Deep Six (Dirk Pitt 7)

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. Girodino 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 lander 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 lander 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 lander, 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 greasestained 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 main coming off duty. None gave him a second look except an officer who threw a distasteful glance at his grimy attire.

By a fortunate accinent, 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 lain 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, "Yes til 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 Leonin 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?"