The Legacy

by Stephen W. Frey

  That made sense. Tori might have given him away without even meaning to. He’d have to go to Powell blind and wing it when he got there. “All right.” He released his grip on her, popped the tape from the VCR, replaced it in its case and headed toward the lodge door.

  “Where are you going?” she shouted.

  “To pack,” he called back over his shoulder. “And then to Powell.”

  “Not without me, you aren’t.”

  Cole stopped at the door. “Billy will give you a ride to the Duluth Airport. There are plenty of flights from Duluth to Minneapolis. From there you can make it back to New York easily.”

  “But—”

  He held up a hand. “When I’m done in Montana, I’ll call you. I told you I’d give you the right of first refusal on the Dealey Tape, and I won’t renege on that. You can match any and all offers.”

  “And just how are you going to get to Montana?” A sly smile spread across her face. “Walk?”

  Cole’s shoulders sagged. He had completely forgotten about his money problem. He couldn’t ask Billy for funds. The man had hardly any money. For a second he considered asking Tori for a loan, but he knew that wasn’t even worth the effort.

  “All right, pack your bags. I guess you’re coming with me to Montana.”

  “Good. And maybe when we get there you’ll give me my cell phone back.”

  22

  The Missouri River is formed by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers at a lonely spot called Three Forks, Montana, located sixty miles northwest of Yellowstone National Park. From Three Forks the Missouri flows north past Helena through the Big Belt Mountains to the tiny town of Powell. At Powell the river turns east toward Great Falls, then finally southeast through the Dakotas toward its St. Louis rendezvous with the mighty Mississippi.

  Powell turns the Missouri east, and in return for this guidance, it clings to the wide river for protection like a storm-weary barnacle to a harbor piling, as if the Rocky Mountain peaks towering high above the tiny town might bend down to swallow it and its four hundred residents like the dinosaurs that roamed the region millions of years before. Powell consists of a small trailer park, a few clapboard homes, a diner that doubles as the local watering hole, several outfitter stores for fishermen and hunters, Miller’s General Store and a rundown seven-room motel also owned by Jack Miller and his wife. The interstate, a half mile west of town, shadows the Missouri’s every move and connects Powell to the outside world—Helena, thirty miles to the south, and Great Falls, forty miles to the northeast. Between Powell and these two small cities is little else but the river, the mountains, the interstate and the single-track main line of the Burlington Northern Railroad, which shadows the river’s course even more closely than the interstate does.

  Cole eased the Jeep Cherokee off the interstate and down the gently sloping exit ramp. At the bottom of the ramp he turned left onto a lonely, uneven gravel road and headed toward Powell as morning light worked its way past high clouds and craggy peaks. It was just after nine o’clock. He and Tori had driven all night, twenty hours straight from Hubbard, alternating shifts at the wheel, stopping only twice for gasoline and food. It had been a marathon drive, but in a way he had enjoyed it. The drive had served as an opportunity to reflect on the incredible events of the last few days, and to figure out what he was going to say to his father—if they could find him.

  “Where are we?” Tori groaned, rubbing her eyes.

  “Paradise,” Cole answered cheerfully. He meant it, too. He had never traveled in the Northwest before, but after only a few hours of the incredible scenery, he was already taken with it. “The place I’m going to live someday.” Northern Wisconsin was beautiful, but Montana was something else. It was more majestic, more impressive and even more remote, which was the best thing of all.

  “Oh!” She groaned again as she stretched, working a kink out of her neck. “Cole, why do you like these backwoods, off-the-beaten-track places? No, wait a minute,” she interrupted herself. “Let me correct that. These off-the-no-track places.”

  “There are fewer people,” he answered, braking as the road dropped down along the railroad. “And there’s a track for you.” Cole pointed at the two silver rails.

  “Ha, ha.”

  Cole barely noticed her laugh as he continued gazing out the window. On the other side of the track was the river—two hundred feet wide at this point—swirling slowly east now that it was downstream from town. Rising a thousand feet straight up out of the far bank was a sheer rock face.

  “Don’t you like people?” Tori asked.

  “Do you?” he asked, watching the sun gleam against the top of the peak.

  “Mostly.”

  “Well, it’s a free country. You’re entitled to your opinion. And I’m entitled to try to change it, but I don’t feel like trying right now because I don’t have the energy.” Suddenly he was exhausted. The rusting sign ahead indicated that Powell was just around the bend, and now that they were here, the adrenaline that had kept him awake through the gray hours of dawn was beginning to dissipate quickly.

  Tori shook her head. Cole was a loner, just like his father. “At least there isn’t any snow here,” she observed, looking past Cole at the river.

  “No, there isn’t. It’s supposed to stay warm. The temperature is supposed to get into the upper fifties today. At least that’s what the weatherman on the radio said.” Cole checked the sky. It was still clear. “They are calling for rain in the afternoon.”

