He came to the conclusion all too quickly that knowing Dreissen’s identity and the connection between him and Viboras Rojas was not the same as being able to prove anything. Bell needed more. He turned around once again to return to Panama City.
Heinz Kohl found his employer in his study when he returned to the hacienda. The Panamanian house servants were putting hurricane shutters over the smashed windows on the outside. The broken glass and water had already been cleaned up. Dreissen was wearing baggy pants and a sleeveless white singlet. The suspenders pulled over his shoulder were decorated with hunting motifs. A lit cigarette sat in the ashtray, blue-gray smoke coiling into the thick air.
“He got away,” Kohl said.
“That’s the second time tonight I’ve heard that,” the industrialist said angrily. “I assume it was Bell, yes?”
“He fit the description,” Kohl told him. “And he was in the area. He doubled back on our men after they lost him on the coast road. That’s how he knew to come here to the house.” Kohl pointed at a crystal decanter sitting on a small side table beneath a painting of Dreissen’s blond wife.
“Help yourself,” Dreissen said and took a sip of the Napoléon brandy he’d poured earlier.
Kohl pressed the decanter against the wall with his prosthetic left hand in order to pull out the stubborn stopper. He splashed some of the golden liquor into a snifter and reinserted the plug. He gulped half the drink in a single swallow and loudly exhaled the fumes.
“What did you think of him?” Dreissen asked, his voice full of contempt.
“He has fast reflexes.” Kohl set his drink down and began unbuttoning his left sleeve. All his shirts were custom-made so he could slide his right hand through the cuff without assistance. The left arms all had buttons running up past the elbow and were cut extra-long to conceal the fake limb. “When I throw this hand at someone the first time, he takes a long time to process what he’s seen, enough time for me to take him out. Bell understood what had happened in the blink of an eye. Fast reflexes and a fast mind.”
“Considering how he took out six men in California and killed Morales, that’s something we already knew.”
Heinz Kohl had worked for Dreissen for a decade and still insisted on asking permission from his employer. He asked to sit, and Dreissen waved him into a chair. For his part, the industrialist also insisted on being asked permission. They were not friends yet were closer to each other, in a way, than they were to any other human being. Heinz Kohl would lay down his life for Otto Dreissen and Otto Dreissen would certainly let him.
“How do you want to proceed?” Kohl asked while tugging on his artificial limb.
“Bell will get no traction with the local police, we’ve got them bought off. But he certainly will have Goethals’s ear.”
“He has no power outside the Canal Zone.”
“He has clout, and that may be enough to override the bribes we’ve paid to the police and to people in the Justice Department.”
“Why don’t you let me kill him? We can pin it on the Vipers.”
“No. It’s important that Viboras Rojas lay low while Court Talbot is hunting them on the lake. We can’t kill Bell anyway. I didn’t tell you, but I received a cable this afternoon. Berlin has authorized the assassination of Theodore Roosevelt. Bell is Roosevelt’s point man for his visit. If Bell is murdered, there’s no way he’ll come to inspect the canal.”
“We hadn’t thought of that before.”
Dreissen nodded. “Good thing the avalanche failed. There is something else. We don’t know how much time Bell had to go through my papers and what he will report to the Americans about Essenwerks’s weapons development. He may even know about the Cologne, even if he doesn’t know it’s here. We need to sweat that information out of him. A man like Bell won’t easily break under physical torture, but I have an idea how to break him psychologically.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Phone Detective Ortega. Tell him we want Isaac Bell arrested for breaking into my house. He’s bound to show up at the Central Hotel sooner or later. I’m going to radio Captain Grosse and send him on a little errand.”
“Won’t that delay—”
“One night won’t matter,” Dreissen countered before Kohl could finish.
“Of course.”
“This should work out quite well.” Dreissen took a final drag on his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray. “If Bell is merely arrested, Roosevelt will still come, and we’ll make up for a past failure. Heinz, this will raise our company’s profile with the Kaiser. I can see Essenwerks getting more and more government contracts, work that would have gone to Krupp or Rheinmetall. It’ll be ours. And when the war comes, our factories will be the busiest in Germany.”
“An amazing opportunity,” his man agreed. “I will call Ortega now in case Bell goes straight to his hotel. Good night, Herr Dreissen.”
“Good night.”
25
The two nurses, Jenny and Ruth, stood at the rail of the Spatminster with Marion Bell until her husband walked off the docks and headed back to the parking lot. They stayed out until the breakwater, built of rock and stone wrested from the Culebra Cut, was off to the port side, and the liner began to roll with the long Pacific waves.
“Come on,” said Ruth Buschman, “Jenny and I have already unpacked. We’ll show you the cabin, and we can get changed for dinner. We’re scheduled for the early seating.”
Their shared cabin was one
