At Green Cape many inquiries were continuing.
Ponomarenko turned up and was soon appearing about town, with a variety of explanations. As was Lydia Yakovlevna, with a black eye.
At the Tchersky Transport Company the inquiry into missing parts continued for weeks, ending with a new set of rules for the disposal of dismantled vehicles. Too many of them had been found about the works, and the removal of parts without signed authority was now strictly forbidden.
In these weeks Vassili relaxed and his wife also relaxed, for she knew he was no longer worried. He whistled a bit, and winked, and she thought he was himself again. And this was true, for he was. Some small problems still lay ahead, relating to his deficit book, but these were familiar and unimportant ones, very minor. The one that had darkened him had gone. For though the Chukchee had used him, he had not let him down, and his faith in the man was restored.
At Murmansk there was the question of a missing seaman.
Two Norwegians, who had been in transit with him at the International Seamen’s Hostel, thought he had gone to the red light district. A trawl of the girls there turned up nothing; and the arrival of his ship, some days later, produced no other evidence.
The man had not left with the ship, and he couldn’t have left any other way, for his passport, his papers, his belongings, all were still at the hostel. These the police retained for three months in case he turned up floating in a dock. But when he didn’t (and in the current crime wave there had been many permanent disappearances) marine agents were advised that his possessions could be sent, not at Murmansk’s expense, to the ship’s owners at Nagasaki.
At Nagasaki the Suzaku Maru, after circumnavigating the globe, was again in dock.
She had arrived, like her sister ship of the preceding year, on Christmas Day — at roughly the time that Porter had crossed the Bering Strait. At various points on his voyage home the captain had learned he would be facing a Board of Inquiry relating to some events at Otaru. These events he and the mate now had in good order, and the two officers appeared before the Board and explained them.
Seaman Ushiba’s illness had seemed just serious enough for an extra hand to be shipped in order to spare the patient deck duties. This the captain had set in hand, as Otaru radio station could confirm. At Otaru, Ushiba’s condition had necessitated sedation and prompt medical care, and he had ordered an ambulance. Adverse weather reports had also impelled him to seek an early departure, forgoing a lucrative cargo of tuna — a commercial loss but necessary for the good of the ship and the voyage.
When, in the Arctic, the new hand too had become ill, he had stopped off the mouth of the Kolyma for medical assistance. The man had been removed to hospital, the ship allowed to proceed, and at Murmansk he had signed bills for the man’s expenses. This was all he knew. He had acted throughout with prudence and good sense. He hoped the Board would recognise it.
This the Board did, and another inquiry was completed.
With all his bills signed, the Korean seaman was of no further interest to Tchersky Health Authority. However, a note at last arrived from Murmansk acknowledging receipt of his discharge from the Kolymsky region. It pointed out that since no application had yet been made for the man to board a ship, it was presumed other arrangements had been made and he had flown home. If this was the case Murmansk had no need to hold his papers and, unless specifically requested, would not do so.
At the medical centre this bureaucratic confusion caused no surprise. But since the man was unlikely to worry them again, it was decided his papers need not clutter up Tchersky’s either, and they were destroyed.
No record now remained in the Kolymsky region of a sullen Korean seaman, nor any connection, if there had ever been one, with a cheerful Chukchee who had driven to Tcherny Vodi.
At Tcherny Vodi the new year was sombre.
Before January was out a small coffin was taken for cremation (the last of the ape programme); and weeks later a larger one. The Administrator of the Buro was advised that the Director’s personal effects and his ashes need not be sent, for there was no one to send them to. Under a new Director the programme would resume, for Moscow still held all records.
In Oxford, Lazenby, without knowledge either of the Korean seaman or the Chukchee driver, was thinking of a third character.
His mind had been led in that direction by Miss Sonntag, whose farewell party he had just attended. Her departure had been planned for June (for she was now nearing sixty-five) and a successor already chosen. But her sister Sonya had fallen ill and needed attention, and now, after Easter, she would not be returning.
At the party they had reminisced a little and she had reminded him, slightly flushed over her second glass of sherry, of the day they had rummaged together through a bin and found only cigarette papers.
He thought of these papers on his solitary walk home and of what had come of them; and of an interrupted fishing trip on the Spey and what had come of that. A grotesque few days … and a grotesque individual met in the course of them. He remembered very little of him. An austere staring face; a face on a totem pole. As at that village. The one with the odd name — what was it now …?
Kispiox; Easter.
And for Jean-Baptiste Porteur, one further journey.
Anchorage had released the body two months before, with the coroner’s verdict amended from ‘unlawful killing’ to ‘death by misadventure’. For a misadventure it was. The deceased had strayed in fog, and in the same fog units involved in a military exercise had also strayed.
The Russians had made handsome apology, and offered handsome amends, with only a simple condition. No compensation could be paid, naturally, until the identity of the deceased had been discovered. But the identity of the deceased had not been discovered …
For the journey to Kispiox, Walters had been in attendance. He had flown with his burden to Hazelton, in the specially-adapted plane, and then had sat silently in the long, sombre vehicle on the slow drive to Kispiox. There he remained for some hours before returning to Langley, where he discussed the matter with the keeper of Lives.
‘Well,’ W. Murray Hendricks said, gazing down at the file before him, ‘it looks to me as if we got away with it.’
‘I’m sure we did,’ Walters said. ‘Nobody special was there, and nobody has been there. No visitors of any kind. They’re in the dark — totally.’
Two months before, at the funeral in Anchorage, special visitors had been present, visitors from the Russian consulate, to convey their government’s regret at the sad accident — and to examine the other mourners. But apart from the grave diggers and a Unitarian minister there had been no other mourners, only two reporters to record the burial of the unknown man; and Walters, watching from a window above the chapel.
‘How is he now?’ asked Hendricks.
‘Coming along. You can’t see a lot of change.’
‘He’s surely changed since you saw him at Anchorage!’
‘Oh, since Anchorage —’ When Walters had seen him at Anchorage — a glimpse only in the private intensive care room — Porter had been connected up to machines and swathed from head to foot in bandages. Walters had not, then, flown directly to Anchorage but to Elmendorf Air Force Base, a few miles away. The air base also had a hospital − without the full surgical facilities of the Providence but with some other facilities, less orthodox. A corpse had been flown in there, of another noncaucasian male, unknown, unclaimed, a road accident victim; a boon for Langley. For it had been decided that Porter’s body, dead or alive, should not remain in civilian jurisdiction, but be removed to a more secure kind. From Elmendorf medical personnel had visited to examine the patient, and the order of his wrappings.