The Canal Zone,
Panama
An hour had passed since Mercer had driven away
aboard the auto carrier. In that hour they had dropped down the
near-vertical rails that launched the freighter’s podlike lifeboat
and waited for ten tense minutes for one of the ship’s loading
ramps to open. It was Bruneseau who motored them toward the repair
docks at Gamboa, satisfied that he had given Mercer enough time and
that the geologist was not coming. The Gamboa harbor was where the
canal operators kept some of their tugboats, as well as the 350-ton
crane barge Titan. Away from where workers
repaired large buoys that bobbed along a seawall, the French spy
had hot-wired an employee’s battered Chevy while Foch and Lauren
helped the injured pilot. Bruneseau took the wheel for the drive to
the Legion safe house in Panama City.
It was just moments into that ride, as they crossed
the trestle bridge they had almost hit with their helicopter, that
they saw the auto carrier again as it continued toward the Pedro
Miguel Lock. From the ship’s towering deck they spied the Chinese
Gazelle lift away toward the west, all of them certain that Mercer
was on board, but only Lauren Vanik feeling that he was somehow
still alive.
Panama’s military had just begun their response to
the distress calls from the ship and a handful of army vehicles
passed them on the road, headed toward the lock where the ship
would likely be detained for an investigation. They were in the
outskirts of the city when they spotted the first military chopper
headed for the canal—far too late to go after the Gazelle.
Now they were safely at the house. Carlson was
being looked after by a medic who had the skills to remove the
bullet fragment lodged in his thigh. The corpsman singled out
Lauren for stemming the pilot’s blood loss with a tourniquet while
still maintaining a trickle of circulation in the lower limb. She
had spent the time riding to Panama City ministering to the man. In
her rage against the French, her aid to the pilot had nothing to do
with compassion. She simply needed something to keep her from being
overwhelmed by grief and anger.
Two of the off-duty Legionnaires went out to dump
the stolen car downtown while the rest huddled over Carlson in a
back bedroom, leaving Lauren alone. Restless, she stripped off her
fatigue blouse and stood over the kitchen sink splashing palmfuls
of water over her face. The cool water soaked the neck of her
T-shirt and beaded like diamond chips in her long lashes. She could
feel hot tears mingled with the water, greasepaint and sweat.
She couldn’t define what Mercer had become to her
in the few days she’d known him. It had been so long since she’d
had such a reaction to a man and she didn’t trust herself enough to
dwell on it. During her tour in Kosovo, she’d learned to insulate
herself from her feelings. To become too close to comrades or those
she’d been charged to protect made the inevitable losses
unbearable. In order to face the horror and the pain she had to
prevent them from getting too deep. That lesson had cost her part
of her soul, she knew. By insulating herself from the agony, she’d
had to sacrifice what brought her the deepest joy, too.
The passage of time was mending that gap and maybe
this was the first instance where her heart had broken through the
shield she’d built around it. She wasn’t sure, and wouldn’t allow
herself to think specifically about Mercer, gladdened that anyone
had gotten through. She clung to that thought, drawing from it,
using it to find the will to act. For the past hour, events had
moved her along because she’d had no choice. Now, standing at the
sink, she knew it was time for action.
Mercer had programmed Rodrigo Herrara’s number into
her cell phone so she could dial it with the press of a button.
Roddy’s wife, Carmen, answered. Without going into details, Lauren
told her that she needed Roddy and Harry White. She gave directions
to the safe house, which wasn’t too far from the Herraras’ home in
Panama City’s El Cangrejo neighborhood. Carmen said the men were in
the back-yard with Miguel and would be on their way in
minutes.
Bruneseau’s actions at the lake—his reckless need
to get into the compound—was an indication that the French mission
in Panama went beyond a concern for radio interception antennas.
