Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 09 - Hunter's Moon

by Hunter's Moon(lit)

  "It's okay, it's only me," Hendrik said meekly.

  At that moment Mutt crashed out of the brush and streaked to stand on tiptoe in front of Kate, head down, haunches quivering, lips curled back and teeth gleaming in the moonlight. She didn't look friendly.

  "It's okay!" Hendrik said hoarsely. "It's only me!"

  It took Kate two tries to get the pistol back in the holster. She snapped the flap and gave Hendrik a stern look that belied the knocking of her knees. "Don't sneak up on people like that, Hendrik. It isn't safe, not in the Bush, and especially not at night in the Bush."

  "I'm sorry." The moon turned his face a sickly white. His eyes were swollen from weeping. "It's only me," he repeated forlornly.

  Kate pressed the heel of her hand against her thumping heart. "Yeah, yeah, it's okay. Mutt, it's all right, relax."

  If she didn't quite relax, Mutt did retire a few steps to stand next to Kate, her eyes fixed on Hendrik in a yellow, un winking stare.

  "Did you want to use the head?" Kate said, waving a hand. "I'm all done." "No," Hendrik said. He was whispering, his voice husky, Kate thought also from crying. "I saw you come back with Jack. I was waiting to talk with you." He looked around furtively. "Can we go somewhere else?"

  Going somewhere else in the middle of the night in a grizzly bear habitat did not sound like a good idea. Kate humored Hendrik by leading him behind the garage. Mutt, curious, tagged along. Hendrik gave the big gray half-husky half-wolf as much room as she wanted, and she grinned at Kate, tongue lolling out between sharp incisors. There was nothing Mutt enjoyed more than putting the fear of beast into a cheechako.

  Kate swallowed a return grin and said, "Okay, Hendrik, what's up?" When he was silent she said impatiently, "Come on, it's late, I want to hit the sack. What do you want?"

  He swallowed hard. "I loved him."

  Oh no, it was going to be that kind of conversation. Kate stifled a groan. "Who?"

  "Fedor."

  "That was kind of obvious, Hendrik," Kate said, raising a hand to hide a yawn. Jack's attentions, while ranging anywhere from ten to ten and a half on the applause-o-meter, did tend to leave one with a lack of enthusiasm for anything but a full night's sleep. "I'm very sorry for your loss."

  Hendrik pitched forward so suddenly that Kate had no choice but to grab him, staggering slightly beneath his weight, as the whole story of his lost love was sobbed out against her shoulder.

  They had met at work, he said, and it had been love at first sight.

  They had tried to take their time, to be responsible in their work and in their personal lives, but they were in bed together within the week--in spite of herself, Kate was put forcibly in mind of those first days with Jack--and living together within the month. They would have married if they could have, but in Germany' Alaska too," Kate said, moved, albeit reluctantly, to sympathy by the intensity of the man's grief.

  They had kept it as quiet as they could at work, but

  "Everyone knew," Hendrik said, tears soaking through Kate's shirt.

  "Fedor was scared we would lose our jobs. But Dieter, he said nothing, and no one else said anything, and we think, Okay, we're safe."

  And you were until you went wandering around in the Alaskan Bush without a clue as to what you were doing, Kate thought. He mumbled something she could barely understand into her shoulder. With less than motherly concern she shoved him upright and away from her.

  "Hendrik, look, I'm sorry for your loss--" those awful, standard-issue law enforcement professional words "-but there isn't anything we can do about it now. Fedor is dead, and--" "And Dieter killed him," Hendrik said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  Kate looked at him and said patiently, "Hendrik, Dieter was eight or ten miles in the other direction at the time Fedor was shot, reducing the Alaska moose population by one. I know because I was with him.

  Besides, Klemens has already admitted to doing the shooting."

  "Dieter had him killed," Hendrik said stubbornly. "He told Klemens to kill him."

  Kate studied him. His eyes were swollen to slits but his mouth was set in a determined line. "You mean Dieter had Klemens kill Fedor?" He nodded violently. "Why? Why did Dieter have him killed?"

  "Because of the international lawsuits. DRG is under investigation, and someone is giving information to the investigators. Dieter thought it was Fedor. But it wasn't."

  He was absolutely sincere and deadly serious, willing her to believe, as he believed, that his lover's death wasn't just a terrible accident, that it had served some purpose, however sinister. Useless, accidental death was something with which it was very difficult for anyone who loved to come to terms with. It hit the young hardest of all. The young were convinced that they were immortal, invincible, unstoppable.

  Kate had been young and immortal once herself, and she remembered how resentful she had felt when life had showed her otherwise.

  Hendrik swiped his sleeve across his nose, gulped and took a step back.

  Mutt relaxed. Kate belonged to Mutt, and Mutt was nice enough to share her with Jack. She didn't like it when anyone else got too close.

  The moon streamed down the way the sun had during the day, casting velvety shadows in every direction. The night looked amorphous and somehow suddenly menacing. Suppose this poor little lovesick boy was telling the truth? Suppose Fedor's death had been deliberate? Kate remembered the triumph in Dieter's bray after he had seen Fedor's body.

