‘and you’ll understand. Leave the cases here, if you want. They can be sent for. Just agree that for now.’

But Porter wouldn’t agree it. He said he planned to rest, and look over the blueprints and his documentation. Yoshi wouldn’t leave the documentation but he reluctantly agreed to leave the blueprints. He unfolded the sheets and carefully scissored off a strip along the bottom, which gave the date and the draughting details. Then he cut off another along the top.

This gave the name of the ship, which was the Suzaku Maru.

Rain was smashing down when he woke.

It was very dark, and the room was chill from the air conditioner. He took a warm shower and went down to the coffee bar. This place he found shut so he crossed the street to the station. Plenty of small cafés were open there.

The rain had stopped but the night was damp and hot, alive now with neon. It glistened in the puddles, and cast a red glow over the enormous city. The station was still crowded, the streets clogged with hooting traffic. He found a sushi bar and picked at his plate, musing.

His Japanese would do. Over the years he had been running there and back; on the last occasion as it happened, to Hokkaido, where he now had to pick up the ship. On that occasion he had been picking up Ainu, from the remaining aboriginals there.

Japanese yes, but his Korean no. On the ship he was going to need Korean. He had brushed up a bit at the camp and more had been arranged for him here. It was the ship that worried him more. As Yoshi had snipped off the details he had noticed the date. The blueprints were thirty-five years old.

He went back and studied them anyway.

He saw there was no provision for containerisation. The ship hadn’t carried containers thirty-five years ago; although evidently it did now. And what of the deck equipment: the derricks, cranes, capstans? Stinking old machinery, for certain, and by now dangerous. A ship that went to ‘places the others don’t’ made heavy use of its own lifting gear, soon worn out. A line like this would either get a cheap repair job or replace it with scrapyard junk. In any case it wouldn’t be where it was on the blueprints — not if container shafts had been put in.

He pored over the sheets, all the same, memorising the equipment and its positioning. He did it until two in the morning when his eyes were closing, and then he phoned Yoshi’s number again. It rang for a long time and then was abruptly answered by a female — very angry, almost in shock. He left a message for Yoshi, and went to bed.

15

The Theosophical Society of East Asia had a beautiful small courtyard, totally secluded, and approached by a long alley ending in a tunnel and solid wooden doors. The doors opened silently after Yoshi had beeped his remote control and received an answering beep.

A little old man with a rake was watching as the car entered and came to a halt. Yoshi nodded to him as they got out and the old man nodded back. He was wearing a conical straw hat and scraping lines in a sand garden, and in addition to the rake he was holding the electronic gadget that had opened the doors.

The morning was very heavy and grey and they had driven for over an hour through back streets to get here. Away from the centre the prosperous city was suddenly in the third world: few pavements, puddled lanes. This area seemed more salubrious but was still a jumble of sheds, factories, small apartment blocks.

The Theosophical Society itself was wedged between a book depository and a tin-roofed works; but inside the gates was another world. A fountain played. Carp swam in a pool.

‘You like this place?’ Yoshi asked.

Porter looked around it, nodding.

A heavily eaved house, evidently ancient and covered with an elegant creeper, it enclosed all four sides of the courtyard, the tunnel and the gates merely set into it.

‘You’ll work well here, you’ll concentrate,’ Yoshi told him. ‘You can rest in the garden. And this is Machiko,’ he said, as a young lady in glasses appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a track suit and an unsmiling countenance.

‘We spoke,’ she said. ‘On the phone. At two o’clock this morning.’

‘Sure. Sorry about that,’ Porter said.

‘It’s okay. It’s just that I like to get out and jog first thing. I didn’t jog too much today.’ The appearance was little-girl Japanese, with black pudding-bowl haircut. But she was not a little girl. And the language was not Japanese but pure Canadian.

‘She does all kinds of voices. She will do regional Korean,’ Yoshi told him. ‘Also your legend. You’ll work with Machiko. on the legend.’

‘What have you got for me here?’ Porter said.

‘You’ll see it after breakfast.’

‘Maybe I’d better see it now,’ Porter said.

‘Okay. We’ll meet up later,’ Yoshi told the girl, and took Porter inside.

The house was a warren of corridors, with a faint smell of incense hanging about. ‘It’s from the walls,’ Yoshi told him. ‘Religious people lived here a long time.’ The walls were of rough plaster and brass oil lamps hung from them. Electric bulbs were in the oil lamps now. They turned a corner, and then another, and went up a flight of stairs, to a room evidently over the entrance tunnel. Yoshi unlocked the door and switched the light on and re-locked behind them.

The room was cell-like, with a single shuttered window. It had tatami matting on the floor and two chairs and a table. On the table was a model of the ship, a metre long, and brightly painted.

‘The man will come and explain it to you,’ Yoshi said. ‘He’s a ship architect with the government.’ He took a side off the ship and exposed the interior. ‘You see what a good job it is? It’s better than any blueprint.’

‘Yes,’ Porter said. The model was very good, immaculately finished, and in much better shape than the original was now likely to be.

He looked at the interior. Two shafts had been installed, he saw. For vertical container stacking. Little containers were stacked in them. He moved the containers up and down. ‘When was this put in?’ he said.

‘They did a big job ten, twelve years ago. The man will explain it all to you.’

Ten, twelve years ago made sense. Then it was worth the expense. They wouldn’t have spent much since. In particular they wouldn’t have spent much on the deck gear. The deck gear was where it was on the blueprints — impossible in view of the shafts. Whoever had made the model was not interested in the deck but in the ship’s interior. The interior was very precise and showed many changes; to holds, lockers, shuttering.

‘Who built this?’ he said.

‘The man did it himself. He’s an expert. He’ll take you through it blindfold. He works for the narcotics bureau.’

‘What has the narcotics bureau to do with it?’

‘We brought them into it. You’re a narcotics agent, with the US government. We supplied good papers. We’ve done a lot of work. And they keep excellent relations with the police, the transport ministries, all kinds of authorities. We’re getting maximum help, and they know we’ll be discreet. So you see why you can’t go poking around and screwing things up. I’ll tell you all about it. You can take your wig off now and we’ll have breakfast.’

The girl didn’t appear at breakfast.

‘She doesn’t have to hear what I’m going to tell you,’ Yoshi said.

He began telling him as soon as the remains were cleared away. He produced two folders from a safe, and emptied one of them on the table. A number of photographs and papers spilled out, including the passport and the pay book.

‘This is his wife. Parents. Children. The house they all live in, street plan. His service record — every ship he’s been on, and where. Police record — some violence, as you’ll see. Medical record. Letters from his wife. Examples of his own writing. You’ll work through all this with Machiko.’

‘This is a real person?’ Porter said.

‘Of course. It’s always the best.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In Kobe. His throat was slit in a prison fight there three weeks ago. We’re holding the ashes a while. They’ll have to go back, of course, he was a Buddhist. The family has not been informed yet — bureaucratic delay. We’ll hold everything until you’re on that ship, and off it.’

‘Had he served with this line?’

‘Some time ago. You’ll see it there.’

‘Won’t any of the crew know him?’

‘No. They’re all signed, and we’ve checked every one out. Not one of them was ever in the same port with him, or even on home leave, at least not in the last six years. It’s a very slight risk.’

‘Who else knows he’s dead?’

‘Outside the prison, a few officials. Inside it, maybe the hospital staff. Not even them, for certain. He was shifted out in an ambulance. A police surgeon was the only one with him when he died. The police know, of course. That is, it will be on a computer somewhere, if they have any reason to check you out. They won’t have a reason. You’ll be staying out of sight. I’ll have one of your cigarettes now,’ Yoshi said.

Porter gave him one and lit it.

‘Wasn’t there an inquest?’ he said.

‘No. The narcotics department helped. They have asked that you stay out of sight. It’s the only thing they’ve asked. They can’t compromise the police.’

‘So how long am I supposed to stay here?’

‘From now, six days. Perhaps seven. Your kit is all here. You pick it up at Otaru.’

Porter thought about this.

‘All right. What’s the timing, from Nagasaki?’

‘From Nagasaki,’ Yoshi said, ‘the ship undocks on the thirty-first, and loads. This is a fast operation, wool the only cargo. I’ll have more information later, but provisionally she arrives at Niigata on the third September.’

He opened the second folder and took some sheets out.

‘Niigata. A fully equipped port. It handles all loading and discharge — ship’s own crew only partially required, so one watch goes ashore. Normal turnaround there is twelve to eighteen hours — again, I’ll know more later. But trouble develops on shore among the crew, and it continues on the ship. A hundred miles or so out the captain suddenly has a casualty on his hands, quite serious.’

He explained this, and Porter drew on his cigarette.

‘This is already fixed?’ he said.

‘Oh yes.’ Yoshi looked through his papers and turned one face round on the table. ‘Here’s the crew.’

Porter counted twelve names; four of them highlighted with red outliner.

‘What are the red ones?’ he said.

‘One of them is the casualty.’

‘How do you know who’ll be the casualty?’

‘I don’t,’ Yoshi said, ‘but the list is alphabetical, and they work the watches the same way. One of these men has to be the casualty. And three of them served together on a previous voyage, which will be useful. Anyway, I want to know what happens in Niigata before starting you off in Otaru.’

Porter considered this.

‘How long from there to Otaru?’

‘Two days,’ Yoshi said.

‘With this man in bad shape.’

‘Very bad shape.’

‘So what happens?’

Yoshi told him what he thought would happen.

‘Won’t there be questions about the casualty?’

‘It will happen fast,’ Yoshi said. ‘And the captain will leave Otaru fast. After shipping another hand.’

‘Are we certain he absolutely needs another hand?’

‘Yes. For a voyage through the Arctic, late in the season,’ Yoshi said, ‘he needs another hand. These ships already operate with minimum crews.’

Porter smoked silently for a while.

‘Okay. Green Cape,’ he said.

‘There isn’t anything for Green Cape. I told you, the Russian trade mission here is always late. They could still give instructions — even at sea. But whether they do or they don’t,’ Yoshi said, ‘you get off there.’ And he explained this, too. ‘After which,’ he ended, ‘you know what to do. And I don’t have to know. I’ve got you on the ship, and I’ve got you off it.’

‘Well. Okay.’ Porter said. ‘Maybe. If it works at Green Cape.’

‘I have no doubts about Green Cape. If you get on the ship, you’ll get off it at Green Cape. And you will get on it, if you keep to the plan. You look good. You look how you’re supposed to look, ‘Yoshi said. Porter was now gnawing the end of his pigtail.’ In seaman’s rig you’ll look even better.’

Porter studied his image in the passport and the pay book.

‘So here’s the next thing,’ Yoshi said. ‘Why you stay out of sight. Koreans aren’t liked here. Working people don’t like them, the police. They regularly get stopped by the police. On no account are you meeting any police.’

‘I never had trouble before.’

‘It wasn’t so bad before. And if it had been bad, you were a Canadian with good papers. Now you’re a Canadian with funny papers. And a wig.’

‘Without the wig, with Sung’s papers?’

‘They run you in right away. One call from a police box, and they find you’re not Sung.’

‘Why would they call?’

‘They do call. I tell you, it’s routine, Koreans have a bad time. They don’t like them. Maybe there’s been trouble recently, violence, theft, whatever. Then what? At Tokyo central, a man on the switchboard, he knows the arrangement with the narcotics bureau? Don’t even think of it. This plan is nice because the timing is nice. Interfere with it in some way — get yourself locked up, an investigation — and there is no plan. This is why you don’t go out,’ Yoshi said.

Porter continued gnawing his pigtail.

