"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 graphite 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.