The Tourist Trail (16 page)

Angela stood on the fore deck and braced herself against a biting headwind. The sting of the cold air on her face reminded her of where she was, whipping her skin, as if to wake her up—to rouse her from the dream world she'd succumbed to when she first decided to follow Aeneas onto his ship.

Their relationship was nothing more than an illusion, she realized: When Aeneas had landed on her shore, drenched and helpless, she'd projected onto him the vision of the man she wanted, someone dependable and safe. He was none of these things, yet she told herself that maybe be could be—that maybe her gentle voice would help him sleep, instead of the liquor he turned to every night. That her body would make him forget about all other bodies, past present and future. That her dreams would become his dreams. It was all selfish, of course, and naive. Illusions always were.

Now the illusion was gone, and she faced an interminable trip with a man she recognized less and less with each passing day. She loved him, and probably always would—but she used to hope that once the whales were safe, once the Japanese and the Norwegians and the Inuit turned their boats around and returned home, Aeneas would turn his boundless energy toward her. But now she knew he would simply move on. To albatross in the Falklands. To sharks off the coast of Ecuador. He wanted to wage war with every fishing vessel in every ocean, and if he had enough time and money, he would. If Angela wanted to be with him, she would have to sail with him through all of these oceans. Ports of call would offer moments of stability, but only moments. And the only penguins she would count would be those that porpoised alongside his ship.

She made her way down to the storage room. Ethan was not there, and she wondered fleetingly where he was before turning her attention to the penguin. Still in his enclosure, he watched her approach. His wings were nearly clean of oil, but frayed from all the scrubbing. The laceration above his wing was no longer bleeding yet he still walked with a pronounced limp, and seemed to favor resting on his belly rather than standing. If he appeared injured, the females would avoid him, thinking him unreliable as a mate and provider for their chicks. Angela believed in natural selection—to disagree with the premise was to implicitly embrace some God holding all the strings—but at times like these, she took issue with the lack of flexibility of such a theory. She wanted to believe that even an injured bird could find a mate.

The penguin allowed Angela to apply a damp towel to his feathers, working out a few remaining spots of oil that had worked to the surface. Her mind wandered toward her camp at Punta Verde. She thought of the penguins she'd tried to rescue last season, the two-dozen birds caught in an oil spill who tried to continue raising their chicks despite being covered in muck. They had such a tragic air to them. They did everything right. They filled their bellies with food; they made it back to their nests despite the oil sheathing that weighed on them like suits of armor. They'd survived so much, only to watch their children die, not realizing that the food they were giving their children bore the poison that killed them. The parents looked so confused, so helpless. Nudging the carcasses with their beaks. Trying to force open the chicks' beaks to ask for more food. Like their human counterparts, they wanted to be needed.

She heard a noise and turned, expecting to see Ethan at the door. It was Aeneas.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said. She turned away and continued to bathe the penguin. He approached and took a seat where he could watch. “I think this is one breed of penguin that hasn't bitten me yet,” he said.

“Better keep your distance, then.”

He chuckled.

“Where's Ethan?” she asked. “You haven't tossed him over, have you?”

“I put him to work.”

“You what?”

“He volunteered. He's a deckhand now. Seems to have taken to it.”

“He didn't have much of a choice.”

“Angela, he approached me. What more can I do besides say I'm sorry?”

“I don't know.”

“Now I have to figure out a way to get
you
out of this room.” He reached for her shoulder, but she pulled back. “What's the matter now?” he asked.

“You have no plans to return to Argentina, do you?”

“What?”

“That line you fed me, about creating some sort of penguin protection sanctuary? When would that have happened? Before or after you went to prison in Buenos Aires?”

“This is not the best time to talk about this.”

Angela let the penguin go and climbed out of his enclosure. “I'm getting the feeling that there will never be a good time to talk about this.”

“I meant every word. But it's not very practical for me to return to those waters now, given my reputation there.”

“I don't expect you to return now, or ever. But it might have been nice for you to tell me that before I sacrificed everything to join you.”

“I didn't force you to come along.”

“Is that what you told Annie before she died?”

Aeneas didn't answer, but Angela could tell by his pained expression that she'd struck a nerve, and she regretted it. She could have let it go right then. Spared him any more anguish. But she wanted him to hurt, especially now.

“You're the captain of this ship. She was a young, idealistic girl. You could have prevented it. You could have stopped her.”

“I let her on that Zodiac because that's where she wanted to be. Everyone on this vessel is here by choice, including you. The risks, though acute, are accepted. She may have been young, yes, even idealistic. But she knew very well what she was doing.”

Angela didn't respond. She suddenly pictured Diesel, standing outside her office door waiting to be let him. She remembered how Aeneas once said that penguins were clumsy creatures.
They're just out of their element,
she responded. Now, on this boat, Angela was out of her element; she was the clumsy one. Aeneas was pelagic by nature, having grown up on the sea. But she was not. She grew up in a river town. She spent her life watching boats glide past. People on the coasts are used to people coming to them, but people on river towns get used to watching other people pass them by.

