by Karen Black
Buddy Lee had no qualms about demonstrating his affection and appreciation for “my girl” right in front of me. Were it someone else, I might have been jealous or felt a little offended, but I kind of enjoyed the way he admired “my girl,” soon to be “my wife” if I could ever get around to popping the question, and of course, assuming she would say yes.
“See ya later,” I yelled over my shoulder, “and thanks again.”
CHAPTER XXIX
Friday, On the Way to Healy
As we drove to the airport, Buddy Lee’s advice started to bother me. If Jack had flown Charley around, and Charley had found some property to buy, even if he didn’t mention the rhenium, Jack should have known where a deed might have been recorded. If he knew, why didn’t he suggest where we should be looking when we were here before?
Jack was waiting by the helicopter, and engaged in an animated cell phone call when Corky and I arrived. When he saw us, he abruptly ended the call, but seemed clearly upset.
As he shook my hand, he said, “I’m kind of surprised to see you guys. We checked every recorder’s office in this entire area for deeds in Charley’s name. So, what makes you think you’ll have better luck this time?” He sounded slightly annoyed.
“If we’re interfering with a private sightseeing tour, we can certainly do this at a later time,” I offered.
“No, no problem. That was…a friend. Where do you want to go?”
“The Denali recorder’s office,” I replied, noting Jack’s momentary startled look as he helped Corky into the back seat, but didn’t hook up her mike. I climbed into the front.
Jack latched his seat belt and looked at me with what I could only describe as a frown. “We went there before. What do you expect to find there this time? What’s changed?”
Remembering Buddy Lee’s advice and alerted by what seemed like strange behavior on Jack’s part, I tried to respond without giving away the farm. “Apparently Charley did purchase some property. He gave the deed to his personal attorney, but the deed was not in his name. We have the recording information. Today, we just want to see if we can find where the property is located.”
He continued to stare at me, appearing to be lost in thought, then abruptly revved up the engine. As he lifted off, I plugged in my mike. I had a few questions. “When Charley was up here and you took him around places, didn’t he ever tell you what he was looking for, or what he might have found?”
Jack eyed me warily. “No, I don’t know what he was looking for. He was a fairly private guy. I just flew him around. He went to a lot of places.”
His defensive-sounding answer concerned me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, just something about his facial expression and his reaction seemed odd. What had happened? This didn’t even seem like the same friendly, easy-going guy we met before.
“Do any of the other pilots ever work for TINMAN?”
“They’ve hired a couple from time to time, but I’m the only one on their payroll. Charley didn’t always ask me to fly him around. He was a pilot and a lot of the time he flew himself. He never asked to use my copter but there’s a lot of helicopters at the airport he could have rented.”
“Charley was a pilot? Amazing. I never knew that.”
“He once told me that because some of the job sites were so remote, like down in the Andes, or the one up in Manchuria, he decided years ago that he needed to be able to fly himself in or around the jobs. I think he actually had a private pilot’s license and a helicopter license.”
I was blown away. In all the years I had known Charley, and all the jobs I’d consulted on with him, I had never known that he was a pilot, let alone in both type aircraft. I leaned back in the seat, and exhaled slowly. Now, it made sense why Jack didn’t know where Charley had found the rhenium. He probably hadn’t been flying him around when he found it. Obviously Charley wanted to keep it a secret, but did that mean he also didn’t trust Jack with the information? An unintended edgy feeling crept back, and I mentally chastised myself for being so suspicious.
I pointed to Jack’s expensive-looking cell phone. “That’s an interesting phone you have, smaller than most I’ve seen.”
“It’s a Motorola MicroTac Ultra Lite. Motorola opened a manufacturing plant in China about five years ago, and I think that’s where this is made. I just got it about a month ago, really convenient, weighs less than six ounces. I can carry it in my shirt pocket.”
I had to get one of those! “How’s cell phone reception up here? I haven’t bought one yet in St. Paul, because outside the city, reception seems pretty spotty, and I always have the land line when I’m at the office or the university.”
