by Matthew Hart
I came to with ice-cold water dripping from my face. I tried to bite down to stop my teeth from chattering. My mouth felt stuffed with bloody pulp.
Where was Lily? I tried to turn my head. My skull exploded in pain as the locomotive hurtled down its track and crashed into my skull.
“He’s looking for the Russian whore,” Fan said. “Help him.” The huge hand clamped down hard again and swiveled my head. I almost blacked out again but settled for throwing up in my lap.
Lily stood pushed against a wall. The cut on her cheek had opened again. A smear of blood extended to her chin. The gym rat with the tats had a grip on her arm. He grinned at me and stuck his free hand under Lily’s sweater and grabbed her breast hard enough to make her cry out. She wrenched her head around and spat in his face. The kid yanked his hand out of her sweater and slapped her hard enough to make her head snap.
Fan’s fingers played among an array of instruments in front of him. He wore a long black scarf looped around his neck. It trailed onto the desk, and he flung it aside with a growl as his fingers clattered through the tray. I could see a scalpel and stainless steel pliers. The pliers looked like something you might see on a dentist’s tray. With his eyes still fixed on me, he picked these up and handed them to the waif. She received the instrument with both hands, reverently.
She moved her legs. Her bony hips poked at the material of her skirt. She had a model’s starveling body and a washed-out expression, as if she’d been put through the rinse cycle too many times. She stared raptly at my crotch.
Fan put his hand under the waif’s skirt. She uncrossed her legs to accommodate him. “She likes dick,” he said. “Maybe not exactly the way you hope. So let’s hear your story, guy, before she adjusts your equipment.”
“I’m police,” I said thickly.
“Asshole,” he hissed. “My men saw you on that Angel cunt’s houseboat. You’re the Treasury agent. You and your fucking country are trying to railroad my sister and steal my property.” He was trying to control his face, but his anger was spilling through the cracks. He snatched up one of the knives and flung it at me. It nicked my shoulder. “What did you say to my sister! Why were you at the courthouse! Time to start talking, guy!”
He jerked his head at the waif. She slid off the desk and crouched in front of me.
“You loser,” Lily snarled.
Fan’s face went red. He tried to ignore her.
“The tough man,” she said in her guttural voice. The tat kid shook her. The blood was streaming from her face. “The tough guy who abuses women and rides on his sister’s brains.”
“Shut that cunt up!” Fan screamed, and tat kid clapped a hand on her mouth.
The waif sniffed and wiped her nose with a finger. With one hand she cupped my testicles. She stared up at me with her glassy eyes and parted her rosebud lips. A fleck of lipstick gleamed on a tooth. Very slowly, she drew the pliers along my penis. And again. She watched intently, then bent down and breathed, bathing the skin with warm, moist air.
When the inevitable happened, she squatted back on her heels and gazed in satisfaction. She picked the scalpel from the floor where it had fallen. She plucked with the pliers and drew out a tag of skin. Above the blonde head, Fan watched with bugging eyes. A strand of lipstick-stained saliva glistened on his chin. The waif slowly pulled the skin out taut, twisting with the pliers. I put my head back and roared at the high ceiling.
But instead of a cut, the scalpel clattered to the floor. So did the pliers. And I saw what she had seen. The flicker of red light.
It danced among the dark web of steel framing that supported the roof, and when I looked down, it glimmered along a door frame and flashed at the edges of the drawn window blinds. I heard a door slam outside. Fan screamed an order in Chinese. Tinkerbell hurried across the room and disappeared briefly through a door. When he returned, he muttered in Fan’s ear. Fan seized his hair and shrieked with rage.
He jumped up and strode across to Lily, the long black scarf twitching behind him like the tail of a predatory animal. He grabbed her chin in one hand and twisted her face and clawed her wounded cheek. “Russian slut!” he screamed, and disappeared through the door. The waif looked longingly at me, then followed.
