Flood Tide

Dirk Pitt 14 - Flood Tide

April 20, 2000 Hong Kong, China

QIN SHANG DID NOT HAVE THE APPEARANCE OF A CORRUPT and depraved sociopath who had indiscriminately murdered untold thousands of innocent people. He did not have serpent's fangs, vertical slit eyes, nor a forked tongue that flicked in and out. There was no aura of evil about him. Sitting at a desk in his palatial four-level penthouse atop the fifty-story mirrored tower of Qin Shang Maritime Limited, he looked no different than any other Chinese businessman working in the financial hub of Hong Kong. Like most mass murderers throughout history, Qin Shang went unobtrusive and unnoticed whenever he strolled down the street.

Tall for most Asian men at five feet, eleven inches, he was heavy around the waist, weighing in at 210 pounds, not solid but what you might call chubby, the aftereffects of a taste and appetite for good Chinese cooking. The black hair was thick and cut short, with a part down the middle. The head and face were not round but narrow and almost feline, and matched the long and slender hands. The mouth, oddly and deceptively, seemed fixed in a permanent smile. Outwardly, Qin Shang seemed as threatening as a shoe salesman.

No one who met him could forget his eyes. They were the color of the purest green jade and revealed a black depth that belied a good-tempered man. They burned with a frightening degree of malevolence and were so penetrating that men who knew him swore he could look through your skull and read the latest stock market quotes. The inward man behind the eyes was a different story. Qin Shang was as sadistic and unscrupulous as a Serengeti hyena. He thrived on manipulation so long as it led to spiraling wealth and power. As an orphan begging on the streets of Kowloon across Victoria Harbor from the island of Hong Kong, he developed an uncanny talent for exploiting people for their money. By the age of ten, he had saved enough to buy a sampan and used it to ferry people and transport whatever cargo he could talk merchants into letting him carry.

In two years, he had a fleet of ten sampans. Before he was eighteen, he sold his thriving little fleet and bought an ancient intercoastal tramp steamer. This tired old rust bucket became the foundation for Qin Shang's shipping empire. The freight line flourished during the next decade because Qin Shang's competitors hi the freight trade strangely fell by the wayside when many of their ships mysteriously disappeared at sea without a trace with all hands aboard. Finding their profit margins dropping into the red, the owners of the doomed ships always seemed to find a ready buyer for their remaining vessels and dwindling assets. Operating out of Japan, the company that did the buying was known as Yokohama Ship Sales & Scrap Corporation. In reality it was a front whose parental ties stretched across the China Sea to Qin Shang Maritime Limited.

In time, Qin Shang took a different course from his business peers hi Hong Kong, who established alliances with European financial institutions and Western exporters and importers. In a shrewd move, he turned his focus on the People's Republic of China, creating friendships with high government officials in preparation for the day when they would take control of Hong Kong from the British. He conducted behind-the-scenes negotiations with Yin Tsang, chief director of the People's Republic's Ministry of Internal Affairs, an obscure department of the government that was involved with everything from foreign espionage of scientific technology to the international smuggling of immigrants to relieve the country's overcrowded population. In return for his services Qin Shang was allowed to register his ships in China without the usual exorbitant fees.

The partnership proved incredibly profitable to Qin Shang. The clandestine transportation and trade in undocumented aliens, in concert with the legitimate hauling of Chinese goods and oil exclusively by Qin Shang's freighters and tankers, brought hundreds of millions of dollars over several years into the company's many hidden bank accounts around the world.

Qin Shang soon amassed more money than he could spend in a thousand lifetimes. Yet there was a fixed determination in his sinister brain to amass even more wealth, more power. Once he had built one of the largest cargo and passenger fleets in the world, the challenge was gone and the moral and legitimate end of the business began to bore him. But there was excitement in the covert side of his operation. The rush of adrenaline and the intoxication of taking risks excited him like a steep slope of moguls in front of an expert skier. Little did his fellow conspirators in the People's Republic know he was also smuggling drugs and guns along with the illegal immigrants. It was a very lucrative sideline, and he used the profits to develop his landmark port facility in Louisiana. Playing the ends against the middle gave him glorious hours of exhilaration.

Qin Shang was an egomaniac with a stratospheric level of insane optimism. He held the firm belief that his day of reckoning would never come. Even if it did, he was too rich, too omnipotent, to be broken. He already paid enormous bribes to high-level officials in half the governments of the world. In the United States alone, there were over one hundred people in every agency of the federal government on his payroll. As far as Qin Shang was concerned the future was wrapped in a nebulous fog that never fully materialized. But just for added insurance, he maintained a small army of bodyguards and professional assassins he'd pirated away from the most efficient intelligence agencies in Europe, Israel and America.

His receptionist's voice came over a small speaker on his desk. “You have a visitor arriving on your private elevator.”

Qin Shang rose from behind his immense rosewood desk, raised on legs intricately carved hi the shape of tigers, and walked across the cavernous room toward the elevator. The office looked like the vastly expanded interior of a captain's cabin in an old sailing ship. Heavy oak planking was laid for the floor. Thick oak beams supported a skylighted ceiling with teak paneling throughout. Large builder's models of Qin Shang Maritime ships sailed on plaster seas inside glass cases on one side of the room while on the opposite wall a collection of old diver's suits with their lead boots and brass helmets hung suspended by their air hoses, as if they still contained the bodies of their owners. Qin Shang stopped in front of the elevator as its doors opened and greeted his visitor, a short man with dense gray hair. His eyes bulged as they protruded from fleshy pouches. He smiled as he came forward and shook Qin Shang's outstretched hand.

“Qin Shang,” he said with a taut little grin. “Yin Tsang, always an honor to see you,” Qin Shang said graciously. “I did not expect you until next Thursday.”

“I hope you'll forgive this unpardonable interruption,” said Yin Tsang, the minister of China's internal affairs, “but I wished to speak with you privately on a matter of some delicacy.”

“I am always available anytime to you, old friend. Come and sit down. Would you like some tea?”

Yin Tsang nodded. “Your own special blend? I'd like nothing better.”

Qin Shang called his private secretary and ordered the tea. “Now then, what is this delicate matter that brings you to Hong Kong a week ahead of your scheduled visit?”

“Disturbing news has reached Beijing concerning your operation at Orion Lake in the state of Washington.”

Qin Shang shrugged carelessly. “Yes, an unfortunate incident beyond my control.”

“My sources tell me the holding station for the immigrants was raided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

“It was,” Qin Shang freely admitted. “My best men were killed and our security people were captured in a lightning raid that was totally unexpected.”

Yin Tsang looked at him. “How could this happen? I can't believe you failed to prepare for such a possibility. Didn't your agents in Washington, D.C., alert you?”

Qin Shang shook his head. “I've since learned the raid did not originate in the INS national headquarters. It was a spur-of-the-moment operation conducted by the local district director, who took it upon himself to launch an assault on the holding station. I was given no warning by any of my agents within the American government.”

“Your entire North American operation has been compromised. The Americans now have broken a link in the chain that will surely lead directly to you.”

“Not to worry, Yin Tsang,” Qin Shang said calmly. “American investigators have no evidence that directly ties me to illegal immigrant smuggling. They may have their pitiful and insignificant suspicions, but nothing else. My other staging sites along the American coastline are still in operation and can easily absorb all future shipments programmed for Orion Lake.”

“President Lin Loyang and my fellow ministers will be happy to hear you have everything under your control,” said Yin Tsang. “But I still have my reservations. Once the Americans scent a crack in your organization, they will hound you unrelentingly.”

“You are afraid?”

“I am concerned. Too much is at stake to allow a man more interested in profit than the aims of our party to remain in control.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Yin Tsang looked at Qin Shang steadily. “I shall recommend to President Lin Loyang that you resign from the smuggling operation and be replaced.”

“And my contract to carry the bulk of national Chinese cargo and passengers?”

“Revoked.”

The expected response of surprise and anger did not materialize. Nor was there the slightest sign of annoyance. Qin Shang merely shrugged impassively. “You think that I can be that easily replaced?”

“Someone with your special qualifications has already been selected.”

“Anyone I know?”

“One of your competitors, Quan Ting, chairman of China & Pacific Lines, has agreed to fill your shoes.”

“Quan Ting?” Qin Shang's eyebrow rose a millimeter. “His ships are little better than rusting barges.”

“Soon he will be in a position to launch new ships.” The words came with a veiled implication that Quan Ting would be financed by the Chinese government with Yin Tsang's blessing and endorsement.

“You insult my intelligence. You have used the Orion Lake mishap as an excuse to cancel my association with the People's Republic of China so you can go into partnership on the sly and rake in the profits yourself.”

“You are no stranger to greed, Qin Shang. You would do the same in my shoes.”

“And my new facility in Louisiana?” asked Qin Shang. “Am I to lose that too?”

“You will be compensated for your half of the investment, of course.”

“Of course,” Qin Shang repeated acidly, knowing full well he would never receive a cent. “Naturally, it will be given to my successor and you, his silent partner.”

“That will be my counsel at the next party conference in Beijing.”

“May I inquire as to whom else you've discussed my expulsion with?”

“Only Quan Ting,” answered Yin Tsang. “I thought it best to keep the matter quiet until the proper time.”

Qin Shang's private secretary stepped into the room and moved to the sitting area with the grace of a Balinese dancing girl, which is exactly what she was until Qin Shang hired and trained her. She was only one of several beautiful girls who served as Shang's aides. Women he trusted more than men. Unmarried, Shang kept nearly a dozen mistresses—three lived in his penthouse—but he followed a policy of never becoming intimate with the women close to his business dealings. He nodded his appreciation as his secretary set a tray with two cups and two teapots on the low table between the men.

“The green teapot is your special blend,” she said softly to Qin Shang. “The blue teapot is jasmine.”

“Jasmine!” Yin Tsang snorted. “How can you drink tea that tastes like women's perfume when your special blend is far superior?”

“Variety.” Qin Shang smiled. As a show of courtesy he poured the tea. Relaxing in his chair while he cradled the steaming cup in his hands, he watched as Yin Tsang sipped until his tea was gone. Then Qin Shang politely poured him another cup.

“You realize, of course, that Quan Ting has no cruise ships available to carry passengers.”

“They can either be purchased or leased from other cruise lines,” said Yin Tsang offhandedly. “Let us face the light. You have made immense profits over the past few years. You are not about to go bankrupt. It will be a simple matter for you to diversify Qin Shang Maritime Limited into Western markets. You are a shrewd businessman, Qin Shang. You will survive without the People's Republic of China's benevolence.”

“The flight of a hawk cannot be accomplished with the wings of a sparrow,” said Qin Shang philosophically.

Yin Tsang set down his cup and rose to his feet. “I must leave you now. My plane is waiting to fly me back to Beijing.”

“I understand,” Qin Shang said dryly. “As minister of internal affairs, you are a busy man who must make many decisions.”

Yin Tsang noted the contempt but said no more. His unpleasant duty performed, he gave a curt bow and entered the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, Qin Shang returned to his desk and spoke into the intercom. “Send me Pavel Gavrovich.”

Five minutes later, a tall, medium-built man with Slavic facial features and thick black hair greased and combed back across his head with no part stepped from the elevator. He strode across the room and stopped in front of Qin Shang's desk.

Qin Shang looked up at his chief enforcer, once the finest and most ruthless undercover agent in all of Russia. A professional assassin with few equals in the martial arts, Pavel Gavrovich was offered an exorbitant salary to leave a high-level position in the Russian Defense Ministry to come to work for Qin Shang. Gavrovich had taken less than one minute to accept.

“A competitor of mine who owns an inferior shipping line is proving to be an irritant to me. His name is Quan Ting. Please arrange an accident for him.”

Gavrovich nodded silently, turned on his heels and reentered the waiting elevator, never having spoken a word.

The following morning, as Qin Shang sat in the dining room of his penthouse suite alone and scanned several newspapers, foreign and domestic, he was pleased to discover a pair of articles in the Hong Kong Journal. The first read, Quan Ting, chairman and managing director of the China & Pacific Shipping Line, and his wife were killed late last night when their limousine was struck broadside by a large truck transporting electrical cable as Mr. Quan and his wife were leaving the Mandarin Hotel after dinner with friends. Their chauffeur was also killed. The driver of the truck vanished from the scene of the accident and has yet to be found by police.

The second article in the newspaper read, it was announced in Beijing today by the Chinese government that Yin Tsang had died. The untimely death of China's minister of internal affairs, who succumbed to a heart attack while on a flight to Beijing, was sudden and unexpected. Though he had no known history of heart problems, all efforts to revive him failed, and he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the Beijing Airport. Deputy Minister Lei Chau is expected to succeed Yin Tsang.

A great pity, Qin Shang thought wickedly. My special blend of tea must not have agreed with Yin Tsang's stomach. He made a mental note to tell his secretary to send his condolences to President Lin Loyang and set up a meeting with Lei Chau, who had been nurtured with the necessary bribes and was known to be not nearly as avaricious as his predecessor.