‘Yoshi,’ he said, ‘I have to see the ship. They’re probably patching it up for one last voyage, like the other ship, and using cannibalised parts. The man who made that model was interested in compartments where narcotics could be hidden — not deck gear where it wouldn’t be. I am interested in it. I’ll be using it. I have to see it before the ship leaves dock. It’s the only place I can see it before boarding. And if I don’t see it I won’t be boarding.’

Yoshi slowly blinked at him.

‘If the ship can be seen,’ he worked out, ‘then it can be photographed. Why don’t we photograph it for you?’

‘All right. I’m still going to see it. I can’t take a chance on this.’

Yoshi continued blinking.

‘Today is too late anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s a long trip. And you can’t go on your own. If you go out at all, it’s as a businessman in a suit, and we go together.’

‘Okay,’ Porter said. ‘Keep me company.’

Nagasaki airport was at Omura, thirty miles from the port. They landed there before noon, into almost sub-tropical heat, and Yoshi hired a car.

The waterfront came in sight presently, sparkling far below, and they followed it round. Houses clung to the hillsides and narrow winding streets tottered down to the bay: the place was built on a series of terraces.

Yoshi had better information on the yard now and also a Port Authority map. On the map the dockyards were shown as a line of numbered blocks, and a key on the edge of the map gave the names. Porter kept his finger on Takeshuma’s. As Yoshi had said, it wasn’t far from Mitsubishi, and they slowed as they neared the area.

Just on two o’clock, they saw it.

The yard passed below, barely distinguishable, and they drove on to the next pull-in, and walked back. A steady stream of traffic was passing on the road but on the hillside, above and below the road, people were picnicking and taking photographs. There was plenty to photograph. Far below, winking in the sun, was the Park Lane of the marine world — a glittering array of success, supertankers, giant container ships, prosperous monsters of all kinds, lined up row on row.

Mitsubishi was the most prominent of the yards, its activities not only visible but audible, even palpable. The thump of its heavy forges echoed between the hills of the bay, rhythmically shifting the air. Just about here Madame Butterfly had taken the air, while awaiting the one fine day when a plume of smoke would herald Lieutenant Pinkerton. Yet it was not Pinkerton but another American who had occasioned the most momentous plume of all.

The B29 with its atom bomb had flown directly overhead, with Mitsubishi as its target — the yard, the steelworks and the munitions plant that had lain alongside. The bomb had landed almost half a mile away, demolishing the lot, and ultimately 73,000 citizens.

They climbed the hill, above the picnickers, and peered down through binoculars. Right away Porter saw why not much of Takeshuma had been distinguishable from the road. High shuttering screened it off from the road. From this height not all of it was screened off. Two ships were in the yard. They were lodged side by side, on chocks, in separate dry docks. All the after parts were visible; maybe even three quarters of the ships’ length.

‘I don’t know which one it is,’ Yoshi said.

‘It’s the nearest,’ Porter told him. He couldn’t see a name, but the gantry was clearly visible. It was a forty-tonner, right specifications. The other ship was a coaster; wrong shape.

‘It’s that one,’ he said.

He examined it for some time. Not only the gantry but the wheelhouse was in its blueprint position. He went over the ship section by section. Two of the derricks were in dismantled heaps on the deck. But he could see another, installed and standing. He couldn’t make out the container-shaft openings. The sun was aslant now and casting heavy shadows. It was blazing fiercely down however, and the workers below were swarming half-naked in the heat.

They were swarming everywhere — on the dock, on the ship, in cradles over the side. Propped high in the cement pit, the hull looked horrible; a bulbous shell, rusty, scabrous, salt-scarred. The men in the cradles were scraping at encrustations with long-handled implements, and being followed by others with power hoses and red lead. Floodlights were rigged round the dock and it was plain that work would be going on all night if the ship was to come out on time.

He heard a click and saw Yoshi at work with the camera.

‘Let me take a look,’ he said.

Through the binoculars everything had quivered in the heat. He needed a clear view of the derrick.

The Nikon had a big telephoto lens and the reflex view was good. But the thing was hard to hold steady. Again the derrick swam in the air currents. A fraction of a second could make a difference.

‘Is this thing motorised?’ he said.

‘Sure.’

Yoshi set the motor and Porter held the camera and shot off half a roll. Then they moved position and he tried again. The view was no better here; the derrick even obscured for some seconds by a group of men in hard hats gesticulating over it. But he kept the camera going and shot off the other half and they went back to the car.

It was after ten when they returned to Tokyo, and almost eleven as they rolled through the tunnel to the Theosophical Society. They had left it at seven in the morning, and 1800 miles had been covered in between. Of the thirty-six photos four were good and one very good, and this one Machiko enlarged.

Midnight passed while she did this; and the thirty-first of August had arrived.

16

For the thirty-first of August the plan called for Porter to have his first session with the ship’s architect, and also his try-on.

The architect came first and he studied the photographs made the night before. Porter had also studied them, without being able to identify the derrick. The architect couldn’t identify it either. He said the equipment was obviously old; he would have it looked up and get a copy of the works manual. But he was anxious to proceed with instruction on his model, and Porter moodily allowed himself to be instructed.

They spent the morning on it, but Porter barely listened. He had realised now what he had to do. He kept the matter to himself; and in the afternoon had his try-on.

The kit was all suitably shabby; shoes scuffed and well worn; darned woollens, oiled stockings, long Johns, sweatshirts, jeans, seaboots, donkey jacket, headgear. They had had his measurements for weeks and little alteration was needed, but what there was Machiko attended to. Then she packed everything in a kitbag and a rope-bound case, all to go by hand next day to Hokkaido.

Afterwards they worked on his ‘legend’. This girl seemed exceedingly responsible, acting as house-mother in charge of the servants as well as of himself. Yet Yoshi instructed him to tell her nothing of his identity. The success of an operation, he said, depended on people knowing only what they had to — but attending to that with maximum efficiency.

This aspect he demonstrated himself by returning, after taking the ship’s architect back, with the manual for the derrick. ‘He’d have forgotten about it in the morning,’ he said. ‘I stood over him while he searched. It was a long search.’

Porter looked at the manual, and saw gloomily why this was the case. It was dated 1948.

‘Is there a working model of this around anywhere?’

‘Only on these ships. It’s been out of use a long time.’

‘Can we get hold of somebody who’s used it?’

‘No,’ Yoshi said. ‘We can’t. But he’ll study it himself and explain it to you in the morning.’

‘Yoshi, if this thing is out of use,’ Porter said, ‘it’s because it’s dangerous. I need somebody who’s used it.’

‘We can’t have anybody who’s used it. We can’t have anybody else at all. In any case he doesn’t know anybody.’

I know somebody,’ Porter said.

Yoshi listened to him, aghast, as he explained what he was going to do.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘You can’t do this. I’ve told you why. Don’t you understand?’

‘Yes, I understand,’ Porter said. But he knew he was going to do it anyway.

The bus was almost empty, and in the dark he couldn’t see through the rain-smeared windows. But the driver was calling out the stops, and when he called out ‘Bund’ he got off.

He could see the Bund Hotel twinkling to the left, and the Marine Tower to the right. He located himself then. This bit of Yokohama he knew. It was only half an hour’s train ride from Tokyo, practically a suburb. The bus from the station had been grinding around the harbour, and in the open air now he could smell the diesel fumes off the water.

He was in jeans and a sweatshirt, his pigtail hanging. He had changed at the Lucky Strike. He had walked into the place as Peterson and walked out of it as Sung, by the side exit.

He crossed the road and cut through to the tinny music and the traffic of Chukagai. Away from the harbour the town was quite sedate, a commuter belt for the capital. But this area was not sedate. He passed the massage parlours and the pachinko parlours, the little steel balls rattling as the gamblers fed in coins. The topless places had now become NO PANTY, he saw. The gaudy glow of Chinatown hung in the air.

In a few minutes he was in the middle of it. The streets shone in the drizzle, narrow, crowded, crawling with cars. Restaurants lined both sides, the vertical Chinese signs flashing at each other. He looked for the laughing pig and the debonair donkey. The pig he couldn’t see but the donkey was still there. He was flashing on and off in the air, legs crossed, leaning on his cane, asinine ears shooting up and down. Then he saw the pig, too. Its lights were off but the red and yellow snout still grinned its cheerful chinky grin.

The alley was a slit between the two buildings and emerged into the street behind. Shabbier bars and coffee shops. Ichiko’s lane had had a barber’s on the corner. Yes, still there. He went down the lane and found Ichiko’s.

The same lantern over the door, the same curtain in the doorway and the smell of cooking coming out. Half a dozen men were supping up their noodles on stools at the counter. His pigtail attracted no attention here. He ordered grilled eel with his noodles, the speciality of the house; Ichiko, when on leave, used to catch them himself in the harbour. He supped his bowl with the rest and kept an eye open for Ichiko. He could hear pots rattling in the kitchen; evidently Hanita at work.

‘Is Hanita around?’ he asked the bar girl.

‘Who?’

‘Hanita. The boss.’

The sleepy girl looked at him and went in the back room. A man came out with her, wiping his hands on a cloth. ‘Who did you want?’ he said.

‘Isn’t this Hanita’s place?’

‘She died, two three years ago.’

‘Oh.’ He absorbed this. ‘What happened to Ichiko?’

‘The sailor? He moved out.’

‘Do you know where?’

‘No. I let him have a room for a while. But he went. He’s around somewhere still. Ask at the koban, they’ll tell you. Just along the street at the crossroad, you’ll see it.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

The koban was the police post.

He went out, brooding. He had attracted no attention so far. Yokohama was a seaman’s place, and plenty of Korean seamen were in it. He wondered if he dare risk the police post. The koban would only be a neighbourhood box, one of thousands. The streets were mainly unnamed, as everywhere else in the country. Each koban had its patch: they knew the streets and who lived in them, who moved in, out, who got drunk, who came home late.

The drizzle had eased a little, and now he could see the koban. The box was dimly lit. A policeman was sitting under the porch smoking a cigarette. He saw the man was looking at him. He took Sung’s passport out of his jeans and held it in his hand; poised to snatch it back and run if it was inspected.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for a mate,’ he said. ‘Ichiko Nagoya. His wife ran a noodle bar up the street.’

The policeman stared at the passport in his hand but didn’t ask to see it.

‘They said he’d moved away. They said you’d know.’

The policeman looked back through the open door behind him. Another policeman was inside, writing. ‘Ichiko Nagoya — was he the one that went cuckoo?’ he called.

The other man came out. He also stared at the passport. ‘Sure. They had him in the bin. He’s out now. Along there,’ he said, pointing, ‘maybe ten minutes — the taxi office. It’s the all-night one, lit up in red. He has a room at the back. He won’t be there now,’ he said, as the Korean thanked him and began moving away. ‘He works as a night watchman, at the Kawakami works, farther along.’

‘Kawakami — is that far?’

‘You can’t go in there.’ The man stared at him. ‘What do you want with him? He owes you something?’

‘No. Just to say I was sorry. About his wife,’ Porter said simply. ‘Maybe I’ll leave a note, at the taxi office.’ He still kept the passport in his hand. They were watching him as he turned to thank them again. The drizzle had stopped now, but he was damp with sweat and didn’t put the passport away till he was out of sight of the koban.

He saw the all-night taxi office presently, but didn’t stop. Farther along, the policeman had said; the Kawakami works. There were few people about now and the street lamps were farther apart. There was the odd bar, a tenement, sheds. From some of the sheds he heard lowing: ćows. There were few fields in the area, and milk for the town came from hundreds of sheds; Ichiko had owned a couple himself.

