“I can’t believe there’s no spare radio,” Striker said.

  “Silver case downstairs is radio,” said Vadim.

  “Then why haven’t we tried it?”

  Vadim shook his head. “What is rush?” He was walking around the zodiac, punching the inflatable in a few choice spots with his fists. Striker watched his inspection. Though it was warm now, she knew what effect cold temps could have on equipment. Even to her untrained eye, the zodiac gleamed like someone had just readied it for an outing, the thing plump and rearing to go. “We take silver case back with us,” he said. “Maybe bring nice wine from wine rack. One for each of us on island. Then we power up and listen.”

  Suddenly she understood.

  He was afraid.

  What good would it do right this second to find out what they were up against? It was better to brace yourself for news like that. Mix yourself a mai tai. Maybe crack open a can of nuts.

  “You think it’s weird the zodiac is launch-ready?” she asked.

  Vadim nodded. “Big weird,” he said. “Gas line is connected to engine. Nobody stores gas tank with gas line still attached.”

  “So what?” said Kevin, appearing from below with another load of stuff. “Dude wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “Little boat is just right, not too soft. Air boats stay optimum one day, two in cold weather. I think owner-man only just went bye-bye.” He finished his walkaround with a series of playful jabs at the zodiac’s gunwales as if channeling his inner Rocky Balboa, then headed down the stairs.

  “What if the guy’s off scuba diving?” asked Striker.

  “See any orange flags floating around?” said Kevin. “We watched this thing sail in. The guy’s definitely not here.”

  He was carrying a crate. It was mostly foodstuff, though Striker could see the laptop case and a few DVDs. Dude probably had the zip drive tucked away in a pocket for a rainy day.

  “You two have a nice powwow out there?” Kevin said in a low voice. Striker knew what he was hinting at. While she and Vadim had been parked on the beach, he’d probably picked up the binoculars, scanned the harbor hoping to find the two of them in flagrante. That was how guys like him saw the world. Everyone else was off having fun and he wasn’t invited. His whole life spent below deck burning up with envy.

  “Only the shadow knows,” said Striker.

  “What is happening? Why we move all this?” said Vadim, reappearing. He was wearing a tracksuit he’d scavenged from the captain’s berth. The pants were too short on him, but the material gleamed, the white racing stripes running up the arms and legs lending him an air of rakishness. He looked like some kind of tycoon or a full-fledged Russian mobster. Man, the Baron’s gonna have a field day with this one, Striker thought.

  “Waddya mean why are we moving all this stuff?” said Kevin.

  “I am sailor,” Vadim said. “You are crew. We raise sail, pull anchor, steer our big, beautiful sailing boat back to island like Santa Claus returning from war.” He picked up Anders’ binoculars and strung them around his neck. A pair of mirrored sunglasses sat on a shelf near the wheel. He rubbed them on his cuff then slid them on, handed his old ones to Striker. They were much too big but she put them on anyway, her eyes finally shielded behind polarized lenses.

  “This thing has a motor,” said Kevin. “Why not just power it up?”

  “Why waste precious gas when air is free?” explained Vadim. “We may need petrol later for bigger important use.”

  Striker left the men to it. She was hoping to find a tracksuit of her own down below like the one Vadim was sporting. “Back in a jiffy,” she said, before disappearing.

  She had just found a white one, a Karl Lagerfeld pure as the driven snow, and was pulling on the pants when she heard what sounded like feet stamping the wood overhead, scuffling around for purchase. They were probably trying to move something heavy, too heavy even for them.

  She didn’t hurry. They were grown men. It couldn’t be anything urgent or they’d call her. As expected, the Lagerfeld was way too big but tracksuits were the most forgiving of clothes. All you had to do was roll up the sleeves or the bottoms on the pants and voila! You were back in business.

  Suddenly a strange noise filled the air. Striker had to admit it wasn’t unpleasant. Up on deck the men must have hit something metal, making it resonate. It brought a smile to her face. She turned to fix her hair in the faux mirror screwed to the wall. Instantly she froze.

  In the reflection the little girl in the yellow dry suit stood with her mouth open. The rat sat cleaning its claws on her shoulder. The tuning fork the child had pilfered from Paulet Island was ringing between her fingers. Slowly the note faded out. Lucy tapped the fork on her front teeth. Again the sound pervaded the room.

  Striker spun around.

  There was no one there. She turned and peered in the mirror.

  Now the little girl was holding the leather riding crop. Playfully she flicked it at Striker. In her affectless voice she began to speak in a language not English. It was all so confusing. In those first hours on the Yegorov, what had the girl’s dads said about where she was from? She didn’t know how, but Striker could understand every word.

  During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror,

  I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues

  in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone “picked me out.”

  On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,

  her lips blue with cold. Jolted out of the torpor

  characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear:

  “Could someone ever describe this?” And I answered: “I can.”

  It was then that something like a smile

  dawned on what had previously been

  a void.

  It was one of the poems inked on Vadim’s body.

