The Testament Read online

  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.

  It beat the hell out of a courtroom. Shirtless, shoeless, sipping sweet coffee while leading an expedition into the heart of the world’s largest swamp. In the glory days, he would’ve been racing to a trial somewhere, juggling ten things at once, phones stuck in every pocket. He didn’t really miss it; no lawyer in his right mind really missed the courtroom. But he would never admit that.

  The boat practically guided itself. With Jevy’s binoculars, he watched the shoreline for jacarés, snakes, and capivaras. And he counted tuiuius, the tall, white, long-necked bird with a red head that had become the symbol of the Pantanal. There were twelve in one flock on a sandbar. They stood still and watched the boat go by.

  The captain and his sleepy crew steamed northward, as the sky turned orange and the day began. Deeper and deeper into the Pantanal, uncertain where their journey would lead them.

  TWENTY-ONE

  _____________

  THE COORDINATOR of South American Missions was a woman named Neva Collier. She was born in an igloo in Newfoundland, where her parents had worked for twenty years among the Inuit natives. She herself had spent eleven years working in the mountains of New Guinea, so she knew firsthand the trials and challenges of the nine hundred or so people whose activities she coordinated.

  And she was the only person who knew that Rachel Porter had once been Rachel Lane, illegitimate daughter of Troy Phelan. After med school, Rachel had changed names in an effort to erase as much of her past as possible. She had no family; both adoptive parents had died. No siblings. No aunts, uncles, or cousins. At least none that she knew. She had only Troy, and she was desperate to remove him from her life. After completing the World Tribes seminary, Rachel had confided her secrets to Neva Collier.

  The higher-ups at World Tribes knew Rachel had secrets, but not a history that would impede her yearning to serve God. She was a doctor, a graduate of their seminary, a dedicated and humble servant of Christ who was eager to enter the mission field. They promised never to divulge anything about Rachel, including her exact location in South America.

  Sitting in her small neat office in Houston, Neva read the extraordinary account of the reading of Mr. Phelan’s will. She had been following the story since the suicide.

  Communication with Rachel was a slow process. They exchanged mail twice a year, in March and in August, and Rachel usually called once a year from a pay phone in Corumbá when she went there for supplies. Neva had spoken to her the year before. Her last furlough had been in 1992. After six weeks she’d abandoned it and returned to the Pantanal. She had no interest in being in the United States, she had confided in Neva. It was not her home. She belonged with her people.

  Judging from the lawyers’ comments in the article, the issue was far from settled. Neva put the file away and decided to wait. At the appropriate time, whenever that might be, she would inform her governing board of Rachel’s old identity.

  She hoped that moment would never come. But how, exactly, does one hide eleven billion dollars?

  ________

  NO ONE really expected the lawyers to agree on where to meet. Each firm insisted on choosing the site of the summit. The fact that they agreed to actually get together, on such short notice, was monumental.

  So they met at a hotel, the Ritz in Tysons Corner, in a banquet room where tables had been hastily wedged together in a perfect square. When the door was finally closed, there were close to fifty people in the room, for every firm felt obliged to bring along extra associates and paralegals and even secretaries to impress.

  The tension was almost visible. No Phelans were present, only their legal teams.

  Hark Gettys called the meeting to order, and did the wise thing of cracking a very funny joke. Like humor in the courtroom, where people were anxious and not expecting comedy, the laughter was loud and healthy. He suggested they go around the table and let one lawyer per Phelan heir say what was on his or her mind. He would go last.

  An objection was lodged. “Who exactly are the heirs?”

  “The six Phelan children,” Hark responded.

  “What about the three wives?”

  “They’re not heirs. They’re ex-w
ives.”

  This upset the attorneys for the wives, and after a heated battle they threatened to walk out. Someone suggested allowing them to speak anyway, and this solved the problem.

  Grit, the feisty litigator hired by Mary Ross Phelan Jackman and her husband, stood and made a plea for war. “We have no choice but to challenge the will,” he said. “There was no undue influence, so we have to prove the old buzzard was crazy. Hell, he jumped to his death. And he gave one of the world’s great fortunes to some unknown heir. Sounds crazy to me. We can find psychiatrists who’ll testify.”

  “What about the three who examined him before he jumped?” someone shot from across the table.

  “That was stupid,” Grit snarled back. “It was a setup, and you guys fell for it.”

  This upset Hark and the other lawyers who had agreed on the mental exam. “Perfect hindsight,” Yancy said, and that stalled Grit for the moment.

  The legal team for Geena and Cody Strong was headed by a woman named Langhorne, who was tall and thick and wore an Armani dress. She had once been a professor at Georgetown Law and when she addressed the group she did so with the air of one who knew everything. Point one: There were only two grounds for contesting a will in Virginia—undue influence and lack of mental capacity. Since no one knew Rachel Lane, it was safe to assume she had little or no contact with Troy. Therefore, it would be difficult if not impossible to prove she somehow unduly influenced him when he made his last will. Point two: Lack of testamentary capacity was their only hope. Point three: Forget fraud. Sure he lured them into the mental exam under false pretenses, but a will cannot be attacked on the grounds of fraud. A contract yes, a will no. They had already done the research and she had the cases, if anyone cared.

