Several months later
It was one of those beautiful blue sky summer days in Puget Sound. Dr. John Owen’s fishing boat, an older model trawler, had been freshly painted, electronically retrofitted and given remodeled sleeping quarters for the celebration.
The smell of coffee drifted out of the galley. Dr. Owen was at the helm next to his college friend, Senator Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom. John Owen’s wife, Rachael, was standing near the two men, while their only daughter, Elisabeth, a graduating medical student, and her new husband, Josh, a newly minted business major, were seated aft, staring into the open water.
Gabriel’s wife, Alice Canyon Hawke, and their daughter, Helen Snowfeather, had emerged from the galley carrying steaming mugs. Just as Snowfeather turned to look back at the receding Seattle waterfront, she heard a gleeful whoop from her father’s friend.
“Whale at three o’clock!” John shouted. Keeping one steady hand on the wheel, Dr. Owen pointed at a moving shape about 200 meters away.
“Thar she blows!” Gabriel shouted.
“I can’t see it!” said Elisabeth.
“Come to the helm, white eyes!” Gabriel said, grinning with gleeful enthusiasm.
As Dr. Owen’s boat lurched in a wave, his daughter, Elisabeth, shouted, “Look! It just spouted!”
“I saw that,” Gabriel said. Then the slick black shape dropped under a wave and seemed to disappear.
“Hey, that was even bigger than one of your trout, Gabriel.” It was Alice, who endlessly teased her husband about his fishing prowess.
“Just barely, my Princess,” Gabriel said. When Elisabeth came forward to hug her father’s best friend around the waist, Gabriel kissed her on the cheek. “Do I get to call you Doctor yet?”
“You’d better, Red Man,” Elisabeth said, then they both chuckled. Elisabeth had just started her residency at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Her husband Josh, moved forward to take the wheel from his father in law and Elisabeth moved to stand at Josh’s side, wrapping one arm around his waist. John and Gabriel moved aft, to sip coffee and catch up.
No one on Dr. Owen’s trawler noticed the two women watching them from the Seattle shoreline. One stood next to a park bench near the popular clam chowder restaurant, supporting the other woman, who was standing on the bench, holding some equipment. Louise Berker adjusted her stance, keeping the high-powered, self-stabilizing binoculars centered on John Owen’s trawler. The linked camera screen tracked the passengers, moving from face to face. No one on shore paid them any attention either; the pair appeared to be whale watching. They’re all so very clueless, Berker thought.
Louise waited patiently for the Indian Senator or the drug maker, Dr. John Owen, to turn around for a full face shot. When Owen turned in her direction, several high resolution pictures were instantly captured.
The world’s premier drug manufacturer, a key US Senator, and their families. Any one person on that boat would be excellent hostage material, but Standing Bear’s daughter is the prize.
Berker felt good about her mission thus far. In-country only months and the quarry is in my sights.
The two men were so deep in conversation that Berker regretted she was not a lip reader. She then captured her last images of daughter and mother. The face shot of Helen Snowfeather showed a young woman, possibly nineteen, with dramatically beautiful features. Then the image of Gabriel’s wife, Alice Canyon Hawke, looking much like her daughter would after another twenty-five years and thirty pounds.
After her quarry had moved out of range, Berker lowered her spy apparatus, and studied the news kiosk display nearby. It was scrolling the headline of the day. She chuckled and pointed.
THE SIX YEAR GREENHOUSE GASES DECLINE CONTINUES…ERRATIC GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE CONTINUES…ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE WORSENS… Scientists are Puzzled
“Fools. They can’t see it yet.”
“See what?” her assistant asked.
“Gaia’s revenge,” Berker said. “Let them stay in the dark.”
Just before Dr. Owen’s trawler moved completely out of sight, Berker captured the two men together in a single close-up. Nearby, the news kiosk prominently featured the latest issue of Business Daily. Dr. John Owen’s face smiled back from the cover. The caption read:
John Owen, Edge Medical’s Contrarian CEO: “What’s Next On The ‘Edge’ Of The New Medicine?”
Berker congratulated herself as she regarded the display on her camera. My picture is a better likeness. Dr. Owen was a sturdy man, with close-cut black hair, gray at the temples, and dangerously intelligent eyes.
Berker snapped the modified binocular into its case. Dr. Owen’s fishing boat was gone. She turned to her companion, an intense looking woman in her twenties. “Cynthia,” Berker said, “we are done here for now. I believe you have that special office space to secure for The Sisters, and I have a trip to Boston where I’ll be conferring with Mr. Fowler and his friends. Meantime I want a watch placed on Dr. Owen. When I get back, you and I will make a personal call on Snowfeather. She has real promise.”
