Flood Tide

“Al?”

“Here.”

“Do you see the ship?”

“Like standing on railroad tracks inside a tunnel watching an express train come at you.”

“She's slowing down through the bend. We'll get one chance and one chance only before she picks up speed again.”

“Just in time for the buffet, I hope,” he said, still hungry after not eating since breakfast.

“I'm going to make a left turn and land on the open deck behind the aft runnel.”

“Right behind you,” Giordino said laconically. “Mind the ventilators and don't forget to step aside for me.”

Giordino's resolution conveyed the loyalty he felt toward his best friend. That he would have accompanied Pitt into the deepest reaches of hell went without saying. They acted as one, almost as if each read the other's mind. From now until they came down on the deck of the United States, no more conversation would pass between them. It wasn't necessary.

Not requiring power to land, Pitt and Giordino hit the kill switches to their little motors to cut off all sound of their final approach. Pitt set up for his circular course and firmly pulled on the left toggle in preparation for a sweeping hook turn. Under their canopies, like a pair of black flying reptiles out of the Mesozoic era about to attack a galloping Sphinx, they swung over the east levee and then made a tight corkscrew turn toward the approaching ship, timing their descent to come from astern for their landing, much like a hobo running from a field onto a railroad track to catch the last freight car of a train.

No gunfire erupted from the ship. No shells reached up and shredded their canopies. They were coming in unseen, undetected and unheard by the armed men defending the ship. With the helicopters down, the Chinese fighting force was no longer focusing on what it thought was an empty sky.

As the deck with its two rows of low ventilators came into view behind the huge funnel, Pitt expertly adjusted and buried both toggles, causing his canopy to stall as he gradually flared down in the clear space between the ventilators. His landing gear—his legs and feet—lightly touched down on the surface of the deck as his lifeless canopy collapsed with the barest of whispers behind him. Not waiting to congratulate himself for landing uninjured, he quickly pulled the canopy and caged motor off to one side. Three seconds later, Giordino dropped out of the sky and made a picture-perfect landing less than six feet away.

“Is this where one of us is supposed to say, 'So far, so good'?” said Giordino softly as he released his harness and engine pack.

“No gunshot holes and no broken bones,” Pitt whispered. “Who could ask for anything more?”

They moved into the shadow of the funnel and, while Giordino searched the darkness for signs of life, Pitt set a new frequency on his helmet radio and hailed Rudi Gunn, who was with the sheriff's deputies and a team of Army demolition experts on the highway above the Mystic Canal.

“Rudi, this is Pitt. Do you read me?”

Before a reply came back, he stiffened as a blast from the Aserma Bulldog intermingled with the staccato fire of an automatic rifle. He spun around and saw Giordino crouched on one knee, aiming the shotgun at an unseen target on the aft end of the deck.

“The natives aren't at all friendly,” Giordino said with glacial calm. “One of them must have heard our motors, and came to investigate.”

“Rudi, please answer,” Pitt said, an urgent tone in his voice. “Dammit, Rudi, talk to me.”

“I hear you, Dirk.” Gunn's voice came resonant and precise through the earphones inside Pitt's helmet. “Are you on the ship?”

Gunn's words ended just as Giordino unleashed another two rounds from his shotgun. “It's getting a bit warm,” he said. “I don't think we should hang around.”

“On board, safe and sound for the moment,” Pitt answered Gunn.

“Is that gunfire?” the unmistakable voice of Admiral San-decker came over the radio.

“Al is celebrating the Fourth of July early. Did you find and cut the detonators on the explosives?”

“Bad news on this end,” replied Sandecker soberly. “The army used a small charge to blow the doors to the tunnel at the end of the canal. We gained entrance and found an empty chamber.”

“You've lost me, Admiral.”

“I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but there are no explosives. If Qin Shang means to blast a hole in the levee, it's not anywhere around here.”

THERE WAS FAR MORE LIGHT ON THE HIGHWAY LEVEE ABOVE the Mystic Canal. Portable floodlights and flashing red and blue lights lit up the river and surrounding countryside. Eight Army vehicles in their camouflage paint schemes mingled with a dozen sheriff's cars from Iberville Parish. Highway barricades had north and southbound traffic backed up for nearly a mile.

The group of men standing beside an Army command vehicle wore expressions of grave concern. Admiral Sandecker, Rudi Gunn, Sheriff Louis Marchand of Iberville Parish and General Olson looked like men who had wandered into a maze with no exit. General Olson was especially exasperated.

“A fool's errand,” he snarled angrily. After being informed his helicopters were shot down and a dozen of his men feared dead, he no longer put up a cocky front. “We were sent on a fool's errand. All this talk about blowing up the levee is a myth. We're dealing with a gang of international terrorists. That's our real problem.”

“I'm forced to agree with the general,” said Sheriff Marchand. No redneck, this man. He was trim and smartly dressed in a tailored uniform. He was polished, urbane and extremely street-smart. “The plan to blow up the levee to divert the river seems most implausible. The terrorists who stole the United States have a different goal in mind.”

“They are not terrorists in the usual sense,” said Sandecker. “We know for a fact who is behind the operation, and they did not steal the ship. This is an incredibly complex and well-financed operation to divert the flow of the Mississippi past the port of Sungari.”

“Sounds like some kind of fantastic dream,” retorted the sheriff.

“A nightmare,” Sandecker said flatly. He looked at Marchand. “What's been done about evacuating residents from the Atchafalaya Valley?”

“Every sheriff's department and all military personnel are alerting the farms, towns and neighborhoods to the possible flood and ordering them to go to higher ground,” replied the sheriff. “If there is a threat to lives, we hope to keep casualties to a minimum.”

“Most residents will never get the word in time,” Sandecker said seriously. “When that levee splits apart, every morgue between here and the Texas border will be working overtime.”

“If your conclusion is correct,” said Marchand, “and I pray to God you and Commander Gunn are wrong, we're already too late to conduct a search for explosives up and down the river before the ship arrives some time in the next hour—”

“Make that fifteen minutes,” interrupted Sandecker.

“The United States will never reach here,” Olson said emphatically. He paused to glance at his watch. “My battle group of national guardsmen under the able command of Colonel Bob Turner, a decorated veteran of the Gulf War, should be in place and ready to fire from the levee at point-blank range any minute.”

“You might as well send bees after a grizzly bear,” snorted Sandecker. “From the time she passes in front of your fire-power until she passes out of sight around the next bend your men will have no more than eight or ten minutes. As a Navy man, I can tell you that fifty guns won't stop a ship the size of the United States in that length of time.”

“Our high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds will make short work of her,” persisted Olson.

“The liner is no battleship and carries no armor, sir. The superstructure is not steel but aluminum. Your armorpenetrating shells will dart through one side and out the other without detonating, unless a lucky shot strikes a support beam. You'd be far better off firing fragmentation shells.”

“Should the ship survive the Army's blitz,” said Marchand, “matters little. The bridge at Baton Rouge was designed and built low specifically to prevent oceangoing ships from continuing any farther up the Mississippi. The United States will have to stop or destroy herself.”

“You people still don't get it,” Sandecker said in frustration. “That ship is rated at over forty thousand tons. It will go through your bridge like an enraged elephant through a greenhouse.”

“The United States will never reach Baton Rouge,” Gunn maintained. “Where we stand is exactly where Qin Shang intends to blow the levee and scuttle the ship as a diversionary dam.”

“Then where are the explosives?” asked Olson sarcastically.

“If what you say is true, gentlemen,” said Marchand slowly, “why not simply ram the liner through the levee. Wouldn't it produce an opening with the same result as explosives?”

Sandecker shook his head. “It may breach the levee, Sheriff, but it would also plug its own hole.”

The admiral had no sooner finished speaking than the sound of cannonfire began thundering a few short miles to the south. The highway quaked as the tank's guns roared out in unison, their flashes lighting up the horizon. Every man on the highway stopped and stared wordlessly downriver. The younger ones, not having served during a war, had never heard a cannon barrage before and stood enthralled. General Oskar Olson's eyes gleamed like a man looking at a beautiful woman.

“My men have opened up on her,” he exclaimed excitedly. “Now we'll see what concentrated firepower at point-blank range can do.”

A sergeant came rushing out of the command truck, snapped to attention in front of General Olson and saluted. “Sir, the troops and deputies manning the north highway barricade report that a pair of tractor trailers have crashed through at a high rate of speed and are heading this way.”

They all spontaneously turned and stared north, seeing two large trucks speeding side by side down the southbound lanes of the highway, the sheriff patrol cars giving chase with sirens and flashing lights. A patrol car cut in front of one of the trucks and slowed in an attempt to pull it to a stop on the road shoulder, but the truck driver deliberately swerved into the patrol car and struck it in the rear, sending it spinning wildly off the highway.

“The idiot!” Marchand snapped. “He's going to jail for that.”

Only Sandecker instantly recognized the threat. “Clear the road!” he shouted to Marchand and Olson. “For God's sake clear the road.”

Then Gunn knew. “The explosives are in those trucks!” he yelled.

Olson stood shock-still in uncomprehending confusion. His first reaction, his instantaneous conclusion, was that both Sandecker and Gunn had gone mad. Not Marchand. He responded without hesitation and began ordering his deputies to evacuate the area. Finally, Olson came out of his trance and shouted orders to his subordinates to get all men and vehicles a safe distance away.

Crowded as the highway might have been, guardsmen and deputies scattered to their cars and trucks and accelerated away, leaving the stretch of road totally empty within sixty seconds. Their response was as immediate as it was instinctive once they became aware of the danger. The trucks could be seen clearly now as they sped closer. They were semitrucks and trailers, big eighteen-wheelers capable of carrying a load weighing over eighty thousand pounds. No markings or advertising was painted on their sides. They came on seemingly unstoppable, their drivers hunched over the steering wheels, acting as though they were bent on suicide.

Their intentions became unmistakable as they skidded to a stop adjacent to the Mystic Canal, one of them jackknifing across the center strip dividing the highway. Unseen and unnoticed during the bedlam, a helicopter appeared out of the darkness and dropped between the trucks. The drivers leaped from their cabs, ran to the aircraft and scrambled inside. Almost before the last driver's feet had left the ground, the helicopter's pilot lifted the craft into the sky, whipped it on a nearly ninety-degree bank and disappeared into the night toward the Atchafalaya River to the west.

As they raced south in the backseat of Sheriff Marchand's patrol car, Sandecker and Gunn twisted around and stared back through the rear window. Behind the wheel, Marchand kept darting his eyes from the highway and the vehicles speeding around him into the sideview mirror. “If only the Army's demolition men could have had time to defuse the explosives.”

“It would have taken them an hour just to find and figure out the detonating mechanism,” said Gunn.

“They won't blow the levee just yet,” Sandecker said quietly. “Not before the United States arrives.”

“The admiral is right,” Gunn agreed. “If the levee is breached before the United States can be angled across the channel to divert the water, enough of the Mississippi's flow will gush into the canal to leave the liner with her keel in the mud.”

“There is still a slight chance,” said Sandecker. He tapped Marchand on the shoulder. “Can you raise General Olson on your radio?”

“I can if he's listening,” replied the sheriff. He reached for the microphone and began asking for Olson to respond. After repeating the request several times, a voice answered. “Corporal Welch in the command truck. I read you, Sheriff. I'll patch in the general for you.”

There was a pause punctuated by static, and then Olson answered. “Sheriff, what do you want? I'm busy getting battle reports from my tanks.”

“One moment, sir, for Admiral Sandecker.”

Sandecker leaned over the front seat and took the microphone. “General, do you have any aircraft in the air?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I believe they intend to set off the explosives by radio from the helicopter that snatched the drivers.”

Olson's voice suddenly sounded old and very tired. “Sorry, Admiral, the only aircraft I had at my immediate command were two helicopters. And now they and the men inside are gone.”

“You can't call up any jets from the nearest Air Force base?”

“I can try,” Olson replied solemnly, “but there is no guarantee they could scramble and get here in time.”

“I understand, thank you.”

“Not to worry, Admiral,” Olson said, his self-assurance all but gone. “She won't get past my tanks.” But this time around he didn't sound entirely as if he meant it.

The gunfire downriver came like a death knell as the United

States presented her broadside to the gunners inside the tanks. What General Olson did not yet know was that it wasn't a one-sided battle.

Sandecker passed the microphone back to Marchand and sagged into the rear seat, anxiety and defeat etched in his eyes. “That bastard Qin Shang has outsmarted us all, and there isn't a damned thing we can do about it except stand by helplessly and watch a lot of people die.”

“And let us not forget Dirk and Al,” he said grimly. “They must be taking it from the Chinese as well as Olson's tanks and howitzers.”

“God help them,” Sandecker murmured. “God help everybody who lives on or near the Atchafalaya River if the United States comes through the chaos.”

THE UNITED STATES did not reel, she barely quivered as the guns on the turrets of the six tanks opened up on her, their flashes lighting up the sky. At less than two hundred yards it was impossible to miss. As if by witchcraft, black, jagged holes appeared in the funnels and upper decks that once housed the cocktail lounges, cinemas and libraries. As Admiral Sandecker had predicted, every round in the first salvo from the tanks' 120-millimeter guns was ineffective. The armor-penetrating rounds passed through the ship's aluminum bulkheads as if they were made of cardboard, buried themselves in the marshlands on the other side of the west-bank levee and exploded harmlessly. The 106-millimeter mortar rounds fired from the launchers of the M125 carriers arched high into the sky and rained down on the exposed decks, gouging craters in the decks below but causing little serious damage. The tried-and-true 155-millimeter high-explosive fragmentation shells that spat from the Paladin self-propelled howitzers were a different story. Their fire battered the superliner unmercifully, causing significant destruction but none that affected her vital machinery deep within the bowels of her hull.

One shell plowed into what had been the main dining room in the center of the hull and burst, shattering the bulkheads and the old stairway. The second exploded against the base of the foremast and toppled it over the side. The great ship shook off the onslaught. And then it was the turn of the Chinese weapons team of professional fighters who were geared to put up a tactical confrontation despite the odds. The battle was not about to be one-sided. There would be no turning the cheek after the first slap.

Their missile launchers, though armed for surface-to-air and not antitank, lashed out. One struck the lead tank without penetrating its armor but burst against the barrel of the 120-millimeter gun, effectively putting it out of action. It also killed the tank commander, who was standing in the hatch observing the results of the barrage and who never expected return fire. Another projectile struck the circular opening in the roof of the mortar carrier, killing two men, wounding three and setting the vehicle on fire.

Colonel Robert Turner, directing the fire from within his XM4 command-and-control vehicle, was slow to comprehend the magnitude of his mission. The last thing he would have predicted was for the old passenger liner to shoot back. It's downright outrageous, he thought. He immediately called Olson and said in a voice vague with shock, “We're taking hits, General. I just lost my mortar unit.”

“What are they using?” Olson demanded.

“They're firing portable missiles at us from the ship! Fortunately, they don't appear to be armor-piercing. But I've taken casualties.” As he spoke another missile blew the treads off a third tank, but its crew gamely kept up their rate of fire, hammering the rapidly passing liner.

“What is the effect of your fire?”

“Severe damage to the superstructure but no vital hits. It's like trying to stop a charging rhino with air-pellet guns.”

“Don't let up!” Olson ordered. “I want that ship stopped.”

Then, almost as suddenly as the hail of missiles from the ship was launched, their fire slackened off. Not until later was the reason known. Pitt and Giordino, risking their lives to halt the counterfire, had shot down the two Chinese missile-launching teams.

Scuttling across the deck on their stomachs to avoid the hurricane of shrapnel and to make aim difficult for the Chinese riflemen who had discovered their presence, they moved around the giant aft funnel and lay prone, peering cautiously down onto the lifeboat deck, whose davits were now empty. Almost directly below, four Chinese soldiers crouched behind a steel bulwark, busily loading and firing their portable missiles, completely disregarding the hail of explosions erupting around them.

“They're murdering our guys on the levee,” Giordino shouted in Pitt's ear, his words barely heard over the bedlam.

“Take the two on the left,” Pitt yelled back. “The others are mine.”

Giordino took careful aim with the shotgun and fired two shots. The two men beneath him never knew what hit them. They fell to the deck like stuffed dolls in almost the same moment as Pitt's Colt dropped their comrades a few feet away. Now, but for a curtain of small-arms fire that was directed at any soldier who showed himself through a hatch in the armored vehicles, no missiles came from the ship.

Pitt grabbed Giordino's arm to get his attention. “We've got to get to the bridge—”

His voice was cut off in a painful gasp, his arms and legs suddenly thrust into the air as his body was catapulted against a ventilator, driving the air from his lungs. A tremendous blast rang in his ears as the deck beneath him was heaved up in an enormous explosion. A shell from a howitzer had smashed into the crew's cabins below and burst, leaving a jagged hole filled with tangled wreckage and shattered metal. Almost before the debris had settled, Pitt was fighting off the blackness that seeped into his vision. With agonizing slowness he forced himself to sit up. His first words muttered through a cut and bleeding lip were, “Damn the Army, damn their hides.” But he knew they were just doing their job, fighting for their own lives, and doing it well.

The mist slowly cleared from his mind, but there were still blinding flashes of white and orange colors before his eyes. He looked down and saw that Giordino was lying across his legs. He reached out and shook his shoulder. “Al, are you hurt?”

Giordino blinked one of his dark brooding eyes open and stared up. “Hurt? I feel like I've had root canals all over my body.”

As they lay recovering, another wave of shells pounded into the ship. The tanks had lowered their guns now and were firing into the steel hull. Now their high-explosive antitank armor began to score, burning through the steel hull plates before smashing into one of the thousands of the ship's bulkheads and exploding. One howitzer zeroed in on the bridge and soon the structure became a mass of jagged wreckage that looked as if a giant had chopped it with a cleaver. The great ship stubbornly bored through the exploding hell, looming huge in front of the gunners as they loaded and fired with incredible calm. The national guardsmen, often called weekend warriors, fought like seasoned veterans. But like a wounded whale that shook off a cloud of harpoons and swam on, the United States absorbed the punishment they dished out without so much as a fractional drop in speed.

The ship was almost past the gauntlet now. Desperately, the forces on the levee loosed one final wall of devastating fire that tore the night air apart. A crescendo of explosions rocked the battered, once-proud superliner. There was no fire, no mushrooming balls of flame or billowing clouds of smoke. Her designer William Francis Gibbs, would have been saddened by her mauling but pleased that his fetish for fireproofing had resisted any attempt to turn his achievement into a fiery shambles. In his command vehicle, Colonel Turner watched in utter frustration as the juggernaut showed her stern and disappeared into the night.

Without warning, three figures rushed out of the blackness toward Pitt and Giordino. A burst of gunfire cut across the deck. Giordino stumbled but regained his feet, firing off a blast from the 12-gauge Aserma that dropped the Chinese who had managed to squeeze the trigger of his Chinese-copied Kalash-nikov AKM automatic rifle. Then the remaining four men fell on each other in a thrashing melee of bodies. Pitt felt the muzzle of a gun jam into his ribs, but he knocked it aside a millisecond before a stream of bullets whipped past his hip. He brought the Colt's barrel down on his opponent's head once, twice, three times and clubbed him to the deck. In icy disregard for his injury, Giordino thrust his shotgun against his assailant's chest at the same time he pulled the trigger. The Aserma's muzzle erupted with a muffled roar that knocked the Chinese fighter backward as if he had been jerked off his feet by a horse galloping in the opposite direction. Only then did the feisty little Italian crumple to the deck.

