The Expansion

by Christoph Martin

  “Want one?” Dalisha had pulled a pack of jelly snakes from her pocket. “Me and a few of the other guys are going to this new fish restaurant in the Old Town tonight,” she said. A red snake hung from the corner of her mouth, and she pulled it till it snapped. She started chewing. “The guy who runs it thinks he’s the Iron Chef. You wanna join us?”

  “Thanks,” Karis said, taking a snake. “Another time. I’m actually … I was planning on dropping in on a friend tonight.”

  “A guy?” Dalisha cast a curious look at her. “You never told me you met someone! Is this the way you treat your loyal roommate?”

  “It was nothing serious,” she said, with a grin. “I just met him briefly the night before we left.”

  “You met him at the signing party?! Awesome! I had no idea! Way to leave the country with a bang! Will I meet him?”

  Karis laughed. “Probably not. I’m not even sure if he’ll remember me. It’s been almost two years.”

  “Course he’ll remember you!” Dalisha scoffed. “Anyway, if he doesn’t, I’m sure you can find a way to remind him.”

  Karis laughed. “I’m sure I’ll find a way.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Panama City, Panama

  Karis stood in the long, swing drive out front of the Smithsonian Institute for Tropical Research. Alongside her, a plastic fir tree, complete with fake snow and blinking Christmas lights, sat dwarfed by a huge, vine-swathed corotú tree.

  A rundown, yellow cab pulled up.

  She held the skirt of her simple, floral sundress bunched up in her hand and slid into the back seat. She could feel the sunburn on her arms and her nose from the long day at the dig site.

  “Buenas tardes,” she said. “And, may I say, you’re looking pretty suave today, Señor Driver.”

  Agent Tucker Avila turned to her with a look of pure joy.

  “Hot isn’t even in the ballpark!” he said. “I’m on fire! You like my shirt? I’m going for a kind of ’70s Hawaii Five-O meets CSI Miami.”

  Karis laughed. “Well, normally I’d say it’s a good way to get noticed … except I gotta tell you, my fairy-footed friend, you’re not the only one around here who likes pineapples and Elvis sunglasses. And I’m sorry to say, less than three of the guys I’ve encountered are likely to be gay.”

  Avila’s expression was one of mock horror. “Less than three? How many have you encountered?”

  “Four.” She broke into peals of laughter.

  “Very funny.” His tone was haughty. “I should warn you, Agent Deen: you’re treading on dangerous ground, making gross generalizations. And assumptions about my preferences.”

  She grinned and rifled through her purse. “Trust me. I can always tell which way someone swings. Sometimes before they even know it themselves.” She looked up and blew him an air kiss. “So I have the same Smithsonian cellphone I had last time. Same number and all.” She handed him a card with the number on it.

  “You want me to lodge the details with the Abbey?”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  Avila swung the taxi out of the drive and onto the main thoroughfare, and proceeded to follow the winding road downhill.

  “I do like this place,” Avila said emphatically. “Not at all what I expected, but I like it.”

  “I told you.” Karis beamed. “So you know where we’re going?”

  He nodded, and Karis didn’t doubt him: Avila had a photographic memory.

  Within a few minutes, they’d reached the top of the hill, and the staff entrance on the east side of the Panama Canal Administration building.

  Karis hopped out.

  Without looking back, she said, “I’ll check in later.”

  Avila drove off.

  Pausing to take in her surroundings, Karis made her way toward the main entrance.

  For the first time in her career, she was really nervous. And it had nothing to do with the armed guards that were stationed in the foyer of the building. All the usual preparations had been done before she left DC in case she encountered secondary screening: her cover story was watertight, and she had the Smithsonian paper trail to back her up. Fisher had even equipped her with a newly acquired, shabby, secondhand suitcase to ensure there would be no trace of explosives.

  Usually, when she headed into the field, she had never met her target. In this case, though, there was Max Burns.

