River of Ruin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Paris, France

  On the Rio Tuira, Panama

  Gary Barber’s Camp on the River of Ruin

  The Lake

  Panama City, Panama

  Cristobal, Panama

  Hatcherly Consolidated Terminal Balboa, Panama

  Panama City, Panama

  Above the Darien Province, Panama

  The Canal Zone, Panama

  The Twenty Devils Mine Cocle Province, Panama

  The Twenty Devils Mine Cocle Province, Panama

  The Twenty Devils Mine Cocle Province, Panama

  Roddy Herrara’s House Panama City, Panama

  Lake Gatun, Panama

  The Radisson Royal Hotel Panama City, Panama

  El Mirador West of Panama City

  The Radisson Royal Hotel Panama City, Panama

  El Mirador

  The Radisson Royal Hotel Panama City, Panama

  Canal Administration Building Balboa Heights, Panama

  Radisson Royal Hotel Panama City, Panama

  Hatcherly Consolidated Terminal Balboa, Panama

  The Pedro Miguel Lock Panama Canal, Panama

  The Englander Rose Panama Canal, Panama

  Hatcherly Consolidated Terminal Balboa, Panama

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for River of Ruin

  “Starts at 100 mph and then gets faster . . . intricate, intelligent, high-octane adventure.”

  —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of Without Fail

  Praise for Pandora’s Curse

  “A rare treat—a thriller that blends some of modern history’s most vexing enigmas with a hostile, perfectly realized setting. This is one thriller that really delivers great characters combined with a breakneck pace and almost unbearable suspense.”

  —Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, coauthors of The Ice Limit and Relic

  “Combining plenty of thrills and a touch of romance, Du Brul’s action-packed contemporary adventure zips along like an out-of-control locomotive. . . . A well-researched foundation of facts and details grounds the reader in this frosty setting. . . . Mercer’s love interest, Dr. Anika Klein, is his fitting counterpart and a strong heroine, and their romance adds a degree of warmth to this swift, sensational tale. Those who enjoy a good adrenaline rush will find plenty here to satisfy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Have you been casually looking for a new thriller writer in the tradition of Clive Cussler? Would the idea of a touch of Jack Higgins intrigue you? Do you like your reading to move quickly, have a grand plot, and the good guy gets the girl? Browse no more! Jack Du Brul is here. . . . Pandora’s Curse hit all the buttons. Read it and run to your favorite bookstore for the others. . . . A dandy read.”

  —News & Citizen (Morrisville, VT)

  The Medusa Stone

  “[The Medusa Stone’s] nearly 500 pages of fast-paced prose propel Du Brul closer to the front ranks of thriller authors.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “With novels like Charon’s Landing, Vulcan’s Forge, and now The Medusa Stone, Jack Du Brul is one of the leaders of adventurous intrigue novels. The story line of his latest thriller continually ebbs and flows, but each new spurt builds the tension even further until the audience realizes that this is a one-sitting novel in spite of its size. Philip is a fabulous lead character and the support cast brings to life Eritrea and some questionable activities in the Mediterranean area. However, in hindsight what makes Mr. Du Brul’s novel a strong candidate for adventure book of the year is the brilliant fusion of Eritrea, its people and customs woven into a dramatic plot.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Charon’s Landing

  “A pleasure . . . A densely detailed and well-paced thinking man’s melodrama.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Jack Du Brul has to be the finest adventure writer on the scene today. Romance, violence, technology are superbly blended by a master storyteller. Du Brul creates a fast-moving odyssey that is second to none.”

  —Clive Cussler

  “Du Brul’s well-calculated debts to Fleming, Cussler, Easter-man, and Lustbader, his technological, political, and ecological research, and his natural gift for storytelling bode well.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Vulcan’s Forge

  “Wonderfully outrageous [cliffhangers]. . . . Finely tuned, buoyed by strong, fresh writing.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An exciting, well-honed thriller that will have Clive Cussler fans taking note of the new kid on the block.”

  —William Heffernan, author of The Dinosaur Club

  “Du Brul has created a high-tempo action pace. . . . The reader is constantly intrigued. . . . An action-packed and intriguing thriller.”

  —The Mystery Review

  “The writing here is good, the pace very fast, the characters believable. . . . A welcome addition to the ranks of thriller writers.”

  —The Sullivan County Democrat

  “A fun thriller.”

  —Oklahoman

  “An intricate tale filled with action and intrigue where the stakes are high. Mercer is an action character with a brain, a penchant for beautiful women, and the ability to think fast and inspire respect and trust. . . . A fast-paced story well told by an upcoming new talent in the spy thriller genre. Du Brul has earned an avid fan.”

