“Come.”
An aide opened the door and came in, something clutched in his right hand. “Sir, a courier just brought this from Culebra. It’s from Chief Engineer Scully.” He handed a scrap of paper to the Colonel and set a small round object on the desk.
Bell couldn’t tell what it was.
Goethals grunted as he finished reading the note. He set it aside and picked up the object. It was a round stone a little larger than a child’s marble. “Jack found this lodged inside the boiler’s pressure relief valve. He said that when the operator called for extra pressure to lift the boulder that was in the dipper’s bucket, the valve wouldn’t open. When he then backed off to get a better grip on the rock, the pressure skyrocketed and the boiler blew. Jack says there is no way a stone this size could get inside the system because of the filters we use, both when water is pumped into the haul trucks and on the excavators themselves. He said it was placed in the boiler’s intake intentionally.”
He tossed the stone to Bell.
“Scully also had some rather unkind words for you, Mr. Bell, that need not be repeated. There you have it. You were certain it was an accident. You were wrong. It was sabotage. The Viboras are still out there and they remain a deadly threat.”
Bell knew he could argue no further.
Outside the administrative building it had grown dark, but at least the rain that had threatened earlier had held off. Bell and Sam Westbrook headed for the railway station and walked the short distance in silence.
“You okay?” Sam finally asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bell admitted. “I’m not used to being dismissed like that.”
“He’s a tough old bird, our Colonel Goethals. Pragmatist of the first order. If it isn’t right in front of his face and he can’t see it, feel it, and study it, he won’t pay it any attention.”
“That describes me as well,” Bell said. “Or it did. Do you believe me, Sam?”
“Let’s just say I believe that you believe it.”
“You think I made it up?”
“No. Honest. Still, I think your noodle got more scrambled than you thought.”
Bell stopped so that they faced each other. “Here’s the thing. I’m not wrong about any of it.”
“Come on, you heard what Jack Scully found. The excavator was sabotaged just like everyone figured. Maybe you’re right about Court Talbot being in on this thing, but you’re wrong about the Vipers no longer attacking us.”
Bell shook his head. “I’m actually banking on Mr. Scully to prove me right. I just hope he does so soon.”
“You’re not making much sense. You just heard Scully’s final report to Colonel Goethals.”
They started walking again.
“I’m good at reading people, Sam. Very good, in fact. I had Scully pegged as a perfectionist the moment he jumped down from Goethals’s little yellow train. He won’t be satisfied until he’s taken that steam shovel down to its last nut and bolt.”
“And you think he’s going to find it was an accident?”
“Yes. And when he does, and Goethals believes me, I can tell him the rest of what I’ve learned.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes. Dreissen had my wife kidnapped at sea using an airship.”
31
Bell didn’t go to the hospital, as Goethals had recommended. Sam Westbrook’s roommate had rotated back to the States a few weeks earlier, and no one had been assigned his place in the company’s austere housing for bachelors.
They ate together, and, afterward, Bell cleaned his clothes in the sink in the communal bathroom and took one of the longest showers of his life. He thought back to his conversation with Goethals, viewing it from all angles to see if he could have done better and convinced the man that he was right. He doubted it. A trained engineer, an Army one at that, would demand tangible proof, not supposition.
Back home, Joseph Van Dorn trusted whatever tale Bell spun from the evidence he’d gathered because they had had a decade of working together and Bell’s theories about various crimes, no matter how far-fetched or implausible they seemed, eventually proved correct.
To Goethals, Isaac Bell was a stranger with no basis for credibility other than the fact he was good with a gun. This is why he didn’t push the conversation harder or bring up Marion’s kidnapping. Without any ally other than young Mr. Westbrook, Bell didn’t have a leg to stand on. He had to wait until Jack Scully came to his rescue.
Meanwhile, Dreissen had Marion. Bell tried not to dwell on what the German would do when he learned he’d escaped police custody. He believed Dreissen still wanted leverage over him, so he wouldn’t kill her but his talk of making her captivity difficult sent his mind racing down dozens of unpleasant avenues.
Bell twisted the tap to its coldest setting to stop himself from thinking like that. It didn’t work, the water never got cooler than tepid because of the tropical climate, so he was left with a vivid image of Marion in the hands of a bunch of sadists.
That thought faded only when his rage grew too intense.
After breakfast the following morning, Bell accompanied Sam back to his office. Bell wanted to look at the maps the Authority had commissioned, especially of the Lake Gatun basin. They weren’t stored in the unfinished office building. For access, Bell had to travel to a warehouse about a mile away.
The building was like every other one within the zone, clapboard and wood-framed with a roof pitched enough to shed the prodigious rain the country endured almost daily at this time of year. An older man sat at a desk in the reception room. He wore a banker’s green visor and had garters holding up his sleeves. His clothes looked thirty years out of fashion. He looked up, his eyes big and owlish behind thick-lensed spectacles.
“I suspect you’re lost, young man. I haven’t had a visitor here in a long time.”
“If you’re Mr. Townsend, then I’m in the right place,” Bell said.
