Though Not Dead (34 page)

She had to pull herself up short when it was her turn to be served and the barista, a fresh-faced, cheerful young man with orange and purple hair and a Black Eyed Peas T-shirt took on a sinister air when he asked if she wanted room in her venti for half-and-half.

This was ridiculous. They hadn’t killed her yet, they’d barely laid a glove on her. She repressed the memory of the dented roof of the pickup. What the hell, it was still running.

Back at the town house she got her cell phone out of the kitchen drawer. A message. At last. She called. “Cell phones for seniors! Call 888—”

She gave in and called him. Voice mail. Naturally. “I’m in Anchorage, staying at the town house. I’m on my cell.”

There. Nothing lovesick about that. She turned her mind to work.

First things first. If her own personal Maltese Falcon was a Russian icon, then it behooved her to learn a little more about them. She called the Anchorage Museum to find out what time they opened, and was at the doors when they unlocked them.

“That can’t come in,” the security guard said, looking at Mutt.

Kate gave the standard answer when faced by nitwits who refused to see the caliber of canine they were facing. “She’s a service dog.”

The guard looked at Kate, the picture of physical and mental health, and raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he stood back to let them both in.

At the information desk she was directed toward the resource center, and was shortly explaining what she wanted to a thin young man with an eager expression. He sported a wispy goatee that reminded her of the ones worn by the Old Believer fishermen who had delivered to the
Freya
in Alaganik Bay. His name was Lazary Kuznetsov and he admitted to being from Voznesenka on Kachemak Bay, and immediately endeared himself to Mutt by giving her half of the ham sandwich he was to have had for his own lunch.

Bona fides established all the way around, Kate explained that she wanted to learn something about Russian icons. Shortly thereafter she found herself seated at a table surrounded by books, articles, and photographs.

It was like being lost in the middle of a story by the Grimm Brothers, leavened with a lighthearted soupçon of medieval Christian fanaticism. The story of the icon began in Russia’s immediate predecessor, Kievan Rus, which she learned to her great surprise had been founded by a Scandinavian warrior elite. She wondered how all the elders back in the Park, many if not most of whom were at least part Russian, would feel about that.

Kievan Rus had existed for about four hundred years, beginning in the late 800s. It was converted to Christianity a century afterward. With the Christians came the icon, a flat panel featuring an image from Christian mythology. This could be the cross or a person (usually Jesus), or both.

Or Mary, Kate thought.

Icons, she read, could be made from just about anything. They could be cast in metal, carved from stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood. True believers in the Russian Orthodox faith had for many years believed that three-dimensional sculpture was inhabited by demons, and to this very day Orthodox icons could never be more than three-quarter bas-relief. Three quarters of what? Kate wondered, and Lazary supplied the answer. No more than three quarters of any image could project from the panel. He showed her an illustration of a horse and rider connected to its original marble only by two legs and a tail, and she understood.

She thought about the alleged gemstones allegedly imbedded in the alleged frame of this alleged family treasure. They must not have counted.

Behave, she told herself. While a healthy skepticism was the cornerstone of any decent investigation, she was talking herself right out of believing in the existence of the icon at all. She laid the blame for this squarely at the door of one Dashiell Hammett, who had had the audacity to intrude on Old Sam’s personal history. A man who wrote fiction, even good fiction, had no business straying into real life.

Someone had attacked her, she reminded herself, either the same people three times or three different sets of people on three different occasions. It argued a certain sincerity of purpose that lent the existence of the icon at least the ragged edge of credibility.

She paused in the act of turning a page.

Only Auntie Joy had ever mentioned the icon and at that only after Old Sam’s death. None of the other aunties, none of the elders, including her own grandmother Ekaterina Shugak, that living embodiment of tribal history, had ever breathed a word of it. Why not? Could losing it really have been such a disgrace?

Or … was it perhaps not lost at all? Did someone know where it was? Had they known all along, and had the tribal elders entered into a conspiracy of silence to protect it, to protect their possession of it?

Speculation was fine. Hard facts were better. She closed one book and opened another.

