Clive Cussler - Shock Wave

“No, I’m having dinner here. Enjoy yourself for a few hours. Then return and pick me up at eleven-thirty.”

Mulholand helped Perlmutter from the car and escorted him to the entry door of the hangar. The door was stained and layered with dust. The camouflage was well conceived. Anyone who happened to pass the run-down appearing hangar would assume it was simply a deserted building scheduled for demolition. Perlmutter rapped on the door with his cane. After a few seconds there was an audible click, and the door opened as if pulled by a ghostly hand.

“Enjoy your dinner,” said Mulholand as he slid a cylindrical package under Perlmutter’s arm and held up the handle of a briefcase for him to grasp. Then he turned and walked back to the Rolls.

Perlmutter stepped into another world. Instead of dust, grime and cobwebs, he was in a brilliantly lit, brightly decorated and spotless atmosphere of gleaming paint and chrome. Nearly four dozen classic automobiles, two aircraft and a turn-of-the-century railroad car sat in restored splendor on a highly polished concrete floor. The door closed silently behind him as he walked through the incredible display of exotic machinery.

Pitt stood on a balcony that extended from an apartment and which ran across one end of the hangar a good ten meters above the concrete floor. He gestured at the cylindrical package under Perlmutter’s arm. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,” he said, smiling.

Perlmutter looked up and gave him a scowl. “I am not Greek and this happens to be a bottle of French Dom Perignon champagne,” he said, holding up the package, “vintage 1983, to celebrate your return to civilization. I would imagine it’s superior to anything in your cellar.”

Pitt laughed. “All right, we’ll test it against my Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gruet brut nonvintage sparkling wine.”

“You can’t be serious. Albuquerque? Gruet?”

“They beat out the best of the California sparkling wines in competition.”

“All this talk about wine is making my stomach growl. Send down your lift.”

Pitt sent down an antique freight elevator with ornate wrought-iron screens around it. As soon as it jangled to a stop, Perlmutter stepped in. “Will this thing take my weigh?”

“I installed it myself to bring up the furniture. But this will be a true load-capacity test.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” muttered Perlmutter as the elevator easily carried him up to Pitt’s apartment.

At the landing they greeted each other like the old friends they were. “Good to see you, Julien.”

“Always happy to dine with my tenth son.” It was one of Perlmutter’s running jokes. He was an old confirmed bachelor, and Pitt was the only son of Senator George Pitt of California.

“There are nine others just like me?” Pitt asked, feigning surprise.

Perlmutter patted his massive stomach. “Before this got in the way, you’d be amazed how many damsels succumbed to my suave manners and honeyed tongue.” He paused to sniff the air. “Is that herring I smell?”

Pitt nodded. “You’re eating basic German farmhand fare tonight. Corned beef hash with salt herring and steamed spiced sauerkraut preceded by lentil soup with pork liver sausage.”

“I should have brought Munich beer instead of champagne.”

“Be adventuresome,” said Pitt. “Why follow the rules?”

“You’re absolutely right,” said Perlmutter. “Sounds wonderful. You’ll make some woman a happy wife with your masterful cooking.”

“I’m afraid a love of cooking won’t make up for all my failings.”

“Speaking of lovely ladies, what do you hear from Congresswoman Smith?”

“Loren is back in Colorado, campaigning to keep her seat in Congress,” explained Pitt. “I haven’t seen her in nearly two months.”

“Enough of this idle talk,” said Perlmutter impatiently. “Let’s open the bottle of champagne and get to work.”

Pitt provided an ice bucket, and they went through the Dom Perignon before the main entree and finished the meal with the Gruet brut during dessert. Perlmutter was mightily impressed with the sparkling wine from New Mexico. “This is quite good, dry and crisp,” he said slyly. “Where can I buy a case?”

“If it was only `quite good,’ you wouldn’t be interested in obtaining a case,” said Pitt, grinning. “You’re an old charlatan.”

Perlmutter shrugged. “I never could fool you.”

As soon as Pitt cleared the dishes, Perlmutter moved into the living room, opened his briefcase and laid a thick sheaf of papers on the coffee table. When Pitt joined him, he was glancing at the pages, checking his notations.

Pitt settled in a leather sofa beneath staggered shelves that held a small fleet of ship models, replicas of ships that Pitt had discovered over the years. “So what have you got on the renowned Dorsett family?”

“Would you believe this represents a shallow scratch on the surface?” Perlmutter replied, holding up the thick volume of over a thousand pages. “From what I’ve researched, the Dorsett history reads like a dynasty out of an epic novel.”

“What about the current head of the family, Arthur Dorsett?”

“Extremely reclusive. Rarely surfaces in public. Obstinate, prejudiced and thoroughly unscrupulous. Universally disliked by all who remotely come in contact with him.”

“But filthy rich,” said Pitt.

“Disgustingly so,” replied Perlmutter with the expression of a man who just ate a spider. “Dorsett Consolidated Mining Limited and the House of Dorsett chain of retail stores are wholly owned by the family. No stockholders, shareholders or partners. They also control a sister company called Pacific Gladiator that concentrates on the mining of colored gemstones.”

“How did he get his start?”

“For that story we have to go back 144 years.” Perlmutter held out his glass and Pitt filled it. “We begin with an epic of the sea that was recorded by the captain of a clipper ship and published by his daughter after he died. During a voyage in January of 1856, while he was transporting convicts, a number of them women, to the Australian penal colony at Botany Bay, an inlet south of the present city of Sydney, his ship ran afoul of a violent typhoon while beating north through the Tasman Sea. The ship was called the Gladiator, and she was skippered by one of the most famous clipper captains of the era, Charles `Bully’ Scaggs.”

“Iron men and wooden ships,” murmured Pitt.

“They were that,” agreed Perlmutter. “Anyway, Scaggs and his crew must have labored like demons to save the ship from one of the worst storms of the century. But when the winds died and seas calmed, Gladiator was little more than a derelict. Her masts were swept over the side, her superstructure was destroyed and her hull was taking on water. The ship’s boats were gone or smashed, and Captain Scaggs knew his ship had only hours to live, so he issued orders for the crew and any convicts handy as carpenters to dismantle what was left of the ship and build a raft.”

“Probably the only option open to him,” Pitt commented.

“Two of the convicts were Arthur Dorsett’s ancestors,” Perlmutter continued. “His great-great grandfather was Jess Dorsett, a convicted highwayman, and his great-great-grandmother was Betsy Fletcher, who was given a twenty-year sentence to the penal colony for stealing a blanket.”

Pitt contemplated the bubbles in his glass. “Crime certainly didn’t pay in those days.”

“Most Americans don’t realize that our own colonies were also a dumping ground for England’s criminals until the Revolutionary War. Many families would be surprised to learn their ancestors landed on our shores as convicted criminals.”

“Were the ship’s survivors rescued from the raft?” asked Pitt.