Flight of the Serpent

by R. R. Irvine writing as Val Davis

  She paused to tuck stray hairs into the bun at the back of her head. “My mother and her sister were very close. Neither had married at the age most women were expected to. The plain fact was, both expected to die old maids. They expected to stay together to the end. Then came two things at once that changed everything. The fire and my father, Jedediah Taylor. Sometimes I wonder if he didn’t set the fire to cover his tracks, but Mother always insisted that wasn’t so.”

  Lily leaned back and smiled, as if she were enjoying her memories.

  “Grandfather Jedediah,” Pearl picked up, “was a rogue Mormon. Some called him that, anyway. But to me, he was like one of those heroes you see in western movies—misunderstood but willing to fight for his beliefs. He was a polygamist, you see. He stole grandmother away and made her his second wife.”

  “Don’t mislead our guest,” Lily admonished, wagging a finger at her daughter. “Mother was in love. He didn’t have to steal her. She went willingly.”

  “How did they meet?” Nick asked softly.

  “Polygamy was illegal in those days just like now, but my father didn’t see it that way. He said what was good enough for Brigham Young was good enough for him. When the law came looking for him, he fled to Arizona until things cooled off a bit. For a while, he lived near Bisbee. When he finally got word that the law had stopped looking for him, he started back to Utah. On the way, he happened to camp outside Ophir. Pearl met him when he went into town to buy supplies. ’It was love at first sight,’ my mother told me. ’One look at him and I was a goner.’ ”

  A smile lit up Lily’s face. “Jedediah was such a handsome man, mother didn’t mind sharing him. She would have shared him with her sister too, but Lillian wouldn’t hear of such a thing. It was a sin, Lillian said, and she threatened to have the sheriff run Jedediah out of town.”

  Lily leaned forward, rubbing her hands together. “I can see my mother now, saying, ’If love’s a sin, so be it.’ ”

  “Tell her about the fire,” Pearl urged.

  Lily shushed her daughter with a stern look. “The night Ophir went up in flames was the night my mother ran off. Whether Jedediah set the fire himself to keep the sheriff busy, we’ll never know, I guess. Years later, mother heard that Lillian had told everybody she’d died in the fire.”

  Lily shook her head. “What a pity. My mother wrote to her sister many times, hoping for a reconciliation, but Lillian felt betrayed. She wrote back to my mother only once. In that letter she said, ’My sister’s dead and buried.’ In a way it was true, my mother told me once. She said the woman she’d been was gone forever.”

  Lily smiled at her daughter. “The cookies ought to be cool by now. I think our guest might like some.”

  “I’ve just had breakfast,” Nick said.

  “Take some with you, then, for later.”

  As soon as Pearl returned from the kitchen with a bag of cookies, Lily continued. “Years later, my mother decided to make one last try at reconciliation. She put everything down in a letter, but it came back unopened, stamped address unknown. My mother cried when she told me about it. I found that letter, still unopened, after she died. I expect you’ll want to read it.”

  She took a polished wooden box off of the coffee table and extracted a letter from it, handing it to Nick without another word.

  With trembling hands, Nick pulled the fragile paper from the yellowing envelope and read.

  My dearest sister,

  Our lives have taken such different paths since that dreadful fire that destroyed our home and yet I dare ask, can we not meet again? My beloved Jedediah has gone to his heavenly reward as has his first wife, Rachel. Surely now there can be no impediment to renewing that sisterly bond of love and respect that nurtured us through the hardships of youth?

  Jedediah swore to me on his deathbed that he had nothing to do with the fire and how could I not believe him? He was such a good man and what you held to be a sin, he counted as a sacred duty.

  You may think it strange that I would be willing to share a man who meant so much to me with another woman. In truth, Rachel became as a sister to me and we were able to share the burdens of a life that was full of joy, but held little luxury. But Lillian, she was not you and never did she displace you from my heart.

  I’ve named my daughter after you, and I hope someday that you will see her. She has Mother’s sweet face.