  Not for the first time, Karis admonished herself that she’d let her guard down just that one time. She realized, now, it had been a mistake: exactly the kind of situation they’d been warned about in training.

  “A non-natural disaster is never an isolated event. It is the result of a long story: a series of bad decisions leading up to that point. Each and every decision matters. Each and every moment.”

  Inside the building, a guard took her passport.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Burns,” she said. “I don’t have an appointment, but maybe you could tell him I’m here?”

  The guard nodded. He was enormous, but—like many of the local guys she’d encountered—not at all intimidating. “Dr. Burns doesn’t work in this building.”

  “I believe he’s here for meetings.”

  The guard nodded. “Of course. I’ll let him know. You can wait in the foyer.” He pointed her through.

  Karis wasn’t worried that Max might not be there: technically, his office was situated opposite the Administration Building, but the intelligence Fisher had garnered already told her that he was reliably in the grand old hallways for meetings every afternoon.

  She passed under a maritime clock and between two substantial white-and-black marble pillars, into the heart of the quiet space under the dome. At its highest point, a tiny ring of oculars allowed light to diffuse, giving more visibility of the high gallery and a detailed panorama painting that depicted the epic story of the canal’s origins.

  She continued to the far side of the dome, where a French door looked out onto a huge flagpole and patio balcony. At the foot of the marble steps, a stone obelisk stood at the center of a large cul-de-sac. Palm trees lined the boulevard that stretched away from the building.

  Idly, Karis walked the periphery of the rotunda, where marble busts commemorated great men.

  President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words were there, cast in bronze.

  “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles … The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming … who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …”

  “Are you looking for the great women? Because you won’t find them. They were in a different arena.”

  Karis turned. Her heart was racing.

  “No,” she said, smiling, attempting to keep her voice even. “I was thinking it’s very … I don’t know … dramatic to strive, isn’t it? People seem to like to say they’re striving valiantly.”

  Max stopped walking, and she couldn’t read his expression. She wondered if she’d said the wrong thing, right out of the gate. She pressed her lips together, fighting the flush that was rising in her cheeks.

  Then Max started laughing. “I once met a great woman who said something very similar,” he said.

  “You did?” She felt the doubt lift: this was the Max Burns she knew.

  “Sure,” he said, with a grin. “She said, ‘Most of us are doing the best we can.’”

  “Wow, she sounds very wise. Would you mind introducing me to her sometime?”

  He nodded. “Of course! Except …” his eyes glinted with mischief. “She has this strange habit of disappearing. Just when you think you’ve discovered something amazing …”

  Karis felt the laughter rise up inside her, and she stepped toward him, the memory of his arms wrapped around her more vivid, more visceral, than she’d anticipated.

  “It’s
good to see you, Max.” She was about to embrace him before she came to her senses.

  Turning her head, she allowed him to kiss one cheek, and then she stepped back.

  Immediately, she saw the confusion in his eyes, and she regretted not trusting their bond, however tenuous. But she knew the risks: it was one thing to be making love, thinking you were about to leave the country for good, and another thing entirely to be standing in the heart of the Panama Canal Administration Building in the middle of the working week, face to face with the target of your new assignment.

  She wondered if he had even the slightest idea of what he’d gotten himself into.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to hold you hostage to the past, Max Burns,” she said, smiling. “I only wanted to pick your brain.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” he said, with a wry expression. He tipped his head to one side, rubbing his shoulder with his free hand. “It’s been a long day.” He sighed. But then he broke into a broad smile. “Well, I have to say, it’s a nice surprise to see you back here, Karis Deen. Where are you staying? Would you like to join me for a drink?”

  Karis laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Panama City, Panama

  Max glanced across to the passenger seat, to where Karis Deen was sitting quietly.

  He knew he shouldn’t have expectations: he barely knew her, and it had been a very long time since their one, solitary night together.

  And here she was, sitting in his Land Rover.

  He hoped she didn’t regret anything.

