They threaded their way through the crowded terminal and waited at the baggage claim. Finally the conveyor belt hummed into motion and Pitt retrieved his two suitcases. They passed outside into a gray, sticky morning and found the blue 1948 Talbot-Lago sitting peacefully under the watchful eye of an airport security guard. Pitt relaxed in the passenger's seat as Loren slipped behind the wheel. The rakish car was a right-hand drive, and it always struck Pitt odd to sit and stare out the left side of the windshield at the approaching traffic with nothing to do.

"Did you call Perlmutter?" he asked.

"About an hour before you landed," she answered. "He was quite agreeable, for someone who was jolted out of a sound sleep.

He said he'd go through his library for data on the ships you asked about."

"If anyone knows ships, it's St. Julien Perlmutter."

"He sounds like a character over the phone."

"An understatement. Wait till you meet him."

Pitt watched the passing scenery for a few moments without speaking. He stared at the Potomac River as Loren drove north along the George Washington Memorial Parkway and cut over the Francis Scott Key bridge to Georgetown.

Pitt was not fond of Georgetown; "Phonyville," he called it. The drab brick town houses looked like they had all been popped from the same biscuit mold. Loren steered the Talbot onto N Street.

Parked cars jammed the curbs, trash lay in the gutters, little of the sidewalk shrubbery was trimmed, and yet it was perhaps four blocks of the most overpriced real estate in the country. Tiny houses, Pitt mused, filled with gigantic egos generously coated with megadoses of forged veneer.

Loren squeezed into a vacant parking space and turned off the ignition. They locked the car and walked between two vineencrusted homes to a carriage house in the rear. Before Pitt could lift a bronze knocker shaped like a ship's anchor, the door was thrown open by a great monster of a man who mashed the scales at nearly four hundred pounds. His sky-blue eyes twinkled and his crimson face was mostly hidden under a thick forest of gray hair and heard, Except for his small tulip nose, he looked like Santa Claus gone to seed.

"Dirk," he fairly boomed. "Where've you been hining?"

St. Julien Perlmutter was dressed in purple silk pajamas under a red and gold paisley robe. He encompassed Pitt with his chunky arms and lifted him off the doorstep in a bear hug, without a hint of strain. Loren's eyes winened in astonishment. She'd never met Perlmutter in person and wasn't prepared.

"You kiss me, Julien," said Pitt sternly, "and I'll kick you in the crotch."

Perlmutter gave a belly laugh and released Pitts 180 pounds.

"Come in, come in. I've made breakfast. You must be starved after your travels."