He tossed the stone to Bell.
“Scully also had some rather unkind words for you, Mr. Bell, that need not be repeated. There you have it. You were certain it was an accident. You were wrong. It was sabotage. The Viboras are still out there and they remain a deadly threat.”
Bell knew he could argue no further.
Outside the administrative building it had grown dark, but at least the rain that had threatened earlier had held off. Bell and Sam Westbrook headed for the railway station and walked the short distance in silence.
“You okay?” Sam finally asked.
“I’m not sure,” Bell admitted. “I’m not used to being dismissed like that.”
“He’s a tough old bird, our Colonel Goethals. Pragmatist of the first order. If it isn’t right in front of his face and he can’t see it, feel it, and study it, he won’t pay it any attention.”
“That describes me as well,” Bell said. “Or it did. Do you believe me, Sam?”
“Let’s just say I believe that you believe it.”
“You think I made it up?”
“No. Honest. Still, I think your noodle got more scrambled than you thought.”
Bell stopped so that they faced each other. “Here’s the thing. I’m not wrong about any of it.”
“Come on, you heard what Jack Scully found. The excavator was sabotaged just like everyone figured. Maybe you’re right about Court Talbot being in on this thing, but you’re wrong about the Vipers no longer attacking us.”
Bell shook his head. “I’m actually banking on Mr. Scully to prove me right. I just hope he does so soon.”
“You’re not making much sense. You just heard Scully’s final report to Colonel Goethals.”
They started walking again.
“I’m good at reading people, Sam. Very good, in fact. I had Scully pegged as a perfectionist the moment he jumped down from Goethals’s little yellow train. He won’t be satisfied until he’s taken that steam shovel down to its last nut and bolt.”
“And you think he’s going to find it was an accident?”
“Yes. And when he does, and Goethals believes me, I can tell him the rest of what I’ve learned.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes. Dreissen had my wife kidnapped at sea using an airship.”
31
Bell didn’t go to the hospital, as Goethals had recommended. Sam Westbrook’s roommate had rotated back to the States a few weeks earlier, and no one had been assigned his place in the company’s austere housing for bachelors.
They ate together, and, afterward, Bell cleaned his clothes in the sink in the communal bathroom and took one of the longest showers of his life. He thought back to his conversation with Goethals, viewing it from all angles to see if he could have done better and convinced the man that he was right. He doubted it. A trained engineer, an Army one at that, would demand tangible proof, not supposition.
Back home, Joseph Van Dorn trusted whatever tale Bell spun from the evidence he’d gathered because they had had a decade of working together and Bell’s theories about various crimes, no matter how far-fetched or implausible they seemed, eventually proved correct.
To Goethals, Isaac Bell was a stranger with no basis for credibility other than the fact he was good with a gun. This is why he didn’t push the conversation harder or bring up Marion’s kidnapping. Without any ally other than young Mr. Westbrook, Bell didn’t have a leg to stand on. He had to wait until Jack Scully came to his rescue.
Meanwhile, Dreissen had Marion. Bell tried not to dwell on what the German would do when he learned he’d escaped police custody. He believed Dreissen still wanted leverage over him, so he wouldn’t kill her but his talk of making her captivity difficult sent his mind racing down dozens of unpleasant avenues.
Bell twisted the tap to its coldest setting to stop himself from thinking like that. It didn’t work, the water never got cooler than tepid because of the tropical climate, so he was left with a vivid image of Marion in the hands of a bunch of sadists.
That thought faded only when his rage grew too intense.
After breakfast the following morning, Bell accompanied Sam back to his office. Bell wanted to look at the maps the Authority had commissioned, especially of the Lake Gatun basin. They weren’t stored in the unfinished office building. For access, Bell had to travel to a warehouse about a mile away.
The building was like every other one within the zone, clapboard and wood-framed with a roof pitched enough to shed the prodigious rain the country endured almost daily at this time of year. An older man sat at a desk in the reception room. He wore a banker’s green visor and had garters holding up his sleeves. His clothes looked thirty years out of fashion. He looked up, his eyes big and owlish behind thick-lensed spectacles.
“I suspect you’re lost, young man. I haven’t had a visitor here in a long time.”
“If you’re Mr. Townsend, then I’m in the right place,” Bell said.
“Jeremiah Townsend at your service, Mr. . . .”
“Bell, sir. Isaac Bell. I’m a detective with the Van Dorn Agency here to help sort out the Red Vipers.”
“And you can do that by looking at a bunch of dusty old maps?” he asked with a teasing twinkle in his eye.
“I believe that I can, actually.”
“Okay. Are you a coffee drinker, Mr. Bell?”
“I am.”
Townsend had a metal thermos bottle on his desk next to a big ceramic mug. He unscrewed the bottle’s top, which doubled as a cup, and un-stoppered the flask itself. He poured steaming black coffee into the cup and then topped off his own mug. He handed the cup to Bell, they saluted each other, and each took a sip. It was the weakest, most burned cup of coffee Bell had
