'So much for brilliant ideas,' Austin said.
Gunn was equally frustrated. His forehead glistened with beads of perspiration. He'd been trying to counteract the push by revving up the ROV's thrusters. At one point, he lost control and the ROV slammed into the hull. A layer of gunk a couple of feet across dropped off to reveal an S.
'There's concretion under the marine growth,' Gamay said. 'That's why you can't brush the stuff away.'
'Can you bang off another chunk?' Austin asked. He turned to the captain. 'With your permission, of course.'
Atwood shrugged. 'Hell, I'm as curious about this old hulk as you are. If it takes a few dents in a piece of NUMA equipment to do the job, let's do it.'
His face flushed as he remembered that NUMA's second-in-command was sitting at the controls. But Gunn had no compunctions. He gritted his teeth and rammed the ship again and again, as if he were trying to break down a castle door. Pieces of thin brittle concretion began to flake off, to reveal more letters. After one sharp jab, a huge piece of the covering dropped off to reveal the ship's name in Cyrillic letters.
Austin studied the letters illuminated in the glare of the ROV's lights and shook his head.
'My Russian is rusty, but the name of the ship seems to be Odessa Star:'
'Doesn't ring a bell,' Atwood said. 'Have you ever heard of her?'
'Nope,' Austin said. 'But I'll bet I know somebody who has.'
22
WASHINGTON, D.C.
ST. JULIAN PERLMUTTER had spent most of his day researching a twin-hulled Civil War ironclad for the Smithsonian Institution, and the work had made him hungry. But then, practically everything made Perlmutter hungry. An ordinary human faced with this state of affairs would have satisfied his needs by slapping a wad of cold cuts between two slabs of bread. Not so Perlmutter. He indulged his addiction for German cooking with a plate of pig's knuckles and sauerkraut, paired with a light-bodied Reisling Kabinett plucked from his four-thousand-bottle wine cellar. He dined using silver and china from the French liner Normandie. He was sublimely happy. The mood persisted even when his telephone gave off a ring like a ship's bell.
He patted his mouth and thick gray beard with a monogrammed linen napkin, and reached with a plump hand for the phone. 'St. Julian Perlmutter here,' he said pleasantly. 'State your business in a brief manner.'
'I'm sorry. I must have the wrong number,' the voice on the phone said. 'The gentleman I'm trying to reach would never answer the phone so politely.'
'Ah ha!' Perlmutter's voice ratcheted up the decibel scale to a supersonic boom. 'You should be sorry, Kurt. What happened to imam?'
'Can't say I know anyone by that name. Have you tried Istanbul missing persons?'
'Don't toy with me over such an important matter, you impertinent young snit,' Perlmutter boomed, his sky blue eyes twinkling in the ruddy face. 'You know perfectly well you promised to get me an authentic recipe for imam bayidi. Translated loosely as 'the imam fainted,' because the old boy was overcome with delight when he tasted the dish. You did remember, didn't you?'
Austin kept on Perlmutter's good side by searching out authentic recipes on his travels around the world. 'Of course I remembered. I've been trying to persuade one of the finest chefs in Istanbul to part with his recipe and will send it to you forthwith. I wouldn't want you to waste away to nothing.'
Perlmutter roared with laughter, the belly laugh amplified by the nearly four hundred pounds of flesh adhering to his sturdy frame. 'There's not much danger of that happening. Are you still in Turkey?'
'In the neighborhood. I'm on a NUMA ship in the Black Sea.'
'Still on your vacation cruise?'
'Vacation's over. I'm back at work and need a favor. Could you dig up something on an old cargo ship named the Odessa Star? It went down in the Black Sea, but I don't know when. That's all I can tell you for now.'
'Tracking down your ship should be no problem, not with such a helpful description,' Perlmutter responded with dry humor. 'Please tell me what you do know about it.' Perlmuttecr jotted down the sparse information Austin was able to give. 'I'll do my best, although I may be weak with hunger, a condition easily remedied by the receipt of a certain Turkish recipe.'
Austin again assured Perlmutter that the recipe was in the pipeline, and hung up. He felt guilty for shading the truth somewhat. With all that was going on, he had forgotten Perlmutter's request. He turned to Captain Atwood. 'Does anybody in the galley know anything about Turkish cooking?'
While Austin tried to track down the imam, thousands of miles away in his N Street carriage house behind two vine-encrusted Georgetown town houses, Perlmutter was grinning with pleasure. Despite his bluster, he enjoyed a challenge. The Smithsonian would have to wait, although the concept of an obscure twin-hulled ironclad was intriguing. He glanced around the huge combination living room, bedroom and study at the stacks of books occupying every square inch. Although the space looked like a librarian's nightmare, Perlmutter's apartment contained the finest collection of historical ship literature ever assembled.
Perlmutter had read every volume he owned at least twice. His encyclopedic mind had absorbed a numbing number of facts, each connected like the links of a Web site to related caches. He could pluck a book from a dusty pile, run his finger down the spine and remember practically every page.
He knitted his brow in thought; something was eluding him, lurking in a shadowed comer of his mind beyond the periphery of consciousness. He was sure he'd heard of the Odessa Star before Austin mentioned it. He would find it in five minutes or not at all. He dug through his piles of books and periodicals, mumbling under his breath. Damned if he could remember. Must be getting old. He rummaged for an hour before giving up. He picked a card out of his telephone number file and dialed the international code for London and a number.
A moment later, a clipped British accent answered, 'Guildhall Library.'
Perlmutter gave his name and asked for an assistant cataloger he had dealt with on previous calls. Like many English institutions, the Guildhall Library had been around for centuries. The original library dated back to 1423 and was acknowledged worldwide for a history collection that went back to the eleventh century.
The library also had the finest collection of wine and food books in the United Kingdom, a fact that had not escaped Perlmutter's attention. But it was the Guildhall's extensive maritime records that Perlmutter often drew upon in his research. England's naval tradition, and the wide reach of the British Empire colonies and trade, made the collection a treasure trove of information about practically every sea-girt country in the world.
The cataloger, a pleasant young woman named Elizabeth Bosworth, came on the line. 'Julian. How nice to hear from you again.'
'Thank you, Elizabeth. All goes well with you, I trust.'
'Very well, thank you. I've been quite busy indexing agreements of colonial registered vessels dating back to the seventeen hundreds.'
'I hope I'm not calling at a bad time.'
'Of course not, Julian. The material is fascinating, but the work does get a bit tedious at times. What can I do for you?'
'I'm trying to track down some information on an old cargo ship named the Odessa Star and wondered if you could tickle the Lloyd's file for me.'
The Guildhall Library held all the shipping records for the giant international marine insurance underwriter prior to 1985. Lloyd's of London had been established in 1811 to provide a universal system of 'intelligence and superintendence' in all the principal ports of the world. To accomplish this goal, Lloyd's had set up a network of agents. By the turn of the century, the agency had more than four hundred agents and five hundred subagents scattered around the globe. Their reports on marine casualties, shipowners, shipping movements and voyages were contained in the library's files, where they were accessible to historians like Perlmutter.
'I'd be happy to look into it for you,' Bosworth replied. Her enthusiasm was due only in part to the generous contributions, far and above the usual research fee, that Perlmutter consistently made to the library. She shared his love of sea history and admired his book collection. More than once, she had gone to him with queries of her own.
