Surely Nate would find her before anyone else.
________
THE STORY grew. It shot from the courthouse on the waves of the latest telecommunications gadgets and hi-tech hardware. The reporters scrambled with cell phones and laptops and pagers, talking without thinking.
The major wires began running the news twenty minutes after adjournment, and an hour later the first round-the-clock news-gab-a-thon broke into its running series of repetitive stories to go live to a reporter in front of a camera outside the courthouse. “Stunning news here …” she began and then told the story, getting most of it right.
Seated in the rear of the courtroom was Pat Solomon, the last person selected by Troy to run The Phelan Group. He’d been CEO for six years, six very uneventful and very profitable years.
He left the courthouse without being recognized by any reporter. As he rode away, in the back of his limo, Solomon attempted to analyze Troy’s last bombshell. He was not shocked by it. After working for Troy for twenty years nothing surprised
him. The reaction of his idiot children and their lawyers was comforting. Solomon had once been assigned the impossible task of finding within the company a job that Troy Junior could perform without causing a dip in quarterly profits. It had been a nightmare. Spoiled, immature, badly educated, and lacking basic management skills, Troy Junior had run roughshod through an entire division in Minerals before Solomon was given the green light from above to sack him.
A few years later, a similar episode involved Rex and his pursuit of his father’s approval and money. In the end, Rex had gone to Troy in an effort to remove Solomon.
The wives and other children had butted in for years, but Troy had held fast. His private life was a fiasco, but nothing hampered his beloved company.
Solomon and Troy had never been close. In fact, no one, perhaps with the exception of Josh Stafford, had ever managed to become a confidant. The parade of blondes had shared the obvious intimacies, but Troy had no friends. And as he withdrew and declined both physically and mentally, those who ran the company sometimes whispered about its ownership. Surely Troy would not leave it to his children.
He hadn’t, at least not the usual suspects.
The board was waiting, on the fourteenth floor, in the same conference room where Troy had produced his testament, then taken flight. Solomon described the scene in the courtroom, and his colorful narrative became humorous. Thoughts of the heirs gaining control had caused great discomfort among the board. Troy Junior had let it be known that he and his siblings had the votes to seize a majority, and that he planned to clean house and show some real profits.
They wanted to know about Janie, wife number two. She’d worked for the company as a secretary until her promotion to mistress, then to wife, and after reaching the top she had been
particularly abusive to many of the employees. Troy banned her from the corporate headquarters.
“When she left she was crying,” Solomon said happily.
“And Rex?” asked a director, the chief financial officer who had once been fired by Rex in an elevator.
“Not a happy boy. He’s under investigation, you know.”
They talked about most of the children and all of the wives, and the meeting grew festive.
“I counted twenty-two lawyers,” Solomon said with a smile. “Talk about a sad bunch.”
Since it was an informal board meeting, Josh’s absence was of no consequence. The head of Legal declared the will to be a stroke of great luck after all. They had to worry about only one unknown heir, as opposed to six idiots.
“Any idea where this woman is?”
“None,” answered Solomon. “Maybe Josh knows.”
________
BY LATE afternoon, Josh had been forced from his office and had retreated to a small library in the basement of his building. His secretary stopped counting phone messages at a hundred and twenty. The lobby off the main entrance had been crammed with reporters since late morning. He’d left behind strict instructions with his secretaries that no one should disturb him for an hour. So the knock on the door was especially aggravating.
“Who is it?” he shot at the door.
“It’s an emergency, sir,” answered a secretary.
“Come in.”
Her head entered just far enough to look him in the face and say, “It’s Mr. O’Riley.” Josh stopped rubbing his temples and actually smiled. He glanced around the room and remembered there were no phones. She took two steps and placed a portable on the table, then disappeared.
“Nate,” he said into the receiver.
“That you, Josh?” came the reply. The volume was fine but the words were a little scratchy. The reception was better than most car phones.
“Yes, can you hear me, Nate?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the satellite, on the back of my little yacht, floating down the Paraguay River. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, fine. Are you okay, Nate?”
