Hunter's Moon

by Dana Stabenow

  Kate shook her head. “No, thanks, I never drink on a hunt.” Or ever, she could have added, but didn’t because such a statement always required an explanation, which she didn’t care to go into with strangers.

  Up close Senta was even more awe-inspiring than she was at a distance. Her skin was flawless, her eyes a deep, oceanic blue, her hair glittered in the firelight like spun gold. Judging from his besotted expression, George was in love. Kate devoutly hoped that Senta was not on the verge of becoming wife number seven. “So, Senta,” Kate said, partly in what she knew deep down was a vain attempt to deflect George, and partly doing the host thing, “tell me a little bit about your company.”

  “Certainly,” Senta said, refilling George’s glass and smiling at him over the rim. George quivered visibly. Senta’s smile widened. Oh lord. Kate thought.

  “Dieter is our CEO,” Senta said. “You know what our company does?”

  “Sure. You make computers.”

  “No, we make the operating systems that run the computers.”

  “Software, as opposed to hardware.”

  Senta’s smile was bright and flashing. “Correct. Dieter is our president and chief executive officer. He is the hill from which all shit rolls down.”

  Kate laughed, surprised into it. “I see.” She glanced across the circle at Dieter, absorbed in cleaning what looked like a shoulder-launched rocket.

  “I will go around the circle,” Senta said. Eberhard was sitting next to Dieter. “So next is Eberhard.” He must have heard his name because he turned his head and met Senta’s gaze full on. She went very still next to Kate.

  “And what does Eberhard do?” Kate prodded.

  Senta looked down into her glass and said, “Whatever he wants.”

  There was a faint tremble in her voice, or so it seemed to Kate. Something personal going on there. Sexual harassment, maybe? Or maybe Senta was just intimidated by the big man, as everyone else seemed to be. “What’s his official job title?” Kate said.

  Senta took a healthy swig from her glass. “He’s the head of our legal department.”

  This was so far off from what Kate had imagined that only strong self-control kept her from sitting up with a jerk. “Eberhard’s a lawyer?” She managed a chuckle. “What do you know, yet another partner of that well-known firm, Huckster, Shyster and Finagle.”

  Senta’s smile flashed again, hard and bright. “Yes.”

  Kate still had a hard time believing it. “He’s got a degree and everything?”

  “Oh, yes. The University of Heidelberg. Where do you think he got the scars?”

  Eberhard a lawyer. Muscle and brains. Kate appreciated that combination only when it was on her side, and it was obvious right up front that she couldn’t afford Eberhard. “What’s that about the scars?”

  “Didn’t I say that right? The marks on his face.” Senta gestured with her glass. “Like the one on your neck. His are not so ugly,” she said, so matter-of-factly that Kate could not take offense. “How did you get that?”

  Kate ignored the question. “Yes, you said it right, but what have the scars got to do with Heidelberg?”

  “They duel in Heidelberg.”

  “They what?”

  “Fight. The students. With swords. You know.” Senta demonstrated, crossing her index fingers in a mock salute. “Like knights in the Middle Ages.” Senta snorted and held out her glass for a refill. “You have words for that in America which I like very much.” She frowned at her drink, concentrating.

  “Macho bullshit?” Kate suggested.

  “That’s it!” Senta toasted her and beamed. “So Herr Eberhard is a lawyer, with scars.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to what she must have imagined was a confidential level. “He has other scars, too. Not from swords.”

  Kate debated asking her how she knew, and decided it came under the heading of Too Much Information. “So Eberhard heads up Dieter’s legal department. From what I read in the papers,” she said mendaciously, “I imagine he’s been busy lately.”

  “He is more than a lawyer, though,” Senta said. “I was in Dieter’s office one time when there was a demonstration in the lobby. Eberhard went down, and the demonstration went away.” She drank. “Some of the demonstrators went away in ambulances.”

  “He’s good, then,” Kate said. “Eberhard.”

  “He’s big,” Senta said. “Sometimes that’s better than being good.”

