“If I get a chance maybe we can have lunch.”
Jack reached out with his hand. “Thanks for the time, Al.”
“You got me on top of Everest and down alive. That’s something I won’t forget.” He pushed open the double doors, “That, and kicking Nash’s useless ass.” He walked Jack out to Karen’s office.
She glanced up suspiciously. “What kind of trouble are you boys getting into now?”
Jack shrugged. “Looks like none, probably to your relief.”
“Are you kidding? Take him away for six weeks. The quiet around here is fantastic.”
“Watch it,” Paulson said. “Otherwise I’ll make you come with me next time.”
“Not a chance,” Karen shot back.
Paulson winked at Jack and then slipped into his office.
“You seem a little let down.”
He shrugged again. “I probably shouldn’t be asking Al for anything. It’s—”
“Never underestimate Alan Paulson,” Karen said, cutting him off. “I learned that the hard way.”
Jack smiled and nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Karen walked him to the elevator and kissed him on the check. “Thanks for bringing the lug home alive.”
Jack rode the elevator to the lobby and walked out onto Sixth Avenue. He grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor, and then flagged down a cab even though it wasn’t that far to walk. “Waldorf-Astoria,” he said. The cabbie nodded and forced the cab out into traffic.
“Wake up, sir. We’re here.”
Jack looked up to find the cab parked at the curb in front of the hotel. “Sorry, it’s been a long couple of days.” He handed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”
Jack grabbed his computer bag and garment bag and climbed out of the cab. He waved off the bellman offering to take his bags and walked through the double doors into the ornately decorated art deco lobby, complete with the wheel-of-life mosaic and thirteen priceless allegorical oil murals by French artist Louis Rigal.
“I’m Jack Hobson,” he said to the well-groomed young man at the check-in counter.
The clerk smiled and tapped on the computer keyboard. His eyebrows lifted a notch, and his manner became even more attentive and animated. “I see you’re here as a guest of Paulson Global, Mr. Hobson. We have you reserved in a suite.”
Jack simply nodded. Karen would have had a fit if he’d downgraded to a mere executive room; the palatial suites were more accustomed to hosting heads of state than mountain climbers.
Once inside the suite, he looked at his cell phone, wondering exactly how he was going to let Leah down.
I’m too tired to do this tonight.
Instead, Jack walked over to the fully stocked mini-bar, pulled out several of the airline-style liquor bottles, and turned on the television. He dropped on the couch and downed several of the small bottles while watching CNN Headline News. Feeling completely exhausted, Jack turned off the television, closed his eyes and fell into a deep slumber.
CHAPTER 17
Jack lurched into the darkness, fumbling for the light switch and the ringing cell phone sitting on the night stand.
“Hello,” he said, feeling a nauseous combination of alcohol and exhaustion fogging his brain.
“Hobson, you lazy son-of-a-bitch, get your ass out of the rack.”
“Al?” Jack rubbed his eyes. “Jesus Christ — what time is it?”
“Three-thirty in the morning…. What’s wrong with that?”
“Ah…” Jack looked down at the couch, where empty mini-bar liquor bottles lay scattered about. “You’re still in the office?”
“I’ve got news for you,” the billionaire said.
“If it’s after three in the morning; it’s either real good or real bad.”
“Let me read you something off the newswire from three nights ago.”
Paulson’s voice faded and echoed as he flipped his phone to speaker mode. “A secret Russian expedition suffered a major setback when their Antonov 74 transport aircraft crashed while attempting to land near the wreck of a World War II B-29 bomber in a mountainous region of the Antarctic continent. Grigoriy Kryukov, a Russian industrialist and wireless telephone entrepreneur with serious ties to the Russian President, was not aboard the aircraft. However, it has been reported his son was killed, along with ten others.” The billionaire’s voice came closer to his phone. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“There are plenty of crashed aircraft on the continent. It’s not a forgiving environment when it comes to man or machine.”
“Okay, then — let me give you a little background,” Paulson said. “Several World War II-era B-29 Super Fortress bombers were sold to the Chilean government after the war was over in 1945. They used the B-29s mostly for doing aerial photography of the Andes Mountains and, because of their long range, Antarctica. This particular Super Fort suddenly develops engine trouble deep in the interior of the continent.
“When the pilot can’t gain enough altitude to clear the mountains, he decides to belly-land it on a flat section of ice. The crew survives the landing and, through the dogged determination of the aircraft commander, manages to stay alive for nearly two weeks until a British search aircraft locates them. The crew members are Chilean national heroes to this day. The name of the plane is the Las Tortugas: ‘The Turtles’ in Spanish. The nose art on the aircraft showed a snapping turtle dropping bombs out of the belly with a, let’s say, ‘scantily dressed, well-developed young woman’ riding suggestively on its shell.”
“It has been sitting on the ice all these years? Why all the interest now?”
“Until a few years ago, nobody gave a damn,” Paulson said. “They figured a wrecked B-29 sitting in temperatures reaching a hundred below zero wasn’t worth the salvage effort.”
“What changed?”
“A former test pilot and fellow aircraft collector named Darryl Greenamyer repaired a crashed B-29 named the Kee Bird and nearly managed to fly it off a frozen lake in Greenland.”
“I remember,” Jack said. “They flew in parts and repaired the aircraft. For some reason it burned up before takeoff.”
“The APU in the rear of the aircraft spilled fuel through a broken diaphragm and ignited. Before they knew it, the Kee Bird burned down to the ice.”
“What’s that got to do with the Las Tortugas, and why are you calling me at three in the morning?”
“Of the more than four thousand B-29s built during the war, there’s only one flying. It’s the Fifi, and it belongs to the Confederate Air Force, a group of old-farts and volunteers based in Texas. It has most of the interior stripped out and carries very little of the original equipment. The Las Tortugas, on the other hand, still has its machine-gun turrets, radio operator’s stations — you name it. The bomber’s in mint condition.”
Jack suppressed an urge to say, So what?
“It’s also a combat veteran, tons of missions over Japan. Most of the flying warbirds today were built at or near the end of the war and never saw any action. It’s invaluable on the open market to any number of well-heeled collectors.”
“I get it,” Jack said. “That’s tempting, I can tell.”
Paulson chuckled. “Trust me, after the Kee Bird incident, I wasn’t the only one who checked into salvaging the Las Tortugas. But given the politics, not to mention the cost, I never went past looking at it on paper. The Chileans still claim ownership of the aircraft because of the hero crew. The situation is highly complicated by the fact that it rests inside a small and generally unrecognized section of Antarctic territory claimed by the former Soviet Union — now the Russian government. The Russians are still pressing their territorial claims, probably because of national pride… and the fortune in minerals likely below the ice. Everyone finally decided the Las Tortugas ought to just stay where it was — except those sneaky Russians.”