Bell shifted his position, finding cover behind another planter that afforded him a better view into the study. He couldn’t see what the man was working on, and the tall back of his desk chair prevented Bell from seeing the man himself. Bell could only see his arm, in a billowy white shirtsleeve, his hand plucking the glass off the blotter and returning it seconds later with its level noticeably lower.
The homeowner worked at his desk for another thirty minutes and then suddenly started closing up the ledgers strewn around him. Bell leaned forward to adjust his aching legs and bumped into the planter, which scraped against the stone flooring of the terrace. The storm more than covered the sound of the light clatter. At least for the man.
A dog had been curled, unseen, at its master’s feet and leapt up at the sound, pressing its snout to the glass door and barking madly. It was sleek and black, with cropped ears and a mouthful of teeth like those of an industrial saw. With its front paws pressed high up on the window, it stood almost as tall as a man.
Fifteen feet and a tightly closed door separated Bell from the dog, but for a fleeting moment Bell was sure he could smell its breath and feel its angry heat on his face.
Knowing what was coming next, Bell backed away from the planter and then off the patio entirely. His best hope was reaching the ocean and waiting out the animal in the surf. The homeowner stood, and Bell caught a glimpse of a large-framed man several inches taller than himself. He opened one of the French doors, and the dog, a breed Bell had never seen before, shot out like a rocket, its ears erect and its mouth wide, powerful haunches launching each smooth stride.
It raced for the exact spot where Bell had been crouched behind the planter. Bell was still in motion and had another thirty feet of beach to cover before reaching the surf. The dog would track his scent and cover that distance in half the time it would take Bell.
The animal put its nose to the patio and suddenly began yelping in pain. Bell stopped and watched as the poor dog bowed its head down so it could swipe at its longish snout with its paws, all the while crying pitiably.
The manchineel, Bell realized. The rain had washed the rest of the toxic sap off his poncho and the concentrate that pooled at his feet had burned the canine’s sensitive nose when it tried to pick up his scent. The animal sneezed several times and seemed to get the worst of the toxin out of its nose, but its enthusiasm for chasing the intruder had died. It high-stepped back to the study door and sat, waiting for its master to open it, sneezing a few more times for good measure.
The owner reemerged and spoke to the dog for a few seconds before letting it back in the house. Bell had remained on the beach in the water, so all he heard was low murmurs.
He waited twenty minutes, now hidden in some sedge grass, before returning to the patio. On one side of the study was a formal living room, on the other was a dining room large enough to seat a dozen guests. Its white walls were hung with colorful, locally dyed fabrics in simple wooden frames. The table was of a honey-hued wood and styled more in keeping with the hacienda’s tropical setting. The homeowner ate by himself, though his butler made frequent forays into the dining room with additional dishes and refreshed drinks.
Bell had a better view of his quarry. The man had dark hair and an unlined, Central European face, putting him closer to forty than fifty. He couldn’t get a read on him because of the distance and angle, but Bell could imagine his anger at tonight’s failure to either capture him or, more likely, kill him. Bell had no doubt that this stranger was the person behind Viboras Rojas, the puppet master secretly pulling the strings. He also had no idea what the man would gain by sabotaging the construction of the canal.
Questions and answers. The ledger for those wouldn’t balance out until the case was solved.
After his meal, the homeowner returned to his study to use the telephone on the desk and then sat in the living room, listening to Richard Wagner operas on a gramophone and smoking a cigar. His taste in music led Bell to believe he was German.
A short time passed before the man rose from a sofa and lifted the needle from a gramophone disc and made his way to his bedroom. The dog stayed close to its master. The butler appeared a few minutes later, bustling about the living room to tidy it up, and then he vanished into the servants’ quarters.
Bell circled the house twice, moving slowly and always locating his next spot for cover before doing so. There was no additional security, and all the lights were off. On his second sweep, Bell located a clutch of outbuildings. One was a garden shed, another housed an oil-burning steam boiler and an electric generator. The former emitted only the soft glow of its pilot light under its insulated main tank, while the generator itself was quiet. The equipment wouldn’t be needed again until morning.
By his estimation, forty-five minutes had elapsed since the homeowner had gone to bed. The servant too was surely deeply asleep. Time to move.
The lock on the study’s French doors took less than fifteen seconds to pick using the tools Bell always carried. Before entering the house, he pulled off the rain-slicked poncho. There wasn’t much he could do about his wet shoes, but at least he wouldn’t drip an obvious amount of water on the floor. The door swung out silently, and Bell slipped into the room. He flicked on the battery-powered lamp and held it so that his fingers blocked all but a tiny ray of light from shining through.
Bell went straight for the desk, sweeping the light across its broad surface and committing the location of everything on it to memory so he could put it all back when he was done. Riffling through some of the ledgers and other books, Bell learned his man was named Otto Dreissen and that he was part owner of a large family business concern called Essenwerks. He knew of the company, not its owners. They were a manufacturing, smelting, and coal mining concern and looked to be mostly profitable.