  There was an undertone to her voice that Kate could not interpret. Some corporate backbiting going on there, she thought comfortably, and decided it was time to move on. “How about Gunther?” Gunther was working the action of what looked like a brand-new rifle, face furrowed with concentration.

  Senta gave the impression of just barely managing to refrain from a rich snicker. “Gunther is the head of security.”

  Kate frowned as if this puzzled her; in fact, it did. Most corporate heads of security were retired cops of some kind, vested in state or federal retirement funds and ready to begin building a second and infinitely more remunerative one in the private sector. Gunther, on the other hand, was a baby, a mere child. Dieter must have an abiding belief in on-the-job training. “Isn’t he a little young for a job like that?”

  “Yes, but he will grow into the job.”

  He’d better, Kate thought, and fast.

  “Hendrik is in research and development. He thinks up all our wonderful products.”

  There was almost but not quite a sneer in Senta’s voice. It was unpleasant and jarring, coming from the Ice Queen, who judging on looks alone should be icily regular and splendidly null.

  “Hubert works with Hendrik. Between the two of them, there isn’t anything they don’t know about computer operating systems. Gregor heads up public relations, and Berg is head of quality control.”

  Kate nodded her head at the young man standing behind Hendrik, one hand resting casually on his shoulder. “And Fedor?”

  Again with the sneer. “Fedor works for Klemens.”

  “And what does Klemens do?”

  Senta’s voice was clipped. “He’s the head of the finance department. He has been with the company the longest, even before Dieter.”

  “So, what do you do?”

  “Human resources.”

  “Wow.” Senta was well cast for her role; that hair and those eyes would look terrific on camera. “The CEO, legal affairs, security, finance, p.r. The whole management team. The gang’s all here. You could run the company from Taiga Lodge if you wanted to.”

  Senta threw back her head and laughed, a deep, throaty sound. Kate saw Berg look across the fire at Senta with an expression in his eyes that made the fire look dim by comparison. “We could at that,” Senta said. “We could at that.”

  “But you’re here on vacation,” George said, seizing his moment, as well as the schnapps bottle. He poured with a lavish hand, ignoring Kate’s frown. Senta met his ardent gaze with a languorous look of her own, and Kate decided Senta was in no need of protection. Tactfully, she got to her feet and went into the lodge to help Jack clean up the dinner dishes.

  Jack was washing and Kate was drying and putting them away when someone screamed in the yard. Kate dropped dishcloth and pan and ran outside, Jack right behind her.

  Her first startled glance showed no one in immediate distress, with the exception of Mutt, who had been slumbering peacefully next to the fire. She shot to her feet, looked wildly in every direction, put her muzzle up in an emphatic and unequivocal howl of protest and vanished into the brush.

  Dieter had produced a boom box equipped with full stereo effects, bass and treble both cranked all the way over. Singing poured forth into the clearing and at that volume probably all the way to Denali, which was, after all, only about seventy-five miles to the northeast.

  “What the hell is that?” Kate said, raising her voice.

  “The Valkyries,” Jack said. He didn’t sound happy, or she didn’t think so, what she could hear of his voice over the
noise.

  Involuntarily, Kate looked at Senta. Jack grinned. “It’s an opera.”

  “Oh.” Kate, after one performance of Carmen by the Fairbanks Opera Company during her college days, did not consider opera necessary.

  She had company. Dieter’s party looked either resigned or enthralled, probably depending on how sure they were of their jobs. Dieter stood where he was, one hand gently conducting the orchestra. He caught sight of Kate and Jack and smiled. “Wagner. Isn’t he wonderful?”

  He might have been, for all Kate knew, but not in the middle of nowhere in the Alaskan Bush, where people paid large sums to get away from the obscenities of modern life. Chief among these obscenities Kate numbered jet engines, cellular phones and nonstop noise being played at you, whether it was CNN in the airport, synthesized pop rock in restaurants or hip-hop with the bass turned up loud enough to break the windows of a passing car.

  Or Wagner in the Bush.

  Dieter appeared to think he was playing music to clean guns by. He bustled over to a long, gray case and opened it.

