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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  In the doorway, Krause slowly shifted position.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Merrit said. “Think about him.” He jerked MacClary’s head toward the body on the deck.

  The dead man’s neck wound gaped like a second mouth, his white shirt sodden with blood. The meteorite gleamed on the deck beside him, a shimmering black island in a sea of red.

  “Last chance,” Merrit said. “I don’t count to three.”

  Krause sprinted for the side of the boat and dove into the waves.

  “If you’re just in this for the money,” MacClary said, “I can pay you more than you’re getting now.”

  “I doubt that.” Her diver had reached the atoll and was now standing on the rocks, shading his eyes to look back at the two dive boats. Krause was still in the water, swimming.

  “One million? Two?”

  Merrit pushed MacClary away. “Your turn. Into the water.” The moment Krause made it to the atoll, Merrit would set a fire on the catamaran that would reach its diesel bunkers before either diver could swim back.

  MacClary stood by the meteorite, facing him, eyes strangely bright. She’d brought both hands to her cross, saying something that sounded like a prayer. It wasn’t any language Merrit recognized.

  “Asking God to strike me down?” he asked.

  “Something like that.” Then she flung herself at him with unexpected speed, a small silver blade flashing in her hand, sweeping toward his unprotected face.

  Merrit, however, was a killer, and without the need for conscious thought he anticipated her again, driving Renault’s knife up through the soft flesh beneath her jaw, on through the roof of her mouth and into her brain. Impassive, he held MacClary’s body as she arched in spasm, then sank to the deck, dead before she reached it.

  Impressed by its workmanship and by the way it had been hidden, Merrit retrieved her blade. Taking the other half of the cross from around her neck, he slid the blade back inside, then slipped it into his open wetsuit before throwing her body overboard, followed by the first of her divers, and then Renault.

  Krause and the other diver were already in the water, swimming for their dive boat.

  Merrit didn’t care, knew how it would play out. The catamaran would be blazing before they reached it, and with all the blood in the water now, the sharks would soon complete his work for him.

  As usual in matters such as these, he was right.

  FIVE

  Jess MacClary zipped up her red Gore-Tex parka, snapped the high collar closed, and stepped from her flapping tent into the Arctic wind.

  It streamed strands of long red hair across her face, bringing an immediate flush to pale cheeks, making her smile. The low sun was bright, the sky brilliant blue, and the gentle hills of stunted grass and peat stretched endlessly around her, broken only by the handful of other tents that made up the camp, and the far-off red and yellow jackets of the dig team, working the site a half kilometer away.

  She pushed her gloved hands deep in her pockets, inhaled the freshest air on the planet, and was as happy and content as she could ever remember. Doubly so today because the word had just come from Charlie Ujarak, the Inuit elder overseeing her work: She’d been right. Again. The burial ground had been found exactly where she had told the oilmen to look for it.

  By the cook’s tent, Charlie was waiting for her, a mix of the Canadian Arctic’s past and present. He wore the latest mirrored Ray-Bans, but his traditional sealskin parka had been made by one of his grandmothers from seals Charlie had harpooned himself. Its design and construction hadn’t changed for centuries, probably longer. He wore it open to reveal a red T-shirt with a faded white logo for York University. For him, August north of the Arctic Circle wasn’t cold.

  “Hey, Jess, Mr. Kurtz is waiting for you.” Charlie sounded as pleased as she felt.

  “I’ll bet.”

  She did without her morning tea—the constant wind was a bracing enough wake-up tonic. They set out across the springy, yielding ground toward the dig.

  “Did he say anything?” Jess asked.

  “Nothing to say. The old settlement was right where you told them it would be. They found the first remains this morning. Article Twelve of the UN declaration takes over now.”

  “The remains were a burial, right? Not just a body.”

  “Definitely a burial. The skeleton’s in a fetal position, and there’re still bits of grass and deerhide wrapping it.”

  “Good. It was a big village, maybe a hundred people or so. There’ll be more remains.”

  Charlie took on a more serious tone. “Then it’ll take a lot of praying to keep them at rest.”

