CHAPTER 3
“I’m sorry, he can’t see anyone today.”
“Can’t you just check his schedule?” Matthew asked. “I’m supposed to be here.”
I don’t know who you spoke with before, but—”
“I told you, I didn’t speak with anyone, the automated system answered early this morning, and said that I had a time. Honest.”
The receptionist nodded and tossed her single black braid over her shoulder. “Well, I don’t know how you connected directly.”
“He sent the number to me himself a while back. At least it came from Doctor Bell’s account.”
“Only a few students get that, and I don’t find you here. If you had listened carefully, you would have heard that you need to get a confirmation back…”
The receptionist droned on. Matthew had gotten up this morning at the first hint of dawn to make the appointment. He caught the first ferry to Port Angeles and, driving the rest of the way, prepared as best as he could for the meeting.
The Point Kinatai Marine Science Center was known the world over as the premier marine sciences research facility in the western hemisphere. This was largely because Doctor Martin Bell, the director, had moved here from England thirty years ago with the promise that he could make it so. Although there were now those who begrudged the personal stamp he had put on the place, no one argued that he had not been the major factor in elevating the Point to its present stature, albeit as much by his fame, charisma and spirit of adventure, as by his work.
Matthew had been pleasantly surprised when he had gotten the appointment. Now here he was, stuck in a waiting room with a receptionist who looked young enough to be in high school, and she would not budge.
“I’m sorry,” she went on, “but as I told you, the director is busy all morning.”
“Not all so busy, Julia,” Martin Bell said, as he strolled out his office door.
“I’m sorry, Doctor, I thought you didn’t want to see anyone today.”
“I didn’t. Except this young fellow, apparently.”
The director of the Point was not a tall man, but stood his full height with easy confidence. In spite of a wind burned face framed by a silver mane of fine hair, he seemed younger than his nearly seventy years. Matthew had liked him from their few short meetings and would have even if Doctor Bell were not world renowned as a brilliant pioneer in marine science.
Bell stood for a moment appraising him, yet it felt totally free of judgment. Finally the director spoke.
“A good morning to you, my rash friend. What trouble are you stirring up now?”
“I hope it’s not trouble, Doctor Bell. I saw something I can’t understand and—”
“Good. An auspicious start. Come in.” He turned to his receptionist. “If anyone calls, tell them I’m…yes, you’re right as usual. Busy, absorbed, pondering the imponderable. And Julia? Get outside today, get some sun and air, won’t you? Take the rest of the day off.”
He gave her a wink and she smiled back, with just a trace of a blush on her pale cheeks.
Bell closed the door after Matthew entered the office.
“I don’t understand why that woman needs to spend virtually every evening in a club, dancing away. What a waste. Sit down, Matthew, I just need to have a quick look at my appointments to see if she has succeeded in keeping my morning free.”
Bell’s office at the Point was on the eastern corner of the main building, awash in morning light from an array of windows that made up the walls. The view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca was almost too dazzling. Bell sat on a large old wooden office chair, swiveling back and forth as he quickly leafed through memos and Post-It notes on what seemed like a still largely uncharted desk. He abruptly pushed most of them to one side and looked up at Matthew.
“Now then, let’s have the lot. Spare me nothing.”
Matthew told his story as plainly as he could. He tried to stick with his experience only and leave out any attempt at interpretation. Bell was famous for a low tolerance of waffling.
Yet Bell sat and listened to him without interrupting.
When he had finished his story, Matthew said, “I know this doesn’t makes sense, Doctor Bell, but that’s the way it was. If there’s anything you know that might explain this…”
“I’m aware they call me ‘Captain Nemo’ behind my back around here, and perhaps not all my expeditions have been successful. I’ve learned to be open to almost anything, and I know what it’s like to be disbelieved. Still, enough has panned out over the years to keep the hounds of academia at their distance. It’s changed here over the last few years, you know. Too many bean counters, too much career politics. The students seem to spend most of their time honing grant-chasing skills.”
Bell stared through the window at a sailing ketch headed out of the Strait to the open sea and said, “As you’ve already conceded, your story does sound like utter nonsense, I’m afraid.”
Bell was right. He could not defend his experience with any kind of proof or explanation—not to Bell, not to anyone.
“If you had told me this story a few days ago,” Bell continued, “I would probably have been seeing you to the door by this point in the interview.”
Matthew waited as Bell sifted through some papers, found a manila folder, and opened it. He scrutinized its contents then looked up and stared at Matthew across the expanse of the desk as if from across a sea. His eyebrows went up and stayed suspended above his clear eyes until he finally let out a slow sigh. It seemed suddenly very quiet.
