River of Ruin

Canal Administration Building Balboa Heights, Panama

Roddy Herrara’s throat was so dry that swallowing felt like a hot needle being jammed into the back of his throat. His palms were greasy and the lump of the 9mm pistol tucked into the back of his pants weighed a ton. He stood along a tree-lined street in the Prado, the area of stately homes created for the canal’s original builders. The neighborhood resembled a slice of small-town America circa 1912. Looming above on a grassy hill was the three-story administration building, its red-tiled roof contrasting with its massive white stone walls. Where once the flags of Panama and the United States had waved, a single blue, white, and red checkerboard standard of the Republic of Panama now hung like a rag in the humid air. He wondered if someday they’d be so bold as to fly China’s bloodred flag next to it.

Near where Roddy waited was the house of the canal administrator, Felix Silvera-Arias. He and Carmen had been invited there for a lavish reception when the legislature confirmed his appointment. A short while later, Roddy had his “accident,” and had been summarily fired.

The memory was as bitter as the taste of fear in his mouth.

He had another few minutes to wait for Esmerelda Vega. Essie was a fixture within the Canal Authority, a procurement manager who’d outlasted the past six administrators. Overweight and mustached, Essie was perhaps the finest person Roddy had ever met, and that included his own wife. She was like a mother to many canal employees and best friend to the rest. Roddy had called her from his car, telling her only that he needed to meet her outside the building. Without argument or need for explanation, the sixty-six-year-old grandmother of seventeen agreed.

While Roddy was confident, he was also racked by guilt. His responsibility to his family weighed heavily on his mind. Carmen had been a pillar of strength since he’d lost his job, encouraging one minute and commiserating the next as his moods swung from outrage to despair. The kids, too young to really understand the strain on the family, had been wonderful. Then there was Miguel. Despite everything that had befallen his family, Carmen was talking about adopting the boy. Had she not miscarried their first child, he or she would be Miguel’s age now. He knew she wasn’t trying to make up for their loss—she was too practical for that—yet here was an opportunity to give a full life to another. Though he hadn’t given his consent, Roddy knew they would take Miguel in if the orphan wanted to stay. Roddy should be with them now, he felt, not standing in the shadows of the very place that had denied him his career.

And still he was here. It wasn’t that his duty to his country meant more than his obligation to his family. In his mind this was one of those times the two ideas merged into one.

A pair of soldiers stood outside the entrance to the building, their M-16s cradled in their arms. Even at this range, Roddy could sense they were eager to use them. As he watched, the main door swung open and a large spot of color appeared. Essie. She wore a shapeless muumuu large enough to cover a motorcycle, and in such a bright shade of pink that Roddy couldn’t help but smile. Unlike many other women, Esmerelda enjoyed drawing attention to her size and often dressed to emphasize it.

Roddy pushed himself from the tree he’d been leaning against and began the long walk up the steps to the office building. When she finally spotted him Essie gave a cry and her dark, moon face blossomed with a smile.

“About time you showed up!” she said with good-natured scorn. “The office is a madhouse without you.”

Not knowing exactly what Esmerelda was talking about, Roddy went along. “Traffic was a nightmare.”

“Well, Felix wants to see you right this minute. Ships in the canal are backing up every second we waste. Come on.”

Roddy took the last few stairs three at a time. The two guards considering denying him entry had heard the exchange and how casually Essie used the director’s name. They let him pass without challenge and continued their monotonous staring across the Prado.

Essie held the door for Roddy. “Hurry, hurry.”

Once through, she led him across the rotunda, past the overly heroic William Van Iagen murals of the canal’s construction, and up the sweeping stairs. Another guard had been sitting at a reception desk, but she hadn’t given him enough time to even think about stopping them.

The brightly lit hallways were nearly deserted, which surprised Roddy. At this time of the day, the administration building should be a hive of activity as they coordinated ships in transit as well as maintenance and all the other details that kept the waterway functioning. He thought Liu Yousheng’s impending attack was the likely reason it was so quiet.

Approaching her office, Esmerelda placed her hand on Roddy’s back in a motherly attempt to guide him. Feeling the outline of the pistol, her jaw dropped and her eyes became huge. She was about to question him when a male voice echoed off the walls from down the hall.

“You there. Stop.” It was another guard. This one didn’t have an M-16, but the webbing belt cinched around his scorpion-thin waist supported a dangling holster. The soldier wasn’t more than twenty years old, yet swaggered as if he’d practiced the walk his entire life.