“I’m wonderful, having a ball, just a little boat trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well, the propeller snagged a line of old rope, and the engine choked down. My crew is attempting to unravel it. I’m supervising.”
“You sound great.”
“It’s an adventure, right, Josh?”
“Of course. Any sign of the girl?”
“Not a chance. We’re a couple of days away at best, and now we’re floating backward. I’m not sure we’ll ever get there.”
“You have to, Nate. We read the will this morning in open court. The whole world will soon be looking for Rachel Lane.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. She’s safe.”
“I wish I were with you.”
The edge of a cloud nipped the signal. “What did you say?” Nate asked, louder.
“Nothing. So you’ll see her in a couple of days, huh?”
“If we’re lucky. The boat runs around the clock, but we’re going upriver, and it’s the rainy season so the rivers are full and the currents are strong. Plus, we’re not exactly sure where we’re going. Two days is very optimistic, assuming we get the damned propeller fixed.”
“So the weather’s bad,” Josh said, almost at random. There
wasn’t much to discuss. Nate was alive and well and moving in the general direction of the target.
“It’s hot as hell and it rains five times a day. Other than that it’s lovely.”
“Any snakes?”
“A couple. Anacondas longer than the boat. Lots of alligators. Rats as big as dogs. They call them
capivaras
. They live at the edge of the rivers among the alligators, and when these people get hungry enough they kill them and eat them.”
“But you have plenty of food?”
“Oh yes. Our cargo is black beans and rice. Welly cooks them for me three times a day.”
Nate’s voice was sharp and filled with adventure.
“Who’s Welly?”
“My deckhand. Right now he’s under the boat in twelve feet of water, holding his breath and cutting rope from the prop. Like I said, I’m supervising.”
“Stay out of the water, Nate.”
“Are you kidding? I’m on the upper deck. Look, I gotta run. I’m using juice and I haven’t found a way to recharge these batteries.”
“When will you call again?”
“I’ll try and wait until after I find Rachel Lane.”
“Good idea. But call if you have trouble.”
“Trouble? Why would I call you, Josh? There’s not a damned thing in the world you can do.”
“You’re right. Don’t call.”
TWENTY
_____________
T
he storm hit at dusk, as Welly was boiling rice in the kitchen and Jevy was watching the river grow dark. The wind woke Nate, a sudden howling blast that shook the hammock and snapped him to his feet. Thunder and lightning followed. He walked to Jevy’s side and looked north into a vast blackness. “A big storm,” Jevy said, seemingly indifferent.
Shouldn’t we park this thing? Nate thought. At least find shallow water? Jevy didn’t appear concerned; his nonchalance was somewhat comforting. When the rain started, Nate went below for his rice and beans. He ate in silence with Welly in the corner of the cabin. The bulb above them swayed as the wind rocked the boat. Heavy raindrops battered the windows.
On the bridge, Jevy put on a yellow poncho stained with grease and fought the rain hitting him sharply in the face. The tiny wheelhouse had no windows. The two floodlights attempted to show the way through the darkness, but revealed no more than
fifty feet of churning water in front of them. Jevy knew the river well, and he’d been through worse storms.
Reading was difficult with the boat swaying and rolling. After a few minutes of it, Nate felt sick. In his bag he found a knee-length poncho with a hood. Josh had thought of everything. Clutching the railings, he slowly made his way up the stairs where Welly sat huddled next to the wheelhouse, drenched.
The river bent to the east, toward the heart of the Pantanal, and when they turned, the wind caught them broadside. The boat rocked and threw Nate and Welly hard into the railings. Jevy braced himself with the door of the wheelhouse, his thick arms holding himself in place and maintaining control.
The gusts became relentless, one after the other, only seconds apart, and the
Santa Loura
stopped moving upstream. The storm shoved it toward shore. The rain pellets were hard and cold now, and poured down upon them in sheets. Jevy found a long flashlight in a box beside the wheel, and gave it to Welly.
“Find the bank!” he yelled, his voice struggling over the howling wind and heavy rain.
