“But . . .”
“No, sir,” Bell said firmly. He couldn’t let Goethals be paralyzed with guilt. “You had no way of knowing how the Viboras and Talbot were linked or the cause and effect of their actions. Those men died that day because Court Talbot murdered them to fulfill his obligation to Otto Dreissen. You played no role in that whatsoever.”
Goethals was quiet for a moment. Bell knew to let him come to his own peace.
All right, then, Goethals said to himself. It was all the convincing he needed. He looked Bell square in the eye. “Where does this leave us?”
“It leaves me needing to explain one more facet to this affair, one that is very personal. Dreissen had my wife kidnapped the other night.”
Goethals’s eyes widened, and he grew very still.
Bell continued. “She was abducted off the SS Spatminster, far enough from Panama for the captain to carry on with the voyage rather than double back here to inform the authorities of her disappearance.”
“How do you know that? The Spatminster lacks a wireless.”
“Otto Dreissen showed me a photograph of her this morning. She was holding today’s paper while a man off camera was pointing a pistol at her head.”
“My God. Have you gone to the police?”
Bell chuckled humorlessly. “I was in a police interrogation room when Dreissen showed me the picture and told me if I didn’t stop sniffing around, he would kill Marion. There’s a detective named Ortega on Dreissen’s payroll.”
“Do you know where they’re holding her?”
“I suspect on the support ship for the dirigible they used to snatch her from the Spatminster.”
“Dirigible?” Goethals scoffed.
Bell feared another dismissal coming. “I know how this all sounds, Colonel, I really do. But logic and local lore bear me out. If the Spatminster had been close to Panama City when Marion was kidnapped, the captain would have turned around, agreed?”
“Yes. I know him. Malcolm Fish. Good man. Why wouldn’t he think she fell overboard? Happens all the time, and there’s no need to report anything until the next port of call.”
“Marion had two roommates on the voyage back to California. In order to abduct my wife, the kidnappers would have needed to deal with them. Were they murdered and dumped? Doubtful. Most likely, they were tied up in their cabins and weren’t reported as missing until one of them worked her way out of her restraints.”
Goethals didn’t look convinced.
“Also, a ship’s porter or purser had to have been compelled by force to tell the kidnappers which cabin was Marion’s. Again, I suspect that man was bound and gagged rather than murdered. Had there been three murders, plus the kidnapping, Captain Fish probably would have returned here. Since he didn’t, he’s no doubt pressing on. While I’m not sure where the closest port is to him now, I guarantee he’ll make contact once he’s there.”
“Southern Mexico, I’d guess. Let’s say I believe you. Why do you suspect an airship?”
“Speed. Once Dreissen decided he needed leverage over me, Marion was long gone. Another boat wouldn’t have been fast enough to reach the Spatminster and return to Panama in time for him to show me the photograph. A seaplane was the other likely option, but I’ve heard rumors about locals seeing and hearing a cloud that hums.”
“I’ve actually heard talk of that myself,” the Colonel admitted.
“How else would you describe a Zeppelin if you had no idea such a machine existed?”
“‘A cloud that hums,’ I should imagine.” Goethals looked to be on the verge of believing until he shook his head. “This seems too byzantine, Bell.”
“No, sir, it’s simple. Dreissen couldn’t take the chance that my amnesia would fade and that my investigation would expose his plan.”
“And what part does an airship play in that?”
Bell wished he had the answer, but he didn’t. That piece of the puzzle was still missing. “I don’t know for certain. They are smuggling items either into the country or out.”
“Good God,” Goethals shouted, before checking himself, and then in a conspiratorial whisper asked, “This doesn’t have anything to do with Teddy Roosevelt’s visit, does it?”
“Not for starters,” Bell said. “The first attacks by the Viboras took place months ago, long before TR announced his side trip here.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“But it’s an unfortunate coincidence, at the very least.”
“I thought all you detectives don’t like coincidences.”