Putting aside the newspapers, Qin Shang took a final sip of his coffee. He drank tea in public, but in private he preferred Southern-style American coffee with chicory. A soft chime warned him that his private secretary was about to enter the dining room. She approached and set a leather-bound file on the table beside him.

“Here is the information you requested from your agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Wait one moment will you, Su Zhong. I'd like your opinion on something.”

Qin Shang opened the file and began studying the contents. He held up a photograph of a man standing beside an old classic car who stared back at the camera. The man was dressed casually in slacks and a golf shirt under a sport coat. A crooked, almost shy grin curled the lips on a face that was tanned and weathered. The eyes, laughter lines wrinkling from their edges, were locked on the camera lens and had a probing quality about them, almost as if they were measuring whoever peered at the photo. They were accented by dark, thick eyebrows. The photo was in black-and-white, so it was impossible to assess the exact color of the irises. Qin Shang wrongly guessed them as blue.

The black hair was dense and wavy and slightly unkempt. The shoulders were broad and tapered to a slim waist and narrow hips. The data in the file gave his body size as six feet, three inches, 185 pounds. The hands looked like the hands of a field worker, the palms large with small scars and calluses, and the fingers long. The eyes, it was stated, were green and not blue.

“You have an inner sense about men, Su Zhong. You can envision things others like me cannot see. Look at this picture. Look inside the man and tell me what you find.”

Su Zhong swept her long black hair back from her face as she leaned over Qin Shang and gazed at the photograph. “He is handsome in a rugged sort of way. I sense a magnetism about him. He has the look of an adventurer whose love is exploring the unknown, especially what lies under the sea. No rings on his fingers suggests that he is unpretentious. Women are drawn to him. They do not consider him a threat. He enjoys their company. There is an aura of kindness and tenderness about him. A man you can trust. All indications of a good lover. He is sentimental about old objects and probably collects them. His life is dedicated to achievement. Little of what he has accomplished was for personal gain. He thrives on challenges. This is a man who does not like to fail but can accept failure if he has tried his best. There is also a cold hardness in the eyes. He also has the capacity to kill. To friends he is extremely loyal. To enemies, extremely dangerous. All in all, a most unusual man who should have lived in another time.”

“What you're saying is that he is a throwback to the past.”

Su Zhong nodded. “He would have been at home on the deck of a pirate ship, fighting in the crusades or driving a stagecoach through the deserts of the old American West.”

“Thank you, my dear, for your extraordinary insight.”

“My pleasure is to serve you.” Su Zhong bowed her head and quietly left the room, closing the door behind her.

Qin Shang turned over the photograph and began reading the data in the file, noting with amusement that he and the subject were born on the same day in the same year. There, any similarity ended. The subject was the son of Senator George Pitt of California. His mother was the former Barbara Knight. He attended Newport Beach High School in California and then the Air Force Academy in Colorado. Academically, he was above average, finishing thirty-fifth in his class. Played on the football team and won several athletic trophies. After flight training, he achieved a distinguished military career during the closing days of the "Vietnam War. Rose to the rank of major before transferring from the Air Force to the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Later promoted to lieutenant colonel.

A collector of old automobiles and aircraft, he kept them stored in an old hangar at the edge of Washington's National Airport. He lived in an apartment above the collection. His accomplishments at NUMA while serving as special projects director under his boss, Admiral James Sandecker, read like an adventure novel. From heading the project to raise the Titanic to discovering the long-lost artifacts from the Alexandria Library to stopping a red tide in the oceans that would have ultimately decimated life on earth, during the past fifteen years the subject was directly responsible for operations that either saved a great many lives or were of inestimable benefit to archaeology or the environment. The list of projects he directed to successful conclusions covered nearly twenty pages.

Qin Shang's agent had also included a list of men Pitt reportedly had killed. Qin Shang was stunned by several of the names. They consisted of men who were wealthy and powerful as well as common criminals and professional murderers. Su Zhong was correct in her evaluation. This man could be an extremely dangerous enemy.

After nearly an hour, Qin Shang laid aside the documents and picked up the photograph. He stared at the figure standing beside an old car intently, wondering what drove such a man. It became clearer with each passing minute that their paths would cross.

“So, Mr. Dirk Pitt, you are the man responsible for the disaster at Orion Lake,” said Qin Shang, speaking to the photograph as though Pitt were standing in the room before him.

“Your motive for destroying my immigrant staging area and yacht is as yet a mystery to me. But I have this to say to you: You have qualities that I respect, but you have come to the end of your career. The next addendum and final postscript to your file will be your obituary.”

ORDERS CAME DOWN FROM WASHINGTON FOR SPECIAL AGENT Julia Lee to be flown immediately from Seattle to San Francisco, where she was placed in a hospital for medical treatment and observation. The nurse assigned to her audibly gasped when she removed the hospital gown so the doctor could make his examination. There was hardly a square inch of Julia's body that wasn't black-and-blue or marked by reddish bruises. The expression in the nurse's eyes also made it evident that Julia's face was still grotesque from the swelling and discoloration, reinforcing Julia's determination not to look at herself in a mirror for at least a week.

“Did you know you had three cracked ribs?” asked the doctor, a jolly, rotund man with a bald head and closely cropped gray beard.

“I guessed from the stabbing pain every time I sat down and then stood after going to the bathroom,” she said lightheartedly. “Will you have to put a cast around my chest?”

The doctor laughed. “Binding fractured ribs went out with leeches and bleeding. Now we just let them mend on their own. You'll suffer some discomfort when you make sudden movements for the next few weeks, but that will soon diminish.”

“How about the rest of the damage? Is it reparable?”

“I've already set your nose back in place, medication will soon reduce the swelling and all signs of bruising should disappear fairly quickly. I predict that by this time next month you'll be voted queen of the prom.”

“All women should have a doctor like you,” Julia complimented him.

“Funny,” he said, smiling, “my wife never says that.” He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “If you're feeling up to it, you can go home the day after tomorrow. By the way, there's a couple of important characters from Washington on their way up from the reception desk to see you. They should be stepping off the elevator about now. In old movies visitors in a hospital are always told not to stay too long. But to my way of thinking, going back to work speeds the healing process. Just don't overdo it.”

“I won't, and thank you for your courtesy.”

“Not at all. I'll look in on you this evening.”

“Shall I stay?” asked the nurse.

The doctor shook his head as two somber-looking men carrying briefcases entered the room. “Official government business. You'll want to talk with Ms. Lee in private. Right, gentlemen?”

“Quite right, doctor,” said Julia's boss, Arthur Russell, director of the INS San Francisco district office. Russell was gray-haired, his body reasonably trim from daily workouts in a home exercise room. He smiled and looked at Julia through eyes warm with sympathy.

The other man, with thinning blond hair, his gray eyes peering through rimless spectacles, was a stranger to Julia. There was no hint of sympathy in his eyes. If anything, he looked as if he was about to sell her an insurance policy.

“Julia,” said Russell, “I'd like to introduce Peter Harper. He flew in from Washington to debrief you.”

“Yes, of course,” said Julia, struggling to sit up in bed, wincing from the pain that shot through her chest. “You're the executive associate commissioner for field operations. I'm happy to meet you. Your reputation is a bit of a legend throughout the Service.”

“I'm flattered.” Harper shook Julia's outstretched hand and was surprised at the firmness of her grip. “You've had a tough time of it,” he said. “Commissioner Monroe sends his congratulations and thanks, and wishes me to say that the Service is proud of your performance.”

He makes it sound as if I was taking a curtain call after a play, Julia thought. “But for one man, I wouldn't be here to receive the compliment.”

“Yes, we'll come to him later. Right now, I'd like a verbal accounting of your mission to infiltrate the smugglers' operation.”

“We didn't mean to put you back in harness so soon,” interrupted Russell in a quiet voice. “A full written report of your activities can wait until you're up and about. But for now, we'd like you to tell us everything you've learned about the smugglers and their procedures.”

“From the time I became Ling T'ai and paid the smugglers for passage in Beijing?” Julia asked.

“From the beginning,” said Harper, taking a tape recorder from his briefcase and setting it on the bed. “Starting with your entry into China. We'd like to hear it all.”

Julia looked at Harper as she began. “As Arthur can tell you, I traveled to Beijing, China, with a group of Canadian tourists. After we arrived in the city I deserted the group during a walking tour of the city. Being of Chinese descent and speaking the language, I had no problem with melting into the people crowding the streets. After changing into more suitable clothes, I began making discreet inquiries about emigrating to a foreign country. As it turned out the newspapers ran stories and advertisements promoting emigration outside China's borders. I answered an ad by an outfit calling themselves Jingzi International Passages. Their offices, coincidentally, were on the third floor of a modern building owned by Qin Shang Maritime Limited. The price to be smuggled into the United States was the equivalent of thirty thousand American dollars. When I attempted to haggle, I was told in no uncertain terms to pay up or leave. I paid.”

Then Julia related the story of her terrible ordeal after boarding the outwardly luxurious cruise ship that became a hell ship. She told of the inhuman cruelty; the lack of food and sanitation facilities; the brutality of the enforcers; her interrogation and beating; the transfer of the able-bodied to boats that took them unknowingly to a life of slavery ashore while those of some wealth were diverted to the prison at Orion Lake and placed in cages until they could be squeezed for more money. The very young, the elderly and those who could not physically endure a life of servitude were quietly murdered by drowning in the lake.

She narrated in exacting detail the entire smuggling operation calmly and unemotionally, covering every foot of the mother ship and drawing illustrations of the smaller craft used to ferry the aliens into the U.S. Using her trained skills in identification, she described the facial features and approximate body measurements of every smuggler she came in contact with, supplying whatever names she was able to obtain.

She told how she, the elderly aliens and the family with two children were forced into the confining cabin of the black catamaran; how they were eventually bound and their feet tied with iron weights before being dropped through an open hatch into the lake. She told how a man in diving gear had miraculously appeared and cut them all loose before they drowned. Then she described how he herded everyone to the temporary safety of the shore; how he comforted and fed them at his cabin and provided a means of escape minutes before the arrival of the smugglers' security force. She told how that enduring man of iron killed five of the enforcers who were set on murdering the escaped immigrants, how he took a bullet in the hip and acted as if it never happened. She gave an account of his blowing up the dock and yacht at the retreat, the harrowing battle down the river to Grapevine Bay, her shooting the two ultralights out of the sky, and the indomitable courage of the man at the wheel of the runabout who threw his body over the children when it was thought they were about to be blasted out of the water.

Julia told them everything she had witnessed since leaving China. But she couldn't explain how or why the man from NUMA came to be under the catamaran at the exact moment she and the others were dropped into the cold waters of the lake, nor could she explain why he made a reconnaissance of the prison building on his own initiative. She did not know his incentive. It was as though Pitt's involvement was a dream sequence. How else could she explain his presence and actions on Orion Lake? Finally, she ended her account by saying his name, her voice trailing off into silence.

“Dirk Pitt, the special projects director for NUMA?” Harper blurted.

Russell turned to Harper, who was staring at Julia in disbelief. “It's true. Pitt was the one who helped reveal the retreat as a prison and provided the people in our district office in Seattle with vital information to conduct the raid. Without his timely appearance and exceptional courage, Agent Lee would have died and the mass killing at Orion Lake would have gone on indefinitely. Thanks to him, the macabre operation was exposed, enabling our Seattle district office to shut it down.”

Harper looked at Julia steadily. “A man materializes in the dead of night underwater who is not a trained undercover agent nor a member of the Special Forces but a marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency and singlehand-edly kills the crew of a murder boat and destroys a yacht and an entire dock. Then he leads you through a gauntlet of smugglers who strafe a boatload of illegal immigrants from light aircraft while they're speeding down a river in a seventy-year-old boat. An incredible story, to say the least, Ms. Lee.”

“And every word of it true,” said Julia firmly.

“Commissioner Monroe and I met with Admiral Sandecker of NUMA only a few nights ago, asking for their help in combating Qin Shang's smuggling operation. It seems unimaginable that they could have acted so quickly.”

“Although we never had time to compare notes, I'm certain Dirk acted on his own without orders from his superior.”

By the time Harper and Russell had asked her a barrage of questions and changed the cassette in the recorder four times, Julia was fighting a losing battle with fatigue. She had journeyed far beyond the call of duty, and now all she wanted was sleep. After her face returned to an assemblage of normality, she hoped to see her family, but not before.

Almost in a trancelike state, she wondered how Dirk Pitt would have described the events had he been there. She smiled, knowing that he would have probably reacted by making a joke out of the whole exploit, making light of his actions and participation. How odd, she thought, that I can predict his reactions and thoughts when I knew him for less than a few hours.

“You've been through more than any of us had any right to expect,” said Russell, seeing that Julia was having a hard time keeping her eyes open.

“You're a credit to the service,” Harper said sincerely as he switched off the recorder. “A fine report. Because of you an important link in the smuggling of illegal immigrants is history.”

“They'll just pop up somewhere else,” said Julia, stifling a yawn.

Russell shrugged. “Too bad we don't have enough evidence to convict Qin Shang in an international court of law.”

