Mapmaker (19 page)

I thought of Piri Reis. Maybe it was hearing my dad’s voice. “Can you pull up the satellite image and superimpose it over this map?”

Cleo took the keyboard and pulled up the satellite imagery, then dropped the map from 1940 over it. The place my father found existed in 1940, but not today. I rolled over the topography in 1940 to 1986. Everything matched up.

“Okay, let’s get the satellite view from 1987 to today.” Was this a place so remote it had been forgotten? Impossible. Had the climate changed so drastically in the last twenty years it had disappeared into the water, and then resurfaced? Highly unlikely. From 1917 to 1987, the place my father found was clearly marked on the map: a five-mile-by-seven-mile swath of land. There was nothing particularly outstanding about
the topography, nothing that I could make out. I squinted, practically putting my nose to the screen, examining every rock, every tree.

“Sweetie, you’ll ruin your eyes. Lemme help you.” Cleo took the keyboard from me. “Try this one.”

What appeared on the screen was a perfectly defined, moving image of Denali National Park. Red spots appeared dotted around the glaciers. I knew what they were: body heat from animals and the human visitors.

I turned to Cleo, finally asking the one question that had been burning inside me since she’d picked me up at the train station. “What do you do?”

She shrugged.

“I mean, who do you work for? The government?”

Cleo cocked her head. “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”

“Right,” I said, staring back at the screen. I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer, and I also knew that it was possibly for my own protection.

“Zoom in on the stream,” I said. I felt my heart racing. The image was crystal clear. In the stream, a splash of red salmon swam upstream, north to south. I followed the river on the computer until the black spot, where it disappeared. What was happening? I traveled backward again, knowing I’d missed something. I watched it again, and again. Thirty times, following the bend of the stream.

“Do you see what I see?” I said to Cleo.

Cleo nodded slowly. “The river was gone. The water slowed to a pool. Someone had redirected the water flow. Built a dam and changed the water pathway.”

“But why would someone redirect it and then make the place disappear?”

“Water and oxygen. The two main staples of life on Earth. Science 101.”

“Right. Science 101.”

I touched the image of the stream on the computer, following it to where it disappeared, to the “black spot” as she’d called it.

“How can I get there?” I asked.

“Sweetheart, you’re not going anywhere. You’re not risking your life for this. They’ll squash you without a second thought and no one will know. They’ll cover their tracks just like they did when they killed your father.”

The reality of her words fell against me. I felt hopeless, insignificant.

“They can’t just keep killing people and getting away with it,” I insisted as her eyes flickered over my face. “Someone will investigate. Someone will find out.” I was talking loudly, furiously. The injustice of it was burning inside of me. They killed my dad without leaving a trace? Without any consequences? They couldn’t keep getting away with it.

“Ever taken a history class, sweetheart?” Cleo asked. “Or do the schools just give you PG versions of the truth? The powerful get away with mass murder all the time. Countries, corporations, individuals … It’s nice to see you’re an idealist but let’s get back to the facts.”

“I’m going with or without your help.”

Cleo laughed. “Good luck getting the visitors’ bus to take you. And don’t forget your mosquito clothes and pepper spray to keep the grizzlies away.”

“Cleo, please—”

“End of discussion,” she interrupted, her smile gone. “I have some work to finish up here, private work. Go back to my house and make yourself at home. You can’t get into any trouble there, unless you play with guns.”

Cleo stayed at “Bill’s
house” until nightfall. She had a telescope on a tripod at her living room window, next to a side table and sofa. When she returned, I began looking through it at the clear sparkling stars, at the glow of the crescent moon. I doubted it was the stars Cleo was looking for in the night sky.

In the kitchen she cooked up a stir-fry from vegetables in her garden. I got bored of the telescope and picked up a black-and-white photo of Cleo and a family. It probably wasn’t even hers. The picture wasn’t recent. Cleo looked about twelve years old.

“Did you ever go to the place in Alaska with Dad?” I asked.

Cleo froze. She had her back to me but I could see the question made her nervous. “That was my camera,” she said. “As soon as we found the house, we knew that it wasn’t left off the maps by mistake. It was no accident.”

“The house?”

“Later, Tanya.” She turned off the stove and carried two steaming plates to the table. “You need to eat something.”

“What house?” I persisted.

She leaned back and sighed, then waved me outside into the backyard. She began walking into the desert. I followed.

“You’re just as stubborn as your dad, you know that?” she said. “There was a cabin. We thought it belonged to the
park ranger. We didn’t see anyone. Your dad filmed it. Then we went back to the campsite. We had something to eat, and he went to catch a plane back home. That was the last time I saw him.”

I swallowed. “He never got on the plane. He never came back home.”

“No, he disappeared somewhere before he reached the airport. There were no witnesses I could find. Nothing on surveillance in Alaska. The thing was, they didn’t know I was with him. They didn’t know I had already downloaded a copy of the video. When I got back to civilization, the Cambodia story was in full swing—” She broke off. “Tanya, he only told you that he went to Cambodia to protect you and Beth. That was his story.”

I ignored the lump in my throat. I had to focus on what was going on here, now. My dad was dead, but if what Cleo was saying were true, if her hunch was correct, then Connor was still alive and his life hung in the balance—over
this
.

“So all this has something to do with the house? Is it the government?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Not unless it’s a security division I can’t access. But that’s unlikely.”

“Cleo, you have to help me get there. I need to find out what happened to him.”

“That’s what the police are for,” she said. “That’s what the government is for, too. Trust me. You’re safe here, and that’s what matters.”

“Harrison and the rest of MapOut say he drowned in Cambodia. And you know that. They even have his plane
ticket to prove he was there. They even have him on tape, leaving the airport and checking into his hotel.”