Pitt dropped to his friend's side. “Where are you hit?”

“The bastard got me in the leg above the knee,” Giordino answered in a hoarse grunt. “I think it's broken.”

“Let me take a look.”

Giordino pushed Pitt away. “Never mind me. Get to the bridge and stop this tub before the levee blows.” Then he forced a grin through the pain. “That's what we came for.”

There were only two more miles left to go and five minutes to get there. And then Pitt was charging like a demon, struggling through the shattered wreckage toward the remains of the wheelhouse. He fought his way through the maze of fallen wires left by the broken foremast and came to a shocked halt. The bridge structure hardly existed anymore. Nothing could be recognized of it. The walls of the wheelhouse looked to have collapsed outward. Miraculously, the interior console had survived with minor damage. The body of Captain Li Hung-chang lay on the floor covered with glass and debris. His fixed expression, his open, staring eyes and few spots of blood on his uniform almost made him seem as though he was looking up through the vanished roof, staring at the stars. Pitt instantly recognized that he had been killed by concussion.

The master helmsman still stood, his lifeless hands gripping the wheel. It seemed that a curse from the devil had refused to let him fall beside his captain. Pitt saw with blood-chilling horror that his head was gone, taken off cleanly at the shoulders.

Pitt glanced through the shattered remains of the bridge window. Mystic Canal was less than a mile away. Far below, the crew had abandoned the engine room and were rushing onto the outer decks in expectation of being evacuated by helicopter.

All gunfire had stopped now and the thunderous tumult became a hushed and unimaginable silence. Pitt's hands played over the levers and switches of the console, trying frantically to cut all power throughout the ship. But without a chief engineer to carry out the commands, the enormous turbines ignored any attempt to stop them. No power on earth could stop the United States now. Her massive bulk and incredible impetus drove her on. In his final moment of life Ming Lin had begun to rum the wheel and send the ship on an oblique angle, lining her up to be scuttled, as dictated by Qin Shang's master plan. Her bow was already coming around toward the east bank of the river.

Pitt knew the explosive charges far below in the ship's bilge were set and timed to go off and sink the ship at any second. He wasted no time in staring helplessly at the obscene apparition at the helm. He pushed the mutilated body off to one side and took the wheel at the exact instant the trucks on the highway, now only a few hundred yards away, exploded with a thunderous roar that shook the ground and churned the river. He felt the icy needles of disaster in his spine. Hopelessness swamped him in a fleeting rage. But his resolve, his infinite endurance, would never allow him to fail. He had developed a sixth sense after having survived death over the years. The fear of hopelessness came and went. He was oblivious to anything and everything, except for what he must do.

With unwavering concentration, he gripped the wheel and desperately spun it, turning the rudder to head the ship on a new course before her bottom was blown out.

Back on the deck beneath the colossal funnels where Pitt had left him, Al Giordino pulled himself up against the base of a ventilator. The pain in his leg had receded to little more than a dull ache. Running figures suddenly appeared, dressed head to toe in black night-fighting attire. Believing him to be among the dead scattered about the deck, they rushed past and ignored him. As he lay there a black helicopter abruptly shot out of the dark and darted over the east levee. The pilot did not waste moments hovering but dove right in, barely clearing the aft railing by less than two feet and dropping onto the same deck behind the rear funnel where Giordino and Pitt had landed their paraplanes. Almost before the helicopter's wheels slammed onto the deck, Qin Shang's men were diving inside through the open door in the fuselage.

Giordino checked the drum on his Aserma shotgun and counted seven 12-gauge rounds left. He leaned to one side, stretched out his hand and retrieved a Kalashnikov AKM rifle dropped by one of the dead ship defenders. He punched out the clip and noted that it was only a quarter empty before shoving it back in the magazine. Wincing from pain, he struggled to one knee and aimed the Aserma at the helicopter, keeping the AKM automatic rifle as a backup.

His eyes did not blink, his face was still. There was no sensation of coldness, no pitiless thoughts running through his mind, but more a perception of detachment. These men did not belong here. They came to kill and cause destruction. To Giordino's way of thinking, allowing them to escape unpunished was a crime in itself. He stared at the men inside the helicopter, who began to laugh with satisfaction in the belief they had won out over the stupid Americans. Giordino became mad, madder than he had ever been.

“How do I hate you,” he muttered angrily. “Let me count the ways.”

With the last man aboard, the pilot lifted the craft vertically into the air. Buffeted by its own downdraft, it hung for a few moments before slipping sideways and aiming its bow toward the east. At that instant, Giordino opened up, pumping round after round into the turbine engines mounted below the rotor. He could see the twelve-gauge magnum-charged pellets tearing holes in the cowlings but without seeming effect.

He pumped out his last casing, dropped the Aserma and snatched up the AKM. There was a thin wisp of smoke coming from the port turbine now, but the helicopter showed no other signs of vital damage. There was no infrared laser pointer on the rifle, and Giordino disregarded the night scope mounted on the barrel. A large target at this distance was hard to miss. He peered over the iron sights at the great bird about to disappear and pulled the trigger evenly on semiautomatic. After pounding the final shot home, Giordino could do no more that hope that he had at least wounded the bird to a condition where it could not reach its destination. The helicopter seemed to hang before falling backward in a tail-low attitude. It was clearly out of control now as flames shot out of both turbines. Then it was falling like a rock, crashing onto the stern deck before exploding in a solid wall of flame that shot straight up in the air. Within seconds, the stem became a raging inferno, radiating heat and fire with the energy of a blast furnace.

Giordino threw the gun aside as the shooting pain in his broken leg returned with a vengeance. He gazed approvingly at the blazing, twisted tongue of fire shooting into the sky. “Damn,” he murmured softly. “I forgot the marshmallows.”

THE EXPLOSION THUNDERED IN THE EARS OF THE SOLDIERS and sheriff's deputies who had stopped just half a mile from the two semitrucks and trailers. The sky tore apart in a violent, demented convulsion of compressed air as the horrendous detonation tore the heart out of the levee. Seconds later, the eruption of the pressure wave stunned them, followed by a blast of dirt from the levee and concrete from the highway. Then flaming metal from the shattered trucks rained down from a world in chaos. As if given a universal order, everyone ducked behind or under his vehicle to shield himself from the storm of debris.

Sandecker threw up an arm to protect his eyes from the blinding flash and flying fragments. The air felt thick and charged with electricity as a great roar pounded his ears. A huge ball of fire rose and mushroomed, spreading into the sky, transforming into a swirling black cloud that blotted out the stars.

And then all eyes turned back to where a hundred yards of highway, the levee and the two big trucks once stood. All had disintegrated. None of those standing there in shock were prepared for the horrific spectacle that avalanched through the vanished remains of the levee. To a man they stood numbed by the rumbling reverberation in their ears that slowly faded, only to be replaced with a far more ominous sound, an unbelievably loud hissing and sucking sound as a seething wall of water gushed catastrophically into the waiting arms of the Mystic Canal, dredged by Qin Shang for this very event.

For one long, terrible minute they stared bleakly through disbelieving eyes, hypnotically drawn to a cataract so violent that it could not be conceived unless witnessed. They watched impotently as millions of gallons of water poured through the breach in the highway and levee, dragged by the natural laws of gravity and impelled by the force of the river's mass and current. It exploded into a wall of boiling water with nothing to stop its great momentum as it began draining off the main flow of the Mississippi.

The great destroying flood tide was on its way, oblivion in the making.

Unlike ocean tidal waves, there was no trough. Behind the crest, the fluid mass moved without the slightest suggestion of distortion, its texture smooth and rolling, surging with immeasurable energy.

What was left of the abandoned town of Calzas was inundated and swept away. Nearly thirty feet high, the irresistible, seething mass engulfed the marshlands as it hurled toward the waiting arms of the Atchafalaya River. A small cabin cruiser, with its four occupants in the wrong part of the river, at the wrong time, was sucked into the breach, where it plunged dizzily through the wild maelstrom and vanished. No act of man could halt the raging wall of uncontrollable water as it rushed across the valley before advancing toward the Gulf, where its muddy flow would be absorbed by the sea.

Sandecker, Olson and the other men on the highway could do nothing but watch the nightmarish disaster like eyewitnesses at a train derailment, unable to fathom the unrelenting cataclysm that could penetrate and crush concrete, wood, steel and flesh. They watched silently in the face of what appeared to promise inevitable calamity, their faces tightened in expressionless masks. Gunn shivered and looked away toward the Mississippi.

“The ship!” he shouted above the rush of the flood. He pointed excitedly. “The ship!”

In almost the same terror-bred moment in time, the United States came rushing past. Mesmerized by the awesome spectacle of the unleashed flood tide, they had forgotten about her. Their eyes followed Gunn's outstretched hand and finger, seeing an unending black silhouette emerge from the night, a tangible monster from the darkness. Her superstructure, fore and aft, was blasted into a shell-torn, jagged mass of indescribable shambles. Her foremast was gone, her funnels raked and holed, great gaps of twisted steel ripped into the sides of her hull.

But still she came, propelled by her great engines, bent on adding her weight to the devastation. There was no stopping her. She passed them by at a tremendous rate of speed, her bows throwing up a great sheet of water as she drove against the current under full power. Despite the fact she had been used to cause death and destruction, she looked magnificent. No man who saw her that night would ever forget that they were seeing a legend die. No drama was ever played to a more climactic ending.

They stared enthralled, expecting to see her hull turn and slant across the river in preparation of her role of becoming a dam to cast the Mississippi away from her established channel forever. Their convictions seemed verified as waterspouts burst alongside her hull.

“Mother of God!” muttered Olson in shock. “They've blown the charges! She's going down!”

Any shred of misplaced hope any of them had of the Corps stemming the flow was gone now as the glorious superliner began to settle in the water.

But the United States was not headed on a course to bury her bows in the east bank with her stern slanted across the river toward the west. She was running straight up the center of the main channel, ever so slowly curving toward the Niagara-like falls roaring through the breach.

Pitt stood and clutched the wheel, now jammed against its stop. He had turned the rudder as far as it could go. His calculated determination could do no more. He felt the ship shudder as the explosive charges blew great holes in her bottom, and he cursed himself for not being able to control the speed or somehow reverse the port propellers and twist the ship in a tighter turn. But the automated control system had been shut down by damage from the Army's gunfire, making it impossible without a crew down in the engine room to carry out his course change. Then, with torturous slowness, almost miraculously, he watched as the bow began easing toward port.

Pitt felt his heart jump. Imperceptibly at first, but as the angle slowly increased, the river's current began nudging her starboard bow sideways. It was as though the United States refused to give up and was not about to pass from the ages with a black mark against her remarkable history. She had survived forty-eight long years of sailing the seas and being laid up, and unlike many of her sister ships who went quietly to the scrap yard, she was not going willingly to her death, but with her heart and soul resisting to the end.

Unerringly, as if Pitt had ordained it, the ship's bow stem cut into the steep slope on the edge of the channel and forged through the bottom mud on an oblique angle to the levee two hundred feet beyond the breach. On a sharper angle she might have driven straight through.

The power of the river's flow through the gash blown out by the explosion came into play and helped slew her massive hull laterally against the breach. And then as suddenly as the vast surge had burst into the marshlands, it was dying, falling off to a small torrent that curled around the liner's still-flailing propellers at the stern.

At last she came to a complete stop, her four great bronze screws beating against the riverbed, embedding their blades in the mud until they could turn no more. The United States, the once-grand superliner of America's shipping fleet, had finished her final voyage.

Pitt stood like a man who had run a triathlon, his head dropped over the wheel, his hands still locked on the rim. He was dead-tired, his body, never fully recovered from the injuries received on an island off the coast of Australia only a few weeks before, shrieking for a rest. He was so brain-weary he could not distinguish any separation of the bruises and abrasions suffered from the explosions or the fight with the Chinese defenders of the ship. They all blended into a growing sea of torment.

It took nearly a full minute before he became dimly aware that the ship was no longer moving. His legs could hardly keep him upright as he released the helm and turned to go search for Giordino. But his friend was already standing in the shattered doorway, leaning on the Kalashnikov AKM that he used to shoot down the helicopter, using it as a cane.

“I have to tell you,” Giordino said with a slight grin, “your docking technique leaves much to be desired.”

“Give me another hour of practice and I'll get the hang of it,” Pitt replied in a tone barely above a whisper.

On shore, the sickening moment of panic had passed. They no longer looked out across a broken levee and saw a roaring, unstoppable flood. The flow had fallen off to that of a rushing stream. Every man on the highway cheered and shouted exultantly, all except Sandecker. He gazed at the United States through saddened eyes. His face was weary and haggard. “No seaman likes to see a ship die,” he said somberly. “But what a noble death,” said Gunn. “I suppose there is nothing left for her but to be scrapped.” “It would cost too many millions to restore her.” “Dirk and Al, bless their hides, prevented a major disaster.” “A lot of people will never know how much they owe those two characters,” Gunn agreed.

Already, a long convoy of trucks and equipment was descending on both ends of the break. Towboats pushing barges loaded with huge stones were arriving from up and down the river. Directed by General Montaigne, the Army Corps of Engineers, seasoned veterans at making emergency repairs along the river, rapidly deployed. Every available man and piece of equipment from New Orleans to Vicksburg had been marshaled to restore the levee and put the highway back in serviceable order for auto and truck traffic.

Thanks to the massive hull of the United States acting as a barrier, the flood tide that hurtled toward the Atchafalaya was robbed of the immense power of the Mississippi. After spreading across the marshlands, the wild waters diminished to a wave less than three feet high when it reached Morgan City.

Not for the first time had the mighty Mississippi been prevented from forging her way into a new channel. The battle between men and nature would go on, and eventually there could be but one outcome.

April 30, 2000 Washington, D.C.

CHINA'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES, QIAN MIANG, was a portly man. Short, hair styled in a crewcut, face fixed in a constant little grin that almost never revealed teeth, he reminded those who first met him of a sculpture of a contented Buddha with its hands supporting a round stomach. Never behaving like a dogmatic Communist, Qian Miang was a very gracious man. Supremely confident, he cultivated many powerful friends in Washington and moved through the halls of the Capitol and White House with the ease of a Cheshire cat.

Preferring to do business capitalist-style, he met with Qin Shang in the private dining room of Washington's finest Chinese restaurant, where he often entertained the city's power elite. He greeted the shipping magnate with a warm two handed shake. “Qin Shang, my dear friend.” The voice was jolly and congenial. Instead of Mandarin, he spoke perfect English with a trace of a British accent absorbed during three years of schooling at Cambridge. “You have neglected me during your stay in town.”

“My humble apologies, Qian Miang,” said Qin Shang. “I have experienced pressing problems. I was informed earlier this morning that my project to divert the Mississippi River past my port of Sungari has failed.”

“I am quite aware of your problems,” replied Qian Miang without loosening his smile. “I cannot suggest otherwise, but President Lin Loyang is not happy. Your smuggling ventures, it seems, have become a substantial embarrassment to our government. Our long-standing strategy to infiltrate high level government offices and influence American policy toward China is threatened.”

Qin Shang was shown to a high-backed chair carved out of ebony before a large circular table and offered a choice of Chinese wines the ambassador kept stocked in the basement of the restaurant. Only after a waiter pulled the cord to a chime to announce his entrance, poured the wine and exited the room, did Qin Shang speak. “My carefully laid plans were somehow thwarted by the INS and NUMA.”

“NUMA is not an investigative agency,” Qian Miang reminded him.

“No, but their people were a direct cause of the raid on Orion Lake and the disaster at the Mystic Canal. Two men in particular.”

Qian Miang nodded. “I have studied the reports. Your attempt to kill NUMA's special projects director and the female INS agent was not a wise judgment, certainly one not condoned by me. This is not our homeland, where such things can be carried out in secret. You cannot run—what do they call it in the West—roughshod over citizens within their own borders. I am instructed to tell you that any attempt to murder NUMA officials is strictly forbidden.”

“Whatever I have done, old friend,” said Qin Shang bluntly, “I have done for the People's Republic of China.”

“And Qin Shang Maritime,” added Qian Miang quietly. “We go back too far to delude one another. Until now, as you have profited, so has our country. But you have gone, not one but several steps too far. Like a bear that has knocked a nest of bees from a tree, you have maddened a swarm of Americans.”

Qin Shang stared at the ambassador. “Am I to assume you have instructions from President Lin Loyang?”

“He wished me to convey his regret§, but I am to tell that from this moment, all operations by Qin Shang Maritime will cease within North America, and all your personal ties to the American government are to be terminated.”

Qin Shang's normally controlled demeanor cracked. “That would spell the end of our smuggling operations.”

“I think not. The government's own shipping company, China Marine, will substitute for Qin Shang Maritime in all smuggling as well as the legal transportation of Chinese goods and materials into the United States and Canada.”

“China Marine is not half as efficiently run as Qin Shang Maritime.”

“Perhaps so, but since Congress is demanding public investigations into Orion Lake and the debacle on the Mississippi, and the United States Justice Department is in the process of building a case for your indictment, you should consider yourself fortunate that Lin Loyang hasn't given orders to surrender yourself to the FBI. Already, the news media is calling the destruction of the levee and the ocean liner the United States an act of terrorism. Unfortunately, lives were lost and the coming scandal is certain to expose many of our agents around the country.”

The chime announced the arrival of the waiter, who entered the private room with a tray of steaming dishes. He artfully arranged the dishes around the table and retreated.

“I took the liberty of preordering to save time,” said Qian Miang. “I hope you don't mind?”

“An excellent selection. I am especially fond of tomato-and-eggdrop soup and squab soong.”

“So I've been told.”

Qin Shang smiled as he tasted his soup with the traditional porcelain spoon. “The soup is every bit as good as your intelligence.”

“Your gourmet preferences are well known.”

“I shall never be indicted,” Qin Shang said abruptly and indignantly. “I have too many powerful friends in Washington. Thirty senators and congressmen are in my debt. I contributed heavily to President Wallace's campaign. He considers me a loyal friend.”

“Yes, yes,” Qian Miang agreed with an airy wave of his chopsticks before attacking a dish of noodles with scallions and ginger prepared in the authentic manner. "But any influence you had has been drastically diminished. Because of unfortunate events, my dear Qin Shang, you have become a political liability to the People's Republic as well as to the

Americans. I'm told there is great activity in the White House to disavow any relationship with you."

“The influence our government enjoys in Washington was due in a large part to me. I bought and paid for access and favors that benefited the People's Republic.”

“No one denies your contribution,” said Qian Miang amicably. “But mistakes were made, disastrous mistakes that must be swept away before irreparable damage is done. You must quietly vanish from America, never to return. Qin Shang Maritime will still have access to all other ports around the world. Your power base with the People's Republic in Hong Kong remains strong. You will survive, Qin Shang, and go on adding to your incalculable assets.”

“And Sungari?” asked Qin Shang, picking at the squab soong with his chopsticks as his appetite rapidly waned. “What of Sungari?”

Qian Miang shrugged. “You write it off. Most of the money for its construction was subsidized by American business interests and in part by our government. Whatever it cost you, Qin Shang, will be recouped within six months. It is hardly a reverse that will affect your empire.”

“It pains me deeply to simply walk away from it.”

“If you don't, the American Justice Department will see that you go to prison.”

Qin Shang stared at the ambassador. “If I refused to divorce myself from all White House and congressional contacts, you're saying President Lin Loyang would turn his back to me, or perhaps even order my execution?”

“If it was in the best interests of the country, he would not blink an eye.”

“Is there no way to save Sungari?”

