Talbot pointed to two workers who hovered close by. They had created a makeshift stretcher out of boards and empty cement bags. “Get this man onto the next truck to the station, and if he starts bleeding, turn the piece of wood I threaded through the knot of the tourniquet to tighten it even more.”
By virtue of his natural leadership and calm in the face of chaos, the men responded to Talbot like they were soldiers under his command. It didn’t matter that he had no actual authority in the zone, the men simply recognized his leadership and obeyed.
The work went on. Bell acted as litter-bearer and driver and helped corral some of the workhorses and mules that had been spooked by the explosion. It was exhausting work, mentally and physically, but he, like all the others, didn’t slow until the last living creature had been tended to.
It was three hours after the blast that the wounded had been evacuated by special train to the zone’s principal hospital, where all off-duty staff had been called in for the crisis. The doctors from the small clinic at Pedro Miguel had accompanied the train, though one remained behind for the grisly task of sorting through the dead to get an accurate count.
Talbot, Westbrook, and Bell found a hot metal lean-to just before the inevitable rain began to fall. They flipped over packing cases to use as chairs, and Court passed around Romeo y Julieta cigars from a leather cheroot case made of crocodile hide that he had tucked into one of his bush jacket’s pockets. The rain pounding against the tin roof made conversation all but impossible, but these men were beyond the need to talk. They each had their own thoughts on the tragedy and felt no need to discuss their grief. The humid air was soon perfumed by the cigars, and the simple act of sharing a companionable silence helped blunt the worst of the horror they’d seen.
A figure came through the curtain of rain falling across the jobsite so quickly that they never saw him coming. It was Goethals, wearing a dark poncho and a wide-brimmed hat on his head. The fury radiating off his face made the stuffy little shelter feel ten degrees hotter.
Westbrook jumped to his feet. “Colonel.”
Goethals waved him down. He shook out his wet things and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke ceilingward, where it mixed with the clouds from the Romeo y Julietas. He was too agitated to sit, and there was little room to pace, so he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the white cigarette bouncing between his lips as he spoke.
“Damned savages,” he spat. “Twenty-seven dead, and they tell me there’s going to be more. Ancon Hospital is overwhelmed with wounded. Worse than the day back in ’09 when a premature dynamite blast killed twenty-three.”
Bell knew there was something troubling him even more than the loss of life, and the next sentence proved him right.
“And this is going to add months to the construction time. That crane’s a total loss, so we’ll have to make do with the one remaining on that side of the lock. And once word of this gets back to Jamaica and Barbados, we’re going to see our recruitment numbers dwindle to nothing. What a disaster.” He looked to Bell. “I heard you shot the bastard.”
“He bled to death in the lock.”
“I guess that’s some small comfort,” Goethals said. “Okay, Talbot, it looks like you’re getting your wish.”
“Colonel?”
“I want you to stamp out this nest of vipers and I don’t care how you do it.”
Normally, there would be much bravado in such a proclamation, but the Canal Administrator delivered it with tired resignation. While he was an officer of the United States Army, he was an engineer first and foremost. Sending troops into battle was not something he was accustomed to and he did not do it lightly.
“How much do you want?”
“Sir?”
“I expect you want to get paid for risking your life. How much?”
Talbot was taken aback. “To be honest, I hadn’t put a number together in my head. Let me see . . .”
Goethals said, “The Marines will be here in a month. I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars if you get them in the first week and five thousand less every week after that until the Leathernecks arrive. Once they’re here, you’re out. Fair?”
“Yes. Very, sir.”
“There’s a problem,” Bell said. He was speaking to George Goethals, but his attention was on Court Talbot. “I don’t recall his name, but the man who blew up the crane, the man I hunted down, he’s Major Talbot’s personal driver.”
Talbot’s eyes went wide for a split second. Then he looked doubtful. “Rinaldo? I think you are mistaken, Mr. Bell. Not only have I known him for many years, he is my wife’s cousin. He’s family.
“I have observed an interesting phenomenon with many new arrivals. When a person is in a foreign country for the first time, it is often the case that most of the locals look alike to you. It’s only after you’ve been here for a while that you focus on the things that make people look different from one another rather than those things they all have in common.”
“I’m not wrong,” Bell said levelly, though he didn’t enjoy being told that he simply categorized people by their race. “There are two parts to my profession, Major. One is merely observing people, places, and things, and I am very good at my job.”
The two men held each other’s gaze, neither backing off their position.
“What’s the second part?” Sam Westbrook asked, cutting the tension.
“Fitting all the parts of what I’ve seen together to discover which one doesn’t belong. Ten times in ten, that’s the perpetrator I’m looking for.”
Over the sound of rain pelting the metal roof came the haunting peals of a church bell. Almost all the West Indian workers were devout Catholics, and the church the company had built for them was putting out the word that death had struck an especially cruel blow to the congregation.
Goethals lit another cigarette. “We can settle this dispute easy enough. Bell, you said the body is in one of the locks?”
“Yes, Colonel. In the far chamber. I chased him across the site and then down into the tunnels below the lock. He almost got away, but I managed two lucky shots just as he climbed back to the surface. He’s near one of the circular water vents.”
