Wild Storm by Richard Castle Page B

world, the one between China and the East Coast of the United States, were slowly slipping away.
    The announcement, a few years later, of the Panama Canal expansion project—an ambitious widening of the locks that would allow larger ships (and more of them) to begin routing themselves through Panama—looked like it would solve all that. As long as the expansion happened, the boom would continue.
    Then the construction delays hit. And the world credit crunch occurred. And the project surged wildly over budget.
    The Autoridad del Canal de Panama, the authority that oversaw all aspects of the canal, continued to insist publicly that all was well. Meanwhile, it had begun a series of desperate appeals: first to the Panamanian government, which pleaded poverty, then to the United States, which had, so far, refused all entreaties.
    Construction had ground to a virtual halt. Panama kept pretending all was well. But Rivera, who had leveraged himself under the belief the expansion project would continue unabated, knew better. The Autoridad del Canal de Panama had paid his company for two days of work in the last thirty. He had more than a thousand workers who depended on him for their livelihoods, leases that were past due, and loans that were in danger of slipping into default. He was on the brink of a crisis, of losing all that he had worked for over the last four decades.
    The phone on Rivera’s desk bleeped twice.
    “Sir, Mr. Villante is here,” he heard.
    Rivera went to the fish tank and raised the partition that separated the eel from the other fish. The creature darted to the other side. The other fish gave it a broad swath, but it was no danger to them. Not then. The eel always preferred an ambush. Rivera would enjoy watching it later.
    “Send him in, send him in,” Rivera said.
    Carlos Villante was a deputy director of the Autoridad del Canal de Panama, a dashing sort blessed with good looks and style. As the man who oversaw the expansion project and had a heavy hand in awarding the contracts for it, he was Rivera’s most important contact within the authority—the moray eel’s cash cow, as it were.
    Rivera had opened the door to his office before Villante could even reach it to knock.
    “Come in, Carlos, come in,” he said.
    “It is nice to see you, Eusebio.”
    Rivera shook with his right hand, while displaying his prized Scotch in his left. “This is the bottle I have been telling you about, the one I have been saving for happy news,” Rivera said. “I am glad you will be able to enjoy this with me. Come, come.”
    Villante allowed himself to be escorted to a sectional couch that overlooked the canal and the skyscrapers that lined it, most of them built with the money made by the canal, either directly or indirectly. As a deputy director of the authority that ran the canal, Villante was considered important, influential. Rivera knew he was not the only man to court Villante’s attention.
    Yet Rivera did so cautiously. In a region of the world where graft flowed freely, Villante made it known to Rivera and others he would not accept a bribe.
    However, he did drive a Cadillac, so it stood to reason he was accepting money from somewhere. Rivera and others had gone to great lengths to figure it out, with no success. To be sure, he was in someone’s pocket. And once Rivera figured out who, he would have it as a bargaining chip to use with the deputy director. In the meantime, Rivera employed the lower level of inducement that was perfectly aged Scotch.
    “What are we celebrating?” Villante asked, lowering himself into a suede-covered captain’s chair.
    Rivera handed him a glass of amber-colored liquid. “You have heard about the airplanes that crashed in the United States, have you not?”
    Villante looked at him sharply, then set the glass down. “That is not something to celebrate. That is something to mourn.”
    “Ordinarily, I would agree with you. And when I am in church on Sunday, I will light a