  “Max, I feel like I should apologize to you.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, you don’t need to—”

  She interrupted him with a short laugh. “Just wait and listen, Dr. Burns!”

  “I’m sorry … what do you mean?” He steered the car across the intersection.

  She smiled. “Max, I’m not apologizing about our night together, or about the fact that I haven’t been in touch.” She seemed amused by his confusion. “I’m apologizing because I want to talk about work, and I realize it’s after hours for you.”

  “Ah. I see.” Max kept his eyes firmly on the road as the reality sank in: she was more interested in Max-the-engineer than in Max-the-person.

  But that had been his experience generally over the past year or so: everyone seemed to want to talk to him because he was the one the media had blithely labelled ‘the expansion’s brainchild’—the expert engineer that everyone called on for comment. He’d almost become the CISCO spokesperson.

  Wearily, he switched back into work mode.

  “So let me guess: you’re back because of the prehistoric feeding grounds. You’re not the boss, but you figure you’re on a first-name basis with the chief engineer, so you want to find out how much we can massage the schedule to allow you to excavate at the site as long as possible. Am I close?” He glanced at her.

  Karis nodded. “Good guess. You’re not just a pretty face.”

  Suddenly, he felt irritated. It had been a long few weeks where he’d been at loggerheads with Paco over the timeline for the concrete pouring and, frankly, he didn’t think he had it in him to try and decode whether the woman was flirting or not. Mixed messages were tedious at the best of times.

  “I’ve negotiated four weeks already,” he said drily, as he came to a stop for a red light. “I can’t give you longer. There are too many stakeholders that can’t be put off at this stage.”

  Karis nodded. “I thought you might say that. Oh, well, it was worth a try.”

  He pulled up in a vacant parking spot alongside a café that was nestled between two blocks of bay side terrace houses. The café—along with many other establishments—had sprung up over the past year. That happened a lot in the Casco Viejo, what with the money being poured into the expansion, and the thousands of employees who were now working on site at the canal.

  There was a free table overlooking the waterfront, and Max directed Karis towards it.

  As they sat, she started laughing.

  He looked at her quizzically.

  She pointed to the plastic holly and mistletoe wreath that garnished their table.

  “It’s so crazy,” she said. “It was snowing when I left the US.”

  “You know there’s an ice rink down on the causeway?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, inside a huge tent. Can you imagine? Ice-skating in the tropics—”

  “Max!”

  Max turned at the sound of his name.

  “I thought you must’ve died of overwork!”

  “Godfredo! What the hell happened to you?!” Max jumped to his feet: Godfredo’s face had stitches down one side, and he wore a large sticking plaster above one eye.

  The two embraced warmly.

  “God, you smell like a brewery!” Max said, laughing. “Had a long lunch, did we?”

  “Small accident with the jet-ski. I guess I jumped a bit too far this time.”

  “Far out, Fredo, you’re going to get yourself killed one day.” Max shook his head, and placed his hand on Godfredo’s arm. “Can I introduce you to Karis? Karis, this is Godfredo.”

  Godfredo’s face froze in an affectation of a star-struck feint as his eyes alighted on Karis.

  “The Karis?” He took her hand and kissed it.

  “Don’t mind him,” Max said mildly. “It’s all show.”

  “You told him about me?” Karis turned to Max and smiled; that shy smile that made his knees go weak.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Karis!” Godfredo said. “Sit here.” He pulled out a chair. “Max will get us some drinks.”

  “You can get your own drinks, you lazy sod,” Max said, laughing. Nevertheless, he waved over a waiter, and ordered beers for all of them.

  “How is it I haven’t met you before?” Godfredo now leaned his elbows on the table and looked at Karis intently. “Usually pretty girls like you don’t take long to find me … in this tropical paradise …”

  Max rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Give it a rest, Fredo, you great big egomaniac.” He turned to Karis. “I apologize in advance for any uncouth behavior or inappropriate language. I’m afraid I have no control.”