He walked fast for another ten minutes, and then wondered if he shouldn’t go back to the taxi office after all. There was nobody in the street and nothing like a factory. He stopped and looked about him, and in the silence heard a distant clanking and screeching. The marshalling yard behind the station. He must have walked back parallel with the railway line. Except the screeching was not that of rolling stock. He walked on again, and as the sound became louder suddenly saw the factory.

Now that the rain had stopped the sky had cleared, and the ugly shape loomed against a slice of moon. It was a breeze-block structure, big, square, with hangar doors. Above the roof iron letters were mounted on stilts, and he picked the Japanese characters out against the sky: K-A-W-A-K-A-M-I.

The screeching set his teeth on edge. It was coming from a gap in the hangar doors, open a few inches, perhaps to let air in. He peered through, and saw nothing: total blackness. Then a kind of glimmering like the markings on a luminous watch. Denser shapes of blackness were shuddering along the markings. He tried to pull the doors wider but couldn’t manage it, and felt with his hands in the gap and found a safety bar in position. He tugged it upwards, and at once an alarm bell went off. He stepped back, but he had been seen; a torch beam was shining on him from inside. He stood away as the light approached, and then put his face into the gap.

‘Ichiko! It’s me — remember?’ The light was blinding him. ‘It’s Johnny. I came to see you.’

The light swung about his face, then down to the safety bar and the alarm bell stopped. The door slid open, and the torch waved him in. Inside, the noise was horrendous, the screeching and clanking grossly amplified and bouncing back off the walls. His arm was being tightly gripped, and the torch shone up to Ichiko’s face. He had ear muffs on, and he touched his lips and shook his head. Then he put the safety bar back on and pointed the light at an end wall, and moved there. A little glass cabin, dimly lit, was up on the wall. An iron staircase led up to it and he followed Ichiko there.

In the cabin Ichiko took his muffs off and closed the door, and the noise abruptly decreased; the glass of the cabin multiply glazed. A long desk and a console looked down on the factory. But it looked down on nothing — only the room lights shining back off the glass. But as he moved Porter saw one panel greenly illuminated, like an aquarium, and a scene of weird activity taking place in it.

As if through night glasses, the whole factory was luminously in view there; and all of it crazily at work. Like a computer game a hundred things were jerkily going on. Carts moved along aisles: moved, stopped, moved again. They moved along glowing lines in the floor. Skeletal arms reached out from bays at either side, and skeletal fingers weaved and bobbed in the air. They were picking up bolts, screws, drill heads; touching, feeling, coming back for more, occasionally letting off showers of sparks and filings.

‘Ichiko, what is this?’

‘The new world, no people. No people needed.’

‘They told me you were here. I went to Hanita’s.’

‘She’s gone. Not required any more. Nobody needed.’

‘Ichiko, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ It was only four years since he had seen him last, when Ichiko had just left the sea — always a cantankerous but a forthright and robust man, jovial in his way. Now he was like an automaton, withdrawn, as jerky in his movements as the machines below. He had shown no curiosity whatever at seeing Porter. ‘So how do you like the night work?’ he asked.

‘It runs itself. I only watch. Nobody needed.’

‘What do they make here?’

‘Robots. Robots make robots. You see? Who’s needed?’

‘Ichiko,’ Porter said. He had a lowering feeling he wasn’t going to get far. ‘You used to give me advice.’ Ichiko didn’t say anything, only looked at him with hollow eyes. ‘I need something, Ichiko,’ Porter said.

Ichiko came closer, and glanced absently through the panel in passing. ‘I’ll give you something,’ he said. Through the panel Porter saw the carts had suddenly stopped and small bulbs on the console were flashing. ‘It’s only coffee,’ Ichiko said. He was filling a mug from a flask. ‘No drink allowed.’

‘Ichiko, something has happened below. Are you supposed to do anything about it?’

‘The robots do it. A drill broke and they’re replacing it. They look after themselves, they doctor each other. They’re cleverer than we are. Here,’ he said, and gave Porter the mug.

‘Aren’t there any workers here at all?’

‘A small shift in the day. They sharpen parts, take away what’s been done. At nights it’s just the robots and me.’ He sneezed and blew his nose. ‘Johnny?’ he said suddenly. He was blinking at him. ‘What do you want here?’

‘I came to see you.’ Porter smiled at him, relieved at the abrupt return to sense. ‘I have to go to sea again, Ichiko. I need some advice.’

‘Leave it alone. That’s my advice.’

‘It’s just for a short while.’

‘You said you were going to the Ainu in Hokkaido.’

‘I went. This is something else.’

‘Another one of your projects?’

‘Yes, another one.’

‘Ah.’ Ichiko looked through the panel and pressed buttons on the console. Below, the subdued row began again. ‘Where are you going?’

‘North, the Arctic’

‘Your Eskimos, eh? Well, best regards to them,’ Ichiko said. He screwed the top back on the flask.

‘Ichiko,’ Porter said. He was glad to see the old robustness back, and he took the enlarged photograph out of his pocket. It was folded small and he opened it out. ‘It’s one of the Yakamoto ships. Remember, you did some trips with them?’

‘Stay away from the bastards. They’re dangerous.’

‘One trip only. But I don’t know the deck gear, Ichiko, the derricks. Take a look here. Maybe you can make it out.’

Ichiko peered at the photo.

‘Make it out? This is the bitch that took Kenji’s arm. Kenji — that fine boy, you remember?’

‘Kenji?’ There were many Kenjis.

‘The whistler, eighteen years old. He helped me catch eels. His first trip on the ship and they put him on this! They gave him nothing for the arm. I tell you — stay away, it’s a killer.’

Porter looked again at the photo. It was one of the last of the roll, among the shots he had thought obstructed by workmen, but it had come out the clearest.

‘Ichiko, what’s so bad about this derrick?’

‘What’s so bad? It cripples you! It belongs in a museum! See how it happened with Kenji,’ Ichiko said, and picked up a piece of pencil and began drawing on the back of the photo.

But he didn’t draw for long and he didn’t explain for long, his animation suddenly expiring. ‘No, I don’t know. I forget. I don’t know anything any more. There isn’t any more.’ He opened the door and the hellish uproar returned. ‘Just stay away from it, I tell you!’

‘Ichiko, a single second!’ He held the man’s arm and tried to close the door but Ichiko resisted. ‘About the greasing again — just once! You said with the greasing —’

‘I don’t know about greasing. I don’t know anything any more. Leave me alone now. Let me go,’ the old man said, and put his muffs on.

Porter followed him down the stairs and through the tumultuous blackness to the slit of sky in the wall.

‘Ichiko, I’m sorry!’ he shouted. But Ichiko couldn’t hear him any more; and at the hangar door when Porter held his hand out he didn’t seem aware of that either, for he put the safety bar on and turned away.

It was still early, not yet eleven, when he got out of the train in Tokyo. He crossed the station forecourt, and made for the side door of the Lucky Strike. No one inside, and he entered quickly. But the indicator showed the elevator descending, so he took the stairs, and let himself into room 303, with a sigh.

All as he had left it, his business suit on the bed, his wig in the wardrobe. From the wardrobe he took the bottle of rye and poured himself one, and drank it. Then he poured another, and sat and looked at the photograph and at the pencilled markings on the back.

Yoshi wanted him to return tonight. He had promised to call when he got back from Yokohama. Well, he would call; but he wasn’t going back tonight. Tonight he had to think. It suddenly struck him that this was the fourth of the four nights he had booked at the Lucky Strike. A figure produced at random, but the right one. This was somehow an omen.

He drank his whiskey and called the house. Yoshi answered and he told him what he had to tell him. Then he hung up. It was a few minutes to midnight.

At just this moment, as it happened, the Suzaku Maru, under floodlights, was slipping out of the dry dock at Nagasaki.

17

For the first two days of September the Suzaku Maru steamed steadily through the Sea of Japan at her customary rate of nine knots. She had left behind the southern island of Kyushu and was hugging the mainland coast of Honshu. The weather was very fine and the bosun took advantage of it to turn the hands to painting ship. The hurried departure had left no time for this in harbour, and he knew her leprous appearance would produce rough treatment from the dockers at Niigata. She was in poor enough shape already.

Eight hours before Niigata the captain radioed his expected time of arrival, 1600 hours, and asked for his berth.

Would he require bunkering facilities?

No, he wouldn’t; he would be refuelling at Otaru.

He was given the berth, and went off watch. He had stood the night watch himself for he intended to sleep the rest of the day. He knew he would be up all night: the loading at Niigata was the main one of the trip and he meant to keep an eye on it.

Also his stomach was out of order. There had been much nervous excitement before he had got out of Nagasaki, and several back-handers to various officials. He knew the ship was not in the pink of condition, but there was ample time ahead to rectify what was wrong and work in both ship and crew before they reached the Arctic.

He had taken breakfast on the bridge. Now he went below to the officers’ heads, the small convenience he shared with the mate, and eased himself before going through to his cabin. He looked over the loading plan before turning in, and also initialled the note left for him by the mate authorising a six-hour shore leave for the off-duty watch.

At 1600 hours, exactly to timetable, the ship nosed into harbour, and an hour later, as unloading of wool commenced, the four off-duty men, in their best rig, trooped down the gangway and set off jovially for Taki’s place. This was the first of a round of places, just outside the dock gates, and it was usual to sink a glass in each before finally tumbling into Yasu’s. Yasu’s was the ultimate place, an enormous cellar, the liveliest and most popular of all among the seamen. Madame Yasu was herself enormous, the widow of a sumo wrestler. In his retirement her late husband had given exhibitions to the clientele, and the establishment was still known for its entertainment. At Yasu’s you could eat, drink, sing along or accompany certain of the girls upstairs, where they served as efficiently as at table: there was always a steady turnover of talent at Yasu’s.

By seven-thirty the jovial four had arrived there. The place wasn’t yet crowded and a table was promptly found for them. It was found for them by the very latest talent, and they took an immediate interest in her. For one thing she was a pert and pretty little thing, and for another she had taken an immediate interest in them, eagerly hurrying forward as they stood grinning and swaying on the entrance balcony. She efficiently took them in tow, shepherded them down the steps, and got them seated.

Madame Yasu watched the young woman’s work with approval. She liked enthusiasm in a girl, and this one was very enthusiastic. Following house etiquette, she first of all gave her own name, which was Toyo, and then invited theirs as she whipped round the menus. And she was coquettish. She avoided the groping hands but still managed a playful pat for each of them as she took their drink orders. But in serving the drinks, as Madame Yasu noted with a frown, she was less than perfect, for in announcing the names and setting down the glasses she managed to upset one, leaving a disconsolate sailor without. She rectified the accident quickly enough, and gave him an extra big one, together with a contrite little peck on the cheek while he drank it, so everything passed well enough. All the girl needed was more experience.

From the off-duty four there were no complaints. Toyo was a little beauty — not unfortunately available for duties upstairs but very willing in all other departments. The place was famous for its seafood, and she swiftly served up helpings of sashima, all fresh, raw and glistening, with seaweed and noodles, and rice amply drenched in soy sauce; together with several more drinks, not one of which the bright little girl spilled again.

By a quarter to eleven, in good heart and voice, the off-duty men were staggering back inside the dock gates and wending their way to the Suzaku Maru. She was bathed in floodlight and loading was in full progress. On the bridge the captain watched the containers swing aboard. On the deck the bosun watched his paintwork.

By ten o’clock next morning she was at sea again and settling to her stately nine knots. Not too much damage had been done to the deck works, so the bosun put the men over the side. His best chance of getting an Arctic sea coat on her lay between here and Otaru, two days away. It couldn’t all be done in the time, but beyond Otaru the weather would worsen, so he kept them at it for long hours, ignoring all grumbles; except, in the late afternoon, from one of the hands who had to be pulled up in his cradle on the grounds of feeling dizzy and unwell.