  Jess understood. What was paleogeology to her, with a smattering of anthropology and archaeology mixed in, was to the Inuit elder his living culture and religion. She envied him his freedom to speak so openly of his beliefs—a freedom she didn’t have and likely never would. “Better that than seeing them dug up by machines for a pipeline, right?”

  “A lot of praying,” Charlie said.

  At the site, most of the workers stood around a dented metal table with steaming mugs of coffee or tea, waiting for an official verdict from their foreman. Another field table had laminated topo maps held down by heavy metal clips and a bulky gray laptop computer hooked to a GPS tracker.

  Lionel Kurtz, the foreman, greeted Jess with a wry smile, his blue-black skin, close-cropped hair, and flat, midwestern speech all seriously out of place in the Barrens, yet sure signs of the twenty-first century and mass globalization. His red jacket sported the corporate patch of Haldron Oil, the energy company that was going to regret it had hired Jess to examine the planned route of its multibillion-dollar pipeline.

  “You here to gloat?” Kurtz asked.

  Jess knew he didn’t take what she had done personally—it wasn’t his money the company was spending here.

  “Like I said,” she told him, “the land tells a story. Every hill, every hollow, every rock.” She pointed to a small rise where yellow gridlines of plastic ribbon had been strung, crisscrossing from a perimeter of thin metal stakes that marked the area for digging. “A couple of centuries ago, there was a river here, and that’s the perfect place for a village on its banks.”

  There was a hint of admiration in Kurtz’s tone. “You called it, all right. Charlie says we shouldn’t rebury what we’ve found until the shaman gets here, so you want to check it out?”

  Jess turned to Charlie. “Would that be all right?”

  “Just don’t touch anything more.” For Kurtz, he added, “And you should tell your team not to use their knives or any cutting tools until the grave is closed.”

  “Because?”

  “Now that the burial ground has been disturbed, the shades of the dead could be anywhere. If your people accidentally cut one of them with a knife, then they’ll become angry and could cause all sorts of trouble for you. Sickness, bad luck, polar bears . . . or your next seal hunt might not go too well.”

  Jess could see Kurtz was trying to decide whether or not Charlie was being serious. Fortunately, he made the right choice. “No knives. I’ll let ’em know.”

  “Thank you.”

  The three of them walked up the rise to the gridded area. Kurtz whispered to Jess, “He knows I don’t hunt seals, right?”

  “A metaphor. Maybe the shades would make it so you’d have a hard time finding a new route for your pipeline to skirt this place.”

  “Fair enough.” Kurtz didn’t sound convinced. “As long as he didn’t mean it about the bears. Once was enough.”

  When they stood by the open grave that revealed the skeletal remains—bones burnished dark brown by time and decay, webbed by shriveled tendons and shreds of hide—Charlie softly chanted a mournful dirge in his language. Kurtz bowed his head respectfully, and Jess realized she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She waited until Charlie had finished, then said, “This isn’t Inuit.”

  The grave was just over two meters deep, and Jess pointed
to the exposed side of the excavation. “Look at the layers of sediment. About halfway up, see the river gravel?”

  A thin layer of small, light pebbles stood out in a distinct line, sandwiched between other bands of darker soil.

  “Give me more,” Kurtz said. Jess could tell she had his interest. As for Charlie, she could see his expression harden—he knew what she was about to say.

  “Modern Inuit moved into this area about a thousand years ago. Any Inuit burial that took place here since that time should be above the river gravel, when the river shore had receded.” She pointed a hundred meters to the west, to the slight dip in elevation she had noted three days ago that marked the vanished river’s course five to six hundred years earlier.

  “My ancestors could have dug a deep grave,” Charlie said.

  “Not through permafrost. Sorry. Permanently frozen ground puts a limit on how deep a modern-era grave would be.” Jess looked around at the terrain, reading it, staring back in time. “For this area to have been low enough for the river to run over it, then rebound with the release of ice and snow . . . I’m thinking three, maybe four thousand years ago. That’s when this burial would have taken place. I’ll need to check the aerial surveys again, climate records . . .” She looked at Charlie apologetically. “The company will carbon-date the remains, and that’ll tell the story, too.”