  “Anna Akhmatova lost two husbands to Stalin,” the child said. “Her son spent years in a Russian gulag.” The little girl sat down on the bed’s dark red duvet. Her feet dangled off the edge. “She was Ukrainian.” With the riding crop, she cut a Z in the air, then smacked the pillow. A spray of feathers erupted in the air. “You believe that story he fed you?”

  Striker turned from the mirror. The little girl and her rat were gone, the cabin filled with small white feathers. She stood watching them settle on the furniture. Suddenly she noticed the total silence echoing overhead. Her ears popped as though she were a hundred feet underwater. She thought of the special room in Midtown, how easy it would be to drift off into nothing. She gave her head a hard shake and raced up on deck.

  Kevin was gazing up the mast. His face lit with wonder. Then he saw her staring at him and his eyes grew large. “Help,” he stated. He tried again but with more conviction. “Help!” he shouted, pointing.

  Striker ran over to the controls but had no idea what anything was. The whole time Kevin just stood there watching.

  Vadim was slowly being pulled up the mast. His face the color of raw meat. The sunglasses had fallen off and shattered. She couldn’t not see his eyes, two big, discolored eggs. The binoculars he was wearing had somehow gotten caught in the pulleys that raise the sail. The day filled with the clamor of the mechanization blindly performing its task. It was shocking to watch a grown man being lifted so easily. If the sails were wet, they might weigh hundreds of pounds. Taking Vadim along for the ride was probably a piece of cake. But how had he managed to get tangled up in it?

  Striker kept pounding on the console. What else could she do? His feet kicked the empty air, his hands gouging at his neck where the binocular strap dug into his throat. She didn’t look. She wouldn’t look. Even as he slowly settled into stillness. By the time the mechanism reached its conclusion, his body hung limp atop the mast like a flag on a windless day.

  A seabird came and landed a few feet from Striker. The bird carefully folded its wings, its one good eye never blinking. Like her, the skua was somehow both a witness and an active participant. She just felt grateful for its presence.

  That strange phrase—it was all a blur—was starting to mean something. Now skimming over the surface of the Southern Ocean, she couldn’t remember how they’d managed.

  Together she and Kevin had loaded everything into the zodiac—the food, the first aid kit, the electronics that were probably already dead. Next they lowered the inflatable over the side and tied the two red tandems to it. Striker was surprised Kate didn’t have a tender with an electric starter, but she pulled the cord and on the first attempt the engine roared to life. As she steered the inflatable back through the flaming blue corridor and out to sea, she wondered what they’d find out there. Would the whole earth be on fire, the ocean boiled away? She kept her hand steady, tried even harder not to think about what they were leaving behind.

  The zodiac shot out of the breach. The light of the jewel-blue paradise faded behind them as if a spell had been broken. In those last moments onboard the stranger’s sailboat, she and Kevin had taken great care not to glance up at the terrible flag casting its eerie shadow on deck. Striker realized she was still holding her breath.

  They were more than a mile away before she saw the first bergy bit sullenly bobbing along. Even the ice seemed to know to leave that eerie blue island alone. The heat from the caldera probably extended some distance, the island surrounded by a chain of volcanic vents that kept the wildlife at bay. Or maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe Vadim had found his heaven.

  Off on the horizon she could see a small braid of smoke staining the sky. She was surprised by how far they had kayaked. She was relieved they didn’t have to paddle back.

  As kids, she and Ama had puttered around on lakes in the White Mountains in a series of small boats with outboard motors. There was really nothing to it. She knew to move the tiller left to go right, right to move left, how to turn the throttle to speed up or slow down. The motor was tuned up, smooth and quiet, no plumes of smoke shooting out of the casing. Judging from the engine’s effortless handling, someone had recently added the right mix of oil to the gas, readying the boat for an escape. She was just glad everything worked.

  The ride back to the volcano was exactly what the doctor ordered. It felt good to be out on the water. The ocean was calm, the salt spray gentle on her face. She needed a long moment to try and cleanse her mind. What would she tell the others?

  I was downstairs. I found a tracksuit. It was white. Karl Lagerfeld. A little too big around the waist but so what? I slipped it on. The feel of the velour utterly delicious. I imagined pairing the outfit with a gold chain and box braids and heading out to Washington Heights for some spicy Dominican food and a night of dancing. Then I heard footsteps overhead. The feet moving in a tight ring. Like they were jockeying for position, trying to gauge the best angle to lift something. There were no shouts, no calls for help. Nothing. Just the sound of feet scraping in a circle. So I finished getting dressed. I went back up. I didn’t hurry. I was still basking in the softness of high-end velour, in fantasies of being home among people like me.

  She knew she wouldn’t mention what she had seen in the mirror. The white feathers clouding the air. The little girl with the flat voice holding a leather riding crop and speaking in Russian.

  “That was crazy, huh?” said Kevin. He shook his head. It was the first thing either one of them had said since abandoning the sailboat. He sounded like a man coming down from a high. The yellow dry bag sat in his lap. Periodically he buried his hand in it for what she could only assume was reassurance.

