The Tourist Trail (12 page)

In the end, that was why he started the engine and began to scrape his way back through the ice, forcing open a passage a few feet at time. To return alone, if he returned at all, would be his purgatory, a fitting punishment, exactly what he deserved. Eventually the cracks began to give way to rivers, then to slush, then to open water, as if the ice were spitting him back out into the ocean.

The blue sky had been replaced by high clouds, and the wind pushed the waves nearly seven feet high. Perhaps he would drown after all, he thought, and he began to welcome the idea all over again. Even if he did make it a hundred or so miles south of the ice cap, finding Svalbard would be no easy task. If he veered off only a few degrees in either direction, he would be out of fuel in the middle of the Polar Sea.

When he saw a plume of spray in the distance, just above the water, his ice-numbed mind focused on it, and he was surprised that with this sudden hope, his instinct to live was stronger than his desire to die.

But as he drew closer to the source, he saw a flipper slice the surface of the water and realized it wasn't another Zodiac but a whale. As he watched it—a humpback, as Noa had taught him—he grew so mesmerized by its graceful meandering that he began to trail after it, following its long pectoral fins, their jagged edges breaching the water every now and then.

As Aeneas had once said, the whale was the only mammal that had emerged from the sea at one point in time, took a look around, and went back. And in that moment, Robert felt as though he, too, was turning his back on dry land forever.

He followed the whale until he could no longer see it through the ice on his eyelashes, until his frozen hands could no longer control the Zodiac. He didn't remember losing consciousness; he only remembered waking much later, a Zodiac pulling up next to his, the crew of a tourist vessel helping him up, ushering him on board. A hot shower, a doctor, a private cabin.

He returned to the States, his mission a failure, as many missions were; agents learned to get past them and move on.

But Robert knew his failures went far beyond the mission, and there was no one he could tell. Aeneas, he learned, had survived; months later, the CDA announced a new mission, this one to Japan.

For more than a year, Robert looked for news about Noa—anything. She was no longer a part of the CDA, but she didn't seem to be a part of any other organization either. There was no announcement of her death, no obituary—but Robert also knew that if she'd died on the ice, Aeneas would not want the bad publicity. His crew members, as he'd always said, came second to the cause, and no matter what happened, the CDA would persevere.

In Puerto Madryn, while most of the passengers were off at Punta Verde taking pictures of penguins, Ethan was in his stateroom lacing his shoes. He needed to take a jog, to clear his head, to get back to his old rituals. He needed to prepare for a life without Annie.

He'd been on the ship for more than ten days, and Annie had not shown up. And Ethan had not seen the
Arctic Tern
at any of their ports of call. Despite this, his mind had been relentlessly occupied with Annie, and he was now making an effort to empty the cache. He had to, if he was ever going to move on. He stopped checking email, stopping using the search engines. He picked up a book on programming to give his mind something else to process.

There were still two hours before the ship was scheduled to leave. He didn't bother with stretching. He was anxious to escape the masses of people milling about on the pier, browsing the tourist stalls. He swiped his I.D. card and began jogging down the gangplank. The street was an obstacle course of tourists—cameras, a child on a leash screaming wildly, strollers, pedicabs, bicycles. Two miles later, Ethan reached the end of the Puerto Madryn harbor, stopped, and turned around. Even from a distance, the cruise ship loomed over the harbor. The thought of boarding it again made him cringe.

He made his way back to the ship, unintentionally scanning the face of every young woman he passed. As he neared the ship he began dodging people again. It wasn't just the passengers lining the sidewalk but people walking dogs, riding skateboards. It reminded him of the coastline back home—wherever water joined land, it seemed, humans fled toward it, as if there were some inexorable pull toward the water's edge.

Or maybe, Ethan wondered, it wasn't that people were drawn toward the water but that the water was holding them in. After all, they reached the edge, then stopped. At least, most people did.

Ethan's mind drifted back to a frigid day in January, when he was thirteen and his dad had taken him to the St. Louis riverfront. The wind off the water was brutal, but he'd been young enough not to care. Back then, the riverfront was little more than cobblestones and mud, along with the skeleton of a tug boat that had sunk a long time ago. Ethan used to scan the shoreline for gold doubloons, remnants of the old riverboats that went down regularly in the 1800s. The old Eads bridge stretched overhead, thick with brown stones and rusting iron. Casinos and condos were a good thirty years away still.

That day, Ethan noticed an old lady in a black overcoat and purse walking slowly to the water's edge. But this lady did not stop. Ethan watched her descend into the water as if walking down a flight of stairs, until her coat floated up around her like a lily pad. She continued down the stairs until her head disappeared in the brown water. Ethan looked over at his dad, who had just realized what was happening. His father ran into the water, dove down after her, and pulled her ashore.