“Jeremiah Townsend at your service, Mr. . . .”
“Bell, sir. Isaac Bell. I’m a detective with the Van Dorn Agency here to help sort out the Red Vipers.”
“And you can do that by looking at a bunch of dusty old maps?” he asked with a teasing twinkle in his eye.
“I believe that I can, actually.”
“Okay. Are you a coffee drinker, Mr. Bell?”
“I am.”
Townsend had a metal thermos bottle on his desk next to a big ceramic mug. He unscrewed the bottle’s top, which doubled as a cup, and un-stoppered the flask itself. He poured steaming black coffee into the cup and then topped off his own mug. He handed the cup to Bell, they saluted each other, and each took a sip. It was the weakest, most burned cup of coffee Bell had ever had, but the old guy was so happy to have company, Isaac made the appropriate grunts of appreciation.
“How can I help? What exactly do you need?”
“I’m not sure,” Bell said. “I guess I’m looking for someplace secluded along the shores of Lake Gatun where I can hold a secret rendezvous.”
“Between . . . ?”
“A fifty-foot workboat and a Zeppelin, let’s guess, four hundred and fifty feet in length.”
To his credit, Townsend didn’t send Bell away. Or maybe he was so bored and lonely, he welcomed the lunatic’s request. He sat still for a few moments before asking, “And these meetings are taking place now or sometime in the past? Remember, the lake continues to rise, so its shoreline is constantly changing.”
“Currently taking place,” Bell assured him.
“Okay, then.” Townsend stood. “Come with me.”
The old archivist led Bell down a short hallway, past a closet-sized washroom and through a door at the back of the reception room. Beyond was a vast, open space, with exposed wooden beams and V-bracing columns. Light came from tall, narrow windows, as well as from electric bulbs. The room was filled with
waist-high metal filing cabinets with wide but very shallow drawers for storing maps flat. It looked like there was enough space for tens of thousands of plats and charts.
Bell was overwhelmed by the task he’d set out for himself.
“The upstairs is more of the same. It’s said that Panama is the best-mapped place on earth, and I’m not one to argue with that. There are two other buildings like this one for storing all the engineering drawings done for the canal, all in metal file cabinets to protect them in case of fire. Those facilities are still busy because we’re still building stuff, but all the site work’s done. No real need to look at the maps any longer.”
“But you’ve kept them?”
“This is a government project, which means everything must be accounted for.”
“Job security?”
“I’ve been here since the beginning almost,” Townsend said proudly. “Any chance you can narrow your search some? The lake’s pretty big, even if it has another year to reach its full size.”
In Bell’s experience, the most convincing lies always contain a bit of the truth. It’s easier to remember and comes across as more trustworthy. Talbot had lied to Goethals about killing two Viboras Rojases. The dead men were no doubt hapless fishermen in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he’d said they’d been found on the lake’s western side, a detail mentioned to make the lie feel authentic.
“Let’s concentrate on the western side of the lake for now.”
“Easy enough.”
Bell followed Townsend as he wound his way through the maze of filing cabinets until he stopped at one as anonymous as all the others. He opened a drawer about halfway down and pulled out a map that was four feet by four. He set it on top of the cabinet, studied it for a second, then slid it back in its drawer. He pulled another map from one drawer higher up and set it on top of the cabinet.
“We’re looking for hills that became islands when the lake rose, Mr. Bell. Hills big enough to hide a dirigible hovering close to the water. Is that how you envision it?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“What you’re looking at is not a map, per se, but a projection of what the shoreline around Gatun should look like this month, give or take. It could be off by several feet because rainfall actuals are likely to be different from the early estimates. It’s still good enough to get us in the ballpark. You a baseball fan by any chance?”
“I was born in Boston, so baseball is in my blood.”
“Think the Red Sox will win the Series this year?”
Bell smiled. “In my line of work, we try not to predict the future, but, in this case, I’ll make an exception and say we may not win it this year, but we’re going to do quite well in the next few years. After that, who knows?”
“As a Cleveland Naps fan, I hope you’re wrong.” He pointed at the map, all official again. “This is an overview, a reference for us to pick some likely candidate. See all those boxes?”
The map of the Canal Zone and surrounding jungle was divided up into hundreds of separate little blocks, each with a reference number too small to read with the naked eye.
From an inside pocket of his vest, Townsend pulled an ivory-handled magnifying glass. “Once we have some choice spots picked out, we’ll pull the corresponding topographical maps, the ones with elevation notations, to see if the hills are high enough to hide your airship.”
“Mr. Townsend, I don’t think I could do this without you,” Bell said gratefully.
“You could, I’m sure. You seem like a sharp fellow, but it might take you a couple weeks.”
“Months.” Bell laughed.
Together, the archivist and the investigator pooled their talents and pored over dozens of maps, discussing the merits of various locations, discarding unlikely places, and holding aside the topographical maps of possibles. They worked as they shared Townsend’s lunch, a ham sandwich, on stale bread, with fiery mustard that made Bell’s eyes swim, washed down with the dregs of the cold, watery coffee.
