by Levi, Steve;
“Yeah,” snapped the Lieutenant. “I don’t like dealing with bad guys even for the best of reasons.”
“Nice quote,” replied Noonan. “You can use it for the Chamber of Commerce next week. Right now I’m worried about 95 people sitting in a dark room hoping we’re going to make the right decision.”
Ayanna was having problems with paying the thieves too.
She didn’t like it.
She didn’t like it at all and it was clear from her voice as she talked to Porky. Porky clearly didn’t care. Then again, why should he? His company only insured the stones if they were stolen on the way to the drop. When the thieves got the stones, his company was off the hook. The Anchorage Airport had bought the stones and they couldn’t sue.
“Relax, Ms. Driscoll,” said Porky with the enthusiasm of an undertaker. “All is well. The stones are authentic, we’ve insured them.” Then he made the only human motion Noonan had seen him make in his 15 minutes in the Command Center. He put his left hand to the center of his chest, over his heart, and gave it a little press. “Cross my heart.” There was no telltale lift to the outer corners of his lips indicating he knew he was making a humorous statement.
“I didn’t know insurance people had hearts,” snapped Ayanna.
“An occupational liability,” said Porky with as much emotion as if he were counting pennies.
Ayanna opened the leather pouch and looked inside. All she could see were a bunch of loose stones.
“Isn’t it bad to have all these stones together in the bag? Won’t they chip?”
“Maybe but not likely,” said Porky. “Besides. We weren’t asked for the papers of authenticity, only the gems. As soon as the thieves get the stones they are going to cut them up anyway.”
“Why do you think that?” Noonan broke in.
“Simple,” replied Porky, craning his neck as he spoke with a look on his face which said we-professionals-have-been-through-this-before, “with the papers of authenticity, there’s a paper trail. Without the papers of authenticity, they have to re-create those papers. That’s a whale of a lot of paperwork and if any one stone is recognized, then the FBI has a clue to follow. If they cut the stones, there are new signatures and the chances of any one stone being recognized is very, very low.”
“We’re talking about a lot stones here,” said Noonan as he reached over Ayanna’s shoulder and fingered the bag. This is just one-fifth of what they’ve asked for. There’s going to be a lot of paperwork. Why not just sell the stones overseas and take the cash?”
“Good point. A better question is why not just sell the stones in New York or Los Angeles? $25 million may be a lot to you but on the world precious stone market it’s not even a drop in the bucket. The answer is simple: traceability. Once again, the thieves have the problem of recognizability. Even a reputable dealer can’t show up with a million dollars’ worth of gems with no paperwork. Sure, he could dribble them into the market over time but there are lots of people watching for stray gems to show up. These are not the good old days where you could drop a few million on the market and no one cared.”
“A few million!” said Ayanna in surprise. “A few million?”
Porky looked at her with all of the enthusiasm of a lode stone. “Twenty-five million is not even close to small in the precious stone market. But, like I keep saying, what is important here is the stones have no papers. Which means the stones are going to be cut up before they ever make it onto the market.”
“Are they going to make more with the cut stones than the whole ones?” Noonan cut in. “I would have thought big stones, if big stones is the correct term, were more valuable than small ones.”
Porky seemed pleased to show his expertise. “Precious stone thieves are an odd bunch of felons. In many cases the jewels are simply stolen for the insurance money. It’s cheaper for the insurance company to buy the gems back from the thieves at, say, 15% of their value than pay out the total loss.”
“Insurance companies do that?” Ayanna was surprised. “Is it ethical?”
“Maybe not,” said Porky clearly carefully about how he was phrasing his response. “But it’s legal.” Porky was emphatic about it. “That’s the way it’s done. If a thief wants more than 15% he has to handle the stones himself. Then things get dicey. No one in the United States or Europe is going to buy a stone without a letter of authenticity. This means they have to take the jewels to Asia or South America to sell.”
He took a breath.
