“I have heard nothing for hours, Tim,” N’go said.
“Me neither. But it could be a trap.”
“Let me go look. This tiny room is crushing my soul.”
Riordan pushed the safety off his weapon and slowly turned the latch on the door. He eased it open and only darkness greeted them. The door made no sound; Bachmann had kept the hinges of his secret vault well oiled.
Riordan pulled out the tiny torch he always carried and aimed it at the floor before he switched it on. They had moved Bachmann’s body, but his blood lay frozen in a small pond where he had died.
“Don’t slip,” he murmured to N’go.
The large man flashed a smile and nodded before he moved out into the office. He inched the office door open and waited. Silence reigned.
Abruptly N’go slipped through the door and into the general store. Riordan hurried to the door and waited a long moment before sliding through the narrow opening. His heart thudded in his chest while he waited for a shot or a command to surrender.
“There is nobody here, Tim.” N’go’s voice was as soft as a lover’s whisper.
“We need to check outside.”
Riordan went out the side door and nearly fell over something in the path. After a full minute of frantically searching the area without moving anything other than his head, he knelt and moved the blanket away from Bachmann’s frozen face. The man still looked angry.
N’go eased around the front corner of the building.
“They all left in the lorry that brought them.” He nodded at the covered form. “That be Bachmann?”
“Yeah. Probably put him out here to keep him cold.”
“I would wager they will not return until warmer weather.”
“Good,” Riordan said through his sudden grin. “That gives us somewhere to live for a couple of months.”
129
Tanana, Provisional Capital of the Alaska Republik
“Where did you get flowers in the middle of winter?” Bodecia asked.
“Colonel Shipley brought them from California on the transport,” Magda said as she peered into the mirror and edged the garland of woven flowers slightly to the right. “Is that straight now?”
“It’s fine, now leave it alone. That transport was jammed with boxes and people. It was nice of the RCAF to stop and pick us up; don’t know how we would have made it otherwise.”
Bodecia admired their similar dresses in the mirror. Both were made of split moosehide so thin it could have passed for silk. The hide had been worked until attaining a pearl sheen. The beadwork on both enhanced their individual forms. A band of beads began at the neck, ran down the slope of the shoulders and dropped to the end of the short sleeves and then continued from the armpit to the hem on both of them.
Bodecia’s dress featured intricate florets across her bosom that seemed to twist and drop to the midriff. Magda’s dress featured a jagged, lightninglike design that shot out from the band beneath the armpits and curved down and across her midriff as if to hold up her bosom. Both dresses were stunning in their simplicity and rich from the beadwork.
Nobody can bead better than an Athabascan woman! Bodecia thought.
“General Grigorievich asked Colonel Shipley to stop for you. I’m glad he agreed. But I was surprised to see Rudi.”
“He said he wouldn’t miss this wedding for all the gold in St. Petersburg, even if he did have to take his life in his hands and fly here.”
“Is everything ready? How much time do we have left? Are the—”
“Magda! Calm down. Everything will be fine. You have to trust that all is going according to plan.”
Wing hurried through the door; her flushed cheeks set off the sparkle in her eyes. “Are you ready, Magda? There are a lot of people out there waiting for you.”
Magda turned from the mirror and stared at Wing. “Did they do a good job with the hangar? I always thought I would get married in a church!”
“Oh, my dear, just wait until you see it. What they have done out there couldn’t be attempted in any church I’ve ever seen. And you look so beautiful!” Wing’s facial muscles twitched and Bodecia realized she barely maintained her composure.
Bodecia felt so full of emotion she couldn’t speak. Her only child, her wonderfully close friend for so many years, was going to leave her house now. This was a natural thing, even a needed thing, she knew that, but it still didn’t dampen the ache in her heart.
How can something be so right and yet so painful at the same time?
Through the wall came the strains of fiddles, accompanied by at least two flutes, a balalaika, and William Williams’ accordion. Bodecia had to concentrate for a moment before she recognized “Blue Skies of California,” the RCAF anthem. How on Earth had William got his accordion clear up here?
“That’s our cue, ladies,” Wing said brightly, stifling a slight sniff.
“Mother?” Magda said, holding out her hand.
Bodecia moved next to her daughter, carefully held her face in both hands, and drew her face down so she could kiss her cheek.
“I am so proud of you, Lieutenant Magda Anton Haroldsson, and I love you with all my heart. Now let’s go begin your future.”
She took Magda’s arm and they walked through the door held open by Wing and into the largest hangar at Tanana Aerodrome. Immediately the organ segued into “Lower Yukon Waltz.”
Bodecia and Magda gasped at the same time. The hangar had been transformed into a military fairy tale.
Two gleaming P-61s had been parked at an angle to each other and festooned with ribbons and long ropes of braided flowers that crisscrossed in a net pattern. The ribbons and braided flowers from each aircraft met over a small dais that was flanked by the flag of the Republic of California on one side and the new Alaska Republik flag on the other. Behind the aircraft were deployed white silk parachutes lending the suggestion of clouds.
Vivid floral bouquets lined the carpeted aisle that stretched from where they entered to the dais behind which stood Pelagian in a formal suit so ancient he looked like an illustration in a fashion history book.
“Where did he get that suit, Mother?” Magda whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“He’s had it for years. Where I don’t know, else I would have destroyed it and found him a new one,” Bodecia whispered back. She could feel Magda laughing but nobody else seemed to notice.
Pelagian seemed to be a mélange of emotions. Bodecia could see his pride in a wonderful daughter, his happiness for her happiness, the fear that her safety was now out of his control (as if it ever was under his control!), the honor he felt for being the master of ceremony on this memorable occasion; and yet there was something else.
It took her a moment to recognize his use of theater in this ceremony. Bodecia felt her throat tighten and willed it to relax. Pelagian knew if he made a hash of this for any political reason, he would never live it down in his own home.
That gave her a sense of peace and she walked the carpet with her daughter between rows of folding chairs mostly occupied by military from a number of nations on one side and a wonderful assemblage of Aleuts, Athabascans, Kolosh, Haidas, Yup’iks, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Tsimpshean, Malemiut, and other Peoples she did not recognize, all in their best regalia.
During the Russian surrender at Delta, one of Colonel Buhrman’s men had taken a photo of Magda, surrounded by her exhausted troops, looking behind her at the sudden appearance of the Republic of California Army and the men under Lieutenant Colonel Smolst. Not yet aware they were allies, her expression is one of combined disbelief, despair, and anguish. Once the photo was printed in the Sacramento Bee with the caption “Beauty among the beasts,” it went all over the world.