“We don’t at all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen. Still, I’ll want to review your security measures for his visit.”
“It’s already been worked out that he won’t set foot in Panama. He’s being taken from his ship on a specially rigged flat-bottom boat that will climb the three locks at Gatun and then tour the lake for a bit while a luncheon is served and then it’s right back out again.”
“That’s good,” Bell said, wishing the former President would heed his warning and stay the hell away. He realized the best he could do was wrap up this whole thing in the couple days he had left. “Back to our business at hand.”
“Yes. Umm, Talbot doesn’t know you suspect him, right? He’s back out on the lake now. Why don’t we snatch him when he returns to Gamboa and—what’s that phrase?—‘sweat it out of him.’”
“He might not come back. He might leave with the Germans, and I, for one, want to know what he’s up to out there.”
Goethals blew out a frustrated breath. “You’ve presented me with a lot of allegations with no real proof or possible solutions. What’s your point with all of this? What do you want?”
“I want my wife back,” Bell said simply. “And you can help. A few months back, a pilot named Robert Fowler flew from the Pacific to the Atlantic in a biplane fitted with pontoons.”
“Yes, he took along a photographer.”
Bell nodded. “Sam tells me the plane is still here. As it turns out, I know how to fly. The airship has a vulnerability. They need a large open area with a tall vertical mooring mast in order to dock. They wouldn’t have cleared a place to land out in the jungle. Too much time and manpower, plus they had to resupply the craft during its transatlantic crossing—the world’s first, by the way.”
“A ship,” Goethals guessed, eyes brightening.
“Exactly. They have a support ship in the waters off the coast. If I can find it, I can rescue my wife because that’s where she would have been taken. I bet Dreissen is there too. And if Talbot is smart, when his role is fulfilled once all of this is over, he’ll leave Panama with his German boss. I need your permission to borrow that plane so I can see this through to the end.”
32
The atmosphere in the wardroom was one of smug self-satisfaction. The job was almost completed, and despite a few minor glitches, mostly the interference of Isaac Bell, it had gone well. Otto Dreissen had just arrived with Court Talbot. They’d linked up in Colón and were motored out to sea for the rendezvous.
Two other men in the room—other than the steward, who was smoking, and Dreissen’s ever-present servant, Heinz Kohl—were both in the Imperial German Navy. One was the captain of the support ship, named for Otto Dreissen’s daughter, Dagna. The second was Max Grosse, the captain of the airship Cologne. Grosse had the distinction of commanding the first transatlantic flight, as well as being the man with the most hours aloft in Essenwerks’s airships. A former pilot for Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Grosse had switched companies when he learned of the vast superiority of Essenwerks’s dirigibles. There was a fifth man there, also dressed as a civilian, but he was addressed as “Major.”
He nonchalantly draped one leg over the other as he slouched deeper into one of the chairs around the ten-seat oak table. “It is too early, just yet, for the champagne. Two more mines should st
ill be placed, since we were provided a surplus. While not necessary according to our calculations, they will boost the shock wave that will dislodge the spillway from the rest of the Gatun Dam.”
“English, please,” Talbot reminded him.
“Sorry, Court,” the Major said, grinning. “Too much German in my English.”
Talbot frowned. He was being mocked for a linguistic mistake that had almost blown both their covers. “Go to hell.”
The Major gave him a dead-eyed stare. “When this is over, I would very much like the opportunity to prove that you are not as tough as you think you are.”
Talbot shot to his feet. “Let’s do it right now.”
Dreissen said, “Enough.” Then he noticed the Major had pulled a Luger pistol from beneath his coat. “Put that away.”
As a precaution to protect his employer, Heinz Kohl had also pulled his weapon, a revolver, he kept secreted in the small of his back.