Cleo raised an eyebrow. “Have you seen the tape? It’s not exactly high definition, is it, sweetheart? It’s a black-and-white blur of a white man in his late forties.”

“You mean …?”

“I mean, whoever is behind this has a lot of money, resources, and has their asses covered.”

“I still need to try. It’s not just about my dad. It’s about Connor, too. It’s my fault he was even snooping—”

“Okay. okay.” Cleo held up her hand, stopping me. “I understand what you want to do. Go in and eat something before it gets cold. I’m going back to Bill’s.”

Half an hour later,
after I’d cleaned my plate and returned to the telescope, Cleo came back inside. She held a metal briefcase that she set on the table. She opened the top; inside was a collection of small pistols. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They filled me with a sense of fear and dread I wasn’t prepared for. I wasn’t ready to shoot anyone.

“I don’t … I don’t know how to use a gun,” I stammered. Nor did I want to.

“You might need to learn. Or you can take the laser.”

She pulled out what looked like a harmonica box. Inside was a thin silver tube, with an electronic screen on the side.

“This is simple to use. It won’t kill anyone, but it will knock them out temporarily.”

I let out a breath. “Okay.”

“I’ll show you how to use it. You touch the screen with your thumb. It will imprint your fingerprints. No one else
will be able to use it, even if they take it from you. It’s undetectable, too, or as close to undetectable as you can get.” She handed it to me.

“Thank you, Cleo.” I felt cold with fear as I turned it around in my hand. It was oddly heavy, as if it were made of lead or gold. I knew this was what I had to do, but somehow the reality of it hadn’t quite set in.

“Let’s get ready. Gretchen will be here soon.”

“Who’s Gretchen?”

“She works with me.” I could tell by the finality of her tone that this was probably all she’d offer in terms of explanation. “By the way, we’re coming with you. Your dad would kill me if he knew what I was letting you do, but I know you’ll try to get there, anyway.”

I forced a smile, even though I was so anxious I could barely speak. Cleo took me into her bedroom. She opened her closet revealing an array of jeans, T-shirts, and sweaters. Then she took a key from the top shelf, unlocking a second door hidden behind the hanging clothes. She pulled out unopened clear bags; inside were plain grey jackets, pants, and sweaters.

“There’s lead inside the fibers; no one will be able to detect weapons beneath.”

I pulled the jacket on; it felt the same as any other jacket, just slightly heavier and the material stiffer. She gave me warm socks and a pair of boots to wear, too. “It’s cold there, even in the summer.”

Cleo filled the dogs’ bowls with fresh water and gave them each an extra few handfuls of food.

“Goodbye my sweeties, I’ll be back soon. Rita will take
good care of you.” The dogs whimpered, knowing she was leaving.

I heard a strange sound, almost like a propeller plane. It hummed overhead, and then its pitch dropped. It popped, crackled, and faded into silence. It was past midnight. Cleo scrawled a note to her neighbor, asking her to feed the dogs and horses while she was gone. We went outside, where she slipped the note under her neighbor’s door. I looked back at the house, the two dogs were watching through the window as we walked across the desert. I caught a whiff of gasoline, and in the moonlight I could just make out a silhouette of a tiny propeller plane. A woman stood beside it.

“That’s Gretchen,” Cleo said.

My heart seized. I wasn’t generally afraid of flying—but this crazy-looking woman didn’t seem much older than me. Her light brown hair was cut short in a boyish style, and she had a diamond stud in her nose. She wore a leather bomber jacket.

“Gretchen, meet Tanya,” Cleo said as she gave Gretchen a huge hug.

I hesitated.

“Sweetheart, Gretchen is a pilot for some very important people.”

“Come on, get in,” Gretchen urged, holding out a hand and opening the door for me. “Flying is the safest way to travel. We’re already about twenty minutes behind schedule and we need to do this in the dark.”

Swallowing my fear, I took her hand and clambered aboard.

Cleo sat up front next to Gretchen and I ducked into the
third seat in the back. I fastened my seat belt and closed my eyes as the propellers started up. The plane roared across the desert. It wasn’t until we were off the ground that I realized we were flying in the dark. Literally. There were no lights on the plane; the only light came from the instrument panel. We were black against the night sky.

We rose up and up for about ten minutes or so. The flight seemed smooth, or at least as smooth as a propeller plane can be. I felt the tension in my stomach ease for a moment when Gretchen suddenly nose-dived fifty feet before settling the plane again. I covered my hand with my mouth.

“I think she’s gonna be sick,” Gretchen alerted Cleo.

Cleo rummaged around the front of the plane and handed back a white wax-paper bag. I grabbed it but I wasn’t sick. I think I was actually too nervous to throw up, even though I wanted to.

“I know it’s not the smoothest flight,” Gretchen shouted from the front. “But it’s better than being shot down.”

“We’re avoiding detection,” Cleo stated more clearly.

“Yeah, I got that.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears with my hands.

The air smelled like ice as we landed on the barren tundra. The sound of the slowing propellers faded into the wind that blew westward, sending blasts of snow tumbling across the flat expanse of white. We’d been aloft for over twelve hours. Gretchen cut the engine and pulled on a coat and gloves. She took something that looked like a metal briefcase from beneath the pilot’s seat.

“You have the box?” Cleo spoke in a whisper.

Gretchen nodded. In the creeping dawn I could see her profile, short brown hair, clear skin; from the side she almost looked like a boy. Cleo pulled her own hair back, twisting it into a bun at the base of her neck.

“What are we waiting for?” I leaned forward.

Cleo looked at Gretchen for an answer. Gretchen monitored the screen; it was purple except for four tiny dots of red, flickering like flames. “I don’t know if they are human or animal.”