An expression passed over Charles’ face that was as unpleasant as it was fleeting.
“I think I’ll stick with the plan, Dad,” Liam said. “The ME will turn it over in due course.”
“There are families waiting for word, for some kind of closure. These men have been missing a long time. They deserve an honorable burial as soon as possible.”
“It’s not like the families don’t know how or when they died,” Liam said. There was no answer to this. “Oh, and I guess you’ll probably want the gold coin, too.”
“The what!”
Charles’ exclamation was somewhere between a bark and a shout. It had a parade-ground kind of feel to it, and if activity in the bar did not come to a halt, it slowed down and heads turned their way.
Liam, not expecting this reaction, said, “The gold coin in the arm’s hand. It, uh, fell out.” He didn’t say where or when.
Charles had himself under strict control. The smile was gone, though, and Jo gave him a long, thoughtful look. This was the face behind the gun sight on his jet. She wouldn’t care to have that face on her tail. He lowered his voice. “There was a gold coin in the hand?”
“Yeah.” Liam, for his part, didn’t know what this was leading to. “It’s an American twenty-dollar gold piece. Bill’s got it.”
“Get it.”
Liam raised an eyebrow at the snapped order, but he got to his feet and walked to the bar, aware that most of the bar was eyeing him, openly or covertly. Moses was one of the former, that connoisseur of upheaval and disaster, and he grinned at Liam as he walked by. Eric Mollberg was one of the latter, nearly tucking his head beneath his arm to avoid eye contact. Clarence took advantage of Moses’ distraction by nipping off with Moses’ other knight. Liam and rest of the bar learned some new Yupik when Moses turned back and discovered the loss.
“Well?” Bill said.
“He wants the gold coin.”
Bill jerked her head. “Top drawer, in the office.”
“Thanks.” He found it and brought it back.
Charles almost snatched it out of his hand and then seemed to notice the odd looks he was getting. He laughed. It didn’t convince them. He saw it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It took me aback a little. I have a list of personal effects from the families, things the flight crew might have had with them on board. One of the copilot’s grandchildren said he remembered his grandmother talking about a lucky gold piece that her grandfather had carried. It had quite a legend attached to it, was supposed to have been won from Wild Bill Hickok in the poker game before the one he got shot in, and been in the family ever since. In the normal course of events, it would have gone to the son and then to the grandson. It’d be nice to get it back to him.”
It was a charming story, told with style and just the right touch of sentimentality. It was a pity that the only person at the table who believed it was the storyteller himself. He seemed to want to move on, and quickly, too. He looked at Liam and said, “Does anyone else know about this piece?”
Liam thought back to the scene in the bar two nights before. “Pretty much everyone in Newenham by now, I’d guess.”
“Damn it. Liam, we can’t wait until spring to recover the bodies. We have to do it now.”
“Dad, I told you, and so did Wy. That’s pretty much next to impossible. It’s October-hell, it’s almost November. Winter’s coming on. It’s snowing right now. That airstrip isn’t maintained, and there’s no way to get the wreck down off the glacier even if it were.”
“We’ll use helicopters. I’ll call Elmendorf, see what’s available. And there’s an Air National Guard base, too-Kulik, isn’t it? I’ll ask them what they’ve got.”
“I know those guys, Dad,” Liam said evenly. “They’re on call for rescues all over the state. I don’t think they’re going to volunteer their crews and their equipment to recover bodies that have been lying there for sixty years. We’re coming up on storm season. They’ll have plenty of work on their hands rescuing the living.”
Charles’ eyes narrowed. “Those guys who came busting up on the four-wheelers when we were out at the wreck…”
“What about them?” Liam said, wondering where this was going.
“They were treasure hunting.”
“They said they were caribou hunting.”
“Crap. They knew about this gold coin and they went looking for more where it came from.”
Liam couldn’t deny it. “So?”
“So if we don’t get that wreck out of there you’re going to start losing Newenhammers who think there might be gold in them thar hills.”
Liam remembered the slab of ice that had nearly killed him and Wy the previous morning. “You’ll lose just as many going after it.”
“Not if I round up good equipment and good equipment operators. Leave it to me.” Charles stood up and threw down a couple of bills. “Excuse me. I’ve got some calls to make.”
The three of them watched him stride out the door. When it closed behind him, Liam looked at Mason and said, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “I don’t,” he added when he saw Liam’s skepticism. “My boss heard about the wreck and called the commander out on Elmendorf. The BOC told him that Colonel Campbell was flying in. My boss asked him to ask Colonel Campbell to let me hitch a ride to Newenham. He said okay. I have to say we were all a little surprised. I mean, the United States Air Force doesn’t exactly hand out rides on an F-15.”
“So the inference is he wanted you here. Why?”
Mason was using a french fry to mop up the last drop of steak juice and was very intent on the job. “He said that co-operation between federal organizations was essential to the smooth working of government, and that he was happy to be able to contribute to it, in however small a way.” He met Liam’s eyes with a bland expression in his own.
“What can you do here?”
“Not much,” Mason said. “I don’t have a lot of authority over the sixty-year-old wreck of a military plane. If it was sabotaged, or the flight was in any way related to espionage of some kind, then I could step in, maybe. And only maybe.” He smiled. “In Alaska the FBI is more concerned with Russians importing underage girls who come thinking they’re going to be part of an ethnic dance group and who wind up shaking it down in the strip clubs.”
“Were you on that case?” Jo said.
“From the start.” Mason didn’t sound happy about it.
“Were the girls in on it?”
“The older one, the twenty-year-old, maybe. The two younger ones, no way.”
“Are they still in jail?”
Mason winced. “We prefer to call it protective custody.”
“Waiting on the INS?”
“That, and the fact that we need them to testify against the guys who brought them into the country.”
Liam reached for his wallet. “I’m due home.”
“Give Wy my love.”
“Where’s Gary?” Liam said, suddenly noticing her brother’s absence.
“Relax,” Jo said. “He’s doing some patchup work for a guy he knows in Ik’ikika.”
Liam tried not to show his relief.
She waited until he was inches from a clean getaway. “What’s going on with your father, Liam?”
“I know as much as you do, Jo. And sometimes I think,” he added, a trifle grimly, “a lot less.”
“Man,” she said.
“What?”
“Sons and their fathers.”
“What about them?”
“Tell the truth. You guys just sit around thinking up ways to fail each other, don’t you?”
“Go to hell,” Liam said, and marched to the bar, wallet in hand.
Jo watched him go, admiring the straight spine that managed to broadcast every ounce of the offended dignity that he was feeling.