Del Olmo continued, “From what I read and hear, Dow and Crystal found formations associated with diamonds, and more than half of them held microdiamonds. But it’s my understanding that microdiamonds aren’t where the big bucks are. The companies were after gem-quality stones. Still, finding micros in more than half the formations was apparently an unexpectedly high percentage, and this got the diamond folks excited. They drilled samples to decide if they had something with real economic potential. I’ve heard rumors that based on the early results, the local formation had the potential to be the biggest diamond field in the world, but that might have been beer talk. Can you believe that? Biggest in the world? The chamber of commerce had an official stiffy over the whole deal. I’ve also heard that there’s a lot more formations around, but most of them tend to be down toward Iron Mountain from here. All moot now. These companies are all pulling out, so I guess the whole thing was wishful thinking. The thing is, they were really tight mouthed about what they were doing around here. The stakes must be huge in that business.”
When they got back to Sagola, del Olmo said, “You think the Knipes are connected to this diamond business?”
Service looked at the younger man. He was smart. “What makes you ask that?”
“I believe in hunches, and my hunches are almost always good.”
Service understood. “Maybe, but you have to be quiet about this. With our people, with anybody.”
“No problem, but I gotta say it’s not against the law to go for diamonds.”
“That depends on how you go after them,” Service said. “And where.”
“How it is,” del Olmo said with a sly grin. “Be cool, compadre. You call, Simon hauls.”
Service drove north toward Houghton. He had an appointment in the morning with petrologist Dr. Kermit Lemich. When he called Michigan Tech and got the name, it seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t peg it. Definitely not a violator. He remembered the names of violets forever. He had invited Kira to come to Houghton with him, but she had too much work and begged off, telling him she would miss him “terribly.” He was on his own. Gus Turnage was going to meet him tonight for dinner.
He was still chewing over the diamond discovery. When he’d told Cece Dirkmaat that the dog had found the stones—which was the truth—she had laughed this off as a nonanswer. She could think what she wanted for now. Kira too.
The diamond was high quality, Cece had insisted. Very high. She was almost passionate about it. She said a professional gemologist should do an official analysis with X rays, but she felt she was pretty much on target with her assessment. Under X rays diamonds showed a distinctive blue color. She said the garnets appeared to be first rate as well.
Diamonds and garnets in the Tract? It was still pretty hard to believe. But his life had been filled with strange events. Service found his mind drifting backward to another time on the other side of the planet.
Major Teddy Gates had awakened them in their bunker one night near midnight, told them to gather their gear, walked them down to the helipad at Camp MagNo, put them in a chopper, and said, “Don’t get your asses killed.”
The chopper had taken them to Da Nang, where they were met by a full colonel who escorted them to an unmarked C-119, a model that the flyboys called a crowd killer because of its history of crashes. They flew to an air base in northeast Thailand called Naked Fanny. There they were fed in an air-conditioned club and given air-conditioned rooms to sleep in. “Fattening us up for the kill?” Treebone wondered out loud while they ate.
The next morning they were taken to a briefing room and surrounded by men in civilian clothes. The only other person in uniform was a two-star navy admiral.
“For a number of years,” the admiral began, “we have been airdropping ARVN commandos into North Vietnam. They were carefully selected men, well trained and well equipped. Of nearly one thousand men we have inserted, we have yet to get a single radio response after the drops. We are certain that someone in the South Vietnamese government is an agent for the north and tipping off Hanoi. We can’t let this keep happening. We are sending you two in to observe and document the next drop.”
Treebone said, “I don’t think I like this, sir.”
The admiral said, “You two have been handpicked. Your participation is voluntary. And if you say no, it will not be reflected in your records.”
“If a thousand men have been lost, what makes you think we’ll be able to make it?” Service asked.
“Because nobody in the South Vietnamese government knows about you or what you will be doing. Your job will be to shadow the ARVN commando drop and report back. I won’t blow smoke up your asses, men. This is going to be dicey even if all goes the way we think it will.”
