A Night Too Dark

by Dana Stabenow

  She walked to the door. “Oh,” she said, hand on the knob, “probably no harm in telling you.” She smiled at King. “You weren’t the only people he was selling information to.”

  She pulled the door closed behind her with the gentlest possible click, grinned at Mrs. Podhoretz, and sauntered to the elevator.

  She’d leave the news that their spy was dead for another time.

  She sat in her car while she tried to figure out where she should go next.

  “I probably should stop by Raven.”

  Raven Inc. was a regional Native corporation, one of the thirteen created with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to administer the money and lands granted to Natives in that act. The thirteen regional corporations were the umbrella organizations for the two hundred plus tribal organizations, like the Niniltna Native Association. Raven Inc. headquarters was ordinarily a place the pre-chair apolitical Kate would shun like the plague, but things were different now. And it wasn’t like Anchorage was the world’s biggest city. Someone would have seen her and word would go around, especially if it got to be known she’d come to town and snubbed her fellow executives.

  Now, there was a job right up Axenia’s alley.

  Really, it only made diplomatic sense, as the head of a small but powerful association, as Emaa’s granddaughter and the (temporary) leader of hundreds of Native shareholders, she should at least drop in to show the flag.

  Her cell phone rang. She’d never been happier to hear it.

  It was Lempe. “My friend says the blood types match exactly.” When she was silent, the doc said, “Ms. Shugak, does this mean that Mr. Gammons is actually this person named Allen?”

  “No,” Kate said, “no, the man in your hospital is Dewayne Gammons, all right.”

  He was silent. “We’re transferring him to API. We need the bed on the ward for more critical patients.”

  “He’s still not talking?”

  “No.”

  Some of Kate’s best perps had been cycled through the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. “I could have sworn I saw something when I mentioned his girlfriend.”

  “Could you get her to come in and talk to him? He might respond to her.”

  Kate took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Lyda Blue is dead.”

  “I … see.” A brief pause, and when he spoke again his voice was cooler. “Ms. Shugak, I am aware of your propensity for getting information by any means. Some people find that admirable. I find it reprehensible. Don’t ever lie to a patient of mine again, even if that lie is only one of omission.”

  “He couldn’t even hear me,” she said.

  “And if he could? And if he remembers you asking about her? And if he comes out of this and asks for her? And I have to tell him she’s dead? It could throw him right back where he was before. I will see to it that you are stricken from his guest list.”

  She was ashamed of herself, she had been when she’d asked Gammons about Lyda. “Doc,” she said, “Lyda Blue was murdered yesterday.” She was momentarily surprised to hear how certain she was. “I’m sorry for Dewayne Gammons’s condition, and I’m sorry as hell if I’ve exacerbated it, but he may be in possession of knowledge that will allow me to find out who did it, and why. If he regains consciousness or wakes up or even gets up to pee on his own, you will call me immediately, do you understand?”

  A brief and frigid silence. “Is that all?”

  “It is,” she said. And added, trying to keep the lines of communication open, “Thanks, doc. I owe you one.”

  She was speaking into a dead phone. How to win friends and influence people. She looked at the time. Six o’clock. It took her five minutes but she finally figured out how to check her voice mail. Nothing. She thought about calling Kurt but she knew if he’d had anything to report he would have called her.

  Wait a minute, who was that guy Truax had thrown off the mine yesterday? She still had his card in the back pocket of her jeans. Kostas McKenzie. Well, there was a suspicious name right there, Greek and Irish, or maybe the McKenzie was Scots, even worse, absolutely have to check that out.

  Besides, she thought more soberly, if the Park was going to be the scene of future environmental protests, best to know as much as possible about it in advance.

