Restless in the Grave (40 page)

Thirty

JANUARY 22

Newenham

They took Jean to Bill’s, who raised an eyebrow at Kate. “Nice to see you alive.”

“Yeah,” Kate said, “sorry about that. Things, well, escalated. Also, I quit.”

“Really,” Bill said. “You’re done here? That didn’t take long.”

“I think so,” Kate said.

“You don’t sound all that sure.”

“I’m sure,” Kate said firmly. “This is Jean, by the way. She’s an experienced bartender, and she needs a job.”

Bill looked Jean over. “You going to stick around a little longer than my last hired help?”

Jean blinked, and was hired.

“The bones are restless,” Moses said, taking a stool.

Kate looked at him.

“The bones out of the grave,” Moses said. “They’re coming up the cellar stairs.” Somewhere between the airport and Bill’s, his usual irritable attitude had vanished, to be replaced by what appeared to be resignation.

Bill’s cornflower blue, impossibly young eyes went wide. Jean was uncomprehending but frightened anyway. Even Mutt’s ruff went up a little at his words. Kate was the first to recover enough to speak. “I don’t know what you mean, Uncle,” she said, and only the two of them were conscious that this was the first time she had accorded him the honorific.

He looked at her. “You can ignore them for only so long, but sooner or later, they will pull the door open and get out.” He looked at Bill. “I need a beer, babe. I need a lot of beers.”

Without a word Bill went behind the bar, opened the refrigerator, and started lining them up.

“Okay if I borrow your pickup, Uncle?” Kate said to his back. “I won’t be long.”

He waved his hand without turning around.

Kate touched Jean’s arm. At the door, Kate realized that Mutt wasn’t with them and turned.

The 140-pound half wolf–half husky was standing on her hind legs, her forepaws on Moses’s stool, her nose pressed against his cheek, a low sound that was neither whine nor growl rumbling up out of her breast. Across the bar, Bill watched both of them with a bleak expression.

“Mutt,” Kate said.

Mutt waited a moment longer and then gave Moses a big, juicy lick up the side of his face, provoking a roar of profanity that was almost Bobby-worthy.

Satisfied with having made her presence felt, Mutt romped across the floor and shouldered her way out the door.

Kate’s eyes met Bill’s.

If she was not mistaken, the older woman’s eyes were filled with tears.

*   *   *

The apartment over the Grant garage was a palace by comparison to the hovel Jean had been sharing in Adak. “The rent’s paid up through the end of the month,” Kate said. “So is the ATV.”

Jean’s tongue became unstuck long enough to say, “What about the landlady? Is she going to be okay with this?”

Kate thought about Tina Grant, the wealthiest woman in Newenham, the woman with the dead daughter, the dead husband, the daughter in the hospital, and the worthless son. “Long as you pay her in cash.”

Jean was almost inarticulate with gratitude. “I don’t know when I can pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kate said. “I’m going to be reimbursed for my expenses.” She hoped. She stuffed her few belongings in her pack. “The ATV’s parked under the stairs, the keys are on the hook here.”

“Hey,” Jean said.

Kate stopped on the stairs, hand on the doorknob.

“It was bad in Adak,” Jean said. “Really bad.”

“I had a feeling,” Kate said.

“I owe you,” Jean said.

“You owe yourself,” Kate said.

Kate pulled up at the trooper post and Mutt, remembering good hunting from the last visit, vanished once more into the underbrush in pursuit of the not-so-elusive ptarmigan.

Inside, Campbell and Mason were interrogating Boyd. She dropped her pack in a corner and perched on the vacant desk.

Boyd, sweating profusely, was loud and repetitive in denying any knowledge of the contents of the totes. “They were sealed when they were loaded onto the aircraft in Anchorage,” he said. “All Finn hired me to do was fly the plane from Anchorage to Adak, with a fuel stop in Newenham.”

“Where did the load originate?” Mason asked.

“I don’t know,” Boyd said. “My job was to haul the freight from Anchorage to Adak. That’s all.”

“Were you going to be flying the bigger planes when Grant bought them?” Kate said. “And didn’t you tell me yesterday that you were a partner in Eagle Air?”

Boyd wouldn’t look at her, and didn’t answer.

“What bigger planes?” Mason asked.

“The girl, Tasha Anayuk, out at Eagle Air, told me yesterday that Finn was buying some bigger planes. She didn’t get more specific.”

