The Legacy

by Stephen W. Frey

  “But I don’t have the tape anymore. The guy with the scar got it. You know that.”

  “I do, but maybe some people don’t.”

  Cole stared at Bennett for a few seconds. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I think the woman you picked up at the Kro Bar drugged you. She probably went through your cabin after you passed out, searching your possessions.”

  “What?” That was a possibility he hadn’t considered.

  “I don’t think you were hung over that morning. I think you were drugged.”

  Suddenly Cole remembered the nasty mineral taste that had stayed in his mouth for twenty-four hours. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she looking for?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  He saw Bennett’s accusing look. “Who could she have been working for?” Cole asked.

  Bennett shrugged. “Maybe those characters we just left locked in the warehouse. Maybe the DIA operation I told you about when we were on the river in Wisconsin.”

  “But the DIA got the tape,” Cole argued.

  “You don’t know they were the ones,” Bennett retorted angrily. “Neither do I. Like I told you, I’m not certain that operation inside the DIA ever really existed. All your father and I ever heard were rumors and innuendo. Like with anything compartmentalized, there was never anything definitive. We put two and two together and came up with ten.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally Bennett checked his watch. “It’s four o’clock and I need to get going. Do you mind catching a cab back to work? Do you have enough cash or are you going to have to knock over a bodega?”

  “I think I can scrape the fare together somehow.” Cole grinned. “And don’t worry. I’m going to pay you back the seven thousand dollars.”

  “You’re damn right you are,” Bennett said quickly, chuckling. “Actually, it’s expense money. Don’t worry about it. I can convince my superiors I lost it.”

  “I pay my debts, too.”

  “I told you, don’t worry. How’s that finger?” Bennett asked, pointing at Cole’s hand.

  He held it up. “It’ll be all right.” Cole touched the skin, which was already turning black and blue.

  “What about that girl of yours?”

  “Same. Not great.” Cole glanced out the car window at the deli. There was no need to tell Bennett that Nicki didn’t seem to want to speak to him ever again. “It’s good of you to ask, though,” he said. Then he grabbed the handle, opened the door, turned back toward Bennett and held out his right hand. “Thanks for everything, Bennett.”

  Bennett shook Cole’s hand. “I’m sorry about the way I talked to you back there at the warehouse. I saw that don’t-talk-to-me-like-you’re-my-father look on your face.”

  Instantly, Cole was embarrassed. “You had every right to say what you said. I was acting like a child.”

  Bennett released Cole’s hand. “Make sure you call that Washington number if you need me.”

  Cole nodded. “I will. Thanks again.” He patted Bennett’s broad shoulder, stepped from the car, closed the door and waved as Bennett eased the car into traffic.

  Cole puffed out his cheeks and exhaled as he watched the Ford disappear into the distance, then began walking. He was a long way from Gilchrist and needed to find the closest subway station. He didn’t have enough cash to pay for a taxi.

  * * *

  —

  Jamison paced back and forth behind the Oval Office desk. Zahn and Walsh sat in the chairs beside the desk, as they had the week before. “A second tape?” he asked

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Zahn answered hesitantly. “That is William Seward’s concern.”

  “Did he voice this concern in front of my associate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dammit!” Jamison smashed his fist on the desk.

  Zahn winced.

  “Why the hell did you let him say that?” Jamison demanded, his eyes burning.

  “I didn’t,” the general said. “Seward just blurted the whole thing out. Including a story about Jim Egan conveying the original film to him to throw him off the track.” Zahn stared steadily at Jamison.

  Finally Jamison folded his arms over his chest and glanced away. He knew Zahn was livid at not being told about the film.

  “On what does Seward base his assumption that there is a second tape?” Walsh asked. Like the president, Walsh was wearing a tuxedo. They were both about to head into a state dinner.

  “I don’t know,” Zahn responded. “Just his analysis of Jim Egan’s character, I think. He says Egan was too careful not to make a second tape.”