  —Cape Coral Daily Breeze

  Also by Jack Du Brul

  RIVER OF RUIN*

  PANDORA’S CURSE*

  THE MEDUSA STONE*

  CHARON’S LANDING

  VULCAN’S FORGE

  *Published by Onyx

  ONYX

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,

  Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

  Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published by Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First Printing, December 2002

  Copyright © Jack Du Brul, 2002

  Map copyright © Jeffrey L. Ward, 2002

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09801-1

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  In loving memory of my

  father, David Du Brul. No

 
work of fiction has produced

  a greater hero or a better man.

  Paris, France

  The auctioneer’s gavel came down with a stinging crack that carried across the ornate salon. “Sold for forty-seven thousand francs to bidder number 127.”

  A digital board on one side of the elevated stage showed the exchange rates for each bid as they were acknowledged. The book held aloft by a white-gloved assistant standing behind the auctioneer had just been purchased for nearly seven thousand dollars.

  The bid had actually been placed by an auction-house employee who fielded business from buyers either unable or unwilling to attend Paris’s premier rare book and manuscript sale. There were several such bid takers grouped together in an area like a jury box, each person equipped with telephones and an Internet-connected computer. The rest of the high-ceilinged room was given over to ranks of comfortable chairs for buyers in attendance. Derosier’s Librairie Antique was offering today’s books from a collection entitled “Patriarchs of the Industrial Age.” Tomorrow’s auction, the main event for the three-day affair, included dozens of Renaissance Bibles and a partial da Vinci manuscript expected to fetch millions of dollars.

  There was a period of murmuring and catalogue rustling before the next book was brought out and its picture flashed on the projection screen at the back of the stage.

  Philip Mercer had waited for the diversion before crossing the marble floor to a seat near the rear. A few elegant patrons frowned at the noise made by his wet, squelching shoes. He was more amused than embarrassed by their haughty reaction. Outside the tall, hemisphered windows, a fierce autumn rain pounded the streets. The leaden sky would not let the city shine. Still, the room managed to glitter with gold leaf on the ceiling and burnished woods covering the walls.

  Mercer caught the eye of the auctioneer as he sat. Jean-Paul Derosier inclined his head slightly, careful not to show deference to any one client. Mercer knew his old friend was glad to see him. It was Jean-Paul himself who had enticed him to Paris with a list of what was coming to the block for this particular auction.

  They knew each other from many years ago when Jean-Paul was simply Gene and pronounced his last name with an American hard r. They had been high school friends in Barre, Vermont, both outcasts in a sense because both wanted a life far beyond the confines of the small New England town. Derosier had somehow developed a taste for life’s finer things and was determined to have the means as well, while Mercer possessed an incurable wanderlust inherited from his parents, who had died in Africa when he was twelve. He had lived in Barre with his paternal grand-parents. Years later, Mercer and Derosier crossed paths again when business success allowed Mercer to indulge his interest in rare books. By then, Jean-Paul was well established in the trade.

  Thumbing open the glossy catalogue, Mercer noted what lot number was due up next, and cursed. Today’s auction was just about half over. A business delay had ruined his plan to arrive in Paris a few days earlier. Had he not scheduled a meeting the following day, he would have canceled the trip altogether and bid through a proxy. He’d only just gotten into town and had taxied directly from Charles de Gaulle Airport.

  The next book being offered was a personal journal written by Ferdinand de Lesseps during his sole trip to Panama in 1879. By the time the famed builder of the Suez Canal ventured to Central America, he had already convinced a syndicate of investors that he could repeat his triumph by carving a sea-level trench across the jungle-choked isthmus. Of course, his attempt ended in failure and the deaths of twenty-three thousand workers, as well as a financial crisis that rocked France to its core.

  This was one of the most important items for sale today, expected to fetch around twenty thousand dollars.

  Mercer scanned the rest of the catalogue and let out a relieved sigh. The manuscript he’d come to bid on hadn’t yet come up. Relaxing for the first time since his plane touched down, he used his palms to press rainwater from his dark hair.

  “And our next item before a short recess is number sixty-two.” Jean-Paul Derosier knew to allow his voice to rise an octave, feeding the palpable wave of anticipation sweeping the room. Mercer also detected a vague sense of anger from the bidders that he couldn’t understand. “This one-hundred-and-seventy-page handwritten journal by Ferdinand de Lesseps was penned during his voyage to Panama. As you can see, the manuscript is bound in maroon leather with de Lesseps’s name on the cover and is in extraordinary condition.”