  She dialed the number on the card. It was picked up on the first ring, a breathless young voice very impressed with the urgent importance of the job her organization was doing. Would Kate like to donate to the cause? Well then, would she like to volunteer? Mother Earth was at grave risk from wholesale, environmentally unsafe resource extraction by conscienceless corporate giants interested only in gross profit and executive bonuses. Kate could answer phones, stuff envelopes, knock on doors, conduct surveys, write letters to her legislators and to her congressmen. There was so much to do if the planet was to be saved. The time to act was now. If you weren’t a part of the solution, you were part of the problem.

  When she was able to get a word in edgewise Kate asked if the office would be open for much longer that evening. Office hours were from ten in the morning until nine at night, this information given to her in a voice thrilled at the prospect of recruiting another true believer into the army of the righteous. When she managed finally to get off the phone Kate pulled the Anchorage map out of the side pocket, found the street name on the card, and set off.

  They were located on one of those ubiquitous four-space Anchorage strip malls. Gaea took up the middle two spaces, and everything looked very bright and shiny and new through the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the wall that faced the street. Kate pulled the Subaru into a spot in front of the double glass doors and looked at the logo printed in translucent paint across them both. It was a larger drawing of the logo on McKenzie’s business card and the leaflet in Gammons’s room, a kneeling goddess dressed in flowing blue-green robes, head bent over a globe cradled in her hands. The goddess was sort of a Euraisamerind racial blend designed to offend as few as possible. The Earth was resplendent in its customary blue-and-white regalia. Beneath the image was the name GAEA, and beneath it the slogan, “One people, one planet.”

  It was a clean image, unfussy, the artist had been restrained from doing too much, and it was very attractive. Kate was reminded again that the Niniltna Native Association had yet to decide upon its own new logo, following the grand plan she had instigated at the last annual shareholders’ meeting in January. She sighed.

  The glass door with half a goddess on it swung out smoothly and heavily, all by itself announcing Gaea to be an organization with weight and gravitas. Money well spent. Inside, the front two-thirds of the room was filled with desks and tables. Volunteers were on the phones and computers. It wasn’t a hive of industry but there was enough of a hum of activity so as to give the impression that Gaea was an organization with a serious base of support.

  The last third of the space against the back wall was partitioned into a small kitchen, a bathroom, and the boss’s office. Only the bathroom had a door you couldn’t see through. The first impression you got walking in was transparency. Kate applauded their decorator.

  “May I help you?”

  It was the same voice that had answered the phone, and it belonged to a sweet young thing in a cropped top and low-rider jeans, who wore far too much black eyeliner and had punked purple hair shorter than Kate’s held back by a wide band of rainbow spangles. Small silver hoops traveled from one lobe to the top of her ear, while its fellow sported a single hoop six inches in diameter that kept catching on the shoulder of her top.

  She was totally styling, and Kate almost said so but caught herself in time. “Hi, I’m looking for—”

  “Kate Shugak!”

  She looked around and found the man himself emerging from the one enclosed office, hand outstretched and a beaming smile on his face. “I’m so glad you could drop by.” He looked around. “Where’s Mutt?”

  This remark bespoke a personal knowledge of Kate’s person
al life that alarmed her a great deal. Before she could snub him for his presumption he put a hand beneath her elbow. “Let me show you around.”

  He escorted her through the room, introducing her to everyone as “Kate Shugak, chair of the board of the Niniltna Native Association, the largest village closest to the Suulutaq Mine.” The words “Suulutaq Mine” appeared to be the most relevant ones, as people’s eyes lit up and she was welcomed warmly into the fold. When the royal progress was complete, Kate looked at McKenzie and said, “You do know I’m not against the mine.”

  He grinned again. “Not yet you’re not. Give us a little time and we’ll convince you.”

  She cocked her head. “Well, I haven’t met any bomb-throwing fanatics today, I’ll give you that much.”

  “We keep them in the basement,” he said.

  Much against her will, it drew out a smile. “Okay. Make your pitch.”

  A map of Alaska covered the entire eastern wall, with an inset of the Park superimposed on it. “Okay if I start from go?”

