Pitt nodded a grateful thank you.
Pitt spoke for ten minutes ‘without stopping, Zacynthus listened thoughtfully, moving only once to switch on a dim overhead lamp as the daylight outside the window faded slowly away. Finally he raised his hand.
“That will do. You must be his son, the person you claim to be. But what are you doing on Thasos?”
“NUMA’s Chief Director, Admiral James Sandecker, assigned Giordino and myself to investigate a series of strange accidents that have recently plagued one of our oceanographic research vessels.’
“Ah yes, the white ship anchored beyond Brady Field. Now I’m beginning to understand.”
“That’s nice,” Giordino said sarcastically from his uncomfortable stance. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but if my bladder isn’t relieved soon, you’re going to have an accident right here on the office floor.”
Pitt grinned at Zacynthus. “He’d do it too.”
A speculative look crossed Zacynthus’ eyes, then he shrugged and pressed a hidden button under the desk top. Instantly the door flew open, revealing Zeno with the Glisenti firmly gripped in one hand.
“Trouble, my Inspector?”
Zacynthus ignored the question. ‘Put away your gun, remove the handcuffs and show — ah — Mister Giordino to our sanitation facilities.”
Zeno’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you certain—”
“It’s all right, old friend. These men are no longer our prisoners, they are our guests.’”
Without another word or any outward sign of surprise, Zeno holstered the automatic and released Giordino, escorting him down the hall.
“Now it’s my turn for answers,” Pitt said, exhaling a transparent cloud of bluish smoke. “What’s your connection with my father?”
“Senator Pitt is well known and respected in Washington. He serves honorably and efficiently on several senate committees. One of which is the Narcotic Drugs Committee.”
“That still doesn’t explain where you come in.”
Zacynthus pulled a well-worn tobacco pouch from a coat pocket and idly filled his pipe, carefully tamping it with a small coin.
“Because of my lengthy experience and my investigations in the field of narcotics I have often served as liaison between your father’s committee and my employer.”
Pitt looked up puzzled. “Employer?”
“Yes, Uncle Sam pays my salary just as he does yours, my dear Pitt.” Zacynthus grinned. “My apologies for the late formal introduction. I’m Inspector Hercules Zacynthus, Federal Bureau of Narcotics. My friends just call me Zac, I’d be honored if you do the same.”
All doubts flew from Pitt’s mind and the relief of certainty covered him like a comforting cool wave from the sea. His muscles relaxed, and he became aware of how tense he had been, how keyed-up his thoughts and nerves were against the unknown dangers of the situation. Carefully, holding back an urge to tremble, ho crushed his cigarette in an ashtray.
“Aren’t you a little out of your territory?”
“Geographically yes, professionally no.” Zac paused to puff his pipe into life. “About a month ago the Bureau received a report through INTERPOL that a massive shipment of heroin was loaded aboard a freighter in Shanghai…“
“One of Bruno von Till’s ships?”
“How did you know?” Zac’s voice was quizzical.
A wry smile crossed Pitt’s lips. “Just a guess. I’m sorry for interrupting, please continue.”
“The ship, a Minerva Lines freighter called the Queen Artemisia, left the Shanghai harbor three weeks ago with a seemingly innocent cargo manifest of soybeans, frozen pork, tea, paper and carpets.” Zac could not help grinning. “Quite a variety, I admit.”
“And the destination?”
“The first port of call was Colombo in Ceylon. Here the ship unloaded the Communist Chinese trade goods and took on a new cargo of grapbite and cocoa.
After a fuel stop at Marseille, the Queen Artemisia’s next and final port is Chicago via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.”
Pitt thought a moment. 'Why Chicago? Surely New York, Boston or the other eastern seaboard ports are better equipped by the underworld to handle foreign drug shipments.”
“Why not Chicago?” Zac retorted. “The Windy City is the greatest distribution and transportation center in the good old United States. What better place to dump one hundred and thirty tons of uncut heroin.”
Pitt looked up, disbelief etched on his face. “That’s impossible. No one on this earth could get that kind of an amount through a custom’s inspection.”
“No one, that is, except Bruno von Till.” The voice was a low murmur, and Pitt suddenly felt cold.
“It’s not his real name of course. That was lost somewhere in his past, long before he became an elusive smuggler, the most diabolic and crafty purveyor of human misery of all time.” Zac swung around and gazed unseeing out the window. “Captain Kidd, the blockade runners of the Confederacy and all the slave traders rolled into one couldn’t hold a candle to von Till’s setup.”
“You make him sound like the arch villain of the century.” Pitt ventured. ‘What did he do to deserve the honor?”
Zac flickered a glance at him, then looked again through the window.
“The numerous revolutionary bloodbaths suffered by Central and South America in the last twenty years would never have occurred without secret arms shipments from Europe. Do you recall the great Spanish gold theft of nineteen fifty-four? Spain’s already shaky economy nearly toppled after a large government gold reserve vanished from the secret vaults of the Ministry of Treasury. Shortly after, India’s black market was glutted with gold bars bearing the crest of Spain. How was a cargo that size smuggled seven thousand miles? It’s still a mystery. But we do know a Minerva Lines freighter left Barcelona the night of the theft and arrived in Bombay a day before the gold appeared.”
The swivel chair squeaked, and Zac refaced Pitt. The inspector’s melancholy eyes looked vague and lost in contemplation.
“Immediately prior to Germany’s surrender in World War II,” he continued, “eighty-five high ranking Nazis suddenly materialized in Buenos Aires on the same day. How did they get there? Again, the only ship arrival that morning was a Minerva Lines freighter. Again in the summer of nineteen fifty-four an entire bus load of teenage school girls disappeared on an outing in Naples. Four years later an Italian embassy aid discovered one of the missing girls wandering aimlessly through one of the back alleys of Casablanca.” Zac paused for nearly a minute, then went on very quietly. ‘She was completely insane. I saw photographs of her body. It was enough to make a grown man cry.”
“And her story?” Pitt prompted gently.
“She remembered being carried aboard a ship with a large ‘M’ painted on the funnel. That was the only thing she said that made any sense. The rest was insane babble.”
Pitt waited for more, but Zac had fallen silent, relighting his pipe and filling the room with a sweet aromatic odor.
“White slavery is a rotten business,” Pitt said! tersely.
Zac nodded. “Those are only four cases of hundred, that are indirectly connected to von Till. If I could quote word for word from the INTERPOL files we would be sitting here for a month, and then some.”
“Do you think von Till masterminds the crimes?” “No, the old devil is much too smart to become involved in the actual deed. He merely supplies the transportation. Smuggling is his game, and on a grand scale at that.”
“Why In hell hasn’t the filthy bastard been stopped?” Pitt asked half angry, half confused.
“I wish I could answer that without a feeling of shame,” Zac shook his head sadly. “But I can’t. Nearly every law enforcement agency in the works has tried to catch von Till with the goods, so to speak, but he has eluded every trap, murdered every agent sent to infiltrate Minerva Lines. His ships have been searched and researched a thousand times, yet nothing illegal is ever found.”
Pitt idly watched the smoke curl from Zac’s pipe. “No one is that clever. If he’s human, he can be caught.”
“God knows we’ve tried. our combined law enforcement agencies have studied every inch of the Minerva