  Jack sucked in a breath. “Are those Purdeys?” He had to repeat the question in a louder voice.

  “Here,” Dieter said, and held one out with a lordly gesture. “Take a look.”

  Jack stepped forward to receive the shotgun as if he were Moses being handed commandments eleven through fifteen. He pulled the stock into his shoulder and sighted along the barrel. “Nice,” he said, trying and failing for nonchalance. “Purdeys,” he said to Kate.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “From England.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “They shoot as well as a Remington twelve-gauge?”

  Kate knew enough about guns to keep her own in serviceable condition and to shoot straight when required.

  She wasn’t a gun fancier. An elaborately scrolled stock did not send her into raptures, she wouldn’t think of loading her own ammunition, and she didn’t own every copy of The Shooter’s Bible ever published. A gun was a tool, one necessary to the Bush lifestyle. Gun nuts, on the other hand, spent thousands of dollars for something they’d never take down from the rack except to show off, as Dieter was showing off now. Kate wondered if the Purdeys had ever brought anything down more edible than a clay pigeon, or if they were merely toys bought specifically for this hunt, to be used once and then stored with the G.I. Joe doll his parents had given him when he was ten and which had bored him before his birthday was over.

  Fortunately Wagner had drowned out her cavalier reply.

  “If I might,” Jack said, entirely too deferentially for Kate’s taste, “may I ask how much they cost you?”

  Dieter said something in German, and then apologized. “Excuse me. Sixteen thousand pounds British. What is that in American dollars, let me see. About thirty thousand dollars, I think.”

  Kate thought Wagner had done something to her eardrums. “Thirty thousand dollars for a couple of lousy shotguns?”

  His smile was condescending. “No, Kate. Thirty thousand dollars each.”

  “You have to be fitted for them,” Jack crooned, caressing the butt of the one he was holding with a reverence previously reserved for Kate’s thigh. “They’re made to order, like a suit. You have to fly to England for fittings.”

  Kate stared at Dieter, who looked insufferably smug. “Let me see that,” she said to Jack.

  He yielded it with reluctance. It felt good in her hands, she had to admit. It looked good, too, all shining metal and gleaming wood, carefully crafted down to the last tiny screw. She broke it open. It was empty. She looked at Dieter, whose indulgent smile waned a trifle.

  “You want ammunition?” he said doubtfully. “Well, all right. You must be careful, though. It has a hair trigger.”

  Jack eyed Kate warily. He knew that look. Out of the corner of his mouth he muttered, “Kate, what are you up to?”

  “Just looking at a gun.” She gave him a sunny smile he instantly distrusted. “Maybe that bear that’s been hanging around smelled the spaghetti. Can’t hurt to throw a little scare into him.”

  Kate took the cartridges and slid them home. She walked around the circle, moving slowly, shotgun carried casually in her hooked arm, to all intents and purposes looking as if she were moving toward the creek, there to let off a few rounds. Dieter sensed no menace in this, and relaxed. Jack knew better, and didn’t.

  The cassette recorder was sitting on a round stump smoothed to a level finish to be used alternately as a chopping block, a table and a stepladder to the woodpile directly in back of it. The woodpile, three and a half cords of seasoned birch, was stacked in a rectangular wooden frame sheltered by a blue plastic tarpaulin.

  Hendrik and Fedor sat on the left-hand curve of the circle, a little apart and heads close together, talking in low voices. The German gutturals reminded her of something. For a moment she couldn’t think of what it was, and then it came to her. The gutturals, so thickly articulated, so deep in the throat, were like Aleut, the language of her grandparents, the language her parents had rejected for fear their daughter would be handicapped by it in an English-speaking world. As a result, the only Aleut she knew were a couple of swear words, ripe oaths that ripped out in satisfying growls, curses whose meanings she had long since forgotten.

  They appeared to be arguing about something. As she strolled by, Hendrik’s voice rose in protest. Fedor looked over his shoulder at Kate and put a soothing hand on Hendrik’s arm. Hendrik shook it off but fell silent.

