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?”