Deep Six

“How?”

“There are any number of ways. Switching the gold bars after her representative has examined them. Substituting lead that is painted gold or bars of lesser purity.”

“And the old bitch would smell out every one of them.”

“Still, we must try.”

“How will it be transferred?” Antonov asked.

“One of Madame Bougainville’s ships is already docked at Odessa, waiting to load the gold on board.”

“Then we’ll do what she least expects.”

“Which is?” Polevoi asked expectantly.

“We hold up our end of the bargain,” said Antonov slowly.

“You mean pay?” Polevoi asked incredulously.

“Down to the last troy ounce.”

Polevoi was stu

“I’ve changed my mind,” Antonov said sharply. “I have a better solution.”

Polevoi waited several moments in silence, but it was apparent Antonov wasn’t going to confide in him. He slowly dropped back, finally coming to a halt.

Surrounded by his entourage, Antonov kept walking, his mind rapidly altering course and dwelling on other matters of state concern.

Suvorov pressed the switch to his night-light and checked the time on his watch. It read 4:04. Not too bad, he thought. He had programmed his mind to awaken at four in the morning and he’d only missed by four minutes.

Unable to suppress a yawn, he quickly pulled on a shirt and pair of pants, not bothering with socks or shoes. Stepping into the bathroom, he splashed his face with cold water, then moved across the small bedroom and cracked the door.

The brightly lit corridor was empty. Except for two psychologists monitoring the subjects, everyone else was asleep. As he walked the carpet in his bare feet, he began measuring the interior dimensions of the facilities and jotting them down in the notebook. Between the four outer walls he arrived at 168 feet in length by 33 feet in width. The ceiling was nearly ten feet high.

He came to the door of the medical supply room and gently eased open the door. It was never locked, because Lugovoy saw no reason for anyone to steal anything. He stepped inside, closed the door and turned on the light. Moving swiftly, Suvorov found the small bottles containing sedative solutions. He set them in a row on the sink and sucked out their contents with a syringe, emptying the fluid down the drain. Then he refilled the bottles with water and neatly rearranged them on the shelf.

He returned unseen to his sleeping quarters and slipped into bed once again and stared at the ceiling.

He was pleased with himself. His moves had gone undetected with no sign of the slightest suspicion. Now all he had to do was wait for the right moment.

37

It was a shadowy dream. The kind he could never remember when he woke up. He was searching for someone in the bowels of a deserted ship. Dust and gloom obscured his vision. Like the dive on the Eagle: green river algae and russet silt.

His quarry drifted in front of him, blurred, always beyond reach. He hesitated and tried to focus through the gloom, but the form taunted him, beckoning him closer.

Then a high-pitched ringing sound went off in his ear and he floated out of the dream and groped for the telephone.

“Dirk?” came a cheery voice from a throat he wanted to throttle.

“Yes.”

“Got some news for you.”

“Huh?”

“You asleep? This is St. Julien.”

“Perlmutter?”

“Wake up. I found something.”

Then Pitt switched on the bed light and sat up. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“I’ve received a written report from my friends in Korea. They went through Korean shipyard records. Guess what? The Belle Chasse was never scrapped.”

Pitt threw back the covers and dropped his feet on the floor. “Go on.”

“Sorry I took so long getting back to you, but this is the most incredible maritime puzzle I’ve ever seen. For thirty years somebody has been playing musical chairs with ships like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Try me.”

“First, let me ask you a question,” said Perl mutter. “The name on the stern of the ship you found in Alaska?”

“The Pilottown?”

“Were the painted letters framed by welded beading?”

Pitt thought back. “As I recall it was faded paint. The raised edges must have been ground away.”

Perlmutter uttered a heavy sigh of relief over the phone. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Why?”

“Your suspicions are confirmed. The San Marino, the Belle Chasse and the Pilottown are indeed one and the same ship.”

“Damn!” Pitt said, suddenly excited. “How’d you make the link?”

“By discovering what happened to the genuine Pilottown,” said Perlmutter with a dramatic inflection. “My sources found no record of a Belle Chasse being scrapped in the shipyards of Pusan. So I played a hunch and asked them to check out any other yards along the coast. They turned up a lead in the port of Inchon. Shipyard foremen are interesting guys. They never forget a ship, especially one they’ve junked. They act hard-nosed about it, but deep down they’re sad to see a tired old vessel pulled into their dock for the last time. Anyway, one old retired foreman talked for hours about the good old days. A real gold mine of ship lore.”

“What did he say?” Pitt asked impatiently.

“He recalled in great detail when he was in charge of the crew who converted the San Marino from a cargo transport into an ore carrier renamed the Belle Chasse.”

“But the shipyard records?”

“Obviously falsified by the shipyard owners, who, by the way, happened to be our old friends the Sosan Trading Company. The foreman also remembered breaking up the original Pilottown. It looks like Sosan Trading, or the shady outfit behind it, hijacked the San Marino and its cargo and killed the crew. Then they modified the cargo holds to carry ore, documented it under a different name and sent it tramping around the seas.”

“Where does the Pilottown come in?” asked Pitt.

“She was a legitimate purchase by Sosan Trading. You may be interested to know the International Maritime Crime Center has her listed with ten suspected customs violations. A hell of a high number. It’s thought she smuggled everything from plutonium to Libya, rebel arms to Argentina, secret American technology to Russia, you name it. She sailed under a smart bunch of operators. The violations were never proven. On five occasions she was known to have left port with clandestine cargo but was never caught unloading it. When her hull and engines finally wore out, she was conveniently scrapped and all records destroyed.”

“But why claim her as sunk if it was really the San Marino, alias the Belle Chasse, they scuttled?”

“Because questions might be raised regarding the Belle Chasse’s pedigree. The Pilottown had solid documentation, so they claimed it was she that sank in 1979, along with a nonexistent cargo, and demanded a fat settlement from the insurance companies.”

Pitt glanced down at his toes and wiggled them. “Did the old foreman talk about other ship conversions for Sosan Trading?”

“He mentioned two, a tanker and a container ship,” Perlmutter answered. “But they were both refits and not conversions. Their new names were the Boothville and the Venice.”

“What were their former names?”

“According to my friend’s report, the foreman claimed that all previous identification had been removed.”

“Looks like somebody built themselves a fleet out of hijacked ships.”

“A cheap and dirty way of doing business.”

“Anything new on the parent company?” Pitt asked.

“Still a closed door,” Perlmutter replied. “The foreman did say, however, some big shot used to show up to inspect the ships when they were completed and ready to sail.”