“If this is true, Major, I will have to rethink my offer.”
“Colonel Goethals”—Talbot’s tone was somber—“if it were true, I’d have to rethink a great many things. I’ve known Rinaldo since almost the day I arrived in Panama. He introduced me to his family, and that’s where I met my Esmeralda. I would literally not have my wife, and children, without him.
“And I assure you, sir, that he doesn’t have a political bone in his body. His brother, on the other hand, is the family firebrand. He is passionate about how the revolution that created Panama was a sham perpetrated by Roosevelt in order to steal land for the canal.”
“He’s not exactly wrong,” Goethals muttered.
The other three were taken aback by such a forthright comment. While it was public knowledge the revolution was mostly for the benefit of United States’s effort to build the canal, it just wasn’t mentioned in polite society.
Talbot said, “Raul Morales, the brother, moved to Cartagena about two years ago, but it is possible he came back as an agent of the Colombian government.”
“Are you suggesting Colombia is responsible for the insurgency?” Goethals was shaken by the thought.
“No,” Talbot said quickly, yet just as quickly amended, “I don’t know. On the ship from San Diego, Bell thought there was a behind-the-scenes actor in all of this. While I was thinking European Bolsheviks, maybe Colombia is fighting to win back its lost province of Panama.”
“Or I’m right,” Bell said, “and that’s Rinaldo Morales’s body out in the lock chamber, and Major Talbot has been an unwitting conduit into the zone for the Red Vipers.”
Like it had been turned off by a spigot, the rain went
from roaring downpour to the patter of drops falling off leaves in just a few seconds. It was a little unnerving. By the time the men were halfway to the far lock, the sky had cleared, and the sun beat down once again. Vapor whirled and twisted out of the jungle beyond the cleared jobsite, while rivulets of runoff snaked across the grounds headed for the irrigation ditches. Standing pools of water were breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and every work zone across the isthmus was designed with an eye toward drainage.
The party strode through the open mitered gates and into the lock itself. The scale was overwhelming. A third of the way down its thousand-foot length lay the body of the man Bell had shot. The deluge had washed away the blood that had drained from his corpse and it looked especially pale because of how much of it he’d lost.
They let Talbot take point but stuck close. The Major got down on one knee, heedless of the wet concrete. The Panamanian bomber wore clothing typical of a canal worker. Talbot gently turned the body so they could better see the face. The Major didn’t say anything for a second. Bell took note that his bullet had shot through both of the man’s cheeks, which would make identification more difficult. He also saw, now that the body had been moved, that another of the rounds had severed the man’s left pinkie.
“Well?” Goethals prompted.
“This is Raul Morales, my driver’s brother.” He stood and then addressed Isaac Bell. “I’m sorry to say, you are wrong. It’s an honest mistake. Rinaldo and Raul looked very similar and were only a year apart. Esmeralda’s family is going to be disconsolate.”
Bell stretched out his hand to shake Talbot’s. “I am sorry about the mistaken identity, and I am even more sorry for your loss. No matter what horrible thing this man did, he was still family.”
Talbot shook Bell’s hand. “Here’s some irony for you. Rinaldo is missing his left pinkie, as punishment inflicted by his father—it’s a long story, about a disturbed, abusive parent—and now his brother loses the same finger in death.”
Bell looked at Talbot critically. He didn’t like irony or, in this case, coincidence. “Are you absolutely certain this isn’t Rinaldo?”
“The wound to the face makes it a little more difficult, but yes. Besides, you can see for yourself that the hand wound is recent.”
“True,” Bell said slowly.
Talbot flipped open one of the pouch pockets on his bush jacket and handed an object to Bell. It was a small metal cylinder with a glass end. “Single D cell electric light. Turn it on by twisting the base.”
He hefted the ladder lying by the drain opening and slid one end into the tunnel below.
“It’s got to be down there.”
Bell knew what he meant and turned on the light before descending into the shaft. There was plenty of light below the opening, and while the rainwater had diluted the blood, it still looked pink where it puddled on the bottom of the huge pipe. The severed finger lay about three feet from the opening, roughly the distance Bell expected it would be. He picked it up with a handkerchief from his pocket and examined the stump. The bone showed the expected fracturing from being struck by a bullet.
He climbed back to the surface and once back on top opened the blood-smeared handkerchief to reveal his grisly find. “This is all the proof I need,” he announced. “By the way, Court, this is one handy little device. Gives off more light than I expected.”
“Sears, Roebuck catalog. Please keep it, I ordered a dozen of them.”
Bell thanked him and pocketed the electric torch.
“What does all this mean?” young Sam Westbrook asked. “Was he working for the Colombians or what?”
“This should be a matter for the Canal Authority,” Bell said, looking at Goethals, “but with your permission . . .”
He gestured to the body, and the Administrator nodded his approval.