Qian Miang shook his head. “Your plan to divert the Mississippi River through your port facility on the Gulf was brilliant, but too complex. Better you should have built it on the West Coast.”

“When I originally presented the plan to Tin Tsang, he approved it,” Qin Shang protested. “We agreed that there was a dire need for our government to control a shipping port on the Atlantic side of the United States; a terminal to siphon illegal immigrants and goods throughout middle America and the eastern states.”

Qian Miang gazed at Qin Shang queerly. “Unfortunately, Internal Affairs Minister Yin Tsang died an untimely death.”

“A great tragedy,” Qin Shang said with a straight face.

“A new directive has been approved, one that places our priorities along the West Coast for the purchase of existing facilities, such as our acquisitions of the United States naval bases in Seattle and San Diego.”

“The new directive?”

Qian Miang paused before answering to taste a stew called curried beef. “President Lin Loyang has given Project Pacifica his total blessing,” Qian Miang answered.

“Project Pacifica? I have not been informed of it.”

“Because of your recent difficulties with the Americans, all concerned thought it best if you not be involved.”

“Can you tell me its purpose, or do our nation's leaders feel I am no longer worthy of their trust?”

“Not at all,” replied Qian Miang. “You are still held in high esteem. Project Pacifica is a long-range plan to split the United States into three countries.”

Qin Shang looked puzzled. “Forgive me, but I find that nothing more than an outlandish fantasy.”

“Not fantasy, old friend, but a certainty. Pacifica may not become a reality in our lifetimes, but with the migration over the next forty to fifty years of millions of our countrymen, respected geographic scientists are predicting a new Pacific-rim nation stretching from Alaska to San Francisco.”

“The United States went to war in eighteen sixty-one to prevent the Confederacy from secession. They could easily do it again to keep their house united.”

“Not if the central government was struck from two sides instead of one. What may even come earlier than Pacifica,” Qian Miang explained, “is Hispania, another new nation of Spanish-speaking people that will spread from Southern California across Arizona, New Mexico and the lower half of Texas.”

“I find it all but impossible to think of the United States divided into three sovereign nations,” said Qin Shang.

“Look how the borders of Europe have changed in the past hundred years. The United States can no more remain united for eternity than the Roman Empire. And the beauty of Project Pacifica is that when it comes to pass, the People's Republic of China will have the power to control the entire economy of the countries surrounding the Pacific Ocean, including Taiwan and Japan.”

“As a loyal citizen of my country,” said Qin Shang, “I would like to think I helped in some small way to make it a reality.”

“You have, my friend, you have,” Qian Miang assured him. “But first, you must leave the country by no later than two o'clock this afternoon. That's when, according to my sources at the Justice Department, you will be taken into custody.”

“And accused of murder?”

“No, willful destruction of federal property.”

“It sounds rather mundane.”

“Only the first tier of the government's case. The murder conspiracy at Orion Lake comes later. They also intend to indict you for the smuggling of illegal immigrants, guns and drugs.”

“I imagine the news media must be gathering like locusts.”

“Make no mistake,” said Qian Miang, “the fallout will be great. But if you quietly disappear and keep a low profile while conducting business from your offices in Hong Kong, I believe we can weather the storm. Congress and the White House are not about to throw a shroud over relations between our two governments because of the acts of one man. We will, of course, deny all knowledge of your activities while our Information Ministry creates a flood of misleading information by throwing all blame on Taiwanese capitalists.”

“Then I am not to be thrown to the dogs.”

“You will be protected. The Justice Department and State Department will demand your extradition, but you can rest assured it will never happen, certainly not to a man of your wealth and power. You have many years of service to the People's Republic left. I speak for our countrymen when I say that we do not want to lose you.”

“I am honored,” Qin Shang said solemnly. “Then this is good-bye.”

“Until we meet in our homeland,” said Qian Miang. “By the way, how did you find the date pancakes?”

“Please tell the chef that he should use sweet rice flour instead of cornstarch.”

The Boeing 737 soared through a cloudless sapphire sky and made a sweeping bank to the west as it passed over the Mississippi Delta. The pilot glanced out his side window and down at the marshlands of Plaquemines Parish. Five short minutes later, the aircraft crossed over the green-brown waters of the Mississippi River at the little town of Myrtle Grove. At the instructions of his employer, the pilot had flown in a southwesterly direction from Washington to Louisiana before turning due west on a course that would take the plane over Sungari.

Qin Shang sat in a comfortable chair in his luxurious private jet and stared through the view port as the golden pyramids of his dockside warehouses and administration buildings grew on the horizon. The afternoon sun's rays flashed off the gold galvanized walls with blinding intensity, causing the precise effect Qin Shang had demanded from his architects and construction company.

At first, he tried to put the port from his mind. It was, after all, merely an investment gone bad. But Qin Shang had poured too much of himself into the project. The finest, most modern and efficient shipping port in the world, lying desolate and seemingly abandoned, haunted him. He gazed down and saw no ships at the docks. All Qin Shang Maritime ships arriving in the Gulf from overseas had been diverted to Tampico, Mexico.

He picked up the phone to the cockpit and ordered the pilot to make a circle over the port. He pressed his face against the window as the pilot banked to give him a good view. After a few moments Qin Shang's mind began to drift, and he gazed without really seeing the empty docks, the big, deserted cargo-loading cranes and the vacant buildings. That he had come within the snap of a finger from pulling off the greatest enterprise in history and achieving what no man had ever attempted before gave him little satisfaction. He was not a man who could block failure from his mind and go on to the next project without a backward glance.

“You will be back,” came the musically soothing voice of his private secretary, Su Zhong.

The beginnings of anger stirred inside Qin Shang. “Not any time soon. If I so much as step foot on American shores again, I will be thrown into one of their federal prisons.”

“Nothing is forever. American governments change with every election. Politicians come and go like migrating lemmings. New ones will have no personal memories of your affairs. Time will soften all condemnation. You will see, Qin Shang.”

“You are good to say so, Su Zhong.”

"Do you wish me to hire a crew to maintain the facility?”she asked.

“Yes,” he said with a curt nod. “When I return in ten or twenty years from now, I want to see Sungari looking exactly as it does now.”

“I am worried, Qin Shang.”

He looked at her. “Why?”

“I do not trust the men in Beijing. There are many who have an envious hatred of you. I fear they may use your misfortune to take advantage.”

“Like an excuse to assassinate me?” he said with a thin smile. .

She dropped her head, unable to gaze into his eyes. 1 ask forgiveness for my unseemly thoughts."

Qin Shang rose from his chair and took Su Zhong by the hand. “Do not worry, my little swallow. I have already conceived a plan to make me indispensable to the Chinese people. I shall give them a gift that will last two thousand years.” Then he led her into the spacious bedroom in the aft section of the aircraft. “Now,” he said softly, “you can help me forget my ill fortune.”

AFTER HIS MEETING WITH DIRK AND JULIA, ST. JULIEN PERL-mutter rolled up his sleeves and went to work. Once he walked the trail leading to a lost ship, he became obsessed. No lead, no rumor, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was left unexplored. Though his diligence and persistence had paid off in ferreting out any number of answers and solutions that led searchers to successful shipwreck discoveries, he failed more often than he succeeded. Most ships that vanished into thin air left no thread to follow. They were simply swallowed up by the infinite sea that very rarely gave up her secrets.

On the surface, the Princess Dou Wan looked to be simply another one of the many dead ends Perlmutter had experienced during his decades as a marine historian. He launched the search by scouring his own immense collection of sea lore before expanding into the many marine archives around the United States and the rest of the world.

The more impossible the project, the more he tackled it with inflexible tenacity, laboring all hours of the day or night. He began by assembling every shred of known historical information concerning the Princess Dou Wan, from the time her keel was laid until she went missing. He obtained and studied plans and designs of her construction, including engine specifications, equipment, dimensions and deck plans. One particularly interesting bit of data he gleaned from the records was a description of her sailing qualities. She was revealed as a very stable ship, having survived the worst storms during her time in service that the seas around Asia could throw at her.

A team of fellow researchers was hired to dig through archives in England and Southeast Asia. By using the expertise of other marine historians, he saved himself considerable time and expense.

Perlmutter sorely wished he could consult his old friend and fellow marine historian Zhu Kwan in China, but it was his understanding that Pitt wanted no revelations making their way back to Qin Shang. He did, however, contact personal friends on Taiwan for leads to still living comrades of Chiang Kai-shek who might shed some light on the missing treasure trove.

In the early hours of the morning, when most of the world was asleep, he stared into a computer monitor the size of a home-entertainment video screen and analyzed the data as it accumulated. He peered at one of the six known photographs of the Princess Dou Wan. She was a stately-looking ship, he thought. Her superstructure was set far aft of the bow and appeared small in relation to her hull. He studied the colored image of her, magnifying the white band in the center of the green funnel, focusing on the emblem of the Canton Lines, a golden lion with its left paw raised. Her maze of loading cranes suggested a ship that could carry a substantial cargo besides her passengers.

He also found photos of her sister ship, the Princess Yitng Thi, which was launched and entered service the year after the Princess Dou Wan. According to the records the Princess Yung Thi was broken up six months before the Princess Dou Wan was scheduled to be scrapped.

A tired old liner doomed for the scrappers at Singapore would not have made an ideal transport to move China's national treasures to a secret location, he thought. She was beyond her time and hardly in prime condition to weather heavy seas on an extended voyage across the Pacific. It also seemed to Perlmutter that Taiwan was the more sensible destination since it was where Chiang Kai-shek eventually set up the Chinese Nationalist government. It was not conceivable the last

known report of the ship had come from a naval radio operator in Valparaiso, Chile. What possible purpose could the Princess Dou Wan have for being over six hundred miles south of the Tropic of Capricorn in an area of the Pacific Ocean far off the traditional shipping lanes?

Even if the liner was on a clandestine mission to hide China's art treasures somewhere on the other side of the world in either Europe or Africa, why go across the vast, empty region of the South Pacific and through the Strait of Magellan when it was shorter to steer west across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope? Was secrecy so consuming that captain and crew could not risk going through the Panama Canal, or did Chiang Kai-shek have an unknown cavern or man-made structure hidden in the Andes to conceal the immense treasure, if indeed it could be proven the ship was carrying China's national historic wealth?

Perlmutter was a pragmatic man. He took nothing for granted. He went back to square one and restudied the photos of the ship. As he examined her outline, a vague notion began to form in his mind. He called a nautical archivist friend in Panama, waking him from a sound sleep, and charmed him into going through the records of ships passing west to east through the Canal between November 28 and December 5, 1948.

With that lead being pursued, he began reading through a list of names of the ship's officers last known to have sailed on the Princess. All were Chinese except for Captain Leigh Hunt and Chief Engineer lan Gallagher.

He felt as if he was throwing chips on every number of a roulette table. What are the odds of losing? he mused. Thirty-six out of thirty-six? But then he had to consider the zero and double zero. Perlmutter was no old fool. He covered every bet, firmly believing that if only one number paid off, he'd win.

He punched the buttons on his speakerphone and waited for a sleepy voice to answer. “Hello, this better be good.”

“Hiram, it's St. Julien Perlmutter.”

“Julien, why in God's name are you calling me at four in the morning?” Hiram Yaeger's voice sounded as if he was talking through a pillow.

“I'm in the middle of a research project for Dirk, and I need your help.”

Yaeger became marginally alert. “Anything for Dirk, but does it have to be four in the morning?”

“The data is important, and we need it as quickly as possible.”

“What do you want me to investigate?”

Perlmutter sighed with relief, knowing from experience that the NUMA computer genius had never let anyone down. “Got a pencil and paper? I'm going to give you some names.”

“Then what?” asked Yaeger, yawning.

“I'd like you to hack your way through government census, IRS and Social Security records for a match. Also, check them out through your vast file of maritime records.”

“You don't want much.”

“And while you're at it...” said Perlmutter, forging onward.

“Does it never end?”

“I also have a ship for you to trace.”

“So?”

“If my intuition is working, I'd like you to find what port it arrived at between November twenty-eighth and December tenth, nineteen forty-eight.”

“What's her name and owner?”

“The Canton Lines' Princess Dou Wan,” he replied, spelling it out.

“Okay, I'll start first thing after I arrive at NUMA headquarters.”

“Leave for work now,” urged Perlmutter. “Time is vital.”

“You sure you're doing this for Dirk?” demanded Yaeger.

“Scout's honor.”

“Can I ask what this is all about?”

“You may,” replied Perlmutter, and then he hung up.

Within minutes after he began his probe of Captain Leigh Hunt of the Princess Dou Wan, Yaeger found the old seaman mentioned in various references in maritime journals listing ships and their crews that sailed the China Sea between 1925 and 1945, in Royal Navy historical documents and old newspaper accounts describing the rescue of eighty passengers and crew from a sinking tramp steamer off the Philippines by a ship captained by Hunt in 1936. Hunt's final mention came from a Hong Kong maritime register, a short paragraph stating that the Princess Dou Wan had failed to arrive at the scrappers in Singapore. After 1948 it was as if Hunt had vanished from the face of the earth.

Yaeger then concentrated on lan Gallagher, smiling when his search ran across remarks in an Australian marine engineer's journal telling of Gallagher's colorful testimony during an investigation into a shipwreck he had survived that had gone aground near Darwin. “Hong Kong” Gallagher, as he was referred to, had little good to say about his captain and fellow crewmen, blaming them for the disaster and claiming he had never seen any of them sober during the entire voyage. The final mention of the Irishman was a brief account of his service with Canton Lines, with a footnote on the disappearance of the Princess Dou Wan.

Then, to cover all bases, Yaeger programmed his vast computer complex to conduct a search of all worldwide records pertaining to commercial engineering officers. This would take some time, so he wandered down to the NUMA building's cafeteria and had a light breakfast. Upon his return, he worked on two other marine geological projects for the agency before finally returning to see if anything turned up on his monitor.

He stared fascinated at what he saw, not willing to accept it. For several seconds the information did not register in his brain. Now suddenly out of the blue he had a hard hit. He spread the search in several different directions. Several hours later, he finally sat back in his chair, shaking his head. Feeling supremely self-satisfied, he called Perlmutter.

“St. Julien Perlmutter here,” came the familiar voice.

“Hiram Yaeger here,” the computer genius mimicked.

“Did you find anything of interest?”

“Nothing you can use on Captain Hunt.”

"What about his chief engineer?

“Are you sitting down?”

“Why?” Perlmutter asked cautiously.

“Ian 'Hong Kong' Gallagher did not go down on the Princess Dou Wan.”

“What are you saying?” demanded Perlmutter.

“Ian Gallagher became a citizen of the United States in nineteen fifty.”

“Not possible. It must be another lan Gallagher.”

“It's a fact,” said Yaeger, enjoying his triumph. “As we speak, I'm looking at a copy of his engineering papers, which he renewed with the Maritime Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation shortly after he became a citizen. He then hired on for the next twenty-seven years as chief engineer with the Ingram Line out of New York. He married one Katrina Garin in nineteen forty-nine and raised five kids.”

“Is he still alive?” asked a dazed Perlmutter.

“According to the records, he draws his pension and Social Security checks.”

“Can it be he survived the sinking of the Princess?”

“Providing Gallagher was on it when she went down,” replied Yaeger. “Do you still want me to see if the Princess Dou Wan arrived in an eastern seaboard port during the dates you gave me?”

“By all means,” answered Perlmutter. “And scan the shipping-port arrival records for a ship called the Princess Yung Tai, also owned by the Canton Lines.”

“You got something going?”

“Crazy intuition,” replied Perlmutter. “Nothing more.”

The border of the puzzle is in place, thought Perlmutter. Now he had to fit the inside pieces. Exhaustion finally caught up with him, and he allowed himself the extravagance of a short two-hour sleep. He awoke to the sound of his phone ringing. He allowed it to ring five times while his mind came back on track before answering.

“St. Julien, Juan Mercado from Panama.”

“Juan, thank you for calling. Did you turn up anything?”

“Nothing, I'm afraid, on the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I'm sorry to hear it. I'd hoped by chance she might have made passage through the canal.”

“I did, however, find an interesting coincidence.”

“Oh?”

“A Canton Lines ship, the Princess Yung Tai, passed through on December first, nineteen forty-eight.”

Perlmutter's fingers and hands tightened around the receiver. “What direction was her passage?”

“West to east,” answered Mercado. “From the Pacific into the Caribbean.”

Perlmutter said nothing, soaking up a wave of jubilation. Several pieces were still missing in the puzzle, but a visible pattern was slowly emerging. “I owe you a great debt, Juan. You've just made my day.”

“Happy to have been of service,” said Mercado. “But do me a favor next time, will you?”

“Anything.”

“Call me during daylight hours. Any time my wife thinks I'm awake after we've gone to bed, she gets amorous.”

WHEN PITT RETURNED TO HIS HANGAR IN WASHINGTON, HE was pleasantly surprised to find Julia waiting in his apartment above the car collection. After a hug and a kiss, she presented him with a margarita on the rocks made the right way—without the sweet mix and crushed ice popular in most restaurants.

“You are so nice to come home to,” he said happily.

“I couldn't think of a more comfortable and secure place to stay,” she said, smiling seductively. She was wearing a blue leather miniskirt with a tan nylon mesh one-shoulder top.

“I can see why. The grounds outside are crawling with security guards.”

“Courtesy of the INS.”

“I hope they're more alert than the last group,” he said, sipping the margarita and giving an approving nod.

“Did you fly in from Louisiana alone?”

Pitt nodded. “Al is in a local hospital having a cast put on his broken leg. Admiral Sandecker and Rudi Gunn came in earlier to make a report directly to the President.”

“Peter Harper filled me in about your heroics on the Mississippi. You prevented a national disaster and saved countless lives. The newspapers and TV news programs are filled with stories of terrorists blowing up the levee and the battle between the United States and the National Guard. The whole country was rocked by the event. Strangely, there was no mention of you or Al.”

“Just the way we like it.” He raised his head and sniffed the air. “What's that appetizing aroma I smell?”

“My Chinese dinner for the party tonight.”

“What's the occasion?”

“St. Julien Perlmutter called just before you returned and said he thinks he and Hiram Yaeger have the inside track on a solution to the disappearance of Qin Shang's treasure ship. He said he intensely dislikes meeting hi government buildings, so I invited him for dinner to hear his revelations. Peter Harper is coming, and I also sent invitations to Admiral Sandecker and Rudi Gunn. I hope they can find time to come.”

“They're fans of St. Julien,” said Pitt, smiling. “They'll be here.”

“They'd better, or you'll be eating leftovers for two weeks.”

“I couldn't have had a nicer homecoming,” said Pitt, embracing Julia and squeezing the breath out of her.

“Phew!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “When was the last time you bathed?”

“It's been a few days. Except for diving in swamp water I haven't had the opportunity to jump in a shower since I last saw you on the Weehawken.”

Julia rubbed the reddish blush on one of her cheeks. “Your beard is like sandpaper. Hurry and pretty up. Everyone will be showing up in another hour.”

“Your presentation is magnificent,” said Perlmutter, eyeing the array of delectable dishes Julia had prepared buffet-style and set out on an antique credenza in Pitt's dining room.

“It looks absolutely scrumptious,” said Sandecker.

“I couldn't have described it better,” added Gunn.

“My mother took special pains to teach me to cook, and my father was a lover of fine Chinese food prepared with a French influence,” said Julia, basking in the flattery. She had changed into a red Lycra jersey tube dress and looked stunning amid the room full of five men.

“I hope you don't leave INS to open a restaurant,” joked Harper.