Roddy’s heart pounded in his chest so loudly he was sure the young soldier could hear. There was nothing he could do. One minute into the building and he was already being captured. And then he thought about the pistol. Could he use it? Surely this was important enough to kill for, but the sound would draw more guards. He felt paralyzed.

“Who are you?” the guard demanded.

“Esmerelda Vega. You’ve seen me a dozen times.” Essie moved so she was backed slightly into her office.

“Not you, cow. Him.” The soldier reached to unsnap his holster, revealing the dark glint of his sidearm. “I asked you a question.”

Unable to believe what he was doing, Roddy reached behind him with the hand the soldier couldn’t see. And felt Essie was already pulling up his shirt. Jesus, no! He planned to push her into the office before showing the weapon. Now she was placing herself right in the middle of the fight.

“Don’t you dare call me cow, young man.” Esmerelda’s tone was filled with the censure of a school principal. She didn’t betray that just past the guard’s view she was pulling a 9mm pistol. “Did your mother allow you to use such language?”

Don’t do it, Roddy silently prayed. Essie cleared the gun from his shirt. He didn’t dare turn away from the guard to see what she was doing with it.

The young soldier didn’t look quite so bold in the face of her anger. “Who is he?” he asked with a little more respect.

Without missing a beat, Essie Vega set the pistol on top of a filing cabinet just inside her office and brushed her substantial calf against the door to close it slightly. “This is Rodrigo Herrara. He’s a senior canal pilot. Director Silvera-Arias has called him in to help handle a crisis. Why don’t you come into my office and we can call him together and you can explain why Mr. Herrara’s being held up from his duties.”

Roddy felt like he was going to throw up. He swiveled his eyes and could see the H&K’s ugly shape on the cabinet. If the soldier took another couple of paces closer he’d be able to see it too.

The guard frowned, looking even less certain now. A silence hung for a few seconds. Squinting, the soldier studied Roddy. Mustering every scrap of self-discipline he possessed, Roddy remained motionless, trying to appear bored.

“Very well,” the soldier said at last. “Carry on.” He returned back down the hallway to wherever he’d been lurking.

Esmerelda bustled him into her office and closed the glazed door before Roddy’s knees buckled and his breath wheezed in a wet sigh. She plucked the automatic from the file cabinet and handed it back. “Are you going to explain what you think you’re doing, Mr. Secret Agent Man?”

“Shaving a decade off my life.” Roddy sighed. “Did you have to invite him in? Jesus, he would have seen the gun.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” she said sternly. “And besides, it worked.”

Roddy slumped into a chair facing her desk while Esmerelda shuffled to her seat. She lowered herself slowly and still the chair creaked under her weight. “My feet are killing me,” she complained. “I think I’ve got the gout.”

“Essie, I hate to be rude, but I don’t have time to talk aches and pains.”

“Didn’t think you did.” She smiled knowingly. “What are you mixed up in, Rodrigo? I know it’s not drugs. Carmen would have already killed you.”

“Nothing like that. It’s canal business.”

Essie’s expression turned sour. “What business? This place has turned into a military base. Armed boys running around, secret meetings with all sorts of wicked-looking Chinese men. I’m actually thinking about retiring if this nonsense keeps up.”

Roddy knew that his friend deserved a full explanation, but every second he spent in the building increased his chances of being discovered. “Can you trust me?”

“I’ve always trusted you.” Essie saw the sharpness in Roddy’s features, the tension in his body. Fear crept into her voice. “What’s happening?”

“Hatcherly Consolidated, the company who built the new piers—”

“I know who they are,” Essie interrupted.

“Sometime tomorrow they’re going to explode a ship in the Gaillard Cut and try to seal the canal entirely.” The elderly woman didn’t even bat an eye. For Roddy to believe this story was enough for her. “I’m working with the American military to stop them. We know the name of the ship, only we don’t know when it’s transiting.”

Esmerelda nodded her head so that the shiny wattles under her chin compressed like an accordion. “Now I see why tomorrow’s schedule was changed.”

Roddy seized on her comment. “I need that manifest. I also need to know if a ship named Korvald has put in at any of Hatcherly’s facilities.”

“The schedule hasn’t been posted. I heard that the personnel department is calling pilots directly to assign ships and times.”

“Damn,” Roddy spat. “Is there any way you can help me?”