Bell searched the corpse with professional adroitness, not a hiding place overlooked or a motion wasted. The man had nothing on him but some matches in a plain paperboard box and a knife fashioned into a shiv from some unidentifiable piece of metal. The knife had been used to cut an appropriate length of fuse, the matches had been to light it. There were no labels in his clothes and nothing hidden in his boots. Bell took a second to tuck the handkerchief into the dead man’s breast pocket.
He got to his feet and said, “It was too much to hope for that he had letters in his pocket from the President of Colombia detailing the plot. Sam asks a good question, Colonel. What will happen if Raul Morales was working with Colombian agents?”
“That’s for Washington to decide. They will need something more definitive than our speculation to even inquire diplomatically at this point, but I can see this escalating very quickly.” He lit another in his unending chain of cigarettes. “You gentlemen must surely be aware that there is a great deal of sentiment around the world that the United States was in the wrong when it came to the Panamanian revolution. It’s said we acted as bullies, and that on the heels of taking Cuba and the Philippines from Spain our colonial aspirations are growing too dangerous.”
Bell said, “Ironic, coming from European powers that have spread their tentacles into every corner of the globe and exploited lands and peoples for generations and enriched themselves endlessly from it, but apparently hypocrisy doesn’t reflect in the mirror.”
“True,” Goethals said. “What I am saying is, we’ve spent half a billion dollars, with a capital B, down here and lost better than four thousand men’s lives. I don’t think we’re going to meekly turn over our marvelous accomplishment. I also know there will be a diplomatic firestorm and quite possibly military repercussions if we have to fight the Colombians if it turns out they are behind the Red Vipers.”
“We’d risk war,” Westbrook said.
“For this?” Goethals spread his arms to encompass the enormous structure in which they stood. “With any and all comers. Mr. Bell, I am very much interested in your continued presence here in the zone, if you are willing to lend a hand. We need answers, and I believe you are the man best qualified to find them.”
“Of course, Colonel, I am at your disposal. I already have a first question that demands an answer. Where are the rest of the dynamite crates? That explosion was big, to be sure, and effective, but it wasn’t a full ton of explosives.” Bell then addressed Westbrook and Talbot. “I believe there was a third option I didn’t consider back in the bunker and that’s they cached some of the dynamite here and took some of it with them.”
“What do we do?”
“We need to search this site from top to bottom, in the unlikely event they left it behind.”
“Why do you say ‘unlikely’?” Goethals asked.
“No point in splitting your loot if you’re going to leave it all on-site. It doubles the chances of it being discovered.”
“Yet halves the chance of losing it all if it were,” Talbot pointed out.
Bell shook his head and said to Westbrook, “A ton of dynamite goes missing. What would happen if you found a thousand pounds of unauthorized dynamite in the back of a truck?”
“We’d run an audit of our supply, discover the theft, and then search every nook and cranny until we found the other thousand pounds. If it was here, we’d find it.”
Court Talbot could find no fault in the logic. “You are rather good at this, Bell. Go on.”
“Point two is that they have already struck here. If I were trying to sow unrest, I would spread my swath of destruction far and wide. That’s why I say it is unlikely they left the remainder of the dynamite behind. They took it with them and will use it to strike elsewhere.”
“Where?” Goethals asked.
“I don’t know, but we need to find out before they attack again.”
13
Goethals remained at Pedro Miguel for another hour, then had to return to Ancon on his private train, nicknamed the Yellow Peril because of the carriage’
s yellow roof and because he used it for surprise inspections up and down the canal. Court Talbot returned with him, while Bell remained at Pedro Miguel to personally oversee the search for the missing explosives. Sam Westbrook, with nothing more exciting planned for his day off than to hang out at the YMCA, offered to help.
Once workers understood what was at stake with the search, there was no loss of volunteers. Bell gave the hundred or so Americans and Caribbean islanders strict instructions not to touch the crates if they found them and to come find him immediately. Men combed every square inch of the sprawling construction site, inspecting all the trucks and trains, searching every foot of tunnel under the two massive lock chambers, and rooting through every warehouse, shed, lean-to, and tent. They sifted through mountains of coal waiting to be used in the locomotives, and a pair of equipment operators checked the crates in the unlikely chance they were hidden high atop the surviving gantry cranes that were the men’s kingdom. Bell detailed other men to search a fifty-foot swath of jungle near the explosives bunker in case the missing dynamite had been hidden there.
As Bell had suspected, they found nothing. He did get a consensus from having conversations with men knowledgeable on the subject and who’d witnessed the blast that it had been produced by about a thousand pounds of explosives, and possibly more, but certainly not less. Again, this fit with Bell’s own hunch that the perpetrators made off with additional crates of dynamite after loading the truck.
The sun was about a half hour from setting, and the shadows were growing long and hard-edged. Sam Westbrook found Bell standing at the base of the ruined crane. He was tracing the curve of bent and torn steel struts as if the ruined metal could give him some clue. Sam handed over a cooled bottle of beer.
Bell thanked him, and his brows shot up when he realized the bottle was chilled. He didn’t realize how thirsty he was until the mild beer hit his lips. The bottle remained upright until the last of it was drained, Bell letting out a satisfied sigh.
“You might have just saved my life.”
The Saboteurs Page 11
