More Than Paradise (19 page)

Ironically, in the end, it was timid, obedient Emma who had tried to save their mother’s life in the horriÞ c attack that claimed it. Incredibly, after his arrest, Cartwright had seemed to expect Ash to take his side. It was as if he thought she regarded her mother and sister with the same contempt he did. He actually believed she was just like him.

Ash had never come to terms with that. She wanted to prove him wrong, yet she could not deny there were similarities. Cartwright was a charismatic bad boy with a dangerous charm women couldn’t resist.

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Ash knew she had inherited something of that from him, and, like him, she exploited it. She also shared his tall blond good looks and the recklessness that could add up to courage in a disciplined individual, but in him had manifested as callous self-indulgence. Cartwright Evans was a narcissist. He did as he pleased and didn’t care how others were affected.

His wife had gotten in his way and he’d made her pay for it. Emma had tried to stop him, and she’d paid, too. Cartwright had attacked their mother with a baseball bat and when Emma tried to drag him off, he turned on her and chased her through the upstairs level of the house, Þ nally clubbing her over the head at the landing. Emma had fallen down the stairs, unconscious. He left her for dead and returned to the master bedroom to Þ nish off his wife, who had managed to call 911 by then. It had all come out at the trial, experts painting the full picture with photos of blood splatter and bodily injuries.

Cartwright’s defense attorney had made a case that two African American men had broken into the house in a robbery that got violent and that he’d come home when the attack was in progress. Ash had testiÞ ed against him, providing a history of his behavior that helped convict him. If she could, she would have killed him with her bare hands. Even that urge made her anxious sometimes. She was always aware of her genes, of a nascent Cartwright ticking like a time bomb inside her.

She’d gone to a shrink about it once, years ago, seeking some kind of reassurance that she would not turn into her father. The shrink had insisted on talking about irrelevant stuff like her lack of committed relationships, which was nothing more than a side effect of her working life. She wanted to read all kinds of signiÞ cance into her love ’em and leave ’em pattern, instead of seeing it for what it was, a practical necessity. Ash had nothing to offer a woman who wanted a cozy domestic existence, and she didn’t want to lead anyone to hope otherwise.

The shrink had said,
Conscience makes cowards of us all.
Her theory was that Ash felt responsible for what had happened to her family and she was afraid to start a new family of her own in case she fucked that up by behaving like her father. Ash could see where she was coming from, but she was wrong. Her biggest concern, if the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, was that she would do something rash on an assignment, kill someone for no good reason and thereby cross

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JENNIFER FULTON

that line in the sand she fought to preserve. She wanted to be able to live with herself, to retain some sense of honor.

That’s what Emma had given her. A sense of honor, of being a good person. She let her mind drift to their last good day together at the Grove. Emma had laboriously baked banana bread and they watched a movie, then went out shopping for new clothes. In stores the clerks always made a fuss of her. She was petite and looked much younger than she was, with her pixie face and ß axen hair in bunches. When she was in a good mood, she was so sweet and lovable no one would believe she was also capable of stabbing a nurse and had to be supervised at all times.

Some days were better than others, and this was one of the best.

Emma was sunny and affectionate and had asked Ash questions about Madang like she could actually imagine she might live there one day.

When it came time for her to leave, Emma had kissed her good-bye and said, as she always did, “Can I come with you?”

Ash said, “Soon.” And for once she’d really believed it.

Medicine made constant advances. Ash had been sure that if she could keep Emma well long enough, a new treatment would emerge that would deliver real results. With Emma’s gradual but marked improvement, it Þ nally seemed possible that she could live outside of an institution.

“Don’t forget me,” Emma had called as she walked away.

Ash could still see her at that window, waving, holding the teddy bear she never let go of. Ash had the bear in her backpack, wrapped in a clean cloth. It still smelled of her sister. Tears stung her eyes and she rolled onto her side, facing away from Charlotte, her face mufß ed against her pillow.