  He certainly hadn't been unhappy over Fedor's passing, but it didn't necessarily follow that he had arranged the boy's death.

  What was it Jack had said, something about DRG being involved in legal action of some kind? Mention had been made of the FBI and SEC, she remembered that much, and American assets being frozen by the IRS. That would certainly clear sinuses at the executive level but it wasn't especially a novelty, or even something to be overly concerned about.

  Big corporations had entire law firms on retainer for the purpose of fending off legal attacks of one kind or another; look at RJR Nabisco, or RPetco Oil after the oil spill in Prince William Sound. Generally speaking corporate executives didn't murder to make those kinds of problems go away, not because they lacked the basic amorality to commission such a task but because of the difficulty in justifying the expense of a hit man before the annual stockholders' meeting. In corporate life, bookkeeping was all.

  Bookkeeping. Finance. Senta had said that Fedor worked for Klemens in finance. "Hendrik," Kate said, "why tell me? What do you want me to do about it? Why don't you just wait until we get back to town and tell the police?"

  His voice rose. "Because he will kill me next! Fedor and I, we lived together, we worked together, we talked. Dieter will know what Fedor told me." "What did he tell you?" He remained silent. Kate sighed.

  "Surely you're safe enough until we get back to Anchorage. Then you can tell your story to the police."

  "Why should Dieter wait? He's already gotten away with it once. And there are so many guns here, so many." He clutched her with grasping hands. "And just now, down by the creek, I heard the others talking.

  They will kill me, Kate. I know too much. They won't let me get back home alive." "What others?" Kate said sharply, remembering the voices she thought she'd heard. "Was someone down by the creek just now?"

  "You must help me," he babbled, "you must or--" His head swiveled around, his eyes gleaming whitely in the moonlight. "What is that?"

  She had heard it, too, a sound like clothing brushing and catching against wood. So had Mutt, who growled, low in her throat. Kate held up a silencing hand, and moved carefully to the corner of the garage, waiting for a moment before looking around it, back toward camp.

  There was a sudden rustle at her feet and she took an involuntary leap backward.

  It was the porcupine, his quills rattling an indignant protest. The night was his, to seek out nice salty things like fan belts, and what did they mean by disturbing his regular rounds?

  Kate felt an insane giggle rise to
the back of her throat and swallowed it down. "It's all right," she said, turning. "It's just the porcupine who lives under the garage. Now what were you saying about--"

  She stopped.

  Hendrik was gone.

  NINE.

  Dieter likes to party with large quantities of money and nubile and preferably famous young women.

  "JACK," SHE SAID AS THEY WERE GETTING DRESSED THE next morning, "tell me again what you know about DRG."

  He grinned. "You're worse than a ferret at a hole." "This is a hole I want to go down," she said pointedly. "Preferably sometime in this century."

  He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, fine, I've always been one for a quiet life." A bald-faced lie for anyone who would willingly tie themselves to Kate Shugak's tail. "DRG stands for Deutche Radio Gesellschaft." "I remember that much," Kate said. "Radio like our radio?"

  "Yeah, I think it means the same in both languages." Kate looked around for Demetri but he had already gone out. Old Sam scowled at her through the neck opening of a very ratty University of Alaska, Fairbanks, sweatshirt that Kate distinctly remembered buying as an undergraduate.

  It had gone missing after last summer on the Freya, Old Sam's seventy-five-foot fish tender. "Okay. Tell me about them."

  Jack finished tying his shoes and went to pour coffee, which George had made before going to the strip to do a pre-flight inspection. "I only know what I read in the papers."

  "Then tell me what you read," Kate said, accepting a mug. "After all, if you read it in the papers, it must be true, right?" She added Carnation evaporated milk straight from the can with a lavish hand.

  Jack, watching, shuddered. "Yeah, right. DRG is in the computer business. From what it sounds like, they write the programs that make computers run." "Like Steven Jobs of revered memory," Kate said, thinking nostalgically of her first on-the-job Mac. No electricity at the cabin, of course, so no computer.

  "I don't think Steven Jobs is dead yet," Jack said. "Although he just went into partnership with Bill Gates, so he probably is well on his way to being eaten alive." "Whatever," Kate said. "Tell me about DRG."

  "Okay," Jack said obediently. "Where was I? Oh yeah, they write the programs that make computers run. They are, according to the Associated Press, the only European computer company that has the talent and the capital to give Microsoft a run for its money, in the European Community, that is. I forget how much of the market in operating systems they've managed to capture, but I remember the writer compared them to Airbus Industries, and how Airbus stacks up to Boeing."

  "Small but talented, capable and energetic?" Kate suggested.

  Jack grinned and said smoothly, "Are we drawing comparisons to anything else here?"

  It took her a minute to get it. When she did, she blushed and said crossly, "Yeah, yeah." His grin widened. Old Sam snorted, stamped his foot down into his boot and slammed out the door, disgusted by the excess of sentiment. "So," Kate said in a monitory tone, "DRG has a lot of European customers?"