The two naval officers were astute enough to step back. There was no clear chain of command, at present, and though Dreissen was a civilian, he owned the airship the German Navy had been testing for the past few months under a lease agreement. The American was just a mercenary in their eyes but he had been vital to their operation. The Major outranked the two Captains, but he was Army—Sektion IIIb, to be exact.
That was the intelligence arm of the German General Staff—spies. No traditional soldier or sailor worth his salt held anything but contempt for those in the espionage business. It was within the purview of liars, thieves, and assassins, not a place for an upright gentleman of noble character. Which is why it came as no surprise the Major was quick to escalate a simple clash of egos by brandishing a pistol.
“I said enough,” Dreissen repeated. “You two want to fight it out, do it on your own time.”
“Of course, Herr Dreissen,” the Major said with a sugary smile and holstered his gun. Talbot sat down without saying anything.
Dreissen turned his attention to the two military men. “I’m concerned that time is running out. Roosevelt will be here in a couple days, and we have two more charges we can plant. While I understand they are supplemental mines not necessary for our success, I would still like the extra insurance they represent. The weather has delayed too many of our flights, and I can’t chance not completing the task tonight. Captain Grosse, I understand you fly with only one mine at a time. Can the Cologne carry two?”
Grosse stroked his mustache, an exact copy of the Kaiser’s. “We have the lifting capacity, yes, but the ship’s controls will be sluggish. If there is even the slightest breeze, I fear we can’t navigate her inside the valley.”
“So, it’s risky but feasible?”
“Ja.”
“How about it, Mr. Talbot?” Dreissen asked. “Can your boat handle two of our mines?”
Talbot shook his head. “Weight’s no problem, it’s the room. The working deck of my boat just isn’t big enough for two.” Dreissen tried to speak, but the newly minted mercenary overrode him. “But we’ve got ourselves a good camp out there, with a log dock strong enough to hold the extra mine. You lower them down one at a time. First onto the boat, second the dock. We head out and set the first one, then use our winch to lift aboard the second.”
The airship commander looked thoughtful for a moment. “If the weather conditions are favorable, that would work. The boat and the dock will be side by side?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t have to maneuver at all, just maintain a hover. Me and my men can guide the mines using the ropes you’ve tied to them aboard the ship, like always.”
Dreissen was relieved. He’d gambled big and it was about to pay off. Germany was about to gain a great deal of prestige and a stronger financial position with the Argentine government, thanks to his scheme. And soon, the expansionist Roosevelt would be dead, and Woodrow Wilson would likely be reelected in a few years. Foreign affairs did not interest him, meaning Germany’s future plans would face little challenge from the United States.
As for himself, he figured his exile to the backwaters of the world was at an end. He would return to Germany and accept a place in the Kaiser’s inner circle of advisers, steering weapons contracts to the family business. And, he thought, it might actually be enjoyable living at home with his wife and daughters, for a change, and maybe it was time to try for a son.
No matter what, Dreissen knew, he would find a way to enjoy the fruits of his ambition.
He roused himself from his musings. “Court, what about after the last charge has been placed?”
“I’m not going to risk Bell figuring out my role with the Viboras. His amnesia was a godsend, but if he remembers anything, then I’ll spend the rest of my life in federal prison. No thank you. My men have all been paid, so I’ll drop them near Colón, from where they’ll head back to their own villages. I’m going to sink my boat and use the skiff to get to town. I’ll get on the first ship out of here and make my way to Brazil. I’ve got contacts in Rio, and, with the money I’ve earned, I figure I’m set for life.”
“Major?”
“Once I set off the mines, I’ll head back to Panama City, keep up my cover for a week or two more, then fade away. I’m sure Sektion IIIb will have another assignment for me in short order.”
Talbot said, “I know I’m hitching a ride on the Cologne back to my boat tonight, but you’ll be busy, and I’d really like a tour. Working under that beast this past week has got me real curious about what makes it tick.”
“I can’t see why not,” Otto Dreissen said. “Captain Grosse?”
“Of course.” He gestured to the waiting steward.
