73 BOSCHVARK FOREVER

73

BOSCHVARK FOREVER

Boschvark overcomes insomnia by escaping the Earth. Anger is usually the cause of his sleeplessness—exasperation with the idiocy of an employee, impatience with members of the media who report what they're told but do it incompetently, rage at tactics of competitors who skin him out of another hundred million dollars that should have been his, fury at the processes of nature resulting in less than an ideal human physiology that isn't just mortal but also allows for inconveniences such as headaches and hangnails and constipation. However, when ensconced in a jet, high above the planet, he is—if only for a few hours—able to feel disconnected from humanity, as though he's an entity unto himself, a glorious species of one, which is a status for which he's yearned all his life. And then he sleeps.

He is still sleeping when his Gulfstream V lands on his private paved airstrip at Rancho del Culebra Furioso, his nine-thousand-acre property in Kettleton County. He purchased this land in order to have a home within a half hour's drive of the Grand Plateau when work there finally begins. Currently he also raises llamas on the ranch for tax purposes. Eventually, using major defense contractors who can construct facilities with the greatest secrecy, he intends to install level-4 biological labs deep underground and staff them with dedicated scientists who will live here while they create new deadly pathogens and the vaccines to guard against the pandemics such microbes could cause. He has neither evil nor humanitarian motivations for funding this research; he is committed to it only because it's his belief that all multibillionaires have similar facilities and that, to preserve his lofty position in the social order, he must maintain parity with others of his kind.

Whenever Boschvark sleeps through a landing, as he does in this case because of exhaustion from chronic insomnia, Heath Granger and Shepherd Eagle, his pilots, are under orders not to wake him. The property manager and head housekeeper of Rancho del Culebra Furioso, Mr. and Mrs. Danvers, assist in the disembarkation of the sleeper and transport him to the primary bedroom in the main residence.

In spite of the comfort money can buy and the power over others that it provides, the sad truth is that even a multibillionaire has no guarantee of a smooth journey through life. For one thing, no amount of wealth can purchase good dreams. With a throttled scream, Boschvark wakes from a half-remembered nightmare in which he was so poor that he owned only three homes and flew commercial. He sits on the edge of the bed, sweating and trembling. When he discovers Mrs. Danvers has forgotten to leave a small plate of Belgian chocolate-covered mint patties on his nightstand, as is absolutely required, he is displeased. His displeasure quickly escalates into resentment, a bitter brooding over past failures of the housekeeper to serve him as diligently as she should. Now he is ready for the day.

After a scalding shower so hot that it has sensitized him to the many physical indignities the day will impress on him, he takes a late breakfast in the large conservatory at the north end of the house, among palms and ferns and orchids that aren't native to this territory. The food is excellent except for one detail. He is quite certain that the three mandarin orange segments arranged around a cherry atop the small serving of flan, which comes at the end of the meal, are not from a fresh fruit, but from a can. After finishing the flan, he sips his coffee and considers confronting Mrs. Danvers regarding her use of an inadequate choice of decorative citrus in violation of his standards. Instead, alert to the need to extinguish the Vida woman in a timely manner, he decides to tuck this culinary offense away in memory and let it fester for another occasion.

At the center of his office in this residence stands an immense black-granite-and-steel desk that some on the staff refer to as the "Darth Vader command center," though they are not aware that he has recordings of them making this amused reference. He isn't angered and calls no one to account for impertinence, because he likes the implications of their joke. Sitting in a black-leather steel-studded pneumatic office chair that looks as though it doubles as a personal aircraft for jaunts around the ranch, he uses the intercom to summon Mack Yataghan, the head of security for the Grand Plateau project.

Yataghan, a former CIA agent, has made a fortune sharing useful national secrets with Boschvark. To prove that his loyalty to his boss is forever and isn't as transient as that to his country, he has received an implanted molar containing a capsule of arsenic that can be detonated by remote control, though only by Boschvark. There is something psychologically wrong with Yataghan, but it's the kind of wrong that makes him just right for Boschvark's purposes. Anyway, even if the security chief were normal, he'd most likely still be holding this job. It always amazes Boschvark what people will do for a salary of a mere two million a year.

Yataghan reports that, to eliminate all risk of a connection to New World Technology, the bodies of four members of the search party have been removed from the forest, wrapped in plastic, loaded in a truck, and driven to Mexico. They will be delivered to MS-13 to be thrown into a mass grave with the corpses of locals killed by the gang this week. They will be doused in gasoline and set afire and—when nothing remains but charred bones—will end up under eight feet of earth plowed over them and compacted by a bulldozer, after which the government will declare the site part of a national forest never to be developed out of respect for nature.

Because Boschvark has been unable to reach Regis Duroc-Jersey on the project manager's burner phone since their Poe-and-Wells conversation the previous day, Yataghan has been seeking the missing executive. Duroc-Jersey's company Lexus seems to have been abandoned at Vida's house. The man has not returned to his rental residence, where one of Yataghan's cohorts has been stationed to intercept and detain him. The security chief is of the opinion that Duroc-Jersey could be—but most likely is not—dead. More plausibly, the man is rattled by the wipeout of the search party; fearful that all the crimes committed in the interest of furthering the project will be exposed, he has probably gone on the lam.