Julia suddenly became alert. “What are you saying? Not enough evidence? I have proof the phony cruise ship, filled with illegal aliens, was registered to Qin Shang Maritime Limited. That alone, plus the bodies lying in Orion Lake, should be enough to indict and convict Qin Shang.”

Harper shook his head. “We checked. The ship was legally registered to an obscure shipping company in Korea. And though Shang's representatives handled all real-estate transactions, the Orion Lake property is in the name of a holding company in Vancouver, Canada, by the name of Nanchang Investments. Offshore corporations with one dummy corporation leading to another in different countries is quite common, and makes it tough to trace the thread to the mother company and its owner, directors and stockholders. As rotten as it sounds, no international court of law would convict Qin Shang.”

Julia looked vacantly through the window of her room. Between two buildings she could just make out the gray, ominous buildings of Alcatraz, the famous and now abandoned prison. “Then everything,” she said disgustedly, “the sacrifice of innocent people in the lake, my ordeal, Pitt's heroic efforts, the raid on the retreat—all for nothing. Qin Shang will laugh up his sleeve and go on operating as if it was all a minor inconvenience.”

“On the contrary,” Harper assured her. “Your information is invaluable. Nothing comes easy, and it will take time, but sooner or later we're going to put Qin Shang and his kind out of business.”

“Peter is right,” added Russell. “We've only won a minor skirmish in the war, but we've cut off an important tentacle of the octopus. We also have a new insight into China's smuggling-operations policy. Our jobs have become a bit easier now that we know which back alleys to investigate.”

Harper gathered up his briefcase and headed for the door. “We'll be on our way and let you rest.”

Russell patted her gently on the shoulder. “I wish I could send you on extended leave, courtesy of the INS, but headquarters wants you in Washington as soon as you're up and about.”

“I'd like to ask a favor,” said Julia, stopping both men at the door.

“Name it,” said Russell.

“Except for a brief visit with my mother and father here in San Francisco, I would like to return to duty by the beginning of next week. I formally request that I remain on the investigation of Qin Shang.”

Russell looked at Harper, who smiled. “That goes without saying,” said Russell. “Why do you think they want you in Washington? Who in INS knows more about Shang's alien-smuggling operation than you?”

After they left, Julia made one last effort to fight off creeping drowsiness. She picked up the bedside phone, dialed an outside line and then the area code and number for long-distance information. Obtaining the number, she called the NUMA headquarters building in Washington and asked for Dirk Pitt.

She was put through to his secretary, who informed her that Pitt was out on vacation and had not returned to work yet. Julia hung up the phone and settled her head into the pillows. In some odd manner she felt transformed. Here I am acting like a brazen hussy, she thought, pursuing a man I hardly know. Why, she wondered, of all the men in all the world, why did someone like Dirk Pitt have to walk into my life?

PlTT AND GlORDINO NEVER MADE IT BACK TO WASHINGTON. When they returned the helicopter to the NUMA marine-science laboratory in Bremerton through a rainstorm, they found Admiral Sandecker waiting for them. Most men in Sandecker's position would have remained in a dry office, sitting comfortably on a couch drinking coffee, making others come to him. But he did not march to the same drummer as most. Sandecker stood outside in a misting rain, raising his arm to shield his face from the clouds of spray that swirled beneath the rotor blades of the aircraft. He remained standing until the blades spun to a stop before stepping toward the hatch. He waited patiently until Gunn swung it open and dropped to the ground, followed by Giordino.

“I expected you over an hour ago,” grunted Sandecker.

“We weren't forewarned you'd be here, Admiral,” said Gunn. “When last we spoke, you elected to remain in Washington.”

“I changed my mind,” Sandecker said gruffly. Not seeing anyone left in the cockpit, he looked at Giordino. “Didn't you bring Dirk with you?”

“He slept like a rock between Grapevine Bay and here,” answered Giordino without his usual grin. “He's not in the best of shape. As if he wasn't already a classic case of battle fatigue when he arrived at Orion Lake, he had to go and get himself shot again.”

“Shot?” Sandecker's face clouded. “Nobody told me he'd been shot. How bad is it?”

“Not serious. Luckily, the bullet just missed the pelvis, going hi and coming out the upper side of his right buttock. A doctor in Grapevine examined and dressed the wound. He insisted that Dirk shouldn't be up and running around, but our friend laughed and demanded we find a bar, claiming a couple shots of tequila would make him as good as new.”

“Did two shots of tequila do it?” Sandecker asked cynically.

“More like four.” Giordino turned as Pitt emerged from the helicopter. “See for yourself.”

Sandecker looked up and found himself looking at a man dressed like a backwoods hiker, thin and played out, as if he'd been existing on little else but berries in a forest. His hair was tangled in every direction, face drawn and haggard but split by a smile as broad as a highway billboard with eyes clear and intense.

“By God, it's the admiral,” Pitt boomed. “You're the last man I expected to see standing out in the rain.”

Sandecker wanted to laugh, but he fixed a frown on his face and spoke as if angered. “I thought it might be nice to demonstrate my charitable disposition and save you a five-thousand-mile round trip.”

“You don't want me back at my desk?”

“No. You and Al are leaving for Manila.”

“Manila,” said Pitt, puzzled. “That's in the Philippines.”

“It hasn't been moved that I was aware of,” Sandecker said.

“When?”

“Within the hour.”

“Within the hour?” Pitt stared at him.

“I've booked you on a commercial flight across the Pacific. You and Al will be on it.”

“What are we supposed to do once we get to Manila?”

“If you'll come in out of the rain before we drown, I'll tell you.”

After Pitt was ordered to drink two cups of coffee, Sandecker gathered his finest team of ocean engineers in the privacy of an aquarium. Sitting among tanks filled with North Pacific sea life under study by NUMA marine biologists, the admiral briefed Pitt and Giordino on the meeting he and Gunn had with the President and officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“The man whose criminal operation you screwed up at Orion Lake directs a vast smuggling empire that traffics in illegal immigrants, transporting them into nearly every country of the world. He literally smuggles millions of Chinese into North, Central, South America and Europe. Under a shroud of secrecy, he is supported and often funded by the Chinese government. The more people he can remove from the over-populated country and place in positions of influence overseas, the better the potential to achieve international power bases working under directives from the mother country. It is a worldwide conspiracy with incredible consequences if Qin Shang continues unchecked.”

“The man is responsible for hundreds of dead bodies lying on the bottom of Orion Lake,” said Pitt angrily. “You're telling me he can't be charged with mass murder and hanged?”

“Charging him and convicting him are different sides of the street,” answered Sandecker. “Qin Shang has more corporate barriers around him than waves pounding a shore. I'm told by the commissioner of INS, Duncan Monroe, that Qin Shang is so far removed, politically and financially, there is no direct evidence linking him to the mass murders on Orion Lake.”

“The man seems impregnable,” said Gunn.

Pitt said in a measured tone, “No man is impregnable. We all have an Achilles' heel.”

“How do we nail the bastard?” Giordino asked bluntly.

Sandecker answered partially by explaining the two objectives the President had ordered NUMA to investigate, the old ocean liner United States and Qin Shang's shipping port of Sungari in Louisiana. He concluded by saying, “Rudi here will be in charge of a special team for an underwater probe of Sungari. Dirk and Al will examine the former ocean liner.”

“Where do we find the United States?” asked Pitt.

“Until three days ago, she was at Sevastopol in the Black Sea undergoing a refit. But according to satellite surveillance photos, she's left dry dock and passed through the Dardanelles on her way to the Suez Canal.”

“That's covering a lot of territory for a fifty-year-old ship,” said Giordino.

“Not unusual,” said Pitt, staring at the ceiling as if retrieving something once cataloged in his mind. “The United States could leave the best of them in her wake. She beat the Queen Mary's best time across the Atlantic by an amazing ten hours. On her maiden voyage she set a speed record between New York and England, averaging thirty-five knots, that still stands.”

“She must have been fast,” said Gunn admiringly. “That works out to about forty-one miles an hour.”

Sandecker nodded. “She's still faster than any commercial ship built before or since.”

“How did Qin Shang get his hands on her?” asked Pitt. “It was my understanding that the U.S. Maritime Administration would not sell her unless she remained under the American flag.”

“Qin Shang easily got around that by purchasing the ship through an American company who in turn could then sell it to a buyer who represented a friendly nation. In this case a Turkish businessman. Too late, American authorities discovered that a Chinese national bought the ship, posing as the Turkish buyer.”

“Why would Qin Shang want the United States?” Pitt asked, still in the dark.

“He's in league with the Chinese People's Liberation Army,” replied Gunn. “The deal he struck with them gives him the right to operate the ship, possibly to smuggle illegal aliens under the guise of a cruise ship. The Chinese military, for their purposes, has the option of commandeering the ship and quickly converting it to a troop transport.”

“You'd have thought our defense department would have seen the light and converted her years ago,” said Giordino. “She could have moved an entire division of troops from the States to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War in less than five days.”

Sandecker stroked his beard in thought. “Airlifts are the thing to transport men these days. Ships are used primarily to haul in supplies and equipment. Any way you look at it, the former pride of the transatlantic greyhounds was way past her prime.”

“So what's our job?” Pitt asked with diminishing forbearance. “If the President wants to prevent the United States from smuggling aliens into the country, why doesn't he order a nuclear submarine to quietly put a couple of Mark XII torpedoes into her side.”

“And give the Chinese military a bona fide excuse to retaliate by blasting a cruise ship filled with American tourists out of the water?” Sandecker said sharply. “I don't think so. There are more practical and less hazardous ways of cutting Qin Shang off at the knees.”

“Like what?” Giordino asked guardedly.

“Answers!” Sandecker snapped back. “There are perplexing questions that must be answered before the INS can take action.”

“We're not undercover specialists,” said Pitt, unmoved by it all. “What does he expect us to do? Pay our ticket, reserve a stateroom and then send questionnaires to the captain and crew?”

“I am aware that you find this uninspiring,” said Sandecker, seeing that both Pitt and Giordino were regarding their mission with a marked lack of enthusiasm, “but I'm dead serious when I say that the information you're to obtain is vital to the future welfare of the country. Illegal immigration cannot continue hi an uncontrolled flood. Sleaze like Qin Shang are conducting modern versions of the slave trade.” Sandecker paused and gazed at Pitt. “From what I've been told, you saw an example of their inhumanity with your own eyes.”

Pitt nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes, I saw the horror.”

“There must be something the government can do to rescue these people from bondage,” said Gunn.

“You can't protect people who are illegally in your country if they've disappeared and gone underground after they were smuggled in,” Sandecker replied.

“Can't a task force be formed to search them out, free them and release them into society?” Gunn persisted.

“The INS has sixteen hundred investigators in the fifty states, not counting those working in foreign countries, who made over three hundred thousand arrests of illegal aliens engaged in criminal activities. It would take twice that number of investigators just to stay even.”

“How many illegals are coining into the Unites States each year?” asked Pitt.

“There is no way to achieve an accurate count,” answered Sandecker. “Estimates run as high as two million aliens who poured in last year from China and Central America alone.”

Pitt stared out the window at the calm waters of Puget Sound. The rain had passed, and the clouds were becoming scattered. A rainbow slowly formed over the docks. “Has anybody a clue to where it will all end?”

“With a hell of a lot of people,” Sandecker said. “The last census put the U.S. population at roughly two hundred and fifty million. With the coming increase in births and immigration, legal and illegal, the population will soar to three hundred and sixty million by the year twenty fifty.”

“Another hundred million in the next fifty years,” said Giordano dolefully.

“I hope I'm gone by then.” Gunn said thoughtfully, “Hard to imagine the changes in store for the country.”

“Every great nation or civilization either fell by corruption from within or was altered forever by foreign migration,” said Sandecker.

Giordino's face registered indifference. The future was of little concern to him. Unlike Pitt, who found pleasure in the past, Giordino lived only for the present. Gunn, contemplative as ever, stared down at the floor, trying to picture the problems a population increase of fifty percent would bring with it.

Pitt said dryly, “And so the President in his infinite wisdom expects us to plug the dike with our fingers.”

“Just how are we supposed to conduct this crusade?” asked Giordino, carefully removing a huge cigar from a cedar wrapper and slowly, very slowly, rolling the end over the flame from a lighter.

Sandecker stared at the cigar, his face reddening as he recognized it as one from his private cache. “When you arrive in Manila at the international airport, you will be met by a man named John Smith—”

“That's original,” Giordino muttered. “I've always wanted to meet the guy whose signature I see above mine on motel registers.”

To a stranger sitting in on the discussion, it would seem none of the NUMA men had the slightest respect for one another, and that there was a cloud of animosity hanging over them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pitt and Giordino had nothing but total and unabridged admiration for Sandecker. They were as close to him as to their own fathers. Without the slightest hesitation, they had on more than one occasion risked their own lives to save his. The give-and-take was a game they had played many times over the years. The apathy was a sham. Pitt and Giordino were too wildly independent to accept instructions without a display of rebellion. Nor were they known to jump up and salute before dashing out the door to do their duty with an overabundance of fervor. It was a scene of puppets pulling the strings of puppets with an underlying sense of humor.

