Dark Full of Enemies(43)

At least, McKay had thought there were no villages. But only three miles up the fjord, on the western bank, opposite the one occupied by Grettisstad, lay a dark spot crumpled against the foot of the mountains.

McKay stood on the deck with Magnus, Petersen’s mechanical expert, and Ollila. They had left their weapons in the wheelhouse so they could move freely about the boat. He squinted at the shore. He could see just well enough by the thin light of the moon to walk the deck without hurting himself, and to make out the mountains, the deep, black, still waters of the fjord, and the dark patch of land on the bank.

He leaned toward Magnus and pointed. “What is that?”

Magnus knew no English, so McKay tried German. Whether he understood or not, McKay could not tell. Magnus shook his head, turned, and looked for something to do.

McKay looked at Ollila. Ollila said nothing

McKay watched the dark place as they moved, the slow glide of the boat giving his perspective more depth in the darkness. He saw dark uprights among the mass, and for a moment thought it could have been the remains of a stand of trees, all burned. Rabun County had had its share of forest fires—he knew in his guts what the aftermath looked like. And then he recognized, among the rubble, the blackened jag of a church tower.

“It’s a town,” he said to Ollila. He spoke softly, both afraid that his voice would carry across the fjord to unwelcome listeners and aware that he looked on something terrible.

Ollila looked closely and said nothing.

McKay brought out his binoculars and watched the burnt town as they passed it by. He could not be certain, but he counted ten or fifteen houses, a small clutch of buildings on a small square, and the church. All lay in ruins.

He put his binoculars back in his case and climbed into the wheelhouse. Ollila followed.

J?rgen stood at the wheel, smoking. He glanced at them when they entered. Petersen himself stood silent in the corner of the wheelhouse. McKay waited for Ollila to slide the door shut and removed his knit cap and gloves. He leaned against the bulkhead opposite Petersen. Petersen looked at them and said nothing.

“There was a town,” McKay said, and pointed back with his thumb, “we just passed. Completely burnt out.”

“Yes.”

McKay noticed J?rgen look back over his shoulder and then concentrate hard on the wheel, as though navigating the Strait of Magellan. He sought, for a moment, the name of the Pequod’s helmsman and then shook off the distraction.

“What happened there?”

“Just a fire,” Petersen said, and righted himself from the wheelhouse bulkhead. “If you will excuse me, I must inspect the engine. I believe I saw Magnus climbing down to it a moment ago.”

He left and shut the door.

McKay looked at Ollila again, and the Finn, again, said nothing. He would have to find a way to make the man talk. He sat and decided to try J?rgen, whom he probably should have tried talking to in the first place.

He regretted it almost immediately. The seminarian turned the conversation to theology, with occasional asides about the quality of American women, and seemed content to smoke and talk predestination, election, Barth and St. Paul for the rest of the trip. McKay wearied quickly. What theology he knew he had absorbed from the low church enthusiasms of the congregations in his county and from the religion-heavy sources of his medieval histories. Anselm and Ockham, he thought, may well have driven him from graduate school to the Marine Corps. McKay sat with Ollila and stared at the back of J?rgen’s head, and out through the black square of window at the front of the cabin.

J?rgen had ventured into another story about his time chasing tail in New York when McKay first saw the glow.

He stood and moved beside J?rgen. He made blinders with his hands and leaned forward until they touched the window.

“You see it, eh?” J?rgen said.

McKay did not move, but watched the glow solidify into a broad grey shape growing on the surface of the waters. “Is that the dam?”

“As my brother would say, yes.”





The Germans had begun leaving all the lights on in the dam complex just a few weeks earlier, J?rgen said. McKay asked why, and J?rgen said nothing for a while. He finally said he did not know. McKay doubted that.

He climbed down to the deck. The cold air was bracing. After the storm the winds had fallen and the temperature slowly risen. He stood on the deck with Ollila and heard nothing but the lap of the water at the prow and the engine, lightly echoed back to them by the walls of the gorge.

The dam still stood at least three miles off, but brilliant under its lights. The big lamps at the top of the dam looked like a string of Christmas lights at this distance, and the lights of the buildings on either side put off the diffused light of a sentimental Christmas card. He exhaled and watched his breath cloud. Just enough humidity for his breath to freeze, and to interfere with visibility.

The engine throttled back and the Hardr?de slowed. The boat drifted almost carelessly to starboard, and McKay saw, not far off, an opening in the mountain wall. As they neared the moonlight and the dim but far-cast lights of the dam showed gaps in cliffs and mountains where the fjord widened into craggy coves and inlets. J?rgen piloted the boat into one of these, and dark mountains drifted over the dam. But McKay could still see his goal, his target—the jags between him and his target stood rimlit yellow in the night.

He had not been able to find Petersen since leaving Grettisstad. Petersen found him.