Flood Tide (Dirk Pitt 14)

"So what's with the detour?"

"I think I found the chink in Qin Shang's armor, his Achilles' heel if you'll pardon the cliche. Despite the seemingly impenetrable wall he's formed around his personal life, he has a vulnerable crack that can be pried open a mile wide."

Julia pulled her coat tightly around her bare legs to ward off the late-evening chill. "You must have divined something from what he said that escaped me."

"As I recall, his words were, 'My life's most passionate desire.' "

She looked curiously into his eyes, which never left the road. "He was talking about a vast cargo of Chinese art treasures that vanished on a ship."

"The same."

"He possesses more wealth and Chinese antiques than anyone else in the world. Why should a ship with a few historical objects be of serious interest to him?"

"Not a mere interest, gorgeous creature. Qin Shang is obsessed like all men down through the centuries who have searched for lost treasure. He won't die a happy man no matter how much wealth and power he's accumulated until he can rep

lace every one of his art replicas with the genuine pieces. To own something no other man or woman on earth can own is the ultimate fulfillment to Qin Shang. I've known men like him. He'd trade thirty years of his life to find the shipwreck and its treasures."

"But how does one go about searching for a ship that vanished fifty years ago?" Julia asked. "Where do you begin to look?"

"You start," Pitt said casually, "by knocking on a door about six blocks up the street."

26

PlTT STEERED the big Duesenberg over a narrow driveway between two homes with brick walls entirely blanketed with climbing ivy. He stopped the car in front of a spacious carriage house that fronted an expansive courtyard that was now roofed over.

"Who lives here?" asked Julia.

"A very interesting character," Pitt replied. He motioned toward a large bronze knocker on the door cast in the shape of a sailing ship. "Give it a rap, if you can."

"If you can?" Her hand reached for the knocker hesitantly. "Is there a trick to it?"

"Not what you're thinking. Go ahead, try to lift it."

But before Julia could touch the knocker, the door was swept open, revealing a huge, roly-poly man dressed in burgundy paisley silk pajamas under a matching robe. Julia gasped and took a step backward, bumping into Pitt who was laughing.

"He never fails."

"Fails to do what?" demanded the fat man.

"Open the door before a visitor knocks."

"Oh, that." The big man waved airily. "A chime sounds whenever someone comes up the drive."

"St. Julien," said Pitt. "Forgive the late visit."

"Nonsense!" boomed the man, who weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. "You're welcome any hour of the day or night. Who's the lovely little lady?"

"Julia Lee, may I present St. Julien Perlmutter, gourmet, collector of fine wines and possessor of the world's largest library on shipwrecks."

Perlmutter bowed as far as his bulk allowed and kissed Julia's hand. "Always a pleasure to meet a friend of Dirk's." He stood back and swept out an arm, the silk sleeve flapping like a flag in a stiff breeze. "Don't stand out there in the night. Come in, come in. I was just about to open a bottle of forty-year-old Barros port. Please share it with me."

Julia stepped from the enclosed courtyard that once served to harness teams of horses to fancy carriages and gazed enraptured at the thousands of books that were massed over every square inch of open space inside the carriage house. Many were neatly spaced on endless shelves. Others were piled along walls, up stairs and on balconies. In bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, they were even clustered in the kitchen and dining room. There was barely enough room for a person to walk through a hallway, they were so thickly stacked.

Over fifty years, St. Julien Perlmutter had accumulated the finest and most extensive collection of historical ship literature ever assembled in one place. His library was the envy of every maritime archive in the world and second to none. What books and ship records he could not possess, he painstakingly copied. Fearful of fire or destruction, his fellow researchers pleaded with him to put his immense archive on-line, but he preferred to leave his collection in bound paper.

He generously shared it all without cost to anyone who came to his front door seeking information on a particular shipwreck. As long as Pitt had known him, Perlmutter had never turned down anyone who sought his extensive knowledge.

If the staggering hoard of books wasn't a colossal sight, Perlmutter was. Julia gazed openly at him. His face, turned crimson from a lifetime of excessive good food and drink, barely showed under a curly mass of gray hair and a thick, heavy beard. His nose under the sky-blue eyes was a little red knob. His lips were lost under a mustache twisted at the ends. He was obese but not sloppy-fat. No flab hung. He was solid as a massive wood sculpture. Most people who first met him thought he was probably much younger than he looked. But St Julien Perlmutter was a year past seventy and as hearty as they came.