Valhalla Rising (48 page)

“It stands to reason he would have consulted her,” said Pitt. “We’ll know some answers by this time Sunday.”

“That’s four days away.” She looked at him questioningly. “What gives?”

He led her from the library and closed the door. “First, I have to make five or six calls. Then we’re flying to Washington. There are people there on whom I rely for their expertise. I want to gather all the data possible before we beat the bushes for old rune stones.”

T
his time when Pitt’s NUMA jet landed at Langley Field, Congresswoman Loren Smith was waiting to greet him. As he stepped onto the tarmac, she embraced him, snaking her fingers through his wavy black hair and pulling his head down so she could kiss him.

“Hi there, sailor,” she said in a sultry tone after she released him. “My wandering one is home.”

Kelly hesitated in the doorway of the aircraft, watching Pitt and Loren looking into each other’s eyes. She could easily see this was no casual friendship, and she felt pangs of jealousy. Loren was a very beautiful woman. Her face and body reflected a healthy aura from having grown up on a ranch on the western slopes of Colorado. An accomplished horsewoman, she had run for Congress and won. She was now in her sixth term.

Loren was dressed casually for the humid Washington heat and looked stunning in tan shorts, gold sandals and a yellow blouse. With prominent cheekbones set below violet eyes and framed by cinnamon hair, she might have been a fashion model instead of a public servant. Over the course of ten years, her relationship with Pitt had gone from intimate to platonic and back again several times. Once, they had seriously considered getting married, but both were married to their jobs and found it hard to live together on common ground.

Kelly came over, and the two women immediately sized each other up. Pitt introduced them, and, being a male, did not see the instant underlying conflict of territory between them.

“Kelly Egan, may I present Congresswoman Loren Smith.”

“An honor to meet you, Congresswoman,” said Kelly, with a tight little smile.

“Please call me Loren,” she replied sweetly. “The honor is mine. I knew your father. Please accept my condolences. He was a brilliant man.”

Kelly’s face brightened. “You knew Dad?”

“He appeared before my committee investigating price-fixing among the oil companies. We also met several times in private and discussed matters of national security.”

“I knew Dad had gone to Washington occasionally, but he never talked about meeting with members of Congress. I always thought his trips had something to do with the Commerce and Transportation Departments.”

Giordino stepped from the plane at that moment and hugged Loren; they exchanged kisses on their cheeks. “Still gorgeous, I see,” he said, gazing from his five feet four inches up at her height of five feet eight.

“How’s my favorite Roman?”

“Still fighting the barbarians. And you?”

“Still battling the Philistines in the nation’s capital.”

“We should change places sometime.”

Loren laughed. “I do believe I’d be getting the better of the bargain.”

She gave Pitt another hard kiss. “Just when I think you’ve gone to the great beyond, you turn up again.”

“What car did you bring?” asked Pitt, knowing she always showed up in one of his collector cars.

She nodded toward an elegant dark green 1938 Packard with long sweeping fenders and two covered spare tires set deep into wells. The beautiful lines of the custom body design by Earle C. Anthony, a noted Packard dealer for five decades, symbolized the very essence of a classic car. This particular car was a model 1607 formal, all-weather town car with a wheelbase slightly over 139 inches and a magnificently quiet V-12 engine with 473 cubic inches that Pitt had tweaked to put out 200 horsepower.

There is an erotic love between a woman and a spectacular automobile. Kelly ran her fingers lightly over the chrome cormorant mascot on the radiator, her eyes glinting with reverence at touching a masterwork of engineering art. She knew her father would have appreciated such a wonderful car. “To simply say it’s beautiful,” she said, “doesn’t do it justice.”

“Would you like to drive it?” asked Loren, giving Pitt an imperious look. “I’m sure Dirk wouldn’t mind.”

Pitt could see he had little choice in the matter and resigned himself to helping Giordino throw their luggage in the trunk and climbing in the backseat with Loren. Giordino sat in the open front seat next to Kelly, who was in seventh heaven behind the big steering wheel.

The divider window between the front seat and the rear passenger compartment was rolled up. Loren looked at Pitt provocatively. “Is she staying with you?”

“What an evil mind you have,” Pitt answered with a laugh. “Actually, I was hoping she could stay with you at your town house.”

“This isn’t the old Dirk Pitt I once knew.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but her life is in danger and she’s safer at your place. The Cerberus Corporation is run by maniacs who won’t hesitate to kill her in order to lay their hands on her father’s formula for a super oil. I assume they’ve traced me to my hangar, which is why I think it wise that she not stay too close to me.”

Loren took his hand in hers. “What would the women of the world do without you?”

“Do you mind baby-sitting Kelly for me?”

Loren smiled. “I could use some feminine company for a change.” Then the smile faded. “Seriously, I had no idea you were mixed up with Cerberus.”

“The investigation has been kept quiet by the FBI and CIA.”

“I’ll say it’s been kept quiet. Nothing has hit the news media. What do you know that I don’t?”

“NUMA proved conclusively that the fire and sinking of the
Emerald Dolphin
and the explosion that put the
Golden Marlin
on the bottom were deliberate. We’re certain that Cerberus and their covert Viper operation are behind the disasters.”

She looked at Pitt steadily. “You’re certain of this?”

“Al and I have been involved up to our ears since the beginning.”

She sat back in the luxurious leather seat and stared out the window for a few moments. Then she turned back. “I happen to head up the committee that’s looking into unfair practices by the Cerberus Corporation. We believe they are trying to build a monopoly by purchasing most of the oil and gas-producing wells in North America.”

“For what purpose?” asked Pitt. “Nearly ninety percent of our oil comes from foreign producers. It’s no secret that American producers can’t compete on the cost of a barrel of oil.”