For ten tense minutes he sought some clue as to Dreissen’s ultimate goal in Panama. There was a great deal about the collieries they owned, and he found a dossier on some of the equipment they manufactured. He saw designs for a biplane that appeared to be able to shoot twin machine guns through the spinning blades of its propeller. There were sketches of a submarine that was as sleek as a shark, others of robust-looking trucks that ran on metal belts rather than wheels and were shown towing large field guns. Still others detailed motors that were meant to be lightweight and more powerful than anything Bell could imagine, and a control room for some unknown craft that looked decades ahead of its time. There was a drawing of an aerodynamic pod whose function was a complete mystery. It was like he was looking at the work of some futurist rather than a contemporary.
Everyone knew Europe was heading to war. The storm clouds had been building for years as alliances were formed and stiffened to the point that a spark would set off a continent-wide conflagration far deadlier than any in history. Bell could see that Dreissen’s company was positioning the Germans to have vastly superior equipment for when the shooting finally started.
He needed to pass this on to some friends with Army Intelligence, but he couldn’t see what any of this had to do with the canal.
He was about to open a new file folder titled Cologne, with a sketch of what appeared to be a cigar, when a floorboard creaked just outside the closed study door an instant before the door itself was thrown open.
Bell doused his light, but a man Bell had never seen before was carrying a flashlight in one hand. His other was gloved in dark leather and balled in a fist. A night watchman making his rounds, was Bell’s first thought. He had the look of a grizzled veteran, tall and strong but past his prime.
The man’s eyes widened for just a second upon seeing Bell, an intruder, before he took two quick paces forward. Bell stepped back, edging closer to the French doors and escape. The broad desk was between them and it was far too wide to reach across. The guard had to go around it, and by the time he could, Bell would be dashing across the lawn.
The man rushed for
the desk and swung a punch with his left hand. It looked awkward, and the range was far beyond his reach, but his fist smashed into Bell’s face anyway. It was a glancing blow yet one that stunned Bell for the long moment it took his brain to process the possibility of being struck.
The guard took that opening to leap on the desk and chop down with what Bell now realized was an artificial arm, one fashioned several inches longer than its flesh-and-blood partner in order to serve as a weapon of surprise.
The distraction had so rooted Bell to where he stood that he barely got an arm up to protect himself as the man tried to stave in his head. The power of the blow struck him with enough momentum to drop him to his knees, and his forearm went numb.
The guard jumped off the desk, aiming his shoes at the back of Bell’s neck.
Bell rolled just before the impact, hooked a hand around the man’s ankle before he had centered his weight, and yanked him off his feet. He crashed to the floor hard enough to rattle the house. The dog began barking in another room, and its claws scratched frantically as it accelerated through the house to investigate the disturbance. Bell got to his feet and pushed through the French doors and back out into the storm. Its glass shattered in his wake as the guard swung again with his elongated prosthetic arm and it met nothing but the elegant door.
Bell retrieved his poncho as he ran. The dog was after him like an arrow and would have sunk its jaws into his thigh before he reached the patio’s edge had it not detected the strong scent of manchineel again.
It kept barking and running alongside Bell, but it wouldn’t commit itself to attack. Bell ran hard for the manchineel trees, flipping the poncho over his head as he plowed into the toxin-laced forest. The storm had diluted the trees’ potency, yet any water touching his skin still felt like fire. The dog managed to get tangled between Bell’s feet. Bell and the dog both fell to the ground in a jumble of limbs. The animal’s coat was short, so its skin was poorly protected. It let out a yelp when its belly hit the forest’s litter of wet leaves and it scrambled to its feet before Bell had even come to a full stop.
Torn between its duty to protect his master and its instinct of self-preservation, the dog raced back toward the house in an inky black streak.
Bell got to his feet, careful not to use his hands when levering himself upright. He adjusted both his hat and poncho to give the most protection and set off again, much more mindful of his surroundings.
He steered clear of the driveway, knowing that with the dog returning to the house so soon, the guard would go search for him in an automobile. Minutes into his hike back to the Renault, a long-hooded saloon sedan drove by slowly. Bell paused and sank to the ground until the vehicle was past. He could tell the car was turning toward Panama City when it reached the end of the drive. Bell tore through the jungle to get to the road and ran as hard as he could in the opposite direction to where he’d left his car. He figured the guard would check the roads for no more than a mile or two before doubling back and investigating the coast road past the estate.
Bell reached the Renault in record time, but he was breathing so heavily that he wasted precious seconds doubled over trying to get his breath back. He set the throttle and choke to the proper settings and worked the hand crank a quarter turn to prime the carburetor. Then he pulled the throttle, making sure the car was in neutral, before returning to the crank once more. It took six tries for the now cooled engine to fire. In that time, a glow had emerged down the road, a vague aura that grew in brightness as the stately saloon drew closer.
Bell hopped back into the sodden driver’s seat and put the Renault in reverse, steering by looking over his shoulder so he didn’t waste time turning the car around. He didn’t bother with the headlights.
He backed down the road as fast as he dared, and all the while Dreissen’s car was growing closer and closer. He was still far out of range of the German’s lights, but every second their corona became brighter. He’d gone at least a mile in reverse and suspected the engine was overheating, as no air was getting through the radiator. He had to spin around or the car would die.
