Eye of the Whale Read online

  “Wrong? Why do you think something is wrong?” Professor Maddings was always after her about her music.

  “I haven’t heard you gasp with excitement once or interrupt me with your own even more brilliant ideas. So all I can think is that you have been neglecting your violin.” Professor Maddings had often told her that music would get her through the low points that accompany any career dependent on the vagaries of discovery.

  “It wasn’t just my violin I was neglecting,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the photo.

  “If I have to tell you again, I will—don’t give up on your music. It will lead you into the heart of whale song. Now tell me what is wrong.”

  “Frank left.”

  “Left? You? Good Lord, what has gotten into him? You are the best student I’ve ever had. Doesn’t he understand the first-class mind he’s dealing with?”

  “I guess he wanted a wife with more than a mind.”

  “What on earth does that deranged husband of yours—I know he’s a good man and only temporarily certifiable for leaving you—but what does he want?”

  “A family.”

  “Oh…” Professor Maddings said, realizing the evolutionary depth of the problem. “Well…we are no different than the rest of the animals in that desire. That’s a hard one, but don’t give up on the whales. They need you. We need you…Oh dear, my battery’s running low, but I’ll be watching you and that wonderful wayward husband of yours. Just show him that you want him—that’s all we men, weak as we are, need to know—and then you can do what you please. Louisa always did. I’ll be calling back to hear the happy—”

  Elizabeth listened for a few moments to the dead line, not wanting to hang up. After putting the phone down, she walked over to the closet. She hesitated before opening it and again as she stared at the black case. At last she pulled out the delicate violin with its dark brown belly and long black neck. She cradled it in her arms as she adjusted the tension on the bow and placed it under her chin. She drew the bow across and then stopped to tune each of the four strings.

  The feeling of the instrument came back to her as she began to play Professor Maddings’s favorite piece, “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber. He had said it intensified all emotion—joy or sadness, grief or exultation. Often she and three other graduate students had played it with Professor Maddings in the middle of a particularly thorny bit of analysis. He would tell them to rest the left hemisphere of their brain and relax into their right, to go beyond reason, beyond thought and into feeling and understanding. These were rehearsals of what he called his “research quartet.”

  As she played, tears began to fall down her cheeks. She recalled a story Professor Maddings had told her about a pilot whale who had grieved the death of a dolphin that was his companion for many years. The whale had fought the trainers when they tried to take the body away. Elizabeth was not willing to give up yet, either.

  SEVENTEEN

  2:00 P.M.

  Eight days later

  Sunday, February 25

  La Pompe, Bequia

  TOKUJIRO KAZUMI approached the small blue house with Nilsen. He had told the Norwegian just to smile and leave the conversation to him. Nilsen could sometimes be a bit trigger-happy. Kazumi knew there would be no need for guns or threats.

  He pushed back his receding gray hair and then wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief. His full eyebrows were still black, not gray, and peaked like an owl’s. Kazumi thought about what he needed to do and felt a pang of shame. As a boy at boarding school he had dreamed of becoming so much more, of showing his English schoolmates that he was their equal. But it hadn’t quite worked out. He had encountered prejudice throughout the Japanese government bureaucracy toward a “haafu”—a half-Japanese. He had taken the job in the Resource Management Department without conviction, but now he saw the righteousness of their cause, fighting against the cultural imperialists. Did they tell Americans not to eat hamburgers?

  As he walked down the dirt path, he looked over to the small structure that the American researcher had rented from this family. He had always known that she was going to be a problem. Fortunately, their man at the university had been responsive to his concerns. But now they had an even bigger problem.

  At the house, Kazumi waved away the cigarette smoke that hung around Nilsen like a perpetual gray cloud. A dog barked, and the door opened almost before he knocked. Standing in it was Milton Mulraine, a local fisherman and Elizabeth’s research assistant.

  The brown-haired dog wagged its tail and jumped on Kazumi’s leg, licking his hand. Tears sprang to Kazumi’s eyes as he remembered Kioko, who had died just the year before. He choked back his feelings and tried to smile. “You must be…Mr. Mulraine?” he said.

  “Who want to know?”

  “My name is Tokujiro Kazumi, and I am the executive director of the Japanese Fisheries Development Department. We are also the main sponsor of your new school.” He gestured to the construction site across the street and the sign that proudly announced its donor country with a bright red circle. “I believe your own children are some of the top pupils. Am I correct?”

  “You got that right,” Milton said, standing taller.

  “This is my colleague Halvard Nilsen.” Nilsen, who as always looked like he needed a shave, nodded inscrutably. “May we come in?”

  “Yes, please do. What can I get for your thirst?”

  “Nothing, thank you,” Kazumi said, stepping inside the small house. “I’m afraid we are in quite a hurry, but I hear that you might be able to help us in another way.”

  “Name it.”

  “We have been conducting some scientific research, and we’ve discovered that a piece of the newborn whale that was caught last week has gone missing.”

  “Oh, it ain’t missing,” Milton said.

  “Do you know who has it? Did…Elizabeth take it?” Kazumi tried to pretend familiarity with the American he had never met.

  “No, she know nothing about it, but Teo—”

  “The whaler?”

