Chapter 68 - The Dead Hand's Deposition
We were moved to a secure briefing room on the second floor of the federal building in downtown Duluth. Outside, the aerial lift bridge hung like a frozen iron skeleton over the ice-choked ship canal, but inside the soundproofed room, a large digital display was illuminated.
"Donald Vance knew he was being poisoned," Marilyn said, her voice steady now as she unlocked the brass clasps of her leather briefcase and pulled out a thumb drive encased in an airtight steel cylinder. "Two weeks before he collapsed at his breakfast table, he came to my private practice in St. Paul. He brought thirty years of forensic accounting records, but more importantly, he brought a video recorded under oath before a federal magistrate."
Agent Lin inserted the drive into the military-grade terminal.
The screen flickered, and then Donald Vance’s face appeared.
He looked frail, his cheeks sunken and his hands bearing the faint tremors of the thallium that had been slipped into his nightly tea, yet his eyes carried the ferocious, penetrating intelligence that had commanded boards of directors for half a century. Behind him sat the familiar mahogany bookshelves of his Duluth study.
"If you are watching this," Donald’s voice rumbled from the speakers, dry as winter pine needles, "my brother Arthur has finally stepped out of the shallow grave he bought thirty years ago. And Julian, in his pathetic, insatiable vanity, has opened the door for him."
I caught my breath, my fingernails digging into the palm of my hand.
"Amanda," Donald said, looking directly into the camera lens as if he could see me sitting across the federal table with Ruby sleeping peacefully in the bassinet beside my chair. "I owe you the truth that I was too cowardly to give you while I lived. Arthur didn't just abandon you when that plane went down over Isle Royale. He arranged that crash to fake his death and avoid federal indictments for treason and illegal mineral cartels. He left you, a six-month-old child, in an empty house in Marquette with no heat and no money."
A heavy silence filled the briefing room.
"I took you in not out of family obligation," Donald continued, a rare softness cracking the gravel in his voice, "but because you were innocent of the Vance curse. Arthur and I inherited sixty thousand acres of the richest mineral deposits on the continent, but while I saw a covenant of stewardship, Arthur saw an empire to be bled dry. When we discovered the Calumet lithium shelf in ninety-four, Arthur tried to sell the rights to offshore syndicates backed by hostile foreign interests. I stopped him. I buried the surveys. And when he vanished, I amended the trust."
Donald leaned forward, his knuckles whitening against the arms of his leather chair.
"Julian was never my true son; he was Arthur’s legal heir by adoption, placed in my household like a cuckoo in a sparrow’s nest. But the sovereign deeds of 1862 cannot be willed away to strangers. They can only be held by Arthur’s blood. Amanda... the bloodline covenant does not bind you to Arthur's greed. By federal statute and the terms of Vault Nine, you possess the unilateral authority to extinguish the patent entirely. You can drown the Vance empire forever."
The screen paused on Donald’s gaunt, resolute face.
Agent Lin stood up, turning to face me. "Mrs. Vance, Chief Judge Albright is holding an emergency federal session in thirty minutes. If you sign the dissolution petition, Donald’s third audit becomes federal law. The land becomes a permanent National Strategic Reserve. Arthur Vance’s patents will be legally extinguished across both sides of the border."
"And if Arthur reaches Thunder Bay before I sign?" I asked.
May you like
"Then his proxy attorneys file the 1862 patents in the Canadian High Court," Marilyn answered grimly. "And the mineral rights will be transferred to shell corporations beyond the reach of American law."
***