“More than likely these guys are jewelers or have a connection to a jeweler. They’ll get the gems, cut them, and place them in jewelry. Once they are in settings the individual stones do not need any letters of authenticity. The entire piece of jewelry has its own fingerprint, so to speak. We may never find one of the stones as a stone but a lot of people will have jewelry with stolen gems inlaid.”
“What you are saying is these guys could get away with it?” Ayanna was not happy.
“They could,” replied Porky, “but I doubt it. This is a big heist of computer-identified stones. It’s unlikely all the stones will slide into the market unrecognized. The thieves will have to be careful every time they sell a stone; we only have to be lucky once.”
But Porky gave a tell. He may have said the cops only had to be lucky once but his facial expression indicated he didn’t believe what he was saying. Noonan, who was hardly an expert on precious stones, figured the truth without an explanation: these guys were going to get away with it.
Ayanna shook her head as she stood up and tucked the bag in her fanny pack. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Not part of your job description, was it?” Noonan smiled wryly. He tightened his belt unconsciously.
“Not even on the radar scope of skills I thought I would need to do this job.” Ayanna raised her hands to indicate the building. “I’m supposed to be saving the airport from bad boys and girls, not paying them ransom.”
“All part of the job,” said Noonan spryly. “You will make up for it when the hostages get free and the bad boys and girls are caught.”
“You sound so confident.” Ayanna pulled on a light jacket and zipped it shut. Then put her hand on the .38 on the table.
“Oh, I am,” replied Noonan as he put his hand on her. “We are a long way from finished here.” When she tried to pick up the revolver Noonan nixed it, “Not yet. There is no danger with this drop.”
Ayanna pulled her hand back, looked longingly at the pistol and then nodded.
Chapter 7
The water was always calm along the shoreline.
This was good. The bank was steep. At high tide the water lapped the roots of the overhanging brush. At low tide – 30 feet down and 6 hours away – the shoreline wasn’t much of a line of shore. It was a sheer cliff. And the cliff line didn’t stop where it joined with the surface of Knik Arm. It kept dropping. Thirty feet from shore at low tide the water was 50 feet deep. On the bottom was mud. Deep mud. With the exception of this part of the shoreline, the Knik Arm reached the shore across deep mud flats. As the tide rose, the mud was swirled about. When the tide receded the mud was so loose a man could be sucked down to his waist. He would not be swallowed alive, but he would find himself stuck in the muck. If he could not get out he would drown with the advent of the next tide. The mud flats always got one or two tourists every year. More than the bears. Alaska was a dangerous land if you were from Iowa or Missouri and didn’t listen to the locals.
A lot of people did not know Anchorage had some of the highest tides in North America. This was probably because of the city’s unique landscape. From the air Anchorage was like a giant triangle. The rugged Chugach Mountains formed the hypotenuse while Knik Arm to the north and Turnagain Arm to the south formed the other two sides. The Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm joined just beyond the end of the runway at Anchorage International Airport. When the salt water was plowing up from the Pacific Ocean it enters Cook Inlet, the wide mouth spreads and flattens the incoming tide. Then,
like honey being poured on a table, it layers as it moves.
As the tide moves south into Turnagain Arm, it often arrives in steps. Known as the bore tide, it arrives in four-foot high sections. From horizon-to-horizon, a four-foot wall of water advances down the arm. Behind the aqueous wall is another with another behind it as well. On good days – good if you are a windsurfer – you can ride two sometimes three bore tides in a single day. On bad days, the water just rises 30 feet in 6 hours and there is no bore tide to ride or jump.
Captain James Cook named Turnagain Arm in May of 1778. He had sailed into the arm hopeful it would lead him to the fabled Northwest Passage. He didn’t get very far because the arm is only about 40 miles long and not very deep at low tide. He ran with the tide coming in and when the tide turned, he found himself stranded on the mud flats in the center of the mud-filled fjord. A dozen hours later he had to turn again and come out leaving nothing but the name of the arm on his nautical charts.
