The Hunter From the Woods (7 page)

“I already said I was—”

“You
shuddup
!” Olaf growled, with another painful finger jab. He looked Michael over from boots to cap. “You ain’t no
sailor
!” Michael said nothing. This was getting serious; who would have thought the dummy could see through him so easily?

“No sailor!” Olaf repeated. “I seen how you don’t know what you’re doin’! And them hands! They ain’t no sailor’s hands!
These
,” he said, thrusting his work-scarred and rope-burned palms into Michael’s face, “are sailor’s hands! So you gonna be tellin’ me, what
real
sailor you put out of a job by signin’ on here! Eh? What friend a’mine you put out on da pier, him with maybe a wife and three, four kids?” He gave a scowl that caused even the black man with the shaved-off nose to wince. “You ain’t no
good
! I take a breath a’ you, and you
stink
!”

Michael had no reply for this. He’d already gone one sorry too many.

Olaf smacked his left palm with his right fist. His mouth wore a wild grin. “Ah, I’m gonna
teach
you! Olaf’s gonna drop you, pretty fella. Olaf’s gonna fix that nose and close up them eyes. Olaf’s gonna stretch that neck and give you a new set a’ teeth! Olaf’s gonna—”

But what Olaf was going to do was interrupted by Michael hitting him in the jaw with his right fist as hard as he could let one fly.

Olaf went back on his heels and crashed over the next table and fell over two men who tried to get away but were caught under the toppling bulk. Then Olaf slid down their backs and fell to the sickly-green floor tiles, where he lay with blood on his mouth, his eyes twitching in their sockets and his fist still balled up but unthrown. He made a bubbling noise over his bitten lower lip, gave a thunderous fart from his massive ass, and then went to sleep like mother’s best baby.

Michael sat down to finish his breakfast. He’d nearly broken his knuckles on that slab of a jaw, but at least he was on his way to having sailor’s hands.

Somebody laughed and somebody hollered. Somebody gave a whistle of respect and somebody shouted out in a singsong language Michael had never heard before. Then the clatter of utensils on plates continued, cigarette smoke puffed into the air, and the black-bearded second mate burst into the mess hall with one of the cooks and wanted to know who the fuck was fighting in here.

No one said anything. The second mate, a Spaniard named Medina, stood staring down at the sleeping Olaf. He repeated: who the fuck was fighting in here?

“Hey, mon!” said the black man with the carved nose. He grinned wickedly, showing white teeth sharpened by chewing Jamaican sugarcane. “That big fool, he fall down and bust hisself open! Doan be no fightin’ goin’ on!”

Medina looked around the room for a second opinion, but suddenly everyone was very much enjoying their oily potatoes, greasy eggs and rubbery bacon. He reached out, grabbed a mug of coffee from another table and threw the liquid into Olaf’s face. The sleeping giant began to come around with a hitch and sputter. “You! And you! Get him into a shower! And don’t waste the water!” The two men Medina had pointed out, the very same two who’d nearly had their spines rearranged, grumbled around their cigarettes but they dragged Olaf out of the mess hall through the swinging door. Medina backed away as if retreating from a roomful of wild animals. “Nobody better fight!” he warned, just before he got out.

The ritual of face-feeding continued. Soon some of the crew would hit their bunks while the others had work detail. Michael was scheduled for six hours of sacktime. He looked across the table at the black man. “Thanks. I’m Michael Gallatin.” He offered his hand.

“Didn’t ask,” the man said. He stared coldly at the hand. “Doan
want
.”

He scraped his chair back, stood up and sauntered out of the mess hall with as near a rooster’s strut as Michael had ever seen.

Michael finished his coffee. Across the table, the grinning idiot giggled into empty space.

A navigator’s degree at a time, the
Sofia
was turning across the sunlit waves toward the Denmark passage to the North Sea.

Three

The Best Man

On the third morning at sea, as
Sofia
’s bow pushed through blue waves under the glare of the Baltic sun and gulls swooped the length of the ship, Michael got a look at the girl.

As his rank of Ordinary Seaman dictated, his was the most mundane and mind-numbing of jobs. His work had much to do with scrubbing away rust and refinishing the affected areas with sealant, primer and paint; there was a lot of rust, and there was a lot of paint. His work also involved a mop, a bucket, and a deck that seemed to go on forever. Therefore as he labored at these concerns he let himself mentally drift, yet not so much as to lose the necessary rhythm that got the job done.

His count of the crew’s nationalities: fifteen Norwegians, nine Swedes, five Poles, three Spaniards, three French, two Dutch, one Brit besides himself, one Russian, one African and one Jamaican. He’d known this before setting foot aboard
Sofia
the first night. He also had known their names and what histories could be discovered about them, no simple feat even for the British Secret Service.

The Jamaican’s name was Dylan Custis. Had been arrested in Kingston for having three wives at the same time. Later the authorities had found out about the counterfeit money he was creating in his cousin’s basement. Custis evidently had an artistic talent suitable to mimic a very reasonable five-pound banknote.

Olaf Thorgrimsen, from Trondheim, had been at sea since he was a thirteen-year-old engine boy on a steam freighter that probably made
Sofia
appear a beauty queen. His only brushes with the law had been several public brawls. Since the incident in the mess hall, Olaf had been in an infirmary bed and the scuttlebutt was that he was feigning double vision.

The other Brit was an eighteen-year-old Ordinary Seaman named Billy Bowers.

Michael had seen him at work and bunked near him, but the young man was quiet and kept to himself. Bowers had no criminal history, the only exceptional fact being that the young man had at fifteen evidently left his home in Colchester after the death of his mother.