“Not much chance of that. I have a sister who owns a restaurant in San Francisco, and it's a hard job with long hours in a small, hot kitchen. I'd rather have freedom of movement.” Helping themselves and gathering around a table built from a cabin roof off a nineteenth-century sailing ship, they dug into Julia's feast with great anticipation. She didn't disappoint them. The compliments flowed and bubbled like fine champagne.

During dinner, the talk purposely skirted Perlmutter's findings and centered instead around the events on the Mystic Canal levee and the Army Corps efforts to repair the damage, All hated the idea of the United States being scrapped as she lay, and expressed the hope that necessary funding would be found to save and refit her, if not for voyaging then as a floating hotel and casino, as originally proposed. Harper filled them in on the indictments being handed down against Qin Shang. Despite his influence and the reluctance of the President and some congressmen, the charges of criminal conduct rolled over any opposition.

For dessert, Julia served fried apples with syrup. After dinner was finished and Pitt had helped Julia clear the dishes and load them in the dishwasher, everyone settled in his living room filled with nautical antiques, maritime paintings and ship models. Sandecker lit up one of his big cigars without asking permission while Pitt poured them all a glass of forty-year-old port.

“Well, St. Julien,” said Sandecker, “what is this great discovery Pitt tells me you made?”

“I'm also interested in hearing how you think it concerns the INS,” Harper said to Pitt.

Pitt held up his port and stared at the dark liquid as if it was a crystal ball. “If St. Julien puts us on the wreck of a ship called the Princess Dou Wan, it will alter the relationship between the U.S. and China for decades to come.”

“Forgive me if I say that sounds wildly improbable,” said Harper.

Pitt grinned. “Wait, and you shall see.” Perlmutter eased his bulk into a big chair and opened his briefcase, retrieving several files. “First, a little history to enlighten those of you who don't yet know exactly what it is we're talking about.” He paused to open the first file and pull out several papers. "Let me begin by saying that rumors concerning the passenger ship Princess Dou Wan as leaving

Shanghai with a vast cargo of historical Chinese art treasures in November of nineteen-forty-eight are true."

“What was your source?” asked Sandecker.

"Name is Hui Wiay, a former Nationalist Army colonel who served under Chiang Kai-shek. Wiay now lives in Taipei. He fought the Communists until forced to flee to Taiwan when it was called Formosa. He's ninety-two years old but with a memory sharp as a razor. He vividly recalled following orders by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to empty the museums and palaces of every art treasure they could lay their hands on. Private collections belonging to the rich were also seized, along with any and all wealth found in bank vaults. All of it was packed in wooden crates and trucked to the Shanghai docks. There it was loaded on board an old passenger liner that was commandeered by one of Chiang Kai-shek's generals, whose name was Kung Hui. He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth the same time as the Princess Dou Wan, so there is every reason to believe he was on her.

“More treasure was seized than the ship could ordinarily hold. But since the Princess Dou Wan had been stripped of her furnishings and fixtures in preparation for her final voyage to the scrappers in Singapore, Kung Hui managed to cram over a thousand crates into the cargo holds and empty passenger staterooms. Most of the crates with large sculptures were tied down on the open decks. Then on November second, nineteen forty-eight, the Princess Dou Wan sailed from Shanghai into oblivion.”

“Vanished?” said Gunn.

“Like a midnight ghost.”

“When you say historical art treasures,” said Rudi Gunn, “is it known exactly what pieces were seized?”

“The ship's manifest, if there was one,” answered Perlmutter, “would make every curator in every museum of the world mad with envy and desire. A brief catalog would include the monumental designs of Shang-dynasty bronze weapons and vases. From sixteen hundred until eleven hundred B.C., Shang artists were advanced in the carving of stone, jade, marble, bone and ivory. There were the writings of Confucius inscribed in wood in his own hand from the Chou dynasty that reigned from eleven hundred to two hundred B.C.; magnificent bronze sculptures, incense burners inlaid with rubies, sapphires and gold, life-size chariots with drivers and six horses and beautifully lacquered dishes from the Han dynasty, two-oh-six B.C. to two twenty A.D.; exotic ceramics, books from China's classical poets and paintings by their masters living in the T'ang dynasty, six eighteen to nine-oh-seven A.D.; beautifully created artifacts from the Sung, Yuan, and the famous Ming dynasty, whose artisans were masters at sculptures and carvings. Their workmanship is widely known for the decorative arts, including cloisonne, furniture and pottery, and of course, we're all familiar with their famous blue- and white-porcelain.”

Sandecker studied the smoke that curled from his cigar. “You make it sound more valuable than the Inca treasure Dirk found in the Sonoran Desert.”

“Like comparing a cup of rubies to a carload of emeralds,” Perlmutter said, sipping his port. “Impossible to set a value on such a grand hoard. Moneywise, you're talking billions of dollars, but as historical treasure, the word priceless becomes inadequate.”

“I can't imagine riches of such magnitude,” said Julia wonderingly.

“There's more,” Perlmutter said quietly, adding to the spell. “The icing on the cake. What the Chinese would consider as their crown jewels.”

“More precious than rubies and sapphires,” said Julia, “or diamonds and pearls?”

“Something far more rare than mere baubles,” Perlmutter said softly. “The bones of Peking man.”

“Good lord!” Sandecker expelled a breath. “You're not suggesting that the Peking man was on the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I am,” Perlmutter nodded. “Colonel Hui Wiay swore that an iron box containing the long-lost remains were placed on board the Princess Dou Wan in the captain's cabin minutes before the ship sailed.”

“My father often spoke of the missing bones,” said Julia. “Chinese adoration of our ancestors made them more meaningful than tombs still containing early emperors.”

Sandecker sat up and gazed at Perlmutter. “The saga behind the loss of the Peking man's fossilized bones remains one of the great unexplained enigmas of the twentieth century.”

“You're familiar with the story, Admiral?” asked Gunn.

“I once wrote a paper on the missing bones of Peking man at the Naval Academy. I thought they vanished in nineteen forty-one and were never found. But St. Julien is now saying they were seen seven years later on the Princess Dou Wan before she set sail.”

“Where did they come from?” asked Harper.

Perlmutter nodded at Sandecker and deferred. “You wrote the paper, Admiral.”

“Sinanthropus pekinensis,” Sandecker spoke the words almost reverently. “Chinese man of Peking, a very ancient and primitive human who walked upright on two feet. In nineteen twenty-nine the discovery of his skull was announced by a Canadian anatomist, Dr. Davidson Black, who directed the excavation and was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Over the next several years, digging in a quarry that had once been a hill with limestone caves near the village of Choukou-tien, Black found thousands of chipped-stone tools and evidence of hearths, which indicated Peking man had mastered fire. Excavations carried out over the next ten years found the partial remains of another forty individuals, both juveniles and adults, and what has been acknowledged as the largest hominid fossil collection ever assembled.”

“Any relation to Java man, who was found thirty years sooner?” asked Gunn.

“When the Java and Peking skulls were compared in nineteen thirty-nine, they were seen to be very similar, with Java man arriving on the scene a shade earlier and not as sophisticated in toolmaking as Peking man.”

“Since scientific dating techniques didn't come into play until much later,” said Harper, “is there any idea as to how old Peking man is?”

“Because he cannot be scientifically dated until he's re-found, the best guess to his age is between seven hundred thousand and one million years. New discoveries in China, however, indicate that Homo erectus, an early species of human, is now thought to have migrated out of Africa to Asia two million years ago. Naturally, Chinese paleoanthropologists hope to prove that early man evolved in Asia and migrated to Africa instead of the accepted other way around.”

“How did the remains of Peking man disappear?” Julia asked Sandecker.

“In December of nineteen forty-one, invading Japanese troops were closing in on Peking,” narrated Sandecker. "Officials at the Peking Union Medical College, where the irreplaceable bones of Peking man were stored and studied, decided they should be removed to a place of safety. It was also evident, more so in China than in the West, that war between Japan and the United States was imminent. American and Chinese scientists agreed that the fossils should be sent to the United States for safekeeping until after the war. After months of negotiation, the American ambassador in Peking finally arranged shipment by a detachment of U.S. marines that was under orders to sail for the Philippines.

“The ancient bones were carefully packed in two Marine Corps footlockers and, along with the marines, were put aboard a train bound for the port city of Tientsin, where both living and dead were to board the S.S. President Harrison, a passenger ship belonging to the American President Lines. The train never arrived hi Tientsin. It was halted by Japanese troops who ransacked it. By now it was December the eighth, nineteen forty-one, and the marines, who had thought themselves neutrals, were then sent to Japanese prison camps to sit out the war. It can only be assumed that after lying underground for a million years, the remains of Peking man were scattered around the rice paddies beside the railroad track.”

“That was the last word on their fate?” Harper inquired.

Sandecker shook his head and smiled. “Myths thrived after the war. One had the fossils secretly hidden in a vault under the Museum of Natural History in Washington. The marines who guarded the shipment and survived the war came up with at least ten different stories of their own. The footlockers went down on a Japanese hospital ship that in reality was loaded with weapons and troops. The marines buried the footlockers near an American consulate. They were hidden in a prisoner-of-war camp and then lost at the end of the war. They were stored in a Swiss warehouse, in a vault on Taiwan, in the closet of a marine who smuggled them home. Whatever the true story, Peking man is still lost in a fog of controversy. And how they somehow found their way into Chiang Kai-shek's hands and onto the Princess Dou Wan is anybody's guess.”

“All very tantalizing,” said Julia, setting a pot of tea and cups on the center table for anyone who wanted some. “But what good is all this if the Princess can't be found?”

Pitt smiled. “Leave it to a woman to cut to the heart of the matter.”

“Any details surrounding her loss?” asked Sandecker.

“On November twenty-eighth, she sent out a Mayday signal that was picked up in Valparaiso, Chile, giving her position as two hundred miles west of the South American coast in the Pacific. Her radio operator claimed a fire was raging in her engine room and she was rapidly taking on water. Ships in the general area were diverted to the location given, but the only trace that was ever found were several empty life jackets. Repeated signals from Valparaiso brought no response, and no extensive search was undertaken.”

Gunn shook his head thoughtfully. “You could look for years with the Navy's latest deep-sea-penetrating technology and not find anything. A vague position like that means a search grid of at least two thousand square miles.”

Pitt poured himself a cup of tea. “Was her destination known?”

Perlmutter shrugged. “None was ever given nor determined.” He opened another file and passed around several photos of the Princess Dou Wan.

“For her time, she was a pretty ship,” observed Sandecker, admiring her lines.

Pitt's eyebrows raised in speculation. He rose from his chair, walked to a desk and picked up a magnifying glass. Then he studied two of the photos closely before looking up. “These two photos,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” Perlmutter murmured expectantly.

“They are not of the same ship.”

“You're absolutely right. One photo shows the Princess Dou Wan's sister ship, the Princess Yung Tai.”

Pitt stared into Perlmutter's eyes. “You're hiding something from us, you old fox.”

“I have no rock-hard proof,” said the big history expert, “but I do have a theory.”

“We'd all like to hear it,” said Sandecker.

Out came another file from the briefcase. “I strongly suspect the distress signal received in Valparaiso was a fabrication that was probably sent by Chiang Kai-shek's agents either on land or from a fishing boat somewhere offshore. The Princess Dou Wan, while en route across the Pacific, was given a few minor modifications by her crew, including a name change. She became the Princess Yung Tai, which had been broken up at the scrappers a short time before. Under her new disguise, she then continued toward her ultimate destination.”

“Very canny of you to fathom the substitution,” said San-decker.

“Not at all,” Perlmutter replied modestly. “A fellow researcher in Panama discovered that the Princess Yung Tbi passed through the Canal only three days after the Princess Dou Wan sent her Mayday signal.”

“Were you able to trace her course from Panama?” asked Pitt.

Perlmutter nodded. “Thanks to Hiram Yaeger, who used his vast computer complex to trace ship arrivals at ports up and down the eastern seaboard during the first and second week of December, nineteen forty-eight. Bless his little heart, he struck gold. The records show a vessel passing through the Welland Canal listed as the Princess Yung Tbi on December the seventh.”

Sandecker's face lit up. “The Welland Canal separates Lake Erie from Lake Ontario.”

“It does indeed,” agreed Perlmutter.

“My God,” Gunn muttered. “That means the Princess Dou Wan didn't disappear in the ocean but sank in one of the Great Lakes.”

“Who would have thought it?” Sandecker said more to himself than the others.

“Quite a feat of seamanship to navigate a ship her size down the St. Lawrence River before the seaway was built,” said Pitt.

“The Great Lakes,” Gunn echoed the words slowly. “Why would Chiang Kai-shek order a ship filled with priceless art treasures to go thousands of miles out of the way? If he wanted to hide the cargo in the United States, why not San Francisco or Los Angeles as a destination?”

“Colonel Hui Wiay claimed he was not told the ship's final destination. But he did know that Chiang Kai-shek flew agents into the U.S. to arrange for the cargo to be unloaded and stored with the utmost secrecy. According to him, it was at the direction of officials at the State Department in Washington, who set up the operation.”

“Not a bad plan,” said Pitt. “The main port terminals along the East and West coasts were too open. The dockworkers would have known what they were unloading in a second. Word would have spread like wildfire. The Communist leaders back in China would never have suspected their national treasures were to be smuggled into America's heartland and hidden.”

“Seems to me a naval base would have been the obvious choice if they wanted secrecy,” suggested Harper.

“That would have taken a direct order from the White House,” said Sandecker. “They were already catching flak from Communist Romania and Hungary for keeping their royal jewels in a Washington vault after the American Army found them hidden in a salt mine in Austria immediately after the war.”

Pitt said, “Not a bad plan when you think about it. Communist Chinese intelligence agents would have put their money on San Francisco. They probably had agents crawling over the dock terminals around the bay, waiting for the Princess Dou Wan to steam under the Golden Gate Bridge, never dreaming the ship was actually headed for a port in the Great Lakes.”

“Yes, but what port?” said Gunn. “And on which lake?”

They all turned to Perlmutter. “I can't give you an exact location,” he said candidly, “but I do have a lead who might direct us to a ballpark location containing the wreck.”

“This person has information you don't?” asked Pitt unbelievingly.

“He does.”

Sandecker looked steadily at Perlmutter. “You've questioned him?”

“Not yet. I thought I'd leave that up to you.”

“How can you be sure he's reliable?” asked Julia.

“Because he was an eyewitness.”

Everyone stared openly at Perlmutter. Finally, Pitt asked the obvious question in their minds. “He saw the Princess Dou Wan go down?”

“Better yet, lan 'Hong Kong' Gallagher was the only survivor. He was the ship's chief engineer, so if anyone can provide details of the sinking, he can. Gallagher never went back to China but remained in the States, eventually becoming a citizen and shipping out again on an American line before retiring.”

“Is he still living?”

“My very same question to Yaeger,” answered Perlmutter with a smile wide with teeth. “He and his wife retired to a lakefront town called Manitowoc on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan. I have Gallagher's address and phone number right here. If he can't point the way to the wreck, nobody can.”

Pitt came over and shook Perlmutter's hand and said warmly, “You do good work, St. Julien. My congratulations on an extraordinary piece of research.”

“I'll drink to that,” said a happy Perlmutter, ignoring the tea and pouring another glass of the forty-year-old port.

“Now, Peter,” Pitt said, focusing his eyes on Harper. “My question to you is what if Qin Shang should return to the United States?”

“Unless he goes completely insane, he would never come back.”

“But if he does?”

“He'd be arrested the minute he stepped off the plane and placed in a federal prison until his trial on at least forty different charges, including mass murder.”

Pitt turned back to Perlmutter. “St. Julien, you once mentioned a respected Chinese researcher you've worked with in the past who was interested in the Princess Dou Wan.”

“Zhu Kwan. China's most renowned historian and the author of several classic books on the different dynasties. I'll have you know I followed your instructions and did not contact him for fear he might alert Qin Shang.”

“Well, now you can feed him everything you've got except lan Gallagher. And if Gallagher puts us in the ballpark, you can give that to Zhu Kwan too.”

“None of this makes sense,” said Julia, puzzled. “Why give away the art treasures by leading Qin Shang to them?”

“You and Peter, the INS, FBI and the entire Justice Department want Qin Shang. And Qin Shang wants what is on board the wreck of the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I catch your drift,” said Harper. “There is method to your madness. What you're saying is that Qin Shang is obsessed and will move heaven and earth to lay his hands on the missing art treasures, even risking arrest and exposure by sneaking back into the United States.”

“Why should he risk everything when he could just as well direct a salvage expedition from his headquarters in Hong Kong?” questioned Gunn.

“I'd bet the bank the wreck haunts his dreams and he wouldn't trust his mother to run the operation. I checked the shipping registry. Qin Shang Maritime owns a salvage vessel. The minute he sniffs the Princess Dou Wan's location, he'll send the ship and board it from Canada when it comes down the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes.”

“Aren't you afraid of him finding it first?” asked Julia.

“Not to fear. We won't show our hand until we've salvaged the treasure first.”

“Finding it is only the first step. Salvaging the treasure will take a year, maybe more.”

Sandecker looked doubtful. “You may be placing too much confidence in Gallagher to lead you to the wreck. He might have jumped ship before it vanished.”

“The admiral has a point,” said Gunn. “If Gallagher knew the position of the sinking, he'd have tried to salvage it himself.”

“But he hasn't,” Pitt said firmly, “simply because the artifacts have never surfaced. St. Julien can tell you, no one can cover up a treasure find. Whatever his reason, Gallagher has kept the location to himself or St. Julien would have found a record of his attempt.”

Sandecker looked mildly through the smoke of his cigar at Pitt. “How soon can you leave for Manitowoc?”

“I have your permission to go?”

The admiral winked at Harper. “I think the INS will let NUMA carry the ball until Qin Shang puts in an appearance.”

“You'll get no argument out of me, Admiral,” said Harper cheerfully. He smiled at Julia. “You're due for a long rest, Julia, but I suspect you'll be happy to act as liaison between our two agencies during the search and salvage.”

“If you're asking me to volunteer,” she said, restraining feelings of eagerness, “the answer is an unqualified yes.”

“Any hint on what kind of guy Gallagher is?” Pitt asked Perlmutter.

“He must have been tough in his early days. His nickname of 'Hong Kong' came from all the bars he wiped butt in while his ship was in port.”

“Then he's no pussycat?”

Perlmutter chuckled. “No, I don't guess he is.”

DARK CLOUDS THREATENED BUT NO RAIN FELL AS PITT AND Julia turned off Highway 43 and took a well-graded dirt road through fruit orchards common to the shore of Lake Michigan before entering a forest of pine and birch trees. Keeping one eye on the mailboxes perched beside the road, Pitt finally spotted the one he was looking for, a box built in the shape of an old steamship and elevated by welded anchor chain. The name GALLAGHER was lettered on the hull.

“This must be the place,” said Pitt as he turned into the little grassy lane leading to a picturesque two-story log house.

He and Julia had flown into Green Bay, Wisconsin, where they rented a car for the thirty-mile drive south to Manitowoc, a port for the big ships sailing the Lakes. The Gallagher residence sat on the lakefront ten miles below the port.

Perlmutter had offered to call ahead and alert the Gallaghers to their coming, but Sandecker thought it best to arrive unexpected in case the Princess Dou Wan was not a subject the old ship's engineer wished to discuss and conveniently found a reason not to be at home.