  “Sure. I’d like to hear what everyone hears.”

  He nodded and in an instant shifted from genial host to crusader. He positioned himself in front of the map without obscuring the area in question and pointed to locations when he mentioned their names. “The Suulutaq Mine is a proposal by Global Harvest Resources Incorporated to build one of the world’s largest gold mines in interior Alaska, approximately fifty miles north of the shores of Prince William Sound.”

  Good sound bite, Kate thought. Everyone hearing the words “Prince William Sound” immediately flashed on a picture of a dying sea otter covered in some of the eleven million gallons of crude oil spilled there thirty years before by the RPetCo Anchorage. A subtle tarring of GHRI with RPetCo’s brush. Work with what you’ve got.

  “Global Harvest has not yet applied for permits, but they are in the process of drilling for core samples to determine the extent of the deposit and the amount of recoverable ore. So far, estimated deposits include over forty-two billion pounds of copper, almost three billion pounds of molybdenum, and almost forty million ounces of gold, which would make it the second largest gold mine in the world.”

  Clever again, Kate thought. While gold had its practical application in electronics and aerospace, it was best known for its luxury use in jewelry. Who cared if Donald Trump’s thirteenth wife got her Cartier wedding set? Especially if it came at the expense of something that you could be convinced was far more precious. Guilt by useless luxury association.

  “Global Harvest has yet to apply for permits, but they propose to build a large open-pit mine as well as an even larger underground mine. Both endeavors will require a great deal of water, which Global Harvest is proposing to acquire from creeks here, here, and here. All three feed into the headwaters of the Gruening River, which then flows through this gap into the Kanuyaq River. These creeks are flourishing habitats for five different species of salmon, a source of food for Alaskans native to the area going back ten thousand years.”

  Really, she was going to have to start keeping a scorecard. By using “Alaskans native to the area” he included everyone who wasn’t Native, too. A feat of rhetorical gymnastics that many Alaska state legislators had yet to achieve.

  “The mine site sits in a high, broad valley facing southwest, between spurs of the Quilak Mountains. Global Harvest proposes building the largest dam in the world to contain the acid mine drainage and metal leaching produced when rain and snow fall on tailings and when chemicals used to process the ore leak or spill.”

  Acid was a scary word right there. Acid rain, anyone?

  “This proposed dam will be made of earth, not concrete.”

  Ah, a little selective omission, an essential ingredient in every compelling argument. The planned dam was going to be bigger than the Three Gorges Dam in China, and the plans called for two dams, not one.

  “All five species of salmon who call these waters home—”

  Anthropomorphizing fish, now, reminding her again of PETA’s fish kittens. A hard sell, she’d have thought, but that was just her.

  “—along with rainbow trout, lake trout, arctic char, arctic grayling, and Dolly Varden spawn, migrate in the waterways downstream of the Suulutaq Mine. It is one of the richest and most unspoiled fish habitats left in the world. Entire coastal towns rely on the commercial catch of salmon every summer in the flats off the mouth of the Kanuyaq River. Sports fishermen come from all over the world to fish the mountain streams. Alaska Natives have been subsisting on the salmon catch from these waters for generations.”

  Now the prospective mine was poisoning the playground of the rich, not to mention the food supply of an entire race.

  “The valley where the open pit is to be dug is home to the Gruening River caribou herd. While a small herd by comparison to the Mulchatna and Western Arctic caribou herds, the Gruening River herd has been found to be biologically unique, a herd that may be a bellwether for all other North American caribou herds. As such it is targeted for extensive study by accredited global wildlife institutes. The Gruening River caribou herd has also been a traditional part of the subsistence lifestyle of the Natives in the area, a significant protein essential to their physical health and cultural well-being.”

  A little vague, there. What study had found the Gruening herd unique? Which institutes had done what targeting? Nice inclusive conspiratorial touch at the end, though. Most of us eat meat.