  “One and the same. He take it to her. Thought she might want to see it. Had something wrong with it,” Milton said.

  “I see.” Kazumi tried not to react.

  “You sure you ain’t want something to drink? My wife make—”

  “No, thank you,” Kazumi said. “I heard Elizabeth was having problems with her funding.” Milton’s eyes fell. “Do you know whether she has the money to analyze the sample from the calf? Because I’m sure our department could help her out.”

  “She buying me a new boat, but I ain’t know how much she got. You need her number?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. We know how to get in touch with her. I’ll make sure someone in our department pays her a visit.”

  “Tell her Milton send you.”

  “We’ll be sure to do that.” Kazumi looked at Nilsen, who was smiling broadly.

  EIGHTEEN

  4:45 P.M.

  Five days later

  Friday, March 2

  Coast of Alabama

  TEO JUMPED OFF THE YACHT onto the long wooden dock. He waved goodbye to his friend, who was piloting a sailboat up to the States. As the boat came about, the towering main sail and jib flapped like an enormous swan beating its wings.

  The sun was low in the sky, and a dull light reflected off the gray water that surrounded the dock and lapped up against the barrier island. The strap of the cooler dug into Teo’s shoulder. He walked down the dock and stepped onto the sandy shore. His legs were unsteady after a dozen days being rocked by the sea.

  “Where you from?” The voice belonged to a large man who was wearing an I LOVE ALABAMA T-shirt. The bottoms of the letters were lost in the folds of his belly. The fisherman was tipped back in a metal beach chair, and a tall surfcasting rod was in the sand next to him. The dock had hidden him, but now Teo could see his burned face, covered in stubble, and the wide neck like a pelican’s gullet swallowing a fish.

 
“From down the way. I just visiting a friend,” Teo said.

  The man looked suspicious, no doubt hearing his accent. “You one of them boat people?”

  Teo put down the small duffel bag slung over his shoulder and reached into the cooler. “No, I am one of the rum people.” He handed a bottle to the man, the golden brown liquid sparkling in the sun. Teo reminded himself to speak “American” to avoid suspicion. He could polish up his speech when necessary, although he didn’t think there was anything wrong with the way Bequians spoke.

  “Well, all right, then, you have a good time with your friend. And welcome to the land of opportunity.”

  TEO NEEDED TO FIND a way across the country. In town he saw a gas station, which also looked strangely like a church. There was an old-fashioned pump in front. On it was painted: DRIVING ON EMPTY? FILL UP WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT.

  Teo stepped into the cool entryway. His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he saw that it was indeed an old, run-down church with a dozen benches on either side.

  “Can I help you?” A black woman stood behind a half door that led to an office.

  “I’m looking for the bus station.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place. My name is Reverend Cissy, and I’m also the ticketing agent and gas station cashier.” She added with a wink, “We call ourselves a full-service service station.”

  “I can see,” Teo said with a wide smile. “I need to get to California. Davis, California.”

  “California? That’s clear on the other side of the country. You are going to need a bus up to Mobile, and from there you can get a Greyhound to California.”

  Reverend Cissy sold him a ticket, which Teo paid for with U.S. dollars, and then made a nice donation to the collection box.

  “The Lord thanks you,” Reverend Cissy said, and then pointed him toward the kitchen so he could help himself to some ice.

  WHEN TEO CAME BACK, he saw a police officer talking to the reverend.

  “Cissy, I got a call about an illegal. Came on a boat. Have you seen him?”

  “What does he look like?” Reverend Cissy asked.

  “Light-brown-colored, not dark like you…more suntan. Toasted, not burnt, if you know what I mean.”

  The police officer’s humor was lost on the reverend. “He got a ride,” she said. “East toward Atlanta. Maybe you can catch him there.”

  The police officer left, and Teo came back in. “I think you have beautiful skin.”

  Reverend Cissy smiled. “We all came on a boat, whether we wanted to or not.”

  NINETEEN

  7:00 A.M.

  Next day

  Saturday

  Farallon Islands, California

  “MY NAME is Dr. Richard Skilling, and we are on ‘sharkwatch’ at the lighthouse on the Farallon Islands. We are surrounded by one of the most densely populated marine mammal sanctuaries in the world, and where there is prey, there are always predators. Each year some of the largest white sharks in the world come to these rugged and forbidding islands just twenty-seven miles from San Francisco, to eat seals and sea lions as part of their natural predation—”

  “Cut. Can we pick it up from ‘just twenty-seven miles’ and avoid the word ‘predation’? Maybe try something like ‘gorging themselves’…‘feasting’…you know.” John Fenster was directing his first IMAX movie, and he had promised Skilling that despite his long list of horror movie credits, he would be true to the science.

  Jesus, Skilling thought, I said “eat.” Doesn’t he think people can make the leap from eating to predation? “You told me you weren’t going to make another ‘sharks as bloodthirsty killers’ movie. People eat chickens and cows. Sharks eat seals and sea lions. I want viewers to know that they don’t generally target people.”

  “Fine, Dr. Skilling, fine. You’re the expert. Not to worry, there will be plenty of opportunities in the film to set the record straight. Tell us whatever you want, just keep the audience’s spines tingling.”