“Considering what you told me about time and location,” Bell said, “I can tell you the name of at least one of the whales you saw.”
“You had a transmitting tag on one of the whales?”
“Yes, Lefty is one of ours. She has a gash, healed over now, on her right flipper. She’s probably not the one that caught your attention, but she had to have been among the others.”
A large map showing all the oceans and continents covered the entire wall opposite the windows. Bell got up and walked to it, his distinctive stride that of someone moving through open wilderness, rather than across office carpeting.
He pointed to Scammon Lagoon in Mexico, and swept his hand up to a location off the coast of British Columbia, due west of Vancouver.
“We electronically tagged Lefty about nine weeks ago in Baja, just before the migration north began. She appears to have been part of the grouping of whales that you saw. She was at the same coordinates at the same time, if what you just told me is correct. Fortunate that you troubled to get that down, wasn’t it?”
“You can thank old Livijo.”
Bell looked back to the window, dazzling light off the water filtered through his white hair. He paused a moment before going on.
“There’s something extremely peculiar connected with this, Matthew. We had a confirmed visual sighting of Lefty two days before you saw your whales.”
He returned to the map and pointed to a spot south of the first location, well within the established migration routes of the grays.
“About here. She was on her own with her calf. It fits that she could get to where you saw her, if we allow eighty kilometers per day. It fits. At this previous sighting of Lefty, there were no other grays closer than a couple of kilometers. I’ve never seen migrating grays act like a pod in the way you described. You said there were at least fifty, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, they do socialize a bit in the breeding grounds, but not while migrating. Of course, grays can appear to travel together, but it would be more accurate to say that they just happen to be going the same way at the same time. I’ve seen clusters of fifteen or so, but forty or fifty swimming together? Not grays, not while migrating. So, if true, worth investigating for that alone.”
“I agree,” Matthew said.
“Of course, but there’s another bone in this stew, you see, because virtually to the minute of the time you say the whales vanished, we lost contact and then had a cluster
of garbled signals before picking them up again.” Bell gestured toward the manila folder. “This is according to a report that landed on my desk this morning.”
“Doctor, I don’t really know what they did.”
“Correct, so we will say, ‘appeared to vanish.’ In any case, it matches the time Harold reported for loss of contact. He was monitoring Lefty at the time.”
“Harold Conlan?” Matthew asked. “Well…”
“Yes, I know, a bit obsessive, but he does a thorough job organizing data. When I need it, that’s damn helpful. Even if he did once tell me there were 8.67 females in the average pod of Orcas.”
“I’ve worked with Harold.” Matthew said.
“Tends to wander a bit too long among the details, agreed, but diligence paid off this time. After the garbled signals settled down, we got clear readings again. Lefty’s signal came from a location, let’s see, right here.”
Bell pointed to another location on the map, off the coast of Vancouver Island, but almost a hundred kilometers further north. “This all happened in less than a minute.”
“That can’t be right,” Matthew said, “and I have no idea whether I saw Lefty.”
“Well, you may have, though you wouldn’t have been looking for her, would you? The GPS data we have for the time you gave puts Lefty at the same location that you said you were at during your sighting. You were using satellite navigation gear on your fishing boat, of course.”
“Nothing fancy, but still accurate to within ten meters.”
“How quickly we get used to the advances of technology!” Bell said with a laugh. “In any case, that puts Lefty within the group you observed, and the point is, they seemed to have moved in a way that doesn’t seem possible!” Bell rubbed his hands together. “We shall know soon enough. The Valentina is on the way to meet them.”
The Valentina was the Point’s flagship, one of the best small research vessels in the world. The chance to join her crew someday was a dream Matthew held closely and that desire had kept him going when he struggled with the most challenging academics.
Bell pointed to the map again.
“The Valentina is about here now and should be able to get to the signal’s source late today. Andrew Thorssen is skippering her, as you know. You need people, Matthew, not just tracking devices.”
Bell went back to his desk, pushed the papers back in the folder and handed it to Matthew.
“I’d like you to look over Harold’s report and talk to me again after lunch.”
Matthew shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
“I have a class after lunch, Doctor Bell. It’s my first one of the semester.”
“Then how about dinner tonight? We are having one of Margaret’s specialties.”
“Yes…yes, of course,” he said, amazed at the invitation. It was almost unheard of for Bell to allow anyone from the Point into his sanctuary.
“Splendid. We’ll see you at seven. Read the report, will you? Strange coincidence that you were there. Sometimes, you know, chance plays us and sometimes for us.”
Bell sat down and looked at Matthew for another long instant, then began foraging through the landscape of papers and files. Matthew took his leave silently.
He walked down the hall and out into the bright shimmer of day, Bell’s last comment ringing in his head.