Everything she did, the way she had built her life over the past ten years, the risks and everyday hazards she took for granted, had only made sense because of Emma. Now that she’d gone, Ash’s life seemed pointless.

She had never felt more alone.

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Predictably, Miles didn’t go for the idea of taking an extra day in Kwerba. He could see the promised land and was chomping at the bit. Ash tried to make an argument about cloud cover and the brief burn-off period when she could hope to put down safely on the lake bed. However, Miles wasn’t hearing anything but mermaids singing.

He looked twitchy just thinking about the possibility that they might not be able to start taping bird calls at Þ ve a.m. the next morning and asked what the big deal was. The ß ight was only a half hour.

So, as soon as the swirling mist seemed to be lifting, the Nagle team organized the Þ eld party, who had ß ipped coins to see who went in Þ rst. Crates of food and water would be dropped last because they could be pushed over the side without having to put the helicopter down on the soft sphagnum bog. Each landing was risky and they would need to get the Huey in the air again before its gear sank too far.

“Once we touch down, you’ll have about three minutes to get out,”

Ash told her passengers. “So jump and run. Stay down. You don’t want to get decapitated before you see your bow-wow bird.”

“That’s
bower
bird,” Miles said like Ash had just disrespected the president or something.

Charlotte pointed to a stack of boxes, cages, and butterß y nets.

“Can I get my things?”

“No. People Þ rst. We’ll drop all the supplies and equipment in last.”

“But what if you can’t make it in again today? We’ll be stuck up there with nothing.”

Ash shrugged and gave Miles a pointed look.

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JENNIFER FULTON

With the conÞ dence of a man who had never ß own a helicopter in the New Guinea highlands, he said, “Don’t worry. If it looks like conditions are deteriorating, we’ll change our plan. You’ll have everything you need. I personally guarantee it.”

Ash almost laughed at Charlotte’s expression. Even she wasn’t kidding herself about the risks they were facing, but Miles was already climbing aboard the Huey, a man with a mission. He waved for the rest of the Þ rst group to follow.

Ash said, “Looks like we’re moving out.”

Charlotte mumbled something under her breath and picked up the bag Ash knew carried her microscope. “I’m not leaving this.”

She was in Þ ne form this morning, Ash reß ected, all business but still sounding so seductive everyone fell into dorkish wonder whenever she opened her mouth. Over breakfast Ash had noticed Billy Bob Woodcock eyeballing her lasciviously. She wanted to smack him in the mouth but refrained. There would always be one guy who saw a sole civilian female as an invitation to help himself. She hoped his training had taught him enough to keep zipped up.

Just in case, she wandered over to him and said, “You’re working, Woodcock. Remember that.”

“Got it, Major. No handling the merchandise.”

Ash disliked him already. She said, “Dr. Lascelles is the client’s representative. I’m talking about our paycheck. Understood?”

That got his attention. “Yes, ma’am. Point taken.”

Ash moved the conversation on immediately. She didn’t want anyone thinking she had a personal interest. Money was the stakes everyone in the game understood. “You’ll be going in with the second lift, Corporal. I’m counting on you to keep order in the meantime.

Don’t let any of these civilians run off by themselves chasing zoo specimens.”

“I’m on it, ma’am.”

He had seemed mindful of the mild reprimand ever since, keeping his eyes off Charlotte and his hands on the supplies. Ash cast a quick look his way as the last of the party climbed aboard. He was making wisecracks with one of the few macho scientists, an Australian not unlike Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.

Klaus moved to Ash’s side. “Think he can keep it in his pants?”

Pleased she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the signs, Ash said,

“If he doesn’t I’ll cut it off for him.”

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“You interested yourself?” Klaus had made her for a dyke about three seconds after they’d met.

Ash said dryly, “I’m interested in getting paid.”

“You could do worse.”

“That’s a fact,” Ash conceded.

Her colleague wasn’t letting it go. “I think she likes you.”

“She’s a long way from home. Women like her end up with people who won’t embarrass them at dinner parties.”