Lily was gasping for breath in big, ragged gulps and searching for the key to the handcuffs when Cedric came in with Larry on his heels. Larry was delivering a stream of verbiage that included phrases like criminal trespass and armed assault, until Cedric saw me, and my condition, and Lily with her blood-smeared face, scrabbling for the keys. Larry noticed at the same time, gaped in horror, and retreated through the doorway Fan and the others had used. The sound of car doors slamming shut and engines starting came from outside.
“Get that gate closed,” Cedric shouted to an officer who’d followed him in. But they were gone by the time he got outside.
* * *
On the way to the hospital I cradled Lily in my arms. She was shaking like a leaf. We pulled up to the ER entrance, and I carried her inside. I sat in the empty waiting room while Cedric went to find someone. He came back with the triage nurse, a tiny woman with gray hair. She started snapping orders, and they bundled Lily into an open bay. A minute later the nurse came back. She peered at me and shook her head and led me into an empty bay. “Who started it?” she said, swishing shut the curtain. “You or the moose?”
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Fractured zygomatic arch,” the young doctor said. “Translation: busted cheek bone.” She gave me a radiant smile. “Lucky for you, the hospital board finally decided to hire a plastic surgeon.” She looked at Lily. “Are you going to hold him down for me?”
“If I take my clothes off and lie on top of him,” Lily said, “he’ll behave.”
They smiled companionably at each other. She’d already taken care of Lily’s cheek. I thought there was more to treat, but Lily would take care of that herself.
“OK, now,” the doctor said, “here’s what we’re going to do.” She scooted her stool close to the examination table and angled a strong light at the side of my face. “I’m going to do what’s called an open reduction of the zygomatic arch.” She snapped on a pair of blue surgical gloves and ran a finger along my hairline. “I’ll incise the scalp right here,” she said, “and then insert a long instrument called an elevator down under the skin to the fracture site. It’s pretty bashed in there, but the fix is straightforward. I work the elevator under the bone and basically just pop things back into place.”
“Will you have to put in something to hold it all together?” Lily said.
“Nope. No wires, no plate. Because I don’t open the cheek, not even much of a dressing. A few stitches here.” She touched my head again. “Precautions post-op, he should try to keep his head upright to reduce swelling and bruising. No nose-blowing. Stick to a soft diet.” She slapped her hands on her knees. “All set?” She jumped to her feet. “See you in the OR.”
* * *
Three hours later I signed myself out of the hospital against the doctor’s advice and made Lily drive me to the restaurant on the hill. She wavered between fury at me and some inner darkness. Powerful men had done violence to her before. She had never bent or yielded. She’d always fought. Men got to the bedrock of Lily and found defiance. There’s a price to make that happen, and Lily was still paying it.
“Remember—soft diet,” she said as I got out, “and if you’re not home in an hour, so help me God, Alex, I’m coming back here and dragging you out.” Then she stamped on the gas, fishtailed out of the snow-covered parking lot, and went roaring down the hill into town.
Luc was waiting at the same table by the windows. Yellowknife Bay was a steely smudge through the blowing snow. The warm spell had been replaced by a blast of Arctic air. “Wow,” said the waiter in the Ugg boots as she filled my cup with coffee and checked out my face. “Maybe you should’ve had the poutine.”
Luc glowered at my face. When she left with our order, he said, “They could have killed you in there
, and I doubt they’d even have been charged. You’re lucky Cedric spotted your truck on that road and saw where you’d cut the fence.”
“I’m not in the mood, Luc. I did you a favor. You wanted to know what was in there as much as I did, but your bosses in Ottawa wouldn’t OK the break-in. They don’t want China any angrier than it is. Fine, but don’t give me that crap about how lucky I was. Cedric didn’t find the truck. You had somebody watching while I did your job for you. When we didn’t come back out by the time the guard made another patrol, you knew they had us inside.”
A burger arrived for Luc, and my plate of scrambled eggs. I was starving. I managed to get a forkful into the right side of my mouth without too much of it falling back on the plate. The waiter pretended not to notice when she came around for refills. Luc was scowling out the window at the snow.
