Bell winced and turned away quickly.
“Good. Very good,” Hamby said and moved back toward the door. “Sorry about that, but it’s the most accurate way to tell if you’re concussed. How’s your memory?”
“He doesn’t remember the crash,” Marion answered for her husband. “Is that common?”
“Actually, yes,” the doctor reassured her. “There’s a French psychologist by the name of Théodule Ribot who’s written on the subject. It’s called retrograde amnesia, meaning one forgets things on a gradient from newest memories to oldest. Oftentimes, the victim of a trauma doesn’t remember the trauma itself and sometimes bits and pieces of its immediate aftermath. Does that sound like what you’re experiencing?”
“I . . . I think so,” Bell said. “I remember being in a tank of some sort. It was utterly black in there. But I don’t remember an avalanche or . . . Wait. The tank was mounted on the truck you let me use, Sam.”
“That’s right. Colonel Goethals granted you carte blanche within the zone, and I got you a truck, one of the surplus water carriers.”
“What happened to me?”
Before Sam could tell the story, Dr. Hamby said, “I’ve got rounds right now. I’ll come check on you later for a more thorough exam. As I understand it, retrograde amnesia is usually temporary. In a day or two it all should come back, though, if it doesn’t, there’s no real danger.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Rest now. And consider yourself the luckiest man in Panama.”
“Hello, all,” Tats Macalister greeted the room cheerfully as he slid past Hamby.
The Englishman wore riding breeches and a gaily striped muslin shirt stained with sweat around the collar and under the arms despite the early-morning hour. His eyes swept the room and immediately returned to Marion. “Felix told me you were up all night. If I may be so bold, you don’t look it at all.”
“Thanks, Tats,” Marion replied to the flattery. “You’re an accomplished liar.”
Macalister greeted Sam by name and shook his hand before angling his face toward Bell, still lying on the bed. Tats’s smile now touched his eyes. “I shudder to think the premiums you pay for life insurance, Isaac.”
“While it’s a group thing for all Van Dorn agents, I do think Joe had to get a special rider so I can be covered too.”
“I would have come last night, but I was engaged with some engineers from General Electric who thought us limeys don’t know how to play poker. I’m glad you’re okay.” Tats looked quickly to Marion. “He is okay?”
“Yes. Just sore, with a nasty bump on his head, and a little amnesia.”
“Amnesia? Awful, old sport. What do you remember?”
“Almost nothing. Sam was about to fill in some details.”
“By all means continue.”
Marion slid off the chair and perched herself on the bed so that she could rest a protective hand on Isaac’s leg. Sam remained standing, and Tats turned Marion’s chair around so he could rest his wrists on its back as he sat astride.
“The doctor wasn’t wrong,” Westbrook said to start his tale. “Isaac, you are the luckiest man in all of Panama. There was a survey crew working the far side of the cut opposite of where you went off the road and down into the canal. You are also the unluckiest, because as you went over the edge, you triggered a string of explosives likely planted last spring when we were working that section. Sometimes when we have a large shot, some of the dynamite doesn’t go off. Maybe a fuse gets cut. We don’t realize explosives have been left behind at the time, then it all goes off weeks or months later.”
He added grimly, “Usually, when some poor sod is working right above it.”
“I drove over the edge of the canal and right on top of an old string of dynamite?”
Sam nodded. “One of the men on the crew said it looked like the truck slid a little sideways off the road and tipped on its side before tobogganing down to the bottom of the canal. Seconds later, the charges went off, and a big chunk of the slope came down after you. They saw you dive into the water tank just before it was hit and then they lost sight of the truck.
“It turned out the avalanche carried you another eighty or so feet from where you’d first came to rest, though they didn’t know it at the time. All they saw was the wall of mud hit you and then you had simply vanished. When the avalanche finally settled, there was nothing to see, just a new field of mud and rock blocking half the channel. It’ll take months to dig all that slop out again.”
“How did you find me before my air ran out?”
“Near thing. You were as gray as a corpse, and just as stiff, when you were pulled free. The survey crew, having seen everything that happened, knew you were down there. While one of them took their truck to bring help, the other three slogged their way across the new landslide and started looking around, hoping to see part of the truck sticking out of the ground. They could estimate where the truck finally ended up but couldn’t find anything.
“An hour or so later, a crew of about fifty men arrived in a convoy. I was part of it because when I heard it was a water truck that went over, I figured it had to be you. You would have been on the road from Gamboa about then.”
“Gamboa?”
“Yeah, you had a meeting with Courtney Talbot in the morning.”
Bell shook his head, frustration furrowing his brow. He didn’t remember meeting with Court.
A concerned look came over Marion. “Maybe we should do this later, Isaac. You need to rest.”
“No, I’m fine.” But he knew he wasn’t fine. Not being able to rely on his wits was a disorienting shock that he could neither comprehend nor accept. At length he said, “You’re right, but let’s hear the rest of the story first.”
“And then straight to
