“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