Essie thought for a moment, leaning back in her chair so that the wood groaned like a schooner at full reach. She was not unaware of the danger. It took her another second to reach for the phone. “Hello, Juana, it’s Essie. Yes, fine, thanks. You? Good. And Ramón, how’s his arm? That’s too bad. Well, boys are like that. You should see some of the scars mine got over the years.” She paid little attention to Roddy’s mounting frustration as she continued chatting. “And you say the recipe’s better than your sister’s? I’ll have to try it. Thanks. Oh, Juana, I called to see if you’ve received tomorrow’s transit orders? Yeah, I know he’s keeping it secret for some reason, but I need to know tugboat requisitions to see how much fuel to send to Gamboa.” She paused to listen. “I don’t care who’s on the ships, just which are going through, and when.”

Roddy knew that Juana was Director Silvera-Arias’s secretary. In a stage whisper he said to Essie, “Tell her that they only want to keep the pilots’ names secret, something to do with the attack on the car carrier a couple days ago. Make it sound like a corruption investigation.”

Esmerelda nodded and passed on the lie, embellishing as she went. “That’s right. I don’t think any of the pilots are involved either but they’re investigating anyway. I assume that’s the reason there’s so much security here. What? Oh, great, thanks. Yeah, just use a pen to block out their names.” Essie sighed. “Can you do me one more favor and fax it to my office. The gout’s acting up again and I don’t want to be climbing more stairs than necessary.”

Someone rapped on Essie’s office door and blew in without being invited. Roddy had no time to react, no place to hide. The interloper was Panamanian, wearing suit pants and a button-down shirt. He stormed straight to the desk, leaning over Roddy’s shoulder like he wasn’t even there. He was enraged. “Essie, where the hell is the replacement hydraulic ram I ordered?”

“Later, Tomás,” Esmerelda said and continued her conversation with Juana. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Your fax is broken. Oh, all right. I’ll come up.”

“Like hell you will,” the man named Tomás shouted. “You’re going to find that ram for me. You said it was here.”

Before Essie could answer, the guard that had challenged Roddy earlier appeared at the door, drawn by the angry voices. “What’s the problem here?”

“Nothing,” Essie said, the phone still gripped in her hand. She looked at Roddy. “Can you go upstairs to get that list for me, Mr. Herrara?”

Roddy turned green. From the jaws of victory, he’d managed to snatch defeat. He didn’t dare go up to the executive suite, yet Essie was suddenly stuck in a bureaucratic snafu she couldn’t get away from without arousing suspicion.

Tomás, the soldier, and Essie seemed to be waiting for him to answer. He gulped a mouthful of air. “Ah, sure. It’s, ah, the list of lubricant suppliers, right?”

“Yup.” She pulled her hand away from the phone’s mouthpiece. “Juana, I’m sending someone up for it. He’ll be there in a second.” She hung up.

“What’s this about changing lubricant suppliers?” Roddy’s cover story infuriated Tomás even further.

“We’re just looking into it,” Essie replied placidly, doubtlessly wishing Roddy had come up with a better lie considering Tomás headed one of the physical plant departments. “Don’t worry.”

The guard continued to stand at the door, looking from face to face. Like a condemned man, Roddy hauled himself out of his chair. Tomás barely gave him a chance to step aside before throwing himself in the vacated seat. He continued to berate Essie about his missing part.

Roddy gave the soldier an assuring half smile, as if to say the argument was none of their business. The youth gave no physical reaction so Roddy stepped past him and started down the hallway. He could feel the guard’s eyes boring through his spine. A dozen yards down the hall Roddy slid into a secondary stairway. He climbed quickly. When he reached the third floor he headed in the direction of the executive suite.

He had only met Juana a couple of times and he doubted he’d made an impression on the secretary, but still he was concerned she’d recognize him. He dreaded getting drawn into a conversation with her no more than ten feet from Silvera-Arias’s office. His hands were already shaking enough.

The suite of executive offices had been recently redecorated and the air conditioning seemed incapable of drawing away the heavy smell of fresh paint. The chemical stench only increased the nausea Roddy felt as he stepped into the reception area. Beyond Juana’s immaculate desk he saw the door to Felix’s office. Even as he studied it, fighting the urge to run in and kill the bastard, it swung open.

Felix Silvera-Arias looked smug and self-satisfied in his suit and glossy shoes. His hair was slick with brilliantine and his mustache was perfectly trimmed, a black slash above his tight mouth in the style of a clichéd Latin lover. Roddy nearly turned and ran right then, and would have had another man not emerged from the director’s office. He was handsome by any standard, with a commanding presence that clearly defined him as a leader of men. That he was Chinese and looked like he’d just given Silvera-Arias a final set of orders left no question in Roddy’s mind that here was Liu Yousheng.

