'Mr. Keeler,' began the Alaska official, 'what do you know about the North Slope?'
'I've worked in many parts of it Prudhoe Bay for the oil companies ... Desolation Point and its local corporation ...an occasional job for the big Native corporation, but as you know, Poley Markham handles most of their affairs.'
'We do know,' the man from Washington said, almost ominously. 'But have you ever done any legal work-drafting of commercial contracts, for example for the North Slope Borough?'
'No. Only the big corporation and its little satellites. Never the borough.' He was referring to an Alaskan phenomenon, a vast, empty township larger than a state like Minnesota but with a population of less than eight thousand. What it also had was an income of nearly eight hundred million dollars in taxes paid by the oil companies at Prudhoe Bay, or about a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash for every man, woman and child in the borough.
'A sudden influx of money like that tempts people to do crazy things,' one of the FBI men said, and from a typed sheet he read off a few of the more malodorous cases in which unexpected wealth had courted local officials into bizarre behavior: 'A heated subway to protect, utility lines projected cost, one hundred million; finished cost, three hundred and fifty; real cost, in Oregon let's say, eleven million. New high school-^projected cost, twenty-four million'
Jeb interrupted: 'I know about that one. Finished cost, seventy-one million.'
'Wrong,' said the FBI man. 'It's not finished yet. When it is, maybe eighty-four million.'
'What would it have cost in the Lower Forty-eight?' Jeb asked, and the man said:
'We had some school construction firms fly in from California and they gave us the figure three million, two.' But now the Alaska official broke in: 'In California, yes. Let them try to build it on the North Slope, with every nail coming in by barge or aircraft.'
The FBI man bowed: 'The California men said the same thing. So I asked them what the school should have cost in Barrow, and they said: "It should have been done for about twenty-four, twenty-six million."'
The man from Washington growled: "That was the original estimate, the one that's exploded to eighty-four.' In disgust he indicated that the FBI man should terminate his recitation of horror stories. Instead, he took a piece of blank paper, scribbled on it, and passed it facedown to Jeb: 'In addition to their eight hundred million dollars in tax money, which they've spent, how much do you think those dreamers up there have borrowed on the New York and Boston markets, all of it spent, all of it representing outstanding debt?"
Jeb studied the matter, and from what he had heard about the generosity of borough dealings, he concluded that the indebtedness might be as much as half of what the income had been: 'Maybe half the eight hundred million. Maybe four hundred million in bonds sold by the Eastern banks.'
'Look at the paper,' the Washington man said, and when Jeb turned it over he saw the staggering figure: $ 1,200,000,000.
'My God!' he gasped. 'More than a billion dollars! How could a bunch of Eskimos who never went to college ...?'
And then the questioning became short and sharp and brutal: 'Do you know of any involvement Poley Markham had with North Slope Borough?' He was involved with everything in Alaska.
'Did he arrange for these bond issues?' He helped all the corporations with their borrowing. 'Did Markham own any of the contracting companies that got the big jobs?'
I don't think he ever invested in other people's companies. He was his own man. 'In your opinion is Poley Markham a crook?' In my opinion he's one of the most honest men I know. I go hunting with Poley quite often, and a man's character reveals itself on an ice pack or a mountain slope. 'What would you say if we told you that Poley Markham has banked more than twenty million dollars from his Alaska fees?' I would believe it. And I'd bet he had signed vouchers for all of it. He told me years ago the money was lying around up here and could be picked up honestly. 'Do you think he earned .his share honestly?' Yes, sir, as far as I know- I'm positive he did.
The men thanked him for his responses and reiterated that he himself was not under investigation: 'We have no solid proof of wrongdoing up there by anyone, and I will confess that we can find nothing on your friend Markham. But when two billion dollars floats around, we have to look for sticky fingers.' That night when Jeb reached his apartment in Anchorage, he tracked Poley down at a country club in Arizona: 'The Feds are after you real big, Poley.'