  Do not be harsh with me for leaving you. 1 was never as strong nor as independent as I know you to be. I saw your heart break when that young Latin teacher jilted you. 1 still remember the handkerchief you embroidered for him with the motto “omnia vincit amor.” Don’t you see, my dear, love does conquer all. It certainly conquered all I knew and made me leave family, friends, and all society. But I have no regrets. Please give way to that sisterly affection that once bound us so closely. Let us be sisters again.

  In all affection, your loving sister,

  Pearl

  A chill ran up Nick’s spine, prompted by a remembered passage from one of Lillian’s diaries. God has never seen fit to provide a husband, she’d written. But sometimes I think it was just as well. Judging from what I’ve seen, falling in love seems a kind of madness. Or possibly an obsession I can well live without.

  “Thank you,” Nick said, returning the letter. “This answers everything.”

  But she couldn’t help thinking that Pearl’s letter had left too much unsaid. Whatever her motives had been, one fact remained clear. She’d left Lillian behind to cope with the fire and its aftermath on her own. To Nick, that didn’t sound like love. It sounded like obsession, a feeling Nick knew well. For her, it was airplanes, for her father, the Anasazi. And for her mother, despair had been an obsession.

  Or was obsession a kind of love? Nick didn’t know, and she suspected that Pearl Benson hadn’t known either.

  Chapter 37

  By the time Nick drove back to the airport, Gault’s two-man crew, Roberts and Campbell, were pacing back and forth on the tarmac in front of the Lady-A’s hangar.

  “Why are you standing out here in the sun?” Nick said. “It must be a hundred degrees.”

  “John’s overdue,” Roberts replied. He looked ashen.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Brad’s just being an old lady,” Campbell answered. “There’s no need to worry.”

  To Nick, Campbell’s good cheer seemed forced. His complexion, like Roberts’s, lacked color.

  Roberts craned his neck, scanning the bright sky. “We should have heard from him by now.”

  Nick looked up too, but saw only empty sky marked with a few jet contrails.

  “He said he’d start back from Oregon this morning,” Campbell pointed out. “Well, it’s only noon.”

  “Shouldn’t we get out of the sun?” Nick said.

  Theron Christensen, a mechanic’s perpetual oily rag in his hands, emerged suddenly from the deep shade inside the hangar. “I’ve been telling them that for the past hour, Nick. Maybe they’ll listen to you.”

  Campbell and Roberts shook their heads in unison.

  “Mad dogs and bomber crews,” Christensen snapped. “They’re all the same.”

  “Cut the crap, Theron,” Roberts said. “You’re just as worried as we are.”

  Christensen winked at Nick. “I might be if I hadn’t just spoken to John on the radio. He’s on final approach right now.”

  “And Yarbrough?” Campbell asked.

  “You’ve got yourself a gunner.” The mechanic shook his head in disbelief. “You’re all nuts.”

  “It takes one to know one,” Campbell shot back.

  My God, Nick thought. Another volunteer for the Lady-A. No, volunteer didn’t say the half of it. Men who’d shared combat were forever linked. She knew that from friends who’d served in Vietnam. For them, war had been the definitive moment of their lives, one they kept living over and over again in their dreams. Or in this case, one they intended to live again aboard the Lady-A.

  Five minutes lat
er, the Cessna rolled to a stop in front of Gault Aviation. The moment Gault cut the engines, Campbell and Roberts, now looking their old selves, rushed forward.

  Nick and Christensen hung back rather than intrude on the reunion.

  A man Nick presumed to be Yarbrough came down the airstairs first with Gault right behind him.

  “Jesus, Russ,” Roberts shouted at Yarbrough. “You’ve gone bald, you old fart.”

  “That’s what John’s flying does to you. I had hair before we took off,” he replied.

  Laughing, the four of them pounded one another on the back. Finally, Yarbrough broke free and whooped, “Lead me to the Lady-A.”

  As one, the four crewmen charged toward the hangar, scooping up Nick and Christensen on the way, making introductions on the go.

