Strindberg's Star (44 page)

He adjusted the regulator and picked up Strindberg’s ankh and star. Then he moved the objects into the flame, and above them, the spheres began to appear once more.

As the ray pointed down, Don immediately saw that it had changed position. In the notebook he noted its new location:

When he placed the ruler on the map, he realized with a dizzy feeling that the opening was already more than thirty-five miles
behind
the icebreaker. The ray had moved quite far to the south, and they had already passed it.

D
on banged on Eva’s door, but she didn’t open up, even though it was so late. He went to look for her, lurching around, lost in
Yamal
’s steep staircases.

He pushed open the doors onto the quarterdeck and came out by the helicopter. Next to its sloping blades, Don took several deep breaths to try to filter the alcohol out of his body.

The frosty Arctic sea air bit into his lungs and made it nearly impossible to breathe. He stood there coughing, thinking that he was sinking. At the same time, it was far too annoying to just stand there, so close to the opening, without even having made an attempt to get the Russians to change the icebreaker’s course.

In the dining room, the South American men were still sitting at their long table, and Don could feel Agusto Lytton following him with his gaze.

David Bailey and
Yamal
’s gray-bearded captain, Sergei Nicolayevich, were standing at the small bar. They turned to Don as he came reeling in their direction.

“Mr. Goldstein,” David Bailey said, looking at him with hazy eyes. “You’re up late; is something troubling you?”

The Russian captain was drinking vodka from a beer glass.

“Yes, you could say that,” Don mumbled.

Then he didn’t really know how he should begin. In the silence, the captain poured another glass of vodka, which he thrust over to Don.

“It’s like this, Mr. Bailey,” Don began, wobbling, “the …”

Bailey nodded and waited for him to continue.

“It’s like this: the icebreaker has to turn around immediately. I have the new coordinates in my pocket, so you can see …”

He dug around in his expedition jacket and found the crumpled paper. He slammed it down on the bar in front of Bailey, and then took a burning gulp from his glass.

“Mr. Goldstein.” Bailey smiled. “I think you mostly need to sleep.”

“Not at all,” Don said. “On the contrary, it’s very important that I’m awake right now.”

He pointed at the smeared coordinates on the paper. The captain grinned behind his scrubby beard. Don wondered whether Sergei Nicolayevich understood English, but he didn’t dare ask. Instead he continued to Bailey:

“We have to turn around immediately, do you understand? It will only delay us by a few hours.”

“So what is it that’s so terribly interesting right there?” Bailey asked, showing the scrap of paper to the captain with a smile.

“There’s …”

Don didn’t know how he should put it, and he could feel his knees buckling.

“Like I said,” said David Bailey, “I think it’s best that you go to bed. Tomorrow evening we’re going to approach the North Pole, and you want to be well rested then, don’t you? It’s not unusual for it to be a drain on the nerves when you experience our first meeting with the ice.”

“There’s a tunnel straight down into the underworld,” said Don, “and we’re leaving it behind us.”

“I’m sure there is,” Bailey said soothingly. “But as you know, the captain is the one who determines our course. When you’re on board, you’re under his command, it’s as simple as that.”

“We have to turn around …”

Bailey moved Don’s glass of vodka away.

“Mr. Goldstein, that’s enough,” said the guide.

Don turned around hesitantly and met Agusto Lytton’s eyes. As he staggered away from the bar, he heard the captain shout after him, “Mr. Goldstein! I wish you a good night!”

But when the laughter came, Don was already on his way out through the doors of the dining room. His lungs were aching for cleansing air.

T
he wind was blowing hard on the quarterdeck; it blew away some of his drunkenness, and Don suddenly realized that he had just given
up. He grabbed the railing so hard his knuckles turned white.
A shvartsen sof,
Don thought, so this was the sad end of the journey.

His eyes slowly began to fill with tears, which hardened into frozen streaks against his cheeks, and without any hope whatsoever, Don turned around and looked in toward the light of the ship.

W
ith his hands still clenching the railing, Don had to squint to be able to see. The old man behind him was lit up by the powerful lights that ran like a string of pearls along
Yamal
’s ice-covered hull.