With a few choice expletives, Boschvark expresses his contempt for the cowardly Duroc-Jersey. Vida's cunning, courage, and skill with a crossbow irritate him. The apparent duplicity of Crockett and his dogs peeves him. The incompetence of Vector, Trott, Rackman, and Monger angers him. He thumps his fists on his granite desk and demands that Yataghan find the hateful woman, Nochelobo's whore.

"We will," Yataghan assures him. "Meanwhile, just last night we found the other woman living in Texas under the name Susan Ivers."

Terrence Boschvark is a brilliant man who can pull the strings on an almost infinite number of puppets without tangling any, but for a moment he is flummoxed. "What other woman?"

"Anna Lagare. The mortician's daughter."

Boschvark sinks in his chair as though the weight of this new exasperation, atop his other angers, is a fearsome burden. "What kind of daughter disowns her father just because he wants to climb the ladder and improve his bank balance?"

"I hope never to have such a child," Yataghan agrees. "As we have long speculated, she did visit Vida before leaving Kettleton. She told her about the dart wound. Worse, she'd found a page from a notepad in the pocket of the shirt that Nochelobo was wearing that day. Someone had scribbled on it. ‘Two moon sun spirit below the smoking river.' She gave it to Vida. That's what set the bitch on the warpath. She put the squeeze on Morgan Slyke for starters."

"And?" Boschvark demands.

"No reason to be concerned. Anna Lagare won't be talking to anyone about anything. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Fell down twice before she got it right."

"I wasn't asking about her. ‘Two moon sun spirit below the smoking river'—what does it mean?"

"They're this Cheyenne couple who don't have the wilderness skills to live by the old ways, but they can't tolerate the new. Ten years ago, they rode off to live in harmony with the Earth, crazy shit like that. The place they settled is deep in the forest, near where the Little Bear River passes over geothermal vents and throws off steam. The Grand Plateau is between that place and Kettleton."

Alarmed, Boschvark gets up from his chair. "Two Moon. Sun Spirit. Why did they matter to Nochelobo? Why do they matter to Vida? Why do they matter to anyone ?"

"We don't know. But maybe that's where Vida has gone—and maybe Sam Crockett with his dogs."

"How Cheyenne are they?" Boschvark asks.

Yataghan looks puzzled. "How Cheyenne?"

"How much do they believe in the old ways? How much do they know about the past? Are they at all committed to the Cheyenne nation or are they just Tontos? Can they be bought? Who can't be bought? Anyone can be bought. Do they want a casino?"

Boschvark hears himself and realizes he doesn't sound like Terrence Boschvark. He doesn't sound powerful and confident and righteously angry. He sounds like a pathetic striver who has only a billion dollars and is scared he'll lose it. He considers sitting down and speaking slowly, expressing himself in fewer words, but it's too late. Mack Yataghan has seen that his employer is alarmed, and to the likes of this man, alarm is the same as fear; fear is a weakness; the weak are to be despised, dominated, and exploited. In an instant, Yataghan has gone from being a reliable employee to a potential threat, because Boschvark has failed to mask his anxiety. It is not easy being the man who sits at the Darth Vader desk.

He only narrows his eyes because more dramatic gestures would be too much and confirm Yataghan's new opinion of him. Quietly, with no threat—a serenity that will worry Yataghan more than shouted accusations—Boschvark says, "I thought we knew every Native American living in Kettleton County, regardless of tribe, assessed each one, identified those who had no interest in the history of their people, and compromised those who expressed faith in their traditions."

"We did," Yataghan says. "There weren't that many of them."

"Not many," says Boschvark, "but two more than we thought. And two who may know the past, be proud of it, even want to defend it."

"I take full responsibility for the screwup," Yataghan says, which is what he'd say if he was still a faithful employee, which perhaps he is, though he can no longer be trusted. A time will come to deal with him. Right now there's a more urgent matter.

"What's it take for you to get there, to the place these two back-to-nature idiots are holed up? How soon?"

"Our people just wrung this out of Anna Lagare five hours ago. I was waiting until you woke and got started on your day. Where they live is an open glen. I can chopper there in half an hour."

"You and I," Boschvark declares. "You're a helo pilot. So just us. Ready to do whatever needs to be done."

Yataghan is astonished. "You're taking direct action yourself?"

"In this case, it's essential. We've got to reach Two Moon and Sun Spirit before Vida does. Everything might depend on it."

"Maybe. But I can put together a team. You being there—is it wise? I don't think it's wise."

If Boschvark narrows his eyes further, he'll be blind. "You might think I'm too finnicky to get my hands dirty instead of paying someone else to dirty theirs. But, see, you didn't know me in the early days, when I busted the balls of anyone who got in my way. I can still do it. I can bust them harder than anyone. Who's gonna finger me for anything I do? Nobody. Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will. Everyone's in my pocket. Let's go."