Klaus lapsed into silence. They both knew what she was saying. Being honest about how they made a living was a guaranteed conversation stopper in polite circles. Once the novelty wore off, respectable women got fed up with hanging out with a social liability.

“I think they’re waiting for us,” Ash said.

She and Klaus shook hands, as they always did before a ß ight. The deal was if they ever had to ditch, this would serve as the respectful good-bye they wouldn’t get time for. They’d known each other ever since Ash started running arms for Tubby Nagle, and she trusted Klaus.

He was the nearest thing she had to a real friend in PNG.

There were folks in the Nagle organization who assumed they were an item. Ash neither conÞ rmed nor denied unless she was asked, and no one ever got that personal, not even Tubby. It wasn’t always diplomatic to mention family to a contractor. For various reasons, many didn’t have one.

Ash climbed into the pilot’s seat, next to Klaus, and sized up their takeoff area. There was enough room for a single bounce, and they would need it. They were loaded to the max.

As the Huey rose grudgingly away from the thatched huts and staring tribesmen, Klaus rotated a map to follow the compass heading and gave her some coordinates. Ash pulled into a hover and checked the gauges, then moved the bird slowly forward. With a slight shudder, the Huey sank and she let the skid toes bounce, then increased airspeed so the blades could bite into clean air. The strained rotor responded with the additional lift she was seeking and they gained altitude, a triumph greeted with audible relief by the passengers behind her.

Ash had done this so many times she no longer held her breath, but she knew everyone else in the Huey had just gulped a lungful of air and the overdue oxygen was making them giddy. They all started talking at once with exaggerated relief, as if no one had feared for a moment that they would end up dangling from a tree.

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JENNIFER FULTON

Heading due west on course toward the lake bed, Ash ß ipped on her audio switch so she could listen to her favorite ß ying music. She liked the oldies, maybe because she could remember her mother singing along to Joni Mitchell and Lynyrd Skynyrd. A cool wind ß oated through the Huey’s open sides as the altimeter crested a thousand feet, and in her headphones Neil Young prophetically mourned Mother Nature in

“After the Gold Rush
.
” Ash stared out at one of the last true Edens on the planet and wondered what this view would be like in twenty years’

time.

After they’d been cruising just on ninety knots for a while, Klaus lifted one of her earphones and protested, “You’re making my nose bleed.”

She dropped some altitude and patched the music through the intercom just in time for Pink Floyd. Why not display her age and outdated musical tastes to everyone on board? “Got a visual on the white treetops yet?” she asked Klaus.

Her copilot lifted his high-powered binoculars and visually prowled the dense canopy below for the markers Ash had noted on several occasions when she’d scoped this region out in a Cessna. One of them was a stand of trees covered in white ß owers at this time of year. They would be hard to spot through the cloud cover, and she would need to Þ nd a safe spot to ß y low if she hoped to see the other physical landmarks she’d recorded.

Keeping an eye on the shrouded slopes before them, she pulled the Huey into a climb to adjust to the rising topography. Flying in the mountains was always dangerous, but the dense cloud made the trip almost lunatic. Ash felt like calling back to Miles,
Having fun, smart
guy? Still think ß ying into the uplands is no big deal?

They were heading for the western summit of the ranges, an area deep in the unexplored heart of the island and often drowning in cloud for weeks on end. The Þ eld party had been warned that both supply drops and changes of staff could be compromised by weather, but Ash had the impression no one took this seriously. She wondered if their opinions were changing now.

“Nine thirty,” Klaus said, pointing through a Þ lmy break in the cloud. “That’s your marker and I have visual on the lake bed.”

Ash accelerated and dropped to a couple of hundred feet above the ground so she could verify. “Roger. We’re going in.”

The trees marked the beginning of the steep glide path into the

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landing zone. The approach angle was dangerous and she was coming in hot, the vegetation rushing up at her with alarming speed. Her heart pumping, she pulled more power and raised the nose a fraction to slow the rate of descent. They were already putting down on marshy ground.