Agusto Lytton was not wearing the obligatory expedition jacket but rather something that resembled a fur. And other than that, in the backlighting that prevailed around the edge of the ship, Don could only make out the hook-nosed profile of his face.

“A death without pain, Señor Goldstein,” said Agusto Lytton, nodding down toward the wake the icebreaker was plowing up. “The shock of the cold will cause you to lose consciousness in less than thirty seconds, and then it takes an hour for you to sink to rest at a depth of thirteen thousand feet.” Don noticed his eyes beginning to adjust to the light, and he tried to get his tongue to form an answer.

“Yet you hesitate?” Lytton continued, taking a step closer. Don got his head to bend in an affirming nod. “You want us to … turn around? If I heard correctly there in the dining room? You said that …”

Don swayed suddenly, but just as he was about to fall, Lytton caught his arm. Sharp fingertips, a hard grip, which didn’t give in to his weight.

When Don finally got control of his legs, he began to fumble through his shoulder bag without really knowing what he wanted to find. No sedative would be able to bring him out of this state of inebriation.

“Do you need help with anything, Señor Goldstein?” asked Lytton, who was still holding on to his arm.

Don tried to get a smile out, but it just turned into a stiff grimace. Because now he had found the chewable tablets of dextroamphetamine, and he took a fistful and tossed them in his mouth. He pressed his teeth together and as though he were chewing cud he began to crush the dry amphetamine derivative, which might make him perk up.

“You’re helping yourself, I see,” said Lytton. “But it seems as though you’re freezing. Perhaps you should warm up for a bit?”

Don made an attempt to pull away from the fingers, but they didn’t release their firm grip.

Finally he slouched along, resigned, as Lytton guided him away from the railing. They walked toward the iced-over ladder that ran up to
Yamal
’s upper deck.

“From darkness to light,” Don heard Lytton mumble when they had come into the warmth of the ship again.

He could see the double doors of the captain’s suite some distance away through the dimly lit corridor. Lytton took a small key from the pocket of his fur coat and stuck it into the lock of the door.

Captain Sergei Nicolayevich was apparently still off with David Bailey in the bar, because the large suite in front of them was dark and quiet. When Lytton turned on the lights, Don saw that the icebreaker was more than just plastic wallpaper and poor cleaning. Before him here was a room that could have belonged to a nineteenth-century admiral.

Wall panels of polished hardwood and furniture with gilded detailing. The floor was covered with a sound-muffling carpet, and the sound of the ice floe breaking under
Yamal
could hardly be heard.
There was a large drink cabinet with doors of crystal, and through the long row of windows that looked onto the foredeck, Don could see the beams of the spotlights playing over the ice.

Where the windows ended, at the far wall, stood an open writing desk, which seemed to be used as a worktable. Piles of papers were spread out on it; manuscripts in old-fashioned binders and an antique-looking magnifying glass. But Don really only had eyes for the inviting leather sofa that stood waiting in the center of the room.

He staggered forward, sank down, and leaned back so that he was half reclining, finally able to rest his legs. He placed his feet up on the low glass table that stood next to the sofa. Then Don moved them a little bit so he wouldn’t dirty the large Arctic map that was spread out across the glass of the table.

“Señor Goldstein,” Lytton said behind him, “I didn’t bring you to my suite for you to lie down and sleep.”

There was a clatter from the china, and then there was the gurgling noise of something being poured.

The old man walked around Don’s boots and placed the steaming teacup on the table. The scent of poppy and cinnamon made Don think of Eberlein and the library at Villa Lindarne.

He wiggled into a sitting position and looked over toward Lytton, who was now sitting in the easy chair across from Don.

“You need to get something warm in you, Señor Goldstein,” Lytton said. “Please, drink.”

“You can call me … Samuel,” said Don.

“Agusto Lytton, Lytton Enterprises.”

Don nodded and extended his hand in a hesitant greeting.

“So, Señor Goldstein …”

Lytton opened a small silver case. He took out a cigarillo, which he lit with his bony hand.