“I’ll sit this one out,” the Major said. “I’ll get some sailors to get me back to shore in the gig. Good luck to us all.”
The steward moved from the back wall, where he’d been standing, and went to a side table, where he picked up the heavy brass lighter everyone had shared to fire up their cigars and pipes. He inspected it carefully to see there were no hot bits of flint inside the mechanism and then placed it in a metal box that he then locked with a key from a fob he kept in his pocket. Then he went around with a brass vase filled with water and made each man ceremoniously drop in his stogie or pipe waste, which hissed as the smoldering tobacco was extinguished. He shook the vase to make certain all trace of fire was doused.
This foul mixture was then dumped in a glass jar whose mouth was sealed with a screw-on lid.
Only when this bizarre ritual was completed did he pull open a door that sealed the Dagna’s smoking lounge. “One last thing, and this is not negotiable, Herr Talbot. There are no firearms allowed on the Cologne.” He held out a hand for the holstered Webley revolver.
Talbot thumbed open the leather safety strap and pulled the gun clear. He reversed it and set it in the German Captain’s palm.
Moments later, the men reached the main deck. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and made the sea’s gently dancing waves flash like mirrors. The heat was kept in check by a steady breeze coming across the decks from the east. Because the Dagna was a civilian vessel, her hull and upperworks were painted white, with an accent of deep maroon. She flew Germany’s civilian flag rather than the distinctive naval ensign. At present, the smoke that normally coiled from the single funnel aft of the wheelhouse was being diverted using a series of electric fans through special vents below the waterline. It looked like the stern of the ship was wreathed in misty tendrils from melting ice. The system was far from efficient, but it guaranteed no spark or ember ever reached the deck.
There were no open flames in the kitchen, everything was cooked using electric coils, and none of the sailors had any metal on their uniforms that could cause a spark. The ribbons adorning both Captains’ tunics were sewn-on cloth facsimiles of their real commendations.
The reason for all these precautions was the seven hundred thousand cubic feet of highly explosive hydro
gen floating above the Dagna inside the gas cells of the mighty dirigible Cologne. The airship’s hull overshadowed its smaller support vessel as it floated above it with its nose locked to the mooring mast on the ship’s aft deck. That spindly structure resembled an oil derrick or a miniature Eiffel Tower and allowed the airship the freedom to pivot around as the winds changed direction. The Dagna’s fore deck was taken up with the boilers, pumps, and other apparatus for separating the fundamental elements of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater after the salt had been filtered out of it.
The Cologne was just over five hundred feet in length and almost fifty in diameter. She wasn’t perfectly cylindrical, the support girders between the multiple ring frames visibly stretching her waterproof skin so it looked like the hull was made of dozens of long panels. Clinging to her underbelly were two forty-foot gondolas. One, just aft of the nose, was for the command crew, including all bridge and radio room staff. The second could be configured either for passengers, to enjoy a sightseeing tour of the countryside, or as the payload bay for ninety hundred-pound bombs. The two gondolas were accessed from inside the hull by a long corridor lined with bunks for off-duty personnel on which to rest.
Power was supplied by four Essenwerks’s straight-six Cyclone engines, each producing two hundred forty horsepower. The motors were in separate pods attached to the hull and accessible during flight by the team of mechanics. They burned the revolutionary Blaugas rather than a liquid fuel like gasoline, saving the airship considerable weight. In normal flight, the Cologne cruised at forty-two knots but could accelerate up to fifty in an emergency. In all aspects, she was superior to Count Zeppelin’s namesake dirigibles. Rather than the multiple wing-like control surfaces that Zeppelins employed, the Cologne had a single cruciform tail for the elevators and rudders.
While the topside of the hull was doped silver to help reflect sunlight and prevent heat from expanding the hydrogen gas, her underside, for this mission, had been daubed in matte black, which made her, effectively, invisible from the ground at night.
The Saboteurs Page 28