  Charlie shook his head. “My people won’t go for that. We didn’t come from anyplace else. Raven created this land and created the people in it. We’ve always been here.”

  Jess could see that Kurtz was caught between trying to be respectful and doing his job. If this burial mound wasn’t Inuit, then the company’s archaeologists could dig it up in a month, send what they found to museums, and the pipeline’s path wouldn’t have to be altered.

  “If not Inuit, then who?” Kurtz asked.

  Jess didn’t know. “That’s out of my area. In this region, Pre-Dorset culture, for sure. The company’ll need to examine any artifacts with the remains, maybe pull genetic material from the bones.”

  “Please,” Charlie said. “You can’t disturb them.”

  “Pre-Dorset,” Kurtz repeated. “Any living descendants?”

  “Descendants? Sure. All through the aboriginal populations of North America. But there’s nothing of their culture or their religion remaining.”

  Charlie’s voice was tight. “You can’t know that for certain.”

  “Again, I’m sorry, but, yes, I can.” Jess pointed to the ancient bones below them. “These people aren’t your people. Geology doesn’t lie.”

  “It’s subject to interpretation.”

  “Like I said, carbon-date the remains, check the artifacts—but I know I’m right.”

  “And I know the history of this land as my father told it to me and his father to him, all the way back to when Raven told it to all the people.” Charlie jabbed a finger at Kurtz. “This is my family business. Don’t touch my ancestor, don’t dig, and for your own sake, don’t use any cutting tools until the shaman gets here to make this right.” He walked away, as if not trusting himself to say anything more.

  Kurtz watched him stalk off. “Any idea when that shaman will get here?”

  Before Jess could say she didn’t know, they both looked up as they heard the distant thrumming of a helicopter.

  “Is this my lucky day?” Kurtz asked.

  “He couldn’t get here this fast. Especially not from Inuvik.” The helicopter was coming from the east, and Inuvik was the closest airport in that direction. By air, it was three hours away.

  Kurtz squinted as the helicopter closed. “It’s not a company helo.” He sounded hopeful.

  Jess saw he was right. Haldron helicopters were painted a distinctive green. This one was white with red bands. “Canadian Air Force?”

  The helicopter began its descent between the camp and the dig site, close enough for Jess to see it wasn’t a military helicopter but a private company’s. She could make out the word SIGHTSEEING on the tail.

  Kurtz patted her shoulder with a smile. “C’mon. Let’s see who’s crazy enough to be a tourist out here. Ten to one it’s the shaman—or more elders.”

  Jess didn’t take the bet but fell into step beside Kurtz, joined soon by the rest of the dig team. Anything that broke routine in the isolation of the tundra was worthy of attention. Jess saw Charlie standing alone, keeping his distance. Whoever was arriving, it was no one he was expecting.

  The helicopter settled slowly, the pilot obviously taking great care that the landing site was solid so the skids wouldn’t be fouled. Surprisingly, he kept the rotor spinning slowly instead of shutting down the engine.

  “Guess he’s not expecting to stay,” Kurtz said. He and Jess and the rest of the team stood a safe distance from the aircraft, waiting.

  The passenger door opened, and a man stepped out, dressed in an open green parka, jeans, and tall rubber boots. He wore black aviator glasses, no gloves.

  He ducked as he walked out from beneath the rotor, looked at the twenty people waiting for him, cupped his hands, and shouted to her, “Jessica MacClary!”

  Kurtz looked at Jess. “You know him?”

  Only one thought came to her, one explanation. “Something’s happened . . .”

  “What?” Kurt asked.

  Jess took a breath. “I might have to go.” She started for the man.

  “Go? Where?” Kurtz kept pace with her. “I’m going to need a written report.”

  “I’ll explain to the company,” Jess said. Her heart was pounding. She had always known that something like this would happen but expected it to be years away. Then her heart stopped.

  The man from the helicopter had pulled a short black gun from his open parka and aimed it toward her.

  From instinct, from training, Jess slammed into Kurtz. “Down!”