  “Don’t worry. My students are always on the edge of their seats.”

  Skilling had made numerous documentaries, but this was a big-budget movie, and he was the star. He had been recruited not only because he was one of the world’s leading white shark experts, but also because he was that rarest of species: a Hollywood-handsome scientist.

  They were filming at the skeletal gray lighthouse that crowned the granite peak of the largest island of the Farallon archipelago. Behind Skilling on the cement deck were two high-powered spotting scopes mounted on tripods. From this height all that was visible of the houses where the researchers lived were a pair of black gabled roofs.

  Ordinarily, the almost constant wind that howled across Lighthouse Hill would make any interview impossible, but they were enjoying surprisingly clear and calm weather. The rocky islands looked almost inviting, which was about as deceptive as a shark’s smile.

  Skilling decided to approach from a different angle. Give them what they wanted, and then he could get the information in.

  “Take two,” Fenster said.

  “Sharks live in our nightmares. They represent our greatest fears. They are humanity’s ultimate predator. But as large as they loom in our imagination, we have until recently known very little about them. The truth is even more fascinating than our wildest fantasies.”

  Skilling picked up the jaws of an eighteen-foot shark and held them in front of him. The top rows of triangular-shaped teeth hovered just above his head, and the bottom rows hung just below his crotch. The jaws, which looked like they could have belonged to a Tyrannosaurus rex, were twice the width of his torso. He could see the film crew’s eyes widen. He had them, as he always had his students whenever he displayed the jaws on the first day of class. Fear has a powerful way of focusing the mind.

  “Great white sharks—or white sharks, as scientists call them—can grow upward of twenty-one feet long and can weigh just under five thousand pounds.” Even Skilling’s muscular arms were starting to shake from the weight of the massive jaws. He carefully put them down and, out of his pocket, pulled a two-inch tooth for a camera close-up. “White sharks have ragged, serrated teeth.” He grabbed a mutilated surfboard from where it was leaning against the cement wall. “As you can see on the bottom, their pointed teeth pin their prey and prevent them from escaping. The crescent here on the top side of the board allows us to see the shape of their upper teeth, which they use to cut through large chunks of meat by shaking their head from side to side. They also thrash their tail back and forth to assist them in their sawing motion. It takes them a few seconds to sever the head off an elephant seal—that would take me ten minutes to remove, cutting through the muscle and bone with a hacksaw and cleaver.

  “In recent years, researchers have discovered that many of our assumptions about white sharks were wrong. Once thought to be mindless killers, sharks are, in fact, cautious and stealthy hunters who stalk their prey from below and execute an attack that is well timed and well planned. Long thought to have poor vision, these ambush predators actually have keen eyesight and can tell not only where you are facing but even where your eyes are looking.”

  Skilling could not hide a sly smile. He took great satisfaction in the shark’s hunting skills. “Yet their killing skills are far surpassed by our own. Last year sharks killed approximately seven people; most of these attacks were probably cases of mistaken identity. On the other hand, humans last year killed over a hundred million sharks, bringing some species to the brink of extinction. In the cruel practice of finning, just their fins are cut off for shark fin soup, and the rest of the body is thrown back into the water to slowly die. Who do you think is truly the most dangerous predator?”

  As if by way of answer, a frothy white boil down in Fisherman’s Bay revealed the presence of an unexpected but welcome visitor. “Shark!” Skilling shouted. The others were all looking where Skilling had pointed, but by now he was on the radio, contacting his graduate students down below. “We’ve got a shark attack off Tower P
oint. Big blood slick. Meet me at the boat in two minutes.”

  SKILLING GUNNED THE MOTOR of the Boston Whaler, squinting, trying not to lose sight of the point of kill. Fenster and the cameraman talked excitedly up in the bow. Ben Lopez, a curly-haired graduate student, sat next to Skilling. “Ben, no matter what happens, keep this running and time coding,” Skilling said quietly, handing him a pole that was attached to an underwater video camera. “Film crews come and go, but the research remains. It must always come first. Understood?” Ben nodded.

  Skilling caught sight of the tail fin whipping back and forth, and then the dorsal, which was well over three feet. Skilling recognized over a hundred individual white sharks by sight, each one identified with a name he or his students had given it. But he had never seen one with a dorsal that big. It was hunting in “sisterhood territory,” an area owned by some of the largest females.

  When the boat arrived at the kill, the water was still stained with blood. A tornado of western gulls pecked at the remains of a blondish-brown pelt with one flipper dangling. The flayed underside revealed pink meat, red blood clots, and white muscle.

  Skilling could tell from the large floating remains that this was a “super weaner.” These baby elephant seals were not content to stop nursing after being weaned, and would steal the teat of another mother, displacing her pup. Instead of weighing the ordinary fifty to one hundred pounds, these overstuffed sausages grew to weigh up to three hundred pounds as they continued their rapacious diet. Skilling knew that weaning pups in general had only a 50 percent chance of surviving their first year. Finding food, avoiding being crushed by the bulk of two-ton elephant seal bulls, and escaping the jaws of white sharks was too much for many of them, including this one.