Bell’s eyes were gritty, and his back ached from stooping over so many maps, by the time they had narrowed it down to two potential places where Court Talbot could be meeting Otto Dreissen’s airship. Both had been deep valleys before the lake began to fill them and now they resembled Norwegian fjords with enough breadth for a massive dirigible to maneuver in. Townsend allowed Bell to keep one map, to annotate it with navigational directions and waypoints, provided he filled out a receipt and promised to return it.
A Model T passed Bell on his walk back to the administration building, and he would have thought nothing of it if he had not looked over his shoulder and seen it slow to a stop in front of the map building’s front portico. He turned and started heading back, instinct raising his hopes. As Townsend said, no one came out to his domain anymore, so the odds were slim that it would happen twice on the same day. Bell suspected the driver was looking for him.
The driver, a lad still in his teens, was exiting the building just as Bell reached the stairs. Isaac’s chest heaved from trying to draw oxygen out of the hot humid air. “You looking for me?”
“Are you Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn—”
“I am. Did Goethals send you?”
“Yes. And Sam Westbrook asked me to give you this.” He handed Bell a folded slip of paper.
It was a cable response from Van Dorn. “Researching Dreissen. A. O. Girard reports that late uncle of John Schrank employed by Essenwerks. Stop.”
Bell read it twice, then nodded, grim-lipped. “Let’s go. On the jump.”
* * *
Jack Scully refused to sit in Goethals’s office because he’d come straight from the cut and his clothes were filthy. The dirt he’d tracked in on his shoes from outside was part of life in Panama, and the office was swept regularly, but he didn’t feel comfortable ruining his boss’s expensive-looking upholstered chairs. He was moving back and forth like a caged bear at a circus when Bell was shown into the inner sanctum.
“How’d you know?” he growled as soon as the secretary closed the heavy door.
“That it wasn’t sabotage? As I explained to the Colonel, the Red Vipers have already achieved their true goal. There was no need to expose themselves or risk any of them being caught. As to how I knew you’d keep looking? Well, you don’t look like a man who does anything by the half measures or accepts the easy answer.”
“Tell him what happened,” Goethals said. He’d lost some of his tropical tan as the implications of Scully’s discovery sunk in—like he’d preferred this was a Viboras attack.
“Does it have something to do with that crew being the best excavators in the cut?” Bell asked before the mechanic could explain.
Scully eyed him suspiciously, then seemed to accept that Isaac Bell had a knack for pulling the right answers out of thin air.
“It does,” he admitted, and retrieved a tobacco pouch and brier pipe from the pocket of his overalls. “Lyle Preston, the team foreman, cheated. He had his guys pull out all the filters from the steam and water lines, he had reinforcing clamps on some of the system’s weak points, and he reshaped the dampers to create a massive draft through the firebox. I never caught on to any of this stuff because he’d have his boys change it all back before we did our scheduled inspections.”
“What does this mean?” Bell asked.
“He could run temperatures and pressures a lot higher than the machine was designed for in order to make her run faster than any of the other ninety-five-tonners down in the cut. He was a good operator, for sure, but the modifications meant he could raise his bucket and swing his boom faster than anyone else.” Scully said this from behind a sweet cloud of pipe smoke.
“Does this mean the stone got in on its own?”
“I had a team pull all the screens at the depot where we fill the water trucks and tank cars. They get inspected regularly, but we weren’t due for anot
her week. One had a puncture large enough for that stone to have slipped through. Had it gone into any of the other shovels, the onboard filter would have caught it. Seems fate didn’t like Lyle Preston messing with my machines any more than I do.”
Goethals said, “Great job, Jack. Thanks for the report.”
“Yes, sir.” Scully gave Bell a look that was an odd blend of malice and respect.
When he was gone, Goethals pulled a whiskey bottle and a pair of mismatched glasses from a desk drawer. He splashed some liquor into each, and Bell had to lean across the big desk to accept the drink.
“A lot of the guys down here get used to drinking Caribbean rum. Too sweet, for my taste.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Bell said to the back of Goethals’s head.
He’d turned in his seat to gaze out the window. It was just dark enough that all he could see was the reflection of a middle-aged military man who’d made a million decisions and countless sacrifices and who was beginning to pay for them all.
“Logic tells me,” he said without turning back, “that just because you were right about the shovel accident doesn’t mean you’re right about everything else.”
“That’s correct,” Bell agreed. “But it should give you insight into how I operate and provide a foundation of trust between us.”
The Colonel finally turned to face his desk. Bell noticed the creases on each side of his mouth had deepened and the bags under his eyes had grown darker. “If you’re right about Talbot controlling the Vipers and that he stopped the attacks when I gave him permission to use his boat on the lake . . .”
He couldn’t finish the thought.
“Talbot ordered the attack on Pedro Miguel to push you into approving his operation when his attempt to kill Senator Densmore failed.”
“Had I said yes a day earlier . . .”
“You can’t blame yourself, Colonel,” Bell told him. “That act of barbarity is on Courtney Talbot and no one else.”
The Saboteurs Page 27