The bosun looked at him as he came up. ‘Dizzy and unwell? Of course you’re dizzy and unwell, you prick. You got pissed last night.’

‘I got pissed last night,’ the man allowed, ‘but it isn’t that. I’m not right, bosun.’

‘What’s up with you?’

‘I’m just not right.’

He wasn’t right. And he didn’t look right. He looked green. His teeth were chattering. The bosun told him to turn in for a spell. But over supper, with the engineer, the bosun was again called to the man. He had fallen out of his bunk and was shaking about so much it was a job to hold him back in it.

The bosun went to see the mate.

‘Who is he?’ the mate asked.

‘Ushiba. Seaman first class. He was ashore last night.’

‘What did he eat there?’

‘Fish. Shellfish.’

‘Ah. Food poisoning.’

‘All the others ate the same.’

‘Yes, it’s chancy, seafood. Give him castor oil.’

The effect of the castor oil was to throw the man into convulsions, and at ten o’clock the captain was sent for. By then Ushiba was vomiting black and his colour had deepened. He was still shaking violently and in a high fever. The heat could be felt radiating off him from a distance.

The captain returned to his cabin and reached for his Mariner’s Medical Dictionary. He went slowly down the list of fevers until he found the matching symptoms. At these his eyes bolted. But he read doggedly on through the rest of the fevers before returning to the fateful one. Then he reached for the voicepipe and asked the mate to step below.

‘Where’s this fellow been to?’ he asked.

The mate failed to understand the question until he too read the symptoms. Then he got out the crew records. Ushiba had last been in Java waters — East Timor. Two other members of the Suzaku Maru’s crew had been there with him. All three of them had been drunk and disorderly, and Ushiba had fallen into the harbour. The ship’s captain had paid a hefty fine for them all before being allowed to leave port the same night, 28 July.

The mate looked at the calendar. It was now 4 September and he counted the days from 28 July, He made it thirty-eight. Then he looked at the Mariner’s Medical Dictionary again. Under Yellow Fever (Jav) (rare) the captain’s finger still held the place: Incubation period — 14 to 42 days: highly infectious. At thirty-eight days the sick man was within the incubation period.

By midnight, Ushiba was locked up in the after heads. This tiny toilet and shower, shared by the bosun and the engineer, had the advantage of being over the engines, so not much noise could be heard from it. None at all was now coming from Ushiba. He had been injected with a strong sedative. The mate and the bosun had waited for the crew to go to sleep before strapping him to a stretcher and carrying him through the fore ends.

There was not enough room for Ushiba to lie flat in the heads so the stretcher had been wedged at an angle, with his feet under the shower and his head over the toilet hole in the floor.

An anxious conference had taken place between the captain and the mate. Nothing seemed wrong with the other two men who had been to Java, but only Ushiba had actually fallen in the harbour. Obviously, he had to be put ashore in Otaru. But just as obviously the ship must not come under suspicion there — the shortest delay could abort the entire voyage.

At a further meeting, joined by the bosun and the engineer, some other matters were agreed. The latter men would now of course have the use of the officers’ heads. There was no need to alarm the crew over a case of food poisoning. For Ushiba’s comfort, and theirs, he had been removed to the convenience of his own heads. If still unwell he could go ashore for medical treatment in Otaru.

For the same reason, there was no need to alert Otaru yet. After refuelling had been completed, and if he was still indisposed, Ushiba could be put ashore just before sailing. Meanwhile it would be a good idea to have his bunk disinfected. The bosun should attend to this himself, preferably at a time when the crew would all be above deck painting. It would also be a good idea to have a replacement standing by in Otaru in the event that Ushiba did elect to go ashore there.

These matters took time to resolve, and it was the early hours before the captain at last climbed into his bunk. He took his Mariner’s Medical Dictionary with him. There were details there that worried him and he wanted to read them again.

The disease was viral, he saw; ‘water-borne v.’ And unlike the constipation of normal yellow fever, the variant was ‘commonly accompanied by diarrhoea, excessive perspn., dehydratn., & blood in vomit (black v.). Dvlpmnts: jaundice, convulsns.’ Yes, Ushiba had all those. ‘Patient shd be restrained, washed frequently, kept out of light. Treatment: saline solution, rice water, vitamins (inject, only); no solids. Duration of fever: 2 to 4 days, frequently fatal.’

The captain got out of bed and looked in the medical chest. Vitamins, but no saline solution. Rice water was not a problem. And in the snugness of the after heads, restraint was not one either. Nor were the requirements for washing and reduced light. There was a light switch there, and also a hose.

But the brief duration and frequent fatality of the disease worried him. Otaru still lay thirty-two hours away, and a further six would be spent in the port. Total thirty-eight hours. If Ushiba had been ill for twelve hours without knowing it — and the intensity of his symptoms suggested this — then his fever would have run fifty hours before they got out of Otaru. If he should prove one of the forty-eight hour fatalities, he could be dead before they left port. In which case they wouldn’t be leaving port …

The captain stroked his chin. His present ETA at Otaru was 1000 hours. An increase of speed could get him there earlier. But this would give time for inquiries. It would be better to cut the time in port. Ideally he should cut it to two hours. That would allow him to leave at 1200. With Ushiba going ashore at, say, 1145. Still only forty-six hours into his fever. And in no position to give any details of it.

Yes, that was the best thing to do. He was not clear at the moment how to do it. But after a sleep his head would be clearer. He looked at the bulkhead clock as he switched the light off. Two a.m. fifth of September.

18

At 2 a.m. in Tokyo, Porter was also switching the light off. He had spent the last three hours alone on a final check of his notes. Since leaving the Lucky Strike he had slept every night at the Theosophical Society, the last two of them with Machiko; but this one he spent on his own. It was the last.

For most of the time he had been speaking Korean with the girl; the Pusan dialect of Korean, which was Sung Won Choo’s. In this dialect he had repeated his legend, recited the parts of the derrick, and also the parts of the ship. She had used a pointer on the ship, and he had given all the alternative routes for getting from one place to another. Machiko was now satisfied with his accent and his knowledge of Sung Won Choo. And he was quite certain he knew the ship from one end to the other.

Their knowledge of the Suzaku Maru’s movements had become increasingly refined. Everything had gone as planned at Niigata, and they knew to the hour her timing in Otaru. She would dock there on the seventh, at 1000 hours, and leave six hours later: 1600. Apart from refuelling, there was only a single cargo to load and the remainder of the wool to unload. He would present himself at the dock soon after 1500 and be away by 1600. There were no uncertainties any more, and he didn’t plan to study any more.

He switched the light off and went to sleep.

Next morning, over a leisurely breakfast, Yoshi gave him a final briefing. There was no change in arrangements. The Suzaku Maru was keeping to her timetable, and Porter would keep to his. His kit was waiting in Otaru, his accommodation confirmed at a rooming house there, and his name and particulars lodged with the port office.

‘So that’s it,’ Yoshi said. ‘No problems?’

‘No. No problems.’

This leg, he had insisted, he would do by himself. He felt better by himself, and Yoshi had been forced to agree.

At nine-thirty he said goodbye to Machiko. Then with his single piece of luggage, an executive attaché case, he got into the car with Yoshi, and they took off to Haneda domestic airport. There Yoshi shook his hand and wished him luck, the car left, and he was on his own.

To Sapporo, the provincial capital of Hokkaido, it was 600

miles, and the 11.30 plane landed him there just before one o’clock. He took a cab to the railway station and bought a ticket to Otaru. The port was only forty minutes away and he arrived there, his last planned destination in Japan, exactly on schedule, 2.55. An arrow pointed to the toilets, and he locked himself into one and changed his clothes.

Out of the executive case came the jeans, shirt and rope-soled shoes kept back for this occasion; and also a folded canvas grip. Into the grip went his wig, and then every trace of the identity of James B. Peterson. He added the executive case itself, zipped up the grip, and went out to the left luggage office. There he deposited the grip, took a receipt, and in the station mailbox posted it off back to Tokyo in the prepared envelope he had brought with him. Somebody would be picking up the grip within forty-eight hours.

Now it was almost 3.30.

He had half an hour to wait.

He had a cup of coffee in the station tearoom and kept an eye on the left luggage office. The two men there had been on duty since 8 a.m. and were due for relief. At four the new shift would come on until midnight when the office closed; they would have no knowledge of a man who had just deposited a grip. All this had been scouted out for him.

At four the new shift arrived, and five minutes later a Korean seaman presented a grubby receipt from his wallet. The attendant looked sourly at him, shuffled among the racks and cursed as he hefted the heavy kit over the counter.

Porter shouldered the kitbag, lifted the bulging strap-bound case, and went out to the cab rank. In twenty minutes he was pulling up at the rooming house.

It was a shabby, run-down place, close by the docks. The proprietor was drowsing on a stool outside. He didn’t bother getting up for the Korean seaman but confirmed that he was booked in and told him where to pick up his key in the lobby. Room 11, first floor.

Porter took his gear up and let himself into the decrepit room. Not a sound in the building. No one else seemed to be in it and he wondered if the phone worked. He had seen one, on the wall, in the passage below. He went down to find out.

‘Phone? Help yourself,’ the proprietor said. ‘It takes tokens.’

There was a push-button light in the dark passage. He read the number on his piece of paper, shoved a token in, and dialled the port office. The light went out twice before he had the right department, and he had to put another token in the phone. But they had his particulars and the man at the other end was irritable. They had been given them that same morning, he said. Why inquire again? There was nothing new. No long-haul ship in. Maybe one would come, in a day or two. They had his number. He got them to repeat it, and found they had it wrong. He gave them the right one, and smiled grimly. Yoshi had told him just to wait. Keep to the plan and wait, he said. Well, it was on just such details — as with the derrick — that the best plan could come adrift. Check everything. He hung up and went back to his room. Now he could wait. Tomorrow; after 3 p.m.

A good sleep and a calm morning watch had cleared the captain’s mind, and he now knew what to do. The load to be picked up at Otaru was a broken cargo of canned tuna — 126 tons of it, salvage from a container ship, gone overboard and declared unfit for the Japanese market. The Russian Trade Mission had snapped up this bargain, for delivery in Murmansk. The crates had been reassembled on several hundred pallets, and were due to go in number one and number two holds.

This cargo, as a further reading of his orders confirmed, was ‘at captain’s discretion’. It was a late booking, and the Russians had squeezed a cheap rate. He decided he would exercise his discretion. A pity, but the fiddling job involved much crane work and would take hours; certainly three. Three hours gained. That left only an hour to dispose of. Not so bad. He would think of something.

He took what he needed from the medical chest, and went aft to inspect Ushiba. He unlocked the door of the heads, switched on the light, and relocked behind him. The man’s sweating face was going to and fro on the stretcher and his eyes fluttered dazedly in the light. He was quite secure, however; firmly pinioned; couldn’t hurt himself. It was hot in the tiny compartment and he was naked. The bosun had hosed him down a couple of times but the place still smelt very bad.

The captain held a handkerchief over his nose. ‘Ushiba, how do you feel, man?’ he asked nasally above the rumble of the engines.

Ushiba’s mouth opened and closed but only gurgling came out of it. He had been doing this for some hours. His lips had a white crust; probably from the rice water. It had stopped him vomiting, anyway. His colour was the same.

‘Ushiba, I’m going to give you another injection,’ the captain told him. ‘It’s very good for you.’

He tore open a new needle package and a vitamin ampoule. Ushiba jerked a little as the plunger went home. The book had recommended buttocks but the captain was not anxious to pick about Ushiba’s underparts: he chose a thigh.

‘There we are.’ A little blood, not much. He stuck a dressing on it. ‘Keep your spirits up! Bosun will be seeing to you soon.’