“The North Pole is a remarkable place, I can guarantee it. Are you nervous that
Yamal
won’t manage to cut through all the ice?”

Don took a sip of the tea and felt himself gradually beginning to wake up.

Lytton’s contours became sharper and sharper over in the easy chair. Watery, shrunken eyes in a skull covered with paper-thin skin. Don thought that it would take only a slight scratch to lay bare the bone of his forehead. Then he looked down at the narrow lips and the sparse mustache. It bobbed up and down as Lytton began to speak again in his soft voice.

“I asked if you were nervous.”

“Not at all,” said Don. “It’s not that …”

He took another warming sip.

“I understand from Captain Nicolayevich that you booked your journey late as well,” Lytton said, taking a deep drag of his cigarillo.

“Yes, it was a coincidence, you could say,” Don said.

“I understand,” said Lytton, “but I don’t think you’ll come to regret it.”

He formed a ring of smoke with his lips.

“Do you know the Russian captain personally?” Don asked.

“Not at all, but I have learned to recognize his needs,” said Lytton. “The constant Russian need for money, to be precise. We have made a small business agreement about the suite, the captain and I. I didn’t feel at home in the cabin they gave me. My men are also dissatisfied; I don’t know how it is with you.”

“No, it’s … a bit tight, perhaps,” said Don.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Lytton. “This is much better. Cleaner, too, and the view is, as you can see, quite spectacular.”

Don looked out at the Arctic sea and didn’t really know what he should say. But it seemed as though Lytton wished to have a nighttime conversation, so he made a lame attempt.

“Lytton Enterprises, you said. That doesn’t sound particularly South American.”

“No, it’s been an international company for many years.”

“So what does …”

“Import-export, you could say,” said Lytton. “Mostly exports, to be honest.”

“Exports of what?”

“Oh, it’s a dirty branch that you don’t want to know about. Believe me, Señor Goldstein.”

I
t hadn’t only come from the tea, Don thought. The exhilarated feeling inside of him definitely had traces of dextroamphetamine. The alcohol intoxication had dispersed like a fog, and the old man in the easy chair now appeared absurdly sharp.

Don looked from Lytton down to the glass table and the large map of the Arctic ice cap that was spread out there. The icebreaker’s route ran in a red line up toward the North Pole. A silver Russian coin lay at the point of
Yamal
’s current position.

“Only seven degrees of latitude left,” said Lytton. “In a few days, we can have a toast at the North Pole, you and I.”

“Señor Lytton,” Don began carefully, without really knowing why himself. “What would you say about doing me a favor?”

“If it’s just a matter of helping you back to your cabin, I can …”

“No, it’s something that’s probably considerably more difficult,” said Don.

He looked up at the contours of the skull over there in the easy chair. The remarkable thing was that Lytton’s face gave him such a strong sense of déjà vu.

Don shook his head. The ashy tip of the cigarillo glowed as the old man inhaled.

“This …” Don pointed at the silver coin. “This is where we are right now.”

Lytton sat quietly, waiting.

“And here,” Don said, moving his finger an inch or so to the southwest, “is something I think you will find very interesting to see. Something that everyone aboard this icebreaker would find amazing.”

“Something that everyone can see can hardly be worth anything,”
Lytton said. But he had moved to the edge of the easy chair, and now he was bending over the map and examining the position where Don had placed his finger.

Then Lytton took out a pen, pushed the fingertip aside, and drew a black X.

“You still want the icebreaker to turn around, I see,” said the old man after a while. “It would probably be an expensive affair, if it’s even possible, and you would likely need a very good reason.”

“There’s a hole,” Don began.

Lytton laughed.

“There’s a hole? A huge hole in the ice, you mean? Well, that sounds sensational.”

“I thought maybe you could help me with David Bailey …”

Lytton coughed, irritated, and blew out a cloud of smoke.

“You truly understand nothing, Señor Goldstein. Talk to
el americano,
the guide? Do you really think he has any say in this? If the course were to be changed, it would be handled by the Russians, but I can promise you that in that case it would be a very costly affair.”