[e-book note: Yes, this novel starts with chapter 5! Chapters 2, 3, and 4 come a bit later in the book, with chapter 1 at the very end. Please don't "fix" this, because while pretty odd, it is what the author intended.]

THE helicopter flew low over a landscape as barren as any to be found on planet Earth. This was Nunavut. It wasn't a province and hardly a territory though they called it that. As far as Warburton was concerned they could give it all back to the Eskimos—which was exactly what Canada had done, back in 1999. Nunavut was 810,000 square miles of nothing much, one-fifth of Canada's land area. Warburton looked out his frosty window and was amazed to see a polar bear loping along a few hundred feet below him. Hunting? Fleeing the helicopter? He was tempted to ask the little Inuit with the brown and weather-beaten face, but realized he could never hope to deal with the man's name. He was introduced to Warburton at the Churchill airport as Charlie Charttinirpaaq, which sounded like a man with a bad cough and a severe case of the hiccups.

It was damn cold inside, but it didn't seem to bother Charlie. The little Inuit had pushed the hood of his parka back, revealing straight black hair that looked to have been groomed with rendered walrus blubber. His gnarled brown hands were bare. His coat had a handmade and hard-used look to it, but his boots looked like L.L. Beans. He seemed to feel Warburton's gaze, looked across the helicopter and smiled, revealing widely spaced but strong, brown teeth. Didn't they chew reindeer hides to soften them? Or was that just the women? Warburton's own outfit, purchased at