Bosun was at that minute seeing to Ushiba’s mattress, over the stern rail. Nobody was working there. He had scrubbed out the bunk with antiseptic, and now peeled off his rubber gloves and sent them after the mattress, into the Sea of Japan.

Before turning in, which he did very late again, the captain discussed final plans with the mate.

Otaru was not a busy port and would not need much advance warning. They would need some warning, of course. For one thing, he wanted a fast turnaround, and for another they had to be told that he was not picking up the tuna. Since the cargo had been specially assembled, and was waiting for him, this could cause irritation in Otaru, and quite possibly requests for confirmation, from the freight forwarders or the ship’s owners. This would not be a good idea.

A much better idea was to leave it to the last moment, a moment when Otaru would not be in a position to ask silly questions but would still have time to make the arrangements he wanted. The arrangements were only to dump his wool and take on oil. Two ship movements involved, it was true — for the refuelling dock was not a cargo dock — but quite possible to do it within a turnaround of two hours. And also possible, since he was expected anyway, for them to arrange it at three hours’ notice. This would mean radioing them at seven in the morning.

The mate agreed with the reasoning and the captain asked for a shake at 6.30, and at last got to his bunk. Two a.m. again.

But the anxious moments ahead robbed him of sleep, and his temper was not good when he spoke to the seven o’clock idiot at Otaru.

‘No loading. Just unloading,’ he barked. ‘And oiling. I want to discharge, oil, and leave by 1200 hours. Have you got that?’

‘Captain, you can’t discharge and oil at the same time.’

‘I know that! I’ll discharge first. I’ll discharge and then oil. And there’s one thing more. Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I want another deck hand.’

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to get another deck hand.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you understand all that? I want to discharge, oil, and board another deck hand. Are you there?’

‘Captain, I can’t get you a deck hand at seven in the morning.’

‘I don’t want one at seven in the morning. I want one when I get there!’ the captain howled. ‘You’ve got my ETA. Have you got my ETA? Hello — Otaru? My ETA is 1000. Please confirm my ETA. Otaru, can you hear me?’

This taped conversation, greatly enjoyed by the next shift, was subsequently ordered to be kept under lock and key; but that was for a Board of Inquiry and some time later.

Meanwhile the Suzaku Maru ploughed on, and at 0830 rounded the point and entered Ishikari Bay. Just a little later, peering through his glasses, the captain discerned the cranes of Otaru, and decided it was time to go below and have a look at Ushiba again. He invited the bosun to step below with him.

Ushiba, to the captain’s eye, looked much the same. His head was going to and fro and he was gurgling. The bosun thought he was worse. He said he was no longer keeping down the rice water, and he hadn’t slept. He had not been hosed much in the past few hours, but there was not much to hose. His strength was going, and without the rice water he probably needed more vitamins.

The captain made no comment, but he took a different view. It seemed to him (and he had it confirmed by the mate at the subsequent inquiry) that despite failing strength Ushiba was still too vocal. Better than a vitamin injection would be a sedative one. A sound sleep would do Ushiba more good than vitamins, particularly while being landed and stowed in an ambulance.

‘It was my honest opinion,’ he said. And he acted on it as they entered harbour. But he was back up on the bridge as they tied up, which was at 1000 hours precisely.

A hammering on the door woke Porter at half past ten in the morning. The proprietor had insisted on his sharing a bottle of cheap shochu the night before and his head was thick.

‘Phone for you — the port office,’ the man called hoarsely. He was cursing.

Porter scrambled down the stairs in his underpants. The phone was swinging in the passage.

‘Sung Won Choo?’

‘Yes.’

‘A ship needs a deck hand — long haul, through the Arctic, you interested?’

‘I might be. When is she in?’

‘She’s in. Half an hour ago.’

On time then. Bang on time. ‘What ship?’ he said.

‘Suzaku Maru, a tramp.’

‘A tramp. Well, I’ll think about it.’

‘There’s no time. If you want her, go right there — I’ll let them know. She’s sailing in ninety minutes.’

Sailing in ninety minutes? He couldn’t understand any of this but he went rapidly back upstairs. Give them less than an hour, was the plan. He’d barely have an hour. He took a shower, yelled for the proprietor to call a taxi, dressed, paid up and departed with his breakfast in his hand.

For an extra 250 yen the driver took him on to the dock, inquired for the berth and drove him right to it. The berth was vacant, and much confusion was going on in the wake of the ship’s apparently rapid departure. In the confusion it took time to discover where she was now. She was now evidently at an oiling wharf. But for another 250 yen, the driver said, he would take him there, too.

The oiling wharf was also in a state of confusion. Hoses throbbed as fuel was pumped into the Suzaku Maru. Everywhere hands were busy clearing up tufts of wool scattered from bales broken open in the hurried discharge. In the wheelhouse the captain anxiously watched. Almost 11.30 and no new hand had shown up yet. On the dockside he could see the ambulance, its doors open. He could just make out the ambulance men themselves, on the deck. Ushiba was on a stretcher there, in a patch of shade. He had been inserted into a pair of pyjamas and was now quite peaceful, eyes closed, a clean sheet tucked up under his chin. The ambulance men seemed unsatisfied about something. The captain drummed his fingers and looked at his watch.

On the deck the ambulance men were talking to the bosun.

‘He’s a funny colour for food poisoning,’ one of them said.

‘Isn’t he? It’s his liver. Masked by the booze, you see,’ the bosun explained. ‘Came back aboard pissed out of his mind and in the morning he was like this — shellfish.’

‘They don’t usually go to sleep, though.’

‘No, you’re right. He couldn’t. Throwing himself about. Captain thought the best thing was, give him a sedative.’

‘Well, that wasn’t the best thing. Hard to say what’s up with him now. Still, they’ll find out in hospital.’

‘Sure,’ the bosun said, and watched them lift the stretcher. He was still watching, from the rail, when the taxi drew up below. A Korean got out. Pigtail. Sloppy kitbag and case. Always trouble, Koreans. Late, lazy, lippy. This one was going to need gingering up.

‘Hoy! You!’ he yelled, as the man had the nerve to stop and look at the patient, actually start chatting with the ambulance men. ‘Get up here!’

The man came up the gangplank.

‘You the new hand? Sung?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re late. Dump your kit here and go up and see the mate, on the bridge. Look lively, now.’

The new hand went up to the bridge and saw the mate, who rapidly checked him out. Papers in order; had served with the line; knew the ships. He took him to the captain.

The captain had watched these proceedings with relief. He briefly catechised the new hand and got him to make his signature. A series of thumps had signalled the disconnection of the hoses. He signed for the oil, told the mate to cast off, heard the bawled orders to let go fore and aft, and took the ship out himself.

As the wharf slid away he reflected that in the confusion the ambulance men had not asked for Ushiba’s belongings; not even his papers. Without his papers it was not possible to say where he had been. Well, it wouldn’t interest them at the hospital where the man had been. They’d have their own procedures for finding out was wrong with him.

In due course.

His stuff could be sent back from Murmansk; perhaps Sweden; even Rotterdam. The owners would have to be informed, of course. He would radio them after putting on a bit of seaway. Quite a bit of seaway. He decided to put it on fast.

‘1315 hours. Cleared Ishikari Bay,’ reported the log. ‘Speed 12 knots. Heading 135°.’ North. Later he would have to go north-east. Much later still, with the Bering Strait behind him and Cape Dezhnev to be rounded, another correction would be needed. North by north-west.

19

Five days and 1300 miles out of Otaru, the bosun decided it was time to ginger up the new hand.

No definite signs of laziness had come out of him yet, and he hadn’t been caught late for watchkeeping. But he was lippy. He seemed to turn things over in his mind before carrying out an order. He had commented on the new mattress in his bunk; had asked questions about Ushiba. And he showed too much interest in the ship’s movements. All out of order for a new deckhand, and a Korean deckhand at that.

The bosun went briskly forward, rattled down the steps, and looked briefly into the fore ends.

‘Sung! Topside now. Look alive!’

He said it once only, and was waiting, in the lee of a container, out of the wind, as the man came up on deck, his eyes still puffy from sleep.

‘Now then, Sung. Ever greased a Takanawa?’

‘Not when I’m off watch,’ Sung said.

The bosun’s lip tightened. ‘You’re on again at night,’ he said, ‘when it’s dark. I want to see you do it now. Well be frosting up soon.’

So they would. Sakhalin and the Kuriles were well behind them. The Kamchatka peninsula had been passing for some hours on the port side.

‘Tomorrow afternoon,’ Sung suggested, ‘I will be on again. Then it will be light.’

‘And maybe iced up. Get your gear.’

The man gave his momentary stare, then shrugged and went below. But he was soon back, with his woollen hat and donkey jacket; also gauntlets, grease gun and chipper from the locker.

He went through the drill properly enough; first switching on the eleven-ton derrick’s electric motor. And standing back smartly as the dangerous thing kicked and the big arms shuddered round.

‘All right. Now manual,’ the bosun said.

‘Manual needs two men.’

‘Here I am,’ the bosun said, and winked. They could all work by the book. ‘Set her up for greasing.’

He watched as the man unhoused the equipment, and located and fitted it: brake lever and distance piece, reduction gear and turning assembly; all properly fitted. He gave him little help. Whatever the book said, the job could easily be done by one man in calm seas. Two men were needed only with pitching and slippery decks — one to revolve the cogs in turn and clamp home the bar brake, the other to get in with the grease gun. That was when the accidents occurred to arms and legs; and invariably to the grease man.

No grease was needed yet, and both of them knew it. No seas had been shipped and the dockyard grease was still thick. But the man did the job without comment; then took down the equipment, rehoused it, and stood and looked at him, pigtail flapping in the wind. ‘Any more?’ he said.

The bosun’s big hands itched at the Korean’s mulish stare.

‘Not now. When we get into some weather will be time. You can get below now.’

The man turned and went without a word, and the bosun’s hands itched again. With surly crewmen he was used to ruling with his fists. Break them quickly: it was always best and saved time in the end. With this one he knew the time would have to come soon.

Porter, returning to the fore ends, knew it too. He saw the other men watching him from their card game.

‘Bosun been riding you?’

‘Tried to get me greasing a derrick.’

‘Why, the bastard — they don’t need greasing yet.’

‘I know. Just got me at it.’

‘Watch yourself with bosun. Show him respect. That’s all he wants.’

‘Sure.’ He turned back into his bunk. There were no problems with the crew. He had soon established a reputation as a moody fellow, best left alone. Because of the two other Koreans aboard he had also established a prepared speech impediment. And because of his size nobody had mocked him for it. But his accent had passed with the Koreans anyway, and he was on reasonable terms with them all. He had dropped in bits of his background; had shown his photos, had looked at theirs. No; no problems with the crew.

But the bosun was something else.

The man didn’t like him. Obeying orders wouldn’t help. He would pile on the orders, give him every lousy job on the ship, until resentment showed, some spark of rebellion. Then bosun would use his fists, beat him into submission. And get him greasing the derrick. He remembered what Ichiko had told him about the derrick. Greasing the derrick was the most dangerous job. The bar-brake was hard to handle, couldn’t be left for a second; and on icy decks, the operator slithering, it could slip — with the grease man in among the cogs. Someone else would have to grease, some more experienced hand. He wouldn’t. So bosun’s first job would be to make him. Well, it had to be faced sooner or later, and sooner was better than later.

He turned over and drifted off to sleep. The dumb insolence had been designed to bring it sooner. Soon enough now the ice would come.

Two days later, five hundred miles north, the ice came.