Everyone looked at Boyd. This time he gave Kate a look that should have turned her into a crispy critter on the spot and said, “I want a lawyer.”

Kate laughed. “You need one.” She looked at Mason. “Finn Grant has been shipping stolen American arms and selling them to buyers in Asia. He started out small, perfecting the route and proving he could deliver.” She glanced at Boyd. “From what Boyd let drop, the pilots he hired were mostly ex-military, disillusioned with the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. If they had any qualms, pretty sure they went away when he offered them an ownership stake in the company. I’m guessing there was a pretty nice profit-sharing plan.”

“Bitch,” Boyd said.

Kate beamed at him. “My middle name.” She looked back at Mason. “He bought Chinook Air Force Base with an eye toward making large deliveries on big planes. The bigger the plane, the more cargo he could ship, and the more cargo, the higher the profit margin. It’s simple economics. Also, and what I think would have been more important to him, the bigger the plane, the longer the range. It would also mean he could lift the arms from a base, say on the West Coast, Washington, Oregon maybe, direct to Newenham, thereby bypassing Anchorage altogether. Anchorage, as it does, playing host to way too many nosy federal agents, FBI, U.S. Customs, like that.” She paused, and added, “If you aren’t already, I’d be looking for a base of operations on the West Coast. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just a big warehouse on a commercial airport with enough traffic for Eagle Air flights not to cause comment.”

Mason meditated, hands clasped loosely in his lap. “We’ve always been worried about western Alaska.” He raised his eyes and gave a faint smile. “It’s just so damn big, and so wide open, and so close to Russia. It’s the fucking Wild, Wild West,” he said, unconsciously echoing Campbell’s words spoken in another context a week before in the Park. “The Russians are broke, and the Russian Mafia pretty much owns the infrastructure. Since it doesn’t look like they’re ever going to give the Russian army a decent retirement plan, the Russian army officer corps has been providing for itself by selling everything from small arms to tanks on the black market ever since the Wall came down.”

“Eventually, they’re going to expand their horizons,” Campbell said.

Mason nodded. “And one of those horizons would be right off their eastern coast. There’s already an infrastructure of sorts. People in eastern Russia would starve without a black market. It’s just a matter of Finn Grant and Eagle Air tapping into what’s already there.”

“And who says no to the Russian Mafia,” Campbell said, “especially on their own ground. It would be, what, a thousand air miles from Adak to, what’s the nearest Russian port?”

“Petropavlovsk,” Kate and Mason said at the same time.

“A town of about two hundred thousand people,” Mason said. “With a history of moving goods in and out unobtrusively. And most conveniently placed for Asian markets.”

“How many miles from Eagle Air to Petropavlovsk?” Kate said.

“Fifteen hundred,” Campbell said, looking up from his computer. He sat back with his hands linked behind his head, meditative eyes on Boyd’s sweating countenance. “And on the U.S. side, no prying eyes at a remote FBO three hundred miles from the nearest population center big enough to support a regulatory and enforcement structure. All the runway you needed. Plenty of fuel storage. Accommodations for pilots and crews on layover.”

“And, no offense,” Mason said, “there’s only, what, three hundred and fifty Alaska State Troopers?”

“Three hundred and eighty,” Campbell said. “And at present only one in Newenham.”

His and Kate’s eyes met and held. “You might want to ask around,” Kate said. “Maybe your getting no help on the job wasn’t an accident.”

He wanted to deny it. It was right there on his face for all to see. But he didn’t.

“So, a wide-open frontier, a rudimentary law enforcement presence concentrated on local offenses, and a modern air base,” Kate said, thinking out loud. “A smuggler’s dream.”

“None of this was cheap,” Mason said.

“Yeah,” Kate said, “I’d like to know where he got the money, too.” Again, her gaze met Campbell’s.

“I may have a line on that,” Mason said unexpectedly. “I got a message from a friend yesterday. You know her,” he said to Campbell.

“Let me guess,” Campbell said, reaching for his phone. “Jo Dunaway?”

Ten minutes later, Jo Dunaway walked in the door. She stopped short at the sight of Mason. “James,” she said.

“Hey, Jo,” James Mason said, looking pleased, and not in a platonic way, either. “I, ah, got your message.”

“Oh, hell no,” Kate said.