'They've been questioning me down here. And they're not after me. They're after the whole incredible setup on the North Slope. Eight thousand Eskimos spending about two billion dollars, all told.'
For just a moment an image of the Natives at Desolation flashed through Jeb's mind, and he could not visualize these hunters, who lived by the ways of the frozen sea, incurring such debts, but then he remembered Poley: 'Are you clean in this debacle?'
'Jeb, every penny I banked came by check ... legal fees legally documented.'
'That's what I told the fellow from Washington.'
'A man with red hair and granny half-spectacles?'
The same.'
'He left here unconvinced. I'm sure he left you unconvinced. But he'll find no trail of sleaze with me.' There was a moment of silence, and then Poley added: !Of course, I recommended my friends in California and Arizona for the fat contracts. But they paid me nothing, Jeb. No kickbacks, no hunting lodges built for me in the mountains.'
'But two billion dollars! Poley, there has to be something not right somewhere.'
'Has there been any with you? No. Any with our friend Afanasi? Never. Any with me?
Not on your life. I was mixed up in everything, as you know, but you also remember my golden rule: "If even eight cents of real money is involved, leave a trail of receipts a mile wide."'
'The Feds told me they'd tracked more than twenty million dollars of those receipts,' and Poley laughed: 'I'd never do it otherwise,' and Jeb said: 'That's what I told them.'
BECAUSE POLEY MARKHAM HAD TO FLY TO THE NORTH Slope to give his clients support during the FBI investigation, he stopped over in Anchorage to verify whatever it was that Jeb told the investigators at the interrogation in Juneau, and he arrived at Jeb's apartment just as there was a flurry on Alaska television. Giovanni Spada, at the Palmer Tsunami Center, had issued an alert that out on the Aleutian chain, Qugang Volcano off the north coast of Lapak Island had begun erupting, with huge clouds of lava dust heading eastward toward Anchorage: 'However, the distance is so great that we can expect most of the dust to dissipate before it reaches the Anchorage area.'
Nevertheless, by late afternoon there was a cloud of ash in the air, and Poley suggested:
'Let's get out of here. A guide told me there were some mountain goats in a cove on the Pacific coast just north of the government lands at Glacier Bay.' So they packed their gear, rented a four-seater, and flew down to a primeval area which few people ever saw, and there in air so clear that even a raindrop seemed like an intruder, they trekked in to where they saw, in an area far below them this time, a trio of billies with small handsomely formed horns.
Poley slapped his thigh: 'At last we've struck it lucky. This time they're below us, not above. If we move down cautiously, you'll get one of those beauties,' but when he inspected the steepness of the descent, he altered his plan: 'We'd be bound to dislodge rocks and spook them. Better wait here and let them come up to us,' and his judgment was sound, for gradually the goats began working their way up the slope, but so very slowly that the two men had about an hour to wait. This they spent in whispered discussion of the crucial problem which governed Alaskan matters at the moment and the much more important one that would come to a head in 1991.
Of the first, Poley said: 'Isn't it peculiar? The two states that irritate each other the most are the two that are most alike,' and when Jeb asked what that meant, he explained: 'Alaska and Texas. When we sent out a call for experienced hands to come in and help us with our oil, seemed like two out of three came from Texas, and I do beli
eve that half our new permanent residents are Texans who stayed on.'
Jeb reflected on this and said: 'You do see a lot of them in Fairbanks,' at which Poley added: 'And like in Texas, up here you never hear a bad word said about OPEC.
We want those Arabs to keep the price of oil as high as possible. They do our work for us.'
But both men agreed that with the disastrous drop in oil prices, the glory days of Alaskan development were ending, just as they seemed to be declining in Texas: 'We were lucky to get here when we did, Jeb, and I hope you saved your money, because come 1991, there'll be opportunities up here like you never saw before, and the prudent man who has eight or ten million in hard cash is going to be able to buy himself a major portion of this wonderful state. I can hardly wait.'
'You mean when the restrictions on the Settlement Act come to an end?'
'I do.'
