The Saboteurs by Clive Cussler (life changing books .txt) 📕

and sat, waiting for its master to open it, sneezing a few more times for good measure.

The owner reemerged and spoke to the dog for a few seconds before letting it back in the house. Bell had remained on the beach in the water, so all he heard was low murmurs.

He waited twenty minutes, now hidden in some sedge grass, before returning to the patio. On one side of the study was a formal living room, on the other was a dining room large enough to seat a dozen guests. Its white walls were hung with colorful, locally dyed fabrics in simple wooden frames. The table was of a honey-hued wood and styled more in keeping with the hacienda’s tropical setting. The homeowner ate by himself, though his butler made frequent forays into the dining room with additional dishes and refreshed drinks.

Bell had a better view of his quarry. The man had dark hair and an unlined, Central European face, putting him closer to forty than fifty. He couldn’t get a read on him because of the distance and angle, but Bell could imagine his anger at tonight’s failure to either capture him or, more likely, kill him. Bell had no doubt that this stranger was the person behind Viboras Rojas, the puppet master secretly pulling the strings. He also had no idea what the man would gain by sabotaging the construction of the canal.

Questions and answers. The ledger for those wouldn’t balance out until the case was solved.

After his meal, the homeowner returned to his study to use the telephone on the desk and then sat in the living room, listening to Richard Wagner operas on a gramophone and smoking a cigar. His taste in music led Bell to believe he was German.

A short time passed before the man rose from a sofa and lifted the needle from a gramophone disc and made his way to his bedroom. The dog stayed close to its master. The butler appeared a few minutes later, bustling about the living room to tidy it up, and then he vanished into the servants’ quarters.

Bell circled the house twice, moving slowly and always locating his next spot for cover before doing so. There was no additional security, and all the lights were off. On his second sweep, Bell located a clutch of outbuildings. One was a garden shed, another housed an oil-burning steam boiler and an electric generator. The former emitted only the soft glow of its pilot light under its insulated main tank, while the generator itself was quiet. The equipment wouldn’t be needed again until morning.

By his estimation, forty-five minutes had elapsed since the homeowner had gone to bed. The servant too was surely deeply asleep. Time to move.

The lock on the study’s French doors took less than fifteen seconds to pick using the tools Bell always carried. Before entering the house, he pulled off the rain-slicked poncho. There wasn’t much he could do about his wet shoes, but at least he wouldn’t drip an obvious amount of water on the floor. The door swung out silently, and Bell slipped into the room. He flicked on the battery-powered lamp and held it so that his fingers blocked all but a tiny ray of light from shining through.

Bell went straight for the desk, sweeping the light across its broad surface and committing the location of everything on it to memory so he could put it all back when he was done. Riffling through some of the ledgers and other books, Bell learned his man was named Otto Dreissen and that he was part owner of a large family business concern called Essenwerks. He knew of the company, not its owners. They were a manufacturing, smelting, and coal mining concern and looked to be mostly profitable.

For ten tense minutes he sought some clue as to Dreissen’s ultimate goal in Panama. There was a great deal about the collieries they owned, and he found a dossier on some of the equipment they manufactured. He saw designs for a biplane that appeared to be able to shoot twin machine guns through the spinning blades of its propeller. There were sketches of a submarine that was as sleek as a shark, others of robust-looking trucks that ran on metal belts rather than wheels and were shown towing large field guns. Still others detailed motors that were meant to be lightweight and more powerful than anything Bell could imagine, and a control room for some unknown craft that looked decades ahead of its time. There was a drawing of an aerodynamic pod whose function was a complete mystery. It was like he was looking at the work of some futurist rather than a contemporary.

Everyone knew Europe was heading to war. The storm clouds had been building for years as alliances were formed and stiffened to the point that a spark would set off a continent-wide conflagration far deadlier than any in history. Bell could see that Dreissen’s company was positioning the Germans to have vastly superior equipment for when the shooting finally started.

He needed to pass this on to some friends with Army Intelligence, but he couldn’t see what any of this had to do with the canal.

He was about to open a new file folder titled Cologne, with a sketch of what appeared to be a cigar, when a floorboard creaked just outside the closed study door an instant before the door itself was thrown open.

Bell doused his light, but a man Bell had never seen before was carrying a flashlight in one hand. His other was gloved in dark leather and balled in a fist. A night watchman making his rounds, was Bell’s first thought. He had the look of a grizzled veteran, tall and strong but past his prime.

The man’s eyes widened for just a second upon seeing Bell, an intruder, before he took two quick paces forward. Bell stepped back, edging closer to the French doors and escape. The broad desk was between them and