River of Ruin Read Free Page A

returned to his four-man operation in Alaska. Mercer had gone on to graduate near the top of his class. They retained a loose friendship of a couple of calls a year and dinner whenever they were in the same city.
    About five years ago, Gary had unexpectedly sold his claim to a business partner and moved to Central America to take up a new venture—treasure hunting. He’d tried to explain to Mercer that tramping through jungles in search of lost artifacts was no different from panning hundreds of miles of streams looking for placer gold.
    Mercer had always disdained treasure hunters. He felt they rarely considered the long odds of their endeavors, and sustained themselves with the false hope of a quick strike. All but a well-publicized few ended up broke and embittered after decades of fruitless work. He likened them to people who thought state lotteries were an investment plan. Mercer couldn’t change Gary’s mind and the tough Alaskan had gone off with an enthusiasm that had damned so many like-minded people.
    Mercer had to give Barber credit, though. Five years of turning up nothing had yet to dampen his spirits. In fact, he was more excited now than ever. He had recently convinced himself that he was on the trail of a lost Spanish treasure larger than any ever found. Gary had called Mercer a month ago after tracking the Lepinay journal to this auction, offering to pay half just so he could read it. He was certain the last piece of the puzzle he was trying to solve lay somewhere in its pages. Mercer thought Gary was self-deluded, and wasn’t close to a breakthrough, yet did agree to the deal.
    He was going to buy the book anyway for the simple reason that he was interested in the man who, in 1879, first proposed the lake-and-lock-type canal that the United States had eventually built a quarter century later. Derosier was right. He would read this journal. Devour it, most likely.
    “No, Maria, I’m still in Paris. Is Gary there? I’ve got some good news for him.”
    “He’s in the middle of the Darien Province, south of El Real,” Maria Barber said with a trace of hostility. She did not share her husband’s interest. “Fooling around in that damned river again. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
    “Can you contact him?” Gary had shown Mercer a picture of his much younger wife the last time they’d gotten together. She was a pretty, raven-haired woman, not yet thirty, but her eyes were sullen. She cast a sober look in the photo, as if she’d fit more life into her years than she should have. Gary explained her melancholy by telling him that she’d been raised in the slums of Panama City’s Casco Viego district.
    “ Sí , we speak on the radio yesterday. I am calling him in an hour.”
    “When you do, tell him I’ve got the Lepinay journal and I’ll be in Panama the day after tomorrow.”
    “He will be pleased,” she said with little enthusiasm. “Am I to still pick you up at the airport?”
    “Yes, my flight connects through from Martinique.” The clothes in his luggage, once laundered, would serve him well enough in the tropical sauna of Panama. “I arrive at about ten in the morning on the seventeenth.”
    “The last time Gary and I talked, he said that he had something very important to show you. He wanted me to make sure you will be here for a week at least.”
    “Tell him that we’ll see,” Mercer hedged. He hadn’t been home in nearly a month and wasn’t planning on more than a few days in Panama. He was looking forward to a quiet couple of weeks before reporting to the White House for long rounds of tedious briefings and staff meetings.
    “I will tell him,” Maria Barber replied. “And I will see you at Tocumen Airport in the morning of the seventeenth. Then I will take you to where Gary is working. And, ah . . .”
    “What is it?”
    “It is just that increased antidrug efforts in Colombia have forced many rebel soldiers into the southern Darien Province. I thought you should