“We’ve just had wireless service for about a year, and yeah, it can be spotty, but one of the providers, I think it was Century Telephone, just installed a tower between here and Denali. That’s really helped. Provides pretty reliable cell service to Talkeetna, all along the highway between the two mountain ranges, clear up to Healy.”
We flew in silence for about five minutes while I enjoyed the beautiful scenery. We were flying just above the tree line, which Jack had mentioned before was about 2500 feet, revealing a surprising amount of hilly, green-colored tundra. At a little higher elevation, most of it was still covered by snow. Unfortunately, the snow and ice-capped top of Mount McKinley off to the left was hidden behind the clouds, depriving us of that beautiful view.
Jack interrupted my serene thoughts. “Do you have the deed with you?”
For some unknown reason, I had folded it up and stuck it in my boot before we left, but a little voice, and Buddy Lee’s advice, told me not to admit it. “No, I just made a mental note of the recording information,” I replied, glad Corky’s mike wasn’t hooked up. She might have corrected me without knowing why I had lied.
On the map in his office, Buddy Lee had pointed out the route from Talkeetna to Healy. We should have been flying basically north, but I detected a slight turn to the left. Although I’m not a pilot, and don’t know what a lot of those little gauges and gadgets mean, I can certainly read a compass. Glancing at the instrument panel, I could see the heading was 345 degrees; it should have been closer to 360 degrees…or do they call it zero degrees…or even 10 degrees. Turning to Jack, I was surprised to see him deep in thought, his jaw clenched and firmly-set.
“Aren’t we a little off course for Healy?” I blurted, hoping he could give me a reasonable explanation.
“No,” he snapped, then checked himself. “Sorry. Yes, a little off course. I have to make a quick stop.”
He turned to face me, saw the quizzical look on my face, and explained, “I have a friend who has been having a few problems, both personal and business. I have to make a quick stop to check on him.” He paused, then smiled for about the first time and continued, “Don’t worry, getting the information on that deed is not going to be a problem. Just a quick stop first, and it’s just a little out of the way.”
I wanted to believe him. It made sense that his odd behavior was because he was worried about his friend. I could understand that. Like Charley, I was probably being just a little paranoid, but then Charley had ended up dead.
CHAPTER XXX
Friday, A Stop Before Healy
About ten minutes later, Jack set the copter down on a level, firmly-packed dirt clearing next to what appeared to be a large cabin located on a fairly level ridge top out in the middle of nowhere as far as what I could see. This certainly wasn’t some guy’s home…perhaps a hunting cabin. Just before we landed, I saw that the building was perched right at the edge of a steep drop-off, and below, a gravel road beside a stream leading from the area disappeared quickly under the canopy of trees.
Jack hopped out and came around to the left side. When it appeared he was going to open the door for Corky, I quickly stepped out. As Corky accepted his hand, she looked around. “Where are we?” she asked, bewildered. Giving her a look that I hoped would convey I wanted her to remain quiet, I grabbed her hand and squeezed. I wa
s starting to have my doubts that Jack had a friend who was in trouble. But that left a big question. What the hell were we doing here?
“You want us to wait here while you visit your friend?” I asked, trying to pass on to Corky what Jack and I had discussed. “We wouldn’t want to intrude; sounds like you’ll want to visit with him privately.”
Jack’s demeanor changed abruptly. He grabbed Corky’s other arm and pushed her forward. “Come on,” he ordered gruffly, his voice as cold as ice. When I hesitated, he pulled a pistol from under his jacket. “Come on!” he repeated, motioning with his gun in the direction of the building.
Corky screamed, dropped her purse, but quieted down immediately when Jack said “Shut up!”
“Jack, what in the hell are you doing? What’s going on?” Although I had been a little suspicious since Jack met us at the airport, this action was really over the top.
“Shut up and move.” He raised the gun so that it was pointing directly at Corky’s head.