Michael knew that the first mate was a twenty-six-year-old African named Enam Kpanga. No criminal record, but a sterling educational history and graduation with degrees in business and maritime law at the University of London.

The
Sofia
’s captain was an interesting case. A Frenchman named Gustave Beauchene, fifty-one years old, from Paris. Beauchene had gone to sea in his late twenties, for a French freighter line, and had drifted from company to company until at last he made captain for the Norwegian Blue Star line at age forty-nine. There was intimation in the report of a fondness for strong drink and a reputation for outbursts of vitriolic anger. Michael had not yet laid eyes on Captain Beauchene, nor had the good captain deigned to speak or otherwise meet with any member of the new sign-ons.

Michael had not wanted this assignment, and had tried to dodge it with as much fervor as he could summon. He didn’t care to be cooped up on a ship for so long, he’d told Colonel Vivian. It was against his nature. It did not require his specific talents, anyway. And besides, shouldn’t it be better handled by someone with actual nautical experience?

We send the best man we have at the moment
, the colonel had told him in that infuriatingly calm, cool and collected way Vivian possessed.
You’ve been trained to do
what is needed
. When
it is needed
.
You are needed now. Please take those reports with you. I am to remind you that your briefing and training session begins promptly at eight o’clock in the morning aboard the freighter
John Willis Scott
, moored at drydock at Battersea.

You’ve got to be joking,
Michael had said
. You’ve secured a
freighter
for me?

I used to joke,
Vivian had answered, already turning his attention to another document on his desk.
But that was when I was a major and a hale and hearty boy.

Now, I fear, I’m all grown up. Good day, Michael, and good hunting.

And Michael Gallatin had answered,
Let’s hope there’s no need for any hunting on this
one
.

Quite
, said the colonel with one of his quick, tight smiles. He rarely showed his teeth anymore.
Do enjoy your night in Danzig, the Hotel Goldene Eiche is very
charming
.

Michael’s paint brush moved back and forth, masking with dull yellow an area that had been scraped of rust and reprimed. But he knew, as everyone did, that rust was an enemy that never slept.

He was on his knees on the starboard deck, working on one of the series of ventilation funnels, when he noted the girl come through a doorway at the base of the amidship superstructure. He knew exactly who she was, though she was dressed against both the chill in the air and any eye that might turn in her direction. She was wearing a shapeless gray overcoat, buttoned to the throat, the collar turned up as well. She was wearing large circular-lensed sunglasses and a dark brown silk scarf over her hair and tied under her chin, rendering herself nearly faceless. Michael could tell her body was slim and she was young, but then again he already knew that Marielle Wesshauser had turned sixteen in the second week of March. He heard the hard clump of her left shoe against the deckboards, and quickly he glanced there though he already knew about her left leg being three inches shorter than the right. The clunky black left shoe, as ugly as the right one since orthopedic shoes are rarely lovely, had a built-up sole to compensate for the problem of balance. Did she catch the movement of his head and did her own eyes behind the sunglasses very quickly mark his notice? Possibly. But she walked away from him with her face downcast, the air slightly ruffling the mouse-colored scarf and the thick-soled shoe beating a halting rhythm on the deck.

She disappeared aft, possibly intending to make as many circuits of the ship as she could before either the impoverished strength of her leg gave out or the hammerblow noise of her condition beat down her willpower.

Michael saw a shadow fall over him.

He realized he should have smelled the medicinal odor of the infirmary in the air a few seconds before he did. He twisted around and there indeed stood Olaf Thorgrimsen, cleaner now than before, his hair combed back and damp from a fresh shower. The cowlick would not be controlled.

“There
you
,” said Olaf.

“Yes,” Michael answered, still on his knees. “Here I am.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither one moving on their own but the ship moving them with its slow roll against the sea.

Olaf reached into a pocket of his trousers and retrieved something wrapped in a piece of old Norwegian newspaper.

“Give you
this
,” Olaf grunted, and he held it out.

Michael put aside the paintbrush and took it. When he opened the piece of newsprint, he saw it contained an oatmeal-and-raisin cookie still warm from a platter in the mess hall. Like rust, the cooks never slept. “Thank you,” Michael said.

“No sailor,” Olaf told him. “
Yet
. But maybe you fighter. Eh?”

Michael didn’t know how he should respond. He simply nodded.

“Olaf likes fighter,” said Olaf. Then he turned away. His thick bulk shambled away from the hard sunlight into the shadow beneath a blue awning roped against the superstructure. Michael heard a door open and close.

He returned to his painting, ate the cookie, and in a few minutes heard the sound of Marielle Wesshauser coming back. Her pace had slowed. It appeared the left shoe was heavier than before, and it dragged at her leg like an anchor. She made her way around a lifeboat, negotiated passage between two ventilation funnels, may or may not have glanced quickly at him as she clumped past, avoided the gaze of a couple more ordinary seamen doing the same work as Michael, and then she went through the exact door by which she’d left the interior of the ship. She was going back to her cabin, the one she shared with her twelve-year-old brother Emil. Her father and mother were in the cabin across the hallway. There were two more passenger cabins on the hall. Michael knew that a V. Vivian had paid for them, but V. Vivian had not shown up for the voyage and so those cabins remained empty. Michael knew that Paul and Annaleisa Wesshauser had made arrangements for their food to be delivered to their cabins. Their names on the
Sofia
’s passenger list, a very short document, were Klaus and Lili Hendriks.

Michael finished his job. But there was always another one to do, and the advice he’d been given by the ex-master of the freighter
John Willis Scott
was to always find it and apply himself before he could be spotted dawdling and be assigned to something far worse. Therefore he went directly to another funnel and started the process of scraping away streamers of orange rust.