“No,” replied Mapes. “The gas shells were assigned to Lot Six.” He stepped from the cart and walked amid the sea of projectiles for about fifty paces and then pointed. “Yes, here they are.” He carefully stepped through a narrow access and stopped.

Pitt remained in the main aisle, but even under the dull glow of the overhead lights he could detect a blank expression on Mapes’s face.

“Problem?”

Mapes paused, shaking his head. “I don’t understand it. I find only four. There should be eight.”

Pitt stiffened. “They must be around somewhere.”

“You start looking from the other end, beginning at Lot Thirty,” Mapes ordered. “I’ll go back to Lot One and begin there.”

After forty minutes they met in the middle. Mapes’s eyes reflected a bewildered look. He held out his hands in a helpless gesture.

“Nothing.”

“Dammit, Mapes!” Pitt shouted, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. “You must have sold them!”

“No!” he protested. “They were a bad buy. I miscalculated. Every government I pitched was afraid to be the first to use gas since Vietnam.”

“Okay, four down, four to go,” Pitt said, pulling his emotions back under control. “Where do we go from here?”

Mapes seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment. “The inventory … we’ll check inventory records against sales.”

Mapes used a call phone at the tunnel entrance to alert his office. When he and Pitt got back, the Phalanx Arms accountant had laid out the records on his desk. Mapes flipped through the ledgered pages swiftly. It took him less than ten minutes to find the answer.

No Return Ticket I 189

“I was wrong,” he said quietly.

Pitt remained silent, waiting, his hands clasped.

“The missing gas shells were sold.”

Pitt was still silent, but there was murder in his eyes.

“A mistake,” Mapes said thinly. “The arsenal crew took the shells from the wrong lot number. The original shipping order called for the removal of forty pieces of heavy naval ordnance from Lot Sixteen. I can only assume that the first digit, the one, did not emerge on the shipping crew’s carbon copy, and they simply read it as Lot Six.”

“I think it appropriate to say, Mapes, that you run a sloppy ship.” Pitt’s fingers bit into the flesh of his hands. “What name is on the purchase order?”

“I’m afraid there were three orders filled during the same month.”

God, Pitt thought, why is it nothing ever comes easy? “I’ll take a list of the buyers.”

“I hope you appreciate my position,” said Mapes. The clipped business tone was back. “If my customers got wind of the fact I disclosed their arms sales … I think you understand why this matter must remain confidential.”