  The moment they entered the hangar, Yarbrough’s entire face lit up.

  “Damn,” he murmured. “She’s still beautiful.”

  Nick thought the plane looked menacing, somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but the olive-drab surface of the B-24 seemed to devour the light. She shook off the feeling.

  “How soon will she be ready to fly?” Yarbrough asked, pointing at the work in progress, which included two ladders rolled against the engines on the port side, each holding a freelance mechanic.

  “That’s up to Theron,” Gault said. “He’s our miracle worker.”

  “If we don’t run into any snags,” the mechanic said, “the engines will be ready one week from today. Of course there are other systems to be checked, too.”

  Yarbrough ran his hand along the wing. “I don’t see any .50’Calibers.’’

  “A gunner to the end,” Roberts said.

  “That’s enough reminiscing,” Christensen said. “All sightseers out of my hangar so my boys can get their work done on time.”

  “It was the same in the war,” Yarbrough mused. “Hurry up and wait.”

  “We’ll be in the office if you need us,” Gault said.

  While the men reminisced and ate Lily’s cookies, Nick used Matt’s laptop to write up her notes on the Benson sisters. But even as she typed, she realized how frustrating archaeology could be at times. At best, her portrait of pioneer life in Ophir would only scratch the surface. True, she had found out what had happened to Pearl Benson after she fled Ophir. But she now knew how much had been omitted from Lillian’s diaries, the cruel jilting, the elopement of Pearl. The more she found out, the more obvious it became that the diaries were like the mirrored surface of a deep and murky pool that gave no hint to the true nature of its depth. And going back to Ophir was now impossible. Her dig site was under half a mountainside. Still, she had enough material to publish a credible article, though not enough to satisfy her own curiosity.

  Nick was checking her disk space when Gault waved at her. “Come on, Nick. There’s only one cookie left. Chocolate chip. It has your name on it.”

  Nick froze. There it was, right in front of her, for anyone to see.

  “I’ll be damned,” she shouted. “I know what Matt meant in his note to Paula. ’If anything happens to me, toss my cookies.’ It’s a file, a computer file.”

  While Gault and his crew gathered around, Nick scrolled through the File Manager display and showed them the file nestled under the Internet browser directory. It was listed as cookies.txt.

  “Some web sites actually write on your machine when you visit them. They leave a record of when you accessed them. Look, here they are,” she said as she opened a file.

  “Looks like gibberish to me,” Campbell retorted.

  “No, see for yourself. Here’s nytimes.com and here’s another site,” she said, pointing to the site names interspersed with times, dates, and status codes.

  Eagerly, Nick went to work, visiting one site after another, hoping they’d find out what story Matt had been researching in Arizona.

  The first few sites were disappointing. They involved discontinued government projects mostly, though none had been in Arizona. One site referred to early weapons tests in Nevada and Utah.

  “Does that mean anything to you?” Nick asked Gault. “Did Matt ever mention it?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Something must be here. Otherwise, Matt wouldn’t have left the note.”

  Nick went onto the next web site, and the next. After an hour had gone by, the crew deserted her to watch Christensen at work on the Lady-A, Only Gault remained behind, his chair next to hers as they both peered at the computer screen.

  Shaking off her growing sense of disappointment, Nick logged onto an American Medical Association site. What came up was biographical material on a Dr. Karl Maitland, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who’d done his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. After that, he’d gone on to specialize in cancer research at several hospitals, including Sloan-Kettering and Johns Hopkins. His articles had appeared in medical journals in this country and England. His most recent appointment was as Director of the National Research Institute for Behavioral Statistics. The bio included a photograph, showing a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed black beard.

  “Bingo!” Nick shouted, grabbing Gault’s arm.

  For a moment he looked blank, then suddenly he broke into a wide grin. “Son of a bitch. That’s the outfit Bob Hanlan came up with, the one on top of that damned mesa.”

  He hugged her. “You’re a genius.”

  It was Gault who finally broke contact, saying, “What the hell do you think they’re doing up on that mesa?”