Despite her economical rate, the ship had now chugged almost three thousand miles from warm Nagasaki into the approaching Arctic winter. From the Bering Strait, still some days off, a howling blast of wind and sleet had them pitching in heavy seas. Since early in the forenoon the hands had been securing the cargo. First down in the holds; then on deck, sliding about as they checked the container locks and cables.

They were warming themselves over mugs of coffee when the bulky figure peered down the companion way.

‘Sung! Matsuda! On top now. Smartly.’

The two men bundled up again and went on top. The bosun was waiting for them, hanging on by the gangway. ‘Derricks icing — get your gear. And start with number three. You’ll need harness, she’s pitching.’ He was already clutching a safety harness himself, and moved away at once.

Cursing, Matsuda led the way to the lockers. ‘The bastard derricks can be steamed off! Who needs them now?’ He had fallen foul of the bosun the day before. He was a little wizened fellow with a wall eye. Right away Sung knew he was not having him on brake. They got the gear and the harnesses and staggered slowly through the uproar of wind to the bosun. He had secured himself to a bollard amidships; number three derrick was close by.

‘Okay, hook up!’ The bosun had to shout above the wind. ‘Matsuda, you’re on brake!’

‘Bosun,’ Sung said. ‘I haven’t greased in these conditions.’

‘Good. Now you can learn.’

‘I’ll be better on brake. I’m stronger than Matsuda.’

‘Ah, strong man! No — you grease, strong man.’

Sung shook his head.

‘It’s an order,’ the bosun told him cheerfully.

Sung leaned over. ‘Fuck the order!’ he said into the bosun’s ear. ‘And fuck you.’

The bosun looked pleasurably at him, and then around, scenting the freezing wind. The lights were on in the wheelhouse and the wipers were going there. Behind the wipers he could see the mate looking down, and beyond him the dim shape of the wheelman.

‘Matsuda, go below for a while, I’ll call you,’ the bosun said, and began unhooking himself. ‘Step aft, Sung.’

Sung stepped aft, his heart beginning to thump. Aft, behind the wheelhouse, was where scores were settled, and he prepared himself to move fast. But they were still below the wheelhouse, and he was unprepared, as his head was jerked sharply back. The bosun had come swiftly on him, yanking his pigtail with one hand and smashing the other into his face. He went over backwards, his feet sliding, but was not allowed to hit deck. His pigtail was still held, and his face still being smashed, two, three, four times. Then, still shocked, his feet still scrabbling the icy deck, he was being swung round and dragged by the pigtail farther aft, before the bosun let go and fell on him.

The bull of a man landed with his knees, knocking the breath out of Sung’s body, the attack so sudden and so ferocious he was utterly stunned. He was still stunned as the bosun began pounding his head on the deck. His only thought was to get out from under, but with the bosun leaning his full weight forward he couldn’t move his body. He brought his hands up and went for the man’s eyes to get him to lean back, but the bosun evaded them easily and butted him for good measure. He felt the sharp crack in his nose, and knew his face was already running with blood, and through the shocked pain felt sudden raging anger as the bosun hawked and spat in his face. He had not been angry before. The fight had been coming, and he knew and accepted it. But now he was angry.

He clutched at the butting head as it came down again, and hugged it fiercely, using every atom of strength to draw it closer and closer until the bosun, straining, twisted his head to try and release it, and brought an ear within range, and Sung sank his teeth in it. He hung on tight and savaged the ear, shaking it from side to side, and heard the bosun swear; the man leaned sideways to ease the ear, and with the weight shifting on him, Sung came out from under.

He slithered fast on the icy deck and was on his knees, in a position now to go on top. But that was not his idea. The man had caught him — okay, he had relied on a sudden attack, and on his weight and toughness. What he had to learn was that with all his weight, with all his toughness, on level terms, or any other terms, he could never win. Never! That he was simply entitling himself to a hard time, and that this time would come to him not by any fluke or momentary disadvantage, but always, every time, whenever he chose to have it.

He had to explain this to the bosun, but his head felt scalped from the dragging and was splitting from the battering, so he thought he had better disable the man first. He let him stumble to his feet and begin his rush, and even backed and got his hands up to defend himself and swung one back to strike, and when the bosun swung himself, he nimbly sidestepped and used his greater agility to kick the bosun in the crotch. He kicked him as hard as he could, and when the man grunted and held himself, he chopped him in the neck and kicked his feet away, sending him crashing to the deck again. Then he jumped on him with both boots. Then he knelt beside the bosun.

‘Bosun,’ he said humbly. ‘Leave me alone. I’m a hard man. I fought many fights, very dirty, and I always win. Pick on me, and I’ll cripple you for life. You’ll never work again — I swear it. And I don’t want that. I’ve got my own problems. They say I’m maybe crazy. Okay, I’ve done crazy things and I’ve done time, it’s there in my papers. But it’s only when people pick on me. I can’t take that, bosun. You understand me?’

The bosun didn’t say if he understood him. He was crooning and gurgling in his throat as he held himself, his head down. This seemed to enrage Sung who took both of the bosun’s ears and shook them savagely, bringing the bull head up and staring into its eyes. ‘You no talk to me? Only spit in my face? Ah, you better fucking answer, man! I tell you, you better or I tear your fucking head off. You don’t treat me like shit! Understand? Understand me?’

The bosun’s head was shuttling so violently that his eyes were squinting. His mouth was still contracted in its painful crooning circle, but through it he grunted his understanding.

‘Well, that’s good. I’ve got things to say to you, bosun. Look, give me orders, make me work. It’s okay. I’ll do what I should. But something I don’t want to do, or I can’t do, you figure it out, and I don’t do that thing. Okay? Because you try to make me, I cripple you. I don’t care, see. Just don’t make me mad!’

The bosun was recovering slowly, and he shuffled himself into a sitting position. ‘Sung, you’re a crazy bastard,’ he said, ‘and you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ll break you.’

‘How you do that, bosun?’ He wasn’t sure if he was coming on too strong with the broken Japanese, and his impediment had slipped. But the general craziness was working, he could see. ‘You want to put me in irons, you want to lock me up? And explain why. Go to the captain, say, “Captain, this man too tough for me.” Or get help from the crew. What you need with that, bosun? Look — you beat me up, you mark my face, anyone can see. I didn’t mark your face. What I say? “Hey, I beat up the bosun”? Everyone laugh at me. I no say that. I no say anything. I just want you off my back.’

These arguments, he could see, were getting through to the bosun, who was slowly pulling himself together.

‘Sung,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be sorry for this. It’s a long voyage, and you’re going round the world. And you know what you’ll get out of it? You’ll get fuck-all. Not a yen. I’ll have every bit of pay docked. I’ll get you for one thing after another. See how you’ll like it, big boy.’

Sung stared at him and his eyes glowed. ‘You think about that, bosun. You think again, eh? You do that to me, I come wherever you are. I find you. I’m crazy? Okay, I put your eyes out. I break you up. I break your bones, your knees, your hands. You no step on a ship again. Say like now: I want to stamp on your balls, I do it. You walk bad for days. I don’t do that. But I give you something, so you remember, eh? Give me your hand, bosun.’

The bosun wouldn’t give him his hand so he jumped hard on the bosun’s thighs and as the man jerked in agony chopped his bull neck so that the head crashed back again on the deck.

‘Sit up, bosun. Give me a hand. Right hand.’

The bosun gave him his hand, and he carefully picked the little finger, and showed it to the bosun, and broke it. And then with the man gasping in agony he helped him to his feet.

‘Don’t ride me, bosun,’ he said simply. ‘I no hurt you any more. See what a face you gave me. I go below and show that face and everybody see. You beat me up — all right? Just rest your hand and remember. You do something to me I don’t like, I come and find you. Wherever you are, I come and find you!’

20

On the nineteenth of September the Suzaku Maru negotiated the Bering Strait, rounded Cape Dezhnev and radioed her arrival in Russian waters. The captain had his notification acknowledged, and set himself to wait in patience.

He regretted the loss of the tuna cargo for Murmansk and was hopeful that something might turn up at Green Cape. He thought it very likely. From radio traffic he knew that fish in the area had been plentiful. His refrigeration capacity was limited but if the stuff was boxed and ready-palleted he would lift it.

In the matter of instructions the Russians were not so much tardy as crafty. They waited till the last moment to catch you. They knew it would cost him nothing, except a few hours’ loading, to carry the stuff along to Murmansk. On the other hand, he knew that nothing else was going his way. All the Russian vessels were now going the other way, to the ice-free ports of the Pacific; his, certainly, was the last foreign ship of the season. He could wait.

His charts showed him at roughly three and a half days’ steaming from the mouth of the Kolyma river; which was where he suspected they would have the stuff sitting in barges. Foreign vessels were seldom allowed upriver to Green Cape itself; and crewmen were not allowed ashore at all. God alone knew what the Russians feared: that foreigners might seduce their citizens, tempt them to smuggle the gold and diamonds of the area. No. They were simply Russian: suspicious by nature, crafty.

That he had no cargo for Green Cape did not at all displease him. No trudging there and back up the Kolyma. He had been keeping close watch on the weather reports, and they were not good. The storms of the past few days had abated but in the frigid calm the icepack was spreading rapidly from the north. He wanted to be away and out of it, Murmansk well behind him, before the whole sea froze. They would know this in Green Cape. They wouldn’t delay long. They’d call him.

But by the next day, when he was again on watch, they still hadn’t called, and the captain hummed to himself. Cat and mouse. He was evidently supposed to call. Any fish you want carried? Nice price. Well, he wouldn’t. Let them call. It was growing colder and the wheelhouse windows were on permanent defrost. The new crewman, Sung, brought him up a flask.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Hot soup, captain.’

‘M’hm.’ He hadn’t asked for it but the man was showing willing, a welcome change from his surliness in the first few days. His face was badly marked, one eye black, the nose swollen, mouth cut about and puffy. The bosun had evidently taken him in hand. The captain had noticed the bosun sporting a bandaged finger himself and had tactfully refrained from inquiry; a too-enthusiastic collision with the Korean’s face, he saw. The bosun had to keep order his own way, and a heavy hand was sometimes needed with the scum they had aboard. The captain kept himself above it, preferring to regard them as criminal children — simple-minded ones, very often. This one was now gaping all about him, the view here much better than from deck.

‘First time north?’ the captain asked him gruffly.

‘First time, captain, first. Is it Siberia?’

‘Yes. Chukotka, this region.’

‘Near Murmansk?’

‘Three thousand miles near.’

He saw the fellow gaping again, but realised after a moment that he was doing it over his shoulder. ‘Look, captain, look! They’ve got aeroplanes!’

The captain turned and saw a small one rising above the ice strip at Cape Schmidta, now going astern on his port beam. He studied it through his glasses for a moment and as he turned away noticed with astonishment that the Korean was bending over the chart table; that he actually had the impertinence to be tracing with his finger the pencilled positions of their track. The captain had not long before added the last point reached: Cape Schmidta: 1648 hours.

‘All right. That’s enough,’ he said curtly, and watched the man go. Simple-minded idiot! He watched the plane a little longer, and commenced humming to himself again. From Cape Schmidta it was under 420 miles to the Kolyma. They had less than forty-eight hours to call him now.

Sung, going below, knew that he himself had less than four hours now. He didn’t know how much less. As well as Cape Schmidta he had seen Wrangel Island on the chart, directly north. When the cape and the island were in position, he had been told, there were 420 nautical miles to go to his destination. The time of arrival depended on their speed.

He sat down again to the letter he had been writing. He had left it open on the fore ends table, and saw from the grinning faces around that one of the Koreans must have read it out to them. The salutations and loving sentiments were exceedingly high-flown and imaginative. So was the account of his heroism in recent icy storms. He hadn’t mentioned being beaten up by the bosun. Now the storms were over and they were sailing seas no one else dared sail and going fast as the wind. He paused a little over the last words.