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked. She had tried to change Cole’s mind yesterday afternoon as they had driven down from northern Wisconsin through Minneapolis to pick up Interstate 90. She had tried to convince him again to deal with the tape first, then go after his father, but he wouldn’t listen. As Minneapolis faded in the rearview mirror, she had changed tactics, grilling him as to how he expected to find Jim Egan. She pointed out that it would be like finding a needle in a haystack the size of—well, Montana. Cole had grumbled back that he had a plan all right, but would provide no details. Now that they were finally here, she wanted to know how he was going to justify the ordeal they had just endured. “Come on,” she urged. “I want to know.”

  Cole reached for his sunglasses sitting on the dashboard and put them on as the sun burst through a break in the peaks. “I have a picture of my father in my wallet. It’s old, but he can’t have changed that much since it was taken. We’ll show it to people around town. Hopefully someone will recognize him. There aren’t that many people here.” The tiny town came into view as they rounded a bend. “Heck, you could probably fit all of Powell into one block of New York City.”

  Tori’s mouth fell open. “That’s the extent of your plan? An old picture you’re going to show to a bunch of total strangers? With just that, you’re willing to jump in a Jeep and drive almost a thousand miles?”

  “Actually it’s more than a thousand miles from here to Hubbard.”

  She hated it when he did that. She realized that deflecting the conversation was his way of saying he didn’t want to talk about the important point, but she hated it anyway. She put her head in her hands as Cole steered the Jeep into the general store’s rutted parking lot. She could feel a headache coming on.

  “Your father was wearing a disguise the day I met him here in Powell.” She pointed at the diner across the dirt road from the store. “He didn’t want anyone to recognize him. I’m pretty sure he still won’t. I’m willing to bet he hasn’t been running down Main Street, if that’s really what one would call this cow path, whooping it up and telling everyone who he is. Call me crazy,” she said acidly, “but I’ve got this feeling.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Cole was trying hard to control his temper, but it had been a long night and he was running thin on patience.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Let’s drive to the nearest airport and get on
a plane to New York.”

  “Again with New York.” Cole groaned as he reached into the backseat for the backpack. Inside it was the Dealey Tape. He wasn’t letting it out of his sight even for a moment now. He pulled on the door handle and hopped out of the Jeep.

  “Yes, again with New York!” Tori slid out her side and met him in front of the vehicle. “Wake up, Cole! Use your head. You’ve got one of the most important moments of history recorded on the tape inside that backpack.” She grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. “We’ll come back for your father, I promise.”

  “I thought you and he were involved.” Cole still couldn’t bring himself to say “lovers.”

  “Yes, so?”

  “So I would think you’d be more concerned about his welfare.”

  “I am, but I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do out here except put ourselves at risk. He’ll be found when he wants to be found. If there are two things I have learned about your father over fifteen years, they are that he can take care of himself and that if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”

  Cole tried to pull away from Tori, but she wouldn’t let him go.

  “Cole, you won’t even tell me who’s after him, or who chased you in Manhattan when you got the first tape.” She paused, giving him a chance to explain, but he said nothing. “I don’t mean to seem so insensitive.” Her voice softened. “I know you think I’m just looking out for myself and my career. I am, I’ll admit, but I’m also looking out for you. It’s what Jim wanted, I swear to you. He wanted you to have the money and me to take the tape to my people. He wanted me to have a chance at some success too. I haven’t told you that yet, but it’s true. He had the whole thing figured out.” Still Cole said nothing. “After we get the tape to New York, we’ll go to the police. Or better still, the FBI. We’ll find him, Cole. We won’t stop until we do.”

  “We can’t go to the FBI,” Cole said quietly, “or the police.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s the government that’s after him—and me,” he added.

  A quizzical expression came to Tori’s face.

  “I didn’t want to scare you,” Cole continued. “It’s people in the federal government who are after what I have in the backpack. People very high up in the government, if my information is correct. People who probably have every law enforcement official in this country looking for me right now. I can’t show myself to the FBI or the police. They’d arrest me immediately, slap me with some phony charge, confiscate the tape and I’d never see it again.”

  Tori let go of Cole’s collar and banged the hood of the Jeep with both hands. “Exactly!” she said loudly. “Which is why I want to get that tape to a safe place right away!”

  Cole leaned down until his face was just inches from hers. “We don’t have time,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Yesterday morning I went to a boathouse on the Lassiter and retrieved the tape I now have in my backpack, thanks to directions on that note you slipped under the hotel door. I barely got away with the tape, and my life.” He pulled the jacket down and pointed to his upper arm. The shirt was caked with dried blood. “That’s thanks to a bullet from a gun fired by one very pissed-off intelligence agent.”