“We land in Manila and wait for a John Smith to make himself known,” said Pitt. “I hope there's more to the plan than that.”

Sandecker went on. “Smith will escort you to the dock area, where you'll board a tired old intercoastal freighter. A singularly uncommon vessel, as you will discover. By the time you set foot on the deck, NUMA's Sea Dog II submersible will be secured aboard. Your job, when the opportunity arises, will be to inspect and photograph the hull of the United States below the waterline.”

Pitt shook his head, his expression one of incredulity. “We cruise around, examining the bottom of a ship that's the length of three football fields. Shouldn't take more than forty-eight hours of downtime. Naturally, Qin Shang's security people wouldn't think of dropping sensors around the hull for just such an intrusion.” He looked at Giordino. “How do you see it?”

“Like giving a nipple to a baby,” Giordino said casually. “My only problem is, how does a submersible with a top speed of four knots keep up with a ship that cruises at thirty-five knots?”

Sandecker gave Giordino a long, sour look, then answered the question. “You conduct your underwater survey while the ship is docked in port. That goes without saying.”

“What port have you got in mind?” asked Pitt.

“CIA informants in Sevastopol report that the ship's destination is Hong Kong, where the final interiors and furnishings will be fitted before she takes on passengers for voyages in and around port cities of the United States.”

“The CIA is in on this?”

“Every investigative agency in the government is cooperating with INS until they can work together to bring the situation under control.”

“The intercoastal freighter,” said Pitt. “Who owns and operates it?”

“I know what you're thinking,” Sandecker replied. “You can forget any connection with an intelligence agency. The vessel is privately owned. That's all I can tell you.”

Giordino exhaled a large blue cloud of cigar smoke toward a tank full of fish. “There must be over a thousand miles of water between Manila and Hong Kong. Any old tramp steamer I've ever seen seldom made more than eight or nine knots. We're looking at a voyage of almost five days. Do we have the luxury of that much time?”

“You'll be docked in Hong Kong less than a quarter of a mile from the United States and staring up at her keel within forty-eight hours after leaving the Philippines,” answered San-decker.

“That,” said Giordino, his eyebrows raised in skepticism, “should prove interesting.”

IT WAS ELEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING, PHILIPPINES TIME, when Pitt and Giordino stepped off a commercial flight from Seattle, passed through customs and entered the main terminal lobby of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Off to the side of a milling crowd they found a man holding a crudely lettered cardboard sign. Placards in the hands of greeters usually advertised the names of arriving passengers. This one simply said SMITH.

He was a great slob of a man. He might have been an Olympic weight lifter at one time, but his body had gone to seed and his stomach had grown into an immense watermelon. It sagged and hung over a pair of soiled pants and an over-stressed leather belt three sizes too small. The face appeared scarred from dozens of fights, and his great hooked nose had been broken so often it veered to one side across the left cheek. Stubble covered the lips and chin. It was difficult to tell whether his eyes looked bloodshot from too much booze or too little sleep. The black hair was plastered over his head like some kind of greasy skullcap, and the teeth were irregular and yellow. His biceps and forearms seemed remarkably taut and muscled in comparison with the rest of him, and were laden with tattoos. He wore a grimy yachtsman's cap and dingy coveralls. “Shiver me timbers,” muttered Giordino, “if it isn't old Blackboard hisself.”

Pitt walked up to the mangy derelict and said, “Good of you to meet us, Mr. Smith.”

“Happy to have you aboard,” Smith said with a cheerful smile. “The captain's expecting you.”

Carrying only a few articles of underwear, toiletries and work shirts and pants picked up at a surplus store on the way to the Seattle airport, and all stuffed in a pair of small carry-on tote bags, Pitt and Giordino had no reason to wait at the baggage carousel. They fell in behind Smith and walked out of the terminal into the airport parking lot. Smith stopped at a Toyota van that looked as if it spent its life in endurance runs around the Himalayan Mountains. Half the windows were broken out and taped closed with plywood boards. The body paint was faded to the primer, and the rocker panels were rusted away. Pitt observed the deeply treaded off-road tires and listened with interest to the throaty roar of a powerful engine as it immediately kicked to life when Smith pressed the starter.

The van moved off with Pitt and Giordino sitting on the torn and worn vinyl upholstery. Pitt lightly prodded his friend with his elbow to get his attention and spoke loud enough for the driver to hear. “Tell me, Mr. Giordino, is it true you're a very observant person?”

“That I am,” Giordino came back, picking up Pitt's intent instantly. “Nothing escapes me. And let us not forget you, Mr. Pitt. Your powers of prognostication are also world-renowned. Would you like to demonstrate your talents?” “I would indeed.”

“Let me begin by asking, what do you make of this vehicle?”

“I have to say it looks like a prop out of a Hollywood movie that no self-respecting hippie would be caught dead in, and yet it sports expensive tires and an engine that puts out around four hundred horsepower. Most peculiar, wouldn't you say?” “Very astute, Mr. Pitt. My vision exactly.” “And you, Mr. Giordino. What does your remarkable insight see in our bon vivant driver?”

“A man obsessed with chicanery, skulduggery and connivery; in short, a rip-off artist.” Giordino was in his element and on the verge of getting carried away. “Have you noticed his bulging stomach?”

“A poorly positioned pillow?”

“Exactly,” Giordino exclaimed as if it were a revelation. “Then there are the scars on the face and the flattened nose.”

“Poorly applied makeup?” Pitt asked innocently.

“There's no fooling you, is there?” The driver's ugly face twisted in a scowl through the rearview mirror, but there was no stopping Giordino. “Of course you caught the hairpiece floating in pomade.”

“I most certainly did.”

“How do you read his tattoos?”

“Inscribed by pen and ink?” offered Pitt.

Giordino shook his head. “I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Pitt. Stencils. Any apprentice remote viewer would envision them being stenciled on the skin.”

“I stand rebuked.”

Unable to remain quiet, the driver snapped over his shoulder. “You two pretty boys think you're smart.”

“We do what we can,” said Pitt lightly.

Having done their dirty work and advertised the fact that they had not fallen off a pumpkin wagon, Pitt and Giordino remained silent as the van drove onto a pier of a shipping terminal. Smith dodged around huge overhead cranes and stacked freight, finally stopping opposite an opening in a railing along the pier's edge. Without a word of instruction, he stepped from the vehicle and walked toward a ramp leading to a launch that was tied to a small floating dock. The two NUMA men obediently followed and climbed into the launch. The sailor standing at the helm in the stern of the boat was a concert in black—black pants, black T-shirt and black stocking cap pulled down over the ears despite the tropical heat and humidity.

The launch eased away from the wooden pilings and turned her bow toward a ship that lay anchored about two-thirds of a mile from the terminal. Around her were the lights from other ships waiting for their turn to load or unload cargo under the great cranes. The atmosphere was as clear as cut glass, and far across Manila Bay the colored lights of fishing boats sparkled like gemstones against the black sky.

The shape of the ship began to rise in the night, and Pitt could see that she was not the typical tramp steamer that plowed the South Seas from island to island. He correctly identified her as a Pacific Coast lumber hauler with clean, unencumbered holds and no amidships superstructure. Her engine room was in the stern below the crew's quarters. A single stack rose just aft of the wheelhouse and behind it, a tall mast. A second, smaller mast rose from the forecastle on the bow. Pitt guessed her at somewhere between four and five thousand tons with a length of just under three hundred feet and a forty-five-foot beam. A vessel her size could have carried nearly three million board feet of lumber. Her time had long come and gone. Her sister ships, which had carried the product of saw mills, had settled into the silt of the boneyard almost fifty years earlier, having been replaced by more modern towboats and barges.

“What's her name?” Pitt asked Smith.

“The Oregon.”

“I imagine she carried a goodly amount of lumber in her day.”

Smith looked at Pitt across the launch, inspecting him closely. “How could a pretty boy like you know that?”

“When my father was a young man, he crewed on a lumber ship. He made ten runs between San Diego and Portland before finishing college. He has a picture of the ship on his office wall.”

“The Oregon sailed from Vancouver to San Francisco for close to twenty-five years before she was retired.”

“I wonder when she was built.”

“Long before you or I were born,” said Smith.

The helmsman swung the launch alongside the hull, once painted a dark orange but now discolored by rust, as revealed by the running lights on the masts and the glow from the starboard navigation light. There was no gangway, only a rope boarding ladder with wood rungs.

“After you, pretty boy,” said Smith, gesturing topside.

Pitt went first, trailed by Giordino. On the way up, Pitt wiped his fingers across a large scale of rust. The patch felt smooth, and no smudge dirtied his fingertips. The hatches on the deck were closed and the cargo booms sloppily stowed. Several large wooden crates stacked on the deck looked like they had been secured by untrained chimpanzees. To all appearances the crew ran what was often called “a loose ship.” None of them were seen, and the decks seemed deserted. The only indication of life was a radio playing a Strauss waltz. The music was inconsistent with the ship's overall appearance. Pitt thought an ode to a trash dump would have been more appropriate. He saw no sign of the Sea Dog II. “Did our submersible arrive?” Pitt asked Smith. “She's stowed in that large crate just behind the forecastle.” “Which way to the captain's cabin?” The mangy escort lifted a plate in the deck that revealed a ladder leading into what seemed a cargo compartment. “You'll find him down there.”

“Ship captains aren't generally quartered in concealed compartments.” Pitt looked up at the superstructure on the stern. “On any ship I've known the captain's cabin is below the wheelhouse.”

“Down there, pretty boy,” Smith repeated. “What in hell has Sandecker gotten us into,” murmured Giordino suspiciously as he turned his back to Pitt's and instinctively went into a fighting crouch.

Calmly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, Pitt laid his tote bag on the deck, unzipped a pocket and retrieved his old .45 Colt. Before Smith knew what was happening the muzzle was jammed under his chin. “Forgive me for not mentioning it, but I blew the head off the last jerk who called me pretty boy.”

“Okay, pal,” Smith said without a hint of fear. “I recognize a gun when I see one. Not one in mint condition, but obviously well used. Please point it somewhere else. You wouldn't want to get hurt now, would you?”

“I don't think it's me who's going to get hurt,” Pitt said conversationally.

“You might be wise to look around you.”

It was the oldest trick in the book, but Pitt had nothing to lose. He glanced around the deck as men stepped out of the shadows. Not two men, nor four, but six men every bit as disreputable as Smith, each holding automatic weapons pointed at Pitt and Giordino. Big, silent men dressed as mangily as Smith.

Pitt pulled back the hammer and pressed the Colt another quarter inch into the flesh under Smith's chin. “Would it matter if I said, if I go, you go with me?”

“And allow your friend to be killed too?” said Smith with an ungodly grin. “From what little I know about you, Pitt, you're not that dumb.”

“Just what do you know about me?” “Put the gun away, and we'll talk.” “I can hear you perfectly well from where I stand.” “Relax, boys,” said Smith to his men. “We must show a little class and treat our guests with respect.”

Incredibly, the crew of the Oregon lowered their guns and began laughing. “Serves you right, skipper,” one of them said. “You said they were probably a couple nerds from NUMA who drank milk and ate broccoli.”

Giordino smoothly joined the act. “You guys got any beer on this tub?”

“Ten different brands,” said a crewman, slapping him on the back. “Glad to have passengers with a little guts on board.”

Pitt lowered the gun and eased the hammer back in the safety position. “I get the feeling we've been had.”

“Sorry to inconvenience you,” said Smith heartily, “but we can't let our guard down for even a moment.” He turned to his men and issued an order. “Weigh anchor, boys, and get under way for Hong Kong.”

“Admiral Sandecker said this was a singularly uncommon ship,” said Pitt, replacing the automatic in his tote bag. “But he didn't say anything about the crew.”

“If we can dispense with the theatrics,” said Smith, “I'll show you below.” He dropped down the ladder through the narrow hatch and disappeared. Pitt and Giordino followed, finding themselves in a brightly lit, carpeted hallway whose walls were painted in pastel colors. Smith opened a smoothly varnished door and nodded inside. “You can share this cabin. Stow your gear, get comfortable, use the head and then I'll introduce you to the captain. You'll find his cabin behind the fourth door on the port side aft.”

Pitt stepped inside and switched on the light. This was no Spartan cabin on a decrepit freighter. It was every bit as swank as any stateroom on a luxury cruise ship. Ornately decorated leading to a private veranda. The only suggestion of the outside world was a porthole painted black. “What,” exclaimed Giordino, “no bowl of fruit?”

Pitt stared around the cabin in fascination. “I wonder if we have to dress formal when we dine with the captain.”

They heard the anchor chain rattle up out of the water and felt the engines begin to throb through the deck under their feet as the Oregon began beating her way across Manila Bay toward her destination in Hong Kong. A few minutes later they knocked on the door to the captain's cabin. A voice on the other side responded. “Please come in.”

