strange way, his father had been the only man he had ever respected. The old man had not understood his only son, but he had stood by him. As a teen, Tremont had been fascinated by the movie Jeremiah Johnson. He had seen it a dozen times. Then, in the dead of an icy winter, he had taken off for the mountains, determined to live off the land just as Johnson had. Pick berries and dig roots. Hunt his own meat. Fight Indians. Pit himself against the elements in a heroic venture few had the courage or imagination to attempt.
But there had been little that was noble about the experience. He killed two deer out of season with his father's 30-30 Remington, mistakenly shot at and almost killed some hikers, got violently sick on the wrong berries, and damn near froze to death. Fortunately, because of his missing rifle, parka, and backpack, plus his constant talking about the film, his father had guessed where he had headed. When the forest service wanted to give up the hunt, his father had raged and pushed all the levers of academia and state politics. The result was the forest service grumbled but soldiered on, eventually finding him, miserable and frostbitten, in a cave on the snowy slopes of Marcy.
Despite everything, he counted it as one of the most important experiences of his life. He had learned from the mountain fiasco that nature was hard, indifferent, and no friend to humanity. He had also discovered physical challenge held little allure for him; it was too easy to lose. But his greatest lesson was the critical point of why Johnson had gone to the mountains. At the time, he had thought it was to challenge nature, to fight Indians, to prove manhood. Wrong. It was to make money. The mountain men were trappers, and everything they did and suffered was for one goal--- to get rich.
He had never forgotten that. The boldness and simplicity of the goal had shaped his life.
As these thoughts flickered through his mind on the rustic veranda, he realized he wished his father were here for the conclusion of Hades. The old man would finally recognize that a man could do anything he wanted as long as he was smart enough and tough enough. Would his father be proud? Probably not. He laughed aloud. Too bad for the old man. His mother would be, but that was meaningless. Women didn't count.
Abruptly he came alert. He cocked his head, listening. The chop-chop of helicopter rotors was growing louder. Tremont knocked back his scotch, left his cigar in a large serpentine ashtray to die a natural death, and strode into the enormous high-beamed living room. Peering down from the log walls were the glass eyes of mounted trophy heads. Adirondack wood-and-leather furniture stood on hand-knotted rugs around the walk-in fireplace. Tremont continued past the crackling fire and along a back hall where the aroma of hot baking-powder biscuits scented the air from the kitchen.
Finally he stepped out on the other side of the lodge into the cool dusk. The chopper, a Bell S-92C Helibus, was settling down in a clearing a hundred yards away.
The four men who descended were in their mid-forties or early fifties, like Tremont himself. Unlike Tremont, who was dressed in custom-made chinos, pewter-colored bush shirt, Gore-Tex lined safari jacket, and a broad-brimmed safari hat that hung from its chin strap down his back, they wore expensive, tailored business suits. They were smooth-looking men with the sophisticated manners of the privileged business class.
As the noisy rotors thundered, Tremont greeted each with the broad smile and vigorous handshake of an old friend. The chopper copilot jumped out to unload luggage. Tremont waved toward the lodge and turned to lead his visitors there.
Moments after the Helibus took off into the twilight, a smaller 206B JetRanger III helicopter settled into the clearing. Two men very different from the occupants of the first helicopter stepped from the JetRanger. They wore ordinary, off-the-rack suits no one would look at twice. The tall, swarthy man in the dark blue suit had a pockmarked face with heavy-lidded eyes and a nose as curved and sharp as a scimitar. The round-faced, bland-looking man with the big shoulders and lanky brown hair wore charcoal gray. Neither had luggage. It was not only the ordinary clothes and lack of suitcases that marked them as different. There was something about the way they moved... a trained predatory manner that anyone who