  There was more about the grizzly bears (Kate could have offered up some eyewitness testimony to the health of the Park grizzlies but she refrained), the moose, the sheep, the goats, and the migratory birds, and the stated determination of the federal government to open up all eligible federal lands in the area to hard rock mining, a blatant “Après moi, le deluge” message if Kate had ever heard one.

  McKenzie’s presentation lasted fifteen minutes and not one minute more, and concluded with a list of sponsors, as he reeled off names that featured green heavy hitters like the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, Ducks Unlimited, and Earthwatch. There were familiar corporate names as well, companies like Apple, Wal-Mart, General Electric, and, to Kate’s secret amusement, RPetCo Alaska. The list ended with a lengthy catalog of do-gooder nonprofits, ranging from familiar names like Rockefeller and Carnegie to what must have been nonprofits new to the business of saving the planet, Clean and Green, Big Blue Marble, Alaskans for Sustainable Jobs, The Seventy-one Percent Society, Clean Air for All.

  She had to admit she was impressed. It argued a breadth of support that crossed ideological lines. Of course, she reminded herself, they could all have bought in at the lowest level.

  Throughout, McKenzie was confident, informed, and succinct, his passion leavened with humor and his fanaticism tempered with reality. He didn’t impugn the morals of GHRI’s executive body, he didn’t refer to those managers of federal lands as rape, ruin, and run boys. He was gently, implacably, immovably rational. Kate decided it was probably the most dangerous thing about him.

  He dropped his arm. “So?”

  “Pretty effective,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And what?” She shrugged. “It’s not me you have to convince.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re the head of your Native Association, an association that is the only recognizable form of organized government within a hundred miles of the mine. What you say and do carries a lot of weight.” He drew closer and touched her arm, turning her gently toward the map. “Look at it, Kate. Twenty million square acres of virtually untouched, unspoiled land.”

  “You come on,” she said. “Oil in Katalla. Copper in Kanuyaq. Coal in Ahtna. Private and commercial gold mines in virtually uncountable numbers going back over a hundred and fifty years. The Park is no stranger to the mining industry, Kostas.”

  He looked disappointed.

  “Besides, you’re a little premature, aren’t you? GHRI hasn’t even completed their EIS yet. That and the permitting process is going to tak
e at least two years. All they’re doing at present is trying to define the limits of the mine, which isn’t easy because it seems to double in size every time they take another core sample. And let’s not forget that they have every legal right to do this. They bought their leases from the state in open auction, fair and square.”

  He listened to her with attention and without condemnation. Probably tucking everything away so he could come up with a way of refuting it the next time he gave his speech.

  “And,” she said, “there is the little matter of jobs, in an area that hasn’t had them in large quantity since 1936, in an economy that is in the toilet.”

  “Say all that’s true,” he said. “Doesn’t necessarily make it right.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “That’s what I enjoy most about environmental groups, their propensity to reduce everything to abstract ideology. Forty billion ounces of gold at a thousand dollars an ounce isn’t right or wrong or abstract, it’s concrete. It’s tangible, it’s a commodity which is in demand, which means there’s a market for it, which means someone is going to pay somebody else to get it out of the ground and get it to where somebody else can buy it. It’s called capitalism. I’m sure you must have heard something about it in high school.”

  When he spoke, his voice was neutral. “So you’re going to come out a hundred percent for the mine? There’s no moving you to our point of view?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m always willing to listen. The only thing I really know is I don’t know enough.” She thought of the aunties, and Axenia. “But I represent almost three hundred shareholders and all their children and grandchildren to come.” She thought of George Perry’s air taxi, and of Johnny and Val. “I have to think about their future.”

  “This is their future,” he said, indicating photographs of gigantic strip mines hung on the wall. Heavy equipment was crawling up and down their sides like tiny yellow and green ants. Some had raised their own dust storms. None of them were a pretty sight. They weren’t meant to be.