  “What are you doing about it, General?” Jamison asked. “I mean, is it possible that Seward could be right?” He was clearly shaken. He had already counted the mission in the “successfully closed” column.

  “It’s obviously possible,” Walsh interrupted. “So what are you doing about it, General Zahn?”

  “We have someone very close to Cole Egan who is monitoring the situation carefully.”

  Jamison stopped pacing for a second. He was already well aware of the person who was close to Cole Egan. “How did my associate react to the news?”

  “Not well,” Zahn answered.

  * * *

  —

  Cole stepped from the hotel elevator. His apartment would be undergoing renovation work for at least a month. He whistled as he walked down the long corridor. During the afternoon—while he had eaten lunch with Tori Brown and been occupied with Mad Dog and his crew—interest rates had dropped a few ticks, increasing the value of his portfolio almost a million dollars. Suddenly the prediction was for additional rate drops in the next few weeks as a mass of weak economic data was being reported. Out of nowhere the possibility of receiving a bonus was looking better and better—and with it the possibility of paying off his debt at the Blue Moon. Life was funny. Just when things looked bleakest, they could turn on a dime.

  Cole pulled the magnetic-strip hotel key from his shirt pocket, inserted it into the slot, waited as the light on the pad turned green, then pushed. Just inside the door a note lay on the floor. He picked it up and in the light from the hall began to read. Finally, he shook his head and laughed softly. On a damn dime.

  13

  There was Magee’s familiar knock—two hard raps. “Come in,” Seward called from the chair in front of the fireplace.

  Magee pressed down the latch, shoved the door open with his shoulder and moved into Seward’s Virginia cabin, briefcase in hand. “Good evening, sir.” He nodded stiffly.

  “Hello, Commander.” Seward recognized that Magee was still annoyed from his last visit. “I hope the drive down from Washington wasn’t too bad.” As much as it annoyed him, Seward forced himself to use a conciliatory tone.

  General Zahn had made it quite clear that he wanted everyone working well together at this point. No petty differences were going to “fuck up” anything. According to Zahn, those were President Jamison’s exact words. The president wanted everyone involved to understand that nothing was going to get in the way of the operation’s successful conclusion. If something did, heads would roll. Seward had realized that the threat was literal, and it had shaken him. He had been involved with Operation Snowfall from its beginning in 1963, and he knew by now that everyone was expendable. He was seventy-two years old and still in reasonably good health. There was no reason to die before his time.

  “Why don’t you get something to drink, Commander Magee?” Seward motioned toward the kitchen. “There’s soda and coffee in there,” he offered. “Make yourself at home.”

  “No, thank you,” Magee said, tight-lipped.

  “Then please sit down,” Seward said politely.

  Magee placed the briefcase on the floor next to the chair opposite Seward and sat
without taking his eyes from the older man.

  “Tell me about Colombia,” Seward said. They never discussed matters as sensitive as this over the telephone, always face to face.

  “Unfortunately, it was as we speculated,” Magee answered tersely.

  “I see.” Seward frowned. “Come over to the table with me.” Seward picked up his cane, rose with some effort and limped to a card table erected in a corner of the room. He pointed at six photographs spread out on the table. “Do you recognize any of these men?”

  Magee perused the pictures. His eyes focused on one in particular. “Him,” Magee said confidently. He tapped the picture of a fair-skinned man with a shock of yellow hair.

  Seward cursed softly.

  “He’s the one who came out of nowhere in Manhattan after I took the tape from Cole Egan,” Magee continued. “He shot Catherine. He probably killed Agent Graham as well.”

  “Graham was found?” Seward asked quickly.

  Magee nodded. “He was found in Bryant Park with the back of his skull smashed in.” Magee glanced at Seward suspiciously. “How the hell did you find this guy so fast?”

