Oates sat up. “I think I see your point. The resemblance is remarkable, but we’d never get away with it, not on a face-to-face basis. Sutton’s voice is a far from perfect imitation, and anyone who is in close daily contact with the President would see through the deception.”
“Yes, but from thirty feet his own wife couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Where is this leading?” Metcalf asked Fawcett.
The White House Chief of Staff took his cue. “Press Secretary Thompson can hand out a press release saying the President is taking a working vacation on his New Mexico farm to study congressional reaction to his Eastern aid program. The White House press corps will be kept on the sidelines — a situation that’s not uncommon when the President isn’t in the mood to answer questions. All they’d see from a roped-off distance would be him — in this case, Sutton the actor — entering the helicopter for the flight to Andrews Air Force Base for departure in Air Force One. They could follow on a later plane, of course, but be denied entry onto the farm itself.”
“Why not have a phony Vice President go with Sutton?” Mercier suggested.
“Both men can’t fly on the same plane,” Lucas reminded him.
“Okay, send him on a plane leaving at night,” Mercier persisted. “Not much news coverage is given to Margolin’s movements. No one would notice a stand-in.”
“Or care,” added Oates, alluding to the public apathy toward vice presidents.
“I can handle the details from the White House end,” offered Fawcett.
“Two down,” said Simmons. “Now what about Larimer and Moran?”
“This is an odd-numbered year,” Mercier said, warming up to the scheme. “Congress recesses for the entire month of August — only two days away. Our one slice of luck. Why not invent a mutual fishing trip or a junket to some out-of-the-way resort?”
Simmons shook his head. “Scratch the fishing trip.”
“Why?”
Simmons gave a tight smile. “Because it’s known all over Capitol Hill that Moran and Larimer relate like syrup and vinegar.”
“No matter. A fishing hole conference to discuss foreign relations sounds logical,” said Oates. “I’ll write up the memorandum from the State Department end.”
“What do you tell their office staffs?”
“This is Saturday; we’ve got two days’ grace to iron out the bugs.”
Simmons began making notes on a pad. “Four down. That leaves the Eagle’s crew.”
“I think I can come up with a convenient cover,” offered Metcalf. “I’ll work through the Coast Guard Commandant. The crew’s families can be told the yacht was ordered on an unscheduled cruise for a top-secret military meeting. No further details need be given.”
Oates stared around the room at his companions. “If there are no further questions—”
“Who else do we let in on the hoax?” queried Fawcett.
“A poor choice of words, Dan,” said Oates. “Let’s call it a ‘distraction.’ “
“It goes without saying,” said Metcalf, “that Emmett of the FBI will have to handle the domestic end of the investigation. And, of course, Brogan of CIA must be called in to check out the international conspiracy angle.”
“You’ve just touched on an ungodly thought, General,” said Simmons.
“Sir?”
“Suppose the President and the rest have already been spirited out of the country?”
Simmons’s speculation brought no immediate response. It was a grim possibility none of them had dared consider. With the President beyond reach of their vast internal resources, their investigative effectiveness would be cut by 80 percent.
“They could also be dead,” Oates said in a controlled voice. “But we’ll operate on the premise they’re alive and held somewhere in the United States.”
“Lucas and I will brief Emmett and Brogan,” Fawcett volunteered.
There was a knock on the door. A Secret Service agent entered, walked over to Lucas and spoke softly in his ear. Lucas’s eyebrows arched upward and he paled slightly. Then the agent retreated from the room, closing the door behind him.
Oates stared at Lucas questioningly. “A new development, Oscar?”
“Ben Greenwald,” Lucas answered vacantly. “He was killed thirty minutes ago. His car struck a city maintenance vehicle.”
Oates wasted no words of sympathy. “With the powers temporarily vested in me, I name you as the new Director of the Secret Service.”
Lucas visibly recoiled. “No, please, I don’t think I can—”
“Doesn’t make sense to select somebody else,” Oates interrupted him. “Like it or not, Oscar, you’re the only man who can be named for the job.”
“Somehow it doesn’t seem right to be promoted for losing the men I’m sworn to protect,” said Lucas dejectedly.
“Blame me,” said Fawcett. “I forced the yacht cruise on you before your people were fully prepared.”
“There’s no time for self-recrimination,” Oates said sharply. “We each have our jobs cut out for us. I suggest we get to work.”
“When should we meet again?” Simmons asked.
Oates looked at his watch. “Four hours from now,” he replied. “The White House Situation Room.”
“We’re flirting with exposure if everyone shows up at the same time,” said Fawcett.
“There’s an underground utility tunnel running from the basement of the Treasury building beneath the street to the White House,” Lucas explained. “Perhaps some of you gentlemen could enter unseen from that direction.”
“Good idea,” Metcalf agreed. “We can arrive at the Treasury building in unmarked government cars, cross under the street through the tunnel and take the elevator to the Situation Room.”
“That settles it then,” Oates said, rising from his chair. “If any of you ever dreamed of going on the stage, this is your big chance. And I don’t have to tell you, if the show’s a flop, we just may bring down the whole country along with the curtain.”