The front of the Gallagher house faced the trees while the rear opened onto Lake Michigan. The logs had been roughhewn into squared beams before they were fitted together and chinked. The entire lower third of the house was mortared river rock that gave it a rustic look. The peaked roof was sheathed in copper that had patinated to a dark turquoise green. The windows were high and trimmed with vertical shutters. The exterior wood was stained a partridge brown with a tint of gray to make it blend perfectly with the surrounding forest.

Pitt stopped the car on a lawn that ran around the house and parked next to a roofed-over carport that housed a Jeep Grand Cherokee and a small, eighteen-foot cabin cruiser with a big outboard motor on the transom. He and Julia walked up the steps to a narrow front porch where Pitt raised a door knocker and rapped three times.

Suddenly, they could hear the yapping of small dogs inside. After a few moments the door was opened by a tall, older woman with long gray hair tied in a bow. Her eyes were star-tlingly blue and her face untouched by the advance of wrinkles. Her body had rounded during the years, but she still carried herself like a woman forty years younger. It was obvious to Julia that she had once been very beautiful. She paused to shoo a pair of short-haired dachshunds into silence.

“Hello,” she said sweetly. “The skies look like they might send us some rain.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Pitt. “The clouds appear to be passing to the west.”

“Can I help you with anything?”

“My name is Dirk Pitt and this is Julia Lee. We're looking for Mr. lan Gallagher.”

“You found him,” the lady said, smiling. “I'm Mrs. Gallagher. Won't you come in?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Julia, passing through the doorway as Pitt stood aside. The dachshunds ran and sat obediently on the stairway leading up to the second floor of the house. Julia stopped and gazed in mild surprise through the entryway into the rooms beyond. She had expected to see the interior of the house decorated in Early American with a sprinkling of antiques. But this house was filled with exquisitely carved Chinese furniture and art objects. The wall hangings were embroidered with silk designs. Beautifully glazed vases stood in corners with dried floral arrangements rising from them. Delicate porcelain figurines perched on high shelves. One glass-enclosed cabinet held nearly thirty jade sculptures. The carpets lying on the wooden floors were all woven with Chinese designs.

“Oh my,” Julia gasped. “I feel like I've just walked into my mother and father's house in San Francisco.”

Mrs. Gallagher suddenly began speaking to Julia in Mandarin Chinese. “I thought you might appreciate things from the Orient.”

“May I ask if your things are very old, Mrs. Gallagher?” inquired Julia, replying in Mandarin.

“Please call me Katie. Everyone else does. It's short for Katrina.” She made a hand gesture around the house. “None go back more than fifty years. My husband and I accumulated what you see since we were married. I was born and raised in China, and we met there. We still have a great affection for its culture.” She invited them into the living room and then returned to speaking English for Pitt's benefit. “Please make yourself comfortable. May I get you some tea?” “Yes, thank you,” said Julia.

Pitt walked over to a rock fireplace and stared up at a painting of a ship that hung over the mantel. Without turning, he said, “The Princess Dou Wan.”

Mrs. Gallagher pressed both hands to her breast and let out a deep sigh. “lan always said someone would come someday.” “Who did you think would come?” “Someone from the government.” Pitt gave her a warm smile. “Your husband is very perceptive. I'm from the National Underwater and Marine Agency and Julia is an agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

She looked at Julia sadly. “I suppose you'll be wanting to deport us because we came into the country illegally.”

Pitt and Julia exchanged puzzled glances. “Why no,” he said. “We're here on a completely different matter.”

Julia walked over and put her arm around the taller woman. “You do not have to worry about the past,” she said softly. “That was a long time ago and, according to the records, both you and your husband are solid, taxpaying citizens.” “But we did some shenanigans with the paperwork.” “The less said, the better,” Julia laughed. “If you won't tell, neither will I.”

Pitt looked at Katie Gallagher curiously. “You talk as if you both entered the United States at the same time.”

“We did,” she said, nodding at the painting. “On the Princess Dou Wan.”

“You were on the ship when she sank?” asked Pitt incredulously.

“It's a strange story.”

“We'd love to hear it.”

“Please sit down and I'll bring the tea.” She smiled at Julia. “I think you'll enjoy the taste. I order it from Shanghai from the same store I used to buy it at sixty years ago.”

A few minutes later, as she poured a dark green tea, Katie told the story about how she met lan “Hong Kong” Gallagher when they both worked for the Canton Lines Shipping Company. She told of v' iting her future husband on board the Princess while the ship was being stripped for the voyage to the scrappers and how hundreds of crates were delivered to the dock and loaded aboard in the dead of night.

“One of Chiang Kai-shek's generals, a man by the name of Kung Hui—”

“We're familiar with the name,” Pitt interrupted her. “It was he who seized the ship and loaded it with a stolen cargo.”

“All done in great secrecy,” Katie agreed. “After General Hui commandeered the Princess, he refused to allow me and my little dog, Fritz, to go ashore. I was a virtual prisoner in lan's cabin from then until the ship sank in a violent storm a month later. lan knew the ship was about to break up and he made me dnss in several layers of warm clothes. Then he literally dragged me to the upper boat deck, where he threw me in a life raft. General Hui joined us just before the ship floundered and we floated free.”

“General Hui left the ship with you?”

“Yes, but he froze to death a few hours later. The cold was unbearable. The waves tall as houses. It was a miracle we survived.”

“You and lan were picked up?”

“No, we drifted ashore. I was within an inch of death from hypothermia, but he broke into a vacation cabin, started a fire and brought me back to life. Several days later, we made our way across the country to the house of a cousin of lan's who lived in New York. He took us in until we could stand on our own feet. We knew we couldn't go back to China after it had been taken over by the Communists, so we decided to remain in the United States, where we were married. After obtaining the proper documents, I won't say how, lan went back to sea while I raised our family. Most of those years we lived on Long Island, New York, but we vacationed every summer around the Great Lakes when the children were young and grew to love the west coast of Lake Michigan. When lan retired, we built this house. It's a good life, and we enjoy boating on the lake.”

“You were both very lucky people,” said Julia.

Katie looked longingly at a photograph of her with their children and grandchildren taken during their last Christmas reunion. There were other photos. One of a young lan standing on a dock in the Orient next to a tramp steamer was in a frame next to a beautiful blond Katrina holding a small dachshund under her arm. She wiped a tear that formed in one eye. “You know,” she said, “every time I look at that picture I feel sad. lan and I had to abandon the ship so quickly that I left my little dachshund Fritz behind in the cabin. The poor little thing went down with the ship.”

Julia looked at the two little dogs that followed Katie everywhere, tails wagging. “It looks as if Fritz is still with you, at least in spirit.”

“Do you mind if I talk to Mr. Gallagher?” asked Pitt.

“Not at all. Just go through the kitchen to the back door. You'll find him down on the boat dock.”

Pitt stepped from the kitchen door onto a long porch overlooking the lake. He walked across a lawn that sloped toward the shore and ended at a small pier that jutted out about thirty feet into the lake. He found lan “Hong Kong” Gallagher sitting on a canvas stool at the end of the pier, a fishing pole propped on a small handrail. An old, weathered slouch hat was puUed down over his eyes, and he appeared to be dozing.

The gentle movement of the pier and the sound of footsteps awakened him to Pitt's approach. “That you, Katie?” he asked in a rumbling voice.

“Afraid not,” Pitt answered.

Gallagher turned, peered at the stranger a moment from under the brim of his hat, and then refaced the lake. “I thought you might be my wife.” The words came with a soft Irish accent.

“Doing any good?”

The old Irishman reached down and pulled up a chain from the water with six good-sized fish dangling from it. “They're hungry today.”

“What do you use for bait?”

“I've tried them all, but chicken livers and worms still work the best.” Then he asked, “Do I know you?”

“No, sir. My name is Dirk Pitt. I'm with NUMA.”

“I've heard of NUMA. You conducting research on the lake?”

“No, I've come to talk to 'Hong Kong' Gallagher about the Princess Dou Wan,”

There it was. No fireworks, no drumroll, just the plain simple fact. Gallagher sat immobile. Neither the twitch of a muscle nor the tic of an eye gave away what Pitt knew had to be a shocking surprise. Finally, Gallagher sat up stiffly on his canvas stool, pulled the hat to the back of his head and fixed Pitt with a melancholy gaze. “I always knew you'd come someday, asking questions about the Princess. Who'd you say you were with again, Mr. Pitt?”

“The National Underwater and Marine Agency.”

“How did you track me down after all these years?”

“It's almost impossible to hide from computers nowadays.”

Pitt moved closer and observed that Gallagher was a big man, weighing close to 230 pounds and every bit as tall as Pitt at six feet, three inches. His face was surprisingly smooth for an old seaman, but then most all his time at sea had been spent in the engine room where it was warm and the air heavy with the smell of oil. Only the red skin and bulbous nose gave away the effects of a love for alcohol. The stomach was round and hung over his belt but the shoulders were still strong and broad. He had kept most of his hair and let it go white along with a mustache that hid his upper lip.

The fishing pole gave a jerk, and Gallagher grabbed the grip and reeled in a nice three-pound coho salmon. “They stock the lake with trout and salmon, but I miss the old days when you could pull in a big pike or muskie.”

“I talked to your wife,” said Pitt. “She told me how the two of you survived the storm and the sinking.”

“A bit of a wonder, that one.”

“She said General Hui died on the raft.”

“The scum got what he deserved,” Gallagher said, smiling tightly. “You must be aware of Hui's role in the last voyage of the Princess or you wouldn't be here.”

“I know General Hui and Chiang Kai-shek stole China's historic heritage and seized the Princess Dou Wan with the intention of secretly smuggling the treasure to the United States, where it was to be hidden.”

“That was their plan until Mother Nature stepped in.”

“It took a team of dedicated people to dig through the subterfuge,” Pitt informed him. “The fake distress signal about the ship sinking off Valparaiso, salting the water with the ship's life vests, altering the Princess Dou Wan to pass for her sister ship the Princess Yung Tai during her passage through the Panama Canal and down the St. Lawrence into the Great Lakes. The only missing piece of the puzzle was your destination.”

Gallagher cocked an eyebrow. “Chicago. Hui had arranged through the American State Department to unload the treasures at the terminal facilities at the Port of Chicago. Where they were to be sent from there, I haven't the foggiest idea. But foul weather swept in from the north. As a man familiar with the oceans, I had no conception that the Great Lakes in North America could brew up worse storms than any at sea. By God, man, since then I've seen saltwater sailors get seasick and heave their guts out during an inland-water storm.”

“They say there are over fifty-five thousand recorded shipwrecks in the Great Lakes alone,” said Pitt. “And Lake Michigan wins the prize for having swallowed more ships than all the other lakes combined.”

“The waves on the Lakes can be deadlier than those on any ocean,” Gallagher maintained. “They pile up thirty feet and come at you much faster. Ocean waves swell and roll from only one direction. Great Lakes waves are more treacherous and relentless. They seethe and gyrate like a maelstrom from every direction at once. No sir, I've seen cyclones in the Indian Ocean, typhoons in the Pacific and hurricanes in the Atlantic, but I'm telling you, there is nothing more terrible than a winter tempest on the Great Lakes. And the night the Princess went down was one of the worst.”

“Unlike the sea, there is almost no room to maneuver a ship on the Lakes,” said Pitt.

“That's a fact. A ship can run before the storm at sea. Here she must continue on course or founder.” Gallagher then told of the night the Princess Dou Wan broke up and sank. He spoke of it as though it was a recurring dream. The fifty-two years since had not dimmed his memory of the tragedy. Every detail seemed as fresh as if it happened the day before. He told of the suffering he and Katie had endured, and how General Hui froze to death in the raft. “After we came ashore, I pushed the raft with Hui still in it back into the raging waters of the lake. I never saw him again and often wondered if his body was found.”

“Can I ask you where the ship foundered? In which Great Lake?”

Gallagher hooked the fish through the gill on the chain and dropped it in the water beside the pier before answering. Then he raised his hand and pointed toward the east. “Right out there.”

At first Pitt didn't get it. He thought Gallagher was referring to any one of the four Great Lakes that lay to the east. Then it hit him. “Lake Michigan? The Princess Dou Wan sank here in Lake Michigan, not far from where we stand?”

“I'd guess about twenty-five miles slightly southeast from here.”

Pitt was elated and numb at the same time: This revelation was too good to be true: The wreck of the Princess Dou Wan and its priceless treasure were lying only twenty-five miles away. He turned and stared at Gallagher. “You and Mrs. Gallagher must have been cast ashore nearby.”

“Not close by,” Gallagher said, smiling. “This exact spot where the pier sits. We tried for years to buy this property for sentimental reasons, but the owners wouldn't sell. Only after they died did their kids let us have it. We tore down the old cabin they used for family vacations on the lake, the same cabin that saved Katie and me from freezin' to death. It was in poor shape, so we tore it down and built the house you see. We figured we was given a second chance in life and it would be a good idea to spend our remaining years at the very spot we were reborn.”

“Why didn't you look for the wreck and salvage the artifacts yourself?”

Gallagher gave a short laugh and slowly shook his head. “What good would it do? The Communists still run China. They would claim it as theirs. I'd be lucky to keep a nail out of one of them packing crates they rest in.”

“You might have filed a claim for yourself and become a very rich man.”

“The Communists wouldn't be the only vultures to come gatherin' around. The minute I'd begin pulling up them antiques, the bureaucrats from the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and the federal government would have come down all over me. I'd have ended up spending more time in court than salvaging the wreck and paying attorneys more than I'd make out of it.”

“You're probably right,” said Pitt.

“You bet I'm right,” snorted Gallagher. “I did a bit of treasure-hunting myself when I was young. It never paid off. You make a strike and, besides having to fight the government, other treasure hunters appear like locusts to rape your wreck. No, Mr. Pitt, my family was my riches. I figured, leave well enough alone. The treasure ain't goin' anywhere. When the proper time comes, I always thought, somebody will salvage it for the good of the people. In the meantime, I've been perfectly content without it.”

“There aren't many men who think like you do, Mr. Gallagher,” said Pitt with respect.

“Son, when you're as old as I am, you see there are a lot more things in life than owning a fancy yacht and a jet plane.”

Pitt smiled at the old man on the canvas stool. “Mr. Gallagher, I like your style.”

Ian cleaned his catch of fish, and Katie insisted Dirk and Julia stay for dinner. They also offered to put them up for the night, but Pitt was anxious to return to Manitowoc, find a place to use as a headquarters for the search-and-salvage project, and call Sandecker with the news. During dinner, the two women happily chatted away in Mandarin Chinese while the men swapped sea stories.

“Was Captain Hunt a good man?” “No better seaman ever trod a deck.” Gallagher stared sadly through the window out onto the lake. “He's still out there. He went down with the ship. I saw him standin' in the wheelhouse as calm as if he was waitin' for a table at a restaurant.” He turned back to Pitt. “I hear the cold fresh water preserves things, unlike salt water and sea creatures that eat bodies and ships until there's nothing left.”

Pitt nodded. “Not long ago, divers brought up an automobile from a car ferry that had been on the bottom of this same lake for nearly seventy years. The upholstery was still sound, the tires still held air, and after drying out the engine and carburetor, and changing the oil, they charged the original battery and started the car. It was then driven to an auto museum in Detroit.”

“Then the Chinese treasures should be in good shape.”

“Most of it, I should imagine, especially the bronze and porcelain artworks.”

“Wouldn't that be a sight,” Gallagher said wistfully, “seeing all them antiques lying there on the bottom of the lake.” Then he shook his head and rubbed eyes that were beginning to moisten. “But it would tear my heart out to look at the poor old Princess.”

“Perhaps,” said Pitt, “but she found a more noble death than if she was torn apart by the scrappers in Singapore.”

“You're right,” Gallagher said solemnly. “She did find a noble death.”

IN THE MORNING PlTT AND JULIA BADE THE GALLAGHERS A fond good-bye and checked into an attractive bed and breakfast in Manitowoc. While she unpacked, Pitt called Sandecker and filled him in on their meeting with the Gallaghers.

“You mean to tell me,” Sandecker said in amazement, “that one of the world's greatest treasures has been sitting under everyone's nose for the past half century, and Gallagher told no one?”

“The Gallaghers are your kind of people, Admiral. Unlike Qin Shang, they were never driven by greed. They felt it was best not to disturb the wreck until the proper time.”

“They should receive a fat reward as a finders' fee.”

“A grateful government may make the offer, but I doubt if they'll accept it.”

“Incredible,” said Sandecker quietly. “The Gallaghers have restored my faith in the human race.”

“Now that we have a ballpark, we're going to require a proper search-and-survey vessel.”

“I'm way ahead of you,” Sandecker said smoothly. “Rudi has already hired a fully equipped search boat. The crew is on its way to Manitowoc from Kenosha. The boat's name is Divercity. Because we have a requirement for secrecy to consider, I felt you'd attract less attention with a smaller vessel. Not wise to advertise a hunt for a treasure of inestimable value. If word leaked, a thousand treasure seekers would flood onto Lake Michigan like a school of piranha in a pond stocked with catfish.”

“A phenomenon that takes place with every treasure find,” Pitt concurred.

“And in the hope and anticipation that you'll make a successful discovery, I've also ordered the Ocean Retriever off a project on the Maine coast and directed her to Lake Michigan.”

“The perfect choice. She's ideally equipped for intricate salvage work.”

“She should arrive on site and be in position over the wreck within four days.”

“You planned and arranged all this before you knew if Gallagher could lead us to the wreck?” Pitt asked incredulously.

“Again, anticipation.”

Pitt's admiration of Sandecker never ceased. “You're a tough man to keep up with. Admiral.”

“I always hedge my bets.”

“I can see that.”

“Good luck, and let me know how it goes.”

With Julia in tow, Pitt spent the day talking to local divers about water conditions and studying charts of the lake bed in the general location of the Princess Don Wan. The following morning at the crack of dawn, they parked the car at Manitowoc's yacht basin and walked along the dock until they found the Divercity and her crew waiting for them.

The boat, a twenty-five-foot Parker with a cabin, was powered by a 250 Yamaha outboard. Functional and electronically well equipped with a NavStar differential global-positioning system interfaced with a state of the art PC and Geometerics 866 marine magnetometer, the Divercity also mounted a Klein side-scan sonar that would play a key role in seeking out the remains of the Princess Don Wan. For a close-up identification, the boat carried a Benthos MiniRover MK II underwater robotic vehicle.

The experienced crew consisted of Ralph Wilbanks, a big, jolly man in his early forties with expansive brown eyes and a bristling mustache; and his partner, Wes Hall, easygoing, soft-spoken and smoothly handsome, who could have doubled for Mel Gibson.

Wilbanks and Hall greeted Pitt and Julia warmly and introduced themselves. “We didn't expect you this early,” said Hall.

“Up with the birds, that's us,” Pitt said, nodding humorously. “How was your trip from Kenosha?”

“Calm water all the way,” answered Wilbanks.

Both men spoke in a soft Southern accent. Pitt liked them almost immediately. He didn't need a drawing to see they were a professional, job-dedicated pair. They watched amused as Julia jumped from the dock, landing on the deck with the finesse of a limber cat. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater under a nylon windbreaker.

“She's a fine, no-nonsense boat,” said Pitt, admiring the Divercity.

Wilbanks nodded in agreement. “She does the job.” He turned to Julia. “I hope you don't mind roughing it, ma'am. We're not equipped with a head.”

“Don't worry about me,” Julia said, smiling. “I've got an iron bladder.”

Pitt looked across the water of the little harbor at the seemingly endless lake. “Light breeze, one- to two-foot waves, conditions look good. Are we ready to cast off?”