  “What was crazy?” said Striker. She kept the zodiac aimed on the curl of smoke. Honestly she knew what he meant. But she was determined to make him earn every second of this conversation. It shouldn’t be so easy.

  “I said that was some crazy shit.”

  “I still don’t understand what happened,” she said.

  “Like I do,” he said.

  “You were there.”

  “So? I don’t know sailboats. I’m a gadgets guy.”

  “Tell me again only slower.”

  “What for?”

  “Just tell me,” she said.

  He sighed. “I was tightening the clasp on one of the cases when I thought I saw something, like a seal. Behind me I heard this funny squeaking noise, but I figured it was just the sail going up, that the pulley needed oil.” He shook his head. “I kept looking over the bay, trying to find what I’d seen. I was about to ask him for the binoculars. Jesus.” He winced. “I thought he was kidding around. Like, pretend dancing. Guy’s a goof, no?”

  She didn’t pull any punches. “Why didn’t you do anything?”

  His hand was back in his dry bag though he was staring off at the sky. “I didn’t even realize what was happening until he was like a foot off the ground.”

  “So why didn’t you help?”

  He grew quiet. She imagined his fingers fondling whatever was in his bag, starting to squeeze. “Is this about Vadim,” he said, “or are you asking me about—” He paused. “That other thing?”

  “What about Taylor?” she said.

  “It just feels like you’ve already made up your mind,” he said. “Same as last time.”

  “Not my style.”

  “What do you want me to say?” he said. “Fine. I panic. There. You happy? I’m a panicker. Panic is what I do. Shit goes south? I freeze. Boom!”

  She didn’t like the way he was staring at her. Like he might lunge. But she couldn’t stop now. They were actually getting somewhere. She kept pushing. Vadim was dead. It was probably Christmas Day. She had nothing to lose.

  Like you never panicked before.

  “Admit it,” she said.

  “Admit what?”

  “You smashed up the radio.”

  “I did what now?”

  “You don’t want us to be rescued, so you smashed it all up.”

  “What’s my plan?”

  “Beats me,” she said. “All I know is if we ever get off this rock, you’ll be arrested for the murder of your wife.”

  He laughed. “Even if that were true, you got zero witnesses and your crime scene’s thousands of miles from the nearest courtroom. Plus, where’s the body?”

  Striker didn’t back down. “Her injury says it all,” she said. “Any decent coroner could call it just from the depth of that hole you left in her head. Rest assured I took lots of photos.” She kept her hand steady on the tiller. Did he know it was a lie, that she couldn’t even find the crime scene a second time? “Even if you aren’t arrested, there’s enough circumstantial evidence to cut you out of her will.”

  He stood up. She’d never realized how big he was. Only an inch or two shorter than Vadim but without the muscle. She shimmied the boat back and forth. It worked. He struggled to keep his balance and fell back down.

  “I didn’t kill Vadim but if I did?” he said. “Guys like that who prey on other guys’ wives—they disgust me.”

  “He disgusted you?”

  “What?” said Kevin, genuinely puzzled. “I said your crazy woman driver shtick is gonna send our food into the sea.” He pointed at a row of crates. The buckle on one had come loose in the wind.

  Keep it together, Ronnie.

  She could still see Vadim’s body dangling from the mast, the two of them hustling around in its shadow, desperate to be gone.

  “And for your information, Taylor was no angel,” said Kevin. “Take it from me. The last six months we had an open relationship.”

  Striker recalled how lovey-dovey he’d acted after they’d first shoved off from the Yegorov, him playing with his wife’s hair, his hand rubbing her knee.

  “You do anything with it?”

  “With what?” he said.

  “With your freedom. Get any side action going? Or was that the problem?” She couldn’t stop. She knew this time the conversation wasn’t just in her head, and that there was a limit to it, a line that couldn’t be crossed without something breaking. “Maybe Taylor liked what she found out there, all that hunky new freedom. A man who wouldn’t freeze up when it counted.”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on the blue sky, combing the heavens for something.

  “This trip was supposed to save our marriage,” he finally said, gritting his teeth, “and she didn’t even want to come. Two years ago I was the one on top. It was me pulling in seven figures.”

  “Times change.”

  “What happened to everyone’s sense of humor?” he said. “I hadn’t even posted on that forum in almost five years.”

  “Didn’t you get the memo?” she said. “On the internet nothing ever dies.”

  “I’m not a racist!” he yelled. The word hung in the air. “They were just jokes,” he said. “For Chrissake, nobody got killed.”

  There was an interminable moment of silence. Her ears popped.

  “So you lost your job and got branded with a scarlet R,” she said. “And now you’re what—an independent consultant? Part of the gig economy?”

  “They didn’t even have the balls to out-and-out fire me,” he said. “Probably knew I had a solid First Amendment case if they tried.” He shook his head. “No, they were real smooth about it. They rolled out this big gun from HR. Told me it was time to make room at the table, and what had I ever done to create a more inclusive space? ‘Uh, besides make you a shit ton of money?’”