Finland? Kate said.

Well, actually, Cameroon.

Cameroon? Kate said.

Well, by way of Paris, George said, and spoiled his deprecating tone with a wide grin.

George, Kate said, what the hell have you been up to?

No, he said, in a manner that could only be described as coy, that should be, George, where the hell have you been?‘ And the answer is almost all the way around the world. He grinned again. And in a hell of a lot less than eighty days. I didn‘t even know you‘d been gone.

I was only gone a week, in February, just long enough to track this puppy down and arrange for it to be brought back.

Is it a turbo?

Yup. He didn‘t bother hiding his pride. Came home by way of the shop in Vancouver.

Going turbo, isn‘t that kind of expensive?

It sure as hell is, he said. It‘s run me a million and a quarter so far. I didn‘t know you had that kind of cash.

I don‘t. I got a loan.

Global Harvest? she said, not really guessing.

He looked a little furtive, and then decided to confess straight up. Yeah. Mandy said they want to buy and hire local as much as they can, so I went into Anchorage to talk to Bruce.

Bruce O‘Malley?

He nodded, looking almost happy, something of a triumph for a guy whose natural gloom rivaled Abraham Lincoln‘s.

Bruce O‘Malley was the chief executive officer of Global Harvest Resources Inc. In January, with much fanfare, he‘d bought a building in downtown Anchorage and opened what would, he claimed, be the headquarters of the Suulutaq Mine. The buck doesn‘t go to Houston, he said, beaming at the television cameras, which clip Kate had viewed on YouTube on Bobby‘s computer. It stops right here in Anchorage, Alaska. He‘d moved his family to Anchorage, too, enrolled the kids in local public schools, and it was rumored that he was about to declare his intention of becoming an Alaskan citizen, to the extent that he was even going to turn in his Texas driver‘s license in exchange for an Alaskan one.

At least GHRI is putting their money where their mouth is, Kate said. She was aware even as she spoke that she was damning with faint praise.

It‘s been a godsend, Kate, George said, and he was dead serious now. As you well know, the population in the Park has dropped every year for the past five years. For a while there I was scared I was going to lose the mail contract, because the volume of mail was dropping like a rock right along with the population. Alaska, because of the remote location of so many of its communities, lived and died by air mail. The U.S. mail contracts were all too often what kept the wolf from the Alaska air taxi door.

You know how the Postal Service likes to contract for larger aircraft because they get a lower rate for bypass mail. I was really sweating out the last negotiations, I thought for sure they‘d award the contract to Bill Taggart at Ahtna Aviation because he runs Caravans. And then they discovered the gold.