“Nobody in Washington ever looked the other way for billionaire investors?” He was mad, but not at me. “It’s always dirty. You and I get paid to make sure the bad guys don’t actually get the whole country when they buy the politicians.” He took another swig of coffee. A gust buffeted the windows. The snow was thicker now. “Fan’s got a drill rig up there now.” He put the mug down hard enough for coffee to slop onto the table. “He flew in an entire camp.”
I watched the snow. “A whole camp? You mean, including staff? Please don’t tell me from China.”
“It’s not a goddam crime,” he said angrily. “The man owns rights to a mineral property. He’s allowed to explore it.”
I was stunned. “We’re not talking about some guy with a pickaxe and a mule. He’s the investment arm of the Chinese military leadership.” The pain in the side of my face made it hard to concentrate. I tried to picture the scale of what Luc was saying. Dozens of men and huge pieces of machinery suddenly transported into the Barrens. “How could they get an entire camp in there in the first place?” I said. “Why didn’t you know it was happening?”
But the answer to that was obvious. He did know it was happening.
Luc shoved his plate away and planted his elbows on the table. He bent his head and grabbed his hair in his hands and made a growl of pure frustration. “They let me know yesterday afternoon, when it was almost here. What happened was Fan’s lawyers showed up in Ottawa. The Chinese ambassador was with them. They had a report that showed the Clip Bay pipe was one of the richest diamond deposits in history. They asked for temporary visas so they could bring in their own crew and get an immediate start. The pitch was that staffing would be one hundred percent local people if the discovery panned out as expected.”
“I’m missing something here. How they got this done so fast. It’s not like we don’t have eyes at the airport.”
“They flew their team directly into the Barrens. They made a deal with the Ekati mine to use the strip. They have choppers at Clip Bay to bring the cargo into camp.” He turned in his chair and waved at Cedric to come over. When he was seated, Luc said to him, “Tell Alex.”
“The word is out that Clip Bay is a diamond strike,” he said. “It’s all over town. That means there’s going to be an immediate rush to stake any available claims within a hundred miles. It’s called an ‘area play.’ Investors bet that where one rich pipe was found, maybe others will be too.”
“How long before that starts?” I said.
“It’s started. We’ve heard about staking teams trying to book planes and order posts.”
“So Fan’s got all the posts he needs,” I said. “What’s he waiting for?”
“He’s almost ready,” Luc said. “He’s already locked up every chopper and bush plane in Yellowknife. That’s why these other stakers Cedric mentioned can’t find aircraft.”
The front door slammed, and Lily blew into the room on a blast of snow. She stomped across the floor and glowered at Luc. “You can’t see that the man has a severe injury? Would you try to use your head for one second? Two hours ago he was under general anesthetic. Are you completely out of your minds?” She slopped some of her icy glare onto Cedric too. “Get up, Alex. You heard the doctor. You are putting your eyesight at risk if you don’t get rest. You could have a brain clot.”
“But a great black eye,” Luc said. “For his collection.”
“Fuck off,” Lily snapped, and I followed her out to the truck.
But we didn’t head for the apartment.
33
She drove down the hill, turned right in town, and took the road that passed the airport.
“Where are we going?”
“For heaven’s sake, Alex, we can’t sit around in Yellowknife when Fan is launching some major action in the Barrens. We’re meeting Pete and Mitzi and flying up to see what’s happening.”
“What about the brain clots?”
“Don’t be such a hypochondriac.” She opened the console and handed me a bottle of small blue pills. I read the label. Dilaudid. The side of my face felt as if someone had driven in nails and hung an anchor on it. I swallowed a couple of pills.
The highway ran along the North Arm of Great Slave Lake. I could see the water glint into view whenever we crested a rise, but mostly it was hidden by the forest.
“Isn’t Mitzi part of whatever Fan is doing?” I said. “He and Mei control the company, but she has Jimmy’s shares. Also some of her own. Or maybe you knew that.”
“Alex,” Lily exclaimed. “Quit trying to trick me into revealing my evil mastermind plan to take over the diamond field.” She twisted the rearview mirror toward her and checked her lipstick, then angled it back. “You’re so paranoid.”