  “Let’s see what else we can find on Matt’s web sites,” she said, missing the feel of him against her as she went on to the next site.

  Three log-ons later a B-24 home page came up. Nick blinked in disbelief. The image downloading on the computer screen was a photograph of the Lady-A, obviously taken in her hangar.

  “Matt took that shot himself,” Gault said. “I have a copy of it on my desk.” He left his chair to fetch the photograph.

  As soon as he handed the silver-framed photograph to her, Nick held it up next to the screen. The shots were perfect matches.

  She tapped a nail against the screen. “This has to be Matt’s personal home page.”

  “He never said a word to me about it. I wonder why?”

  Because, she thought to herself, Matt hadn’t wanted to involve him in something that was obviously dangerous, what with black money and the government involved. At the same time, Matt wanted backup material in place, in case something happened to him, as his card to Paula had said. But what?

  Hairs prickled on the back of her neck. “Hold it!” Gault said, leaning forward until his nose was close to the computer screen. “Look there.” He pointed at the B-24’s nose. “You see! The Lady-A’s nose art is different. Something’s written on the serpent.”

  Nick squinted but couldn’t make out the text.

  “Keep your fingers crossed,” she said and moved the cursor onto the serpent. “We’re in luck. It’s hot.”

  A double click of the mouse brought them a close-up. The serpent’s coils contained the words annie has james k. polk’s number.

  “Does that mean anything to you?” Nick asked.

  “Do you remember me telling you that Matt was a student of history? Well, presidents were a favorite of his. When James Polk was elected president his campaign motto was fifty-four forty or fight.”

  “So?”

  “That’s the Lady-A’s serial number, fifty-four forty. She fought too. Matt called that serendipity.”

  Nick looked doubtful. “He went to a lot of trouble to put up this web page. Somehow, I don’t think serendipity explains it. Can you think of anything else that it might mean?”

  Before he could answer, the phone rang. Since Nick was closest she answered.

  “Gault Aviation,” she said.

  “Is that Nick Scott?”

  She recognized Congressman Bob Hanlan. “Yes, Congressman,” she said for Gault’s benefit. “Would you like to speak to John?”
<
br />   “Is he there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m here at the airport, in the VIP suite at the main terminal building. My plane leaves for Washington in one hour. I’d like to see the two of you before then if possible.”

  Chapter 38

  “Shit!” Wiley blurted. “Did you hear that?”

  Voss threw down his headset, a duplicate of Wiley’s. “You’re damn right. It shouldn’t have gotten this far.”

  Wiley switched off the tape recorder and removed his own headset. They were sitting in their telephone truck, which had been carefully parked in line-of-sight of Gault Aviation. To avoid drawing unnecessary attention, the truck’s engine was off, which meant no air-conditioning.

  “I can’t believe it,” Wiley said with a shake of his head. “Now we’ve got a congressman in on the act.”

  “Whoa! Don’t say we. They can’t blame us for that.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Wiley said. “They’ve already tied that cookie file to our tails.”

  “What are we, mind readers? Nobody said a goddamned word about any kind of cookies.”

  Wiley grunted his agreement. “And now that busybody archaeologist has tied Maitland to the mesa. Jesus Christ, when he hears they’ve come up with his name he’ll go ballistic.”

  “If it gets him off his ass, I’m all for it.”

  “Sometimes, I think it’s Odell we ought to worry about, not the Director.”

  “I know what you mean. There’s something sneaky about that bastard.” Voss mopped his face. “It’s like a furnace in here. The way I’m sweating all over the electronics, it’s a wonder we haven’t gone up in flames.”

  “For God’s sake, be careful.”

  “Then start up the engine and cool things off for a while.”

  Wiley hated to risk it, but equipment failure was the last thing they could afford. Besides, they had credentials good enough to get them off just about any hook. Even so, he checked the perimeter for agents or sniffers before firing up the engine. Once the air conditioner was working, he and Voss positioned themselves in front of the vents and basked in the breeze.