‘How fast we going?’ he said.

The man opposite hid his smile and listened for a moment to the engines. ‘The normal. Nine knots,’ he said.

‘Only nine?’ Sung said, disappointed, and wrote on.

Nine knots into 420 nautical miles came to just under forty-seven. Forty-seven hours to go. Or rather forty-seven hours from the last marked timing, which was 1648. It was now after 1730. He had less than three hours. He had less than two and a half. It would have to be at 2000; eight o’clock.

At eight o’clock he went to the heads and locked himself in. He unzipped his jeans and produced his penknife. The small bulge was in the waist of his long johns and he carefully unpicked the stitches. The capsule was wrapped in a tiny polythene envelope and he removed the envelope. To ensure complete and rapid ingestion he had been told to bite it; in which case it would take twenty hours to work, as it had with Ushiba. Ushiba’s dose had been much bigger, to secure a spectacular and unmistakable result. He wouldn’t be as ill as Ushiba, but he would be very ill indeed.

He put the capsule in his mouth and bit it. There was the faintest taste, vaguely clinical, and then it was gone. Twenty hours to wait; until 1600 tomorrow.

He didn’t relish the hours ahead. In particular he didn’t relish being in the hands of the bosun.

Between 1600 and 2000 the watches were split into two-hourly shifts, the first and second dog watches. Next day the captain took the second dog and came on at 1800, very fractious.

The ship was off Cape Shelagskiy and swinging wide, to stay well clear of Chaunskaya Bay. Some kind of military base was in there, at Pevek, and the Russians were suspicious — as ever — of anyone coming near it.

The mate handed over the ship and went below, and the captain stood at the chart table, humming. Still nothing from Green Cape. What the devil was up with them? He was barely twenty-two hours away. Either they had no fish, or they were playing games with him. Well, to hell with them! They could keep the fish. Or send it by air. Yes, very good, let them try that. He wouldn’t call, anyway.

He brought the ship’s head round after half an hour and kept distance with Ayon Island, steadying his course. No more compass changes now till after the Kolyma. He would sail right past. He wouldn’t stop now if they begged him.

The mate came hurriedly into the wheelhouse. ‘Captain,’ he said softly, and motioned him away from the helmsman, ‘there’s some trouble below.’

‘What is it?’

‘The new hand. Sung. He’s in a bad way.’

‘The bosun been at him again?’

‘No, no. He has a fever. He’s vomiting badly. In Ushiba’s bunk.’

The two men stared at each other, and the mate slowly nodded. ‘I think you’d better take a look at him,’ he said.

The captain went below. He found Sung being held by two men as he hung out of his bunk and vomited into a bucket.

‘Captain, sir!’ The bosun anxiously drew him aside and explained.

It seemed that Sung had tried to turn out for his watch, the first dog, but had kept falling over. The bosun, recalling that the man had somehow banged his head on the deck a few days ago, had thought this might be a delayed reaction and had told him to take a spell off. But then he had started being sick. ‘And shaking. And turning green,’ the bosun said, peering into the captain’s eyes.

‘How long has it been going on?’

‘Over two hours. First dog! At first I thought nothing of it. There didn’t seem any need to −’

‘Was it like this with — with —’

‘The same. Teeth rattling.’

The captain thought for a moment.

‘You destroyed the mattress?’

‘Mattress, cover, blanket, everything. All fresh, from the stores.’

‘And scrubbed out the bunk?’

‘With my own hands. Antiseptic. A whole bucket of it.’

‘Captain, captain!’

He was being called, hysterically. Sung was calling him.

‘All right, what is it? I’m here.’ The captain went and leaned over the bunk. He saw with dismay the complexion, the glassy rolling eyes, the chattering jaw. The man was gesturing wildly. ‘Send them away, captain! Only you! Only talk you. No one else — send them away!’

‘All right,’ the captain said, and told the men to step back.

‘And bosun! No bosun. Only you, captain!’

‘Very good. Leave us, bosun. What is it?’ the captain said. The man had gripped his arm, and with his other shaking hand was pointing to his face. His teeth were chattering so much, the captain had to bend closer. ‘Bosun marked me, captain. See my face. No leave me with bosun!’

‘All right.’

‘No with bosun — like Ushiba in heads! No like that, captain. No with bosun. He mark me again — mark me bad!’

‘All right. I’ll see to it,’ the captain said, chilled by the man’s extensive knowledge of Ushiba; evidently fore ends’ tattle.

‘Promise, captain! Promise you no leave me!’

‘I promise. I’ll see to you myself. Rest quietly now. I have to look into some matters.’

Which he certainly did. He went straight to his cabin and reached for the Mariner’s Medical Dictionary. The ominous symptoms told him nothing new, but he read through them all again most hungrily. The man would be having convulsions soon, and diarrhoea. He couldn’t be left where he was. It was the bunk. Antiseptic was no use against a virus. It might even have activated the virus. Water-borne v …. Whatever had activated it, Sung had now got it. It was the bunk; Ushiba’s bunk. But with Ushiba there had been the convenient haven of Otaru to dump him in. Where in this godforsaken waste of the Arctic was he to dump Sung?

For a moment the golden idea of dumping Sung in the Arctic glowed in his mind, but died immediately. Fore ends’ tattle … Somewhere in this waste there would be a medical station. He rumbled through his Notices to Mariners for the area. Longitude 170.

Pevek: sick bay facilities. Well, not there — a military base. He continued west through the consecutive sheets, longitudes 169 to 163, and found nothing — nothing at all to find in this desolate area — and came on 162, and the ultimate irony.

Tchersky: Hosp. & Isolation wing (Call Green Cape).

Call Green Cape! Which he had vowed not to call. Which he now would have to call. He looked at his watch, seven o’clock, and decided there was no point in calling them now. They would have closed down for the night. He was still twenty-one hours away. Morning would be time enough; before noon, anyway. That would still give them time to call him. And give him time to work a few things out.

21

At 2100 Sung was removed to the after heads, in convulsions but not yet diarrhoeic. He became diarrhoeic shortly after, and the captain hosed him down himself. The mate spelled him on the bridge during the night, which was a restless one, for he looked in on Sung every hour. The man looked bad. His head threshed on the stretcher, his teeth rattled, and he gurgled continuously. Also his deepening pigment seemed to show up the bruises more, which worried the captain. The bosun had volunteered twice to take charge, but the captain kept the key himself.

At eleven in the morning, still sleepless, he called Green Cape and received a cheery response.

‘Suzaku Maru, Suzaku Maru, hello! Good to hear you. Maybe we have something for you.’

The captain smiled grimly. Playing games after all. For certain they had something for him. And now they’d got him. His Russian was rudimentary but serviceable.

‘Green Cape, is good to hear you. I have something for you, too.’

‘For us? What for us, captain?’

‘I have a sick man aboard. I need assistance.’

‘What’s the sickness, captain?’

‘I think jaundice, I’m not sure.’

‘It’s not a problem. What’s your ETA?’

‘My ETA is 1600, repeat 1600.’

‘ETA 1600, good. Captain — you want a cargo?’

‘What’s the cargo?’

‘Maybe fish. Boxed and palleted.’

‘Salt or frozen?’

‘Maybe both. You want some?’

‘How much is there?’

‘Maybe not much. It depends.’

Of course it did. It depended on the rate.

‘Well, let’s see,’ the captain said.

‘For sure. We’ll see! Okay, captain.’

‘And my sick man?’

‘We’ll let you know.’

They’d let him know. At the last minute they’d let him know. It was their way. They certainly wouldn’t let him know before 1400.

At 1400 they let him know.

‘Suzaku Maru, Suzaku Maru! Green Cape here.’

‘Hello, Green Cape. Suzaku Maru.’

‘Captain, you are to stand off Ambarchik. A medical officer will board you there, okay?’

‘Stand off Ambarchik, okay,’ the captain repeated. ‘Where off Ambarchik?’

‘A boat will meet you at the point. You follow that boat, captain. We made all the arrangements, okay?’

‘Okay. Thank you, Green Cape.’

He knew Ambarchik well enough. He hadn’t made this passage for three or four years. Another one of the line’s ships had been doing it, the one they’d broken up a few months back. Still, he remembered the place. It stood at the eastern mouth of the river. Several mouths led out of the big messy estuary, but he recalled that this was where they liked to keep the fish, waiting in barges. It was waiting for him there now, he didn’t doubt it: they had ‘made the arrangements’ …

He now had to make some himself. He went below and let himself into the after heads.

By 1530 when a voice from the bridge reported they had the boat in sight, Sung was cleaned up and in the captain’s cabin. Rice water had abated the diarrhoea but an arrangement involving towels and a rubber blanket was still necessary. The man was snugly wrapped in blankets and the stretcher was on the cabin floor so the retaining straps were no longer required. He was lightly sedated, his head still moving restlessly, eyes open and glazed, some gurgling coming out of him. The captain had thought it unwise to put him out completely. In the case of Ushiba a fast exit from Japanese waters had been required. In this case the ship would be in Russian waters for days: time enough for them to stop him whenever they wanted. It was common sense to let them find out right away.

The boat led them round the point, and once they were in the estuary the captain changed places with the mate and took the ship in himself. He saw an old hand from Green Cape watching him through glasses in the boat, remembered him from years back, and returned his wave. And he nodded to himself as he saw where he had to pick up his buoy: half a mile offshore, near the first of the small islands. Four barges were strung together there, all laden. About a hundred tons, the captain estimated. The haggling would begin after they’d taken Sung off.

It was half an hour before the quarantine boat arrived, and he had the ladder out waiting. The medical officer, a bulky individual hugely wrapped in a dogskin coat and cap, came nimbly enough up the ladder, and the captain went down to meet him. To his surprise it was a woman and he led her down to his cabin, somewhat moody. He knew right away he had got a bad one here, haughty and officious, unlike the jovial rascals he knew from Green Cape. She looked down at Sung while divesting herself of her coat, irritably shaking off the captain’s efforts to help her.

‘How long has he been like this?’

The captain briefly outlined the duration and symptoms of Sung’s illness, omitting all mention of Ushiba.

‘Why is his face bruised?’

‘Seamen fight.’ The captain shrugged.

She looked at him sharply, and bent to Sung.

‘This is not jaundice,’ she said presently.

‘I thought the yellow —’

‘Jaundice is present, but this is not all. Have you kept specimens of his faeces?’

The captain admitted that he hadn’t, and by way of lightening the atmosphere remarked mildly that the process was continuous and that she might yet find some.

She looked sharply at him again.

‘The man is very ill. I will need more details. Show me his quarters.’

A purgatorial half hour began for the captain. The termagant examined not only Sung’s bunk, now bare again, but every inch of the fore ends, the galley and the heads. Fortunately the captain was the only Russian-speaker and he saw to it that nothing compromising came out of the crew.

But he observed with gloom that the light was going. The haggling over the fish had still to be gone through, by which time it would be too dark to load. He would have to stay overnight.

‘Very well,’ she said, back in the cabin. ‘I will take him to the isolation wing at Tchersky. I need his documents. Do you intend waiting for the results?’

‘How long — the results?’

‘Five days.’

‘No,’ the captain said.

‘Then I will take his belongings, also. They will need treatment, in any case. What is your destination, captain?’

‘Murmansk.’

‘I’ll contact them. Of course, if this is what I think, they won’t let you in. You understand that?’

‘Won’t let me in?’ the captain said.

‘It’s a highly infectious fever. You would be well advised to stay here until we can identify it.’

‘But the sea will freeze!’

