And get copies of the core samples to you.

Yes.

Data that could inform either a buyout or an unfriendly takeover, Kate thought, meditating on her clasped hands. When is the last time you heard from him? Over six weeks now, Childress said.

Did he quit?

No. He just stopped sending us core sample reports.

Did you try to contact him?

Childress shook his head. That‘s not the way it worked. There was to be no direct contact, ever.

How did you get the reports?

He brought them with him when he came to town on his shift off and mailed them to a post office box in Houston. Someone in the Houston office would pick them up and courier them to my office.

You paid him on delivery.

They both looked at her as if she had suggested they vote Democrat. Yes. That explained the regular payments every two weeks, Kate thought. How did you trace the payments to us, Shugak?

She stood. It took a friend a couple of minutes on a computer, she said. You guys aren‘t exactly James Bond, are you?

She walked to the door. Oh, she said, hand on the knob, probably no harm in telling you. She smiled at King. You weren‘t the only people he was selling information to.

She pulled the door closed behind her with the gentlest possible click, grinned at Mrs. Podhoretz, and sauntered to the elevator.

She‘d leave the news that their spy was dead for another time.

She sat in her car while she tried to figure out where she should go next. I probably should stop by Raven.

Raven Inc. was a regional Native corporation, one of the thirteen created with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to administer the money and lands granted to Natives in that act. The thirteen regional corporations were the umbrella organizations for the two hundred plus tribal organizations, like the Niniltna Native Association. Raven Inc. headquarters was ordinarily a place the pre-chair apolitical Kate would shun like the plague, but things were different now. And it wasn‘t like Anchorage was the world‘s biggest city. Someone would have seen her and word would go around, especially if it got to be known she‘d come to town and snubbed her fellow executives.

Now, there was a job right up Axenia‘s alley.

Really, it only made diplomatic sense, as the head of a small but powerful association, as Emaa‘s granddaughter and the (temporary) leader of hundreds of Native shareholders, she should at least drop in to show the flag.

Her cell phone rang. She‘d never been happier to hear it.

It was Lempe. My friend says the blood types match exactly. When she was silent, the doc said, Ms. Shugak, does this mean that Mr. Gammons is actually this person named Allen?

No, Kate said, no, the man in your hospital is Dewayne Gammons, all right. He was silent. We‘re transferring him to API. We need the bed on the ward for more critical patients.