Only a fellow Alaskan could have appreciated the ominous nature of Poley's response.
It meant that he had tracked the operations of the thirteen huge Native corporations, the ones that really owned the land, and had concluded that many of them were in such pitiful shape financially that the Natives who owned them would have to sell to white men from Seattle and Los Angeles and Denver who had the money to buy them out and the know-how to make a fortune on the land when properly managed. Obviously this meant that well-intentioned Eskimos like Vladimir Afanasi were in danger of losing the land upon which their forefathers had depended for thousands of years, but when Jeb, who saw in Afanasi the salvation of Alaska, asked about this, Poley said reassuringly: 'I think the North Slope corporation is one that can survive.
Even with the huge debt and the collapse of oil prices, we built some very solid social and political structures up there, but of the other twelve, I have good reason to believe that at least five are doomed. They're the ones we'll move in on.'
And now, on that lonely mountainside overlooking the Pacific, the wedge that would drive between the two friends manifested itself, for Jeb Keeler, despite his disappointment in losing Kendra Scott, had grown honestly to love Alaska and to see it as a unique blending of white newcomers like himself and longtime natives like the Eskimos, the Athapascans and the Tlingits for whom he had worked. He wanted the groups to coexist in harmony, he told Poley, to develop this wonderland mutually, and to trade its natural resources to countries like Japan and China in return for consumer goods.
Specifically, he wanted the Natives to retain ownership of their land so that they could, if they wished, continue their subsistence style of life, and when he stated that conclusion he placed himself athwart the ambitions of Poley Markham, who revealed his plans with astonishing clarity.
'I don't see it your way at all, Jeb. The Natives can never govern their own lands, not in the modern world of airplanes, snowmobiles and automobiles, not to mention supermarkets and television sets. Even the six or seven corporations which are viable today could wither by the end of the century. And men like me will be on hand to pick them off.'
For some moments Jeb reflected on this gloomy prediction, whose probability of coming true he had to concede, but before he could comment on what he saw as a tragedy, Poley added a revelation which proved what a Machiavellian character he had: 'Why do you suppose I've worked so hard with these corporations? Not for the money that is, after I solidified my nest egg. I wanted to know the capacity of each one, where the good lands were, what the likelihood of collapse was. Because I realized from day one that the crazy organization Congress established in ANCSA could not survive this century. And that meant that the lands would have to come into the hands of people like you and me.'
'Not' me,' Jeb said firmly. 'I'll help the Natives petition Congress for an extension past 1991. We won't allow the lands to be alienated from the Eskimos and the Indians.'
Poley drew back to study this young man he had befriended in so many ways, had inducted into the fraternity of Lower Forty-eight experts who knew what was happening in Alaska, and he could not believe what Jeb was saying: 'Son, if you go that route, you and me is gonna cross swords.'
'I've seen it coming, Poley. I want to keep Alaska unique, a modern wonderland. You want to make it one more Southern California.'
'Face it, son,' and with the use of this word he had used when talking to Jeb years ago in northern Canada, he indicated the distance that had been reestablished between them, 'what is Anchorage but San Diego North?'
'Anchorage, I can surrender,' Jeb conceded, 'but the rest must be protected from men like you, old friend.'
Poley laughed: 'Impossible. The next census will show Anchorage with more than fifty percent of the population. Then its representatives will storm down to Juneau and begin to pass laws that bring this state into the modern world. Probably move the capital up to Anchorage, where it should have been long ago.'
'The more you say, Poley, the more I realize that I'll have to fight almost everything you'll be trying to do.'
If the two debaters had had their radio turned on, they would have heard an urgent broadcast by Giovanni Spada sent to all the nations bordering the North Pacific:
'This is a tsunami alert. I repeat, a tsunami alert. There has been a massive submarine earthquake off Lapak Island in the Aleutian chain registering eight-point-four on the Richter scale. All coastal areas are advised that a wave ...'