Not exactly a denial. “And it’s Clip Bay we’re checking out?”
“Yes. Mitzi wants to make sure Fan’s not cheating her.”
The sky was clear. A loose skin of snow slid and curled along the surface of the highway. A couple of miles ahead a small, tight cloud of snow appeared above the forest. It looked like a white tornado, boiling along above the treetops. At last a heavy rig hurtled into view around a bend, its powerful draft sucking snow from the woods into a maelstrom of white that seethed toward us along the highway. Lily slowed, and the truck roared by in a blinding whirl of snow.
“Remind me again of what your exact interest is in whether the twins swindle Mitzi,” I said.
“Don’t cross-examine me, darling. You’re too battered. Not everything has to be a conspiracy.”
Think about it, though. A Galaxy with a United States military command center parked at Yellowknife airport because of Chinese activity in the Arctic. Tycoons with close ties to the Beijing leadership drilling a diamond target. Mitzi, technically their partner, going up to spy on them. Lily wants me to come along, possibly because she has some scheme with Mitzi but doesn’t trust her. Somewhere in there you could probably find a place for the word conspiracy.
My phone pinged for incoming mail. Dad.
The report was composed in his exacting style, the methodology explained and the lab work meticulously described. What it boiled down to was two clear statements. One—the diamond I’d picked up at Clip Bay didn’t come from there; and two—it was identical to the garnets I’d taken from Jimmy’s lab.
The conclusion was obvious. Jimmy had found a fabulously rich diamond target, probably richer than the original discovery that established the diamond field. And it wasn’t Clip Bay.
An hour after leaving Yellowknife, we turned off the highway and drove through the village of Behchoko. We passed the Dogrib government office and St. Michael’s Catholic Church and crossed onto a little island. We pulled into a gravel lot beside a stubby dock. A banged-up yellow Beaver with black pontoons was moored at the end. Pete had just finished checking the engine and was screwing the cowling shut. Mitzi looked as she had the first time I’d seen her—hair scrunched up in a topknot, strong legs planted on the dock, lofting bulky canvas bags into the plane. Even the cargo shorts were the same. Her only concession to the freezing wind that was slapping waves against the dock was a thermal vest.
She fired the tw
o bags in her hands through the door and turned to stare at us. A purple zigzag ran down the inside of her thigh. Scabs had formed on the splinter cuts on her forehead and the side of her neck. Other than that, the same Mitzi—tiger’s eyes and crooked grin and a stance that said: try me. She was what she always was. A loaded cannon. And she didn’t like what she saw.
“Jesus,” she said when I got out. “Who drove a truck into you?” And to Lily, “I didn’t get that Alex was coming.”
“In case we need someone to get punched,” Lily said, and tousled my hair.
Mitzi shrugged, not bothering to hide her irritation. “The more the merrier. Let’s get going. Alex, why don’t you sit up front.”
Pete clambered into the cockpit, and I followed. Mitzi cast off and jumped in after Lily. We taxied away from the dock and turned into the wind. The cockpit was smaller than the one in the Twin Otter, with the yoke on one side only. Pete grasped the throttle, pushing it forward as the big radial engine roared up to full power. We banged across the whitecaps, climbed away, and turned to the northeast.
The village drifted away beneath the wing. A snow squall swept out of the sky. The plane slipped and bounced in the turbulence. When we came out the other side, the vista of the boreal forest stretched to the horizon. Ragged clouds sped through the sky beneath a high ceiling of pearly stratus. Here and there the wind tore holes in the overcast, and sunlight flashed on a lake. I put the headset on, and Pete filled me in on where we were going.
Jimmy Angel had explored many targets, and one was only four miles from the Clip Bay pipe. Jimmy had brought a steel container up on the winter road. The container had built-in living quarters and a generator. Although he’d shifted his focus to Clip Bay, Jimmy had left the container camp in place. That’s where we were headed.
“Four miles from Clip Bay,” I said. “Won’t the people there see us coming in?”