If their cabin resembled a deluxe stateroom, this one would have easily rated as the penthouse suite. It resembled a decorator showroom on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The furniture was expensive yet tasteful. The walls, or bulkheads in nautical terms, were either richly paneled or covered by curtains. The carpet was thick and plush. Two of the paneled walls were covered by original oil paintings. Pitt walked up to one and studied it. The painting inside an ornate frame was a seascape depicting a black man lying on the deck of a small, demasted sloop with a school of sharks swimming around its hull.

“Winslow Homer's Gulf Stream,” said Pitt. “I thought it was hanging in a New York museum.”

“The original is,” said a man standing beside a large antique rolltop desk. “What you see are forgeries. In my line of business no insurance company would insure the real thing.” A handsome man in his mid-forties with blue eyes and blond hair in a crewcut stepped forward and stuck out a manicured hand. “Chairman Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, at your service.” He pronounced Cabrillo as Ka-bree-yo.

“Chairman, like in chairman of the board?”

“A departure from maritime tradition,” Cabrillo explained. “This ship is run like a business, a corporation if you will. The personnel prefer to be assigned corporate titles.”

“That's a twist,” Giordino said equably. “Don't tell me, I'm keen to guess. Your first officer is president.”

Cabrillo shook his head. “No, my chief engineer is president. My first officer is executive vice president.”

Giordino lifted an eyebrow. “This is the first I've heard the Kingdom of Oz owns a ship.”

“You'll get used to it,” Cabrillo said tolerantly.

“If I recall my California history,” said Pitt, “you discovered California in the early fifteen hundreds.”

Cabrillo laughed. “My father always claimed Cabrillo the explorer as an ancestor, but I've had my doubts. My grandparents walked across the border at Nogales from Sonora, Mexico, in nineteen thirty-one and became American citizens five years later. In honor of my birth they insisted my mother and father name me after a famous historical figure in California.”

“I believe we've met before,” said Pitt. “Like about twenty minutes ago,” added Giordino. “Your imitation of a waterfront derelict, Chairman Cabrillo, alias Mr. Smith, was very professional.”

Cabrillo laughed merrily. “You gentlemen are the first to see through my disguise as a rum-soaked barnacle.” Unlike his staged character, Cabrillo was well-built and slightly on the thin side. The hook nose was gone, along with the tattoos and the overstuffed belly.

“I must admit, you had me fooled until I saw the van.” “Yes, our shore transportation is not quite what it appears.” “This ship,” said Pitt, “your playacting, the facade, what's it all about?”

Cabrillo gestured for them to sit in a leather sofa. He walked over to a teak bar. “A glass of wine?” “Yes, thank you.” “I'd prefer a beer,” said Giordino. Cabrillo poured and held out a mug to Giordino. “A Philippine San Miguel.” Then a wineglass to Pitt. “Wattle Creek Chardonnay from Alexander Valley, California.”

“You have excellent taste,” Pitt complimented Cabrillo. “I have the feeling it extends to your kitchen.”

Cabrillo smiled. “I pirated my chef from a very exclusive restaurant in Brussels, Belgium. I might also add that should you get heartburn or indigestion from overindulging, we have an excellent hospital staffed by a top surgeon who doubles as a dentist.”

“I'm curious, Mr. Cabrillo, what sort of trade is the Oregon engaged in, and who exactly do you work for?”

“This ship is a state-of-the-art intelligence-gathering vessel,” Cabrillo replied without hesitation. “We go where no U.S. Navy warship can go, enter ports closed to most commercial shipping and transport highly secret cargo without arousing suspicion. We work for any United States government agency that requires our unique array of services.”

“Then you're not under the CIA.”

Cabrillo shook his head. “Although we're staffed by a few ex-intelligence agents, the Oregon is operated by an elite crew of former naval men and naval officers, all of whom are retired.”

“I couldn't tell in the dark. What flag do you fly?”

“Iran,” replied Cabrillo with a faint smile. “The last country any port authority would identify with the United States.”

“Am I correct in assuming,” said Pitt, “you're all mercenaries?”

“I can honestly say we're in business to make a profit, yes. By performing a variety of clandestine services for our country, we are paid extremely well.”

“Who owns the ship?” asked Giordino.

“Everyone on board is a stockholder in the corporation,” answered Cabrillo. “Some of us own more stock than others, but there isn't a single crew member who hasn't at least five million dollars stashed away in foreign investments.”

“Does the IRS know about you?”

“The government has a secret fund for operations like ours,” Cabrillo explained. “We have an arrangement whereby they pay our fees through a network of banks in countries that do not open their records to IRS auditors.”

Pitt took a sip of his wine. “A sweet setup.”

“But one that isn't unknown to peril and occasional disaster. The Oregon is our third ship. The others were destroyed by unfriendly forces. I might add that over thirteen years we've been in operation, we've lost no fewer than twenty men.”

“Foreign agents caught on to you?”

“No, we've yet to be unmasked. There were other circumstances.” Whatever they were, Cabrillo didn't explain them.

“Who authorized this trip?” inquired Giordino.

“Between you and me and the nearest porthole, our sailing orders came from within the White House.”

“That's about as high as you can go.”

Pitt looked at the captain. “Do you think you can put us reasonably close to the United States? We have a couple of acres of hull to inspect, and our time underwater is limited due to the Sea Dog IFs battery power. If you have to moor the Oregon a mile or more away, just getting to the liner and back will cut our downtime considerably.”

Cabrillo stared back at him confidently. “I'll put you near enough to fly a kite over her funnels.” Then he poured himself another glass of the chardonnay and held it up. “To a very successful voyage.”

PlTT WENT OUT ON DECK AND LOOKED UP AT THE MAST LIGHT as it swayed back and forth across the Milky Way. He planted his arms on the railing and gazed across the water at the island of Corregidor as the Oregon sailed out of Manila Bay. The indefinable black mass rose from the night, guarding the entrance to the bay in tomblike silence. A few lights glimmered on the interior of the island along with red warning lights on a transmitter tower. It was difficult for Pitt to imagine the onslaught of death and destruction that inundated the rocky outcropping during the war years. The number of men who died there, Americans in 1942, Japanese in 1945, numbered in the thousands. A small village of huts sat near the decaying dock from which General Douglas MacArthur had boarded Commander Buckley's torpedo boat for the initial stage of his journey to Australia and later return.

Pitt smelled the pungent odor of cigar smoke and turned as a crewman moved beside him at the railing. Under the running lights, Pitt could see a man who was in his late fifties. He recognized Max Hanley, who had been introduced earlier, not as the chief engineer or first officer, but as the corporate vice president in charge of operational systems.

Once safely out to sea, Hanley, like the rest of the dedicated crew members, transformed himself into a different person by donning comfortably casual clothes better suited for a golf course. He wore sneakers and was dressed in white shorts and a maroon polo shirt. He held a cup of coffee in one hand. His skin was reddened with no trace of tan, the brown eyes alert, a bulbous nose and only a wisp of auburn hair splayed across his head.

“A lot of history on that old rock,” said Hanley. “I always come topside when we slip past her.”

“She's pretty quiet now,” replied Pitt. “My father died over there in 'forty-two when the big gun he was manning took a direct hit from a Japanese bomber.”

“A lot of good men died with him.”

“That they did.” Hanley looked into Pitt's eyes. "I'll be directing the descent into the water and retrieval of your submersible. Anything me or my engineers can help you with in regard to your equipment and electronics, you just holler.

There is something.

Name it."

“Could your crew do a quick repaint of the Sea Dog II? The NUMA turquoise trademark color is highly visible in shallow water from the surface.”

“What color would you like?” asked Hanley. “A medium green,” explained Pitt, “a shade that blends with the water in the harbor.”

“I'll get my boys on it first thing.” Hanley turned and leaned against the rail with his back, staring up at the wisp of smoke drifting from the ship's funnel. “Seems to me it might have been a whole lot simpler to use one of them underwater robotic vehicles.”

“Or an autonomous underwater vehicle,” said Pitt, smiling. “Neither would prove as efficient as a manned submersible for inspecting the bottom of a hull the size of the United States. The sub's manipulator arm may also prove useful. There are certain projects where human eyesight is advantageous over video cameras. This happens to be one of them.”

Hanley read the dial of an old pocket watch whose chain was hooked to a belt loop. “Time to program the engine and navigation systems. Now that we've reached open water, the chairman will want to triple our speed.”

“We must be doing close to nine or ten knots now,” said Pitt, his curiosity piqued.

“Strictly a performance,” Hanley said candidly. “Whenever the old Oregon is in sight of prying eyes around the harbor or other ships that pass at sea, we like to make her look as if her antique engines and screws are straining to make headway. Which is the way she should appear for an old tub. In truth, she's been modified with two screws turned by twin diesel turbine engines that can push her past forty knots.”

“But with a full load of cargo, your hull is riding low in the water and causing a heavy drag.”

Hanley tilted his head toward the cargo hatches and the wooden crates tied to the deck. “All empty. We ride low because we fill specially installed ballast tanks to give the appearance of a heavily laden ship. Once they're pumped out, she'll rise six feet and take off four times faster than when she was built.”

“A fox in disguise.”

“With the teeth to match. Ask Chairman Cabrillo to show you how we bite back if we're attacked.”

“I'll do that.”

“Good night, Mr. Pitt.”

“Good night, Mr. Hanley.”

Ten minutes later Pitt felt the ship come to life as the vibrations from the engines increased dramatically. The wake turned from a white spreading scar to a boiling cauldron. The stern sank by a good three feet, the bow raised in an equal proportion and creamed white. The water rushed along the hull as if swept away by a giant broom. The sea shimmered under an awning of stars that outlined a scattering of thunderclouds on the horizon. It was a postcard South China Sea evening with an orange-tinted sky to the west.

The Oregon approached the outer reaches of Hong Kong Harbor two days later, making landfall at sunset. She had made the crossing from Manila in remarkable time. Twice, upon meeting other freighters during daylight, Cabrillo gave the order for slow speed. Several of the crew always quickly dressed in their shabby coveralls, assembled on deck and peered across the gap between the passing ships, staring blankly at what Cabrillo called a show of dummies. In an unwritten tradition of the sea, the crews of overtaking or passing ships coming together at sea never showed any animation. Only their eyeballs moved and blinked. Passengers wave, but merchant seamen always act uneasy when looking at crewmen on another ship. Usually, they offer a stiff little wave from a hand draped over the rail before disappearing inside their ship. Once the strange vessel was a safe distance in the Oregon's wake, Cabrillo ordered a return to fast cruising speed.

Pitt and Giordino were given a tour of the remarkable ship. The wheelhouse above the aft house or superstructure was kept in a grimy and dirty state to mislead visiting port officials and harbor pilots. The unused officer and crew quarters below the wheelhouse were also kept in a slovenly mess to avoid suspicion. There was, however, no way of masquerading the engine room to make it look like a scrap heap. Vice president Hanky wouldn't hear of it. If any customs or harbor inspector came on board and wanted to see his engines, Hanley fixed up a passageway with enough dirty oil and sludge covering the deck and bulkheads to discourage even the most zealous officials from wanting to enter. None ever realized that the hatch beyond the filthy passageway opened onto an engine room as immaculate as a hospital's operating room.

The actual officer and crew cabins were concealed under the cargo holds. For defense the Oregon fairly bristled with weaponry. Like the German raiders of both wars and the British Q-ships of World War I, whose sides dropped away to reveal six-inch guns and vicious torpedo tubes, the Oregon's hull secreted an array of sea-to-sea and sea-to-air missile launchers. The ship was remarkably different from any whose decks Pitt had set foot on before. It was a masterwork of deception and fabrication. He suspected there was no other like it on the seas.

He ate an early dinner with Giordino before going to the wheelhouse for a conference with Cabrillo. He was introduced to the ship's chef, Marie du Gard, a lady from Belgium with credentials that would send any restaurant or hotel owner on his knees begging her to work as his chef de cuisine. She was on board the Oregon because Cabrillo made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Through wise investments of her considerable fee as the ship's chef, she planned on opening her own restaurant in midtown Manhattan after two more undercover operations.

The menu was extraordinary. Giordino's tastebuds were mundane, so he settled for the boeuf & la mode, braised beef covered with aspic and glazed vegetables. Pitt opted for ris de veau ou cervelles au beurre noir, sweetbreads in brown butter sauce served with baked mushroom caps stuffed with crab enhanced by a boiled artichoke with hollandaise sauce. He allowed the chef to select for him a fine 1992 Ferrari-Carano Siena from Sonoma County. Pitt could not boast of having eaten a more savory meal, and certainly not on board a ship such as the Oregon.

After an espresso, Pitt and Giordino took a companionway up to the wheelhouse. Here pipes and iron fittings were stained with rust. Paint was flaking from bulkheads and window frames. The deck was deeply marred and spotted with old cigarette burns. Very little equipment seemed up-to-date. Only the brass on the old-fashioned binnacle and telegraph gleamed under the antiquated light fixtures still containing sixty-watt bulbs.

