If it made Desault happy, it made Katherine sad and his promises to her sounded hollow. He stayed in Sacramento, stalled until late afternoon, and then he parked outside the Water Resources building and rode the elevator up to Fish and Game headquarters. Chief Blakely wasn’t in her office, but her assistant let him in and he put the six green logbooks on her desk. He stacked them one on top of the other, the oldest on the bottom. He laid his resignation letter next to the books, started to leave the room, and then walked back from the door to the green logbooks and rested his hand on the warm cover of the top one. He kept his hand there for several minutes, standing alone in the late sunlight in the chief’s office, emotion coursing through him as he let go.
III
FORTY
They flew low and fast, skimming the tundra, hoping to startle a bear. It was Stoval who spotted a big grizzly feeding on a caribou carcass. He shouted to the pilot, ‘Right side, three o’clock.’
The pilot banked hard as the bear ran and now willows bent under the rotor wash as the helicopter settled lower and Xian Liu, rifle raised, waited for the helicopter noise to flush the bear out of the willows. When it did, the pilot held the copter steady and Liu’s shot caught the bear in the hindquarters. But the bear hardly slowed.
A half mile later they hovered close enough again, though the bear was only partially visible under another stand of stubby low trees. Stoval had the pilot bring the helicopter down fifty feet. He wasn’t sure Liu could make the shot and turned to him and asked, ‘Want us to put you on the ground?’
‘No, he’ll come out.’
‘He’s done moving for now. You hit something with that first shot. He bled a lot.’
‘He’ll come out.’
‘We’ll put you down and he might come at you, but you’ll get a shot.’
Liu wasn’t going to do that, but Stoval stayed with it until they all understood that Liu was too cowardly to leave the safety of the helicopter. Liu took another shot and a tree branch dropped. He fired four more times before striking the bear. When it left the willows, it moved more slowly. Stoval found the new wound with binoculars, a lucky shot that had caught the bear near the right front shoulder, and it was easy to stay with the bear now. The pilot nosed lower, pulled in front of the big grizzly, and turned so that Liu’s next two shots were straight on. Both hit the bear but neither killed it. A fist-sized hole bled from its left side and still it kept moving. The big head swung looking for a foe on the ground that wasn’t there.
The next shot dropped the bear and after they landed Liu still didn’t want to get out of the helicopter. So it was Stoval who made sure the bear was dead, walking up to it unarmed with Liu watching him. Then he left Liu alone with his Chinese medical myths and ate a sandwich and drank a beer, talking to the pilot as Liu carved out the gall bladder he imagined would save his mistress from terminal cancer. She was already as good as dead, but Stoval still needed Liu a little longer so he’d set up the hunt.
Steam rose from the bear’s carcass as Liu lifted the gall bladder out. He slid it into a large Ziploc bag and the bag went in the cooler with the cold drinks and salmon sandwiches the pilot had packed for them. The other thousand pounds of bear they left to the wolves.
Liu’s jet was in Anchorage waiting, and all that really mattered here was that Liu’s gratitude for the hunt got Liu past any remaining worries he had about retribution from the Taiwanese government. Sooner or later, the Taiwanese would track things back to Liu and Liu was afraid the Americans with their paranoia over terrorism would then come for him. He was getting fat and fearful. Liu was not the man Stoval had first worked with. He was distracted by his mistress and had become cautious and self-important.
Stoval carried the cooler on to the jet. He rarely carried anything for anyone, but did this as a gesture Liu couldn’t mistake. They embraced and he watched Liu’s plane take off before driving to Seward. In the two hours it took to make the drive he decided he would do this last deal and not go any farther with Liu. After this deal he would throw his business to Liu’s rival and then prove his intentions to the rival by working to destroy Liu. It was time.
In Seward he found Darcey Marquez’s restaurant within minutes. Inside, he went upstairs to the bar. A large window looked out over the small boat harbor, allowing drinkers to enjoy the dismal gray clouds and cold water. A woman in a red flannel shirt and jeans cleaned glasses behind the bar and Stoval knew immediately she was Darcey Marquez. He smiled as he slid on to a stool. He picked up a menu. He made small talk, got her name and told her it was a pretty sounding name, but really it was a name typical of the new American peasant.
‘What kind of local beer should I order?’
‘You choose.’
‘Don’t you want to recommend something?’
It offended him slightly that she didn’t. Her offhand rejection irritated him and he ignored her joking now as he ordered a whiskey rather than a beer. He studied her legs in the tight jeans. There was always something sexual in this, but he didn’t desire this woman. He drank the whiskey and ordered a halibut sandwich and beer and watched her put the order in, then go retrieve it. After she returned and was behind the bar again she was watchful. He made her nervous and she was so right to be scared because he was studying her now as he did an animal he was hunting. When she turned to meet his gaze directly he smiled and imagined how she would look when they found her.
FORTY-ONE
‘ Dad, where are you now?’
‘Crossing the Golden Gate on my way to the FBI Field Office to get sworn in. I start working with the task force in a couple of days.’
‘Did you hear about the condo fire in Arizona yesterday?’
‘Sure.’
It was all over the news and the FBI was calling it ecoterrorism. The fire burned seventy-two condos under construction in an Arizona canyon and now was burning through drought-weakened, beetle-infested national forest.
‘I might know something about it,’ Maria said.
‘What do you mean? How?’
Marquez slowed. He adjusted his ear piece so he could hear her better.
‘I overheard something in July when I was still going out with Jack that I want to talk to you about. When I heard about the fire last night on TV it all clicked. Jack was talking to a friend of his, Ben Marsten, the guy that founded 1+1Earth. But I don’t want to tell you over the phone, and I have to tell the FBI, but I want to talk to you first.’
Marquez remembered the name Jack Gant, but he didn’t have a face to go with the name. He knew that earlier in the summer Katherine had believed Maria was falling in love with Gant, but the relationship had ended abruptly and it really hadn’t lasted that long.
‘I’m on my way to the FBI Field Office in San Francisco to get sworn in. I become a Federal officer again today and you could-’
‘Oh, that’s right, Mom told me, congrats.’
‘Do you want to meet me there?’
‘No.’
‘OK, but tell me a little more. Where did you overhear this?’
‘In Los Angeles at the W Hotel in Westwood in mid July, the same day we broke up. July fourteenth.’
As she talked Marquez crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Out of habit he reached for a pen and wrote the name of the founder of 1+1Earth, Ben Marsten, on a pad, Jack Gant’s name underneath it. Ahead of him, the traffic was solid going into the toll booths, and he was late. The Special Agent-in-Charge, the SAC at the San Francisco FBI Field Office had a tight schedule today. The swear-in was slotted for 11:45 to noon.
‘I’ll tell you the rest when I see you.’