“I'm sorry, Mr. Perlmutter,” Dodson said, getting his voice under control. “It's all part and parcel. It would do no one any good and cause a great deal of painful embarrassment if this material were made public.”

“Forgive me for being obtuse, but I understand that he willed all the material to the library to be put in the archives.”

“Yes, that's true. But you have to understand my grandfather. He was a man of towering rectitude.” Catching the unintentional comparison to his own character, Dodson said, “What I mean was that he was naive in many ways.”

“He couldn't have been too naive to hold a high post in the Foreign Office.”

Dodson laughed nervously. “You Americans can be damnably persistent. Look Mr. Perlmutter, I don't wish to be rude, but I must terminate this conversation. Thank you for your interest. Good-bye.”

The phone went dead. Perlmutter stared at it for a moment and shook his head. Strange. Why would the old boy be so upset at an innocent query? What secret could be so painful after so many years? Well, he had done his best. He punched out the number Austin had given him. He would let others determine why the Odessa Star could upset someone more than eighty years after the ship had gone to her grave in the Black Sea.

NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

-23- MOSCOW, RUSSIA

THE NIGHTCLUB WAS a short walk from Gorky Park, in a narrow alley that had once been a rat-infested flophouse for vodka-soaked human derelicts who used trash-can covers as their pillows. The drunks had been displaced by swarms of young people who looked as if they had stepped off a UFO. The crowds gathered each night out- side a blue door lit by a single lamp. The unmarked door was the entrance to a Moscow night spot so trendy it didn't even have a name.

The enterprising young Muscovite who'd founded the club had seen the potential in bringing together Moscow's crass nouveau riche and the tackiest of Western pop culture. He'd modeled his venture on Club 54, the defunct but exclusive New York dive that had made international headlines before it drowned in a sea of tax woes and illegal drugs. The club was located in a cavernous space that had once housed a state-run sweatshop where underpaid workers toiled making ripoffs of American jeans. Clubgoers who were allowed inside found frenetic dance music, stroboscopic lighting and designer drugs supplied by the Russian Mafia, which had taken over the club after the original owner died of acute lead poisoning.