People emerged from cars and the steps of the Gateway Arch. The lady was crying and shivering. The ambulance driver gave his dad a blue blanket with a red cross on it that ended up in their family room. His dad's picture was in the paper the next day.

It turned out that the lady had lost her husband three months before and was trying to join him. Ethan spent days and months wondering how she overcame her body's instincts to stay safe and warm and dry. How she stepped into that water so casually and with such purpose. He never had more respect for his father than that day—his father having thrown himself into the water to save an old lady, without hesitation, without fear. Yet it was the lady herself Ethan could not stop thinking about. The way she'd just kept going.

Now, his t-shirt drenched with sweat, Ethan approached the
Emperor of the Seas
. The lines to reboard were so long that he walked along the pier to stretch. He noticed a much smaller ship docked at the far end of the pier, a ship that seemed familiar. As he looked more closely, he felt his pulse quicken, as if he were still running.

He had seen this ship before. In the magazine Annie had left behind. Its picture on Web sites and brochures and news articles. Ethan had tracked it for months over the Internet but had never seen it in person.

The
Arctic Tern
. A three-story ship painted white. Antennas all over, like thorns from a cactus. A quietly spinning radar dish. A blue-and-white mural of a whale on each side. And a long ramp that reached down to him, inviting him in. People his age and younger rushed up and down the ramp, ferrying boxes and plastic cartons of vegetables. It was a chaotic scene, as if they were trying to beat a deadline.

He looked for Annie. She was not on the pier, nor on any part of the deck he could see. But there was so much he couldn't see. He would have to go inside. There was no such thing as randomness in computers, no such thing as luck—but life was a different matter. Was this where luck ended and destiny began?

Ethan picked up a crate of potatoes. He took a first step, without hesitation, without fear. Then another. His mind flashed back to that day on the banks of the Mississippi. Up the ramp he walked. Onto the deck. Into the ship. With purpose, like that old lady, like his father.

He just kept going.

Sometimes I stumble into history

the way a small animal, a rabbit or a fox,

stumbles into a passing car's beam of light.

Sometimes I am the driver.

— Yehuda Amichai

The waves came to her in a dream. She felt her body, buoyant and lithe, pulled over them, floating just above the water, like a wandering albatross, her wings spread wide. Then she felt herself lifted up high on a burst of air until she was riding in the crow's nest of an ancient schooner. Dark clouds obscured the sky and sank so low she could almost touch them. She looked down and watched waves breaching the deck of her boat, until it was consumed entirely, the mast disappearing into black water. Penguins porpoised over the waves surrounding her, hundreds of them, circling in formation. She could feel them watching her. She wanted to dive in, to follow them to wherever they went when they left her shores. She was not afraid of the darkness, not afraid of drowning. She was ready to be with them, at last in their world, just below the water line.

When Angela opened her eyes, she was in a dark room, alone in a single bed. She turned her head to the side. The bed across the narrow aisle was empty, the sheets twisted in knots, remnants of her first night aboard. The night before, Aeneas had paraded her through the ship's hallways, lined with crew members greeting him like a hero returned from battle. Angela felt like Aeneas's trophy, or his captive; all eyes were upon her, curious and probing. Back at Punta Verde, she'd always dressed to blend into the landscape; here, there was no blending in. As she watched the crew members study her, she realized how difficult it would be to fit into shoes that she'd rarely worn—she wasn't accustomed to the role of girlfriend or lover, let alone the girlfriend or lover of an eco-terrorist. And yet by association she had now become one of them—an activist and a pirate, on a wave-tossed descent to the bottom of the planet.

They had lingered in the galley after dinner, celebrating Aeneas's return over glasses of vodka. Angela sat next to D. J., the second mate and ship navigator. A clean-cut man in his thirties, he spoke quietly about coordinates and dates, and Aeneas assured him they would make up for lost time.

But it clearly wasn't meant to be a working evening. By his third glass of vodka, Aeneas's voice and mannerisms amplified; he grew more animated, holding up his penguin-scarred hands up for all to see, standing to recite a poem:

Will ye come down the water-side,

To see the fishes sweetly glide

Beneath the hazels spreading wide,

And the moon that shines full clearly.

As his words segued into song, members of the crew joined in, as if this were a longtime family ritual. Eventually the entire room echoed with melancholy voices, and Angela was the only silent one, made even more self-conscious by Aeneas's eyes on her as he sang.

While waters wimple to the sea,

While day blinks in the sky so high,

Till clay-cold death shall blind my eye,

Ye I shall be thy dearie.