  “But Max!” Godfredo opened his arms wide. “Hermano! You know people are more likely to trust you if you swear! It’s a scientific fact!”

  Karis immediately started laughing, and Max allowed himself to relax: she could hold her own, no question.

  “Well, since you ask,” Karis said, “I haven’t had time to ‘find’ you yet, as I’ve been back in the US. I’m with the Smithsonian Institute. I’m doing a postdoctorate.” She paused. “And you’re one of Max’s work colleagues?”

  Godfredo nodded. “CISCO is my dad’s company. We’re part of the British consortium; we’ve been contracted to build the new locks for the canal.”

  Karis’s eyebrows shot up. “So you’re Godfredo Roco!” She seemed impressed. “You look different than in the local gossip magazines!” She grinned. “So … technically …”—she slid a glance at Max—“… he’s your boss?”

  Max laughed. “Well, I’m sure he’d like to think so, though it’s not quite as simple as that.”

  “It never is.” She flashed him a smile. “So when is the expansion going to be finished?”

  Godfredo leaned in. “You ask a lot of questions for a Smithsonian girl.”

  “I’m a scientist,” she said. “What’d you expect?”

  “Well, you should come out and see the construction site with us one time. It’s really something,” Godfredo said.

  She smiled. “I know. I was out there today.”

  “She’s one of the paleontologist crew,” Max said. “She likes bones and teeth.”

  “She does?” Godfredo looked at her with more than a little innuendo.

  “Yeah. But only the ones that are millions of years old,” Max countered.

  Karis nodded. “True. We’re trying to beat the clock before the concrete
kings move in.”

  “Aha! So you’re the one to blame for our delays!”

  “Yep,” she said, cheerfully. “We’ve just discovered a huge deposit of shells and teeth, and we think it might be a prehistoric feeding ground. Much older than we thought. Like, about twelve million years older than we thought. Very exciting!”

  Max couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.

  He turned to Godfredo. “So tell us how your face remodeling happened.”

  Godfredo launched into the tale, and Max watched as his friend relived the boating collision with animated hand gestures.

  Not for the first time, he mused that Godfredo was a bit of a mystery. After Paco’s interference in the figures for the bid, Godfredo had simply dropped off the radar for several weeks, leaving Max and Paco to put together the teams that would move forward with the project.

  Not that it was a bad thing, in the end, as Max had finally had the opportunity to work with, and observe, his friend’s father closely; to see the way he operated. And, unexpectedly, his mind had been put at ease. He’d been impressed with the speed at which Paco got things done. His ability to rally suppliers and contractors for steel and materials as well as dredging and excavation equipment was hardly trivial, but it was his hard-nosed bargaining and dogged pursuit—and, ultimately, engagement—of the big players that had made the most impression. Max often wished he’d been a fly on the wall at some of the meetings from which Paco had emerged triumphant.

  It made him think of all those years he and Godfredo had been at school together, when he’d had no real picture of Paco’s capacity for—and momentum with—his work. And how easy it had been, as a teenager, to jump to conclusions about Godfredo’s home life.

  Whatever the dynamic between the two Rocos was, Max knew it was not something he could ever understand. Because Paco was, after all, Godfredo’s father. And perhaps it was better to have an unpredictably explosive father than none at all.

  In any case—after they’d won the contract, when Godfredo finally showed up after being off the radar for three weeks—he’d acted as though nothing had happened: he jumped back into his role as Paco’s right-hand man without any explanation. Every attempt Max made to discuss the goings on had been met with stonewalling or dodging, and Max had all but given up on finding out where he’d been. He’d even considered contacting Sofia, but eventually opted to assume Godfredo’s behavior wasn’t out of the ordinary. The fact was, he hadn’t seen his old friend or lived in close proximity to him for going on twenty years, and he had no real way of knowing what was usual and what was extraordinary in Godfredo’s world these days. The two of them were so different—and always had been—that it wasn’t worth taking to heart.