Corky’s eyes widened in surprise and fear. I shook my head slightly, cautioning her not to say anything, hoping against hope her usual tendency to chatter, particularly when she was nervous, wouldn’t spring forth. I caught a slight nod of her head. She seemed to sense my non-verbal instructions. I hoped she didn’t sense my fear as well. “Take it easy, you don’t need that gun; we’re moving,” I uttered, trying hard to quell my near-panic.
At Jack’s direction, we walked in front of him to the door on the side of the building facing the smooth, level, landing area. Still holding us at bay with the gun in his right hand, he inserted a key and pushed the door open with his other. Stepping to the side, he motioned for us to enter.
I was still squeezing Corky’s hand as he pushed us into the room. One swift visual examination revealed smooth wooden floor planks covered partially by a very old threadbare rug, thick wooden walls, a large round log running from front to back in the middle of the ceiling, one bare light bulb hanging from the center log, and two small high paneless windows secured by metal bars on the right. It was sparsely furnished with an old couch and two straight back chairs. Jack ordered Corky and me to each sit in one of the chairs.
“Jack, what the hell are you doing?” I asked again, still stunned from the happenings of the past five minutes. “What do you want from us?”
He took some rope off a hook on the back of the door. “Shut up,” he again ordered. While still pointing the gun at Corky, he instructed, “Stand up. Bind his wrists together. Make sure it’s tight.” Confirming that I wasn’t going to get loose anytime soon, he stuck the gun in his waistband, pushed Corky into the other chair, and tied her hands behind her.
Once we were immobilized, he stepped part way out the door and made a call on his cell phone. Well, I decided, we couldn’t be that far off the main road if he still had cell service out here. I could hear his voice, but he was speaking in a language I did not understand. Feeling very vulnerable at this point, I started mentally kicking myself for allowing us to get in this dangerous situation. Maybe I should have jumped him. But he had a gun. And I wasn’t sure I would have been able to overpower him. He was certainly as physically fit as I, probably better. While I’d been hanging out in a classroom or the lab, he’d been rafting Devil’s Canyon. Even my consulting jobs with Charley in remote areas had not required a lot of physical fitness. A shot, even accidental, could have killed Corky. I started trying to figure out what we could do to get out of this mess. I couldn’t just do nothing, but the ‘what to do’ was escaping me. Too bad I hadn’t gotten around to buying a gun and boning up at the range on using one.
As soon as he hung up, I tried to appeal to Jack again, to the guy I remembered from before. “Look, I haven’t a clue what’s going on, but I can’t think of a solitary reason you need to be threatening me or Corky. We thought you were our friend, Charley’s friend, and Buddy Lee’s friend. Please, Jack, what on earth is going on?”
Jack jerked his head and with an air of arrogant certainty said, “Probably doesn’t matter what I tell you now. You aren’t getting out of here alive. But, I’m going to do you a big favor. I’m going to let you know why you have to die…so the suspense doesn’t kill you first.” He chuckled almost to himself, but his current audience did not appreciate his woeful attempt at humor. “I’ve asked my partners to let me do you a big favor by simply putting a bullet in your heads. They’re going to get back to me.”
“Partners? What are you talking about?” I asked again.
Jack looked away, staring into space, as if debating what he should say. Finally, with a big sigh, he spoke. “As you obviously know by now, Charley found a valuable piece of property containing rhenium. China has a monopoly on many rare earth metals. And they want to keep it. My partners’ employer, Jinshue Manufacturing Company, is currently the largest supplier of rhenium. They don’t want competition, certainly not competition from sources within the U.S. They’d like to eventually corner the market, if you know what I mean. My partners tried to buy the stupid mine that hot-shot, white-linen-suited lucky bastard discovered and then bought. They made Charley a generous offer. Very generous. But the cocky son-of-a-bitch refused. My partners, independent contractors for Jinshue, weren’t willing to accept no for an answer and weren’t up for long, drawn-out negotiations either. Instead they took care of Charley.”
“But…Charley…I…thought one of the South American drug cartels was after him. That’s what Charley thought and that’s what the cops thought,” I objected.