Icons were found on church altars and in private homes. Some icons were said to have “appeared” as opposed to having been made by human hands. The most famous of the icon makers had been canonized. Kate was introduced to the word
thaumaturgy,
and Lazary pointed her to a dictionary so she could look up its precise meaning. “The performance of miracles,” said
Webster’s,
also “magic.”

So at least some icons were traditionally held to have mystical powers. Including perhaps the power to heal. To true believers, such an object would be valuable indeed. During the Middle Ages crusaders and pilgrims had brought back enough knucklebones of St. John the Baptist for altar reliquaries to reconstruct the man entire several times over. Nothing was too crazy for someone infected with the fatal virus of faith.

Again, Kate paused in the act of turning a page. Suppose she was looking at this from the wrong angle. Who had made the icon in the first place? For whom had it been commissioned? Who had brought it to Alaska from Russia? Had it been theirs to bring, or had it been stolen? Was someone’s descendant fourteen generations removed, with the fall of the wall now able to travel freely in the West, hot on its trail?

Had they attempted to retrieve it with a piece of sixteen-inch firewood, and had her head gotten in the way?

“Enough,” she said out loud, earning her a quizzical glance from Lazary and annoyed ones from several serious scholars who, judging by their elbow patches, were UAA professors on the lam from classrooms.

She thanked Lazary for his help and left the museum with more questions than she’d come in with, which had not been her object. Best to take a break from the past and attend to something in the present day.

From the pickup, she called her cousin Axenia. Axenia was, as usual, curt and unwelcoming, but she agreed to see Kate if Kate could get there in the next hour.

Axenia was Kate’s younger cousin who while growing up in the Park had held the unfortunate reputation of being a screwup, although that was only because it was true. It was Emaa’s wish for Axenia to follow Kate to college. She didn’t, instead taking up with a series of boyfriends, each of which she had hoped would be her ticket out of the Park. On the heels of the murder of Axenia’s last boyfriend, Kate, against her grandmother’s express wishes, had spirited Axenia to Anchorage, set her up in an apartment with Native roommates so she wouldn’t feel surrounded by aliens, and gotten her a job in the Anchorage district attorney’s office.

Axenia had never forgiven her for it.

The job had lasted just long enough for Axenia to meet Lew Mathisen, a lawyer and lobbyist twenty years her senior. They had married, Lew had installed Axenia in a palatial home off 100th Avenue with satellite television, a dishwasher, and a housekeeper, and Axenia had rewarded him with an entrée into Alaska Native society and a measure of immortality with two children.

Kate pulled into the driveway and got out. The yard, free of leaves and fallen boughs, was as neat as the inside of the house. Axenia, short, trim, dark straight hair hanging to her waist, brown eyes unsmiling, led the way to the kitchen. “Have you had lunch?”

This was an unlooked-for courtesy. “No,” Kate said, and wondered if Axenia would spit in her soup.

“I was about to make myself a salmon salad sandwich.”

If the salad for both sandwiches came out of the same bowl, there was a good chance lunch would be spit-free. “Sounds good.”

And it was good, made with onions and sweet pickles chopped fine and not too much mayonnaise, served on sourdough bread (store-bought) with chips on the side. They ate at the counter. “Where are the kids?” Kate said.

“Day care.”

“Didn’t know they were old enough,” Kate said.

Axenia’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know you were an expert in child care, Kate.”

“All I meant was they’re growing so fast—” Kate gave it up as a lost cause.

“Why are you in town?” Axenia said, directing the conversation back to neutral topics with an iron hand. “Costco run?”

“I’m looking into something.” Kate hesitated. Lew was now a registered lobbyist for Global Harvest Resources, Inc., the parent company of the Suulutaq Mine. She couldn’t trust Axenia not to tell Lew everything. She couldn’t for the moment imagine why GHRI would be interested in a lost tribal heirloom, but knowledge was power. On general principles it was simply none of their business. “You heard about Old Sam.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

Kate could feel the heat rise up the back of her neck. “Your sorrow overwhelms me.”

“He barely noticed me. Especially not when you were in the same room.”

“He was your elder.” And your better. Although Kate did not speak that last out loud.

