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  "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 Leonin Andreyev eased away from the dock. The engines beat softly as the bow came around. The sandy arms of San Salvador's harbor slin 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'Callao,han, 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. 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?"

  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 anded, no apology in his voice.

  "We've got to look at every angle, good or bad."

  "Loren is alive and onboard 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 lain 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 Leonin 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.

  'Veil, 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 andress, 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, solinly 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."

  "You're setting out on a dangerous course. They'll band together to freeze out every issue you put before them."

  "No, they won't " the President shouted, rising to his feet and coming around the desk to face Fawcett. "Congress will not have a chance to upset my plans."

  Fawcett could only look at him in shock and horror. "You can't stop them. They're gathering now, flying in from every state to hold an emergency session to block you."

  "if they think that," the President said in a morbin voice Fawcett scarcely recognized, "they're in for a big surprise."

  The early-morning traffic was spreading thin when three military convoys flowed into the city from different directions. One Army Special Counterterrorist Detachment from Fort Belvoir moved north along Anacostia Freeway while another from Fort Meade came down the Baltimore and Washington Parkway to the south. At the same moment, a Critical Operation Force attached to the Marine Corps base at Quantico advanced over the Rochambeau bridge from the west.

  As the long lines of five-ton personnel carriers converged on the Federal Center, a flight of tilt-rotored assault transports settled onto the grass of the mall in front of the Capitol reflecting pool and disgorged their cargo of crack Marine field troops from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The two-thousand-man task force was made up of United Emergency Response teams that were on twenty-four-hour alert.

  As they deployed around the federal buildings, they quickly cleared everyone out of the Capitol chambers, the House and Senate offices. Then they took up their positions and sealed off all entrances.

  At first the bewildered lawmakers and their aides thought it was a building evacuation due to a terrorist bomb threat. The only other explanation was an unannounced military exercise. When they learned the entire seat of American government was shut down by order of the President, they stood shocked and outraged, conferring in heated indignation in small groups on the grounds east of the Capitol building. Lyndon Johnson had once threatened to lock out Congress, but no one could believe it was actually happening.

  Arguments and demands went unheard by the purposeful-looking men dressed in field camouflage and holding M-20 automatic rifles and riot guns. One senator, nationally recognized for his liberal stands, tried to break through the cordon and was dragged back to the street by two grim-faced Marines.

  The troops did not surround or close the executive departments or independent agencies. For most of the federal offices it was business as usual. The streets were kept open and traffic directed in an efficient manner local citizens found downright enjoyable.

  The press and television media poured onto the Capitol grounds.

  The grass was nearly buried under a blanket of cables and electronic equipment. Interviews before cameras became so hectic and crowded that senators and congressmen had to stand in line to voice their objections to the President's unprecedented action.

  Surprisingly, reaction from most Americans across the country was one of amusement rather than distaste. They sat in front of their television screens and viewed the event as if it were a circus.

  The consensus was that the President was throwing a temporary scare into Congress and would order the troops removed in a day or two.

  At the State Department, Oates huddled with Emmett, Brogan and Mercier. The atmosphere was heavy with a sense of indecision and suspense.

  "The President's a damned fool if he thinks he's more important than the constitutional government," said Oates.

  Emmett stared steadily at Mercier. "I can't see why you didn't suspect what was going on."

  "He shut me out completely," said Mercier, his expression sheepish. "He never offered the slightest clue of what was on his mind."

  "Surely Jesse Simmons and General Metcalf weren't a party to it," Oates wondered aloud.

  Brogan shook his head. "My Pentagon sources say Jesse Simmons flatly refused."

  "Why didn't he warn us?" asked Emmett.

  "After Simmons told the President in no uncertain terms that he was off base, the roof fell in. A military security g
uard detail escorted him home, where he was placed under house arrest."

  "Jesus," muttered Oates in exasperation. "It gets worse by the minute."

  "What about General Metcalf?" asked Mercier.

  "I'm sure he voiced his objections," Brogan answered. "But Clayton Metcalf is a spit-and-polish soldier who's duty-bound to carry out the orders of his commander in chief. He and the President are old, close friends. Metcalf undoubtedly feels his loyalty is to the man who appointed him to be Chief of Staff, and not Congress."

  Oates's fingers swept an imaginary dust speck off the desktop.