Hall nodded and unwound the mooring lines from the dock's cleats. Just as he was about to climb on board, he pointed down the dock at a figure awkwardly approaching and waving wildly. “Is he with you?”

Pitt found himself staring at Al Giordino, who was stomping across the wooden planks on a pair of crutches, his wounded leg encased in a plaster cast from ankle to crotch. Giordino flashed his celebrated smile and said, “A pox on your house for thinking you could leave me onshore while you got all the glory.”

Happy to see his old friend, Pitt said, “You can't say I didn't try.”

Wilbanks and Hall gently lifted Giordino over the side and sat him on a long cushion that lay on a raised hump in the middle of the boat. Pitt introduced him to the crew as Julia fussed over him and pressed a cup of coffee in his hand from a thermos she carried in a picnic basket.

“Shouldn't you be in a hospital?” she asked.

“I hate hospitals,” Giordino grumbled. “Too many people die in them.”

“Is everyone aboard who's coming aboard?” Wilbanks inquired.

“All present and accounted for,” replied Pitt.

Wilbanks grinned and said, “Then let's do it.”

As soon as they cleared the harbor, Wilbanks pushed the throttle forward and the Divercity leaped ahead, bow clear of the water, until she was skimming the waves at nearly thirty miles an hour. While Julia and Giordino sat aft, enjoying the view and the beginning of a spectacular day under a sky decorated with clouds drifting overhead like a grazing herd of white buffalo, Pitt gave Wilbanks his chart with an X marked twenty-five miles just south of east frorh the Gallagher's house. He had enclosed the X within a five-mile-by-five-mile search grid. Wilbanks then programmed the coordinates into the computer and watched as the numbers came up on the monitor. Hall busied himself studying the photos and dimensions of the Princess Dou Wan.

It seemed hardly any time had passed before Wilbanks slowed the boat and announced, “Coming up on lane one in eight hundred meters.” He used the metric system, since the equipment was set up for it.

Pitt helped Hall drop over the magnetometer sensor and the side-scan sonar towfish, trailing them behind the stern of the boat on tethered cables. After tying off the cables, they returned to the cabin.

Wilbanks steered the boat toward the end of a line displayed on the monitor that led to a search grid with parallel lanes. “Four hundred meters to go.”

“I feel like I'm taking part in an adventure,” said Julia.

“You're going to be sadly disappointed,” Pitt laughed. “Running search lanes for a shipwreck is downright tedious. You might compare it to mowing grass on an endless lawn. You can go hours, weeks or even months without finding so much as an old tire.”

Pitt took over the magnetometer duties as Hall set up the Klein & Associates Systems 2000 sonar. He sat on a stool in front of the high-resolution color video display unit that was mounted in the same console as a thermal printer that recorded the floor of the lake in 256 shades of gray.

“Three hundred meters,” Wilbanks droned.

“What range are we set for?” Pitt asked Hall.

“Since we're hunting for a large target five hundred feet in length, we'll run thousand-meter lanes.” He pointed to the lake-bed detail that was beginning to unreel from the printer. “The bottom looks flat and undisturbed, and since we're operating in fresh water, we should have no problem spotting an anomaly that fits the target's dimensions.”

“Speed?”

“The water's pretty calm. I think we can run at ten miles an hour and still get a sharp recording.”

“Can I watch?” asked Julia from the cabin doorway.

“Be my guest,” said Hall, making room for her in the cramped quarters.

“The detail is amazing,” she said, staring at the image from the printer. “You can clearly see ripples in the sand.”

“The resolution is good,” Hall lectured her, “but nowhere near the definition of a photograph. The sonar image translates similar to a photo that's been duplicated and then run through a copy machine three or four times.”

Pitt and Hall exchanged grins. Observers always became addicted to watching the sonar data. Julia would be no different. They knew that she would gaze entranced for hours, enthusiastically waiting for the image of a ship to materialize.

“Starting lane one,” Wilbanks proclaimed.

“What's our depth, Ralph?” Pitt asked.

Wilbanks glanced up at his depth sounder, which hung from the roof on one side of the helm. “About four hundred ten feet.”

An old hand at search-and-survey, Giordino shouted from his comfortable position on the cushion where he lay with his cast propped up on a railing. “I'm going to take a siesta. Yell out if you spot anything.”

The hours passed slowly as the Divercity plowed through the low waves at ten miles an hour mowing the lawn, the magnetometer ticking away, the recording line trailing down the center of the graph paper until swinging off to the sides when it detected the presence of iron. In unison, the side-scan sonar emitted a soft clack as the thermal plastic film unreeled from the printer. It revealed a lake bed cold and desolate and free of human debris.

“It's a desert down there,” said Julia, rubbing tired eyes.

“No place to build your dream house,” said Hall with a little grin.

“That finishes lane twenty-two,” Wilbanks broadcast. “Coming around on lane twenty-three.”

Julia looked at her watch. “Lunchtime,” she announced, opening the picnic basket she had packed at the bed and breakfast. “Anybody besides me hungry?”

“I'm always hungry,” Giordino called out from the back of the boat.

“Amazing.” Pitt shook his head incredulously. “At twelve feet away, outside in a breeze with the roar of the outboard motor, he can still hear the mere mention of food.”

“What delicacies have you prepared?” Giordino asked Julia, having dragged himself to the cabin doorway.

“Apples, granola bars, carrots and herbal ice tea. You have your choice between hummus and avocado sandwiches. It's what I call a healthy lunch.”

Every man on the boat looked at each of the others with utter horror. She couldn't have received a more unpalatable reaction if she had said she was volunteering their services as diaper changers at a day-care center. Out of deference to Julia none of the men said anything negative, since she went to the bother of fixing lunch. The fact that she was a woman and their mothers had raised them all as gentlemen added to the dilemma. Giordino, however, did not come from the old school. He complained vociferously.

“Hummus and avocado sandwiches,” he said disgustedly. “I'm going to throw myself off the boat and swim to the nearest Burger King—”

“I have a reading on the mag!” Pitt interrupted. “Anything on the sonar?”

“My sonar towfish is trailing farther astern than your mag sensor,” said Hall, “so my reading will lag behind yours.”

Julia leaned closer to the sonar's printer in anticipation of seeing an object appear from the printer. Slowly, the image of a hard target began to move across the video display and the printer simultaneously.

“A ship!” Julia shouted excitedly. “It's a ship!”

“But not the one we're after,” Pitt said flatly. “She's an old sailing ship sitting straight up off the bottom.”

Wilbanks leaned around the others to peer at the sunken ship. “Look at that detail. The cabins, the hatch covers, the bowsprit, they all show clearly.”

“Her masts are gone,” observed Hall.

“Probably swept away by the same storm that sank her,” said Pitt.

The ship had passed behind the range of the towfish now, but Hall recalled its image on the video screen before zooming in, freezing the target, and comparing synchronous magnifications. “Good size,” Hall said, studying the image. “At least a hundred and fifty feet.”

“I can't help wondering about her crew,” said Julia. “I hope they were saved.”

“Since she's relatively intact,” said Wilbanks, “she must have gone down pretty fast.”

The moment of fascination quickly passed, and the search for the Princess Dou Wan continued. The breeze had slowly veered from north to west and dropped until it barely fluttered the flag on the stern of the boat. An ore ship passed a few hundred yards away and rocked the Divercity in its wake. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Wilbanks turned and looked at Pitt.

“We've got two hours of daylight left. What time do you want to pack it in and head back to the dock?”

“You never know when the lake will turn ugly,” Pitt answered. “I suggest we keep going and finish as much of the grid as we can while the water is calm.”

“Gotta make hay while the sun shines,” Hall agreed.

The mood of anticipation had not diminished. Pitt had requested that Wilbanks begin the search through the center of the grid and work east. That half had been completed, and now they were working west with over thirty lanes to go. The sun was lingering over the western shore of the lake when Pitt called out again.

“A target on the mag,” he said with a tinge of excitement in his voice. “A big one.”

“Here she comes,” said Julia, electrified.

“We've got a modern steel ship,” Hall acknowledged.

“How big?” asked Wilbanks.

“Can't tell. She's still showing on the edge of the screen.”

“She's huge,” Julia muttered in awe.

Pitt grinned like a gambler who hit a jackpot. “I think we've got her.” He checked his X on the chart. The wreck was three miles closer inshore than Gallagher had estimated. Actually, an incredibly close guess, all things considered, Pitt thought.

“She's broken in two,” Hall said, pointing at the blue-black image on the video screen as everyone, including Giordino, pushed in for a closer look. “About two hundred feet of her stern lies a good hundred and fifty feet away with a large debris field in between.”

“The forward section looks to be sitting upright,” added Pitt.

“Do you really think it's the Princess Dou Wan?” asked Julia.

“We'll know for certain after we get the ROV down on her.” He stared at Wilbanks. “Do you want to wait until tomorrow?”

“We're here, ain't we?” Wilbanks retorted with a smile. “Anybody have any objections against working at night?”

No one objected. Pitt and Hall quickly retrieved the sonar towfish and magnetometer sensor, and soon they had the Benthos MiniRover MK II robotic vehicle tethered up to the control handbox and a video monitor. At seventy-five pounds, it only took two of the men to lift it over the side and lower it into the water. The bright halogen underwater lights of the ROV slowly vanished in the deep as she began her journey downward into the dark void of Lake Michigan. She was attached to the Divercity and the control console by an umbilical cable. Wilbanks aimed an eye on the computer screen of the global positioning system and adroitly kept the Divercity floating motionless above the wreck.

The descent to four hundred feet took only a few minutes. All light from the setting sun vanished at 360 feet. Hall stopped the MiniRover when the bottom came into sight. It looked like a lumpy blanket of gray silt.

“The depth here is four hundred thirty feet,” he said as he swung the ROV in a tight circle. Suddenly, the lights illuminated a large shaft that looked like a giant tentacle reaching out from a sea monster.

“What in hell is that?” muttered Wilbanks, turning from his computer positioning screen.

“Move toward it,” Pitt ordered Hall. “I think we've come down on the forward cargo section of the hull, and we're looking at the overhead boom of a loading crane on the forward deck.”

Working the controls of the MiniRover's handbox, Hall slowly sent the ROV along one side of the crane until the camera revealed a clear video image of a hull belonging to a large ship. He worked the ROV along the sides of the hull toward the bow, which still stood perfectly upright, as if the ship had refused to die and still dreamed of sailing the seas. Soon the outline of the ship's name became visible. It looked to have been painted crudely on the raised white gunwale atop the black bow slightly aft of the anchor, which still fit snug in its hawsehole. One by one the letters slid past the screen.

A doctor will tell you that if your heart stops, you're dead. But it seemed everyone's heart paused for several seconds as the name of the sunken ship passed under the MiniRover's cameras.

“Princess Yung Thi,” Giordino shouted. “We got her!”

“The queen of the China Sea,” Julia murmured as if she was in a trance. “She looks so cold and isolated. It's almost as if she was praying we'd come.”

“I thought you wanted a ship called the Princess Dou Wan,” said Wilbanks.

“It's a long story,” Pitt replied with a big grin, “but they're one and the same.” He laid one hand on Hall's shoulder. “Move aft, keeping at least ten feet from the side of the ship so we don't entangle our tether and lose the ROV.”

Hall silently nodded and worked the little joysticks on the handbox that controlled the camera and vehicle movement. Visibility was nearly fifty feet under the vehicle's halogen lights and showed that the exterior of the Princess Dou Wan had changed very little after fifty-two years. The frigid fresh water and deep depth had inhibited marine growth and corrosion.

The superstructure came into view, looking surprisingly fresh. None of it had collapsed. Only a light coat of silt adhered to the paint, which had dulled somewhat but still appeared surprisingly fresh. The Princess Dou Wan looked like the interior of a haunted, abandoned house that had not been dusted for half a century.

Hall maneuvered the MiniRover around the bridge. Most of the windows had been smashed from the force of the waves and the pressure of the deep. They could see the engine-room telegraph standing inside, its pointer still set on FULL AHEAD. Only a few fish lived in her now. The crew was no more, most all swept away by frenzied waves when she went down. The

MiniRover crept alongside the ship on a horizontal course a short distance from the main promenade deck. The lifeboat davits were empty and twisted out, grim evidence of the chaos and terror that occurred that violent night in 1948. Wooden crates, still intact, were lashed down on every square foot of open deck. Her runnel was missing aft of the bridge, but could be seen where it had fallen beside the hull when the ship drove herself into the soft bottom.

“I'd give anything to see what's inside those packing boxes,” said Julia.

“Maybe we'll find one that's broken open,” said Pitt without taking his eyes off the screen.

The hull aft of the superstructure had been ruptured and spread open, the steel twisted and jagged from when she had broken up from the battering of the giant waves. The stem section was completely torn away when the ship plunged under the water. It was as if a giant had squeezed the ship apart and then tossed her broken pieces aside.

“Looks like mementos from the ship are scattered in a debris field that leads from one part of the wreck to the other,” observed Giordino.

“Can't be,” said Pitt. “Every nonessential piece was stripped off before she was to go to the scrappers. At the risk of sounding like an irrepressible optimist, I'm betting we're looking at an acre or more of fabulous works of art.”

On closer inspection the cameras on the MiniRover revealed a sea of wooden crates that had been spilled between the broken sections of the ship when she sank. Pitt's prediction was confirmed when the ROV soared over the debris field and honied in on a strange shape materializing out of the murk. They all stared astonished as a poignant artifact from the distant past slowly rose and met the camera lens. The walls of a large crate had burst open like petals of a rose, exposing a strange shape standing in eerie solitude.

“What is it?” queried Wilbanks.

“A bronze life-size horse and rider,” Pitt muttered in awe. “I'm not enough of an expert, but it must be the sculpture of an ancient Chinese emperor from the Han dynasty.”

“How old do you reckon it is?” asked Hall.

“Close to two thousand years.”

The effect of the horse and rider standing proud on the bottom was so profound, they all gazed solemnly at its image on the screen for the next two minutes without speaking. To Julia it was as if she had been carried back in time. The horse's head was turned slightly in the direction of the MiniRover, its nostrils flared. The rider sat stiffly upright, his sightless eyes staring into nothingness.

“The treasure,” whispered Julia. “It's everywhere.”

“Steer toward the stern,” Pitt said to Hall.

“I've got the tether at its maximum length now,” Hall replied. “Ralph will have to move the boat.”

Wilbanks nodded, measured the distance and direction on the computer, and moved the Divercity, dragging the Mini-Rover until it was sitting atop the detached stern section. Then Hall deftly steered the ROV past the ship's propellers, whose upper blades rose from the silt. The huge rudder was still set on a direct course ahead. The lettering across the stern could be distinctly seen to identify the vessel's home port as Shanghai. The story was the same—the bent and shredded hull plates, the disemboweled engines, the scattered art treasures.

Midnight came and went as the first humans to lay eyes on the Princess Dou Wan in fifty-two years studied the two broken hulks and their priceless cargo from every angle. When they finally decided that there was no more to see, Hall began reeling in the MiniRover.

No one tore his gaze away from the screen until long after the MiniRover ascended toward the surface and the Princess Dou Wan was lost to view in the black void. The ship was once again alone on the bottom of the lake, her only companion an unknown sailing ship that rested only a mile away. But the solitude was temporary. Soon men, ships and equipment would be probing her bones and removing the precious cargo she had carried so far across the world and jealously guarded through the years since she steamed from Shanghai.

The ill-fated voyage of the Princess Dou Wan had not ended, not quite yet. Her epilogue was still to be written,

HISTORIAN ZHU KWAN

SAT AT A DESK ON A STAGE IN THE middle of a huge office and studied reports gathered by an international army of researchers hired by Qin Shang. The Princess Dou Wan project took up half of one floor in the Qin Shang Maritime office building in Hong Kong. No expense was spared. And yet, despite the massive effort, nothing of substance had been found. To Zhu Kwan, the loss of the ship remained a mystery.

Zhu Kwan and his team scouted every maritime source for leads while Qin Shang's survey-and-salvage ship kept up its search of the waters off the coast of Chile for the elusive passenger liner. Built in his Hong Kong shipyard, the vessel was a marvel of undersea technology and the envy of every maritime nation's oceanographic science and research institutions. Named the Jade Adventurer rather than a Chinese name to make documentation simpler when operating in foreign waters, the ship and its crew had previously discovered the wreck of a sixteenth-century junk in the China Sea and salvaged its cargo of Ming-dynasty porcelain.

Zhu Kwan examined a description of works of art from a private collection of Chinese art owned by a wealthy merchant

in Peking that had disappeared in 1948. The merchant had been murdered, and Zhu Kwan had tracked down his heirs in what turned out to be a successful hunt for an inventory of the lost art. He was studying a drawing of a rare wine vessel when his assistant's voice came over the speakerphone.

“Sir, you have a call from the United States. A Mr. St. Julien Perlmutter.”

Zhu Kwan laid aside the drawing. “Please put him on.”

“Hello, Zhu Kwan, are you there?” came the jovial voice of Perlmutter.

“St. Julien. What an unexpected surprise. I am honored to hear from my old friend and colleague.”

“You'll be more than honored when you hear what I have to tell you.”

The Chinese historian was bewildered. “I am always happy to hear of your archival discoveries.”

“Tell me, Zhu Kwan, are you still interested in finding a ship called the Princess Dou Wan?”

Zhu Kwan sucked in his breath, a fear rising inside him. “You are also searching for her?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Perlmutter said carelessly. “I have no interest in the ship whatsoever. But while researching another lost ship, a missing Great Lakes car ferry, I ran across a document by a ship's engineer, since deceased, that told of a harrowing experience while he served on board the Princess Dou Wan.”

“You found a survivor?” asked Zhu Kwan, unable to believe his luck.

“His name is lan Gallagher. His friends called him 'Hong Kong.' He was the chief engineer on the Princess when she went down.”

“Yes, yes, I have a file on him.”

“Gallagher was the only survivor. He never went back to China for obvious reasons and dropped out of sight in the United States.”

“The Princess,” gasped Zhu Kwan, unable to contain his growing expectation. “Did Gallagher give an approximate position off Chile where the ship sank?”

“Brace yourself, my Oriental friend,” said Perlmutter. “The Princess Dou Wan did not go to the bottom of the South Pacific.”

“But her final distress call?” muttered a confused Zhu Kwan.

“She lies under Lake Michigan in North America.”

“Impossible!” Zhu Kwan gasped.

“Believe me, it's true. The distress signal was a fake. The captain and crew, under the direction of a General Kung Hui, altered the name to that of her sister ship, the Princess Yung Tai. Then they sailed through the Panama Canal up the East Coast of the United States and down the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes. She was overtaken by a horrendous storm and went down two hundred miles north of Chicago, her ultimate destination.”

“This is incredible. Are you sure of your facts?”

“I'll fax you Gallagher's report of the voyage and sinking.”

A sick feeling began to spread in the pit of Zhu Kwan's stomach. “Did Gallagher make mention of the ship's cargo?”

“He made only one reference,” replied Perlmutter. “Gallagher said that General Hui told him the numerous wooden cases and crates loaded on board in Shanghai were filled with personal furnishings and clothes of high-ranking Nationalist Chinese officials and military leaders who were fleeing mainland China ahead of the Communists.”

A wave of great relief settled over Zhu Kwan. The secret appeared safe. “Then it seems the rumors of a great treasure are not true. There was no cargo of great value on board the Princess Dou Wan.”

“Perhaps some jewelry, but certainly nothing that would excite a professional salvage hunter. The only artifacts that will ever be retrieved will probably surface in the hands of local sport divers.”