The two women walked in silence toward Pioneer Square.
After Dr. John Owen’s fishing boat had drifted out of Berker’s sight, Alice Canyon Hawke took deep breath. It felt good to be among old friends and family. Safe on John’s boat, Alice was feeling normal for the first time in weeks. Senator Gabriel Standing Bear and his family had joined John Owen and his family to celebrate a return to real life after a brutal mugging that put both Alice and Gabriel in a DC hospital months earlier. The Seattle trip was to be a vacation from everything, politics, crime, trauma, and a chance to reconnect with their daughter, Helen, who was a junior at the University of Washington. Discussion of the attack was not allowed. But when Alice had slipped down into the galley to clean up, she had allowed her mind to wander. Damn, she thought. Sharp memory fragments from that harrowing incident in DC had not yet lost their bite. She knew that eventually such memories fade…but apparently not just yet.
Ironically, of all of the disturbing aspects of the emergency that had brought Dr. John Owen and her daughter from Seattle to Alice’s bedside, of the grim-faced police guarding her hospital room, of Gabriel’s head wounds, of the frightened face of her daughter, there was no memory of the attack itself. The mugger’s blow to Alice’s head had erased all recollection of the incident, except the stunning sound of a gun fired at close range. The police account had filled in the chilling details…and Alice’s nightmares were lighting up the dark cracks.
Her first post-assault memory was of the bright lights in the ER, blurred voices, a sense of being moved. Later she awakened in a room, having just opened her good eye, finding herself in a hospital bed, propped up slightly. When she had tried to move, she felt the pressure of the head bandage, the dressing over her right eye, and became aware of the pain in the right half of her face. Still puzzled and disoriented, she noticed the oxygen tubes in her nostrils and the drip line leading from her wrist to the IV tree beside the bed.
Later, after her right eye had recovered, she would look into as mirror and marvel at the persistent, deep bruises. On the boat in Puget Sound, her reverie broken, Alice glanced at her image in a tiny wall mirror. Unconsciously, she touched the area over her right eye; then she blinked. Not a bruise or blemish. Just memories.
The trawler rocked slightly. “Alice, you okay down there?” It was Gabriel’s voice from the deck. “I’ll be out in a minute!” she shouted. “Don’t spear a whale without me!”
Alice stepped out of the galley facing the stairs to the deck; then she hesitated. Damn. Her reverie wasn’t quite done with her. She sat on a small storage chest.
Gabriel. A noise outside her hospital room had pierced her foggy mind. The doorway to her room was open. A bandaged man was sitting just outside. With a start she recognized her husband, Gabriel, in a wheelchair. His head was wrapped in bandages, and his left shoulder was in a sling. Her daughter was standing next to Gabriel in a purple sweatshirt and jeans. The girl’s long, raven hair framed those arresting gray eyes from which nothing seemed to escape.
Then Alice had glimpsed John Owen, their old friend from Seattle. John was standing behind Gabriel and Snowfeather, gripping her husband’s wheelchair. The three crowded in the doorway to Alice’s room, pausing for a seeming eternity. The image of the three of them, inexplicable and poignant, would forever be engraved in Alice’s mind.
Snowfeather broke the spell, holding the door open while John pushed Gabriel just inside the doorway. “Hey, Mom, you’re awake!”
Dr. Owen immediately walked to Alice’s bedside and studied the vital signs monitor. She could feel him gently check her wrist. “Do you know where you are?” Suddenly puzzled, Alice gave him a panicked stare. “This is a hospital, Alice. You and Gabriel were injured by a robber. You’ve been in and out of it for several hours. You do know who I am, right?”
“John,” she had whispered.
Dr. Owen leaned over. “Alice, you have some guests,” he said gently. He motioned back at Gabriel who was still in just inside the doorway. “Do you recognize this motley pair?” Gabriel’s face was stricken with worry. Snowfeather was grinning. Alice managed a smile and raised one hand in greeting.
“You can come in guys,” John said. “She won’t break.”
It took Alice several minutes to connect all the dots and even longer to see the picture they made.
John began speaking. “Alice, two nights ago, when you and Gabriel were going out to dinner, four muggers attacked you in front of an ATM. Gabriel had been waiting in the car. He jumped out, got into a fight with them, pulled two of them off you, disabled one, then…” John paused. “One of them shot him.”