“True,” acknowledged Loren. “We cannot afford to produce the oil we need internally. With foreign producers playing a dangerous game by dropping production to drive up prices, every country in the world could find itself faced with severe shortages. What makes the situation even worse is that U.S. oil stockpiles and inventories have virtually dried up. Domestic producers are only too happy to sell their leases and fields to Cerberus and stick to refining the crude oil that is shipped from overseas. There’s a long supply chain from the ground to storage to supertankers to storage again and finally to the refineries. Once this supply line is drained because of decreased production, it will take three to five months to bring it up to full flow again.”

“You’re talking about an economic disaster of epic proportions.”

Loren’s lips tightened. “Fuel prices will soar out of sight. Airlines will have to raise fares through the roof. Prices at the gas pump will skyrocket. Inflation will quadruple. We could be talking about an oil-price swing as high as eighty dollars a barrel.”

“I can’t conceive of five dollars a gallon or more for gas,” said Pitt.

“We’re staring it in the face.”

“Wouldn’t that hurt the foreign producers as well?” asked Pitt.

“Not with them cutting costly production while profits nearly triple. OPEC, for one, is angry over the way the West has manipulated them through the years. They’re going to play hardball in the future and turn their backs on pleas for increased production at lower prices. Ignore our threats, too.”

Pitt gazed out the window at the small boats sailing on the Potomac River. “Which brings us back to Cerberus. What’s their angle in all this? If they’re playing for a domestic monopoly on crude oil, why not take over and control the refineries, too?”

Loren made a mystified gesture with her hands. “It’s entirely possible they’ve been in secret negotiations with the refinery owners to buy them out. If I were in their position, I’d cover every base.”

“They must have a motive, and a big one, or they wouldn’t go around leaving a trail of dead bodies.”

Following Giordino’s directions, Kelly turned through the gate on the end corner of Ronald Reagan International Airport and drove the old Packard down the dirt road that stopped at Pitt’s old aircraft hangar. Pitt rolled down the divider window and spoke to Giordino.

“Why don’t you drop the ladies off at Loren’s town house and go on to your place to clean up? Then pick us all up around seven o’clock. I’ll make reservations for dinner.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Kelly. She turned in her seat and smiled at Loren. “I hope I’m not causing you any trouble.”

“Not at all,” Loren said graciously. “I have a spare guest bedroom, and you’re welcome to it.”

Then Kelly gazed at Pitt, her eyes aglow. “I just love driving this car.”

“Just don’t become too attached,” he said, grinning at her. “I want it back.”

As the Packard town car moved silently down the road, Pitt punched the security code on his remote, entered the hangar, dropped off his luggage and checked his Doxa watch. The hands indicated two-thirty. He reached in the open window of a NUMA Jeep SUV and made a call on its cell phone.

A deep, musical voice with a distinguished cadence answered, “I’m here.”

“St. Julien.”

“Dirk!” roared St. Julien Perlmutter, raconteur, gourmand and renowned maritime historian. “I was hoping I’d hear from you. Good to hear your voice. I received a report that you were on the
Golden Marlin.
”

“I was.”

“Congratulations on a narrow escape.”

“St. Julien, I wonder if you have time for a little research job?”

“I always have time for my favorite godson.”

“May I come over?”

“Yes, indeed. I want to try out a new sixty-year-old port that I ordered from Portugal. I hope you’ll join me.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

P
itt drove down a tree-lined street in Georgetown filled with fashionable old houses built at the turn of the twentieth century, and turned into a driveway. The driveway ran past a huge brick home with ivy-covered walls and ended at a spacious carriage house in front of a roofed-over courtyard in the rear. What had once housed the manor’s horse-drawn buggies and, later, automobiles, had been expanded into a large home with a two-story basement that housed the largest library on the sea ever amassed by one individual.

Pitt parked the Jeep, walked to the door and rapped the big bronze knocker that was cast in the shape of a sailing ship. The door was swept open almost before the knocker struck its bolt. A huge man who weighed 400 pounds, wearing burgundy paisley silk pajamas under a matching robe, filled the doorway. He was not what you’d call soft or flabby fat. His girth was solid and he moved with an unexpected grace. His flowing hair was gray, as was his long beard beneath a rosy red tulip nose and deep sky blue eyes.

“Dirk!” he cried out. He crushed Pitt in a tight hug and stepped back. “Come in, come in. It seems I don’t see enough of you anymore.”

“I have to admit I do miss your fantastic cooking.”

Pitt followed St. Julien Perlmutter through rooms and hallways stacked floor to high ceilings with books on ships and the sea. It was an immense library eagerly sought by universities and museums, but Perlmutter meant to keep every volume until the day he died. And only then would his last will and testament reveal the recipient of his collection. He led Pitt into a spacious kitchen with enough jars, cooking utensils and dinnerware to fill ten restaurants. He motioned Pitt to a chair beside a round hatch table with a compass binnacle standing in the center of it.

“Sit down while I uncork my rare port. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“My presence hardly ranks as a special occasion,” Pitt said, smiling.

“Any occasion is special when I don’t have to drink alone,” Perlmutter chortled. He was a good-natured man who laughed easily and was rarely seen without a happy grin. He removed the cork and poured the deep red liquid into port glasses. He handed one to Pitt. “What do you think?”

Pitt savored the port and swished it gently around his tongue before swallowing and voicing his approval. “Nectar fit for the gods.”

“One of life’s finer joys.” Perlmutter sipped his glass dry and poured another. “You said you had a research project for me.”

“Have you heard of Dr. Elmore Egan?”

Perlmutter stared at Pitt intently for a moment. “I most certainly have. The man was a genius. His efficient and cost-practical magnetohydrodynamic engines are a marvel of the technical age. A pity he had to be one of the many victims of the
Emerald Dolphin
on the eve of his triumph. Why do you ask?”