Killer

Ross fell to his knees, his spirit very nearly broken, and Kate knelt beside him, holding his shoulders, tears streaming down her face as the black sails began to circle the tiny floe.

Unable to speak, they watched as they formed an arrow and began to close in on them, towering out of the water. Shuffling stiffly, the two humans turned round and round, their eyes fixed hopelessly upon the whales. In the tense quiet the ocean lapped against the tiny fragment of ice, the water hissed and bubbled as the fins moved closer. The floe began to rock as the huge bodies brushed against it. There were ten in all, their fins varying from four feet to nearly seven feet high.

The hope which had bubbled in them at the sound of the ship’s engines drained away. It seemed to both of them that they had been fools to think they might survive. Like children lost in the dark they clung to each other, and waited for the inevitable end as the arrow-head formation of the killers moved away, becoming vague in the mist, only to turn and begin to build up speed in an attacking run at them.

Now that it no longer mattered, Ross relaxed and his great frame convulsed. Every muscle began to jerk with wrenching force. His teeth crashed together. Kate hugged him harder, wrapped both arms round him with all her strength, stroked his writhing shoulder muscles. “It’s all right,” she whispered, “it’s all right, Colin.”

The fins sank out of sight, several yards out. Colin tensed his massive frame for the shock. His right arm, round Kate’s waist, all but cracked her ribs.

Nothing happened.

Then the killers surfaced. Kate and Colin jerked round in unison, just in time to see the formation of the fins break up and vanish silently behind them. And out of the silence came a new sound: the powerful buzz of an outboard motor.

Neither of them moved or spoke, as though this were some strange magic which they could destroy by an unwise act or word. They simply knelt side by side on the ice, searching the shifting fog with wild eyes.

Ross saw it first, and told Kate by tightening his right arm again, and lifting the slightly bent club of his left arm. While silently, behind them, the fins reappeared and held still as the pack watched.

Out of the fog a tall shape took form. For a terrible moment they thought it was a fin of a whale for it was of equal size, but a fluke in the wind cleared the fog a little, and a tall, broad-­shouldered man was revealed. He was clean-shaven, with short dark hair sticking out from the tight hood of his bright yellow anorak. He was standing erect, legs slightly parted, in the bows of a fat little inflatable. He had a long boat-hook held in the navy-prescribed fashion across his chest, parallel to the surface of the water.

“Kto vi?” called the man. He had a deep resonant voice. The rest of the rubber boat gathered itself out of the mist. There were four more men seated in it, all staring suspiciously at them past the legs of the man in front. “Kto vi?” he repeated. The boat slowed.

“What?” called Colin. His voice was faint, broken.

“Kto vi? Vi otkuda?” The boat stopped and bobbed uneasily.

“What is he saying?” whispered Colin to Kate.

“I don’t know!”

There was a little silence before the man in the boat, clearly confused, tried again. “Kto vi? Vi otkuda? Vi nachoditis v sovjetskich vodach.”

The word sovjetskich slowly sank into Ross’s cold-fuddled brain. “Of course!” he said. “They’re Russian! Soviet!”

“Russian?” Kate’s face was blank with astonishment.

“Yes. We must have drifted into Russian waters.”

The man in the bows of the boat, only twenty feet away now, looked back over his shoulder, then he repeated “Vi nachoditis v sovjetskich vodach.”

“English!” Ross pointed to himself, to Kate. “We’re English. Do any of you speak English?”

The man in the bows made a gesture. The boat turned a little. It looked as though they were going away again. Then, suddenly, there was a plump, deep-chested young man standing by the man in the bows. He turned his head towards them, light catching his glasses, glistening in the fog-droplets on his short dark brown beard. “I speak,” he yelled. He had a light, baritone voice. “Menya zovut Pjotr Picatel.” he gestured to himself and repeated, “Pjotr Picatel.”

“Well, how do you do Pjotr? It’s nice to meet you. Now can you get us off the fucking ice?” Colin was in an agony of impatience. Surely they could sort all this out later, on their ship, in the warm.

“Please,” cried Pjotr “Not fast. You listen. Eto vtoroi ofitser . . . ah . . . this second officer, Sergei Antonovich Ivanov.” He gestured towards the tall man holding the boat-hook. “He ask questions. You listen. I translate. OK?” He beamed.

“Kto vi?” snapped the second officer.

“Who you?” yelled Pjotr Picatel, cheerfully butchering the grammar of a language he did not fully understand.

“Colin Ross. Kate Warren.”