That’s what I figured would happen.
But it did not happen.
The submarine remained on the surface. The real truth, I saw, was that whatever was going on lay far beneath any surface that I knew. Zhou stood there, looking back, as the sub began turning in our direction.
I didn’t have any torpedoes with which to protect us this time. There wasn’t even a single deck gun on board.
“Shit,” said DeBlieu, and told the bridge to start us up again, head south again, full speed ahead in relatively clear seas, no point in hanging around waiting to see what Zhou intended. In fact, if he was going to fire, why leave the ship sitting broadside to him, fat and open?
I felt the icebreaker’s engines rev, felt us turning.
“Sweet Jesus,” said Marine Lance Corporal Frederick Fastbinder beside me at the handrail.
Waiting…
Waiting…
Then minutes later we got a message on our handheld radios, channel 13, required to be monitored on all vessels. Our ship radios were out.
“Captain Zhou wishes to escort you as far as the U.S. twelve-mile limit.”
“That will not be necessary,” I replied.
“Captain wishes me to say that you are in no danger. He would appreciate it if you might be so kind as to allow us to trail behind you, like one of your research vessels. We do not wish to encounter ice. Even small amounts might damage our hull. Please to not be alarmed. If you like, we can coordinate speeds. Again, we have no hostile intent.”
He wasn’t asking permission, I knew. He sounded like he was, but he was informing us, not making requests. There was no way for us to stop him.
“Hostile intent?” said Eddie. “This is a guy who threatened to kill us all yesterday.”
“My captain heard that and assures you that the situation is quite different now.”
“Different how?”
“The Montana has gone to the bottom. We are on a humanitarian mission.”
All fires on board were extinguished, and a vague smell of burned rubber drifted from the ship’s vents, and across deck, a dirty, infected odor, a whiff of destruction, enhancing the sense of near escape that worsened moment by moment, along with the growing sense of danger. The Wilmington steamed south, 300 more miles to Barrow, 288 miles to U.S. waters, seventeen hours minimum, if we could hold top speed, and the British-accented voice of the Chinese translator clear and bright, all of us aware that, thanks to Peter Del Grazo, there could be listening software anywhere on the ship. Zhou’s people might be riveted right now hearing any private talk between us.
Eddie said, “Fucking Del Grazo.”
Zhou repeated patiently that his intents were honorable, that he understood that we might not trust him.
I asked him what his intentions were exactly. Or rather, why he felt it necessary to escort us at all.
When he answered, when the stuffy British-sounding translator spoke next, Eddie turned bone white.
TWENTY-FOUR
I’ve come to believe that all human actions are explicable. Understand motivation and you can reconstruct an act. You may be horrified by it, you may be disgusted or appalled, but at least you see how it happened. The madman’s murders make twisted sense if you understand his delusion. The future acts of an Adolf Hitler might be predicted if you observe his unique twisted growth, his particular step-by-step path in life.
Now the Wilmington hit full speed in the iceless summer waters. Only now we had an escort, mile for mile. But even if Zhou submerged, his top speed would exceed ours. From the bridge, or on monitors, or from the fantail, anyone could follow the dark fin shape, frothing at the bow.
Zhou’s words to me were ice in my veins, as I recalled his answer to why he was staying close.
He had said, through his translator, that low voice clear over the handheld radio, “To help, if you need it.”
“Considering what happened earlier, that is hard to believe.”
After a hesitation, he said stiffly, “I’ve been instructed to tell you, in order to alleviate any concerns you may have, that in light of new developments there’s been an… adjustment of our policy.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Captain?”
“I’ve been instructed to tell you that there’s been a reappraisal on my end. I am ordered to make myself available to you should emergency assistance be required.”
“Oh, we’re friends now,” I said skeptically.
There was no answer, and then the voice said, devoid of emotion, “If it makes you feel better. Good luck.”
He clicked off. The radio buzzed with static. But that click didn’t mean Zhou couldn’t hear us.
“Hey, One,” Eddie said, “remember those vultures in Afghanistan. The way they’d appear magically, in the air, following guys, troops, Taliban, watching, circling. Those fucking carrion birds, just waiting for people to die.”
“I remember.”
“What’s he really been ordered to do, swoop in if we’re dying?”
On the monitor, from the aft camera, I could see the sub back there as a sort of luminescence, a frothy V-shape marking the forward-most progress of the black hull.
“Captain Zhou Dongfeng, everybody’s buddy,” said Eddie.
“There’s nothing we can do about him. There’s no one we can even tell about him. Let’s get back to work,” I said.
“Good luck,” Eddie repeated as we went cot to cot, taking temperatures, peering into eyes and throats, hoping the medicines had had an effect, seeing that they had not. “Good luck. Like he’s wishing us good luck?”
“Ever get the feeling he knows more than we do?”
“I get the feeling everyone knows more than we do.”
“It’s goddamn creepy, having him back there. Maybe he doesn’t know the long-range is out. Maybe he’s waiting for us to send a general SOS. Then he swoops in and boards the Wilmington. He’s got the ship. He’s got,” I said, “the film.” I stopped. My left eye was hurting. “It can’t be the film, can it?”
“Give me a break, man. It’s a hundred years old. Forget the film. We can’t even see the first part of it. What I can’t figure is, why does Zhou stay on the surface? Why advertise that he’s here? He’d be safer submerged, from the ice, from Washington seeing him on satellite, from someone at the Pentagon deciding he’s aggressive.”
The throb in my left eye spread to my temple. “Plus,” I said, “if Del Grazo planted listening devices aboard, he could monitor us remotely. Like those hackers who broke into the Defense Department, or the banks. Hell, those guys were on other continents.”
Eddie blew out air, turning possibilities over in his mind as we moved between patients. “I read this article in Time magazine. About bad guys driving around suburban neighborhoods, and they can see what’s going on inside homes ’cause they hijacked the owner’s webcam. It’s called drive-by programs. They hack in, or you click on an infected website — and then they access you remotely whenever they want, use your own mike to listen to you argue with your wife about money, activate your webcams to watch your daughter get undressed as they jerk off. Anyone can buy this shit at spy stores, and God knows what the really sophisticated stuff that governments have can do.”