Chairman Cabrillo was standing on a bridge wing, pipe firmly clamped between his teeth. The ship had entered the West Lamma Channel leading to Hong Kong Harbor. Traffic was heavy, and Cabrillo ordered slow speed in preparation of taking on the harbor pilot. Her ballast tanks refilled when twenty miles out, the Oregon looked like any one of a hundred old freighters fully laden with cargo entering the busy harbor. The ruby lights on the television and microwave antennas atop Mount Victoria blinked on and off as a warning to low-flying aircraft. The thousands of lights decorating the palatial Jumbo Floating Restaurant near Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island sprinkled the water like clouds of fireflies.

If there was any risk and danger attached to the planned covert activity, the men and officers congregated in the wheel-house demonstrated an utter immunity to it. The chartroom and the deck around the helm had become a corporate boardroom. The merits of different Asian stocks and bonds were being weighed. They were savvy investors who followed the market with seemingly more interest than they showed for the coming spy job on the United States.

Cabrillo stepped in from the bridge wing, noticed Pitt and Giordino, and approached them. “My friends in Hong Kong have informed me that the United States is tied up at Qin Shang Maritime's terminal dock at Kwai Chung north of Kowloon. The proper harbor officials have been bribed, and we've been given a berth in the channel about five hundred yards from the liner.”

“A thousand-yard round trip,” said Pitt, mentally calculating the submersible's downtime.

“Sea Dog 7 has batteries—how far can you stretch them?” asked Cabrillo.

“Fourteen hours if we treat them gently,” replied Giordino.

“Can you be towed behind a launch while underwater and out of sight?”

Pitt nodded. “A tow to and from would give us an extra hour under the liner's hull. I must warn you, though, the submersible is no lightweight. Its underwater drag will make ponderous going for a small launch.”

Cabrillo smiled evenly. “You don't know what type of engines power our shore launch and lifeboats.”

“I'm not even going to ask,” said Pitt. “But I'm guessing they could hold their own in a Gold Cup hydro race.”

“We've given away enough of the Oregon's technical secrets for you to write a book on her.” Cabrillo turned and peered through the bridge window as the pilot boat came out from the harbor, made a 180-degree turn and came alongside. The ladder was dropped, and the pilot stepped from his boat and climbed to the deck while both vessels were still under way. He went directly to the bridge, greeted Cabrillo and took charge of the helm.

Pitt walked outside onto the bridge wing and viewed the incredible carnival of colored lights of Kowloon and Hong Kong as the ship slipped through the channel to her assigned anchorage northwest of the central harbor. Along the waterfront of Victoria Harbor, the skyscrapers were illuminated like a forest of giant Christmas trees. In appearance, the city had changed little after it was taken over in 1997 by the People's Republic of China. For most of the residents life went on as before. It was the wealthy, along with many of the giant corporations, who had moved, primarily to the West Coast of the United States.

He was joined by Giordino as the ship closed on Qin Shang's dock terminal. The transatlantic ocean liner that was once the pride of America's maritime fleet appeared and grew larger.

During the flight to Manila he and Giordino had studied a lengthy report on the United States. The brainchild of the famed ship designer William Francis Gibbs, she was built by the Newport News Ship Building & Dry Dock Company, who laid her keel in 1950. Gibbs, a genius and a genuine character, was to marine engineering and design what Frank Lloyd Wright was to dry-land architecture. His dream was to create the fastest and most beautiful passenger liner yet built. He achieved his dream, and his masterpiece became the pride and apex of America during the age of great liners. She was truly the ultimate in elegant refinement and speed.

Gibbs was fanatical about weight and fireproofing. He insisted on using aluminum whenever possible. From the 1.2 million rivets driven into her hull to the lifeboats and their oars, stateroom furnishings and bathroom fixtures, baby's high chairs, even coat hangers and picture frames, all had to be aluminum. The only wood on the entire ship was a fireproof Steinway piano and the chef's butcher block. In the end, Gibbs had reduced the weight of the superstructure by 2,500 tons. The result was a ship of remarkable stability.

Considered huge then and now with a gross tonnage of 53,329 and measuring 990 feet in length with a 101-foot beam, she was not the world's largest liner. At the time of her construction the Queen Mary outweighed her by over 30,000 tons and the Queen Elizabeth was forty-one feet longer. The Cunard Line Queens may have provided a more ornate and baroque atmosphere, but the American ship's lack of rich wood paneling and fancy decor in favor of tasteful restraint, and her speed and safety were the elements that set the United States apart from her contemporaries. Unlike foreign competing liners, the Big U, as her crew had affectionately called her, gave her passengers 694 unusually spacious staterooms and air conditioning. Nineteen elevators carried passengers between the decks. Besides the usual gift shops, they could enjoy three libraries and two cinemas and could worship in a chapel.

But her two greatest assets were a military secret at the time of her building and operation. Not until several years later did it become known that she could be converted into a military transport capable of carrying 14,000 troops within a few weeks. Powered by eight massive boilers creating superheated steam, her four Westinghouse-geared turbines could put out 240,000 horsepower, 60,000 for each of her four propeller shafts, and drive her through the water just under fifty miles an hour. She was one of the few liners that could slip through the Panama Canal, charge across the Pacific to Singapore and back to San

Francisco without refueling. In 1952, the United States won the prestigious Blue Riband, awarded for the fastest speed across the Atlantic. No liner has won it since.

A decade after she left the shipyard, she had become an anachronism. Commercial airplanes were already becoming competition to the famed greyhounds of the sea. By 1969, rising operating costs and the public's desire to reach their destination in the shortest time possible by air, spelled the end for America's greatest ocean liner. She was retired and laid up for thirty years at Norfolk, Virginia, before eventually finding her way to China.

Borrowing a pair of binoculars, Pitt studied the huge ship from the bridge of the Oregon. Her hull was still painted black, her superstructure white, her two great, magnificent funnels red, white and blue. She looked as magnificent as the day she broke the transatlantic record.

He was puzzled to see her ablaze with light. The sounds of activity echoed across the water. It puzzled him that Qin Shang's shipyard crews were working on her around the clock without any attempt at secrecy. Then, curiously, all sounds and activity suddenly stopped.

The pilot nodded at Cabrillo, who rang the ancient telegraph to STOP ENGINES. Unknown to the pilot, the telegraph was nonfunctional and Cabrillo muttered orders through a handheld radio. The vibration died, and the Oregon went as quiet as a tomb as she slowly moved forward under her own momentum. Then the command came for slow astern, followed shortly by all stop.

Cabrillo gave the order to let go the anchor. The chain rattled, and it fell with a splash into the water. Then he shook hands with the pilot after signing the usual affidavits and logging the mooring. He waited until the pilot was on board the pilot boat before motioning to Pitt and Giordino.

“Come join me in the chartroom and we'll go over tomorrow's program.”

“Why wait another twenty-four hours?” asked Giordino.

Cabrillo shook his head. “Tomorrow after dark is soon enough. We still have customs officials due aboard. No sense in alerting suspicions.”

Pitt said, “I think we have a breakdown in communications.”

Cabrillo looked at him. “You see a problem?”

“We have to go during daylight. We have no visibility at night.”

“Can't you use underwater lights?”

“In black water any bright light stands out like a beacon. We'd be discovered ten seconds after we switched on our floods.”

“We'll be inconspicous when we're under the keel,” Giordino added. “It's when we're inspecting the hull on the sides below the waterline that we're vulnerable to detection from above.”

“What about the darkness caused by the shadow of the hull?” asked Cabrillo. “What if underwater visibility is lousy? What then?”

“We'd have to rely on artificial lighting, but it would be imperceptible to anyone staring over the side of the dock with sun over their head.”

Cabrillo nodded. “I understand your dilemma. Romantic adventure novels say it's darkest before dawn. We'll drop you and your submersible over the side and tow you within spitting distance of the United States, putting you on station before sunup.”

“Sounds good to me,” Pitt said gratefully.

“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Chairman?” inquired Giordino.

“Go right ahead.”

“If you carry no cargo, how do you justify entering and exiting a port?”

Cabrillo gave Giordino a canny look. “The empty wooden crates you see on the deck and the ones in the cargo holds above our concealed cabins and galley are stage props. They will be off-loaded onto the dock, then consigned to an agent who works for me and transported to a warehouse. After a proper length of time, the crates are re-marked with different descriptions, returned to the dock and loaded back on board. As far as the Chinese are concerned, we dumped one cargo and took on another.”

“Your operation never ceases to amaze,” said Pitt.

“You were given a tour of our computer compartment in the bow of the ship,” said Cabrillo. “So you know that ninety percent of the Oregon's operation is under the command of computer-automated systems. We go manual when entering and departing a port.”

Pitt handed the binoculars to Cabrillo. “You're an old pro at stealth and covert activities. Doesn't it strike you odd that Qin Shang is converting the United States into a first-class smugglers' transport right out in the open under the eyes of anyone looking on? Crewmen on cargo ships, passengers on ferries and tour boats?”

“It does seem peculiar,” Cabrillo admitted. He lowered the glasses momentarily in thought, puffed on his pipe, and peered through the lenses again. “It's also peculiar that all work on the ship appears to have stopped. No sign of tight security either.”

“Tell you anything?” asked Giordino.

“It either tells Qin Shang is uncommonly careless or our renowned intelligence agencies have been outsmarted by him,” said Cabrillo quietly.

“We'll know better after we check out the ship's bottom,” said Pitt. “If he intends to smuggle illegal aliens into foreign countries under the noses of their immigration officials, he'd have to have a technique for removing them off the ship undetected. That can only mean some kind of watertight passage beneath the waterline to shore or even possibly a submarine.”

Cabrillo tapped his pipe on the rail, watching as the ashes spiraled down into the harbor. Then he looked thoughtfully across the water at the former pride of America's passenger fleet, her superstructure and two rakish funnels brilliantly lit like a movie set. When he spoke it was slowly and solemnly. “You fully realize, I assume, that if something should go wrong, a minor mishap, an overlooked detail, and you are caught in what is considered an act of espionage by the People's Republic of China, you will be treated accordingly.”

“Like being tortured and shot,” said Giordino.

Cabrillo nodded. “And without anyone in our government so much as lifting then” little finger to stop the execution."

“Al and I are fully aware of the consequences,” said Pitt. “But you're placed in the hazardous position of risking your entire crew and your ship. I wouldn't fault you for a second if you wanted to toss us in the bay and steam off into the sunset”

Cabrillo stared at him and smiled craftily. “Are you serious? Skip out on you? I'd never consider it. Certainly not for the enormous sum of money a certain secret government fund is paying me and the crew. As far as I'm concerned, this has far less risk than robbing a bank.”

“In excess of seven figures?” Pitt asked.

“More like eight,” replied Cabrillo, suggesting a fee of over ten million dollars.

Giordino looked over at Pitt sadly. “When I think of what our pitiful monthly stipend from NUMA adds up to, I can't help wondering where we went wrong.”

UNDER THE COVER OF PREDAWN DARKNESS, THE SUBMERSIBLE Sea Dog II, with Pitt and Giordino inside, was lifted from her crate by the loading crane, swung over the side of the ship and slowly lowered into the water. A crewman standing on top of the submersible unhooked the cable and was hauled back on board. Then the Oregon's shore launch pulled alongside and attached a towline. Giordino stood in the open hatch that was raised three feet above the water while Pitt continued ticking off the instrument and equipment checklist.

“Ready when you are,” announced Max Hanley from the launch.

“We'll descend to ten feet,” said Giordino. “When we reach that level you can get under way.” “Understood.”

Giordino closed the hatch and stretched out beside Pitt in the submersible, which had the appearance of a fat Siamese cigar with stubby wings on each side that curved to vertical on the tips. The twenty-foot long, eight-foot wide, 3,200-pound vehicle may have looked ungainly on the surface, but underwater she dived and turned with the grace of a baby whale. She was propelled with three thrusters in the twin tail section that

impelled water through the front intake and expelled it out the rear. With a light touch on the two handgrips, one controlling pitch and dive, the other banks and turns, along with the speed-control lever, the Sea Dog II could glide smoothly a few feet under the surface of the sea or dive to a depth of two thousand feet in a matter of minutes. The pilots, who lay prone with their heads and shoulders extending into a single transparent glass bow, had a much wider range of visibility than provided by most submersibles with only small viewing ports.

Visibility beneath the surface was nil. The water enclosed the sub like a thick quilt. Looking up and ahead, they could just barely make out the shadowy outline of the launch. Then came a deep rumble as Cabrillo increased the rpms of the powerful Rodeck 539-cubic-inch, 1,500-horsepower engine that drove the big double-ender launch. The propeller thrashed the water, the stern dug in and the launch strained before surging forward with the bulky submersible in tow. Like a diesel locomotive pulling a long train up a grade, the launch struggled to gain momentum, finally increasing its speed until it was dragging the deadweight below the water at a respectable eight knots. Unknown to Pitt and Giordino, Cabrillo had the throttle of the powerful engine set at only one-third power.

During the short journey from the Oregon to the United States, Pitt programmed the on-board computer analyzer that automatically set and monitored the oxygen level, electronics and the depth control systems. Giordino activated the manipulator arm by running it through a series of exercises.

“Is the communications antenna up?” Pitt asked him.

