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The steward balanced the tray and knocked lightly on a door two suites beyond Loren's Giordino couldn't see who responded, but he heard a woman's voice invite the steward inside

Without wasting a second, Giordino rushed to Loren's suite, crudely forced in the door with a well-aimed kick near the lock and entered The roohts

Everything was pin neat and luxurious with no hint of an occupant

He didn't find Loren's clothes in the closet He didn't find any luggage or evidence that she had ever been there He combed every square foot carefully and slowly, room by room He peered under the furniture and behind the drapes He ran his hands over the carpets and under chair cushions He even checked the bathtub and shower for pubic hairs

Nothing

But not quite nothing A woers in a rooht whiff of perfuuished Chanel No 5 frorance of a flower He tried to identify it, yet it hung just beyond his reach

He rubbed soap on the wooden splinter that broke off when he kicked in the door and pressed it into place A poor glue job, he thought, but enough to hold for a few openings in case the suite was checked again by the crew before the ship docked back in Miami

Then he snapped the lock, turned off the light and left

Pitt suffered hunger pangs as he dropped down a tunnel lander toward the engine roorowls from his stomach seemed to echo inside the narrow steel access tube He wished he was seated in the dining rooourht of food as he detected voices rising from the compartment below

He crouched against the lander and gazed past his feet A man's shoulder showed no more than four feet below hiy, unkempt blond hair moved into view The crewman said a feords in Russian to someone else There was a rating After three minutes, the head moved away and Pitt heard the thin clap of a locker door closing Then footsteps again and silence

Pitt swung around the lander, inserted his feet and calves through a rung and hung upside down, his eyes peering under the lip of the tunnel

He found hiine room crew's locker room It was teh the lockers until he found a pair of greasestained coveralls that were a reasonable fit He also took a cap that o sizes too large and pulled it over his forehead Noas ready to wander the working areas

His next problem was that he only knew about twenty words of Russian, anddinner in a restaurant

Nearly a half-hour passed before Pitt meandered into the main crew's quarters in the bow section of the ship Occasionally he passed a cook fro a cart loaded with liquor for the cocktail bars, or a cabin ave hilance at his grimy attire

By a fortunate accinent, he stumbled on the crew's laundry room