Knik Arm, on the northern flank of Anchorage, does not get bore tides. It does get good, deep water for ships, the reason the anchorage at Ship Creek gave the city its name. It still gets tides. They can be vicious during the winter, particularly because the Knik and Matanuska rivers feed into Knik Arm.
It isn’t the water making Knik Arm so hazardous; it’s the ice. The river which feeds into the Knik Arm, freezes from shore-to-shore during the winter. Then snow falls on the river ice and freezes in place. Layer by layer the ice builds.
Until Spring.
Late Spring.
Then the ice sheet on the river breaks and several hundred miles of river ice bergs gouge their way downriver. When they tumble into Knik Arm they come as a flotilla many the size of small houses and some the size of skyscrapers. Ships choose their passage carefully into and out of Anchorage during the days when the ice is running. The oil rigs further down Cook Inlet cannot dodge the big ones. Built to withstand the impact of massive boulders of ice, the workers on the rigs are always wary of the “the big one,” a berg so large it will snap the legs of the strongest rig man could build. It hasn’t arrive yet but every spring the chances of “the big one” arriving gets better.
Chapter 8
“Who?”
“Noonan. Chief of Detectives from Sandersonville, North Carolina, I think. Some hick town on the Atlantic coast. I’m really not sure where. Just in North Carolina somewhere.” Gerry was looking at her palm pilot as she spoke. “He’s in his 60s, about six feet tall, thick but not fat, athletic and looks like someone you’d miss in a crowd.”
The cameraman was built like an athlete, young enough to be training for the Olympics and dressed for speed. He was wearing a track suit and had on running shoes. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail and a tattoo was half-visible at the back of his neck. He and Gerry were wedged in a corner of the lobby of the Wickersham Hotel behind an artificial fern. They had moved the table and four chairs behind them so they get the camera in the right position. Now the two were pressed so close together than Gerry could feel Sam’s muscular buttocks on her thighs. She couldn’t see his face. It was glued to the eyepiece of the camera focused on the bank of telephones.
“Geraldine,. . .” Sam was whispering.
“Gerry, Sam. Gerry. We’ve worked together long enough for you to call me ‘Gerry.’”
“Gerry,” Sam said. “Every time I work with you I get in trouble.”
“Correction,” said Gerry. “Every time you work with me you have an adventure.”
Sam smiled, half of it hidden by the camera. “I’m dressed to run but this camera is heavy. Why don’t we get a backup car to follow us around?”
“Because we’re not going to have much of a runaround. With a 60-year old guy doing the drop, I don’t think they are going to have him run around too much.”
“Who are ‘they?’”
“They are the kidnappers.”
“We’re on a kidnapping drop? Hey, exciting! Is this part of the story about those folks who got snatched out of thin air?”
“Same folk. They disappeared on a flight to Anchorage from Seattle.”
Sam pulled back from the camera view scope and looked at Gerry carefully. “These guys aren’t aliens or anything are they?”
“Nope. Flesh and blood types, just like you and me. You know how I know?”
“No. How?”
Gerry gave Sam a look which said ‘you are so easy.’ “They’re asking for $25 million in precious stones. Asking for money doesn’t sound like aliens to me.”
“Sounds like someone who wants to get rich quick,” replied Sam. “How’d you get the lead?”
Gerry made a mock expression of surprise. “Why a little bird told me.”
“Speaking of birds, is that our pigeon?” Sam gave a brief forward jerk using his camera. He wasn’t being careful and one of the ferns slipped across the camera lens and slapped back striking him in the face. Another fern covered the camera lens for a moment before he shook it off.
“Be careful there,” snapped Gerry. “We need every second of footage we can get.”
Gerry stared through the veneer of fronds. “Looks to be. He’s old enough and I recognize the woman from the Chamber of Commerce. Has to be Ayanna Driscoll in the flesh.”
The camera began to grind as Sam shot a few seconds of the pair leaning against the jade telephone counter.