Lying next to him, Giordino nodded slightly. “I let out the cable to a maximum length of sixty feet as soon as we entered the water. She's dragging on the surface behind us.”

“How did you disguise it?”

Giordino shrugged. “Another cunning ploy of the great Albert Giordino. I encased it in a hollowed-out cantaloupe.”

“Stolen from the chef, no doubt.”

Giordino gave Pitt a hurt look. “Waste not, want not. It was overripe and she was going to throw it in her garbage collector.”

Pitt spoke into a tiny microphone. “Chairman Cabrillo, do you read me?”

“Like you were sitting next to me, Mr. Pitt,” Cabrillo came back quickly. Like the other five men in the launch, he was dressed as a local fisherman.

“As soon as we reach our drop zone, I'll release the communications-relay antenna so we can remain in contact after you've returned to the Oregon. When I drop the antenna, its weighted line will settle into the silt and it will act as a buoy.” “What is your range?”

“Underwater, we can transmit and receive up to fifteen hundred yards.”

“Understood,” said Cabrillo. “Stand by, we're only a short distance away from the liner's stern. I won't be able to come in much closer than fifty yards.” “Any sign of a security force?”

“The whole ship and dock look as dead as a crypt in winter.” “Standing by.”

Cabrillo was better than his word. He slowed the launch until it barely maintained headway and steered it almost directly under the stern of the United States. The sun was coming up as a diver slipped over the side and descended down the towline to the submersible. “Diver is down,” Cabrillo announced.

“We see him,” answered Pitt, looking up through the transparent nose. He watched as the diver released the connection mechanism mounted on top of the submersible between the twin tubes and gave the familiar “okay” sign with one hand before disappearing up the towline. “We are free.”

“Make a turn forty degrees to your starboard,” directed Cabrillo. “You are only eighty feet west of the stern.”

Giordino gestured up through the murky depth at the immense shadow that gave the illusion it was passing over them, The seemingly unending shape was enhanced by the sunlight filtering between the dock and the gigantic hull. “We have her.”

“You're on your own. Rendezvous will be at four-thirty. I'll - have a diver waiting at your antenna mooring.”

“Thank you, Juan,” said Pitt, feeling free to use the chairman's first name. “We couldn't have done it without you and your exceptional crew.”

“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Cabrillo came back cheerfully.

Giordino gazed in awe at the monstrous rudder looming overhead and pressed the lever that dropped the antenna's anchor into the silt on the bottom. From their position the hull seemed to travel off into infinity. “She appears to be riding high. Do you recall her draft?”

“I'd have to make a wild guess,” said Pitt. “Somewhere around forty feet, give or take?”

“Judging from the look of her, your guess is a good five feet on the low side.”

Pitt made Cabrillo's course correction and dipped the Sea Dog /Ts bows into deeper water. “I'd better be careful or we'll bump our heads.”

Pitt and Giordino had worked as a team on countless dives into the abyss and operated a score of submersibles on various NUMA projects. Without any discussion each man spontaneously assumed his well-practiced responsibilities. Pitt acted as pilot while Giordino kept an eye on the systems monitor, operated the video camera and worked the manipulator arm.

Pitt gently eased the throttle lever forward, directing the sub's movement by angling and tilting the three thrusters with the handgrip controls, dodging beneath the giant rudder and banking around the two starboard screws. Like some nocturnal flying machine, the submersible slipped around the three-bladed bronze propellers that spanned the watery gloom like great, beautifully curved fans. The Sea Dog II continued silently through the water, which became an eerie opaque green.

The bottom appeared as distant land through a fog. Assorted trash dumped off ships and the dock over the years lay partially embedded in the silt. They soared over a rusting deck grate that was home to a small school of squid that drifted in and out of the parallel rows of square openings. Pitt guessed that it had simply been dumped by dockyard workers sometime in the past. He stopped the thrusters and settled the craft into the soft bottom beneath the liner's stern. A small cloud of silt filtered up and outward like a brown vapor, momentarily obscuring any view through the forward canopy.

Overhead, t ic hull of the United States stretched above them into the dusky water like a dark, ominous shroud. There was a sense of loneliness on the desolate bottom. The real world above did not exist.

“I think it best if we took a few minutes and thought this thing out,” said Pitt.

“Don't ask me why,” said Giordino, “but a dumb joke from my childhood suddenly popped into my head.”

“What joke is that?”

“The goldfish that blushed when it saw the Queen Mary's bottom.”

Pitt made a sour face. “The simple things that come from simple minds. You should rot in purgatory for resurrecting that old turkey.”

Giordino acted as if he didn't hear. “Not to change the titillating subject, but I wonder if these clowns thought of using eavesdropping sensors around the hull.”

“Unless we bump into one dangling from the dock, we have no way of telling.”

“Still pretty dark to make out any detail.” “I'm thinking we can set our light beams on the low end and begin inspecting the keel. Our chances of being spotted that deep beneath the hull are unlikely.”

“Then as the sun rises higher in the sky, we can work out and up toward the waterline.”

Pitt nodded. “Hardly a brilliant plan, but it's the best I can come up with under the circumstances.”

“Then we'd better get a move on,” said Giordino, “if we don't want to suck our oxygen dry.”

Pitt engaged the thrusters, and the submersible slowly rose from the silt until it was only four feet below the keel. He concentrated on keeping the Sea Dog II on an even plane, glancing every few seconds at his positioning monitor to guide him on a straight track while Giordino peered upward, his eyes searching for any irregularity that indicated an exit or entry hatch that had been riveted in the bottom of the hull, taping any suspicious piece or workmanship with the video camera. After a few minutes, Pitt found it more expedient to ignore the monitor and simply follow the horizontal seams between the hull plates through the transparent canopy.

On the surface, the sun's rays pierced the depths, increasing visibility. Pitt switched off the exterior lights. The steel plates, black in the earlier darkness, now became a dull red as the antifouling paint became more evident. There was a slight current caused by the outgoing tide, but Pitt held the submersible steady as the inspection continued. For the next two hours they glided back and forth as if mowing a lawn, each man strangely silent, intent on his job.

Suddenly, Cabrillo's voice broke the silence. “Care to make a progress report, gentlemen?”

“No progress to report,” Pitt answered. “One more sweep and we'll have finished the bottom of the hull. Then it's up the sides toward the waterline.”

“Let's hope your new paint job makes it tough to spot you from the surface.”

“Max Hanley and his crew laid on a darker green tint than I'd planned,” said Pitt. “But if nobody stares down in the water, we should be okay.”

“The ship still looks deserted.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“See you in two hours and eighteen minutes,” said Cabrillo jovially. “Try not to be late.”

“We'll be there,” Pitt promised. “Al and I don't want to hang around down here any longer than we have to.”

“Standing by and out.”

Pitt leaned his head toward Giordino without looking at him. “How's our oxygen supply?” he asked.

“Tolerable,” Giordino replied briefly. “Battery power still reads steady, but it's creeping slowly toward the red line.”

They finished the final run working out from the keel. Pitt guided the little craft along the section of the hull that curved upward toward the waterline. The next hour passed with agonizing slowness, and nothing out of the ordinary was revealed. The tide turned and began flowing in from the sea, bringing cleaner water and increasing visibility to nearly thirty feet. Swinging around the bow they began working the starboard side, which was moored next to the dock, not rising to within ten feet of the surface.

“Time remaining?” Pitt asked tersely without lifting a hand to glance at his Doxa dive watch.

“Fifty-seven minutes to rendezvous with the Oregon's launch,” replied Giordino.

“This trip definitely wasn't worth the effort. If Qin Shang is sneaking aliens on and off the United States, it isn't by means of an underwater passage or submarine-type vessel.”

“Doesn't figure he'd do it topside in the open,” said Giordino. “Not in enough numbers to make it pay. Immigration agents would tag the operation ten minutes after the boat hit port.”

“Nothing more we can do here. Let's wrap up and head home.”

“That may present a problem.”

Pitt glanced sideways at Giordino. “How so?”

Giordino nodded through the canopy. “We have visitors.”

Ahead of the submersible, three divers materialized out of the green void, swimming toward them like evil demons in their black wet suits.

“What do you think the fine is for trespassing in these parts?”

“I don't know, but I'll bet it's more than a slap on the wrist.”

Giordino studied the divers who were approaching, one in the center, the other two circling from the flank. “Most odd they didn't spot us earlier, long before we made our last run just under the waterline.”

“Somebody must have looked over the side and reported a funny green monster,” Pitt said facetiously.

“I'm serious. It's almost as if they sat back observing us until the last minute.”

“Do they look mad?”

“They ain't bringing flowers and candy.”

“Weapons?”

“Looks like Mosby underwater rifles.”

The Mosby was a nasty weapon that fired a missile with a small explosive head through water. Though devastating against human body tissue, Pitt didn't believe it could cause serious damage to a submersible able to withstand the pressures of the deep. “The worst we can expect is scratched paint and a few dents.”

“Don't get cocky just yet,” said Giordino, staring at the approaching divers as a doctor might study an X ray. “These guys are making a coordinated assault. Their helmets must contain miniature radios. Our pressure hull may take a few good knocks, but one lucky shot into the impellers of our thrusters and we'll end up desecrated.”

“We can outrun them,” said Pitt confidently. He banked the Sea Dog II in a tight turn, set the thrusters on HIGH, and steered for the stern of the liner. “This boat can travel a good six knots faster than any diver encumbered with air tanks.”

“Life isn't fair,” Giordino muttered, more annoyed than fearful as they unexpectedly found themselves confronting another seven divers hovering in a semicircle beneath the ship's mammoth propellers, blocking off their avenue of escape. “It seems the goddess of serendipity has turned her back on us.”

Pitt switched on his microphone and hailed Cabrillo over the radio. “This is Sea Dog II. We have a total of ten villains in hot pursuit.”

“I read you, Sea Dog, and will take appropriate steps. No need to contact me further, out.”

“Not good,” said Pitt grimly. “We might dodge past two or three but the rest can get close enough to do us real damage.” Then a notion struck him. “Unless ...”

“Unless what?”

Pitt didn't answer. Orchestrating the handgrip controls, he threw the Sea Dog II into a dive, then levelled out less than a foot off the bottom and began a search pattern. Within ten short seconds, he found what he was looking for. The deck grate he'd seen earlier loomed up out of the silt.

“Can you lift that thing out of the muck with the manipulator arm?” he asked Giordino.

“The arm can handle the weight, but the suction is an unknown. It depends on how deep the grate is buried.”

“Try.”

Giordino nodded silently and quickly slipped his hands over the ball-shaped controls to the mechanical arm and tightened his fingers. Exercising a delicate touch, he rotated the balls in a manner similar to moving the mouse on a computer. He extended the arm, which was articulated at the elbow and wrist like human joints. Next, he placed the mechanical handgrip over the top of the grate and tightened the three hinged fingers.

“One grate in hand,” he announced. “Give me all the vertical thrust in the cupboard.”

Pitt tilted the thrusters upward and poured on every ounce of their remaining battery power as the divers from Qin Shang's security force closed to within twenty feet. For a tormenting few-seconds nothing happened. Then the grate slowly began to slip from the silt, stirring up a great cloud of silt as the sub pulled it free.

“Twist the arm until the grate is in a horizontal position,” ordered Pitt. “Then hold it over the front of the thruster intakes.”

“They can still shoot an explosive up our tail.”

“Only if they carry muck-penetrating radar,” said Pitt, reversing the thrusters and tilting them down so their exhaust blasted into the bottom, raising great billows of swirling silt. “Now you see us, now you don't.”

Giordino grinned approvingly. “An armored shield, a selfinduced smoke screen—what more could we ask? Now let's get the hell out of here.”

Pitt needed no coaching. He sent the submersible careening across the bottom, stirring up silt as he went. Traveling every bit as visually blind as the divers through the agitated sediment but not nearly as confused, he had the advantage of an acoustics system that homed him in on the antenna buoy. He had traveled only a short distance when the submersible experienced a hard thump.

“They hit us?” Pitt asked.

Giordino shook his head. “No, I think you can scratch one of our attackers off as road kill. You almost tore his head off with the starboard wing.”

“He won't be the only casualty if they blindly miss and shoot each other—”

Pitt was cut off as an explosive thud rocked the Sea Dog II. Two more followed in quick succession. The submersible's speed fell off by a third.

“There's that lucky shot I was talking about,” said Giordino matter-of-factly. “They must have slipped one under the grate.”

Pitt glanced at his instruments. “They caught the port thruster.”

Giordino placed a hand on the transparent nose, which had a series of tiny cracks and stars on its outer surface. “They pitted the hell out of the windshield too.”

“Where did the third missile strike?”

“Impossible to see through this stuff, but I suspect the vertical stabilizer on the starboard wing is gone.”

“I figured as much,” said Pitt. “She's pulling to the port.”

Unknown to them, the team of ten divers was down to six. Besides the one Pitt crashed into, the others, shooting indiscriminately through the brownout, had struck and killed three of their own number. Firing and reloading their Mosby underwater rifles as fast as they could insert a new explosive charge, the divers overlooked the danger to themselves. One was brushed by the submersible as it surged past and he fired point-blank.