Nate grappled along the railings to a spot next to Welly because he too wanted to see where they might be headed. But the beam caught nothing but rain, rain so thick it looked like fog swirling above the water.
Then lightning came to their aid. A flash, and they saw the dense black growth of the riverbank not far away. The wind was pushing them toward it. Welly shouted and Jevy yelled something back just as another gust slammed into the boat and tipped it violently to its starboard side. The sudden jolt knocked the flashlight out of Welly’s hand and they watched it disappear into the water.
Crouched on the walkway, clutching the railing, soaked and shivering, it occurred to Nate that one of two things was about to happen. And neither was within their control. First, the boat was
going to capsize. If it didn’t, then they were about to be shoved into the side of the river, into the quagmire where the reptiles lived. He was only slightly scared until he thought about the papers.
Under no circumstances could the papers be lost. He suddenly stood, just as the boat tipped again, and he almost went over the rail. “I have to go below!” he yelled to Jevy, who was gripping the wheel. The captain was scared too.
With his back to the wind, Nate crept down the grated steps. The deck was slick with diesel fuel. A drum had tipped over and was leaking. He tried to lift it, but it would take two men. He ducked into the cabin, flung his poncho in a corner, and went for his briefcase under the cot. The wind slammed into the boat. It pitched and caught Nate with his hands free. He landed hard against the wall with his feet above his head.
There were two things he couldn’t lose, he decided. First, the papers; second, the SatFone. Both were in the briefcase, which was new and nice but certainly not waterproof. He clutched it across his chest and lay on his bunk while the
Santa Loura
rode out the storm.
The knocking stopped. He hoped Jevy had killed the engine with a switch. He could hear their footsteps directly above him. We’re about to hit the bank, he thought, and it’s best for the prop to be disengaged. Surely it wasn’t engine trouble.
The lights went out. Complete darkness.
Lying there in the dark, swaying with the pitch and roll, waiting for the
Santa Loura
to crash into the riverbank, Nate had a horrible thought. If she refused to sign the acknowledgment and/or the waiver, a return trip might be necessary. Months down the road, or maybe years, someone, probably Nate himself, would be forced to trek back up the Paraguay and inform the world’s richest missionary that things were finalized and the money was hers.
He’d read that missionaries took furloughs—long breaks in
their work when they returned to the States and recharged their batteries. Why couldn’t Rachel take a furlough, maybe even fly home with him, and hang around long enough for Daddy’s mess to get cleaned up? For eleven billion, that seemed the least she could do. He’d suggest it to her, if he ever got the chance to meet her.
There was a crash, and Nate was tossed to the floor. They were in the brush.
________
THE
SANTA LOURA
was flat-bottomed, built, like all the boats in the Pantanal, to scrape across sandbars and take the hits of river debris. After the storm, Jevy started the engine and for half an hour worked the boat back and forth, slowly dislodging it from the sand and mud. When they were free, Welly and Nate cleared the deck of limbs and brush. Their search of the boat found no new passengers, no snakes or
jacarés.
During a quick coffee break, Jevy told the story of an anaconda that had found its way on board, years ago. Attacked a sleeping deckhand.
Nate said he didn’t particularly care for snake stories. His search was slow and deliberate.
The clouds went away and a beautiful half-moon appeared above the river. Welly brewed a pot of coffee. After the violence of the storm, the Pantanal seemed determined to be perfectly still. The river was as smooth as glass. The moon guided them, disappearing when they turned with the river, but always there when they headed north again.
Because Nate was half-Brazilian now, he wore no wristwatch. Time mattered little. It was late, probably midnight. The rain had battered them for four hours.
________
NATE SLEPT a few hours in the hammock, and awakened just after dawn. He found Jevy snoring on his bunk in the tiny cabin
behind the wheelhouse. Welly was at the wheel, himself half-asleep. Nate sent him for coffee and took the helm of the
Santa Loura.
The clouds were back, but no rain was in sight. The river was littered with limbs and leaves, the rubble and remains from last night’s storm. It was wide and there was no traffic, so Nate the skipper sent Welly to the hammock for a nap while he commanded the vessel.