“Make sure you get them on the phone,” whispered Gerry hoarsely as she leaned into Sam. “Then get ready to run. The second they put the phone down, they are going to be off and away.”
Sam pushed back against Gerry. “I’m ready when you are!”
Chapter 9
The Wickersham Hotel in Anchorage was legendary for its silence. This is not to say the hotel was a quiet place to stay. Actually, the opposite was true. In terms of the audible range, it was notorious for being the worst possible place to hold a meeting. It had floors of Travertine tile and oaken walls, which, together, allowed sound to bounce from floor to ceiling to wall to floor as though it were an echo chamber. The food was bad, the liquor expensive and the décor abysmal. But if one were looking for an establishment where the staff was as blind as the clientele, the Wickersham Hotel was the place to be.
The hotel had originally been built with fish money. Rather, it had been constructed with funding from the large salmon canning companies wanting a luxurious home-away-from-home for their executives when they came north. These executives, almost exclusively male, were most often accompanied with secretarial help, almost exclusively female, and every effort was made to make sure these executives were not saddled with pedestrian difficulties. Those difficulties included such indignities as liquor raids during Prohibition or the unexpected arrival of wives of the executives on the Alaska Marine Highway ferries. Until the advent of the oil industry, the Wickersham did not bill its guests. The company for which they worked checked them in and the Anchorage office of those companies then handled all charges with no questions asked. It was said the only thing higher than a liquor bill at the Wickersham Hotel was an incoming cold front.
No one had ever been arrested in the Wickersham. Certain people had been arrested on the sidewalk thereof but not within the hotel itself. It was like a city unto itself. It had a doctors, barbers, lawyers and other professionals available at all hours of the day and night who, for a fee, could resolve any problem. Judges, mayors, governors, movie stars, police chiefs and illustrious foreign officials frequented the establishment and not a single one of them had ever been subject to even a passing legal or ethical glance. No one was ever asked why they were in the establishment when they lived in Anchorage or, if they lived out of town, what they were doing within the confines of the oaken walls of the hotel. It was a proverbial city of silence. One went to the Wickersham Hotel for silence and to associate with others who were as blind, deaf and dumb as you wanted them to be.
It was thus the perfect place to begin a fruitless enterprise and exactly why Heinz Noonan and Ayanna Driscoll were
there in the morning, leaning against the solid jade telephone counter of the Wickersham Hotel, their backs to the bank of telephones.
“How do you know?” asked Ayanna as she scanned the lobby for the press. Clearly the last thing she wanted was for the press to be there. Being new to law enforcement, she did not know how to spot the press. Her point of view was simple. If she did not see anyone who looked like the press there was no press there. There were no light flashes, cameras being lugged or men and women with pen and pad. It was actually a relief to be away from the airport where every other person had a press pass and very one of them had a question she could not answer.
“Believe me,” said Noonan casually. “They’re here. Just because you can’t see them means nothing. The bad guys we are dealing with are going to make our lives as difficult as possible – which means tipping off the press. The press is here. We just can’t see them yet.”
“What good will it do?” Harried asked. “I mean, won’t tipping the press make the drop more difficult?”
Noonan shook his head. “Keep in mind the bad people are very clever boys and girls. They are calling the shots and they want the press on top of every aspect of this story as fast as possible. Using the press will clog the information system. While the police are trying to satisfy the press, the bad guys are screwing up the time schedule, anything to throw us off of being prepared. Every second we spend spinning our wheels or dealing with the press is one second the bad boys and girls will use to their advantage. It means they are pretty sure their drops are going to be safe.”
“I don’t like that kind of confidence,” snapped Ayanna.
“Get used to it,” advised Noonan. “These guys are pros. They’ve planned this right down to the second they make the call.” Noonan looked in the direction of the artificial ferns in the corner where he saw a camera lens peeking out from the shrubbery. “I see our reporters are here right on cue.”
