“Enough,” the man said tightly.
He switched his aim and pressed the gun’s hot muzzle to Jenny’s temple. The sneer he gave Marion told her that this man wouldn’t care one way or the other if she compelled him to pull the trigger. Human life meant nothing to him.
Marion deflated. If it was just her, she would have fought all four to the death. But she wasn’t alone. She wouldn’t put her new friends in any more danger than they were already facing. She dropped her handbag and allowed one of the men to bind her wrists with rope and another to gag her mouth. The black hood came next. She was thrown over one of the bigger men’s shoulder like a joint of meat and bustled from the cabin. The boarding party made its way aft. At this late hour, the Spatminster was like a ghost ship. The decks were deserted, and any lookouts would be studying the seas ahead of the liner and not be looking over her fantail.
One of the boarders tugged on a tow rope tied to an all-aluminum boat bobbing in the ship’s wake. Two of his compatriots climbed down to keep the craft stable. Marion felt a hemp line being looped under her armpits, and then she was spinning and dancing like a plumb bob as she was lowered to the skiff. Waiting hands guided her the last few feet. The rope was untied, and she was shoved to the floor.
The night air was warm, yet the aluminum hull was chilled by the sea and dripped with condensation. Her silk gown was quickly soaked through, and she began to shiver. She also began to think. She already assumed these men were tied to Isaac’s investigation and that her kidnapping meant they were going to use her as leverage with him. The leader spoke English, but the other had cursed in German. So they were likely Germans, validating Isaac’s theory that there was a European influence over the Red Vipers.
As the remaining boarders climbed down from the three-hundred-foot liner, Marion Bell vowed to keep fighting. She expected no less of herself, even if in one corner of her mind she wasn’t shivering just because of the cold.
The line securing the boat to the Spatminster was cut, and the skiff vanished into the night.
The only evidence of the assault were the two ropes hanging off the fantail and the two bound and gagged nurses and a beaten-up purser locked in a closet who’d been forced to disclose the location of Marion’s cabin. The kidnapping went undetected until Ruth Buschman worked herself free of her rope and gag six hours after the assault.
The Spatminster didn’t carry a Marconi radio set, and she wasn’t scheduled to make landfall until the colliery in Rosarito. The captain was torn as to where his duty lay. On the one hand, he had a schedule to maintain, but, on the other hand, he needed to report this brazen act of high seas piracy. He decided the best course was to detour to the closest port that he knew had international telephone service, Acapulco, in Mexico. From there, he could contact the authorities back in Panama.
By then, though, the kidnappers would have an insurmountable head start.
26
Bell had to assume that Otto Dreissen had phoned his people stationed in Panama City and that by now it was open season on his life. The Viboras would be combing the town for him, which meant he couldn’t go back to the Hotel Central. He spent the night in a seedier section of town, in a run-down rooming house on a street full of bars and brothels. He’d paid for a broom-closet-sized room above a cantina and was overcharged by the night clerk, who knew desperation when he saw it.
He’d washed up in the lavatory as best he could. In the silvered mirror over the basin, Bell could see the manchineel burns on his face were barely noticeable, but the lump on his head from the avalanche was a sickly-looking purple. He stood in his undershirt while he wrung out the linen oxford he wore under the poncho. A double whiskey sat on the edge of the sink.
Back in his room, he draped his wet things over a chair and hoped the night air would dry them by morning. The room’s lock was a joke, so he placed his wallet and .45 under his pillow. Ignoring the raucous singing and tuneless piano coming up through the floor, Bell was asleep in seconds.
He awoke to sunshine and recalled dreaming about a great-aunt he’d stayed with when he was a boy who’d punished him by making him swallow a spoonful of castor oil. He hadn’t thought about it in years yet still could feel the greasy emollient on his tongue.
His clothes were damp but wearable. He found a cheap restaurant near the cantina and sat in the far back. The food was simple—eggs, over thick corn tortillas, and a sweet green fruit he didn’t recognize—but the coffee was excellent, and the waitress came by often to refill his mug. The clientele were locals, who eyed him for a moment, then left him in peace.
Bell had parked the Renault a few blocks from his room in case its description had been passed on to the Viboras. He found a vantage point from which to watch the car, or, more accurately, watch if anyone else was watching it. After ten minutes and a careful assessment of all the open windows above the establishment-lined street, he approached the car. He got it fired up in record time and lit out of the rough neighborhood.
After filling the tank at a gas station next to Ancon Hill, Bell took the road back toward Gamboa. He’d thought that traveling it again and seeing where he’d been buried alive might jog some memories.
Seen from above, the landslide looked enormous, though it