Song had followed song until the bottle was empty, and Aeneas led her again through the maze of narrow hallways, rooms, and stairways to his cabin—to
their
cabin, he called it.

“I don't even know your real name,” Angela said.

“It's Neil Cameron,” he replied. “But few of us go by our real names, particularly those of us with names on wanted lists. It's safer that way, for everyone.”

“What about my name?”

“How about we call you
Pingüina
?”

Just then she'd wondered what she'd gotten herself into, and the fear must have shown in her eyes because Aeneas pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “Don't worry,” he said. “You are safe here, and I am not leaving you. We're a team.”

When he kissed her, she could forget the chaos and doubts of the last twelve hours, the momentary panic attacks about having abandoned her one and only career. His lips were warm and they relaxed her, and she had not felt relaxed for many years. How could she when a half million penguins needed to be protected? How could she waste a moment on a kiss when there was tagging to be done, data to gather? The few old friends who visited her at Punta Verde used to tell her how they envied her simple life, as if it were a vacation. But not once in her fifteen years at Punta Verde had she ever taken time off to read a book or spend the day in town or sleep in. Maybe if she had, she wouldn't be here now.

The bed was small, but they made the most of it. His back against the wall, sideways across the bed, feet propped against the other bed across the aisle. Her straddling him. Their noises camouflaged by the engine below. The movement of the ship bringing them together, then apart, then together again, in a slow rocking unison that made her forget everything else.

But this morning, the waves were no longer so generous. Angela sat up and looked out the small window and saw a clear sky, wind-blown waves—no land. Suddenly the boat dropped beneath her, and she fell back into bed and pressed her eyes shut.

Humans may have come from the sea, Angela reflected, but that was a long time ago, and bodies have a short-term memory. It wasn't her first time on open ocean, and she knew her body would resist the motion, in vain, before finally adapting. But this time, it was not only her body that would have to adapt. She found herself listening for the sound of penguins calling out to one another, for the gentle scratching of wings against the floor below her feet, for the steady drumbeat of wind against the single-paned window of her trailer. Now she could hear only the straining roar of the ship's engine somewhere far below.

She stood, uneasily at first, and emerged from her room, arms held up to brace herself against the door frame. She squeezed past a large cluttered map table and an array of radios and terminals. Maps carpeted the linoleum floor. She stepped over them and through a doorway, them pulled herself up a flight of stairs to the bridge.

In the middle of the room was a chest-high control console, and to its left stood Aeneas, his face pressed to the glass. He seemed lost in the tempest of white-capped waves ahead of him.

D. J. stood behind the controls at the wheel. To his right, another crew member, a young man wearing a baseball cap and a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on the back of his neck, studied a radar screen. Angela considered introducing herself, but she didn't want to break their concentration.

“Steady one five,” Aeneas mumbled.

D. J. repeated the command rapid-fire, hands loose on the small wooden wheel, so tiny in comparison to the ship that it looked almost ornamental.

Angela took a few tentative steps toward Aeneas, not wanting to disrupt the quiet, the sense of peace that filled this warm windowed room overlooking a wild sea. “Morning,” she said softly.

Aeneas turned and winked. He did not make a move toward her, so she followed his lead and stayed where she was.

“We're well into the Drake Passage now,” he said. “You're holding up pretty well.”

“It's not my first time across.”

“Oh, yes. I forgot. You were once the entertainment on a cruise ship.”

“They use the term ‘naturalist.'”

“Of course they do.” He arched his eyebrows, and she couldn't help but smile back. She approached the window so she could stand next to him, her left arm touching his right. They looked out over the madness of water, and as sheets of rain began to pelt the windows, she wanted to hold his hand, to reach out and stroke the soft skin of his neck, but she did not. This was his place of work, his office, and she was only a visitor.

Aeneas mumbled something, and his mumble was echoed by D. J. Angela realized then that these two were more like a married couple than she and Aeneas were—they were the ones who spoke a secret language, who read each other's minds.

Aeneas reached into one of the bulging pockets of his jacket and pulled out a Blow Pop. He offered it to her, and she shook her head. “One of our supporters works at this company,” he said as he unwrapped it. “Sends us a case of them before every trip. Lauren won't touch them because she doesn't believe they're vegan.”

“Are they?”

“Of course.”

“Who's Lauren?” Angela asked.

His eyes scanned the horizon, binoculars in one hand, Blow Pop stick in the other. She wasn't sure whether he hadn't heard her or whether he'd ignored her. For the first time it occurred to her that he now had the advantage that she'd so comfortably held on land. Now he was back in his element, and she was as lost on his turf as he'd been on hers.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Icebergs. It's premature, probably, but I prefer that we see them before we hear them.” His eyes remained focused on the outside.