  She worked from a brief of some sort, and was impeccably prepared. No less than six others from her firm huddled behind her in support.

  Point four: The mental exam would be very difficult to crack. She’d seen the video. They would probably lose the war, but they could get paid for the battle. Her conclusion: Challenge the will with a fury, and hope for a lucrative out-of-court settlement.

  Her lecture lasted for ten minutes, and covered little new ground. She was tolerated without interruption because she was female and the chip was almost visible.

  Wally Bright, he of the night school, was next, and in sharp contrast to Ms. Langhorne, he raged and railed at injustice in general. Nothing was prepared—no brief, no notes, no thoughts about what he would say next, just a lot of hot air by a brawler who perpetually flew by the seat of his pants.

  Two of Lillian’s lawyers stood at the same time, and appeared to be joined at the hip. Both wore black suits, and had the pale faces of estate lawyers who rarely saw the sun. One would start a sentence and the other would finish it. One would ask a rhetorical question, the other had the answer. One mentioned a file, the other pulled it from a briefcase. The tag team was efficient, to the point, and repeated in succinct fashion what had already been said.

  A consensus was quickly emerging. Fight, for (a) there was little to lose, (b) there was nothing else to do, and (c) it was the only way to force a settlement. Not to mention (d), wherein they would get paid handsomely by the hour for fighting.

  Yancy was particularly forceful in urging the use of litigation. And rightly so. Ramble was the only minor among the heirs, and had no debts to speak of. The trust that would pay him five million on his twenty-first had been established decades earlier, and could not be revoked. With five million guaranteed, Ramble was in far better shape financially than any of his siblings. With nothing to lose, why not sue for more?

  An hour passed before someone mentioned the contest clause in the will. The heirs, excluding Ramble, ran the risk of losing what little Troy left them if they contested the will. This issue was given slight treatment by the lawyers. They had already decided to fight the will, and they knew their greedy clients would follow their advice.

  A lot was not being said. The litigation would be cumbersome to begin with. The wisest and most cost-efficient course would be to select one firm with experience to act as chief trial counsel. The others could take a step back, still protect their clients, and be kept abreast of every development. Such a strategy would require two things: (1) cooperation, and (2) the voluntary downsizing of most of the egos in the room.

  It was never mentioned during the three-hour meeting.

  Through no grand scheme of their own—schemes require cooperation—the lawyers had managed to divide the heirs so that no two shared the same firm. Through skillful manipulation that is not taught in law school but acquired naturally thereafter, the lawyers had convinced the clients to spend more time talking to them than to their fellow heirs. Trust was not a virtue known to the Phelans, nor to their attorneys.

  It was shaping up to be one long chaotic lawsuit.

  Not one brave voice suggested the will be left alone. There was not the slightest interest in following the wishes of the man who’d actually made the fortune they now conspired to carve up.

  During the third or fourth trip around the tables, an effort was made to determine the level of debt held by each of the six heirs at the time of Mr. Phelan’s death. But the effort fizzled under a barrage of legal nitpicking.

  “Are the debts of spouses included?” asked Hark, attorney for Rex, whose wife Amber the stripper owned the skin clubs and had her name on most of the debts.

  “What about obligations to the IRS?” asked the attorney for Troy Junior, who’d been having tax trouble for fifteen years.

  “My clients have not authorized me to divulge financial information,” said Langhorne, who with that dire declaration effectively iced the issue.

  The reluctance confirmed what everybody knew—the Phelan heirs were up to their ears in loans and mortgages.

  All the lawyers, being lawyers, were deeply concerned about publicity, and how their fight would be portrayed by the media. Their clients were not simply a bunch of spoiled, greedy children who’d been cut out by their father. But they feared the press might take this posture. Perceptions were crucial.

  “I suggest we hire a public relations firm,” Hark announced. It was a wonderful idea, one that several others immediately seized as their own. Hire a pro to paint the Phelan heirs as the brokenhearted children who’d loved a man who had little time for them. An eccentric, philandering, half-crazy … Yes! That was it! Make Troy the bad guy. And make their clients the victims!

  The idea bloomed and the fiction spread happily around the tables until someone asked just exactly how they would pay for such services.

  “They’re horribly expensive,” said a lawyer, who happened to be charging six hundred dollars an hour for himself and four hundred an hour for each of his three useless associates.

  The idea lost steam quickly until Hark offered the lame suggestion that each firm could front some expense money. The meeting grew incredibly quiet. Those who’d had so much to say about everything were now captivated by the magical language of briefs and old cases.

  “We can talk about this later,” Hark said, attempting to save face. No doubt the idea would never be mentioned again.