By what silvery light made it through the storm clouds from the half-moon, Bell judged the best spot to sling the car around. Near one of the other hacienda driveways, the gravel track was a bit wider. Bell steered the Renault as close as he could risk to the verge and then stomped the brakes and powered the wheel hard over. The roadster slewed around so quickly that the front wheels lost grip. Bell had the transmission in first by the time the hood was lined up with the road once again. He popped the clutch and mashed the throttle so the engine would stop the car from spinning out and into the ditch.
He was quickly up to thirty miles per hour, and while Dreissen’s automobile kept gaining, the driver never got close enough to spot Bell ahead of him. After three miles or so, Bell saw the other car’s headlights diminish, as the guard slowed, and then go dark when he turned the big car back toward the hacienda.
Bell took his foot off the gas and let the Renault coast until it stopped on the side of the road. He took a few breaths. As close calls went, this one wasn’t even in the top fifty for him, but his nerves still needed a moment, and he needed to think through the information he’d gained and its context for his investigation.
He came to the conclusion all too quickly that knowing Dreissen’s identity and the connection between him and Viboras Rojas was not the same as being able to prove anything. Bell needed more. He turned around once again to return to Panama City.
* * *
Heinz Kohl found his employer in his study when he returned to the hacienda. The Panamanian house servants were putting hurricane shutters over the smashed windows on the outside. The broken glass and water had already been cleaned up. Dreissen was wearing baggy pants and a sleeveless white singlet. The suspenders pulled over his shoulder were decorated with hunting motifs. A lit cigarette sat in the ashtray, blue-gray smoke coiling into the thick air.
“He got away,” Kohl said.
“That’s the second time tonight I’ve heard that,” the industrialist said angrily. “I assume it was Bell, yes?”
“He fit the description,” Kohl told him. “And he was in the area. He doubled back on our men after they lost him on the coast road. That’s how he knew to come here to the house.” Kohl pointed at a crystal decanter sitting on a small side table beneath a painting of Dreissen’s blond wife.
“Help yourself,” Dreissen said and took a sip of the Napoléon brandy he’d poured earlier.
Kohl pressed the decanter against the wall with his prosthetic left hand in order to pull out the stubborn stopper. He splashed some of the golden liquor into a snifter and reinserted the plug. He gulped half the drink in a single swallow and loudly exhaled the fumes.
“What did you think of him?” Dreissen asked, his voice full of contempt.
“He has fast reflexes.” Kohl set his drink down and began unbuttoning his left sleeve. All his shirts were custom-made so he could slide his right hand through the cuff without assistance. The left arms all had buttons running up past the elbow and were cut extra-long to conceal the fake limb. “When I throw this hand at someone the first time, he takes a long time to process what he’s seen, enough time for me to take him out. Bell understood what had happened in the blink of an eye. Fast reflexes and a fast mind.”
“Considering how he took out six men in California and killed Morales, that’s something we already knew.”
Heinz Kohl had worked for Dreissen for a decade and still insisted on asking permission from his employer. He asked to sit, and Dreissen waved him into a chair. For his part, the industrialist also insisted on being asked permission. They were not friends yet were closer to each other, in a way, than they were to any other human being. Heinz Kohl would lay down his life for Otto Dreissen and Otto Dreissen would certainly let him.
“How do you want to proceed?” Kohl asked while tugging on his
artificial limb.
“Bell will get no traction with the local police, we’ve got them bought off. But he certainly will have Goethals’s ear.”
“He has no power outside the Canal Zone.”
“He has clout, and that may be enough to override the bribes we’ve paid to the police and to people in the Justice Department.”
“Why don’t you let me kill him? We can pin it on the Vipers.”
“No. It’s important that Viboras Rojas lay low while Court Talbot is hunting them on the lake. We can’t kill Bell anyway. I didn’t tell you, but I received a cable this afternoon. Berlin has authorized the assassination of Theodore Roosevelt. Bell is Roosevelt’s point man for his visit. If Bell is murdered, there’s no way he’ll come to inspect the canal.”
“We hadn’t thought of that before.”
Dreissen nodded. “Good thing the avalanche failed. There is something else. We don’t know how much time Bell had to go through my papers and what he will report to the Americans about Essenwerks’s weapons development. He may even know about the Cologne, even if he doesn’t know it’s here. We need to sweat that information out of him. A man like Bell won’t easily break under physical torture, but I have an idea how to break him psychologically.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Phone Detective Ortega. Tell him we want Isaac Bell arrested for breaking into my house. He’s bound to show up at the Central Hotel sooner or later. I’m going to radio Captain Grosse and send him on a little errand.”
“Won’t that delay—”
“One night won’t matter,” Dreissen countered before Kohl could finish.
“Of course.”
“This should work out quite well.” Dreissen took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray. “If Bell is merely arrested, Roosevelt will still come, and we’ll make up for a past failure. Heinz, this will raise our company’s profile with the Kaiser. I can see Essenwerks getting more and more government contracts, work that would have gone to Krupp or Rheinmetall. It’ll be ours. And when the war comes, our factories will be the busiest in Germany.”
The Saboteurs Page 21