Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“I’ll see you then. As you know I am staying with the Trouts. And Korean would be fine.”

Austin bid Francesca good-bye near the huge globe that rose from the center of the sea-green floor in the NUMA lobby, an atrium surrounded by waterfalls and aquariums filled with colorful and exotic sea life. Then he went back to his fourth-floor office, called Zavala to let him know of his meeting with Sandecker, and lined up transportation for their trip.

• • •

Francesca was ready when he arrived at the Trouts’ Georgetown house to pick her up. He chatted with Paul and Gamay long enough to be polite, then drove to his favorite Korean restaurant, housed in an unpretentious building in Alexandria.

Austin recommended that they order belogi, thin strips of marinated beef cooked on a hot plate on the table. Ordinarily it was one of his favorite meals, but he hardly tasted it; he was too busy looking at Francesca. She was dressed simply in a stone-washed denim dress whose light blue color set off her dark complexion and long luxurious hair that seemed to have captured the light of the sun. It was hard for Austin to reconcile the picture of this cultured and beautiful woman, who was clearly delighted over the simple pleasure of a civilized meal, with the tale he had heard of her reign as a white goddess among savage Indians. She seemed relaxed and entirely at ease, but even as they laughed over her inept use of chopsticks, Austin couldn’t shake the feeling he experienced when they first met. Despite the civilized veneer, the jungle had seeped into her blood. He saw it in the feline gracefulness of her movement, and the watchfulness in her dark eyes. It was a quality that fascinated and attracted Austin, and he vowed to see more of Francesca when he returned from his mission.

Which was why it was all the more painful when Austin apologized for calling it an early night. He had much to do before leaving for Alaska, he explained. As he dropped her off on the Trouts’ doorstep, he asked if she would like to go out again when he returned.

“Thank you. I’d like that, very much,” she said. “I plan to be in Washington for some time and hope we can get to know each other better.”

“Until then,” Austin said. “At a time and place to be announced.”

She smiled and pecked him lightly on the lips. “It’s a date.”

29

WITH SANDECKER’S BACKING, Austin had no trouble commandeering a NUMA jet. Streaking across the country at five hundred miles per hour, the turquoise Cessna Citation Ultra had refueled at Salt Lake City before pushing on to Anchorage. After the all-night trip they arrived as the morning light cast a rosy glow over the Chugach Mountains on the outskirts of Alaska’s big city, which some of the locals call Los Anchorage. They were airborne within minutes, pushing on to their destination in Nome.

Shortly after the NUMA jet took off from Anchorage, Zavala came back from the galley with a couple of steaming mugs of coffee. Austin was studying an old map spread out on the table that folded down between the seats. He was directing his attention to a fist of land whose knuckles jabbed at the former U.S.S.R. a few miles across the Bering Strait.

Settling into the chair opposite Austin’s, Zavala sipped his coffee and looked out the window at the vast land mass below. Black mountains edged by rivers and heavy forests were visible through a scattering of whiskered cirrus clouds.

“That’s big country,” Zavala said lazily. “Any idea of our next port of call after Nome?”

Austin leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared into space. His broad mouth curled in a wry smile. “More or less,” he said.

Zavala knew his partner wasn’t trying to be mysterious. Austin simply didn’t like surprises. When time allowed he cautiously collected the facts before making a move. Zavala pointed downward. “I’m sure it doesn’t come as any surprise to you that there is more down there than less.”

“Something like six hundred thousand square miles, last I heard. I have no illusions about the formidable task we’re up against. We could search until we became eligible for NUMA pensions and not find a thing.” Austin’s brow furrowed in thought. “That’s why I decided to work my way backward from what we know, not what we don’t know.”

Zavala swiftly grasped the premise. “We know what the target was in the Soviet Union.” He pointed on the map to the northwest coast of Alaska where blunt fingers of the ragged coastline, all that remained of the old land bridge, reached toward Asia. “What was the flying wing’s statistical range?”

“Around three thousand miles cruising at around five hundred miles per hour. I’m assuming that its fuel storage capacity would have been beefed up to extend the range as much as possible for this mission.”

“There’s always the possibility of midair refueling,” Zavala said.

“I’ve taken that into consideration. I’m guessing that they would have kept the operation simple and short to avoid detection.”

Taking a sharp pencil in hand, Austin drew an arc from Barrow to the Yukon Delta.

Zavala let out a low whistle. “You’re talking about a trip that could be more than a thousand miles from target. That’s still a lot of territory to cover.”

“It’s bigger than some states,” Austin acknowledged. “So I made an educated guess. The cloak-and-dagger boys wanted to keep this crazy scheme as hush-hush as possible. Building a new base would be costly and time-consuming, and most important, it might attract unwanted attention.”

Zavala snapped his fingers. “They would use an existing base.”

Austin nodded. “During World War II, Alaska bristled with gun emplacements and airfields because of fears Japan would invade. Each red dot on the map denotes an airstrip from World War II.”

Zavala pondered the problem. “What if the base were secret?”

“It was secret, at least up to now.” Austin jabbed the map with his pencil at Nome and drew a wide circle around the dot. “We’ll find what we’re looking for here, although I must admit that with all the suppositions I’ve made, it’s still a crapshoot.”

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sp; Zavala studied the map, and his lips twitched up at the corners in his trademark smile. “How can you be certain this is the right area? The plane could have taken off from dozens of places.”