David Golemon: Primeval

The heavy F-4 Phantom clipped the tree line with its right wing and then Phillips felt his face flush and his heart freeze as the heavy jet fighter, with Solar Flare still attached, slammed into the Stikine River and then bounced three times as it came apart, spreading fire and debris into the desolate reaches of the surrounding woods and finally smashing into pieces against the facing of the small rise that sloped into a barren plateau.

The code name, Operation Solar Flare, would be lost forever, never to be mentioned in the annals of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, nor would the official histories of the U.S. navy and air force have anything placed into their archives telling the world that the United States was prepared to strike first against the Soviet Union. Even with the massive four-decade search for the lost superweapon, Solar Flare, the cover-up of an event of that magnitude would be kept secret — until fifty years later.

L. T. Lattimer was the last of the old miners who had worked the goldfields from Nome to South Dakota. Like most, Lattimer had spent twenty-four years of his life, his life savings, and a good portion of his family's fortune, and again, like most, had absolutely nothing to show for it. Raised in wealth and educated in ivy, the Boston-born Lattimer knew he could never go home again after such a monumental misjudgment. The burned bridges and a family alienated by his arrogance have assured him of a life of loneliness.

Reduced at times to hiring himself out as a guide to men who used to be his equal in the wealth department, he contracted out for the rich on fishing and hunting expeditions to the many lakes that were fed by the Stikine River.

In between these excursions to the tamer areas of the basin, Lattimer worked his illegal claims and panned, mined, and subsisted on the forested slopes of the valley. Every few months he would strike a small deposit and that was usually just enough to offer a faint glimmer of hope that he was onto what he knew was out there — the mother lode that had supplied the strikes in Nome and the rest of the great Alaskan goldfields. However, as always, the small deposits he had found turned out to be nothing more than that: a deposit, left there by the flowing waters of the Stikine, a mere shadow of the lode that awaited the right man. It was enough, however, to keep the nightmare alive in his heart.

Just recently, he had hired out to a group of graduate students from Stanford University, a subpar institution in his Ivy League mind. Most of the students were studying wildlife that flourished in the Stikine area without the intervention of man; others were there to study the way of the Tlingit Indians. They called themselves anthropologists. They had walked the southern shore of the Stikine for twenty-two days, taking notes, setting up equipment, and listening to loud music half the night. Lattimer suspected they were using drugs, but as long as he was paid, he didn't really care. However, the rock-and-roll music drove him absolutely nuts as he suspected it did also the wildlife they were there to study.

Lattimer was frustrated beyond all measure on this afternoon. He was walking the riverbank with a long-haired and thinly built student everybody called Crazy Charlie Ellenshaw. He was one of the anthropologists that kept him awake at night with his music and social philosophy, but he was a brave sort that had broken away from the others that day out of boredom and followed Lattimer on a quick look-see of the new area. He had even braved the swift current of the Stikine as Lattimer waded across the shallowest spot he could find. Ellenshaw looked as if he were a drowned rat, his crazy long hair was wet and disheveled, but as Lattimer took the boy in, he knew him to be what he called a gamer.

"So, after all of these years, you have never found anything worth being here for so long?" Ellenshaw asked as he looked north toward the large face of a plateau. As he observed the small rise before him he tied his crazily arranged hair back with a leather tie.

"Tracer bits and pieces, nothing to scream and jump for, I'll tell you that," Lattimer answered as he reached down and ran his hand through the river gravel at his feet.

Charlie Ellenshaw watched the guide and then he, too, looked down at the gravel. He saw glittering bits of rock and he also reached down and scooped up a small handful that he held out toward the bearded Lattimer.

"There's gold right here."

Lattimer didn't even look back at the graduate student.

"They don't teach much to you Stanford students, do they, boy?" He laughed out loud and then finally turned to face Ellenshaw. "That's pyrite, sonny. Fool's gold; iron sulfide. It's everywhere, and has sent many an idiot off screaming claims of massive strikes. Sorry, son, finding gold's not quite that easy."

Crazy Charlie let the gravel and fool's gold slide from his hand. He then followed Lattimer toward the tree line. As he did, something caught his eye. It was sticking out from under a large rock that looked as if it had been smoothed by a million years of rushing water. Charlie walked over and kicked at the rock, but it didn't move. Then he bent over and rolled the heavy rock away and then saw the crumpled metal underneath. He reached down and picked it up and rolled the shard over. He saw some black numbers standing out against a lighter black paint.

"Hey, I thought men have never been in this area before?" he asked, looking at the back of Lattimer.

"I never said no one was ever here. Just that you can count all the fishermen and sportsmen on one hand's all." Lattimer irritatingly looked back at the young student. "Why?"

"Aluminum, and look, there's more right there." Charlie pointed to the ground not far from where Lattimer stood.

"Trash — maybe washed up here from someone north, way north." Still, Lattimer walked over and picked up the metal that lay dull in the sunlight. It was crumpled and looked as if it had been in a fire. As he looked from the twisted aluminum in his hand to the stretch of gravel that made its way to the trees, he saw even more of the garbage that had washed up along that stretch of riverbank. "What in Sam Hill is this?"

The young Ellenshaw dropped the piece of aluminum and looked around. He saw something else farther away and walked over. It was also under a rock, washed by a long-ago flood of the Stikine and buried. He knelt down and felt the material. It was rotted and came off in his hand. Then he lifted the rock, not expecting much, and that was when he saw it. The book was old. Its leather was covered in some sort of material that had aged well, but was now deteriorating to the point he saw the pages through the cracks. He lifted the small book and looked it over. The pages for the most part had vanished over time. Some looked to have been torn out, and some appeared to have just turned to dust. Even the pages that remained were almost illegible because of the ink having been wet, dried out, and then wet again over the many years of being exposed to the elements. He raised the small book to his face and saw that some of the writing looked to be in Cyrillic — Russian.

"Mr. Lattimer, do you read Russian?" he asked as he carefully thumbed through the six remaining pages. "Looks like a journal of some sort."

"Living here, you have to speak a little bit and read at least the basics — I was taught by Helena Petrov down at the fishing camp, 'nough to get by, anyways."

"Yes, we met her and her very large son on the way in. Didn't know she was Russian, though."

"Well, she is. Hates the damn Ruskies, though. I mean, she really hates 'em, even though she's one of them."

Charlie walked over and handed Lattimer the journal. Then he looked around him as a sudden breeze sprang up. As the wind ruffled his drying hair, he felt something strange come over him. It was as if he had instantly stepped back into a world he didn't recognize. It wasn't a feeling or thought that Charlie could explain — it just was. He also knew, or felt, they were being watched.