  They hit the peat together as a ripple of soft popping sounds filled the air, mixed with the foreman’s sharp gasp of pain.

  She felt him tense, saw red blossoms dot both legs. “Play dead . . . don’t move . . .” She turned her head to see him staring at her, dark eyes blank with shock.

  Half the dig team had scattered. A few others held position, startled, uncertain of what they had witnessed. Two now started running toward her. One after the other they jerked grotesquely as the gun fired again and dropped them.

  Still on her stomach, Jess eased away from Kurtz’s rigid body, stripped off her gloves, tore at the neck of her parka with shaking hands, heard the wet sounds of boots approaching. She reached inside her parka, fingers seeking the heavy silver cross she wore. If she died here, she’d take one of them with her.

  “On your knees,” the man ordered.

  He stood out of knife range, his weapon leveled at her. Jess recognized it as a Heckler & Koch MP5K—an easily concealable, short submachine gun. She’d been trained to use them.

  She palmed her cross and pushed herself up.

  “This won’t stop us,” she said.

  The man gave a half-grin. “It’ll stop you.” He took aim. “They told me you’d want to say a prayer.”

  Jess’s fingers slid the blade from her cross. She pictured bringing her hands up to pray and throwing it at the same time. He’d kill her, of course. She wasn’t faster than bullets. Still, with luck and his unprotected neck, she’d—

  The man’s green parka puffed out on one side, and he registered surprise. Only when his temple erupted in a bloody explosion did Jess recognize the sound of rifle shots.

  She instantly dropped beside Kurtz again, looked back.

  Charlie Ujarak was striding purposely forward with his Remington—the one the camp kept for polar bears. She saw a flash from the long-barreled rifle’s muzzle and heard a metallic ping. Now he was firing at the helicopter.

  Jess wanted to see it start to rev up for takeoff. Instead, as she’d feared, she saw the pilot roll out of the far door, putting the aircraft between him and Charlie. The pilot would have his own H&K. The enemy was alwa
ys prepared.

  Jess shouted back at Charlie to hit the ground, then scrambled forward, slipping on the wet turf, to dive at the dead shooter and get his weapon.

  The pilot saw what she was doing and fired a burst that stitched across the shooter’s body.

  Charlie fired the Remington again, and one of the helicopter’s forward windows cracked.

  The pilot fired back at Charlie. Jess popped up and fired at the pilot, shattering side windows.

  The pilot ducked back behind cover, and Jess guessed he was changing magazines. She saw Charlie, prone but unhurt, aiming his rifle like a sniper. This time, Jess stayed down, clawing through the dead man’s parka for his spare clips.

  Then she heard a stutter of hard impacts, braced for bullets to tear into her, and instead felt a blast of heat and a thunderclap of air as the helicopter exploded.

  Flaming wreckage wheeled across the tundra. Jess rose to her feet in amazement. The aircraft’s tail had blown off where the auxiliary fuel tanks had detonated. The pilot’s body was pinned by the blazing cabin, unmoving and in flames. But how?

  She looked back at Charlie. He pointed to the sky.

  A second helicopter was landing. Unmarked.

  Jess dropped the spent magazine from the shooter’s submachine gun, slapped in a new one.

  Charlie hurried to her side and pushed down the stubby barrel of the weapon. “No, Jess, they’ve got to be friends of yours. They shot up the first helo.”

  Jess watched the second craft set down. Its side panel was open, and a man with a rifle much larger than a hunter’s Remington was sitting in the open hatchway.

  Two more men in red parkas without insignia jumped out, running, arms open to show they carried no weapons.

  Jess stayed where she was, H&K held ready but pointed down. Charlie stood beside her.

  The first man to reach them turned his hand to display to Jess a dark metal disk not much larger than a silver dollar. Twelve segments were inscribed on it, a different symbol in each.

  She let the H&K drop to the ground.

  Then the two messengers knelt before her and spoke as one. “Defender.”

  Jess could feel Charlie stare at her, but, as tradition demanded, she held her left hand out, palm down, and each man, in turn, held it briefly to his lips.