After nearly a whole day of briefings and discussion, Service and Treebone agreed to go.
Three days later they were parachuted into eastern Laos, from where they infiltrated the North Vietnamese border, descending through a brutal range of mountains.
Along the way they saw a herd of a dozen animals that looked a bit like antelope, but were unlike anything they had ever seen before. They took photographs.
Days later they witnessed the ARVN airdrop and watched in horror as the parachutists were shot while they descended in their ’chutes. The North Vietnamese had rolled into position only an hour before the drop and were waiting. They used a small camera to record the entire disaster, then retreated to Laos for their pickup, which went uneventfully.
Based on their evidence the infiltration program was terminated and a hunt begun for the traitor in the government who was tipping the North Vietnamese, where no questions were asked.
They never heard another word about any of this and were returned to their unit.
But the strange animals had piqued their curiosity. They showed the photographs around, but nobody could identify them. They eventually gave the photos to a UPI reporter, who sent them to university contacts, who in turn declared that the animals were a previously unknown species. The lesson stuck in Service’s mind. There were a lot of things in the world yet to be discovered.
When it came to natural phenomena, you just never knew. So far in this diamond deal, there were a lot of peculiar circumstances, but no conclusive evidence. Which was not unusual in a complex case, he reminded himself. Case? There was no case yet. The cops would handle the murder of Jerry Allerdyce. All he had was a bunch of stuff.
And alarms in his gut.
Service stopped at a small general store in Amasa, which sat west of the Hemlock River where iron ore had been found before the turn of the twentieth century. Amasa somehow remained one of the few villages in the U.P. not yet invaded by downstaters and outstaters. A developer had once tried to attract rich Japanese to the shore of Lake Superior between Marquette and Munising, but the locals had not been receptive and the whole thing had died. He had read about moneyed Californians invading Montana and Idaho, buying huge chunks of land, bulling their way into local and state politics, trying to reshape or abolish local customs and ways of life. In Michigan the relocation influx was primarily from suburban Detroit, but the disruption was not appreciably different than what Montana was experiencing.
Amasa had fended off such an invasion in part because the old town was surrounded by the Copper Country State Forest, a tough, dirt-poor, isolated region.
Sometimes Service wished he had the power to declare the entire U.P. a wilderness and limit human occupation to a few large towns, the way things were already done at Cape Hatteras. Outside the towns there would be no development, and all the villages and places there now would be let go to be reclaimed by nature. There was too damn little wilderness left in America and when it was all gone, America would no longer be America. Something had to be done. He felt it almost as a rising panic.
Governor Sam Bozian sure as hell wouldn’t do the right thing. Bozian believed that previous incompetent state governments had prevented the sort of investment in Michigan that would put it in
the top tier of the lower forty-eight economically. He repeatedly reminded the public of the Arab oil boycott of decades ago and how that had crippled the state, which had only one major industry: cars. If Clearcut had his way, the whole state would be reduced to concrete and factories.
There was a huge blaze orange billboard across the street from the store. let them go. let them grow. The DNR knew that habitat supported only so many animals and unless the herd was reduced, the animals would be stunted. The DNR wanted hunters to shoot does and small bucks in most U.P. areas, but some self-styled experts from know-it-all sportsmen’s groups that vehemently disagreed had run their own campaign against DNR policy. Real men shot only big bucks, and you couldn’t have big males if you shot all the small ones. It was all baloney, bereft of science, one of those situations where science seemed to be counterintuitive. The no-kill bucks crowd reasoned that the more small bucks you had, the more big ones you would eventually get. This wasn’t true, but the sportsmen refused to believe the studies and considered the deer their own, not the charges of distant bureaucrats. Too many residents of the UP seemed to think they knew more than the professionals in the DNR, and Bozian’s careless disregard of the environment just served to embolden others.
A middle-aged woman and a girl of eight or nine were sitting on the sagging wooden steps outside the store, eating ice cream cones.
