"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 schoolgirls disappeared on an outing in Naples. Four years later an Italian embassy aide 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 hundreds 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 world 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 re-searched 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 ships, shadowed them day and night at sea, guarded them like hawks at the docks and searched every bulkhead with electronic detection gear.

"I can rattle off the names of at least twenty investigators—damn good ones too—who have made von Till's arrest their life's work."

Pitt lit a second cigarette and stared at Zac steadily. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because I think you might help us."

Pitt sat silent, scratching the irritating chest bandage. Might as well nibble at the bait, he thought.

"How?"

For the first time a flicker of devilishness showed in Zac's eyes, then disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"I understand you're quite friendly with von Till's niece."