Deep Six

“Surely the Belle Chasse turned up in another port?” Loren asked.

Perlmutter shook his head. “She faded from the records until two years later, when she was reported scrapped in Pusan, Korea.” He paused and looked across the table. “Does any of this help you?”

Pitt took another swallow of the schnapps. “That’s the problem. I don’t know.” He went on to briefly relate the discovery of the Pilottown, but omitted any mention of the nerve gas cargo. He described finding the serial number on the ship’s boiler and ru

“So the old Pilottown’s been tracked down at last.” Perlmutter sighed wistfully. “She wanders the sea no more.”

“But her discovery opened a new can of worms,” Pitt said. “Why was she carrying a boiler that was recorded by the manufacturer as installed in the San Marino? It doesn’t add up. Both ships were probably constructed on adjoining slipways and launched about the same time. The on-site inspector must have been confused. He simply wrote up the boiler as placed in the wrong hull.”

“I hate to spoil your black mood,” said Perlmutter, “but you may be wrong.”

“Isn’t there a co

Perlmutter gave Pitt a scholarly gaze over the tops of his glasses. “Yes, but not what you think.” He turned to the book again and began reading aloud. “The Liberty ship Bart Pulver, later the Rosthena and Pilottown, launched by Astoria Iron and Steel Company, Portland, Oregon, in November of 1942—”

“She was built on the West Coast?” Pitt interrupted in surprise.

“About twenty-five hundred miles from Sava

Loren stood up. “You two keep talking. I’ll get it.”

“It’s espresso.”

“I know how to operate the machine.”

Perlmutter looked at Pitt and gave a jolly wink. “She’s a wi

Pitt nodded and continued. “It’s not logical a Charleston boiler-maker would ship across the country to Oregon with a Sava

“Not logical at all,” Perlmutter agreed.

“What else do you have on the Pilottown?”

Perlmutter read on. “Hull number 793, also classed as a cargo carrier. Sold after the war to the Kassandra Phosphate Company Limited of Athens. Greek registry. Ran aground with a cargo of phosphates off Jamaica, June of 1954. Refloated four months later. Sold 1962 to the Sosan Trading Company—”

“Inchon, Korea,” Pitt finished. “Our first co

Loren returned with a tray of small cups and passed the espresso coffee around the table.

“This is indeed a treat,” said Perlmutter gallantly. “I’ve never been waited on by a member of Congress before.”

“I hope I didn’t make it too strong,” Loren said, testing the brew and making a face.

“A little mud on the bottom sharpens a woolly mind,” Perlmutter reassured her philosophically.

“Getting back to the Pilottown,” Pitt said. “What happened to her after 1962?”

“No other entry is shown until 1979, when she’s listed as sunk during a storm in the northern Pacific with all hands. After that she became something of a cause célèbre by reappearing on a number of occasions along the Alaskan coast.”

“Then she went missing in the same area of the sea as the San Marino,” said Pitt thoughtfully. “Another possible tie-in.”

“You’re grabbing at bubbles,” said Loren. “I can’t see where any of this is taking you.”

“I’m with her.” Perlmutter nodded. “There’s no concrete pattern.”

“I think there is,” Pitt said confidently. “What began as a cheap insurance fraud is unraveling into a cover-up of far greater proportions.”

“Why your interest in this?” Perlmutter asked, staring Pitt in the eyes.

Pitt’s gaze was distant. “I can’t tell you.”

“A classified government investigation maybe?”

“I’m on my own in this one, but it’s related to a ‘most secret’ project.”

Perlmutter gave in good-naturedly. “Okay, old friend, no more prying questions.” He helped himself to another dumpling. “If you suspect the ship buried under the volcano is the San Marino and not the Pilot-town, where do you go from here?”

“Inchon, Korea. The Sosan Trading Company might hold the key.”

“Don’t waste your time. The trading company is most certainly a false front, a name on a registry certificate. As is the case with most shipping companies, all trace of ownership ends at an obscure post office box. If I were you, I’d give it up as a lost cause.”

“You’d never make a football coach,” Pitt said with a laugh. “Your half-time locker-room speech would discourage your team into throwing away a twenty-point lead.”

“Another glass of schnapps, if you please?” said Perlmutter in a grumbling tone, holding out his glass as Pitt poured. “Tell you what I’ll do. Two of my corresponding friends on nautical research are Koreans. I’ll have them check out Sosan Trading for you.”

“And the Pusan shipyards for any records covering the scrapping of the Belle Chasse.”

“All right, I’ll throw that in too.”

“I’m grateful for your help.”

“No guarantees.”

“I don’t expect any.”

“What’s your next move?”

“Send out press releases.”

Loren looked up, puzzled. “Send what?”

“Press releases,” Pitt answered casually, “to a

“When did you dream up that foolish stunt?” Loren asked.

“About ten seconds ago.”

Perlmutter gave Pitt the stare of a psychiatrist about to commit a hopeless mental case. “I fail to see the purpose.”

“No one in the world is immune from curiosity,” Pitt exclaimed with a devious glint in his green eyes. “Somebody from the parent company that owned those ships will step from behind the shroud of corporate anonymity to check the story. And when they do, I’ll have their ass.”

16

When oates entered the White House Situation Room, the men seated around the conference table came to their feet. It was a sign of respect for the man who now shouldered the vast problems of the nation’s uncertain future. The responsibility for the far-reaching decisions of the next few days, and perhaps longer, would be his alone. There were some in the room who had mistrusted his cold aloofness, his cultivated holy image. They now cast off personal dislike and rallied to his side.

He took the chair at the head of the table. He motioned to the others to sit and turned to Sam Emmett, the gruff-spoken chief of the FBI, and Martin Brogan, the urbane, intellectual director of the CIA.

“Have you gentlemen been fully briefed?”

Emmett nodded toward Fawcett, seated at the table’s other end. “Dan has described the situation.”

“Either of you got anything on this?”

Brogan shook his head slowly. “Off the top of my head I can’t recall hearing any indications or rumors from our intelligence sources pointing to an operation of this magnitude. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have something that was misinterpreted.”

“I’m in pretty much the same boat as Martin,” said Emmett. “It’s beyond comprehension that a presidential abduction could slip through the Bureau’s fingers without even a vague clue.”

Oates’s next question was put to Brogan. “Do we have any intelligence that might lead us to suspect the Russians?”

“Soviet President Antonov doesn’t consider our President half the threat he did Reagan. He’d be risking a massive confrontation if it ever leaked to the American public his government was involved. You could compare it to striking a hornet’s nest with a stick. I can’t see what, if any, gains the Russians would net.”