  "And Asian," Jack said, "according to the articles I read, anyway. Plus it is said they are beginning to carve out a sizable niche in Canada, which, as you may or may not know, is right across the border from the U. S." He drank coffee, ignoring the face she made at him. "And what with that new North American Free Trade Agreement, maybe you don't get to market under your own name, but I bet you could market under someone else's if you found a Canadian distributor willing to shift your product. Which they did. Before you ask, I don't remember the name of the Canadian company. DRG bought a controlling interest in the stock of some distributor or other, and they started selling across the border."

  He paused. "Yeah, and I think there was something about them beating everyone else into Russia, some government contract to do with monitoring oil exploration, or maybe it was gold production. It was something to do with minerals in Siberia."

  The coffee settled into her stomach and produced a warm and comforting glow. "Interesting to see how well Russia and Germany are getting along after the Germans starved everyone to death in Stalingrad and the Russians raped everyone in Berlin."

  Jack shrugged. "

  "When war is over, it's over forever. When it's over, it's as if it has never been." Baron Whar ton," he added at Kate's quizzical expression.

  "One of Elizabeth the Great's advisors. Or maybe Henry the Eighth's. And I probably misquoted anyway."

  "So, ancient enemies are new pals and everything's coming up roses,"

  Kate said. "What's wrong with this picture?"

  "Maybe nothing. Nothing that has been proved so far, at any rate. The U.S. government, which as you know is never, ever wrong--kind of like the newspapers--has accused DRG of--horrors!--bribing American officials to allow DRG to dump their product at vastly inferior prices to gain a foothold in the American market and has brought suit before the World Trade Commission.

  This, of course, has opened the door for various American makers of computer operating systems to charge DRG with industrial espionage and patent infringement. This was naturally followed by a statement from the IRS announcing its own investigation into the taxes paid by overseas corporations doing business in the U. S." and in particular corporations whose home offices were in the European Community."

  Thirsty, Jack drained his mug and went back for more. Kate accepted a warmup. "What about Dieter? What about his crew?"

  Jack brightened perceptibly. "Ah, Dieter, now, that lovely lad. Dieter likes to party with large quantities of money and nubile and preferably famous young women."

  "Is he married?" "He's European," Jack said superbly. "Being married in Europe isn't the same as being married in America." He thought about that for a moment, and added, "Sometimes even being married in America isn't like being married in America. It's probably all Norman Rockwell's fault." "Right," Kate said faintly. She rallied. "And Dieter?"

  "Dieter also likes to have his picture taken. Barely a month goes by without an episode of Entertainment Tonight featuring footage with him frolicking on the beach in Cannes with Julia Roberts, or a front page of the National Enquirer given over to the tragic but absolutely true story of how he fathered a three-hearted, two headed, one-legged son on the Princess of Scienfictia, third planet out from Rigel." "What's Entertainment Tonight?" Kate said.

  Jack looked at her, saw that she was serious, and said with becoming gravity, "This, Kate, is why I love you."

  "But what is it?"

  "It's better you should not know," Jack said, still grave.

  He wasn't going to tell her, so Kate left it for another day. "So Dieter's a publicity whore." She reviewed what she had seen of the man so far, and it seemed to fit. Dieter liked being the center of attention, and if the reactions of his people were any indication, didn't like it when that attention wandered. Even Eberhard didn't make the mistake of ignoring Dieter when Dieter was performing, and Eberhard didn't seem like that kind of guy. Kate wondered what happened if someone didn't say

  "How high?" when Dieter said

  "Jump!"

  "Do you know anything about any of the rest of them?"

  Jack shook his head. "Dieter's the CEO, he gets all the press."

  "Did he buy or build?"

  "Neither. He inherited, from his father, who manufactured transistors for radios and who by all accounts was one of those Germans who managed to sail close enough to the Nazi wind to coast by most of the nastier squalls of World War Two, and at the end of the war have enough breeze left in the luff to land softly on the Allied shore." "Nicely put," Kate said, admiring. "And very illustrative."

  Jack inclined his head in gracious acceptance of praise earned and duly received. "Thank you. Anyway, he left all to his only son." "Dieter."

  "Dieter," Jack said, nodding, "who sniffed out the trend of, well, hell, the world and everything in it toward computers, and shifted the focus of the company there."

  "So it's partly his creation and partly his birthright," Kate said.

  "Yes."

&nb
sp; "He'd be doubly determined to protect it." "Kate," Jack said dryly, "on a bad year DRG grosses enough to fund the yearly budget of the state of Alaska." "Wow," Kate said, impressed.

  "So don't kid yourself. Dieter will be keeping very close tabs on his assets." Jack raised his second cup and paused to regard her over the rim. "So? Why do you want to know?"

  "Because last night, on the way back from the outhouse, Hendrik buttonholed me and told me that Dieter--"

  The screen door slammed and they turned to see Berg standing there, blinking like an owl through his glasses. "George is about to take off.