“My elder, maybe. My better, maybe not.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve heard the stories. Grandma used to say he shouldn’t have been a shareholder at all.”

Auntie Edna was Axenia’s grandmother. “What did she mean by that?”

“Some old scandal about his parents.” Axenia shrugged again. “Besides, all you had to do was look at him. He was more gussuk than native.”

Only last year Auntie Edna had been hectoring Kate about her choice of white boyfriends. “He was the grandson of a chief, Axenia.”

“And the son of a thief,” Axenia said coolly.

You can take the girl out of the Park, but you can’t take the Park out of the girl. Again, Kate, hanging on to her temper by her fingernails, refrained from saying the words out loud. She would both praise and bury Caesar, she just wouldn’t do it here. “So with Old Sam dead, you know there is a vacancy on the board.”

“So?”

“So maybe you should think about running for it.”

Axenia’s eyes widened but she made no immediate response.

Kate, determined not to be sucked into the conversational vacuum, returned to her sandwich. After a moment, Axenia did, too.

It was quiet enough for a while that they could hear each other chewing. Finally Axenia, moistening a fingertip to chase an errant crumb around her plate, said in a tone that could almost be described as idle, “I thought you said I couldn’t because I was married to the lobbyist for the mine. Conflict of interest.”

“There aren’t three hundred shareholders in the Association, Axenia.” Kate pushed back her own plate. “There are barely seven hundred thousand people in the whole damn state. There aren’t six degrees of separation in Alaska. I don’t think there are three.”

“What’s your point?”

“After we talked last month, I looked up the ethics clauses in the Association bylaws. Emaa did a pretty good job on them. Maybe she was thinking ahead, recognizing that with so few shareholders the Association should make sure we didn’t exclude our best and brightest from real power when we need them most. If you follow the rules she laid down and keep everything you do transparent, you should be fine.”

Axenia’s face was devoid of expression.

“And I will support you.”

Axenia smirked. “Harvey and Ulanie running you that ragged?”

Kate closed her eyes and shook her head. “Okay, Axenia. You’re pissed off at me because Emaa liked me better, I get that. You’re pissed off at me because I rescued you, you didn’t rescue yourself, I get that, too. The social obligation to display gratitude makes some people want to bite. Believe me, right there with you, babe. But really?” Kate slid to the floor and stood looking at Axenia over the counter. “In the context of the Niniltna Native Association, you, Axenia Shugak Mathisen? You don’t matter one damn bit.”

Axenia’s face darkened.

“Don’t get your back up,” Kate said. “Neither do I. What matters is what we leave behind.”

She left the kitchen with its au courant stainless-steel appliances and walked through the living room with its de rigueur leather furniture. At the door she raised her voice. “If you want to waste your time fighting with me instead of building something with a chance to last through your children’s lives, be my guest. I won’t be on the board that much longer anyway, and then you can run for chair.”

She tried very hard not to slam the door behind her. It was how she usually felt leaving Axenia’s house.

“Move over,” she said to Mutt when she opened the door to the Forester.

Mutt moved over without a whimper and maintained a prudent silence all the way to Loussac.

*   *   *

At Loussac Library, Kate received the distressing information that Bruce, her favorite reference librarian, had retired. She spent an unnecessary amount of time mooching sullenly around the stacks. “Would you like some help?” the new librarian said for the third time.

No, Kate thought, I’d rather be miserable and pissed off. “Stuff about World War Two in the Aleutians?”

Soon she sat at another table surrounded by another welter of books, magazines, and journals, and a few academic dissertations with subtitles that went on forever, like “Unveiling the Secrets of the War in the Aleutians: The Failure of Japanese Strategy in the Central and North Pacific at Midway, Attu, and Kiska” and “The Aleut Diaspora: The Displacement of the Aleut People After the Bombing of Dutch Harbor and Its Effect on the Negotiations of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.” But there was also a copy of a government publication called
The Battle of the Aleutians,
published in 1944 and written by Corporals Robert Colodny and Dashiell Hammett. It was an elegant and well-written pamphlet, with black-and-white photographs. She looked for Old Sam’s face under every helmet.