But until she knew what it was they were looking for, she decided
not to call the U.S. embassy. The ambassador had bought his post
with financial contributions to the current White House
administration, so he didn’t have the clout in Washington to
forward any report she gave him. The CIA station chief was a
hopeless drunk who was marking time to his retirement and
Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft, her military superior, wouldn’t
jeopardize his chance to put eagles on his shoulders by acting on
what Lauren had found out. Maybe if she had concrete evidence—but
for now he’d do nothing. That left her with Frenchmen she didn’t
trust, an old man and an out-of-work canal pilot.
She was at the front window drinking from a second
bottle of water when an older Honda Accord pulled into the
driveway. She recognized Roddy behind the wheel and Harry sitting
erect next to him. It was only when she opened the door that Rene
Bruneseau came out of the back room.
He glared at seeing the two men enter the safe
house. “What is the meaning of this?”
His size and intimidating build may have stopped
most people in their tracks but Harry White brushed past him with
such a casual contempt that the spy retreated a step. “Where’s
Mercer?” he asked Lauren in a brusque tone that couldn’t cover his
concern.
“Captain Vanik,” Rene snapped, “who are these
men?”
Harry wheeled on Bruneseau, poking the heavier man
in the chest with every third word. “I’ll ask you the same question
in a second, but first I want to know where Mercer is.” It had
taken him two seconds to gain control of the situation.
Lauren felt a rush of comfort that Harry was here.
More than an ally, the feisty octogenarian was an advocate who
wouldn’t stop until Mercer was safe. Had Bruneseau not been in the
room, she would have hugged him. “The Chinese have him,” she
answered. “They took him away in a chopper.” She paused, unsure how
to tell him that she didn’t know Mercer’s condition. “We don’t know
if he’s . . .”
White ignored the implications of her voice
trailing off. “Took him on a chopper from where to where?”
“From a ship in the canal. They were headed
west.”
“I thought you guys were going to the volcanic
lake?”
“It’s a long story,” Lauren replied.
“That is enough!” Bruneseau snapped. “Captain
Vanik, you have compromised our safe house and our mission by
inviting these two men. I will not permit you to tell them any
more.”
“As of right now,” she said hotly, her well of
strength seemingly replenished by Harry’s presence, “your mission,
whatever it is, means nothing to me. I am getting Mercer back. I
suspect you will do nothing to help me, but you damned well can’t
stop me either.”
“What she said,” Harry echoed and settled onto a
couch, his body language dismissing Bruneseau. He lit a cigarette.
“You said it was a long story. I’ve got all day to hear it.”
The Frenchman wouldn’t let his point drop. “I
cannot believe your unprofessionalism. These men are
civilians.”
The rage Lauren had been holding in since the canal
exploded. “My unprofessionalism? Don’t you dare lecture me. You and
Foch were the ones who tried to infiltrate Liu’s camp at the lake
and nearly got us all killed. You still haven’t explained what you
were looking for, and don’t give me some cock-and-bull story about
Chinese listening posts.”
“I will not answer your questions.”
“But I will.” The voice came from the hallway
leading to the bedrooms. It was Foch.
“Lieutenant!”
“I am sorry, monsieur. They deserve the
truth.”
Although the two men switched languages, there was
little difficulty following their argument. Bruneseau’s anger did
nothing to blunt the Legionnaire’s resolve, even when faced with
what sounded like a direct order. When it was over, the spy leaned
against a wall with his arms crossed. It was evident by his
expression that Foch was going to pay for what he was about to
reveal.
“Eleven weeks ago, a shipment of spent uranium fuel
was transported from Rokkasho in Japan to the reprocessing plant in
France owned by Cogema.” Foch overrode the startled gasps and the
quick looks of confusion directed at him. “The route, like the
previous one hundred and sixty times such a load has been moved,
took the specially designed double-hulled ship through the Panama
Canal. The fuel was stored in what are called type-B casks, huge
drums about twenty feet long and weighing over a hundred tons.