“I have to say I wasn’t expecting this quick a response,” Dunaway said. “I thought you got transferred out of state.”

“Ah, overseas, actually,” Mason said, gray eyes warm behind his glasses. It looked to Kate’s critical eye as if, absent present company and press of business, the special agent might be inclined to get a room.

Dunaway looked at Campbell, green eyes narrowed, blond corkscrews bristling with hostility. “What’s going on, Liam?”

“Tell us about the embezzlement story you’re following, Jo.”

“Why should I?”

Campbell sighed. “Because it might be a lot more than just an embezzlement story.” He glanced at Mason. “And if it is, you get it all.” He raised an eyebrow.

Mason looked from Campbell to Dunaway, lingered for a long moment, and then gave Campbell the nod.

Dunaway thought about it long enough for the others to get restive, Kate thought not because she was thinking it over but because she was enjoying having a hold over three law enforcement professionals, and said, “Okay. You know I used to report on the criminal courts,” she said.

“To my cost, yes,” Campbell said.

Kate just looked at her.

“Yeah, yeah.” Dunaway waved off both of them. “I’m doing more general reporting now, but I made a lot of contacts over the years and they keep in touch. A source, and that’s as close as I’ll come to naming them, a source at Chapados, Reid, Reid, McGillivray and Thrall told me they thought there were some shenanigans going on with Alexandra Hardin’s trust fund.”

Mason looked puzzled. “Who’s Alexandra Hardin?”

“The heir to one of the biggest fortunes ever made during the Klondike Gold Rush,” Kate said, “and doubled over the next three generations in natural resource exploitation and transportation. I think her dad was a lease-owner at both Swanson River and Prudhoe Bay.” Along with Emil Bannister, Erland fucking Bannister’s father.

“What’s the estate worth?” Mason said.

“Half a billion dollars,” Dunaway said.

“Jesus Christ,” Mason said.

Campbell’s jaw simply dropped.

“More than enough to finance the overthrow of half a dozen third-world nations,” Kate said, who was made of sterner stuff. “Who or what is Chapados, Reid Squared and Whoever?”

“The law firm handling the Hardin estate. A very old firm, in Alaskan years, and very reputable.”

“Alexandra not watching her own bank balance?” Mason said.

“I’m sure she would be,” Dunaway said, “were it not for a little problem of early-onset Alzheimer’s.”

Everyone winced.

“As it happens, Chapados, Reid is also—” Dunaway paused for effect. “—the law firm for Dagfin Arneson ‘Finn’ Grant and Eagle Air Enterprises, Limited.”

“Who’s Grant’s lawyer?” Campbell said.

“Hugh Reid,” Kate and Dunaway said at the same time.

“Who is administering the Hardin estate?” Campbell said.

“Hugh Reid,” Kate and Dunaway said again, and frowned at each other.

Kate thought back to the safari-clad suck-up she’d met at Eagle Air her first day on this job. “I met him,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like the type to orchestrate a massive embezzlement scheme and parlay it into an international arms-smuggling operation.”

“He’s a halfwit,” Dunaway said. “He flunked the bar exam five times and the rumor is that he passed the sixth time only because his father, the first Reid in Chapados, Reid, Reid, McGillivray and Thrall, finagled it. The first Reid took our Reid into the firm because chances were he wasn’t going to get a job anywhere else. My informant says he got the Hardin estate because it was supposed to be a no-brainer, just counting the money coming in and out, and making sure Alexandra Hardin was well cared for.”

Mason’s brow furrowed. “Where is Alexandra Hardin?”

“That,” Dunaway said, with all the air of one who knew she was about to create a sensation, “is the half-a-billion-dollar question.”

Kate didn’t know Campbell very well, but she saw the slow burn. “Where is Hardin?” he said.

Dunaway looked like she was thinking about sulking, but the story was too good not to continue. “My source didn’t have much except for a printout from the Hardin trust account showing transfers of figures in six and sometimes even seven zeros moving out of the account into a dozen different accounts scattered all over the planet. Each transfer was authorized by Alexandra Hardin. As it happens, Alexandra Hardin left the state of Alaska over two years ago, almost immediately after her father died. It took three months, a forensic accountant—and she wasn’t cheap—and a lot of sweat equity before I could even locate the banks that held the transfer accounts. Usually by the time she got there, the funds had moved on. But I kept looking.”

Kate couldn’t resist. “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”