“Nice day,” the woman said when Service came out. She had thin, pale red hair and patches of freckles peeking through sun-reddened skin. There were gold rings on several fingers, and her wrists were weighted down with bracelets. Fifty, sixty? It was hard to tell her age.
“It’s a beauty,” he said.
“How come you don’t wear a uniform?” the tiny girl asked.
“What makes you think I should?”
“Game warden, ain’tcha?”
“How do you know?”
“Your truck.” She pointed with her dripping cone. “I can read, you know.”
He laughed. Since joining the DNR he had never owned a car. He lived a simple life that revolved around work and he had saved a lot of money despite what most would think was not a handsome salary. He supposed the money he had saved would come in handy if he and Kira decided to make things permanent, but that was a big if. Was he ready for marriage? The first time hadn’t worked out at all, and in the years since he hadn’t met anybody he cared enough to try again with.
“We got a bear at my Grampa’s camp and he poops all over,” the girl said.
Service loved how candid children were and how easily they segued from topic to topic without the slightest transition. He wondered what kind of a father he would have been. At forty-seven, he probably ought to stop thinking about that.
“A bear, huh?”
The girl gave an exaggerated nod. “And know what?” she said excitedly. “He bites Grampa’s tires! Tell him, Grandma.”
“You know bears,” the woman said. “Like ill-tempered dogs.”
Service knew that most bears were timid and wary of people. “Where’s your camp?” he asked.
“East, near Premo Lake.”
Service sort of knew the area. It was pretty wild. “Have you called us about the bear?”
“My grampa will shoot that damn thing!” the girl said. She had ice cream smeared on her chin.
The woman said, “Mind your language, Mary Ruth. Be a proper little girl.”
The little girl pouted. “Grampa says it.”
Service looked at the grandmother. “Is your camp new?”
“We had it built last summer,” she said.
Had it built. He was not surprised. “There’s no point in killing the animal.”
“He’s punctured three of my husband’s tires. You know how much new tires cost?”
Meaning the state paid for his. “Your camp is probably in the bear’s territory. The males can be pretty aggressive and the new camp is a threat, but they seldom attack people. They just want you to go away.” The way I do. “Call Officer Simon del Olmo in Crystal Falls. He’ll drive over and trap the bear and move it far away.”
“We’ve heard they always come back.”
This was one of the myths that conservation officers repeatedly faced in dealing with the public. “Some do, but they’re rare. If this one keeps coming back, then we might have to destroy it, but why kill it before we have to?”
“Three tires, for starters,” the woman said. “It’s only one bear. They’re all over the place up here. Just pests.”
“Where are you from, ma’am?” Service asked.
“Grand Rapids. My husband sold his dry-cleaning business and we retired up here. We love the summers. We bought a little house here in town and built the camp. Wouldn’t do to live out there, but eventually we’re going to build our dream house there and make the county improve the roads. It’s just dirt and mud now.”
Just like Montana. He had been wrong. Even Amasa was being invaded. He wrote del Olmo’s telephone number on a notepad and gave the number to the woman. “It’s against the law to kill a problem animal without a permit. Talk to Officer del Olmo and he’ll help you.”
The woman looked at the paper. “Seems like a lot of useless red tape.”
“It’s for the animal’s benefit and yours.”
It was not that he didn’t like people, he tried to convince himself as he drove north. It was just a shame they had to come up here. The more people who came, the more problems there would be, and he and other officers were already strapped. Animals needed space and space was shrinking, a major threat to all the progress they had worked so hard to achieve.
When he reached Covington, Service called del Olmo on his cellular and told him about the woman in Amasa, suggesting he get over to the woman’s place before her husband killed the animal.
“They make you some kind of roving three-striper now?” del Olmo asked, half joking.
“Me, a sergeant? No fucking way.”
Service concentrated on the problem in the Tract as he drove toward L’Anse. He needed to sort things out.