  Tori’s upper lip curled and she turned away. She couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

  He pulled the jacket back up. “Tori, the guy who did this is probably still after me. Him and an army of others. They’re after my father too, and they’re mad as hell.” Maybe she wouldn’t understand this part but he was going to say it anyway. “I’ve only seen my father a few times in my entire life. God knows he hasn’t put out much of an effort to be a part of it, but I don’t care. If I ever thought I’d missed a chance to get to know him because I chose to go for the money first, I’d never be able to live with myself. I know what it’s like to think he’s dead, and it’s horrible. Now I’ve got a second chance. I have to find him as soon as possible.” He saw the faint smile on her lips and in her eyes. “As far as I know, you’re the last person to see him. And you saw him right here in this town. That puts us one step ahead of everyone else. One very small step, but that’s enough for me. I have to find him. Then we can focus on the Dealey Tape.”

  Slowly Tori reached up and touched his cheek gently, then kissed him there. “Okay,” she said softly, pulling away. She wasn’t going to change his mind, that was obvious. There was no reason to argue any further. “I won’t say another word about going to New York first. I’m here to help. Just tell me how to do that.”

  “The first thing you can do is wait here for a second.”

  “All right,” she agreed.

  Cole walked to an old phone booth outside the general store’s entrance. From his shirt pocket he pulled out a long distance calling card he had Tori purchase with cash early this morning at a Billings gas station. The card was good for two hours of calls. To this point he had only made one short call, so there was plenty of time left on it. The beauty of using it, unlike Tori’s cell phone, was that no one would be able to pinpoint their whereabouts because there was no record as to who was the owner of the card’s PIN number.

  He punched in the number for the Gilchrist trading floor reception area and the card’s access code, then checked his watch. It was nine-fifteen here and eleven-fifteen in the east. Anita ought to be at the reception desk.

  “Gilchrist and Company.”

  “Anita.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Cole, but don’t say my—”

  “Hey, Co—”

  “Don’t say my name!” Gebauer could be out by her desk. Jesus, the paranoia was really setting in, he realized. “Just listen to me.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “When I was leaving I told you I might need your help, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need it now.”

  She hesitated. “All right.”

  “I need you to go to the following address.” He reeled off the street number quickly. “There’s a package waiting there for you with instructions inside. I need you to get it. This is very important. Will you do this for me, Anita?”

  “Yes.” She was frightened. It all sounded very strange and she didn’t want to be caught up in something illicit, but Cole was a good person. He had always treated her with respect, unlike many of the other traders. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks, and don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to go over to the Bloomberg terminal and check the rate on the two-year treasury note for me.” Gilchrist kept a terminal in the reception area so visitors could check financial news as they waited. “The rate is in the lower left section of the main screen. You won’t have to get to other screens or anything.” It might be stupid to stay on the line any longer than was really necessary, but he had to know where the market was going.

  “Hold on.”

  “Thanks.”

  He had to wait only a few seconds.

  “Hello.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got the rate,” Anita said.

  Beautiful, he thought as he listened. The rate was down thirty basis points since he had left New York. His portfolio had gone up twenty-five million dollars in value. “Thanks, Anita. I’ll call you soon. Goodbye.”

  He hung up the phone and beckoned to Tori. “Ready?” he called.

  “Yes.”

  The only person inside the general store was a checkout girl standing behind the cash register reading a magazine.

  “Good morning,” Cole called.

  The young girl glanced up from her magazine. “Hello.” She was polite, but indifferent.

  Cole removed the picture of his father from his wallet and placed it on the count
er. “This is my father. He has Alzheimer’s disease. Two weeks ago he disappeared from my family’s house up in Great Falls.” Cole shook his head dejectedly. “Just flat disappeared.” Cole saw sadness flicker over the young girl’s face as he related the story. “We can’t find him anywhere,” he continued. “He used to come down to Powell a lot to fish. He loved it here. Anyway, I just wondered if maybe you had seen him.”

  The young girl leaned over and carefully inspected Jim Egan’s photograph. Finally she straightened up and shook her head. “I’m sorry, mister. I don’t recognize the man in that picture.”

  “Have you seen any strangers lately? People who maybe recently moved into town?”

  “No. I’d notice, too. Strangers stick out like sore thumbs around here.”

  “Okay.”

  “If your father was a fisherman, maybe you should try one of the outfitter stores in town,” the girl suggested. “Maybe he stopped in one of those places.”

  Cole smiled. “Good idea.” He began walking toward the door, then stopped and turned back. “Oh, miss.”

  “Yes?” She had already gone back to the magazine.

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What?” Her face brightened. She wanted to be of help now. The handsome young man had an engaging way about him.

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “Since the beginning of last summer.”

  “And you know everybody in town, right?”

  “Sure. Powell’s a small place,” she offered cheerfully. “I knew you were a stranger the minute you walked in. Like I said, strangers stick out like sore thumbs.”

  “And I guess everybody living in Powell pretty much does their food shopping here.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s the only place within thirty miles to buy groceries.”

  Cole hesitated. He didn’t want this question to seem too mysterious. “Has anybody been buying more groceries than normal lately?”

  Tori glanced up. That was a good question. Why hadn’t she thought of it?

  The checkout girl put a finger to her lips and gazed at the water-stained tile ceiling for a few moments. “Mmm. I can’t think of—wait a minute! The General’s been buying a lot more lately.”