Deep Six (16 page)

“Did you call Perlmutter?” he asked.

“About an hour before you landed,” she answered. “He was quite agreeable, for someone who was jolted out of a sound sleep. He said he’d go through his library for data on the ships you asked about.”

“If anyone knows ships, it’s St. Julien Perlmutter.”

“He sounds like a character over the phone.”

“An understatement. Wait till you meet him.”

Pitt watched the passing scenery for a few moments without speaking. He stared at the Potomac River as Loren drove north along the George Washington Memorial Parkway and cut over the Francis Scott Key Bridge to Georgetown.

Pitt was not fond of Georgetown; “Phonyville,” he called it. The drab brick town houses looked like they had all been popped from the same biscuit mold. Loren steered the Talbot onto N Street. Parked cars jammed the curbs, trash lay in the gutters, little of the sidewalk shrubbery was trimmed, and yet it was perhaps four blocks of the most overpriced real estate in the country. Tiny houses, Pitt mused, filled with gigantic egos generously coated with megadoses of forged veneer.

Loren squeezed into a vacant parking space and turned off the ignition. They locked the car and walked between two vine-encrusted homes to a carriage house in the rear. Before Pitt could lift a bronze knocker shaped like a ship’s anchor, the door was thrown open by a great monster of a man who mashed the scales at nearly four hundred pounds. His sky-blue eyes twinkled and his crimson face was mostly hidden under a thick forest of gray hair and beard. Except for his small tulip nose, he looked like Santa Claus gone to seed.

“Dirk,” he fairly boomed. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

St. Julien Perlmutter was dressed in purple silk pajamas under a red and gold paisley robe. He encompassed Pitt with his chunky arms and lifted him off the doorstep in a bear hug, without a hint of strain. Loren’s eyes widened in astonishment. She’d never met Perlmutter in person and wasn’t prepared.

“You kiss me, Julien,” said Pitt sternly, “and I’ll kick you in the crotch.”

Perlmutter gave a belly laugh and released Pitt’s 180 pounds. “Come in, come in. I’ve made breakfast. You must be starved after your travels.”

Pitt introduced Loren. Perlmutter kissed her hand with a Continental flourish and then led them into a huge combination living room, bedroom and study. Shelves supporting the weight of thousands of books sagged from floor to ceiling on every wall. There were books on tables, books on chairs. They were even stacked on a king-size water bed that rippled in an alcove.

Perlmutter possessed what was acknowledged by experts as the finest collection of historical ship literature ever assembled. At least twenty marine museums were constantly angling to have it donated to their libraries after a lifetime of excess calories sent him to a mortuary.

He motioned Pitt and Loren to sit at a hatch-cover table laid with an elegant silver and china service bearing the emblem of a French transatlantic steamship line.

“It’s all so lovely,” said Loren admiringly.

“From the famous French liner
Normandie,”
Perlmutter explained. “Found it all in a warehouse where it had been packed away since before the ship burned and rolled over in New York harbor.”

He served them a German breakfast, beginning with schnapps, thin-sliced Westphalian ham garnished with pickles and accompanied by pumpernickel bread. For a side dish he’d whipped up potato dumplings with a prune-butter filling.

“Tastes marvelous,” said Loren. “I love eating something besides eggs and bacon for a change.”

“I’m addicted to German cooking.” Perlmutter laughed, patting his ample stomach. “Lots more substance than that candy-ass French fare, which is nothing but an exotic way to prepare garbage.”

“Did you find any information on the
San Marino
and the
Pilottown?”
asked Pitt, turning the conversation to the subject on his mind.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” Perlmutter hefted his bulk from the table and soon returned with a large dusty volume on Liberty ships. He donned a pair of reading glasses and turned to a marked page.

“Here we are. The
San Marino,
launched by the Georgia Shipbuilding Corporation, July of 1943. Hull number 2356, classed as a cargo carrier. Sailed Atlantic convoys until the end of the war. Damaged by submarine torpedo from the U-573. Reached Liverpool under her own power and was repaired. Sold after the war to the Bristol Steamship Company of Bristol, England. Sold 1956 to the Manx Steamship Company of New York, Panamanian registry. Vanished with all hands, north Pacific, 1966.

“So that was the end of her.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Perlmutter. “There’s a postscript. I found a report in another reference source. About three years after the ship was posted missing, a Mr. Rodney Dewhurst, who was a marine insurance underwriter for the Lloyd’s office in Singapore, noticed a ship moored in the harbor that struck him as vaguely familiar. There was an unusual design to the cargo booms, one he’d seen on only one other Liberty-class ship. He managed to talk his way on board and after a brief search smelled a rat. Unfortunately, it was a holiday and it took him several hours to round up the harbor authorities and convince them to arrest the ship in port and hold it for an investigation. By the time they reached the dock, the vessel was long gone, steaming somewhere out to sea. A check of custom records showed her to be the
Belle Chasse,
Korean registry, owned by the Sosan Trading Company of Inchon, Korea. Her next destination was Seattle. Dewhurst cabled an alert to the Seattle Harbor Police, but the
Belle Chasse
never arrived.”

“Why was Dewhurst suspicious of her?” Pitt asked.

“He had inspected the
San Marino
before underwriting the insurance on her and was dead certain she and the
Belle Chasse
were one and the same.”

“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 running a check on it in Charleston.

“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 connection between the two ships?”

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 Savannah, as the crow flies,” Perlmutter replied indirectly, “and nine months earlier than the
San Marino.”
He turned to Loren. “Would you like some coffee, dear lady?”

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 winner.”

Pitt nodded and continued. “It’s not logical a Charleston boiler-maker would ship across the country to Oregon with a Savannah shipyard only ninety miles away.”

“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 connection.”

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 announce the discovery of both the
San Marino
and the
Pilottown
and describe NUMA’s plans for inspecting the wrecks.”

“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.”

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