  They then discussed Rachel, and where she might be. Should they retain a top-notch security firm to locate her? Almost every lawyer happened to know one. The idea was quite appealing and received more attention than it should have. What lawyer wouldn’t want to represent the chosen heir?

  But they decided against looking for Rachel, primarily because they couldn’t agree on what they would do if they found her. She would surface soon enough, no doubt with her own entourage of lawyers.

  The meeting ended on a pleasant note. The lawyers gave themselves the outcome they wanted. They left with plans to immediately call their clients and proudly report how much progress was made. They could say unequivocally that it was the combined wisdom of all the Phelan lawyers that the will should be attacked with a vengeance.

  TWENTY-TWO

  _____________
/>   THE RIVER rose throughout the day, slowly leaving its banks in some places, swallowing sandbars, rising into the thick brush, flooding the small muddy yards of houses they passed once every three hours. The river carried more and more debris—weeds and grass, limbs and saplings. As it grew wider it grew stronger, and the currents running against the boat slowed them even more.

  But no one was watching the clock. Nate had been politely relieved of his captain’s duties after the Santa Loura was struck by a wayward tree trunk, one he never saw. No damage, but the jolt sent Jevy and Welly scurrying to the wheelhouse. He returned to his own little deck with the hammock stretched through the center, and there he spent the morning reading and watching wildlife.

  Jevy joined him for coffee. “So what do you think of the Pantanal?” he asked. They sat next to each other on a bench with their arms through the railing and their bare feet dangling over the side of the boat.

  “It’s pretty magnificent.”

  “Do you know Colorado?”

  “I’ve been there, yes.”

  “During the rainy season, the rivers in the Pantanal overflow. The flooded area is the size of Colorado.”

  “Have you been to Colorado?”

  “Yes. I have a cousin there.”

  “Where else have you been?”

  “Three years ago, my cousin and I rode a big bus, a Greyhound, across the country. We were in every state but six.”

  Jevy was a poor Brazilian boy of twenty-four. Nate was twice his age and for most of his career had had plenty of money. Yet Jevy had seen much more of the United States than Nate.

  When the money was good, though, Nate had always traveled to Europe. His favorite restaurants were in Rome and Paris.

  “When the floods stop,” Jevy continued, “we have the dry season. Grasslands, marshes, more lagoons and swamps than anyone can count. The cycle—the flooding and the dry season—produces more wildlife than any place in the world. We have six hundred and fifty species of birds here, more than Canada and the U.S. combined. At least two hundred and sixty species of fish. Snakes, caiman, alligators, even giant otters live in the water.”

  As if on cue, he pointed to a thicket at the edge of a small forest. “Look, it’s a deer,” he said. “We have lots of deer. And lots of jaguars, giant anteaters, capivaras, tapirs, and macaws. The Pantanal is filled with wildlife.”

  “You were born here?”

  “I took my first breath in the hospital in Corumbá, but I was born on these rivers. This is my home.”

  “You told me your father was a river pilot.”

  “Yes. When I was a small boy I began going with him. Early in the morning, when everybody was asleep, he would allow me to take the wheel. I knew all the main rivers by the time I was ten.”

  “And he died on the river.”

  “Not this, but the Taquiri, to the east. He was guiding a boat of German tourists when a storm hit them. The only survivor was a deckhand.”

  “When was this?”

  “Five years ago.”

  Forever the trial lawyer, Nate had a dozen more questions about the accident. He wanted the details—details win lawsuits. But he said, “I’m sorry,” and let it go.

  “They want to destroy the Pantanal,” Jevy said.

  “Who?”

  “Lots of people. Big companies that own big farms. To the north and east of the Pantanal they are clearing large sections of land for farms. The main crop is soja, which you call soybeans. They want to export it. The more forests they clear, the more runoff collects in the Pantanal. Sediment rises each year in our rivers. Their farm soil is not good, so the companies use many sprays and fertilizers to grow crops. We get the chemicals. Many of the big farms dam up rivers to create new pastures. This upsets the flooding cycle. And mercury is killing our fish.”

  “How does mercury get here?”

  “Mining. To the north, they mine gold, and they do it with mercury. It runs into the rivers, the rivers eventually run into the Pantanal. Our fish swallow it and die. Everything gets dumped into the Pantanal. Cuiabá is a city of a million people to the east. It has no waste treatment. Guess where its sewage goes.”

  “Doesn’t the government help?”

  Jevy managed a bitter laugh. “Have you heard of Hidrovia?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a big ditch, to be cut through the Pantanal. It is supposed to link Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. It is supposed to save South America. But it will drain the Pantanal. And our government is supporting it.”

  Nate almost said something pious about environmental responsibility, then remembered that his countrymen were the biggest energy hogs the world had ever seen. “It’s still beautiful,” he said.

  “It is.” Jevy finished his coffee. “Sometimes I think it’s too big for them to destroy.”

  They passed a narrow inlet where more water entered the Paraguay. A small herd of deer waded through the floodwaters, nibbling at green vines, oblivious to