And when she finally hit the open ocean and her speed began to build, she produced a rhythmic shudder that wasn’t quite as bothersome as the clack of a railway carriage, but it was a constant reminder that somewhere deep in her engine room some vital piece of equipment was out of alignment. Also, the smoke from her twin funnels was especially thick because of her inefficient boilers and was so filled with cinders of unburnt coal that standing at the fantail was all but impossible.
Bell and his wife had been apart long enough for them to have other considerations than dressing for dinner and meeting fellow travelers, so it wasn’t until breakfast the following day that Bell learned Court Talbot was also a passenger aboard the Valencia. He spotted the retired Major at one of the tables along the starboard wall of the main dining salon and wended his way over. Talbot was engrossed in a book.
“Mind some company?” Bell asked as they neared.
“Isaac. Hello. Sit down, please.” He then noticed Marion and quickly wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and sprang to his feet. “Ma’am.”
“Court, this is my wife, Marion. Marion, this is Court Talbot, expert on the Panamanian insurgency known as the Red Vipers.”
“Viboras Rojas,” Marion said.
Talbot said something in Spanish, and Marion replied in kind. They conversed for a moment more and ended with a little laughter.
“Your accent is more Madrid than Central America, Mrs. Bell, but you speak Spanish very well,” Talbot said as they all sat down.
A moment later, a waiter in a white jacket with a red sash around his waist poured coffee as black as ink into their cups. Marion added milk and some sugar while Bell drank the potent brew as is.
“We didn’t get a chance to see the Senator this morning,” Bell told Talbot. “How did it end up between you two?”
“He sent a telegram to Goethals right from the hotel and penned a more detailed letter for me to present to the Canal Administrator once I’m back in Panama. Hopefully, it will be enough to persuade him to let me and my men try to stop this thing before it gets out of hand.”
“That’s good,” Bell said.
Marion asked, “How is it you even have troops in Panama, Major Talbot?”
“Please call me Court, Mrs. Bell.”
“Of course, and I’m Marion.”
“It goes back to the founding of the Panamanian Republic and the people’s revolt against Colombia. There was talk of coups and counter-coups at the time. Everyone suspected everyone else’s loyalty. U.S. Marines were sent in. Sharpshooters arrived from Colombia. It was a chaotic and very precarious situation, and nobody knew how it would turn out. The first President of Panama was Manuel Amador Guerrero, a friend of mine who knew of my military background. He asked that I establish a small force loyal only to his office. Not him, mind you, but to the Office of the President. I was honored to do so, though we were never called to arms.
“Since then, I have kept regular contact with my men. We drill a few weekends each month for the fun of it. Really, it was more social than anything else. But when Viboras Rojas began to make their presence known, we knew we were in the best position to help. Panama has no army to speak of and can’t operate within the Canal Zone anyway while Colonel Goethals purposely keeps the number of American troops to a minimum so the local politicians don’t think they are militarizing the canal.”
“And you believe you and your men are enough?”
“I do currently, but if the insurgency isn’t crushed soon, it will attract more recruits, and then we’ll have a slow-boil war on America’s doorstep with the most ambitious project in human history caught in the cross fire.”
After breakfast, Marion excused herself and headed back to the cabin. Bell and Talbot moved off to one of the liner’s lounges. Talbot produced a well-used pack of playing cards, and he and Bell settled into the new, faster version of rummy, called gin.
After dealing the first hand and going through a couple pickups and discards, Talbot said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you hoping to accomplish in Panama?”
Bell grabbed the queen Talbot had put down. He now had all four and only needed either the four or seven of clubs. “I have no interest in tramping about in the jungle with you and your men, if that’s what you’re thinking. I guess I want to get a sense of the situation. There are aspects of the assassination attempt that bother me, and I believe the answers are in Panama.”
“‘Aspects’? What aspects?”
Bell pulled the seven. “Gin.”
“That was fast.”
“You dealt me three queens, so . . .” Bell scooped up the cards and began shuffling. “It’s too big of a leap for the Red Vipers being a small-scale indigenous insurgency to attempting an international assassination without some sort of outside influence.”
“I believe I mentioned they’re inspired by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.”
“Inspiration doesn’t explain it. There’s something else at play.”
“I hate to disagree, but if there was some international plot under way in Panama, the local police or the Authority’s security squad would have picked up on it.”
“I’m sure Panama City has a fine police force, and the Authority have plenty of capable guards, but I’m betting that neither has much in the way of investigators.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Bell. The Red Vipers are a nest of snakes, but they are a local nest of snakes. I will grant you that they almost got lucky against Senator Densmore. Consider this, though. You alone held off and ultimately killed all six gunmen. You’re pretty good in a fight, but are you that good? Or were they in over their heads?”
Bell looked him in the eye. “They pulled off the first successful invasion of American territory since the War of 1812. That means something.”
* * *
With the exception of one eight-hour storm, the trip southward was pleasant. The food was decent enough, and staff were all first-rate. Marion found several ladies to socialize with during the day. Bell and Talbot spent a great deal of time together over countless hands of gin. And when the ship rounded the newly constructed breakwater at the Pacific terminus of the canal, they had developed a mutual respect, though both were too restrained to call it a friendship just yet.
