River of Ruin

labor. Derosier had spent so much of his life in Paris that his English was tinted with an accent. “Mercer, mon Dieu, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“I got stuck at a job in Utah and missed my connecting flight through Dulles. I didn’t even have time to go home.” Mercer lived in a town house in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington. “My luggage is full of dirty clothes and mineral samples for my collection.”

“Gold, I hope.”

“Nothing so fancy. A copper-mining company was looking to get a sizable loan from an investment bank. The bankers hired me to check the company’s geology reports and oversee a series of bore-hole tests to verify the claim that there was a mother lode of extractable ore at the site.”

As an independent mining consultant, such jobs were Mercer’s stock-in-trade, and earned him considerable fees as well as a reputation as one of the foremost mine engineers in the world. His word was enough for companies to commit billions of dollars and thousands of lives into the subterranean world.

Jean-Paul gave a little Gallic shrug. “Filthy way to make a living, but I suppose it pays the bills.” He slapped at Mercer’s flat stomach. “And apparently keeps you in shape. I’m fighting a losing battle at a gym four hours a week and you look like you’re in better shape now than when we graduated high school.”

“You were the one who married a professional chef, not me.” Mercer chuckled. “The fact that I’m single and can’t cook worth a damn is what keeps me thin.”

“I understand congratulations are in order. Do you remember Cathy Rich, our high school yearbook editor? After all these years, she still e-mails me updates about old class-mates. She told me you might be working in the White House.”

“Well, not in the White House,” Mercer dodged. “It’s an advisory position to the president. Once I get through some indoctrination I’ll only be going there when called. Kind of a part-time thing.”

The job was actually Special Science Advisor to the President, a position specifically created for Mercer that would be outside the chief executive’s regular staff of advisors. The offer had come following an unusual job in Greenland that had turned into a violent confrontation with a terrorist cell trying to steal a lethal radioactive isotope called Pandora.

“I don’t think you are telling me the whole thing,” Jean-Paul said, “but I congratulate you anyway.”

“Thanks. So, what’s up with the auction? Who’s doing all the buying?”

“Goddamned Chinks,” Derosier spat. “I hate them.”

“Not very politically correct.”

“I’m a Parisian now.” The auctioneer grinned. “We hate everyone equally.” Jean-Paul grew serious. “All I know is he’s Chinese and that a few days after the contents of this auction became public, he sent an intermediary to the family who was selling all the Panama Canal documents in an attempt to buy them outright. As you’ve already guessed, he’s taking everything even remotely connected to the canal while ignoring all the rest. A lot of my regulars are leaving here empty-handed.”

A look of concern crossed Mercer’s face.

“Don’t worry,” the expatriate soothed. “When I invited you to this auction, I promised that you’d be able to buy the Godin de Lepinay journal and I’m keeping my word.”

Mercer understood what Derosier was intimating. “Jean, thanks for the offer, but don’t do anything you wouldn’t for any other client.”

“Too late. At the beginning of the auction, I announced that Lepinay’s journal was no longer for sale. You pay me the estimate, I think four thousand dollars, and it’s yours. Listen, you’re one of my only clients who actually reads what he buys. I’m sure you’ve already read a translation of Diderot’s twenty-eight-volume Encyclopedie Methodique after I helped you complete the set. I hate that the Panama books I’m selling today are going to end up on some businessman’s shelf because he thinks they’re decorative.”

A chime rang in the main auction hall. “I’ve got to get back,” Derosier said. “Meet me after the auction and I’ll give you Lepinay’s diary.”

Mercer waited for the tide of people to return to the salon before reaching inside his jacket for the cell phone his friend Harry White had gotten him for his birthday. The number had already been programmed into the device so he held it to his ear as it beeped through an international exchange. The connection took a full minute.

“Hola?” a woman’s voice answered.

“Maria, it’s Philip Mercer.”

“Mercer”-her English was good, but heavily accented-“are you already in Panama City? You sound so clear.”

Maria Barber was the Panamanian-born wife of Gary Barber, a native Alaskan whom Mercer had met while attending the Colorado School of Mines. Mercer was there having just completed his bachelor’s degree in geology on his way to an eventual doctorate. Gary was two decades older, and had already laid claim to a sizable gold strike when he’d gone to the famed mining school. Gary had dropped out after a single semester, and returned to his four-man operation in Alaska. Mercer had gone on to graduate near the top of his class. They retained a loose friendship of a couple of calls a year and dinner whenever they were in the same city.

About five years ago, Gary had unexpectedly sold his claim to a business partner and moved to Central America to take up a new venture-treasure hunting. He’d tried to explain to Mercer that tramping through jungles in search of lost artifacts was no different from panning hundreds of miles of streams looking for placer gold.

Mercer had always disdained treasure hunters. He felt they rarely considered the long odds of their endeavors, and sustained themselves with the false hope of a quick strike. All but a well-publicized few ended up broke and embittered after decades of fruitless work. He likened them to people who thought state lotteries were an investment plan. Mercer couldn’t change Gary’s mind and the tough Alaskan had gone off with an enthusiasm that had damned so many like-minded people.

Mercer had to give Barber credit, though. Five years of turning up nothing had yet to dampen his spirits. In fact, he was more excited now than ever. He had recently convinced himself that he was on the trail of a lost Spanish treasure larger than any ever found. Gary had called Mercer a month ago after tracking the Lepinay journal to this auction, offering to pay half just so he could read it. He was certain the last piece of the puzzle he was trying to solve lay somewhere in its pages. Mercer thought Gary was self-deluded, and wasn’t close to a breakthrough, yet did agree to the deal.

He was going to buy the book anyway for the simple reason that he was interested in the man who, in 1879, first proposed the lake-and-lock-type canal that the United States had eventually built a quarter century later. Derosier was right. He would read this journal. Devour it, most likely.

“No, Maria, I’m still in Paris. Is Gary there? I’ve got some good news for him.”

“He’s in the middle of the Darien Province, south of El Real,” Maria Barber said with a trace of hostility. She did not share her husband’s interest. “Fooling around in that damned river again. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“Can you contact him?” Gary had shown Mercer a picture of his much younger wife the last time they’d gotten together. She was a pretty, raven-haired woman, not yet thirty, but her eyes were sullen. She cast a sober look in the photo, as if she’d fit more life into her years than she should have. Gary explained her melancholy by telling him that she’d been raised in the slums of Panama City’s Casco Viego district.

“Si, we speak on the radio yesterday. I am calling him in an hour.”

“When you do, tell him I’ve got the Lepinay journal and I’ll be in Panama the day after tomorrow.”

“He will be pleased,” she said with little enthusiasm. “Am I to still pick you up at the airport?”

“Yes, my flight connects through from Martinique.” The clothes in his luggage, once laundered, would serve him well enough in the tropical sauna of Panama. “I arrive at about ten in the morning on the seventeenth.”

“The last time Gary and I talked, he said that he had something very important to show you. He wanted me to make sure you will be here for a week at least.”

“Tell him that we’ll see,” Mercer hedged. He hadn’t been home in nearly a month and wasn’t planning on more than a few days in Panama. He was looking forward to a quiet couple of weeks before reporting to the White House for long rounds of tedious briefings and staff meetings.

“I will tell him,” Maria Barber replied. “And I will see you at Tocumen Airport in the morning of the seventeenth. Then I will take you to where Gary is working. And, ah. .”

“What is it?”