The emotional surge made Roddy sway. Here was the man behind the whole operation and he had a gun tucked into his waistband. Should he do it? Could he do it? Before he could react, the two men strode past him without a glance.

“Did Esmerelda send you?” Juana asked.

“H’mm? Oh, yes.” Roddy turned to the assistant.

She studied him for a moment, a spark of recognition in her eye. She glanced down at her desk, dismissing whatever feeling she’d had. “Here’s that list. As you can see I’ve blocked out the pilots’ names.”

“Thank you.” Roddy took the proffered list.

At the end of the hall he saw Liu and Felix talking in front of the elevator. With them were two other Chinese men wearing light jackets that did little to hide their concealed weapons. Roddy turned the other way, knowing that the operation would go on with or without its architect and that it was more important to get the six-page list to Mercer than exact revenge right now.

He exited the building as quickly as possible, coming out at the back of the structure near the parking lot. A guard gave him only a passing inspection as he left.

Walking a wide arc around the office, he reached his car a few minutes later. He didn’t bother to give its air conditioning time to vent the stifling waves of heat that washed from the interior. The steering wheel felt like a steam pipe and the gearshift a rock that had lain in a campfire. After tossing the gun under his seat, he jammed the car in gear and spun one hundred and eighty degrees on the quiet street.

Rather than drive all the way across the snarled city, Roddy decided to find a shipping service that sent faxes for business customers.

Once he passed the old Ancon Train Station and encountered the anonymity of heavy traffic he dialed the hotel with his cell phone. “It’s Roddy.”

“Damn,” Harry said. “I was hoping it was General Vanik. I was going to tell him that Mercer’s been making eyes at his daughter. Hey, did you get it?”

“I got it. I’m looking for a place to fax it to you. It’ll be quicker.”

“I’ll tell Mercer when he gets back. He’s downstairs talking to that Barber woman. Any problems?”

“Went fine.” Roddy still felt like the tension was going to make him ill.

“Congratulations. I’ll make sure you’re given the secret decoder ring and learn our club handshake.”

“Hold on, Harry.” Roddy checked his rearview mirror. With traffic so dense it was difficult to be certain but he thought he was being followed. There was little he could do to check. The street he was on was nearly bumper to bumper.

“What is it?” Harry asked finally.

“I’m not sure, maybe nothing.” Roddy scanned the businesses along the street. Usually he saw plenty of places that sent faxes, but now he saw nothing but bodegas and children’s clothing stores. He turned another corner, moving deeper into the city’s commercial district. The car, a sedan with windows tinted so dark he couldn’t see the occupants, stayed with him. “Listen, Harry, I’d better go. I think someone’s following me.”

“Where are you?” the old man asked. “I’ll have some of the French pick you up.”

There! A copy center. “Too late, stand by the fax machine.” Roddy clicked off his phone and bulled his way toward the curb. A Kuna woman on a rickety bicycle almost went down under his car.

Roddy pulled a wad of cash from his wallet and jumped from his Honda. Car horns screamed as he tied up traffic by blocking half a lane. The bottleneck helped pin the pursuing car fifty yards back. He dashed across the sidewalk, clutching the manifest and the money in one hand. The copy center was busy, with employees in blue slacks or skirts and white shirts helping harried secretaries and students with their orders. On the long counter sat a cup of pens. Roddy hurriedly scrawled the fax number in Mercer’s room on the top of the shipping itinerary.

As he did he noted the names of the first dozen ships scheduled to pass through the canal the next day. Oh my God! No! He looked again, more closely. None were named Gemini. None were even close to Gemini. He scanned the rest of the list. Nothing.

“Can I help you?”

Without looking at how much money he was handing the clerk, Roddy passed over the roll of bills and the six sheets of paper. “Please send this as quickly as possible.” He was near panic.

Without waiting for an acknowledgment he fled the store. He pushed past several pedestrians, and when he reached the curb he dropped to his knees. The tension and fear and defeat spilled into the gutter.

When his stomach was empty, he looked up, wiping his mouth. Two men stood over him. Locals. Dangerous-looking. Ex-Dignity Brigades for sure. An image of Carmen and the children flashed through his mind in the seconds before one of them reached down and plucked him from the sidewalk. Without a word they began to duckwalk him back to their car. People on the street parted as they passed, all looking at anything other than the pathetic man with vomit on his chin and the look of death in his eye.