She knew Aeneas couldn't take all the blame for her misgivings. They were two different species, neither more important than the other. She'd heard what she wanted to hear. She had been running from something—herself, most likely—and it had taken her this long to realize that she could not escape.

“Angela, what do you want from me?” Aeneas asked. “My life is this boat. This mission. Everything else is secondary. I thought you knew that.”

“I did. And I understand it. Penguins come first with me. Or at least they did once.”

“You'll get back to them. I promise.”

“I hear we're going to be passing Palmer soon.”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the bird in front of her. “I'm going to take him there so I can release him.”

“And how do you expect to do that?”

“You're going to drop me off.”

“I can't afford to slow down, let alone stop.”

“You will slow down. You'll stop. And you'll let me take him off the ship.”

“Only the bird, right?”

Angela said nothing. She wanted to punish him with her silence, let him feel some of the uncertainty she had been feeling.

Aeneas waited a few moments, then got up and left, closing the door behind him.

* * *

Angela returned to the cabin and unzipped her backpack. She removed her log book, caliper, hand-held scale, and nylon strap and placed them on her bed. Relics of a previous life, they seemed foreign to her now. At the bottom of the backpack she found the satellite transmitter. Brand new, it had not yet been activated. She was supposed to have attached it to a penguin in the south end of the colony the morning that Aeneas returned to her, the morning she ran away. And now it served only to remind her of her dereliction of duties, of those she left behind.

She could feel tears welling, but she resisted them. She could feel the boat's engine begin to slow. She looked out the window and saw Palmer Station in the distance. For anyone who wasn't a scientist, there was nothing attractive about Palmer Station; it looked like an industrial park, with corrugated metal structures scattered about, containing dorms and labs, mostly painted blue. But to her it looked like the closest thing to home.

Angela returned everything to her backpack. She had nothing new to add to it but her white
crew
t-shirt. She located her passport, something she might need as she began to reenter civilization.

She paused and removed the satellite transmitter once again and looked over at the bed, where Aeneas's yellow jacket lay. Then she activated the device.

* * *

There was no berth for large ships at Palmer Station, so the
Tern
docked offshore, and a Zodiac was lowered. Angela found Ethan on the rear deck, learning how to operate the crane. He was intent and focused, and he smiled at her when she waved him over.

“You can leave with me if you'd like,” she told him.

“Thanks,” he said. “But I think I'll stay.”

Angela leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and he grabbed her in a tight hug. She noticed Aeneas standing off to the side, looking irritated. “Any day now,” he said.

Angela slung the backpack over her shoulder and picked up the penguin in a carrier Hedley had fashioned from a wooden crate.

“What's with the backpack?” Aeneas asked.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Are you leaving for good?”

“I'm going home.”

Aeneas studied her face. “And I can't change your mind?” he asked.

“Not this time.”

He sighed. “Very well, then.”

Aeneas piloted the Zodiac with Angela and her penguin seated at the front. She looked up at him, but his eyes were fixed above her head. When the Zodiac reached the pier, Angela lifted herself up. Aeneas handed her the carrier. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“I guess we were only meant to sail together for a short while.”

“I guess.” She turned away.

“You forgot this,” he said. When she turned back, he tossed her a necklace, and she caught it. It was her penguin tag, the sharp indentations of the punched numbers catching the sun. Zero four two two nine. She had come to believe that it had brought Aeneas luck as he sideswiped the icebergs, and she could not imagine him not wearing it as he did the same while chasing the Japanese.

She tossed the necklace back. “Return it to me when you're finished.”

“It might be awhile. It might be a very long time.”

“I'll wait. You'll know where to find me.”

“In absentia?” he asked, his eyes coming alive again.

“Right. In absentia.”

Angela wanted to return to him suddenly and hold him, prevent him from leaving. Why couldn't she take him back home with her? Why did they both have to be so stubborn, so independent? She didn't want to regret this moment, and yet she knew she would. She already did.

Aeneas put the boat in reverse, backed out a few feet, then spun around. Within minutes he was back at the vessel. Thick wires drew the Zodiac up out of the water and onto the deck.

Through the Gerlache Strait, past Palmer Station. Past the Adelaide Islands, through an ice-choked, slow-going passage known as the Gauntlet. Finally into the Amundsen Sea. Twenty-one hours to reach Aeneas.

When the Argentine cutter finally came within sight of the
Tern
, they were, as Robert predicted, too late. The battle was well underway, the
Tern
in close pursuit of a Japanese whaling ship, and, following well behind, a Greenpeace ship.

Robert, in the bridge with Lynda, was reminded of the days of being Jake. He now found it hard to play the role of bystander; he wanted to be a participant. But this was not his battle. He could only watch and wait it out. Wait for his opportunity to board the
Tern
and arrest Aeneas.

The Japanese whaler, the
Takanami Maru
, was a large-hulled ship painted blue and black. It was nearly twice as long as the
Tern
, its deck a good fifteen feet higher. Seeing the
Tern
chasing after the
Maru
reminded Robert of a Chihuahua making a run at a Mastiff; it would have been comical if it weren't so tragic.