Superficially nothing added up, but he could feel something big was under way, and he needed to find a way to tie it all together. No doubt it all fit; the question was how. His gut was rarely wrong, but it had taken him most of his life to learn to trust it. A slow learner in some ways. Maybe in all ways, he thought.
What had the stranger been doing in the Tract and why had he been so evasive? He’d had a camera and a hammer. Geologist? Prospector? Had he been looking for diamonds? Had he been upstream at the log slide before he encountered him?
First a fire at the Geezer Hole, then at the log slide.
Neither fire had been an accident.
Connected to the granite formations? At this point there was only conjecture. His. If this all finally came together in a case, he was going to have to go upward for assistance. But not until he knew what he was dealing with.
A mysterious helicopter had been seen by Voydanov north of the log slide, and Voydanov might be a little addled in some ways, but he seemed to know choppers pretty well. Granite up there too. Just one outcrop, a phallic shape. He was surprised Nantz hadn’t pointed this out. It fit her mind. Surely she noticed, because Nantz didn’t seem to miss much. Granite at the log slide, but not the Geezer Hole. How did these three locations fit together? Did they? The chopper had taken pains to not leave an imprint. In at daylight, flying low, no call sign, no flight plan. Shadowed by a goose? Voydanov was a nice old man and might know choppers, but the conversations with him reminded Service how useless eyewitnesses were on most counts.
The pebbles were a diamond and several garnets. Maybe the dog had found these downstream of the lone outcrop. In the water. The clay and gravel there were brownish red, same as he had seen near the log slide and Geezer Hole. Related geologically? Maybe, but he would have to learn more about this from the professor tomorrow.
Limpy had suggested that the Tract was not all publicly owned, and he was technically wrong; the state
did own all the land. But he was also right in that the state had leased a few parcels to citizens. This was a technicality, Hathoot had tried to assure him. Maybe. How did Limpy know this, and why had he put him on this scent? Seton Knipe held two of the leases, the only ones not on the perimeter, and Knipe had moved to the Crystal Falls area about the same time Dow Chemical had gotten into the hush-hush hunt for diamonds. Was this more than a coincidence?
Diamonds in the U.P. He vaguely remembered something about this years ago but had never seen or heard anything more since then. He figured it had fizzled, and if del Olmo was correct it had. But what about Knipe and his office attached to the laboratory? There had been silver and gold in the U.P.’s past, but a real diamond find would create an unwanted, uncontrolled rush. He wondered how Bozian would handle this. Had Dow Chemical briefed the governor? Probably. He was an outspoken supporter of big business and considered environmental impact something between a minor consideration and a pain in the ass. Had Dow’s political action committee contributed to Bozian’s campaigns? Service felt vaguely irritated.
Knipe’s businesses were involved in industries that potentially might use a helicopter for one task or another. Did Knipe own one? Or Wildcat, Inc.? Could they lease one somewhere? If so, there had to be a record. There was always a paper trail of some kind. Knipe, speculating in small land parcels. Why? Was Knipe in the diamond hunt? If so, his parcels in the Tract seemed too far from the granite formations to serve a purpose. If the granite had anything to do with diamonds, which remained a major if. What were the Knipes up to, and did Limpy know Knipe?
If the pebbles were really gems, what was he going to do about them? A stampede could start on no more than a rumor. These sorts of things traveled underground and took on their own lives and power. Yukon, Keweenaw, Black Hills, Sutter’s Mill: these had all been stampedes for easy riches, all deeply rooted in the American psyche. In this country you could start with nothing and get everything through smarts and hard work. Or luck. Usually luck played the greater role. You could have a fortune, lose it, get it back, lose it again. No need to lose hope in America. If there were diamonds in the Tract, what would Bozian do? Simon said there had been talk that the Crystal Falls diamond find could be the richest in history. Bigger than South Africa or Siberia? Jesus. Bad news on all fronts, except that the diamond hunters seemed to be gone. What if the real diamonds were not near Crystal Falls, but in the Tract? Or in both locations?
Ice Hunter (Woods Cop Mystery 1) Page 18