  Hubert had forsaken the fire for the edge of the brush and stood shoulder deep in a patch of fireweed. examining the topped-out tufts with a notebook in one hand and a frown of concentration on his face. As she passed, he waded deeper into the brush, catching at a handful of highbush cranberries Kate had missed that afternoon, tasting one, making a face, spitting it out, jotting a note in his notebook. Hubert was into R&D of more than just computer operating systems.

  A few feet beyond them, the fire-lit circle on her right, the woods on her left and the cassette player with its woodpile backdrop ten feet in front of her, she stopped. She raised the shotgun, looking to Dieter’s indulgent eye as if she were admiring its finish, and why not? It was a perfect example of the gunsmith’s art. Hadn’t he paid thirty thousand dollars to make sure it was?

  Instead, Kate pulled the stock into her shoulder, laid her cheek to its smooth finish, sighted along the barrel and, almost as an afterthought, pulled the trigger.

  The result was spectacular. There was a deafening boom, the cassette player leapt into the air and shattered into a hundred pieces, silencing the music in mid-shriek. Bodies dove for cover and German oaths filled the air.

  There was a long, strained silence. Inevitably, heads popped up and turned Kate’s way, eyes round with a growing comprehension and intensifying incredulity.

  “Oops,” Kate said.

  She lowered the shotgun and smiled at Dieter. “You were right, Dieter. A very sensitive trigger. I didn’t realize. You understand, I’m sure. It was an accident. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Demetri, whose natural expression was stoic in the extreme, became so impassive he looked like he’d been stuffed and mounted. George said, “I’d better go check on the planes,” and headed off toward the airstrip at a smart clip. Jack made the mistake of catching Old Sam’s wicked eye and had to turn away hastily, his shoulders shaking.

  Dieter was engaged in picking little pieces of black plastic from the front of his shirt. When he looked up his face was very still.

  “Not a problem,” he said. He even smiled, a widening of his full lips to expose most of his square white teeth. The pale blue eyes met hers.

  “An accident. I understand.” The mirthless smile widened. “Oops.”

  Three

  There ain’t a damn bit of difference between a bull moose in rut and a drunk chasing girls in a bar.

  THE GUESTS BEDDED DOWN in the cabins, two to a cabin. Dieter shared with Eberhard, Gunther with Klemens, Hendrik with Fedor, Hubert with Gregor,
and, in a pairing that caused no end of speculation among certain of the guides, Senta with Berg.

  “Berg means mountain in German,” Demetri observed in a rare burst of loquacity.

  There followed more speculation in the lodge, where the guides were bunking. Demetri, Old Sam and George slept on fold-out cots placed on three sides of the enormous old wood stove that took up most of the west wall of the building. Jack and Kate, declared more or less unanimously to stand in no need of the warming influence of the stove, had been banished to the double bed tucked into a corner behind a three-quarter wall made of stacked Blazo boxes that doubled as pantry shelves.

  “You think they got something going?” George wanted to know.

  “Why, you interested?” Old Sam said.

  “Of course he’s interested,” Kate said, snuggling backward into Jack’s ready embrace. He was interested, too, and she smiled into her pillow. He couldn’t do anything with three men in the room. She wriggled some more, to torture him.

  “It’s a funny group,” George said thoughtfully. His cot creaked as he rolled to his back, staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling through the cracks in the stove’s fire door. “Dieter’s the only one who appears to have any real interest in hunting. The rest of them don’t seem to care one way or the other. They aren’t even urban warriors. I can’t figure out why the bunch of them aren’t at Club Med, laying around on a beach and knocking back mai tais.”

  Old Sam grunted. “I can. Dieter’s the boss. He signs their paychecks. He wanted them to go skydiving on their vacation, they’d say how high you want us to jump from.”

  “You think any of them have shot a gun before now?” Demetri said.

  Old Sam snorted. “Not hardly.”

  “Great,” Jack grumbled, raising his voice to be heard above the partition. “So that means we’re going to be giving shooting lessons along with everything else?”

  “Looks like it,” George said glumly. “Kate, I want you with Dieter and Eberhard when we go out.”