Isaac and Marion got their first taste of Panama’s notorious rain while the ship was coming into its berth along a pier as busy as any they’d seen in New York City. Cranes were unloading massive pieces of equipment from the holds of freighters twice the size of their ship. Talbot had told him the Atlantic’s Port of Colón was even busier, as most of the machinery for the canal came from America’s Eastern Seaboard.
The air was oppressively humid, and Bell’s linen suit hung on his frame damp and clammy. His hatband was already stained through. Each breath supplied enough oxygen, but somehow it felt like the moisture-laden air was too thick to breathe. Next to him, the fan Marion waved under her chin looked like the wing of a bird flapping to gain elevation. It did little to dispel the sweat dewing her throat.
“This is going to take some getting used to,” Bell said.
The sky suddenly darkened, and an ominous charcoal shimmer, like some nightmare optical illusion, raced across the harbor’s surface. The effect swept over the steamer, and it was as if the heavens had flooded and were spilling over onto the world. The rain seemed to come down in waves rather than drops. The harbor looked like it had started to boil. Rain pounded the freighter’s deck so fiercely that conversation had to be conducted at a yell, and anyone caught out in the downpour was soon soaked to the skin. The docks were made of concrete or wood, but Bell imagined any dirt street beyond in the coastal city would soon be a river of ankle-deep mud.
He had never seen anything like it. The rain was so voluminous that he couldn’t see more than a few dozen feet, and any thought of turning his face skyward would risk accidental drowning. Thunder
rumbled over the roaring rain, a deeper bass note that he felt in his chest.
Bell and Marion were standing in the doorway of the lounge, looking out over the ship’s covered promenade and rail. Talbot came up behind him, peered around Bell’s shoulder, and shrugged.
“This is just a light sprinkle,” he said and clasped Bell’s upper arm. “Wait until the real rain hits. I could have told you about this on the way down, but you need to see it to believe it. And you’re going to want to buy a straw hat. That blocked wool thing of yours will be moldy mush inside of a week.”
“Thanks,” Bell said sarcastically.
“Also, keep an eye on your feet. They won’t be dry again until you leave and can develop all sorts of issues.” Talbot smiled broadly, enjoying the discomfort of people newly arrived on the isthmus. “Welcome to Panama, Mr. and Mrs. Bell.”
* * *
There was only one upscale place to stay in the city and that was the Central Hotel Panama on Independence Plaza, not far from the Presidential Palace. There was the Tivoli Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt had stayed in 1906, but it was within the Canal Zone, for all intents and purposes a separate country, and there was confusion as to whether people who weren’t employees could stay there. The Central was located in the Old Quarter of the city and it retained some colonial charm. The small peninsula jutting into the Pacific was actually the second Panama City. The first had been five miles south but it had been sacked and burned by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671.
Bell had expected heavy Spanish influence on the architecture but noted a lot of French provincial. He realized it dated to their ill-fated attempt to dig a sea level canal some forty years earlier. The three-story hotel had been built at that time and looked faintly Parisian, with dormers along the roof and wrought iron balconies ringing the upper floors.
An associate of Talbot’s, Rinaldo Morales, had met them at the dock and given them a lift to their hotel. Despite the heat, the man wore his shirt buttoned to the throat and had on a pair of kid driving gloves. Talbot reminded Bell that he could join in his meeting the following morning with the Canal Administrator, George Goethals. Morales drove the former Army Major away to his house at the base of Ancon Hill, the jungle-shrouded hillock between the city and the canal.
Inside the Central Hotel was an atrium painted a smart, clean white. The floors, however, were muddy despite the staff’s efforts. As Bell had thought, the streets of the Casco Viejo district were a mixture of pavement and dirt, and the dirt sections were like quicksand, viscous and impassable, following the storm. The lobby buzzed with a crowd, and Bell noted English was being spoken more than Spanish.
He could just imagine the unprecedented upheaval the country was experiencing thanks to the American effort to bridge the Atlantic and Pacific.
His room was ready, as he’d reserved it while still in San Diego, and the receptionist handed him an envelope with a half dozen telegraph messages in it. To Bell, it was a ritual. At nearly every hotel he visited, upon check-in there were always a number of dispatches waiting that needed his urgent attention.
He turned over their luggage to a bellhop, and they followed the man up to the third floor to their room overlooking the plaza. The décor was spartan, just a bed and dresser with a wash basin, but Marion delighted at the need for mosquito netting. He was aware of the effort during the early years of the canal’s construction to tame malaria and yellow fever. Newspapers across America wrote weekly about Dr. Gorgas and his theory that these dread diseases were carried by mosquitoes and how he and his staff had gone about eradicating them by draining the swamps in which they bred and bringing proper drainage and sanitation to the region.
Panama saw its last case of yellow fever in 1906, and malaria grew rarer and rarer, though the threat persisted.
