Saffire (27 page)

I turned back to the sidewalk, and Harding was there, waiting for me.

“What was that about?” he asked as I joined him.

“Chasing a ghost.” I walked away slowly, as if it were a leisurely day, and doing my best to give no sign that I was fleeing to save my life.

I
stood on a massive man-made hill, photographs of revolutionary papers still with me, pretending to continue Goethals's investigation. It was a necessary deception if I was going to get the information about the papers I needed from the man in front of me. Oliver MacDonald, the foreman of this area of the dam construction. He was a roly-poly man whose face transformed into the Cheshire Cat with each grin, and MacDonald could rival Harry Franck for chattiness.

“Let me tell you about last month's congressional delegation,” MacDonald said. “The colonel was here, right where you are standing, and looking that way.”

He pointed almost due south, at jungle hills rising about five or six miles away. In that span of lowland, thousands of acres had been razed, leaving behind stumps of once-magnificent mahogany trees in the swamp formed by slowly rising water.

“Right here,” I said to echo him. A half mile to the east were the Gatún Locks, and construction sounds carried clearly to us. The day before, my chat with the foreman there had been much less congenial than this.

MacDonald could afford the luxury, though. The dam was close to completion, and therefore he felt none of the urgency of his counterparts in the other two divisions.

“Yes, right here,” MacDonald said. “And let me tell you, those congressmen thought they were the most important officials of the project. First I explained to them why we had chosen to dam the Chagres River. Behind us, the river channel is about six miles to the ocean, and in heavy rain, water might rise thirty feet. Thirty feet! Every bridge put in has washed out. The French were so arrogant after completing the Suez that they wouldn't budge from a plan to keep the canal at ocean level, thought they could come up the Chagres, but it was an enemy they couldn't beat. What we did was genius, I tell you. Genius. We're turning the Chagres into a lake, and that means nearly half the entire route from Atlantic to Pacific is on top of those waters. All we needed was an elevation of eighty-five feet to bring the ships to the lake. Mother Nature is doing most of the work for us, because we use the water from the dam to raise and lower the ships in the locks. In short, we've conquered the Chagres and turned it into a servant.”

“Yes,” I said. I already knew all of this. I needed to be patient, to get the questions I really wanted answered. “Brilliant.”

“Right here, those five congressman looked at the same view that you are seeing and had the gall to doubt our fine engineering. And not only that, but voice those doubts to the colonel himself.”

“Yes?”

“Understand,” MacDonald continued, “this is not a conventional dam. Do you see concrete?”

It was a rhetorical question. Besides, who was I to knock him off his rhythm as an enthusiastic tour guide?

“Not a lick of concrete,” MacDonald said. “The design of the dam was as brilliant as the reason for it. Below us, we began with two walls of big rocky fragments. Then with hydraulic dredges, we pumped silt from the river channel of the Chagres and filled those two walls. Silt! It doesn't wash away, not with the protective rock walls. And it fills every pore, and the pressures of weight above it turn it into something more solid than stone. Where we stand is well above the final water level, and all that remains is to finish turning this into a hill and planting vegetation. A year from now, it will look like part of the landscape and not a drop of water will percolate through all the silt beneath it guarded by those rock walls.”

That dirt to cap the hill was also being hauled in by train on temporary tracks. MacDonald oversaw about a thousand men.

“So,” I said, “there was an explosion on one of those trains, and that slowed things down?”

“Who is talking about a train?” MacDonald frowned. “Aren't you listening? With the colonel himself standing where you are, one of those spindly congressmen pipes up and says sure enough this might be the biggest dam in the world, but compared to the lake it's supposed to hold, how can something this small keep back such a tremendous amount of water? And the colonel—well, you probably know how he believes in letting a man be responsible for his own work—turns to me and says, ‘Mr. MacDonald, why don't you explain?' So there I am, with the honor of slapping those doubting Thomases with the facts of engineering. I mean, really, what did they think, that the colonel didn't know what he was doing, choosing to make a lake that would do almost half of the canal's work? And I told them, clear as day, that the pressure of a body of water is determined by its height, not its volume. That's a hydrostatic law of engineering, not too difficult to understand, I would say.”

“Of course.” I hoped MacDonald would get around to answering my question about the explosion when he was ready, so I played the role of a good listener. “Don't tell me, then, that your answer wasn't good enough.”

“Not even near good enough! That congressman flat out told me that if he had a big enough foot to kick the dam, the more he had behind that kick, the more pressure he'd put on the dam, and how was he going to explain his votes for maintaining the canal budget when he couldn't tell anyone back home he believed a dam this small could do the job? Right in front the colonel he said this. Right in front! But let me tell you, the colonel didn't get to where he was because he suffers fools, not at all.”

“Of course. Not at all.”

“So the colonel just gives the man a smile and says, ‘Sir, if your theory is true, how could the dykes of Holland hold back the entire Atlantic Ocean?' And just like that, in one sentence, the colonel paints the prettiest picture of the hydrostatic law that a man could hear. Those congressmen walked away happy as could be, and the colonel winks at me and slaps my back and then follows. He's terrific, all right, the colonel is.”

MacDonald paused. “You had a question about the explosion?”

Finally. “Just following up, on the colonel's behalf.”

“Well, it knocked a car off the tracks, killed some silvers, is all. Nothing like that has happened since. What we decided was someone might have left a box of dynamite in the wrong place.”

“Seen this man before?” I showed him a newspaper photo of Ezequiel Sandoval.

“No, sir.”

“This man?” I showed the newspaper photo of Raoul Amador and was rewarded by a flinch.

“No, sir.”

“That's all.” I'd have to ask Miskimon a few questions about Mr. MacDonald. “Thank you. I can find my way back.”

I walked past the work crews and the slow-moving cars filled with dirt. Colón was my next destination, but not, unfortunately, to finally take passage on a steamer.

Not quite yet.

Just after dawn, when I'd realized that the photographs showed a new constitution signed by a group of revolutionaries, I had been given the responsibility of all their lives. I couldn't be certain this was the only set of photographs. I
could
be certain that Cromwell had an inkling of its existence and that he'd made sure many of those who'd signed it saw me pull out their newly designed flag, as if I were the investigator who'd discovered that flag.

Given that Raoul Amador's name and signature was the first among all the others, it now made sense why he had confronted me with a pistol and knife.

But who had slipped those photographs into my laundered clothing, and why?

Had I been wiser, I would have simply delivered the evidence to Goethals. He'd wanted to know who was hunting me and who was behind the sabotage. Those photographs had the full answer.

Had I been wiser, I would not have continued with this charade of investigation, assuming that Goethals was keeping track of my movements in the way he kept track of every activity in the American Zone.

The trouble was, among those fifteen whose signatures were tantamount to treason against the republic, fifteen people who would face execution, was the signature of a woman with whom I was utterly smitten.

Raquel Sandoval.