Clive Cussler - Deep Six

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.

The girl laid the bundle on the counter and asked him another question.

His mind raced to dredge up something from his limited Russian vocabulary. Finally he mumbled, “Yest’li u vas sosiski.”

The girl gave him an odd look indeed but handed him the bundle, making him sign for it, which he did in an illegible scrawl. Pitt was relieved to see that her eyes reflected curiosity rather than suspicion.

It was only after he found an empty cabin and switched coveralls that it dawned on him that he’d asked the laundry girl for frankfurters.

After pausing at a bulletin board to remove a diagram showing the compartments on the decks of the Leonid Andreyev, he calmly spent the next five hours browsing around the lower hull of the ship. Detecting no clue to Loren’s presence, he returned to his cabin and found Giordino had thoughtfully ordered him a meal.

“Anything?” Giordino asked, pouring two glasses from a bottle of Russian champagne.

“Not a trace,” said Pitt wearily. “We celebrating?”

“Allow me a little class in this dungeon.”

“You search her suite?”

Giordino nodded. “What kind of perfume does Loren wear?”

Pitt stared at the bubbles rising from the glass for a moment. “A French name; I can’t recall it. Why do you ask?”

“Have an aroma like a flower?”

“Lilac… no, honeysuckle. Yes, honeysuckle.”

“Her suite was wiped clean. The Russians made it look like she’d never been there, but I could still smell her scent.”

Pitt drained the champagne glass and poured another without speaking.

“We have to face the possibility they killed her,” Giordino said matter-of-factly.

“Then why hide her clothes and luggage? They can’t claim she fell overboard with all her belongings.”

“The crew could have stored them below and are waiting for an opportune moment, like rough weather, to announce the tragic news. Sorry, Dirk,” Giordino added, no apology in his voice. “We’ve got to look at every angle, good or bad.”

“Loren is alive and on board this ship somewhere,” Pitt said steadfastly. “And maybe Moran and Larimer too.”

“You’re taking a lot for granted.”

“Loren is a smart girl. She didn’t ask Sally Lindemann to locate Speaker of the House Moran unless she had a damn good reason. Sally claims Moran and Senator Larimer have both mysteriously dropped from sight. Now Loren is missing too. What impression do you get?”

“You make a good sales pitch, but what’s behind it?”

Pitt shrugged negatively. “I flatly don’t know. Only a crazy idea this might somehow mix with Bougainville Maritime and the loss of the Eagle.”

Giordino was silent, thinking it over. “Yes,” he said slowly, “a crazy idea, but one that makes a lot of circumstantial sense. Where do you want me to start?”

“Put on your Zelda getup and walk past every cabin on the ship. If Loren or the others are held prisoner inside, there will be a security guard posted outside the door.”

“And that’s the giveaway,” said Giordino. “Where will you be?”

Pitt laid out the diagram of the ship on his bunk. “Some of the crew are quartered in the stern. I’ll scrounge there.” He folded up the diagram and shoved it in the pocket of the coveralls. “We’d best get started. There isn’t much time.”

“At least we have until the day after tomorrow, when the Leonid Andreyev docks in Jamaica.”

“No such luxury,” said Pitt. “Study a nautical chart of the Caribbean and you’ll see that about this time tomorrow afternoon we’ll be cruising within sight of the Cuban coast.”

Giordino nodded in understanding. “A golden opportunity to transfer Loren and others off the ship where they can’t be touched.”

“The nasty part is they may not stay on Cuban soil any longer than it takes to put them on a plane for Moscow.”

Giordino considered that for a moment and then went over to his suitcase, removed the mangy wig and slipped it over his curly head. Then he peered in a mirror and made a hideous face.

“Well, Zelda,” he said sourly, “let’s go walk the decks and see who we can pick up.”

The President went on national television that same evening to reveal his meeting and accord with President Antonov of the Soviet Union. In his twenty-three-minute address, he briefly outlined his programs to aid the Communist countries. He also stated his intention to abolish the barriers and restrictions on purchases of American high technology by the Russians. Never once was Congress mentioned. He spoke of the Eastern bloc trade agreements as though they were already budgeted and set in motion. He closed by promising that his next task would be to throw his energies behind a war to reduce the national crime rate.

The ensuing uproar in government circles swept all other news before it. Curtis Mayo and other network commentators broadcast scathing attacks on the President for overstepping the limits of his authority. Specters of an imperial Presidency were raised.

Congressional leaders who had remained in Washington during the recess launched a telephone campaign encouraging their fellow lawmakers who were vacationing or campaigning in their home states to return to the capital to meet in emergency session. House and Senate members, acting without the counsel of their majority leaders, Moran and Larimer, who could not be reached, solidly closed ranks against the President in a bipartisan flood.

Dan Fawcett burst into the Oval Office the next morning, anguish written on his face. “Good God, Mr. President, you can’t do this!”

The President looked up calmly. “You’re referring to my talk last night?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” Fawcett said emotionally. “You as good as went on record as saying you were proceeding with your aid programs without congressional approval.”

“Is that what it sounded like?”

“It did.”

“Good,” said the President, thumping his hand on the desk. “Because that’s exactly what I intend to do.”

Fawcett was astonished. “Not under the Constitution. Executive privilege does not extend that far—”

“God damn it, don’t try and tell me how to run the Presidency,” the President shouted, suddenly furious. “I’m through begging and compromising with those conceited hypocrites on the Hill. The only way I’m going to get anything done, by God, is to put on the gloves and start swinging.”