About six tons of spent uranium are carried in each cask. Since
1971 about thirty-five thousand tons of spent fuel have been
transported in these and other types of containers.
“This is all sanctioned by the International Atomic
Energy Agency under guidelines drawn up in the 1970s,” Foch
explained when Lauren drew a breath between her teeth at the amount
of radioactive material routinely shipped around the globe. “When
the ship arrived in France, and each cask was reweighed, one came
up five hundred pounds light.”
“Jesus Christ! You lost five hundred pounds of
radioactive fuel?” Harry said.
Foch nodded. “There are two ways this could have
happened. Either it wasn’t loaded in Japan or it was taken from the
ship during its run to France. French regulators are working with
the Japanese at Rokkasho to see if the problem occurred at the
plant—”
“And you’re working with Bruneseau to see if it was
somehow taken off when the ship passed through the canal,” Lauren
finished for him.
“It is an unlikely scenario,” Bruneseau scoffed.
“The ship never stopped on its way through and only three pilots
came on board to guide it. Not enough men to open one of the casks
and steal a deadly fuel assembly weighing almost two hundred
kilos.”
“But you were still given orders to check it out
anyway?”
“My government wanted every contingency
investigated.”
“How big is the ship that carried the fuel?” Roddy
Herrara spoke for the first time.
“One hundred and four meters, about three hundred
and forty feet,” Foch answered after Roddy told him he had been a
canal pilot.
“A ship that size,” Roddy said, “would only need
one pilot.”
“Except for its extraordinary cargo. Surely they’d
bring in extras to help.”
“Maybe one other,” the Panamanian replied. “Not
two.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bruneseau said. “Even two men
couldn’t have done it alone. There’s no way the uranium could have
been taken off the ship here. The safety monitors on the vessel
never recorded a spike in radiation, the ship’s officers said that
the pilots never left the bridge and the security tags on the cask
hadn’t been tampered with. The five hundred pounds of missing
uranium was not on board. The Japanese screwed up by shorting the
load when they put the fuel into the casks. It’s a clerical
error.”
“You’re probably right, sir,” Roddy said
respectfully, “yet you seem to have stumbled onto something here or
you wouldn’t be so vehemently pursuing your investigation.”
Bruneseau remained silent for a moment. “I’ll grant
you something’s going on, but it’s not about a lost shipment of
uranium. We focused on Hatcherly because of their connection to
China’s military, but in the weeks we’ve been monitoring them with
gamma detectors we’ve found nothing. Their activities at the lake
were something we didn’t know about, and yet there was no evidence
of radiation at that location either.” He turned to Lauren. “You’re
right when you said my mission has nothing to do with yours. I
don’t care that Hatcherly Consolidated is robbing this country
blind or that they’re about to complete a Chinese takeover of the
Panama Canal. Your country should have considered that when they
gave the damned thing away. As I told my superiors when they sent
us here, the whole trip is a waste. Nous sommes
fini, ici. We’re done here.”
“Señor.” A little of the
respect had drained from Roddy’s voice. “I am not saying that it is
likely that your ship was tampered with in the canal, but I think
you should know it is possible. Many times during a transit,
tugboats are used to nose a ship into a lock. Depending on the time
of day your ship went through, enough men could have boarded the
vessel from the tug and broken into one of these casks.”
“Don’t you think I’ve had men sweep all the tugs
looking for residual radiation?” Bruneseau retorted. “That’s the
first damned thing we did when we got to Panama. I’m telling you
the casks weren’t tampered with. The missing uranium is still
sitting in Japan and eventually some clerk will find the error that
wrongly listed it on the ship’s manifest.”
“You’re willing to take the risk if you’re wrong?”
Harry growled.
“If there was a risk, no. But there isn’t.”
“And what about Mercer?” Lauren had gone bitter,
knowing how the agent would reply. “Don’t you owe him something for
using him to gain access to more of what Hatcherly is doing? I
thought the Legion always took care of their own?”
