“Hi-ho, Captain,” he said with a slack grin.
“I am not the captain. My name is Peter Kolodno. I am the purser. How can I help you?”
“I’m Charlie Gruber and this is my wife, Zelda. We bought tickets here in San Salvador.”
He handed a packet to the purser, who studied them carefully for a few moments.
“Welcome aboard the Leonid Andreyev,”said the purser officially. “I regret that we do not have our usual hospitality festivities to greet new passengers, but you’ve joined us rather late in the cruise.”
“We were sailing on a windjammer when the dumb helmsman ran us onto a reef,” the man called Gruber babbled. “My little woman and I near drowned. Couldn’t see going back home to Sioux Falls early. So we’re finishing our vacation on your boat. Besides, my wife turns on to Greeks.”
“This is a Russian ship,” the purser explained patiently.
“No kidding?”
“Yes, sir, the Leonid Andreyev’shome port is Sevastopol.”
“You don’t say. Where is that?”
“The Black Sea,” the purser said, maintaining an air of politeness.
“Sounds polluted.”
The purser was at a loss as to how America ever became a superpower with citizens such as these. He checked his passenger list and then nodded. “Your cabin is number thirty-four, on the Gorki deck. I’ll have a steward show you the way.”
“You’re all right, pal,” Gruber said, shaking his hand.
As the steward led the Grubers to their cabin, the purser looked down at his palm. Charlie Gruber had tipped him a twenty-five-cent piece.
As soon as the steward deposited their luggage and closed the door, Giordino threw off his wig and rubbed the lip gloss from his mouth. “God, Zelda Gruber! How am I ever going to live this one down?”
“I still say you should have taped a couple of grapefruit to your chest,” Pitt said, laughing.
“I prefer the flat look. That way I don’t stand out.”
“Probably a good thing. There’s not enough room in here for the four of us.”
Giordino waved his arms around the small confines of the windowless cabin. “Talk about a discount excursion. I’ve been in bigger phone booths. Feel the vibration? We must be next to the engine.”
“I requested the cheap accommodations so we could be on a lower deck,” Pitt explained. “We’re less visible down here, and closer to the working areas of the ship.”
“You think Loren might be locked up somewhere below?”
“If she saw something or someone she wasn’t supposed to, the Russians wouldn’t keep her where she might contact other passengers.”
“On the other hand, this could be a false alarm.”
“We’ll soon know,” Pitt said.
“How shall we work it?” Giordino asked.
“I’ll wander the crew’s quarters. You check the passenger list in the purser’s office for Loren’s cabin. Then see if she’s in it.”
Giordino grinned impishly. “What shall I wear?”
“Go as yourself. Zelda we’ll keep in reserve.”
A minute after eight P.M. the Leonid Andreyeveased away from the dock. The engines beat softly as the bow came around. The sandy arms of San Salvador’s harbor slid past as the ship entered the sea and sailed into a fiery sunset.
The lights flashed on and sparkled across the water like fireworks as the ship came alive with laughter and the music of two different orchestras. Passengers changed from shorts and slacks to suits and gowns, and lingered in the main dining room or perched in one of the several cocktail lounges.
Al Giordino, dressed in a formal tux, strutted along the corridor outside the penthouse suites as though he owned them. Stopping at a door, he looked around. A steward was approaching behind him with a tray.
Giordino stepped across to an opposite door marked MASSAGE ROOM and knocked.
“The masseuse goes off duty at six o’clock, sir,” said the steward.
Giordino smiled. “I thought I’d make an appointment for tomorrow.”
“I’ll be glad to take care of that for you, sir. What time would be convenient?”
“How about noon?”
“I’ll see to it,” said the steward, his arm beginning to sag under the weight of the tray. “Your name and cabin?”
“O’Callaghan, cabin twenty-two, the Tolstoy deck,” Giordino said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Then he turned and walked back to the passenger lift. He pushed the “down” button so it would ring and then glanced along the corridor. The steward balanced the tray and knocked lightly on a door two suites beyond Loren’s. Giordino couldn’t see who responded, but he heard a woman’s voice invite the steward inside.
Without wasting a second, Giordino rushed to Loren’s suite, crudely forced in the door with a well-aimed kick near the lock and entered. The rooms were dark and he switched on the lights. Everything was pin neat and luxurious with no hint of an occupant.
He didn’t find Loren’s clothes in the closet. He didn’t find any luggage or evidence that she had ever been there. He combed every square foot carefully and slowly, room by room. He peered under the furniture and behind the drapes. He ran his hands over the carpets and under chair cushions. He even checked the bathtub and shower for pubic hairs.
Nothing.
But not quite nothing. A woman’s presence lingers in a room after she leaves it. Giordino sniffed the air. A very slight whiff of perfume caught his nostrils. He couldn’t have distinguished Chanel No. 5 from bath cologne, but this aroma had the delicate fragrance of a flower. He tried to identify it, yet it hung just beyond his reach.
He rubbed soap on the wooden splinter that broke off when he kicked in the door and pressed it into place. A poor glue job, he thought, but enough to hold for a few openings in case the suite was checked again by the crew before the ship docked back in Miami.
Then he snapped the lock, turned off the light and left.
Pitt suffered hunger pangs as he dropped down a tunnel ladder toward the engine room. He hadn’t eaten since Washington, and the growls from his stomach seemed to echo inside the narrow steel access tube. He wished he was seated in the dining room putting away the delicacies from the gourmet menu. Suddenly he brushed away all thought of food as he detected voices rising from the compartment below.
He crouched against the ladder and gazed past his feet. A man’s shoulder showed no more than four feet below him. Then the top of a head with stringy, unkempt blond hair moved into view. The crewman said a few words in Russian to someone else. There was a muffled reply followed by the sound of footsteps on a metal grating. After three minutes, the head moved away and Pitt heard the thin clap of a locker door closing. Then footsteps again and silence.
Pitt swung around the ladder, inserted his feet and calves through a rung and hung upside down, his eyes peering under the lip of the tunnel.
He found himself with an inverted view of the engine room crew’s locker room. It was temporarily vacant. Quickly he climbed down and went through the lockers until he found a pair of grease-stained coveralls that were a reasonable fit. He also took a cap that was two sizes too large and pulled it over his forehead. Now he was ready to wander the working areas.
His next problem was that he only knew about twenty words of Russian, and most of them had to do with ordering dinner in a restaurant.
Nearly a half-hour passed before Pitt meandered into the main crew’s quarters in the bow section of the ship. Occasionally he passed a cook from one of the kitchens, a porter pushing a cart loaded with liquor for the cocktail bars, or a cabin maid coming off duty. None gave him a second look except an officer who threw a distasteful glance at his grimy attire.
By a fortunate accident, he stumbled on the crew’s laundry room. A round-face girl looked up at him across a counter and asked him something in Russian.
He shrugged and replied, “Nyet.”
Bundles of washed uniforms lay neatly stacked on a long table. It occurred to him that the laundry-room girl had asked him which bundle was his. He studied them for a few moments and finally pointed to one containing three neatly folded white coveralls like the dirty pair he wore. By changing into clean ones he could have the run of the entire ship, pretending to be a crewman from the engine room on a maintenance assignment.