  Derosier continued to expound on the virtues of the journal as pictures of individual pages were flashed on the screen behind him. He spoke in French, and while Mercer had once been fluent in the language, he couldn’t concentrate. Instead of paying attention to a book he had no interest in, he gazed out one of the windows, wishing he’d had time to at least change his shirt from the flight. His suit felt clammy and his tie dug into the stubble on his neck.

  Jean-Paul ended his pitch by saying, “We will start the bidding at fifty thousand francs.” The phone operator holding a sign for bidder number 127 nodded her head and the audience let out a tired groan.

  Mercer immediately recognized that this mysterious bidder had been bullying the auction by overbidding on the books he or she was interested in. In a minute-long frenzy, the price was driven up to thirty thousand dollars. Those bidders who nodded at the incremental increases did so with a resigned fatalism, knowing they were going to lose. However, it seemed they derived a perverse enjoyment from making bidder number 127 pay far more than the journal was worth. The telephone operator’s impassiveness began to crack as the bids passed the fifty-thousand-dollar mark, two and a half times the journal’s estimated value. Mercer could imagine the anger she was hearing in the voice of whoever she represented.

  Then it was down to just two bidders, the mystery person on the phone and an American Mercer had seen at a Christie’s auction in New York about a year earlier. Like Mercer, this man was here for the love of the books, not their resale value. Mercer recalled the man was some kind of oil executive and had pockets deeper than the wells he drilled, but at seventy-five thousand dollars even he had to bow out with an angry shake of his head.

  Following Jean-Paul’s cry of “Sold!” there wasn’t the normal round of applause for such a high sale. The room vibrated with an ugly tension. The operator who represented bidder number 127 would not look up from her desk, as if ashamed of the domineering tactics she’d been forced to use.

  “There will now be a twenty-minute break,” Derosier said. “Champagne is available in the foyer outside the salon.”

  Mercer accepted a fluted glass from a waitress and waited while Jean-Paul chatted up old clients and worked to make new ones. A cut across the knuckles on Mercer’s left hand had reopened and he dabbed at the blood with napkins. Patrons might have wondered about the man in the Armani suit with his injured hands, but none approached. It wasn’t that he seemed out of place, rather he appeared so self-contained, more comfortable in the opulent surroundings than they themselves felt despite the wet shoes and bloody wound.

  He threw away the stained napkins when he’d stanched the cut and offered a disarming shrug to a staring matron as if to say, Don’t you hate when this happens? It was a curious, bonding gesture, like she’d been the one being judged and that she’d passed his inspection. Her dour façade cracked and she returned a smile.

  Derosier finally disentangled himself from an elderly woman in a ridiculous blue hat and came over to where Mercer leaned against a damask wall. They were the same height, around six feet, but Mercer appeared to be the larger of the two men. Jean-Paul’s lustrous skin, boyishly long eyelashes, and animated mouth made him pretty rather than handsome. In contrast, Mercer’s good looks came from more masculine, squared features and bold gray eyes that could be as alluring as silk or rage like an arctic storm.

  Mercer couldn’t bring himself to use Derosier’s full French name, so he compromised by calling him Jean. “Do I want to know what’s been happening in there, Jean?�
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  The true contrast between the old friends was apparent when they shook hands. Jean-Paul’s were slim and pampered, while Mercer’s were crisscrossed with scars and calluses like a relief map detailing years of physical labor. Derosier had spent so much of his life in Paris that his English was tinted with an accent. “Mercer, mon Dieu, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  “I got stuck at a job in Utah and missed my connecting flight through Dulles. I didn’t even have time to go home.” Mercer lived in a town house in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington. “My luggage is full of dirty clothes and mineral samples for my collection.”

  “Gold, I hope.”

  “Nothing so fancy. A copper-mining company was looking to get a sizable loan from an investment bank. The bankers hired me to check the company’s geology reports and oversee a series of bore-hole tests to verify the claim that there was a mother lode of extractable ore at the site.”

  As an independent mining consultant, such jobs were Mercer’s stock-in-trade, and earned him considerable fees as well as a reputation as one of the foremost mine engineers in the world. His word was enough for companies to commit billions of dollars and thousands of lives into the subterranean world.

  Jean-Paul gave a little Gallic shrug. “Filthy way to make a living, but I suppose it pays the bills.” He slapped at Mercer’s flat stomach. “And apparently keeps you in shape. I’m fighting a losing battle at a gym four hours a week and you look like you’re in better shape now than when we graduated high school.”