Angela felt hunger growing within her and asked, “Have you eaten already?”

“I don't eat breakfast. But there's food in the galley.” He glanced down at her, as if just remembering that she was new to the ship. “Want me to show you the way?”

“I can find it. Better that I get lost than we hit an iceberg.”

She slid open the door and exited the bridge, where a burst of cold air slapped her fully awake. She stood at the rail for a few moments, watching the waves, catching the eye of a wandering albatross gliding past. It had been years since she last made this passage, and seeing the albatross felt like greeting an old companion.

She climbed down the stairs, back into the ship. She could hear music playing in the cabins as she passed, young voices talking and laughing. It reminded her of a college dormitory, and she felt stuck on the outside looking in, as she always had back in school. Those awkward years were nothing she wanted to repeat, but the feelings were still so vivid, those situations in which she'd always existed on the periphery.

In junior high, she'd lost herself in books, in backyards climbing trees. Most afternoons she hiked through a small patch of woods near her house, surrounded by industrial parks and divided by railroad tracks. She was too stubborn to worry about the risks of a young girl alone in the trees. She was invisible there, watching the older kids smoking pot in a clearing, imaging herself climbing aboard the trains that passed. While other kids were memorizing their lines for
Arsenic and Old Lace
or tossing a basketball around a humid gymnasium, she was watching squirrels bark at one another and hide acorns under leaves, or sometimes just pretending to hide things, to throw the squirrels off. She had watched the birds, learned their names and voices: the cardinals calling to one another with their unmistakably sharp lyrics; the blue jays gathering on the tree limbs to harass a migratory Swainson's hawk, nipping at its feet in flight. Now, looking back, it was clear that she'd been on a path to becoming a naturalist. Perhaps if she'd had a boyfriend in school, he may have distracted her from her journey. But she was too busy nursing chicks that had fallen from nests back to health.

She passed by the closed cabin doors and found her way to the galley, a cramped room with four tables of various makes and sizes, each half-occupied. She felt eyes upon her as she navigated between the tables to a stainless steel counter that held what looked like breakfast. A man stood behind it, preparing coffee. “Hello, Angela,” he said.

She recognized the face and smiled, wishing she could remember the name that went along with it.

“Garrett,” he reminded her. “The chef.”

“Yes, right.”

“We've got pumpkin scones, Tofurkey sausages, the usual fruits and cereals. There is always plenty of everything when we're in the Drake Passage, so many of the crew forgetting to take their meclizine tablets.”

A tall blond woman brushed up against Angela and reached for an apple. Angela took a step back and offered her hand. “Pardon me. I'm Angela.”

“I know who you are,” the woman said, without looking up. She grabbed her scone and left. Angela turned to Garrett with a quizzical look.

“That's Lauren,” he said. “Not exactly the warm and fuzzy type.”

“What does she do?”

“Keeps the ship fueled, running, on time. We're off schedule, incidentally, which she's none too happy about.”

“And I'm the reason why.”

“Please. We've
never
been on schedule. Not with Aeneas at the helm. Every day's an adventure with our dear captain.”

Garrett guided Angela around the room, stopping at each table and offering up names, too many to memorize. She focused on three at a time, the friendliest faces so far: Maggie, Hedley, Ben. Maggie, young and fresh-faced, wore a wrinkled CDA t-shirt. Hedley looked his role as first engineer his long hair dirty and frayed as if from long hours in the engine room. Ben seemed to have more tattoos than skin to hold them; flames crawled up his neck and circled his ears.

Angela sat down next to Hedley with a scone and a mug of coffee, listening to the group banter over who clogged the toilet next to the meeting room, over why Maggie hadn't been in her bunk earlier that morning. And then Angela's mind returned to Lauren, to that stoic Roman face, devoid of emotional crevices and flaws, and she wondered how Lauren fit into the social structure of this mostly volunteer crew. Angela realized that this ship likely suffered from many of the same dynamics of her research base, and she wondered whether she'd simply traded a soap opera on land for one at sea.

“Is there a restroom on this level?” Angela asked.

“Down the hallway, on the left,” Maggie said.

Angela thanked her and stood. “I think those waves are taking their toll after all.”

“Or Garrett's cooking,” Ben said.

They laughed, and Angela left, her breakfast uneaten. She didn't feel seasick; she simply needed to get out of there. She walked to the end of the hall, down a flight a stairs and then another, until there was nowhere else to go. The hallway was uncarpeted and dimly lit. She saw a room marked
Storage
and entered. The room, piled high with boxes, was lit by a tiny porthole. She approached the window and felt at first as if she were looking into a washing machine, eye level with the white tips of waves, dousing the glass, leaving streaks behind only to be erased again by the next wave.