“Have you given out this information to anyone besides me?” asked Zhu Kwan warily.

“Not a soul,” Perlmutter answered. “You're the only one I know who had any interest in the wreck.”

“I would be grateful to you, St. Julien, if you did not reveal your discovery. At least not for the next few months.”

“From this moment on, I promise not to disclose a word.”

“Also, as a personal favor—”

“You have but to name it.”

“Please do not fax Gallagher's report. I think it would be better if you sent it by private courier. I will, of course, take care of any expense.”

“Whatever you wish,” said Perlmutter agreeably. “I'll hire the services of a courier the minute I lay down the phone.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Zhu Kwan said sincerely. “You have done me a great service. Though the Princess Dou Wan is of no great historical or economic value, it has been a mosquito in my ear for many years.”

“Believe me, I've been there. Some lost shipwrecks, no matter how insignificant, captivate and consume a researcher's imagination. They're never forgotten until answers behind their disappearance are finally found.”

“Thank you, St. Julien, thank you.”

“My best wishes to you, Zhu Kwan. Good-bye.”

The Chinese historian could not believe his luck. What had seemed an impossible enigma only minutes ago had suddenly been solved and dropped in his lap. Though exhilarated, he decided to put off informing Qin Shang until the courier arrived with lan Gallagher's narrative of the final moments of the Princess Dou Wan and he had an hour or two to study it.

Qin Shang would be highly pleased to learn that the fabulous art treasure stolen from the country had been lying safe and preserved in the fresh water of a lake all these years and was now within reach. Zhu Kwan fervently hoped that he would live long enough to see the artifacts on display in a national gallery and museum.

“You do nice work, St. Julien,” said Sandecker as Perlmutter put down the phone. “You missed your calling as a used-car salesman.”

“Or a politician running for election,” Giordino muttered.

“I feel like a low-down skunk, misleading that nice old man,” said Perlmutter. He paused and looked around Sandeck-er's office at the four NUMA men seated around him. “Zhu Kwan and I go back many years. We've always had the highest respect for each other. I hated lying to him.”

“Fair is fair,” said Pitt. “He conned you, too. All this time he's claimed his only interest in the Princess Dou Wan was strictly academic. He knows damned well the ship sank with a fantastic fortune in art on board. A fax line can be eavesdropped on. Why else would he insist you send Gallagher's story by courier? You can bet he's itching to give the news to j Qin Shang.” j

Perlmutter shook his head. “Zhu Kwan is a hard-nosed scholar. He won't make any announcement to his boss until he's analyzed the document.” He looked into the other faces one by one. “Out of curiosity, who did write the report I'm sending him?”

Rudi Gunn raised his hand almost sheepishly. “I volunteered for the chore. And a rather good job, if I may say so. Naturally, I took writer's liberty with the text. A footnote makes mention of lan Gallagher's death from a heart attack in nineteen ninety-two. So he and Katie's tracks are covered.”

Sandecker looked at his special projects director. “Will we have enough time to properly bring up the art treasures before Qin Shang's salvage ship arrives?”

Pitt shrugged. “Not if the Ocean Retriever is the only ship working the wreck.”

“Not to worry,” said Gunn. “We've already chartered two more salvage vessels. One is from a private company in Montreal and the other is on loan from the U.S. Navy.”

“Speed is essential,” said Sandecker. “I want the treasure raised before word leaks out. I want no interference from any quarter, including our own government.”

“And when the salvage work is completed?” inquired Perlmutter.

“Then the artifacts will be quickly turned over to facilities equipped to preserve them from damage after so many years of immersion. At that time we'll announce the discovery and stand back while the bureaucrats from Washington and Beijing fight over it.”

“And Qin Shang?” Perlmutter probed deeper. “What happens when he shows up on site with his own salvage ship?”

Pitt grinned deviously. “We'll give him a reception fitting for a man of his sterling qualities.”

THE OCEAN RETRIEVER, WITH PITT, GIORDINO, GUNN AND Julia on board, was the first to arrive and position herself over the wreck of the Princess Dou Wan. The Canadian salvage ship from Deep Abyss Systems Limited out of Montreal, Hudson Bay, arrived only four hours later. She was an older vessel converted from a powerful oceangoing salvage and tugboat. Aided by clear weather and smooth water, the salvage of the art treasures commenced immediately.

The underwater part of the project was handled by submers-ibles using articulated arms in cooperation with divers encased in deep-water atmospheric diving systems called Newtsuits that were similar in appearance to the Michelin tire man. Bulbous, constructed of fiberglass and magnesium, and self-propelled, the suit enabled a diver inside to work for long periods of time at the four-hundred-foot-plus depth without concern over decompression.

The artifacts were beginning to come up systematically and with rapid regularity once a routine was established. The operation continued at an even more rapid pace when the U.S. Navy salvage vessel Dean Hawes came charging down from the north end of the lake two days earlier than expected and took up station beside the other two ships. She was considered new, only two years from her launch date, and was constructed especially for deep-water work, the recovery of submarines in particular.

An immense open barge with long ballast tanks attached along its hull was parked in place by use of the global positioning system and sunk, falling to the lake bed a short distance from the forward section of the Princess Dou Wan. Then crane operators, working from the ships on the surface and employing underwater cameras, manipulated the clamshell claws on the end of their winch cables, deftly recovering the crates exposed on the outer decks of the ship, those deep inside the cargo holds and the artifacts littering the bottom between the two sections of the broken hull. The crates, together with their contents, were then lifted onto the sunken barge. When it was fully loaded, the ballast tanks were filled with pressurized air and the barge rose to the surface. A tugboat then took it in tow for the trip to the Port of Chicago, where it was met by a team of NUMA archaeologists who took charge of the art treasures. They very carefully removed them from the waterlogged packing cases and immediately immersed them in temporary conservation tanks until they could be transported to a more permanent preservation facility.

No sooner was one fully loaded barge towed off site than another one was maneuvered into position and sunk, repeating the process.

Six submersibles, three owned by NUMA, one by the Canadians and two by the Navy worked in harmony, meticulously lifting the crates with their invaluable contents into the specially designed cargo compartment of the sunken barge.

To facilitate the removal of the artwork from inside the hull, the divers in the Newtsuits cut through the steel plates with state-of-the-art torch systems that melted metal underwater at an incredible rate. Once an opening was made, the submersibles moved in and lifted out the treasures, aided by the clamshell claws from the cranes on the surface.

The entire operation was observed and directed from a control room on board the Ocean Retriever. Video screens linked to cameras set at strategic locations around the wreck revealed every stage of the recovery project. The high-resolution video systems were carefully monitored by Pitt and Gunn, who managed the intricate deployment of men and equipment. They worked twelve-hour shifts, as did the crews of all three vessels. The around-the-clock project never stopped bringing up the seemingly endless mountain of artifacts on the bottom below. Pitt would have given his right arm to have worked on the wreck in one of the submersibles or Newtsuits, but as project director his experience was required to coordinate and guide the operation from the surface. He watched one of the monitors with envy as it showed Giordino being lifted into the Sappho TV submersible, broken leg and all. Giordino had over seven hundred hours in submersibles, and the one he was piloting was his favorite. On this shift, the wily little Italian planned to take his sub deep into the Princess Dou Wan's superstructure after the bulkheads were cut away by the divers inside the Newtsuits.

Pitt turned as Rudi Gunn stepped into the control room. The early sun flashed through the doorway, momentarily illuminating the compartment, which had no ports or windows. “You here already? I'd swear you just walked out.”

“It's that time,” Gunn answered, smiling. He was carrying a large, rolled mosaic photograph under one arm that had been shot above the wreck before the start of the salvage operation. The mosaic was invaluable in detecting artifacts that had been scattered in the debris field and for directing the submersibles and divers to different sections of the wreck. “How do we stand?” he asked.

“The barge has been filled and is on its way to the surface,” replied Pitt, his nose catching the smell of coffee from the galley and yearning for a cup.

“I never cease to be amazed by the sheer numbers of it all,” said Gunn, taking his place in front of the communications console and array of video screens.

“The Princess Dou Wan was incredibly overloaded,” said Pitt. “It's no small wonder she broke up and sank in heavy weather.”

“How close are we to wrapping it up?” “Most all the loose packing crates have been recovered from the lake bed. The stern section is about cleaned out. The cargo holds should be emptied before the end of the next shift. Now it's down to ferreting out all the smaller cases that were stowed in the passageways and staterooms in the center part of the ship. The deeper they penetrate, the more difficult it is for the men in the Newtsuits to cut through the bulkheads.”

“Any word on when Qin Shang's salvage ship is due to arrive?” Gunn asked.

“The Jade Adventurer?” Pitt looked down on a chart of the Great Lakes spread out on a table. “At last report she passed Quebec on her way down the St. Lawrence.”

“That should put her here in a little under three days.”

“She didn't waste any time coming off her search operation off Chile. She was on her way north less than an hour after Zhu Kwan received your phony report from Perlmutter.”

“It's going to be close,” said Gunn as he watched a sub-mersible's articulated fingers delicately pick up a porcelain vase protruding from the muck. “We'll be lucky to finish up and get out of the neighborhood before the Jade Adventurer and our friend come charging onto the scene.”

“We've been lucky Qin Shang didn't send any of his agents ahead to scout out the environment.”

“The Coast Guard cutter that patrols our search area has yet to report an encounter with a suspicious vessel.”

“When I came on my shift last night, Al said a reporter from a local newspaper somehow got a call through to the Ocean Retriever. Al strung him along when the reporter asked what we were doing out here.”

“What did Al tell him?”

“He said we were drilling cores in the bottom of the lake, looking for signs of dinosaurs.”

“And the reporter bought it?” Gunn asked skeptically.

“Probably not, but he got excited when Al promised to bring him on board over the weekend.”

Gunn looked puzzled. “But we should be gone by then.”

“You get the picture,” Pitt laughed.

“We should consider ourselves lucky that rumors of treasure haven't brought out swarms of salvors.”

“They come as soon as they get the word and rush out to pick over the scraps.”

Julia came into the control room balancing a tray on one hand. “Breakfast,” she announced gaily. “Isn't it a beautiful morning?”

Pitt rubbed the stubble of a beard on his chin. “I hadn't noticed.”

“What are you so happy about?” Gunn asked her.

“I just received a message from Peter Harper. Qin Shang came off a Japanese airliner at the Quebec airport disguised as a crew member. The Canadian Royal Mounted Police followed him to the waterfront, where he boarded a small boat and rendezvoused with the Jade Adventurer.”

“Hallelujah!” exclaimed Gunn. “He took the bait.” “Hook, line and sinker,” said Julia, flashing her teeth. She set the tray on the chart table and removed a tablecloth, revealing plates of eggs and bacon, toast, grapefruit and coffee.

“That is good news,” said Pitt, pulling a chair up to the table without being told. “Did Harper say when he plans to take Qin Shang into custody?”

“He's meeting with the INS legal staff to formulate a plan. I must tell you, there is great fear the State Department and White House may intervene.” “I was afraid of that,” said Gunn.

“Peter and Commissioner Monroe are very afraid Qin Shang will slip through the net because of his political connections.” “Why not board the Jade Adventurer and haul his ass off now?” Gunn asked.

“We can't legally apprehend him if his ship skirts the Canadian shoreline while sailing through Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron,” explained Julia. “Only after the Jade Adventurer has passed through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Michigan will Qin Shang be on American waters.”

Pitt slowly ate his grapefruit. “I'd like to see his face when his crew lays a camera on the Princess and finds her guts ripped out and her cupboards bare.”

“Did you know that he's filed a claim on the ship and its cargo through one of his subsidiary corporations in state and federal district courts?”

“No,” said Pitt. “But I'm not surprised. That's the way he operates.”

Gunn rapped a knife on the table. “If any of us were to stake a claim on a treasure ship through legal channels, we'd be laughed out onto the street. And whatever artifacts we found would have to be turned over to the government.”

“People who search for treasure,” Pitt said philosophically, “believe their problems are over when they make the big strike, never realizing their troubles are only beginning.”

“How true,” Gunn assented. “I've yet to hear of a treasure discovery that wasn't contested in court by a parasite or government bureaucrat.”

Julia shrugged. “Maybe so, but Qin Shang has too much influence to have the door slammed in his face. If anything, he's bought off all opposition.”

Pitt looked at her as though his fatigued mind had suddenly thought of something. “Aren't you eating?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I had a bite in the galley earlier.”

The ship's first officer leaned in the doorway and motioned to Pitt. “The barge has surfaced, sir. You said you wanted to take a look at her payload before she was towed away.”

“Yes, thank you,” Pitt acknowledged. He turned back to Gunn. “She's all yours, Rudi. I'll see you, same time, same place tomorrow.”

Gunn waved without taking his eyes from the monitors. “Sleep tight.”

Julia hung on Pitt's arm as they stepped out onto the bridge wing and gazed down at the big barge that had risen from the depths. The interior cargo hold was filled with crates of all sizes containing incredible treasures from China's past. All had been neatly spaced by the cranes and submersibles. In a divided compartment with extra-thick padding, the artworks whose packing crates had been either damaged or destroyed sat open and exposed. Some were musical instruments—tuned chimes of stone, bronze bells and drums. There was a three-legged cooking stove with a hideous face molded on the door, large jade ceremonial carvings of half-size men, women and children, and animal sculptures in marble.

“Oh, look,” she said, pointing. “They brought up the emperor on the horse.”

Standing under the sun for the first time in over half a century, the water glistening on the bronze armor of the rider and streaming from his horse, the two-thousand-year-old sculpture looked little the worse for wear than the day it came out of the mold. The unknown emperor now stared over a limitless horizon, as if in search of new lands to conquer.

“It's all so incredibly beautiful,” said Julia, staring at the ancient wonder. Then she gestured at the other crates, their contents still hidden. “I'm amazed the wooden containers did not rot away after being submerged all these years.”

“General Hui was a thorough man,” Pitt said. “Not only did he insist that the crates be built with an outer wall and an inner lining, he specified teak instead of a more common wood. It was probably transported to Shanghai from Burma by freighter for use in the shipyards. Hui knew that teak is extraordinarily strong and durable, and he undoubtedly seized the shipment to construct the crates. What he couldn't have predicted at the time was that his foresight paid off in protecting the treasures for the fifty years they were resting underwater.”

Julia raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun on the water. “A pity he couldn't have made them watertight. The lacquerware, wooden carvings and paintings cannot have survived without some damage or disintegration.”

“The archaeologists will know soon enough. Hopefully, the icy, fresh water will have preserved many of the more delicate objects.”

As the tugboat maneuvered into position to tow the barge to the receiving dock in Chicago, a crewman stepped from the wheelhouse with a paper in his hand. “Another message for you, Ms. Lee, from Washington.”

“Must be another message from Peter,” she said, taking the communication. She studied the wording for a long time, her facial expression turning from surprise to utter frustration to downright anger. “Oh, good God,” she muttered. “What is it?”

Julia held out the message to Pitt. “The INS operation to apprehend Qin Shang has been called off by order of the White House. We are not to molest or harass him in any way. Any and all treasure recovered from the Princess Dou Wan is to be turned over to Qin Shang as acting representative of the Chinese government.”

“That's crazy,” Pitt said wearily, too tired to display outrage. “The man is a proven mass murderer. Give him the treasure? The President must have a brain hemorrhage.”

“I've never felt so helpless in my life,” Julia said, furious. Suddenly, unpredictably, Pitt's lips spread in a crazy grin. “I wouldn't take it too badly if I were you. There's always a bright side.”

She stared at him as if he was certifiably insane. “What are you talking about? Where do you see a bright side in allowing that scum to roam free and steal the art masterpieces for himself?”

“The orders from the White House definitely state that the INS is not to molest or harass Qin Shang.” “So?” “The orders,” Pitt said, still grinning but with a hard edge to his voice, “make no mention of what NUMA can or cannot do—”

He broke off as Gunn ran excitedly from the control room onto the bridge wing. “Al thinks he's got them,” the words rushed out. “He's coming to the surface now and wants to know how you want them handled.”

“Very carefully,” said Pitt. “Tell him to rise slowly and maintain a good grip. When he surfaces, we'll lift the Sappho IV aboard with them.”

“Who is them?” asked Julia.

Pitt gave her a quick glance before he rushed down a ladder to the submersible recovery deck. “The bones of Peking man, that's who.”

Word quickly spread throughout the salvage fleet, and the Ocean Retriever's crew began assembling on the stern work deck. The crews of the other vessels crowded their railings, watching the activity aboard the NUMA ship. There was a strange silence as the turquoise Sappho TV broke the surface and rolled slightly from the low waves of the lake. Divers waited in the water to attach the crane's cable hook to the lifting ring on top of the submersible. Every eye was on the large wire-mesh basket between the twin articulated arms. Two wooden boxes sat in the basket. They all held their breath as the submersible was slowly lifted from the lake. The crane operator used great caution in swinging the underwater craft over the stern before lowering it gently into its cradle.

The crowd on deck gathered around the sub as the ship's archaeologist directed the unloading of the crates on the deck. While the archaeologist, a blond lady in her forties by the name of Pat O'Connell, was engaged in exposing the interior of the crates, Giordino threw back the hatch from inside the submersible and pushed his head and shoulders into the open air.

“Where did you find them?” Pitt shouted up at him.

“Using a diagram of the deck plans I managed to force entry into the captain's cabin.”

“The location sounds right,” said Gunn, peering through his eyeglasses.

With the help of four eager pairs of hands, archaeologist O'Connell pried off the top of the crate and peered inside. “Oh my, oh me, oh my,” she muttered in awe.

“What is it?” Pitt demanded. “What do you see?”

“Military footlockers with U.S.M.C. stenciled on the top.”

“Well, don't stand there. Open it up.”

“It really should be opened in a laboratory,” O'Connell protested. “Proper methodology, you know.”

“No!” Pitt said flatly. “Proper methodology be damned. These people worked long and hard. And by God they deserve to see the fruits of their labor. Open the footlocker.”

Seeing that Pitt was not to be denied, and glancing at the sea of faces around her reflecting expressions of hostility, O'Connell knelt down and began working open the latch on the front of the footlocker with a small crowbar. The wall around the latch quickly fell away as if it were made of clay, and she lifted the lid open very, very slowly.

Inside the footlocker the upper tray held several objects neatly wrapped in sodden gauze and exactingly placed in little individual compartments. As if she was unwrapping the Holy Grail, O'Connell delicately removed the covering from the largest object. When the last piece of gauze fell away, she held up what looked like a yellow-brown circular bowl.

“A skullcap,” she said in a hushed voice, “from Peking man.”

THE CAPTAIN OF THE JADE ADVENTURER, CHEN JlANG, HAD served Qin Shang Maritime Limited for twenty of his thirty years at sea. Tall and thin with straight white hair, he was quiet and efficient in the operation of his ship. He forced back a smile and spoke to bis employer.

“There is your ship, Qin Shang.”

“I can't believe after all these years I'm seeing her at last,” said Qin Shang, his eyes locked on the video monitor receiving images from an ROV that was moving over the sunken wreck.

“We are very lucky the depth is only four hundred and thirty feet. If the ship had, indeed, foundered off the coast of Chile, we'd have found ourselves working in ten thousand feet.”

“It appears the hull is separated in two parts.”

“Not unusual for ships caught in storms on the Great Lakes to break up,” explained Chen Jiang. “The Edmund Fitzgerald, a legendary ore carrier, was twisted apart when she sank.”