  “When you told me last week that you had been chased in Manhattan, I did some digging. I spoke to a friend of mine in Washington and he sent me these.” Seward pointed at the photographs. “These are pictures of the men Jim Egan worked closely with during his career as a DIA agent.” Seward picked up the photograph Magee had identified and scrutinized it for a few seconds. “The man you have just identified is Bennett Smith. He was Jim Egan’s primary partner on covert DIA operations over the last thirty-five years.”

  Magee nodded. “I see.” So this operation involved the DIA. Seward hadn’t told him that. Seward had simply told him to investigate the grave in Colombia and to inspect the body. There had been no particulars other than that. There hadn’t been all along. “A young boy in Colombia informed me that a man fitting Smith’s description was the one who dug the grave.”

  “That makes sense,” Seward agreed. “Egan and Smith were on a mission together.”

  “What kind of mission?” Magee didn’t expect to receive any specifics, but what the hell, he might as well ask.

  Seward turned, limped back to the chair and sat down. He motioned for Magee to do the same. “Does the name Hector Gomez mean anything to you?”

  Magee racked his brain for a moment. Almost, almost. There it was. “Yes, it does.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Gomez is the kingpin of a drug family out of Colombia.” He had heard Gomez’s name mentioned once at a Pentagon briefing.

  “Jim Egan and Bennett Smith were in Colombia to kill Gómez,” Seward said matter-of-factly. “Commander, what I’m about to tell you is classified top secret and contained in a compartment into which you have just been admitted.”

  Magee nodded as he heard the official language. He loved this stuff. It was what he lived for.

  “Iraq has experienced a huge influx of crack cocaine over the last two years.” Seward could see Magee’s resentment at being kept in the dark turning quickly to fascination.

  Magee nodded again. He had performed SEAL team covert operations on Kuwait’s beaches during the Persian Gulf War and had kept up with the political situation in the Middle East since. He was aware that drug abuse by Iraq’s poor population had suddenly exploded despite hardline efforts by the government to stop the inflow. “I assume from what you are telling me that Gómez is supplying Iraq,” Magee said.

  “Yes,” Seward answered.

  “But why would we want to assassinate Gómez? It seems to me we’d be happy about what he’s doing. More civil unrest in Iraq means their government has less time to focus on Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. It means they have less time to focus on moving the Republican Guard around and causing ulcers for our senior military officers. Our military spends billions every time the Republican Guard assembles at a border. Gómez is probably saving us a lot of money.”

  “Gómez doesn’t sell directly to dealers in Iraq.”

  It took Magee only seconds to fully grasp the implication. “So from your tone of voice I’m guessing there must exist a covert operation in which we are the middlemen.”

  “That’s correct.” Magee might be arrogant and obnoxious, Seward thought, but he was also very intelligent. “It’s an operation that perhaps ten people in the world are aware of.” Seward knew that would impress Magee. “An operation which the Drug Enforcement Agency doesn’t know about, which is where the problem arises.” Seward paused as he switched gears. “A few months ago members of the Gómez cartel killed two Drug Enforcement Agency people in Bogotá and the DEA went ballistic. They wanted Gómez badly—”

  “And the people who put the operation together were afraid that if the DEA got to Gómez, he would tell them what was going on in Iraq,” Magee interrupted. “And the United States government would have a political nightmare on its hands.”

  “Right,” Seward said stiffly. He hated the way Magee finished his sentences sometimes. “A nightmare of epic proportions. Jim Egan and Bennett Smith were sent down to Colombia to take out Hector Gómez before the DEA found him. Gómez was the only one who could identify the middlemen in the Iraq situation—in other words, identify the United States as funding those who delivered the cocaine. Egan and Smith led a small group of specially trained Army Rangers through the rain forests of Brazil and Colombia to Zaraza, where you went to recover the body. That was where Gomez’s drug operation was based. Egan and Smith got Gómez, but Egan was lost in a gun battle when the Rangers attacked the Gómez compound.”

  “I haven’t seen any news reports of Gomez’s death.”

  “And you won’t,” Seward countered. “The Gómez family is the most secretive of any drug outfit operating south of the border.”

