The driver, a lad still in his teens, was exiting the building just as Bell reached the stairs. Isaac’s chest heaved from trying to draw oxygen out of the hot humid air. “You looking for me?”
“Are you Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn—”
“I am. Did Goethals send you?”
“Yes. And Sam Westbrook asked me to give you this.” He handed Bell a folded slip of paper.
It was a cable response from Van Dorn. “Researching Dreissen. A. O. Girard reports that late uncle of John Schrank employed by Essenwerks. Stop.”
Bell read it twice, then nodded, grim-lipped. “Let’s go. On the jump.”
Jack Scully refused to sit in Goethals’s office because he’d come straight from the cut and his clothes were filthy. The dirt he’d tracked in on his shoes from outside was part of life in Panama, and the office was swept regularly, but he didn’t feel comfortable ruining his boss’s expensive-looking upholstered chairs. He was moving back and forth like a caged bear at a circus when Bell was shown into the inner sanctum.
“How’d you know?” he growled as soon as the secretary closed the heavy door.
“That it wasn’t sabotage? As I explained to the Colonel, the Red Vipers have already achieved their true goal. There was no need to expose themselves or risk any of them being caught. As to how I knew you’d keep looking? Well, you don’t look like a man who does anything by the half measures or accepts the easy answer.”
“Tell him what happened,” Goethals said. He’d lost some of his tropical tan as the implications of Scully’s discovery sunk in—like he’d preferred this was a Viboras attack.
“Does it have something to do with that crew being the best excavators in the cut?” Bell asked before the mechanic could explain.
Scully eyed him suspiciously, then seemed to accept that Isaac Bell had a knack for pulling the right answers out of thin air.
“It does,” he admitted, and retrieved a tobacco pouch and brier pipe from the pocket of his overalls. “Lyle Preston, the team foreman, cheated. He had his guys pull out all the filters from the steam and water lines, he had reinforcing clamps on some of the system’s weak points, and he reshaped the dampers to create a massive draft through the firebox. I never caught on to any of this stuff because he’d have his boys change it all back before we did our scheduled inspections.”
“What does this mean?” Bell asked.
“He could run temperatures and pressures a lot higher than the machine was designed for in order to make her run faster than any of the other ninety-five-tonners down in the cut. He was a good operator, for sure, but the modifications meant he could raise his bucket and swing his boom faster than anyone else.” Scully said this from behind a sweet cloud of pipe smoke.
“Does this mean the stone got in on its own?”
“I had a team pull all the screens at the depot where we fill the water trucks and tank cars. They get inspected regularly, but we weren’t due for another week. One had a puncture large enough for that stone to have slipped through. Had it gone into any of the other shovels, the onboard filter would have caught it. Seems fate didn’t like Lyle Preston messing with my machines any more than I do.”
Goethals said, “Great job, Jack. Thanks for the report.”
“Yes, sir.” Scully gave Bell a look that was an odd blend of malice and respect.
When he was gone, Goethals pulled a whiskey bottle and a pair of mismatched glasses from a desk drawer. He splashed some liquor into each, and Bell had to lean across the big desk to accept the drink.
“A lot of the guys down here get used to drinking Caribbean rum. Too sweet, for my taste.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Bell said to the back of Goethals’s head.
He’d turned in his seat to gaze out the window. It was just dark enough that all he could see was the reflection of a middle-aged military man who’d made a million decisions and countless sacrifices and who was beginning to pay for them all.
“Logic tells me,” he said without turning back, “that just because you were right about the shovel accident doesn’t mean you’re right about everything else.”
“That’s correct,” Bell agreed. “But it should give you insight into how I operate and provide a foundation of trust between us.”
The Colonel finally turned to face his desk. Bell noticed the creases on each side of his mouth had deepened and the bags under his eyes had grown darker. “If you’re right about Talbot controlling the Vipers and that he stopped the attacks when I gave him permission to use his boat on the lake . . .”
He couldn’t finish the thought.
“Talbot ordered the attack on Pedro Miguel to push you into approving his operation when his attempt to kill Senator Densmore failed.”
“Had I said yes a day earlier . . .”
“You can’t blame yourself, Colonel,” Bell told him. “That act of barbarity is on Courtney Talbot and no one else.”
“But . . .”
“No, sir,” Bell said firmly. He couldn’t let Goethals be paralyzed with guilt. “You had no way of knowing how the Viboras and Talbot were linked or the cause and effect of their actions. Those men died that day because Court Talbot murdered them to fulfill his obligation to Otto Dreissen. You played no role in that whatsoever.”
Goethals was quiet for a moment. Bell knew to let him come to his own peace.
All right, then, Goethals said to himself. It was all the convincing he needed. He looked Bell square in the eye. “Where does this leave us?”
“It leaves me needing to explain one more facet to this affair, one that is very personal. Dreissen had my wife kidnapped the other night.”
Goethals’s eyes