‘Then go on, if you want. I can’t stop you. Or turn back.’

‘I have a ship full of cargo! I have to pick up more cargo here. For Murmansk.’

‘What cargo?’

‘Fish. Tons of it, out there in the barges.’

‘That’s quite impossible. I can’t allow it. You have fever on this ship.’

The captain felt himself unhingeing. He couldn’t pick up the fish. He couldn’t stay here for five days; he’d never get out at the other end. He couldn’t go back to Japan with a shipload of cargo for Murmansk. And they might not let him in to Murmansk.

‘Well, decide for yourself, captain. I have no power to prevent you, but I definitely prohibit the loading of any fish. Meanwhile, the first thing is to get this man off the ship.’

And this was the first thing that happened. Sung was loaded into the quarantine boat and taken upriver to Tchersky. And the captain, after frantic cogitation, arrived at a decision, and took it, fast.

1820. Ambarchik. Weighed & left. Speed 13 knots.

General direction, Murmansk.

22

Tchersky, four kilometres south of the river port of Green Cape, was the administrative capital for the Kolymsky district of north-east Siberia. Though small (population under 10,000) it had a sizeable hospital, the only fully equipped one for, an area the size of Holland and Denmark combined. The isolation wing was in use mainly during the brief mosquito-ridden summer, and it was empty when Porter was admitted on 23 September.

The hospital’s doctors were all specialists. General physicians, rare anywhere in the Russian Federation, were unknown in Siberia, and their function was supplied by a corps of feldshers — experienced paramedics. The senior ones, graded as medical officers, were each responsible for a particular area; and Medical Officer Komarova, who brought Porter to Tchersky, was responsible for the lower Kolyma including Ambarchik and the coastal strip.

At the hospital she registered her patient as a suspected case of yellow fever and he was assigned to Dr P. M. Gavrilov, a young specialist from St Petersburg. Dr Gavrilov had not before encountered a case of yellow fever but was soon aware, from his observation of the symptoms, that this might be the rare Java variety. This excited him. Very little existed in the literature on this form and he instituted a series of careful tests, meticulously noting the results.

Porter knew nothing about any of this. As the only occupant of the wing he was left to be ill in peace. Drip-fed, bed-bathed, and sedated as necessary, he was aware of very little for the first two days. But waking from a sound sleep on the third he found a woman doctor examining him.

‘Do you speak Russian?’ she said.

Her face was vaguely familiar.

‘little Russian,’ he said. ‘Little.’

‘I have no Korean or Japanese.’

‘Little Russian.’

‘You are in hospital. I brought you. You understand?’

‘Yes. Hospital,’ he said.

She looked him over for a while. A face mask was hanging loose round the neck of her white hospital coat. She felt his head, and he was aware that his pigtail was now up in a bun on top of it.

‘How you feel?’ she said, smiling suddenly.

It took him a moment to realise she had said it in English.

‘Okay,’ he said, and closed his eyes at once.

He must have babbled. He had tried to train himself in advance not to do this. He wondered what he had babbled.

‘You ill. Maybe you little better now.’ Again English.

He decided to keep his eyes shut and presently she went away. He thought about the English, but soon drifted off.

A male doctor came to see him. This man he didn’t recollect at all. The man also spoke to him in English, quite fluently.

‘I am Dr Gavrilov. How do you feel now?’

‘I don’t know how I feel. What happen here?’

‘You were brought in with a fever. This is Tchersky hospital. You don’t remember anything?’

‘Just — sick. How long I’m here?’

‘Three days now. I think you have been ill maybe four days, perhaps a little more. We can talk of it later. Is it hard for you, speaking English?’

‘When I speak English?’

‘A few words, in delirium. I couldn’t understand the Korean,’ Dr Gavrilov said, smiling.

‘Where my ship?’

‘Don’t worry about it. You’re very weak. Rest now.’

Next day he was off the drips and on light food, and the woman doctor came again.

‘Good. You’re much better,’ she told him in Russian.

‘What fever I have, doctor?’

‘We thought yellow fever, but it isn’t. Some other kind of virus.’

‘I can go?’

‘When you’re stronger. You’ve been very ill.’

‘But they wait for me on ship!’

‘The ship went.’

‘It went? All my things there!’

‘No, they’re here. We have them.’

‘Well — what happen to me?’

It was a good question, and it was to exercise the hospital authorities all that day and the next. The seaman was the first foreigner ever to be admitted as an in-patient to a hospital in the Kolymsky district. Normal patients, on recovery, went home. This one’s home was in Korea, some thousands of miles away. The Kolymsky district, which was anyway a restricted district, had no procedure for dealing with such a case. Presumably he could be flown to Vladivostok, or more likely Nakhodka which had a shipping service to Japan. Nakhodka would then have the problem of getting him home. But even getting him to Nakhodka was a problem.

Tchersky could not deal directly with Nakhodka, which was in another autonomous region. The matter would have to go through Yakutsk, the capital of Yakutia, which was Tchersky’s autonomous republic. Dealing with Yakutsk was a major headache at any time, but after a preliminary talk with the hospital’s director the medical officer was given to understand that an even bigger one was looming. In whisking the seaman off his ship, she had omitted to get a guarantee for his upkeep and future transportation. The matter had never arisen before. But Polar Aviation would want paying for taking him to Yakutsk, and Aeroflot for taking him to Nakhodka. At Nakhodka, they would want to know who was picking up the bill to Japan.

Obviously, the man’s employers were liable for all bills. But between liability and payment there was a hiatus; which Yakutsk would want closing before doing anything. This could take weeks. And meanwhile the man was causing the hospital grave problems. Although recovered he could not be moved out of the isolation wing. The area was banned to foreigners and it was impermissible for him to be placed in a general ward with other patients. He couldn’t be allowed the run of the hospital, and he couldn’t be allowed outside it.

In his frustration he was also creating considerable uproar himself. While ill his pigtail had been unpicked and disinfected. He wanted it regreased and replaited. He also wanted his moustache groomed. Above all he wanted to get out. And since, in his fury, he had lost what meagre command he had of Russian and English he had taken to bawling loudly at the staff in Korean; and when they didn’t answer, even more loudly in Japanese. The hospital director tried to explain that everything possible was being done to get him out; but it still took time to make him understand that they were trying to get him out to Japan. At this he almost went out of his mind.

‘No Japan! Ship! Ship!’

‘The ship has gone.’

‘Job on ship! Money. No Japan. Ship!’

‘But it isn’t here. The ship went.’

‘My job ship. Ship wait me.’

‘The ship didn’t wait for you. It went.’

‘Yes, went. Where he went?’

‘To Murmansk. It’s gone.’

‘Murmansk no gone! Wait. My job ship.’

Amid the gibberish the hospital director at last discerned the drift. the man seemed to think the ship would wait for him in Murmansk. But the ship had now been gone five days and would have left Murmansk. He didn’t bother explaining this. The medical officer, whose patient he was, seemed to have a better time with him so he thought she could explain it. But before informing her he checked on the ship himself. A call to Green Cape revealed that the Korean might not after all be out of his mind. The ship was a slow tramp whose upper speed would not have got it to Murmansk yet. A few minutes later the port called him back to say that the ship was still three days out of Murmansk.

He hung up with considerable elation. This put a new complexion on things. If the ship’s captain signed the bills, there was no need to worry about Yakutsk, Polar Aviation, Aeroflot or Nakhodka. And the captain would have to sign the bills, or he wouldn’t get out of Murmansk. A single call to the militia or the security service would fix everything. Then Komarova, who had signed the seaman in, could sign him out, the isolation wing could be closed down, the Korean would stop shouting at everyone in Korean, and they would be rid of him.

And this the following day all came about. Komarova handed her patient and his belongings over to the militia. The militia put him on Polar Aviation’s flight for Yakutsk. At Yakutsk he was escorted to the Aeroflot flight for Irkutsk and Murmansk. And at Murmansk, late at night, he was conveyed to the International Seamen’s Hostel and signed in as a transit visitor awaiting ship. Here he was given a locker and a bed; and after the long day slept most soundly.

Transit visitors at the hostel were not allowed ‘shore rights’ but as most of them were foreigners with hard currency this was never a problem. Five dollars was the recognised contribution for taking a breath of air, and taxis were always available at the end of the street. Since all passports were retained by the hostel, and there could be no question of absconding anywhere, the system worked well enough. It was usual for discreet taxi-loads of three to take the air together, and the taxis took them to the red light district.

Porter made up a threesome at eight the following evening. His Norwegian companions couldn’t understand him so at the first place they amicably agreed to split. There was no shortage of taxis in the red light area either, and he took one to the airport, again using dollars and taking his change in roubles and kopeks. With the kopeks he made three telephone calls, at precisely twelve-minute intervals. He allowed each one to ring twice, and then cut off. Then he made a fourth, and let it ring twelve times, when it was answered.

He said in Russian. ‘I am here.’

Murmansk was a major naval base and the airport was thronged with uniformed sailors. He watched quietly from a seat in the concourse and saw the man arrive thirty minutes later. The man had a sea-faring look himself; a solid, chunky individual dressed, like Porter, in donkey jacket, muffler and woolly hat. He carried a hefty grip. The plan, if no seat was available next to Porter, was to move elsewhere. But a seat was available, and the two men were soon in warm conversation. Then the new arrival asked Porter to watch his bag while he made a call and suggested that they meet in the Automat. Porter agreed and off the man went; and so presently did Porter, with the bag, following the arrow marked Toilets.

Familiar with the routine, since Otaru, he locked himself in and went swiftly to work. In the grip was a set of clothing, new documentation, a wallet and a toilet bag. He started with the toilet bag, taking out the towel and wrapping it round his neck, and then the scissors and the hand mirror. He cut off the pigtail at the roots, and dropped it in the bag, and then scissored away all over his head until it was down to the shortest fuzz he could manage. This too went from the towel into the bag. Then he lathered his scalp and his moustache with the liquid soap and started work with the razor.

He had been clean-shaven before but never totally bald, and the effect was startling. He wasted no time examining it but right away changed into his new clothing. This was handsome: winter-weight velvet cords, fine white woollen rolltop, a stylish fur-lined leather jacket, two-tone ankle boots, and a splendid bushy mink for his shaven head. Kolya (Nikolai) Khodyan was a snappy dresser. Dark snow glasses were in the top pocket of the jacket. He briefly tried the effect, and took them off again. Then he packed everything of Sung Won Choo’s in the bag, and went back with it to the concourse.

The seaman was in the Automat, by the samovars, at the busiest corner, as planned. Porter jostled his way through and got himself a glass, and they amicably exchanged a few words. Then the man picked up the bag, they nodded to each other in the scrum, and he was gone.

Porter remained a while, finishing his tea, and made his way to the left luggage office, fishing the receipt out of his new wallet. The two pieces awaiting him were every bit as opulent as the rest of Khodyan’s effects; a fine large Scandinavian case and a soft antelope grip. He took them over to the check-in desk.

In his breast pocket he had the sheaf of open-flight tickets. It took almost thirty minutes to get the stages of the journey booked, a computer being out of action at one of them. Then he handed in the case, and went and bought himself another glass of tea. The place was still swarming, flights still being called to take the fleet sailors to distant parts of the country.

But he was smoking in the lounge when, at midnight, the first of his own flights was called. This was to Irkutsk. At Irkutsk he changed for Yakutsk. At Yakutsk, in a blizzard, he made Polar Aviation again for Tchersky.

Three days after leaving it he was back. This was the second of October, just over a month after his arrival at Narita airport in Japan, and ten weeks since he had first heard of inaccessible and forbidden Green Cape. He now took a taxi there, and fifteen minutes later let himself into the apartment.