Over the radio they could hear Aeneas: “This is the captain of the
Arctic Tern
. Acting under full authority of the Antarctic Treaty, we demand that you cease your whale slaughter immediately and leave these waters. Failure to do so will result in a direct action. This is not a protest action. Repeat: This is not a protest action.”

The
Maru
was silent, seemingly indifferent. Instead of running in a straight line, the
Maru
was moving diagonally, tacking ever so slightly, as if the
Tern
did not even exist. When Robert raised his binoculars, he realized the reason for the ship's trajectory—it, too, was in pursuit of something.

A whale.

A misty cough erupted from the water just ahead of the
Maru
, then the gray bulge of a humpback. Robert panned back to the helm of the
Maru
, where a man stood at attention behind a harpoon mounted in what looked like a rocket launcher. Robert remembered what Aeneas told him once:
If a harpoon hits you, pray that it goes straight through you
. The tip of a harpoon contained twenty grams of penthrite, one of the world's nastiest explosives, designed to detonate a foot or two within the body of the whale. Yet despite the explosive, the harpoon rarely killed them.

A cloud of smoke suddenly enveloped the man at the harpoon. By the time Robert heard the explosion, the damage was done. He didn't see the harpoon in the air, but he saw the impact, the explosion of blood, a sudden curvature of a black body in the water. A wire drawn taught began to pull in its prey. Blood gushed as if from a fire hose.

Through his binoculars, Robert watched the whale, helpless, bleeding from all orifices. And then he noticed a smaller whale, a baby, following close behind. He glanced at Lynda, who was watching wide-eyed and silent. “The pup always stays close to its mother,” he explained. “So they kill the mother first. They take their time with the second.”

The injured whale was still moving, its tail slapping against a pool of its own blood. But the whale could not keep itself from being dragged to the side of the ship, where men in bright blue uniforms reached out of an opening in the hull with metal prongs. They began sending large doses of electricity through the whale. The body convulsed for a few seconds, then went limp.

“Jesus Christ,” Lynda said, cringing.

Aeneas accelerated the
Tern,
and it became clear that the two ships were on a collision course, with the Japanese cutting across the
Tern's
path.

Finally, the radio sputtered to life, and Robert heard a man's voice speak in halting English. “Leave us alone. You are in our path.”

“We will not leave you alone, sir,” Aeneas responded. “Only when you stop killing whales in blatant violation of international law will we leave you alone.”

“You are terrorist.”

“That's your opinion. Would you care to ask the whales what they think of me?”

Robert watched the crew of the
Tern
ready themselves on the deck to hurl a grab-bag collection of stink and smoke bombs. At the front of the
Tern
, a crew member manned the fire hose and began spewing out a steady stream of ocean water. The whaler's horns began to blare, and the
Tern
fired its horn back, creating a cacophony of noise as the two ships headed for a collision.

From Robert's point of view, the impact appeared to be nothing more than a glancing blow, the Japanese hull passing by like the side of a bus. But the
Tern
's crew told a different story—crew members upended, neatly stacked and strapped Zodiacs strewn about. It was if an earthquake had struck, and Robert half expected to see the fragile
Tern
split in half.

Instead, ever so slightly, the
Tern
began to veer away from the
Maru
and then stabilize. Robert could hear shouts from the crew, could see objects being thrown. The fact that the
Tern
could have gone down in an instant, bodies drowned, did not appear to mean anything. Even the weather, which had turned ominous—an overcast sky spraying mist, the wind gathering strength—did not slow anyone down. More Zodiacs were dropped into the water, and they pursued the Japanese ship like flies. But like the ones before, they were just as ineffectual. Above the clouds darkened, and rain began to spit.

Robert turned to check on Lynda. Her face was red, her eyes still glued to the bleeding, convulsing whale hanging from the Japanese ship's hull.

“It's tough to watch, I know,” he said.

“My husband wanted to become a sport fisherman when we moved to Florida,” she said. “I didn't think anything of it until he took me out one day to catch marlin. That poor fish was dragged kicking and screaming for miles—I'd never seen such a display of courage. And for what? To be strung up and photographed. I told the hubby if he wanted to stay in Florida, that would be the last fish he caught.”

“Was it?”

She forced a smile. “He was never any good at it anyway. I think he was relieved. I wonder if the whalers would feel the same way, if we sent a warning shot or two.”

“I wonder,” was all Robert could muster in response. He was ready to give the command, to blow that Japanese ship out of the water, if she were willing to translate. But he knew that Lynda was speaking from anger, from empathy, and that there was no sense in taking any more lives than necessary. This was not yet their war.

He followed Lynda's eyes back to the ships. They were approaching a wall of fog, and soon everyone would be enveloped in suspended moisture. Maybe this would be enough to give the whalers pause.

“Let's get this over with and go home, okay?” Robert said.

“Okay.”