14
After the brisk air of Alaska, the hot, humid atmosphere of South Carolina felt like the inside of a sauna. Pitt made a phone call and then rented a car at the Charleston airport. He drove south on Highway 52 toward the city and took the turnoff for the sprawling naval base. About a mile after turning right on Spruill Avenue, he came to a large red brick building with an ancient rusting sign perched on the roof advertising the Alhambra Iron and Boiler Company.
He parked the car and walked under a high iron archway with the date 1861 suspended on a panel. The reception area took him by surprise. The furnishings were ultramodern. Chrome was everywhere. He felt as though he’d walked onto a photo layout from Architectural Digest.
A sweet young thing looked up, pursed an ever so small smile and said, “Can ah help you, sir?”
Pitt stared into the mossy green magnolia eyes and imagined her as a former homecoming queen. “I called from the airport and set an appointment with Mr. Hun-ley. My name is Pitt.”
The recognition was automatic and the smile didn’t alter so much as a millimeter. “Yes, he’s expecting you. Please come this way.”
She led him into an office decorated entirely in brown tones. Pitt was suddenly overwhelmed with the sensation of drowning in oatmeal. A rotund, smiling little man rose from behind an enormous kidney-shaped desk and extended his hand.
“Mr. Pitt. I’m Charlie Hunley.”
“Mr. Hunley,” Pitt said, shaking hands. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Not at all. Your phone call ticked my curiosity. You’re the first person to ask about our boiler making capacity in, golly, must be forty years.”
“You’re out of the business?”
“Heavens, yes. Gave it up during the summer of fifty-one. End of an era, you might say. My great-granddaddy rolled armor plate for the Confederate ironclad fleet. After World War Two, my daddy figured the time had come for a change. He retooled the plant and started fabricating metal furniture. As
things turned out, it was a shrewd decision.”
“Did you, by chance, save any of your old production records?” Pitt asked.
“Unlike you Yankees, who throw out everything,” Hunley said with a sly smile, “we Southern boys hold onto everything, including our women.”
Pitt laughed politely and didn’t bother asking how his California upbringing had qualified him as a Yankee.
“After your call,” Hunley continued, “I ran a search in our file storage room. You didn’t give me a date, but since we only supplied forty water-tube boilers with the specifications you mentioned for Liberty ships, I found the invoice listing the serial number in question in fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what you don’t already know.”
“Was the boiler shipped to the company that supplied the engines or direct to the shipyard for installation?”
Hunley picked up the yellowing paper from his desk and studied it for a moment. “It says here we shipped to the Georgia Shipbuilding Corporation in Savannah on June fourteenth, 1943.” Hunley picked up another piece of paper. “Here’s a report from one of our men who inspected the boilers after they were installed in the ship and connected to the engines. All that is mentioned of any interest is the name of the ship.”
“Yes, I have that,” said Pitt. “It was the Pilottown.”
A strange expression of puzzlement crossed Hun-ley’s face as he restudied the inspector’s report. “We must be talking about two different ships.”
Pitt looked at him. “Could there be a mistake?”
“Not unless you wrote down the wrong serial number.”
“I was careful,” Pitt replied firmly.
“Then I don’t know what to tell you,” said Hunley, passing the paper across the desk. “But according to the inspection report, boiler number 38874 went into a Liberty ship called the San Marino.”
15
Congresswoman Loren Smith was waiting on the concourse when Pitt’s flight from Charleston arrived at Washington’s National Airport. She waved to get his attention, and he smiled. The gesture was unnecessary. She was an easy woman to spot.
Loren stood tall, slightly over five foot eight. Her cinnamon hair was long but layered around the face, which accented her prominent cheekbones and deep violet eyes. She was dressed in a pink cotton-knit tunic-style dress with scoop neck and long sleeves that were rolled up. For an elegant touch, she wore a Chinese-patterned sash around her waist.
She possessed an air of breezy sophistication, yet underneath one could sense a tomboyish daring. A representative elected from the state of Colorado, Loren was serving her second term. She loved her job; it was her life. Feminine and softspoken, she could be an unleashed tiger on the floor of Congress when she tackled an issue. Her colleagues respected her for her shrewdness as well as her beauty. She was a private woman, shunning the parties and dinners unless they were politically necessary. Her only outside activity was an “on again, off again” affair with Pitt.
She approached him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Welcome home, voyager.”
He put his arm around her and they set off toward the baggage claim. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“I borrowed one of your cars. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Depends,” he said. “Which one?”
“My favorite, the blue Talbot-Lago.”
“The coupe with the Saoutchik coachwork? You have expensive taste. That’s a $200,000 car.”
“Oh, dear, I hope it doesn’t get dented in the parking lot.”
Pitt gave her a solemn look. “If it does, the sovereign state of Colorado will have a vacant seat in Congress.”
She clutched his arm and laughed. “You think more of your cars than you do your women.”
“Cars never nag and complain.”
“I can think of a few other things they never do,” she said with a girlish smile.
They threaded their way through the crowded terminal and waited at the baggage claim. Finally the conveyor belt hummed into motion and Pitt retrieved his two suitcases. They passed outside into a gray, sticky morning and found the blue 1948 Talbot-Lago sitting peacefully under the watchful eye of an airport security guard. Pitt relaxed in the passenger’s seat as Loren slipped behind the wheel. The rakish car was a right-hand drive, and it always struck Pitt odd to sit and stare out the left side of the windshield at the approaching traffic with nothing to do.
“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.”
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