“My God, Gabriel,” Alice whispered, “how badly…”
John held up a gentle hand to Gabriel, mouthing, “Let me tell this…” Gabriel nodded. “Your husband is a tough old Injun, Alice, and a damn lucky man. He took two shots. The shoulder wound wasn’t serious: the bullet just missed his collar bone, a clean in and out.” Then John shook his head in wonder. “And there was a miracle. Gabriel survived a grazing head wound. The bullet actually cut a crease in his skull.”
“What?” Gabriel made a face.
Dr. Owen shook his head, a small smile appearing. “It really was a miracle…or a damn good imitation. Gabriel only lost consciousness for a few minutes. Not even a concussion. You were the one we’ve been worried sick about. I didn’t get your good news until we got off the plane this morning. But when Snowfeather and I left Seattle, you were on the endangered species list. By the way, Rachael, Elisabeth and Josh send their love.”
“I’m no snail darter with the Sierra Club on my side, but I guess I’ll live,” Alice murmured. She looked at her husband, and with a stronger voice, she asked, “How is my man?”
Gabriel leaned forward and took her hand. “I’m doing fine, Princess. I thought I’d lost you…” Gabriel was fighting tears.
“Who would do this to us, Gabriel?”
“The usual DC street thugs, I guess.”
“And you took them on?”
“I had no choice, Princess. Hey, I know, I know.” Gabriel said. “I should have ducked sooner.” Gabriel grinned.
“Not funny,” Alice said.
“Takes more than a thirty-eight to kill a bear,” Gabriel said.
“Don’t talk like that, Gabriel. We could have both been killed.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We need to get away from this terrible place.”
“You mean the hospital or DC?”
“Yes, both.”
Gabriel nodded again, tears streaming down his face. “We will,” he said.
“Promise me,” Alice demanded.
“I promise.” Gabriel said.
When Alice finally broke out of this reverie and climbed onto the deck of the trawler, she noticed John Owen and her husband studying her. Promise kept, Alice thought. John Owen smiled as if reading her mind.
No one was talking at the moment; each passenger seemed to have retreated to his or her own private space. It’s going to be that kind of an outing, John thought as he looked out to the open water and slipped into his own memories.
John Owen was starting medical school at the University of Washington when he first met freshman Gabriel Standing Bear Lindstrom. Despite the age difference, it was an instant buddy relationship that became a lifelong friendship.
Gabriel seemed to carry his depths with him guilelessly, like a child taking his Marvel comic book on his father’s mountain lion hunting trip in order to hide a volume of Kierkegaard. It seemed that Gabriel’s outer toughness was always betrayed by something suddenly soft or funny or startlingly deep…a lingering glance, a turn of phrase, a stance. John had long ago concluded that Gabriel Standing Bear carried more real depth than any guy he had ever met.
On a recent visit to DC, Dr. Owen had noticed a new painting in his friend’s office. Senator Gabriel Standing Bear was looking out from the wall. That stocky torso, the white shirt, the bolo tie and Gabriel’s gray braided hair were perfectly rendered. Like a modern Chief, John had thought. Gabriel’s close-set, brown eyes were lit with the irrepressible twinkle John had seen so many times before. As John had stared at the painting, he imagined his old friend launching into another story. He noted the artist’s signature: ACH. He later asked Gabriel who that was. “He really captured you, Gabriel.”
“It was my Alice,” Gabriel had said, glowing with pride.
“John? Earth to John.” Gabriel was waving his hand at his friend from his seat on the boat.
John Owen smiled. “Sorry, I was just remembering…our history together.”
“Like?”
“Oh…like when the doctors cleared Alice for release, and Snowfeather and I met you for pancakes before our flight back to Seattle. You didn’t look that much worse for wear. That’s when you told me you’re going to have that crease in your skull filled in.”
“You said I wouldn’t want to damage my hard-headed reputation.”
“Thick-headed.” The two men smiled. As John stood to stretch, he caught Gabriel with a direct look. “There was something more you were going to tell me about your skull surgery?”
“Yes.” Gabriel also got up. “Dental surgeons do something like it but I will be supplying the filling.”
Snowfeather had been quietly standing behind the two men when Gabriel made his “bone” announcement. She made a face, and Gabriel patted her on the shoulder.
“Using your own bone?” John asked.
“No, but it’s sort of in the family,” Gabriel said.
“Please, Dad, can I tell?” Snowfeather was gleefully impatient. Gabriel nodded and winked. “It is from the skull of a bear Grandfather Tall Bear killed in Montana.” Snowfeather dramatically rolled her eyes—she was enjoying this moment.
“Oh boy,” Dr. Owen remarked. “I’d love to see the look on the face of that surgeon.”