  “What does all that have to do with the tape I took from Cole Egan in Manhattan?” Magee asked.

  “I believe that Jim Egan’s disappearance in Colombia is linked to the tape surfacing at this time. Somehow Jim Egan arranged for the tape you recovered in Manhattan to be conveyed to his son, Cole. I’ve been trying to pry that thing out of him for thirty-five years. I knew he had it, but obviously I didn’t know where it was. But I figured that when he died, the tape might appear. So I focused on anyone Jim was close to, including his son, his sister and the men he has worked closely with over the years, as people who might turn up with the tape. I had them all followed by teams. Your team was assigned to Cole Egan and you hit pay dirt.” Seward paused. “I had a team after Bennett Smith, but they lost him about twenty-four hours before you followed Cole Egan to that Chase branch. Smith is a slick character.”

  “It seems coincidental that Bennett Smith just happened to be in Manhattan when Cole Egan got hold of the tape,” Magee pointed out.

  “Doesn’t it?” Seward asked dryly.

  “Do you think there is a connection?”

  “I think we should assume so. I think we should assume that Smith delivered the tape to Cole Egan.” Seward tapped the end of his cane on the floor. “Smith is a loose cannon at this point. He was very close to Jim Egan. There’s no telling what he knows, or what he’ll do.” Seward paused. “He needs to be apprehended in light of his sudden appearance in Manhattan, and what you found in Colombia.”

  “Yes,” Magee agreed. “But if he’s AWOL, how will I find him?”

  “That won’t be hard,” Seward replied. “Smith hasn’t allowed Cole Egan out of his sight since that night in Manhattan.”

  “How do you know?”

  Seward smiled. “Because we haven’t let Cole Egan out of our sight either. We regained contact with him in Wisconsin. And by regaining contact, I’m not talking about Lewis Gebauer saying good morning to Cole on the Gilchrist trading floor. I’m talking about a professional following Cole’s every move.”

  “Why did you continue following Cole? I got the tape.”

  “I�
��ve been shadowing Jim Egan for almost four decades. I thought it might be a good idea to stick with Cole a little longer, even after you got the tape, in case there was another copy.” Seward raised a bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “Which was why I ordered you not to harm Cole in Manhattan.”

  “And?” Magee didn’t want to dwell on that issue.

  Seward shrugged. “And we followed him from Wisconsin to Minnesota, then home to New York, but we didn’t observe anything unusual. We even had someone in Wisconsin drug him and go through his possessions, but she found nothing suspicious. However, we’re still watching him.” Seward took a deep breath. “And Bennett Smith is still watching Cole too, although we aren’t sure why.” Seward pointed at Magee. “Which is where you come in. I need to know why Smith is sticking so close to Cole.”

  14

  Cole grabbed the receiver and punched a button on his phone bank marked TUCKER TRAVIS. This line was a direct intercom to one of the largest government securities dealers on Wall Street. “Pick up Gilchrist!” he yelled, eyeing the six message slips cluttering his desk. It was only 8:30 A.M. but CNN and Fox had already each called three times this morning. Tori Brown had been just one day ahead of the pack. “Come on!” he shouted. “This is Gilchrist!”

  “Yeah, Gilchrist!” someone shouted back over the line almost instantly this time. “It’s Chris Tessorio at Tucker.”

  “Chris, this is Cole.”

  “Hey, Cole, baby. Sorry I took so long, but it’s crazy out there this morning. Lots of securities are swapping hands.” It had been all of ten seconds since Cole’s first request for service, but that was aeons in the trading business. In those ten seconds Cole could have pushed a button for one of the other five dealers on his phone bank and Chris would have lost a large commission. “What can I do for you?” Chris asked.

  Cole had met Chris’s boss once, but never Chris. He wouldn’t have been able to pick Chris out of a police lineup if his life depended on it, but they spoke at least five times a day and over the last few years had executed thousands of transactions together. But that was the trading side of Wall Street. It was strictly a phone business.