A tall bearded man in a charcoal suit with a leonine head of graying hair approached from the back offices with an outstretched hand and a somber expression.
“Drake Simmons? Michael Lynch. Good of you to come. I trust your trip was uneventful?”
“Yes. It wasn’t bad.”
“Excellent. Would you be kind enough to follow me to the conference room?”
“Sure.”
They moved through the hushed suite to a large room with a rectangular table. A bookcase filled with legal tomes occupied one entire wall, with a panoramic view of the Seattle skyline through the picture windows that ran its length the main attraction. Lynch offered Drake a seat by the window.
Lynch moved to the head of the table, where a small package wrapped in brown paper sat next to a check and a heavy green leather-bound signature book.
“Let’s dispense with formalities. Do you have identification?” Lynch asked.
“Of course. Driver’s license okay?”
“Certainly.”
Drake slid it across the table to the attorney, who pressed a button on the intercom box mounted on the corner of the table. “Would you please come in and make a copy?”
Twenty seconds later a blonde in a black business suit entered and wordlessly took Drake’s license. She offered a polite smile and departed as quietly as she came, exuding high-priced professional discretion.
Lynch made small talk until she returned with a photocopy and deposited it in front of him. He studied the license like it held nuclear launch codes and then opened the big ledger and slid it, and the ID, to Drake.
“Sign there, by the X, if you would,” Lynch instructed. Drake did so and pocketed his license.
“Well. There we have it. All done. This, young man, is yours,” Lynch said, presenting him with the cashier’s check. “And this is also yours.” He handed him the package. “Oh, and I’m afraid there’s one tiny caveat. It’s nothing, really.”
“A caveat?” Drake repeated, instantly suspicious.
“Yes. You’re to open the package while seated in this room, and read the note inside. After that, if you choose to do nothing else, I will return with another check for your two thousand dollars of expense money, and you may leave the contents of the package with me. I’ve been instructed, if that’s your choice, to forward it on to the largest museum in New York, and you may leave, your part in the matter finished.”
“Wait. All I have to do is read a note from some lady I never heard of?”
“Your aunt. Recently departed.”
“Sure. Okay, go get the check. This won’t take long.”
“As you wish. I’d suggest you be careful with the wrapping. You don’t want to tear the note,” Lynch said with a frown, and then stood. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Drake waited until the heavy door had closed and smiled to himself. Fine. He’d humor the old codger. Play along, pretend interest, and then take the money and run. Twenty-five big ones. No, counting the extra two, twenty-seven. Added to the five he’d just gotten for Cranford, that was enough to lounge around on the beaches of Baja for a good year, if not longer.
He leaned forward and began tearing at the brown paper, which to his eye was an old sandwich bag hurriedly sliced up and used for wrapping, and then remembered Lynch’s warning about going easy. He folded back the flaps, the cheap tape yellowed from age, and found a single creased sheet of binder paper sitting atop a five-by-seven battered brown leather book held closed with a grimy piece of twine. Drake gave it a cursory glance and opened the note. A flowing, clearly feminine hand filled the ruled page in blue ballpoint ink.
Dear Drake:
If you’re reading this, I’m dead. How or why isn’t important. What is important is that you know some things about your past. Important things. About your father.
My brother.
After his death, I moved from Portland, leaving everything behind. I did so because the men who killed him would be looking for me. As they would for your mother, who was a saint. By the way, I’m sorry she passed away. She’ll be missed.
Where do I start? Best at the beginning.
I was at your baptism. At your first four birthdays. At countless outings, picnics, dinners. Then everything changed. Your father went away and never returned. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Do you know the story of your name? You’re named after one of the greatest adventurers of all time: Sir Francis Drake. Your father admired his courage no end, which was probably his undoing. And your real last name is Ramsey. Drake Ramsey. Your mother and I changed our names after your father died, and yours, too. Why you don’t use the Ramsey name is one of the topics of this letter.
Your father loved you more than life itself. Words can’t describe his joy when you came into the world. It breaks my heart that you never really knew him.
Your father, Ford Ramsey, was an adventurer. A treasure hunter. He was a good man, but with a wild streak that couldn’t be tamed. Your mother knew it when she married him, and she did so willingly.
He was killed searching for a lost Inca city said to contain the greatest treasure ever known. The journal contains his notes and his reasoning, up until he left for South America. Word arrived later that he’d died in the jungles there. Murdered, although the details are muddled. I know this because his trusted friend, who also changed his last name and is now using the name Jack Brody, returned from that trip with the news of his death.
I have left you whatever money I’ve managed to cobble together in my new life. And the most precious gift I can offer — the words of your father, in his own hand, chronicling his thinking, and ultimately, his journey to his fate. Read it and guard it well. Its value is substantial.
Your loving aunt,
Patricia Ramsey
Chapter Five
Drake reread the note three times, wondering if it was for real. He had no memory of his father — or at least, nothing concrete. A vague recollection of a man at the first birthday party he could remember. Drake was four years old, wearing a red cowboy hat, playing pin the tail on the donkey. A hazy figure, male, tall, was there with his mother, but beyond that, he couldn’t form anything more. That was it for his dad, whom his mother had claimed had died in an accident. Beyond an insistence that he’d loved Drake and been a good man, she’d been reluctant to talk about him. When she did, it was always generalizations: that he’d been a writer and photographer, very smart, engaging. And that Drake shared some important qualities with him — a photographic memory and an ability to organize seemingly random data into patterns that were obvious to him, but eluded everyone else.
The few photos she’d shown him were of a handsome man in his early forties with a full head of Drake’s longish brown hair and a twinkle of merriment in his eye. Their resemblance was strong, but it was one that elicited nothing from Drake but an ache in his gut at the lost opportunity to know his dad.
And now, here was a connection with the past, his father’s thoughts and observations set down on paper in his own hand.
Ultimately, his curiosity got the better of him, and he unwound the string with a trembling hand before cracking the worn cover open to the first page.
Lynch returned, and seeing Drake reading the journal, left him to commune with the ghosts of the past in peace. Drake didn’t notice, so engrossed was he in his father’s account, and barely registered the passage of an hour. When Lynch entered again, Drake looked up from the journal as though surprised.