Marion opened the floor-to-ceiling door to the balcony, and they stepped outside. They both marveled at the lawn across the street. Thanks to the tremendous amount of rain the country received each year, the grass covering Independence Plaza was a vibrant green and lusher than any either had ever seen.
While another squall passed over the city, and Marion busied herself unpacking their bags, Bell went through the telegrams. Chief Wilson cabled to tell him that a subsequent dive had discovered the boat’s ownership papers in an oilskin pouch. The cabin cruiser had belonged to a couple from Huntington Beach. A check with the local police found that they had been missing almost a week.
Bell didn’t need Chief Wilson’s speculation that they were dead. He was sure they’d been murdered for their boat and their bodies weighted down and dumped somewhere off the coast of Orange County.
The other telegrams were from Van Dorn about ongoing investigations unrelated to his current mission.
Bell and Marion ate dinner in the hotel and then went strolling through Casco Viejo. He was surprised by the number of bars. It seemed every other business was a saloon of some sort. Some seemed respectable enough, while others were no more than a scrap of canvas strung over the back corner of an alley with a couple stools pulled up to a sawhorse bar. The streets were filled with men in various states of inebriation. Some were out having some fun with their friends and swayed from place to place, others were passed out in gutters and against walls. The second-floor windows of many establishments were adorned with red curtains. In the doorways leading to the stairs up were heavily rouged women making suggestive gestures.
It all reminded Bell of the tales of the Old West. Panama City indeed was a frontier town on the edge of a jungle so thick that very little of it had ever been mapped. Bring in a labor force of some thirty thousand men and they’d seek the same distractions that slaked the appetites of the men who’d built the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Colosseum in Rome.
As if to reinforce the image of the city Bell was constructing, two men tossed a third out the open door of one of the rougher-looking establishments. He hit the muddy road with a smack but quickly got to his feet, his anger fueled by plenty of drink. He rushed back toward the bouncers, arms flailing. The larger of the bar employees stepped forward, nimbly ducked a floppy haymaker, and put the sot down with a straight right that caused his nose to erupt with blood.
The bouncer shook out his hand and slapped his partner on the shoulder as if to say the next turn was his laying out an overly intoxicated patron. From inside the bar, Bell could hear a pianist pounding out a quick-tempo rag.
He managed to find a clothing store that was still open and bought himself a straw hat that, while made in Ecuador, was called a panama. He also bought a pair of shin-high, well-fitted rubber boots. They were as comfortable as loafers and had a clever venting tube on the inside so his feet wouldn’t overheat. His current shoes were already waterlogged, and his feet were white and dimpled from being wet. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any boots small enough for Marion, but she assured her husband that she had no intention of traipsing around in the mud.
The last few minutes of their walk was in a downpour every bit as powerful as the afternoon deluge. Bell’s head and feet stayed dry, and he realized he was already becoming accustomed to the tropics.
9
The administration building for the Canal Authority overlooked the waterway from partway up Ancon Hill. It was still under construction but was where Goethals wanted to meet. As the Canal Zone was sovereign American territory, there was a checkpoint to gain access. Talbot was friendly with the guard, as he crossed into the zone frequently, but Bell had to present his credentials and have his name written in a ledger.
It truly felt like they had left Panama for the United States. Behind them, French and Spanish influences dominated the architecture and the everyday life. The pace was more languid and without urgency. On this side of the line, the buildings had a barracks-like quality and had been constructed with American efficiency and were diligently maintained. Lawns were well tended and bordered by whitewashed rocks. Roads were perfectly delineated, an
d the people on them moved with purpose.
Again, Bell was struck by the contrast of the two worlds coexisting side by side and could understand the resentment it could foster in groups like Viboras Rojas.
Talbot’s driver took them around Ancon Hill and parked behind the massive building. Half of the roof was missing, as were a number of windows. Scaffolding climbed part of the way up its three-story façade.
The morning sky was a cloudless blue, but the humidity was a physical presence that made everything uncomfortable. Bell felt certain he’d sweat through his suit by noon. Talbot looked more at ease. He wore khakis and riding boots, with his befeathered bush hat on his head. There was just a trace of moisture on his freshly shaved upper lip.
An aide saw them through to Goethals’s corner office. The Authority director had a reputation of being terse and to the point. He didn’t wear his uniform while in Panama, but there was no disguising his military bearing. He was a little shorter than Bell, with thick silvered hair and a darker mustache.
“Talbot,” he said as they entered, and nodded his way. He looked to Bell. “You’re the Van Dorn man?”
“Isaac Bell.”
They shook hands, and Goethals settled behind his cluttered desk and indicated chairs for his guests. His office was completed down to the stucco walls and wooden baseboards but was so filled with books, maps, rock samples, and other junk that it was hard to tell.
“This is from Senator Densmore,” Talbot said and handed over the handwritten page.
Goethals read it through and laid it on his blotter. “Given the attack on you in California, and Bill’s telegram, I was inclined to let you and your men loose on the rebels, but then I got a telegram from Washington late yesterday. The powers that be plan on sending down a thousand Marines to put down this insurrection once and for all.”
The Saboteurs Page 8