“What happened to Schrank?”
“He was declared insane following a series of hearings and sessions with a lunacy commission. He was committed to an insane asylum, probably for life.”
“Mein Gott.” The guest was taken aback by the casual cruelty of using an already unbalanced man and warping him into an assassin and then leaving him abandoned in an asylum.
Dreissen mistook his expression for one of admiration. “The best part is, even if Schrank somehow recalls the sessions with our doctor, no one will believe him. They will assume it’s just a new delusion that further proves his original diagnosis. Our doctor was on his way back to Germany days after the shooting, and Schrank never knew he’d been held in the basement of my brother’s country house.”
When his guest didn’t speak, Dreissen deduced the truth and said, “For the greater glory of das Vaterland, it is nothing to us to sacrifice the freedom of a simpleton. When the war with France finally comes, Germans must be willing to sacrifice all, even their lives, to ensure our nation’s future. Don’t be so squeamish. Now, let’s get breakfast, and I’ll explain what I think should happen.”
The men rose and loaded plates at the buffet. There was enough food to feed a dozen, but it had been laid out for just the two of them. Neither paid the monumental waste the least notice.
“Nothing has changed since that last assassination attempt. Roosevelt remains wildly popular, and if he is the Republican nominee, he will certainly win the Presidency once again, something no one in Berlin wants to see. He’s vulnerable here. Viboras Rojas have already demonstrated they’re willing to go after American politicians, so it makes perfect sense they will try here.”
“Why is he coming, then?”
“Ego, my friend. He thinks he is bulletproof, for one. More important than that, I think he wants to see his canal. I have no doubt that he will insist on ascending the Gatun Locks and cruising on Lake Gatun, now that it is high enough to float in a shallow-draft boat. He can’t resist. This is his crowning achievement, more than the trophy hunting or charging up San Juan Hill in Cuba. The Panama Canal is the most transformative engineering feat in history, and he will not be able to resist seeing it with his own eyes now that it’s almost completed. A man like Roosevelt can’t resist, dangers be damned.
“I am going to cable Berlin through my brother’s offices in New York and get approval to kill him, but we need to step up our timeline immediately if we are to have a chance at him.”
“Do we tell the others this?”
“No,” Dreissen replied forcefully. “This is for us alone. We will say that the engineers reconsidered and believe we need a second string of explosives to be successful. We will lay the first row now and the second after the excitement of Roosevelt’s brief visit has died down.”
His visitor nodded.
Dreissen went on, “We’re only pushing up our timetable by a couple weeks. Our recent deployments of the Cologne have been great successes. Though the crew would like more practice, they’ll follow orders.”
“Of course.”
“We had better start moving material into position. Not tonight or tomorrow, let’s plan for the following night. I’ll radio my people and let them know. So much of this is weather dependent. We have to make only six trips, but we need near-windless nights to make them.”
“We will just have to hope for the best. Have they found a suitable spot?”
“Yes, it’s perfect,” Dreissen assured him. “It’s close enough to the dam yet still remote, with hills—well, islands now, I suppose—to protect it on two sides so no one will see what we’re doing.”
“Excellent,” the visitor said as he finished his meal. “There is one more thing we need to discuss. Isaac Bell.”
“Bell?”
“The Van Dorn detective.”
“Right. The man with the nine lives of a cat.”
“That’s the one,” the visitor agreed grimly. “I had the chance to speak with him last night. He has absolutely no idea what is going on down here, but his instincts and intuition are uncanny.”
“He worries you?”
“Yes. My impression of him is that he is skeptical of everybody and everything until he’s proved to himself that things really are as they seem. There are so many moving parts of our operation that I’m concerned we overlooked some minor detail, something no one else would think to question.”
“Except Bell would question it, ja?”
“He already has. And he’s not satisfied with the answers he’s being given.”
“And you think we should eliminate him?”
The visitor nodded. “I didn’t think his survival of the attack in California would prove to be of any consequence, yet no one imagined he’d come nosing around here in Panama. I fear he could find some lead, that one detail we neglected, and expose our operation.”
“Do you propose we kill him and pin the blame on the Viboras?”
“The Viboras wouldn’t know his identity or reason for being here. They have no reason to kill him.”
“But he is an investigator. Wouldn’t they be concerned he’d find out information about them?”
“If he was getting close to unmasking them, certainly. But he has only just arrived. He hasn’t learned anything about them to get himself killed. I think it better that Isaac Bell should meet with an accident. Panama is a dangerous place. It will be easy enough to see him die in an automobile crash or something equally mundane.”
“Can you arrange it?”
The visitor slung an arm over the back of his chair in a relaxed pose. “It’s already done.”
16
Because it was the weekend,