“Yeah,” he smirked and uttered an evil-sounding laugh, “clever of my Chinese friends to frame those low-life druggies. It was all staged with the help of their contact inside TINMAN.” Corky and I exchanged surprised glances. “Brilliant, actually, don’t you think? The planting of the heroin in one of the rigs, an anonymous tip to Charley to help him find it, and tips to the cops where the druggies were located. My friends actually did the U.S. a big favor. The feds got a lot of drugs off the streets and took out a lot of drug dealers they hadn’t been able to find before.”
“What contact inside Tinman?”
“My friends have a lot of sub-contractors, like me, working for them. The guys who actually killed Charley really screwed up–big time. Their job was the find the damn deed, even kidnap Charley and torture him if necessary to make him give it up. But when he got suspicious, called you, said he was sending you a ticket to Alaska, and then agreed to meet you in Denver when you called to let him know you’d been bombed, those idiots decided Charley was on to them and panicked. So they killed him–killed him before finding out where the deed was.
“And then the public break-ins in Aspen and at his apartment drew more attention, making it clear to the authorities he hadn’t just been killed in a mugging. Naturally, that was all a huge blunder, and the three of them…I hear the skinny little white dude had this tall, fairly nice-looking blonde wife…but all of them had to be eliminated. Stella was supposed to simply scare the shit out of you, but she hired some idiot bomb-maker who overdid it. My partners are not very forgiving of costly mistakes, so I was ordered to take care of Stella when she came to Alaska. Another contractor took care of the bomb maker in Minnesota.”
All of this was really interesting and utterly shocking, but one thing still stood out. I repeated my early question, “What contact inside TINMAN?”
He shook his head, and curled his upper lip in a sneering expression. “Oh, I don’t know. Some guy with good access. They didn’t volunteer that information and I didn’t ask. But he was able to plant bugs in Charley and Hennie’s office and home phones. They figured because Hennie was so close to Charley, he had to know what Charley had found. Once I told them he was still alive and hadn’t been charbroiled in the little surprise barbeque they set up for him in his house, they’ll have to finish the job now that he’s back in L.A.”
Corky and I exchanged another horrified look. Hennie was still in danger. But then, so were we. But if we ever made it out of here alive, I wanted
as much information about what had been going on and who was behind it that I could coax out of Jack.
“Jack, are you saying someone connected with the Chinese government is behind the murder of Charles Farnsworth?” I asked in disbelief.
“Oh, no. The government probably doesn’t know a thing about it…or care for that matter. They just direct their state-owned or “semi-private” companies to protect their control of several of the much-needed rare earth metals. How they do it, that’s the company’s business. The government can legitimately claim no knowledge of any wrongdoing. My partners are simply independent contractors for Jinshue, hired to protect the company’s interests…without much input on how it’s done…just a big bankroll.”
His phone rang. Another conversation in a foreign language, which I now assumed was Chinese. Jack seemed to be arguing with whomever was on the other end. Abruptly, he angrily slammed his thumb on the off/on button.
“Dammit, lost the connection. I told you service could be spotty. But, I’m sorry.” He actually seemed apologetic. “My partners want it to look like a couple of hikers or skiers just got lost, took refuge in this building, got locked in and died of starvation, so as not to raise questions that bullet holes in the head would cause.” He looked down and shifted his feet before continuing. “I am truly sorry. I liked you guys and starvation is not a pleasant way to go. You’ll be better off if it turns real cold and you freeze to death first. Unfortunately, this place isn’t that high up for it to get that cold this time of the year.”
Fantastic! A hit man with a heart, but one whose parting shot is “drop dead.”
He loosened the knots behind Corky’s back. “You’re a clever girl. You can get out of that almost as soon as I walk out the door, and then you can untie your boyfriend.” Reverting to his evil twin mode, he added, “Say hello to Charley if you end up in the same place. He could have avoided this whole thing if he’d just sold that damn mine. Too bad he had to give it to you two. That insured you had to be eliminated too. Now, no one will know about it, and it won’t be competition for my partners and their employer. My partners are actually pleased the way it’s turning out. The deed will be in the name of dead people and no one knows where the property is or will be looking for it.”