Instead of hearing the warning which might have influenced their actions on that vulnerable coast, they were preoccupied with the goats that had begun to behave as Poley had predicted, but before the final stages of the hunt started, Poley wanted to assuage the political differences that had erupted between them, and he switched subjects completely: 'You know, Jeb, your mountain goat isn't a goat at all. It's an antelope, misnamed.'
Surprised, Jeb turned to face his future adversary: "No one ever told me,' and for some moments he considered this strange news: 'Suppose the goat had been named snowy antelope or arctic antelope.
It'd be twice as attractive,' and Poley growled: 'Not for me. I like things simple and honest.' Then he became the ruthless director of the hunt, the role for which he was predestined: 'Jeb, you've got to nail one as they come up that draw. Once you let them get above us, they're long gone.'
So Jeb, having lost half a dozen goats when he followed his own tactics, slipped silently down the protected side of the ridge, taking precautions that he not be seen by the approaching goats, and when he had positioned himself so that he could intercept them as they came up the other side, he realized that he would be allowed only one shot at whichever of the three billies first poked his head above the skyline.
Looking back for confirmation from Poley, he was gratified when from a considerable distance above him Markham signaled an 'A-okay' with his right thumb and forefinger forming a circle. The stage was set for the best chance Jeb would ever have to bag the last of his Big Eight.
He held his breath, waited for one of the goats to appear, then experienced the great joy of seeing a billy, snowy white and with perfect black-spiked horns, emerge right onto the crest of the ridge and stand there for a moment. 'For Christ sake, shoot!'
Poley whispered to himself, frightened lest the merest sound alert the goat, and in the next moment he was relieved to hear the report of Jeb's rifle. The goat lurched forward, trembled, and fell backward out of Jeb's sight on the far side of the ridge.
But Poley from his higher vantage could see clearly that the goat had been killed and had plunged rather far down into the cut on the other side. 'Jeb!' he shouted.
'You got him but he's well down in the gully. Fetch him and I'll start down with the gear.' When Jeb descended to where he had last seen the goat, he took his gun with him, but Poley shouted again: 'Leave your gun, I'll get it. He's pretty far down the hill,' and when Jeb saw where the goat's body had landed, quite far below him, he appreciated the wisdom of Poley's advice and propped his gun against a rock where Poley could easily spot it. Almost as if the two men were attached by invisible bands, they began to desc
end together, Poley from his outlook spot to where the gun rested, Jeb from his gun down to where the goat's body had lodged.
As they scrambled down in this triumphant tandem, Jeb kept his eyes fixed on the goat, a magnificent specimen he was convinced, but Poley, from his higher vantage, was able to survey the entire setting: the Pacific Ocean near at hand, the two headlands marking the beginning of the little fjord, the steep flanks on which the three billies had been exploring, and the V-shaped head of the bay into which Jeb was descending to claim his prize. It was almost an artist's miniature stage setting for what would be an ideal Alaskan coastal painting.
But Poley also saw a sudden and persistent suction of water from the bay, and he knew instinctively that something ominous and terrible was happening.
'Jeb! Jeb!' he began to scream, but in Jeb's eagerness to get to his goat he had hurried ahead out of earshot. Nevertheless, the older man continued screaming, for now he saw the water sweeping back into the bay, inexorably piling up as if pushed from behind by some malevolent titan.
'Jeb! Come back!'
And now it became obvious that the dark waves, never very high but with tremendous pressure behind them, were not going to stop before they had filled the valley and flooded upward to some incredible spot seven or eight hundred feet above ordinary sea level, and when Jeb finally became aware of his peril, the water was so high, and piling up so rapidly, that he was incapable of doing anything to save himself. He saw the churning water snatch the goat and toss it about, submerging it in foam, and then the relentless waves were upon him, throwing him sideways and engulfing him as they climbed the sides of the valley faster than the goats had done. His last sight was not of his final trophy, which was mangled in the deep, but of Poley Markham scrambling desperately upward to gain the really high ground which even the Lapak Island tsunami could not reach.