During the search, Qin Shang had paced the deck of the wheelhouse restlessly. He appeared impassive to the captain and officers of the ship, but beneath the cold exterior, his adrenaline was pumping madly. Qin Shang was not a patient man. He hated doing nothing but waiting while the ship swept back and forth before finally striking the wreck he hoped was the Princess Dou Wan. The tedious search was a torment he could have happily done without.

The Jade Adventurer did not look like the usual businesslike survey-and-salvage ship. Her sleek superstructure and twin catamaran hulls gave her more the look of an expensive yacht. Only the stylized, contemporary A-frame crane on her stern suggested that she was anything but a pleasure cruiser. Her hulls were painted blue with a red stripe running around the leading edges. The upperworks gleamed white.

A big ship with a length of 325 feet, elegant and brutishly powered, she was a marvel of engineering, loaded from the keel with the latest and most sophisticated equipment and instrumentation. She was Qin Shang's pride and joy, expressly designed and constructed to his specifications for this moment, the salvage of the Princess Dou Wan.

The ship had arrived on site early in the morning, relying on the approximate position Zhu Kwan had received from St. Julien Perlmutter. Qin Shang was relieved to see only two ships within twenty miles. One was an ore carrier heading toward Chicago, the other Chen Jiang identified as a research vessel only three miles away, showing her starboard broadside as she moved on an opposite course with uncommon lethargy.

Using the same basic techniques and equipment as Pitt and the crew of the Divercity, the Jade Adventurer was only in the third hour of the search when the sonar operator announced a target. After four more passes to improve the quality of the recording, the sonar operator could safely say they had a ship on the bottom that, although broken up, matched the dimensions of the Princess Dou Wan. Then a Chinese-manufactured ROV was lowered over the side and descended to the wreck.

After another hour of passionately staring at the monitor, Qin Shang snapped angrily. “This cannot be the Princess Dou Wan! Where is her cargo? I see nothing that confirms the report of wooden crates protecting the art treasures.”

“Odd,” murmured Chen Jiang. “The steel plates of the hull and superstructure look scattered around the wreck. It looks as if the ship was burst apart.”

Qin Shang's face went pale. “This wreck cannot be the Princess Dou Wan,” he repeated.

“Move the ROV around the stern,” Chen Jiang ordered the operator.

In a few minutes the little underwater prowler stopped and the operator zoomed the camera in on the lettering across the stern of the hulk. There was no mistaking the name,

PRINCESS YUNG T'AI, SHANGHAI.

“It is my ship!” Qin Shang's eyes were stricken as he stared into the monitor.

“Could it have been salvaged without your knowledge?” asked Chen Jiang.

“Not possible. No treasure that immense could have remained hidden all these years. Pieces of it would have most certainly surfaced.”

“Shall I order the crew to prepare the submersible?”

“Yes, yes,” Qin Shang said anxiously. “I must have a closer look.”

Qin Shang hired his own engineers to design the submersible he named Sea Lotus. She was built at a company in France that specialized in deep-undersea vehicles. He had watched over every aspect of her construction. Unlike most submersibles, where the requirements of the equipment came before the comfort of the crew, the Sea Lotus was built more like an office than a Spartan chamber for scientific study. She was a pleasure craft to Qin Shang. He trained himself in her operation and often piloted her around the Hong Kong harbor shortly after she was built, making suggestions for modifications to suit his personal demands.

He also ordered a second submersible built, called Sea Jasmine. Her purpose was to act as backup in case Sea Lotus suffered mechanical problems while on the seabed.

An hour later, Shang's private submersible was rolled out of her compartment onto the stern of the salvage vessel and stationed beneath the modernistic A-frame that would lift her out and into the water. When all systems were checked, the copilot stood at the hatch, waiting for Qin Shang to enter.

“I will pilot the craft alone,” he said imperiously.

Captain Chen Jiang looked up at him from the deck. “Do you think that wise, sir? You are unfamiliar with these waters.”

“I am quite familiar with the operation of the Sea Lotus. You forget, Captain, I created her. I will go down alone. It is for me to be the first to see the treasures stolen from our country all these years. I have dreamed too long of this moment to share it.”

Chen Jiang shrugged and said nothing. He merely nodded for the submersible's copilot to stand aside as Qin Shang descended the ladder down through the tower that prevented rough water from cascading into the open hatch leading to the control and pressure chamber. He pulled the hatch closed and sealed it, then turned on the life-support systems.

Diving to 430 feet was child's play for a vessel built to withstand the immense squeeze that water exerted at depths of 25,000 feet. He sat in a comfortable chair of his own design, facing the control console and a large viewing window on the bow of the submersible.

Sea Lotus was swung out over the water by the A-frame away from the ship's fantail, where she hung for a few moments until her rocking motion ceased. Then she was lowered into Lake Michigan. Divers released the lift hook and made a final check of the exterior before Qin Shang took her into the frigid depths.

“You are free of the lift line and cleared to descend,” Chen Jiang's voice came over the communications speaker.

“Flooding ballast tanks,” Qin Shang replied.

Chen Jiang was too experienced an officer to allow his employer to override his responsibilities as captain of the Jade Adventurer. He turned to an officer and issued an order unheard by Qin Shang. “Have the Sea Jasmine prepared to launch as a safety precaution.”

“Do you expect trouble, sir?”

“No, but we cannot allow harm to come to Qin Shang.”

The Sea Lotus quickly slipped out of sight beneath the waves and began her slow fall to the bottom of the lake. Qin Shang stared through the viewing window into the dark green water as it magically went black and he saw his reflection inside the pressure chamber. His eyes were cold, his mouth was in a tight line, unsmiling. Within the brief span of an hour he had gone from a man of supreme confidence to someone who looked sick and tired and baffled. He did not like what he saw in the nebulous face staring back at him, seemingly outside in the depths. For the only time in his life that he could remember, he felt a growing surge of anxiety. The treasures had to be somewhere inside the broken hulks, he told himself over and over as the submersible sank ever deeper into the cold waters of the lake. They had to be. It was inconceivable that someone had come before.

The descent took less than ten minutes, but to Qin Shang the seconds passed like hours. He gazed into pure blackness before switching on the exterior lights. It was also becoming cold inside the chamber, and he set a small heating unit to seventy degrees. The echo sounder indicated the bottom was coming up fast. He allowed a small amount of pressurized air to flow into the ballast tanks to slow his descent. On deep-water dives beyond one thousand feet, he would have dropped weights attached to the keel of the submersible.

The flat, barren lake bed emerged under the lights. He adjusted the ballast and stopped five feet from the bottom. Then Qin Shang turned on the electric thrusters and began banking in a wide circle. “I am on the bottom,” he called to his support crew above. “Can you see where I am in relation to the wreck?”

“The sonar shows you only forty yards west of the starboard side of the main wreckage,” Jiang answered.

Qin Shang's heartbeat raced in anticipation. He banked the Sea Lotus until it was moving parallel to the hull, and then brought the sub upward until it passed over the railing along the edge of the forward cargo deck. He saw the cranes looming out of the black void and banked to miss them. Now he was over one of the cargo holds. Hovering the submersible and tilting its stern upward so the lights beamed down, his eyes strained into the darkness as he stared into the gaping cavern.

With indescribable dread, he saw that it was empty.

Then something moved in the shadows. At first he merely thought it was a fish, but then it moved up from the black of the cargo hold and materialized into an unspeakable monstrosity, an apparition that belonged in another world. Slowly it rose, as if levitated in air, like some hideous creature from the murky abyss, and moved toward the submersible.

On the surface, Captain Chen Jiang stared with mounting apprehension as the research vessel he'd sighted earlier had turned on a ninety-degree course and was now facing the Jade Adventurer. Abruptly presenting its bows after having showed its starboard broadside, the research vessel now revealed a United States Coast Guard cutter that it had shielded from view. Now both vessels were traveling at full speed directly toward the Chinese salvage ship.

QIN SHANG LOOKED LIKE A MAN WHO HAD SEEN THE DEEPEST pit in hell and wanted no part of it. His face was as white and rigid as hardened putty. Sweat streamed from his forehead, his eyes glazed with shock. For a man totally in control of his emotions during his entire life, he was suddenly paralyzed. He stared awestruck at the face inside the bubble-shaped head of the yellow and black monster as it broke into a ghastly grin. And then he recognized the familiar features.

“Pitt!” he gasped in a rasping whisper.

“Yes, it's me,” Pitt answered over his underwater communications system inside the Newtsuit. “You do hear me, don't you, Qin Shang?”

The trauma of disbelief, then revulsion at who the apparition was, released a flow of venom in Qin Shang's veins as shock turned into crazed wrath. “I hear you,” he said slowly, his thoughts coming back under his iron control. He did not demand to know where Pitt came from or what he was doing here. There was only one question in Qin Shang's mind.

“Where is the treasure?”

“Treasure,” Pitt said, his face taking on a witless expression behind the transparent bubble on the globular helmet of the Newtsuit. “I ain't got no treasure.”

“What has happened to it?” Qin Shang demanded, his eyes sick with the cold realization of defeat. “What have you done with the historical masterworks of my country?”

“Put it all in a place where it's safe from scum like you who want it all to themselves.”

“How?” he asked simply.

“With much luck and many good people,” Pitt said impassively. “After my researcher discovered a survivor who pointed the way, I put together a salvage project combining NUMA, the U.S. Navy and the Canadians. Together, they completed the salvage in ten days before leaking the Princess Dou Wan's position to your researcher. I believe his name is Zhu Kwan. Then it was merely a matter of sitting back and waiting for you to show up. I knew you were obsessed by the treasure, Qin Shang. I read you like a book. Now it's payoff time. By coming back into the U.S. you've forfeited any chance you had of a long life. Unfortunately, because there is a great lack of ethics and morality in the world these days, your money and political influence has undoubtedly kept you out of prison. But the final entry in your ledger, Qin Shang, is that you are going to die. You are going to die as retribution for all those innocent people you murdered.”

“You create amusing plots, Pitt.” There was a sneer in Qin Shang's voice, but it was contradicted by a deep uneasiness in his eyes. “And who is going to see that I die?”

“I've been waiting for you,” Pitt said, hate mirrored in his green eyes. “There was never a doubt that you would come and come alone.”

“Are you quite finished? Or do you wish to bore me to death?”

Qin Shang knew his life was hanging by a thread, but he had yet to figure by what means he was supposed to die. Although Pitt's casualness made him uncomfortable, all fear was slowly replaced by an inner self-defense mechanism. His conspiring mind began to concentrate on a plan to save himself. His hopes rose when he comprehended that Pitt had no support from a surface ship. A diver inside a Newtsuit did not make descents and ascents without an umbilical cable. He had to be lowered and raised by winch from a mother ship on the surface. The cable also served as a communications link. Pitt was breathing self-contained air that could not last much longer than an hour.

Without life support on the surface, Pitt was on borrowed time and totally defenseless.

“You're not as clever as you think,” Qin Shang said, a faint pallor on his face. “From my side of the viewing port, it looks like you are the one who is going to die, Mr. Pitt. Your ingenious diving apparatus against my submersible? You stand about as much chance as a sloth against a bear.” “I'm willing to give it a try.” “Where is your support ship?”

“I don't need one,” Pitt said with unnerving nonchalance. “I walked from shore.”

“You are very humorous for a man who will never see the sun again.”

As Qin Shang spoke, his hands moved furtively toward the controls of the submersible's manipulator arms and their claws. “I can either drop my weights and float to the surface, leaving you alone to your fate. Or, I can call my crew and order them to send down my backup submersible.”

“Not fair. That would make it two bears against one sloth.”

The man's imperturbable composure is inhuman, thought Qin Shang. Something is not as it seems. “You act sure of yourself,” he said, as he measured his options.

Pitt raised one of the Newtsuit's manipulator arms and displayed a small, watertight box with an antenna. “In case you're wondering why you haven't heard from your friends topside, this little device scrambles all communications within five hundred feet.”

That explained why he had received no calls from the Jade Adventurer. But that piece of news did nothing to deter Qin Shang's determination to wreak punishment on Pitt.

“You have meddled in my affairs for the last time.” Qin Shang's fingers slowly curled around the throttle of the thrust-ers and the manipulator controls. “I can not waste another minute with you. I must seek out where you've hidden the treasure. Farewell, Mr. Pitt. I'm dropping my ballast weights and returning to the surface.”

Pitt knew full well what was coming. Even through the murky water that separated them, he detected the sudden shift in Qin Shang's eyes. He threw up his manipulator arms to protect his vulnerable bubble mask and reversed the two small motors mounted on each side of the Newtsuit's waist. His reaction came at almost the same instant as the submersible lurched forward.

It was a battle Pitt could not win. One second the Sea Lotus was hovering level, the next it was relentlessly coming toward him. His much smaller manipulator pincers were no match for the larger claws on the arms of the submersible. Qin Shang's vehicle could also move at twice the speed of the Newtsuit. If the submersible's mechanical claws cut through the Newtsuit, it would be all over.

Pitt could do nothing but helplessly watch as the big ugly manipulator arms spread in preparation of encircling him in a death grip, squeezing until the integrity of the Newtsuit was gashed open to the water waiting to rush inside. When that happened, Pitt would die an agonizing death.

He had no wish to wait for the water to gush down his open throat into his lungs. The burst of sudden pressure alone would make his final moments unbearable. He had come close to drowning on at least two occasions, and he had no desire to repeat the events. Tormented, struggling and dying with no one near him to see except his most vicious enemy was not what Pitt had in mind.

Pitt longed to drive the Newtsuit forward, using his own manipulator pincers to smash Qin Shang's viewing window of the submersible, but they were too short and would have easily been knocked away by the arms on the submersible. Also, an aggressive attack was not part of his plan. He looked into the twin jaws of death, saw the evil leer on Qin Shang's face and maneuvered his cumbersome pressure suit backward in a losing effort to stall for time.

Directing the articulated joints of the Newtsuit, he leaned over and used the manipulator pincers to pick up a short length of pipe that was lying on the deck. Then he swung the pipe to ward off the deadly arms of the submersible. It was almost a laughable gesture. Qin Shang guided his claws toward Pitt from two sides. Almost as if he was snatching candy from a baby, he seized the pipe and tore it from the Newtsuit's pincers. If spectators could have seen the fight through the murk, it would have looked like a ballet between two huge animals in slow motion. All movement at that depth was hindered by the surrounding water pressure.

Then Pitt felt the Newtsuit come to an abrupt halt as he backed it against the forward bulkhead of the Princess Dou Wart's superstructure. Now there was no room to escape the onslaught. The uneven fight had only lasted eight or nine minutes. Pitt could see the satanic grin on Qin Shang's face as his sadistic opponent closed in for the kill.

Then, unexpectedly, without warning, a vague shape came gliding silently out of the gloom like a great incarnate vulture. Stretched prone inside a submersible with the configuration of a small airplane with stubby wings and a tail assembly, Giordino angled the Sappho TV from above and dropped behind the Sea Lotus. With grim concentration he operated the controls to a viselike talon that protruded from beneath the craft. Clutched in the talon was a small round ball less than three inches in diameter that was attached to a small suction device. Completely oblivious, Qin Shang's attention was focused on murdering Pitt. Then Giordino pressed the ball and suction device against the pressure hull of the Sea Lotus until it adhered. After that he tilted the Sappho TVs bow sharply upward and banked away, quickly disappearing into the watery void.

Twenty seconds later a sharp thump sounded through the water. At first Qin Shang was mystified as he felt the Sea Lotus shudder. Too late he realized that Pitt's brave defiance against overwhelming odds was a diversion for an attack from another source. And then he watched in growing horror as a spiderweb of tiny fractures spread across the upper wall of the pressure chamber. Suddenly water burst inside as if shot from a small cannon. The pressure chamber maintained its integrity and did not implode, but the incoming flood spelled its doom.

Qin Shang froze in cold fright as the water rose higher and higher, rapidly filling the small interior of the submersible. He frantically switched on the pumps to drain the ballast tanks and hit the lever to drop the heavy weights beneath the keel. The Sea Lotus sluggishly ascended for several feet and then hung there as the flooding water neutralized its buoyancy. Then it slowly began to fall, settling into the bottom and throwing up a thin cloud of silt.

Now in mindless panic, Qin Shang desperately tried to open the outer hatch in an insane attempt to reach the surface 430 feet above, an impossible gesture because of the immense water pressure outside.

Pitt moved the Newtsuit through the cloud of silt and gazed through the submersible's viewing window, remembering the sight of the bodies strewn in the depths of Orion Lake as the Chinese arch-criminal pulled himself up into a rapidly compressing air pocket for one last breath before the icy water of the lake filled his nose and open, screaming mouth. The screams were soon choked off until the only sound coming from the Sea Lotus was the gurgling of escaping bubbles. Then, as if set on a timer, the halogen lights blinked out, throwing the submersible into total darkness.

Pitt was sweating heavily inside the Newtsuit. He stood on the bottom, staring with grim satisfaction at the underwater tomb of Qin Shang. The billionaire shipping magnate, who had dominated and exploited and slain thousands of innocent people, would spend eternity in the deep next to the empty treasure ship that had obsessed most of his waking life. It was a fitting end, Pitt thought without the slightest sense of pity.

He glanced up as Giordino reappeared in the Sappho IV. “You took your sweet time. I might have been killed.”

Giordino hovered the sub until their faces behind the protective transparent shields were no more than two feet apart. “I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the show,” he laughed. “If you could have only seen yourself in that Pillsbury Doughboy suit playing Errol Flynn with a pipe as a sword.”

“Next time, you do the hard part.”

“Qin Shang?” asked Giordino.

Pitt pointed a pincer at the inert submersible. “Where he belongs.”

“How are you fixed for air?”

“Down to twenty minutes.”

“No time to waste. Stand still until I can connect up my cable to the lift ring on top of your helmet. Then I'll tow you to the surface.”

“Not just yet,” said Pitt. “I've got a little task to perform.”

He activated the little thrusters on the Newtsuit and moved up the sides of the superstructure until he came to the wheel-house. The bulkheads had been torched away for entry and for the removal of the treasures packed in the passageways and former passenger staterooms. He quickly studied a diagram of the ship's interior that he had taped to the globular view plate and began propelling the pressurized suit past the captain's cabin next to the wheelhouse to the next cabin beyond. Amazingly, the furnishings were still relatively intact and jumbled about the small compartment. After only a few minutes' search, Pitt found what he was looking for and removed a small pouch from the utility belt on the Newtsuit and filled it with objects from one corner of the cabin.

“You'd better get a move on,” came Giordmo's worried voice.

“On my way,” Pitt complied.

With three minutes to spare, the Sappho TV and the Newtsuit surfaced one behind the other and were lifted on board the Ocean Retriever. As the technicians worked to remove Pitt from the big dive suit, he looked across the water at Qin Shang's Jade Adventurer. A boarding party from the Coast Guard cutter was routinely examining the ship's papers before ordering it out of American waters.

When he was finally free of the ponderous suit, Pitt leaned wearily over the railing and gazed down into the water as Julia came up behind him and ran her arms around his waist, clasping her hands across his stomach. “I was worried about you,” she said softly.

“I put my trust in Al and Rudi, knowing they would never fail.”

“Is Qin Shang dead?” she asked, certain of the answer.

He held her head between his hands and looked down into her gray eyes. “He's only a bad memory it pays to forget.”

She pulled back, her face suddenly disturbed. “When word leaks out that you killed him, you're going to be in big trouble with the government.”

Despite the exhaustion, Pitt threw back his head and laughed. “Dearheart, I'm always in big trouble with the government.”