“I’m late for a meeting with the Colonel. Care to join me to explain why I was further delayed?”
Between the little-veiled threat and his noticing the big pistol hanging below Bell’s left arm, the busybody decided his interest lay elsewhere and moved on.
Bell mounted the steps to the sprawling building. Workers moved purposefully around the site, some administration types, others tradesmen, such as carpenters and plasterers. He spoke to a construction worker installing some wooden moldings just inside the entrance to get directions to which parts of the building were already in use. Moments later, he found where Sam Westbrook worked and located the young man in the open office space. He was standing up behind his desk to give himself a bird’s-eye view of the hodgepodge of papers covering its blotter.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Mr. Bell.” His jaw dropped when he saw Bell’s battered appearance.
“We’ve been through enough together for you to call me Isaac, and I’m afraid our adventures aren’t yet done.”
“Of course. What on earth happened to you?”
“Where to start,” Bell said rhetorically. “First of all, I owe a horse some tender loving care. Is there someone here who can return it to its stable over on Avenue Peru y Calle?”
What Bell especially liked about Sam was that nothing seemed to faze him, not a terrorist attack or a bizarre request. “Sure. I’ll get one of my clerks to do it. Where’s the horse?”
“Tied to a tree out front.” Bell then hesitated, as if he wanted to say more.
“Something to add?” Sam asked in a teasing tone.
“I . . . Yes. I stole the horse and I need to make some sort of restitution to its owner, but my wallet was confiscated by the police.”
Sam took that news in stride as well. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a metal strongbox, which he opened with a small key on a ring of keys he kept in his pocket. He took out a rumpled five-dollar bill. “Petty cash.”
He called over a teenage junior clerk from the office across the hall. “There’s a horse out front that needs to go to that stable on Peru y Calle. Do you know it?” The towheaded lad nodded. “The owner is going to be ripping mad, so give him the money. Tell him it was taken on a drunken bet, or something.”
The kid threw a questioning look to Bell. Bell shrugged. “I sober up fast.”
When the clerk scurried out, Sam took a seat at his desk and indicated Bell should pull up a chair. “Police custody? Let me guess—you stole the horse to escape jail.”
Bell remained on his feet. “I stole the horse to escape being railroaded, shanghaied, and Count of Monte Cristoed. But that’s nothing but a distraction at this point, Sam. They have my wife.”
“What? Who?” Sam shot to his feet as if he were gearing up for action.
“Do you know Otto Dreissen?”
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s a German businessman who has a big house on the coast road south of the city. He had her kidnapped off the Spatminster and is holding her someplace here in Panama.”
“Do you think in his house?” Sam suggested eagerly.
“He wouldn’t be that stupid,” Bell said. “And Detective Ortega, his man on the police force, would have gotten word to him as soon as I escaped. Dreissen’s long gone. In his place is a trap set for me in case I go there looking for Marion. Maybe cops. Most likely Viboras Rojas.”
“The Viboras? This Dreissen is involved with the Viboras?”
“He’s bankrolling them,” Bell told him.
He was about to drop a real bombshell revelation when the shouts of men rushing through the building overwhelmed their conversation.
A wide-eyed clerk rushed into the room, breathless. “Do you fellas know where the Colonel is?”
“He left this morning for the power plant at the dam,” Sam said. “What’s going on?”
The kid was already rushing out again. He shouted over his shoulder, “The Red Vipers hit us again.”
“What?” Sam and Bell said in unison. They took off after the clerk, who was racing for the telephone exchange’s office. Other office workers were already there, milling around outside the closed door. Someone had beaten all of them there with Goethals’s location and was in the exchange having a call placed to the power station. The mood of the crowd was ugly, anxious, and more than a little fearful.
Sam grabbed the elbow of one of the men he knew and drew him away a little from the mob.
“What do you know, Billy?”
“Not much. They say one of the big steam shovels down in the cut exploded. They say a bunch of guys were killed and that it was the Vipers that did it.”
“How do they know it wasn’t an accident?” Bell asked sharply, almost like an accusation. “Steam engines explode all the time.”
“Not the shovels, Isaac,” Sam said. “Those machines are babied by a team of mechanics. For all the years they’ve been digging, we’ve never had one blow. Men have been killed on ’em, and by ’em, but not like this.”
“I need to see.” Bell said it in such a way that it wasn’t a request, it was an order.
Sam Westbrook nodded. “Fastest way is if we take the Donkey.”
“Donkey?” Bell said with skepticism. “Surely horses would be quicker.”
“Not this donkey.” He turned to his friend. “Any idea where the attack happened?”
“The base of Gold Hill.”
Bell said, “Call the hospital, have a doctor meet us at the, er, Donkey.” He asked Sam if they would know where that was and was assured any doctor would.
“Do you want a change of clothes?” Sam asked. “You look like a bum and smell like an old nag that’s on its way to the glue factory.”
“We’ve got to do this on the jump, Sam. Clues could be compromised.”
“Right. At least I can get you some decent boots.”
They found the beast parked under a tin-roofed lean-to near the rail marshaling yards. It had started life as a one-ton truck with an open flatbed behind the cabin. The bed had been fitted