“And I,” Rene pronounced, “am not with the
Legion.”
Lauren looked to Foch, imploring. The soldier
seemed to have gone as far as he was willing. He couldn’t meet her
gaze. “Neither was Mercer. I am sorry, Captain.”
“You cowards,” she hissed. “Mercer risked his life
not knowing what you were looking for and you’ll just abandon him
now that you think you’ve been on a fool’s errand.”
“Even if we wanted to help,” Foch offered, “we
don’t know where Hatcherly took him or even if he’s still
alive.”
Harry White leaned forward, his eyes drilling
Bruneseau to the wall even as he spoke to the whole room. “I know
where they’re taking him.”
Rodrigo Herrara nodded. “Sí, we know.”
A feeling of hope surged through Lauren’s body. Her
breath seemed to catch in her throat. “Where?”
Harry, never one to let an opportunity to be the
center of attention pass, ground out his cigarette and
ceremoniously lit another. He decided against opening the
whiskey-filled flask at the top of his sword cane. With Mercer in
danger, time was of the essence.
“Okay, after your little romp in the container
port, Mercer asked Roddy and me to find out where those dump trucks
were bringing all that gravel from and why. No surprise, we didn’t
find a trace of the armored car. Liu probably stashed it that night
after moving the gold someplace else. Bank most likely.
“Anyway, Roddy and I waited outside Hatcherly’s
gates all the next day and into the early evening before the first
of the dump trucks left the container port. They drove out of the
city and across the canal on the Bridge of the Americas toward
Penonome to the west.” He gave Lauren a significant look. It was
the same direction the Gazelle had taken. “About twenty miles past
that town they turned onto a private road belonging to Las Minas
del Viente Diablos. The Twenty Devils Mine.”
“A mine?” Lauren asked, having never heard of the
place. “What kind of mine?”
Harry looked pleased with himself and his detective
skills. “We talked to a peasant walking along the highway. Told us
it’s a gold mine.”
“I know there’s a big copper mine between Santiago
and David but the gold mines in Panama were in the Darien Province
and have been closed for a century.”
“The place is little known,” Roddy interjected.
“After we discovered that is where the trucks are going, I phoned
the ministry that oversees mines. I wanted to question some
officials but I was refused a meeting. I got only as far as a
low-level clerk who told me that the mine has been in operation for
six months and that it’s partially owned by a foreign company. He
wouldn’t tell me which country nor would he tell me how much gold
they’ve extracted.”
“At the lake,” Lauren said, “we discovered that Liu
Yousheng hasn’t found the Twice-Stolen Treasure yet. Is it possible
the gold Mercer and I saw at the warehouse came from this Twenty
Devils Mine?”
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion quite yet,”
Harry said enigmatically.
“This is a waste of time,” Bruneseau dismissed the
whole line of inquiry. “We don’t know where the Gazelle went after
it left the auto carrier. As for the trucks at the port? Hatcherly
is a maritime company. They could be shipping ore for the mining
company.”
Harry smirked, as if he was setting up the French
agent. “A minute ago you said that you’d take no chances if Liu had
stolen the atomic fuel and stashed it someplace in Panama. What if
the mine is controlled by Hatcherly and that’s where the helicopter
took Mercer? Would you be willing to check it out?”
“It could have gone anywhere.”
“Too true,” White agreed. “But we have evidence
that something about that mine isn’t kosher, a strange link between
it and the warehouse. Remember the gravel in the warehouse?” The
others waited expectantly while Harry drew out the moment.
“Hatcherly isn’t moving it to a ship from the mine. It’s the
opposite actually. It appears that the gravel is brought in on
ships and is then transported to the
mine.”
“Huh? Why?”
Looking around the room, Harry said, “Only way to
find out is to go and see for ourselves.”
He didn’t need to add that his interest was finding
Mercer, not why Hatcherly was playing bizarre shell games with
dump-truck loads of gravel.