“Another hit,” reported Giordino. He twisted his body in the confined space and gazed back along the submersible's starboard hull. “This time they caught the battery case.”

“Those Mosby explosive heads must be more powerful than I was led to believe.”

Giordino jerked his eyes back and to the side as another explosion burst on the frame between the starboard hull and the nose-viewing shield. Water began to spurt in where metal met glass. “Those things do more than scratch paint and make dents,” said Giordino. “I can vouch for it.”

“We're losing power to the thrusters,” came Pitt's voice in a precision display of unruffled coolness. “That last strike must have caused a short in the system. Dump the grate. It's causing too much drag.”

Giordino complied, working the manipulator controls and releasing the grate. Through the silt cloud he could see several places in the grate where the rusting iron had been gouged away by the explosive charges. He watched it fall out of sight back into the sediment on the bottom. “So long, old pal, you served your purpose.”

Pitt stared briefly at a small navigation monitor. “Two hundred feet to the antenna. I make us about to pass under the liner's screws.”

“No hits in the last minute,” said Giordino. “We must have left our angry friends behind in the fog. I suggest you cut back on your throttles and conserve whatever battery power is left.”

“Nothing left to conserve,” replied Pitt, pointing to the instrument dial indicating battery power. “We're down to one knot and the needle is in the red.”

Giordino smiled tightly. “It would make my day if Shang's divers got lost and gave up the chase.”

“We'll know soon,” said Pitt. “I'm going to angle up and out of the cloud. The instant we break into clear water, look astern and tell me what you see.”

“If they're still hanging around,” said Giordino, “and they spot us limping along at half a knot, they'll be all over us like maddened wasps.”

Pitt said nothing as the Sea Dog II emerged from the swirling mud storm. He squinted his eyes, trying to pierce the velvet-green water, searching for the antenna line and Cabrillo's diver. A vague silhouette wavering seventy to eighty feet ahead and slightly to port slowly evolved into the bottom of the launch rocking in the waves rolling across the harbor.

“We're almost home!” Pitt exclaimed, his spirits lifted.

“Stubborn little devils,” said Giordino morosely. “Five of them are swimming like sharks up our tail.”

“Smart fellas to catch on so quick. They must have kept one man in the clear as a lookout. Soon as he caught us rising out of the gunk, he alerted his pals by radio.”

An explosive charge smashed against one of the Sea Dog IPs tail stabilizers and blew it away. A second charge narrowly missed the hemispherical nose section. Pitt fought for control, urging, willing the submersible on a straight course toward the launch. The instant he saw one of Shang's divers out of the corner of his eyes, overtaking and coming in from the flank of the sub, he knew it was all but over. Without battery power and help from Cabrillo, there was no escape.

“So near, yet so far,” Giordino mumbled, staring upward at the keel of the launch as he waited helpless but unperturbed for the inevitable final assault.

Then suddenly a series of concussions swamped and reverberated all around the submersible. Pitt and Giordino were thrown about the interior like rats inside a rolling pipe. The water around them erupted in a mass of froth and bubbles that raged crazily in all directions before heading for the surface. The divers, who were about to close in on the Sea Dog II, died instantly, their bodies crushed to gelatin by the sledgehammer blows. The men inside the sub were both stunned and deafened by underwater detonations. They were saved from serious injury by the pressure hull.

It took several moments for Pitt to realize that Cabrillo, forewarned of the chase in progress, waited until the submersible and its attackers were close enough to the Oregon's launch to throw concussion grenades into the water. Through the ringing in his ears, Pitt heard someone calling over the radio.

"You guys all right down there?” came Cabrifto's welcome voice.

“My kidneys will never be the same,” Pitt answered back, “but we're behaving ourselves.”

“How about the vigilantes?”

“They look like they came out of a Jell-o mold,” replied Giordino.

“If we were attacked underwater,” Pitt warned Cabrillo, “it stands to reason they'll come after you on the surface.”

“Funny you should mention mat,” said Cabrillo airily. “There just happens to be a small cruiser coming this way as we speak. Nothing we can't handle, of course. Sit tight. I'll have my diver hook you up to the towline after we greet our callers.”

“Sit tight,” Giordino repeated acidly. “We have no power. We're dead in the water. He must think we're in an underwater amusement park.”

“He means well,” Pitt sighed as the tension inside the sub eased. He lay there idly, his hands loosely holding the handgrips of his now nonfunctioning controls, staring through the transparent canopy at the bottom of the launch, wondering what cards Cabrillo was about to deal.

“They mean business,” Cabrillo said to Eddie Seng, the Oregon's former CIA agent who was their man in Beijing for nearly twenty years before he was forced to make a sudden departure back to the States and retirement. Cabrillo peered through a small, single-lens telescope at the rapidly approaching cabin cruiser. Its configuration reminded him of a U.S. Coast Guard rescue boat, except that this one was not in the business of saving lives. “They figured the game when they detected the submersible, but they can't be sure we're tied in until they board and investigate.”

“How many do you make out?” asked Seng.

“About five, all carrying arms except the helmsman.”

“Any good-sized weapons mounted on the boat?” asked Seng.

“None that I can make out. They're on a fishing expedition and not looking for trouble. They'll leave two men behind to cover us, while the other three come on board.” Cabrillo turned to Seng. “Tell Pete James and Bob Meadows to slip over the unobserved side of the launch. They're both strong swimmers. When the boat comes alongside, tell them to swim under our craft and hang in the water between the hulls. If my plan works, the two guards remaining behind on their boat will instinctively react to an unexpected situation. We've got to take all five without guns. Nothing that makes noise. There'll be enough prying eyes on the dock and ship as it is. We'll just have to tough it out the best we can without drums and bugles.”

James and Meadows slipped over the side under a tarpaulin and waited in the water for the signal to swim under the launch. The rest of Cabrillo's men lounged around the decks as if dozing. One or two acted as if they were fishing off the stern.

Now Cabrillo could plainly see that Qin Shang Maritime's security men were wearing showy, dark maroon uniforms that were better suited for a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Four of them clutched what looked to Cabrillo like the latest-model machine pistols manufactured by the Chinese. The boat's captain wore the indecipherable, hard expression of a Chinese in authority.

“Remain where you are!” he shouted in Mandarin. “We are coming aboard!”

“What do you want?” Seng yelled back.

“Dockyard Security. We want to inspect your boat.”

“You're not the Harbor Patrol,” said Seng indignantly. “You have no authority over us.”

“You have thirty seconds to comply or we shoot,” the captain said with icy persistence.

“You'd shoot poor fishermen?” Seng said bitterly. “You're mad.” He turned to the others and shrugged. “We'd better do as they say. They're just crazy enough to do what they threaten.”

“All right,” he said to the Qin Shang Maritime security captain, “come aboard. But don't think I'm not going to report you to the People's Republic harbor authorities.”

Cabrillo leaned over the helm, shielding his face with a straw hat so the security guards couldn't see his Western eyes. He casually flipped a few coins over the side as the signal for James and Meadows to swim under the launch. Slowly, one of his hands snaked onto the throttle lever. Then, just as the captain of the security boat and his men were in the midst of leaping across the narrow gap separating the two craft, Cabrillo cracked the throttle open and just as quickly pulled it back, abruptly widening the gap between the two boats.

As if the action was a rehearsed comedy routine, the security cruiser captain and his two men fell into the water between the two boats. Acting on impulse, as Cabrillo predicted, the two men still on the security boat dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, reaching out to their superior in an attempt to haul him out of the water. Their rescue attempt failed as two pairs of arms reached up out of the water, grabbed them each by the throat and pulled them overboard with a wild splash. Then, taking one man at a time by the feet, James and Meadows hauled them under the launch to the opposite side, where they were rendered unconscious by a none too gentle rap on the back of the head before being pushed aboard and roughly dumped in a small cargo hold.

Cabrillo scanned the stern of the United States and the end of the dock for witnesses. He counted no more than three or four shipyard workers who had paused to watch the activity on the two boats. None appeared unduly concerned. The cabin on the security cruiser had blocked off most of the view the workers had from the dock and the liner. As far as they could see, it looked like a normal investigation by the security force. All they could see was Cabrillo's crew still dozing and fishing off the stern of the launch. The shipyard workers soon returned to their jobs, showing no signs of alarm.

James and Meadows climbed back on board and, along with Eddie Seng, quickly stripped the security commander and two of his men of their clothes. A few minutes later all three reappeared on deck wearing the security guards' uniforms.

“Not a bad fit,” said Eddie, modeling his damp attire for Cabrillo, “considering that the suit is soaking wet. ”

“Mine is about four sizes too small,” grumbled Meadows, who was a big man.

“Join the club,” said James, holding out an arm and demonstrating a sleeve that barely passed the elbow.

“You don't have to walk down the runway at a fashion show,” said Cabrillo while jockeying the launch next to the security boat. “Jump over and take the helm. As soon as we've got the submersible under tow, follow along in our wake as though you were escorting us to the Hong Kong Harbor Patrol dock. Once we're out of sight of Qin Shang's shipyard, we'll cruise around until dark. Then we'll head back to the Oregon and scuttle the security boat.”

“What about the five drenched rats in the hold?” asked Seng.

Cabrillo turned from the helm and leered. “We'll enjoy seeing the expressions on their faces when they wake up and find they've been abandoned on an island off the Philippines.”

Not having enough oxygen supply to remain underwater, the Sea Dog II was towed on the surface with the upper hatch partially open. Pitt and Giordino remained inside while the security boat cruised alongside and screened any view of it from passing ships and shore. Thirty minutes later the Sea Dog II was quickly lifted back onto the deck of the Oregon. Cabrillo was there to help Pitt and Giordino out of the submersible. With muscles stiff and numb from the many hours of tight confinement, they were grateful for his help.

“I apologize for leaving you cooped up like that, but as you know, we ran into a little difficulty.”

“And you handled it very well,” Pitt complimented him.

“You boys did a pretty fair job of fighting off the bad guys yourselves.”

“We'd still be sitting on the bottom if you hadn't lobbed those grenades.”

“What did you find?” asked Cabrillo.

Pitt shook his head wearily. “Nothing, absolutely nothing. The hull below the waterline is clean, no modifications, no concealed hatches or pressurized doors. The bottom has been scraped and recoated with antifouling paint and looks as unaltered as the day she was launched. If Qin Shang has a shifty method of slipping illegal aliens ashore in a foreign port, it's not from below the waterline.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Pitt gave Cabrillo a steady look. “We've got to get inside the ship. Can you manage it?”

“As the resident whiz, yes, I believe I can arrange a guided tour of the ship's interior. But consider this. One, maybe two hours from now is all we have before the security guards we kidnapped are discovered as missing. The chief of Qin Shang's shipyard security will put two and two together and figure the intruders came from the Oregon. No doubt he's already wondering how and why ten of his divers went missing. Once he alerts the Chinese Navy they'll come after us as sure as women bear babies. With a head start the Oregon can outdistance most any ship in the Chinese fleet. If they send planes after us before we can get out of their territorial waters, we're dead.”

“You're well armed,” said Giordino.

Cabrillo tightened his lips. “But not immune to warships with heavy guns and aircraft with missiles. The sooner we get the hell out of Hong Kong and onto the high seas, the safer we'll be.”

“Then you're pulling up anchor and skipping town,” said Pitt.

“I didn't say that.” Cabrillo looked over at Seng, who had thankfully changed into dry clothes. "What say you, Eddie?

Do you want to put the uniform of a Qin Shang security chief back on and parade around the shipyard like a big man on campus?

Seng grinned. “I've always wanted to tour the inside of a big cruise ship without paying for a ticket.”

“Then it's settled,” said Cabrillo directly to Pitt “Go now bee what you have to see and get back here fast, or we'll all regret not knowing our grandchildren.”

“DON'T YOU THINK WE'RE OVERDOING IT A BIT?” SAID PITT less than an hour later.

Seng shrugged behind the wheel on the right-hand side of the driver's seat. “Who would suspect spies arriving at a security gate in a Rolls-Royce?” he asked innocently.

“Anyone who does doesn't suffer from glaucoma or cataracts,” Giordino said wearily.

A collector of old classic cars, Pitt appreciated the fine workmanship of the Rolls. “Chairman of the Board Cabrillo is an amazing man.”

“The best scrounger in the business,” said Seng as he braked to a stop beside the main guard gate in front of the Qin Shang Maritime Limited shipyard. “He made a deal with the concierge of Hong Kong's finest five star hotel. They use the limo to pick up and deliver celebrity guests to the airport.”

The late-afternoon sun was still perched above the horizon when two guards came out of the security shack to stare at the 1955 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn with Hooper coachwork. The elegant body lines exemplified the classic “razor edge” saloon style that was popular with British coach-built cars in the 1950s. The front fenders gracefully swooped downward across

the four doors to the skirted fenders at the rear, matching the sloping rear roof and trunk known as the “French curve” that was copied by Cadillac in the early eighties.

Seng flashed the identification he'd taken from the captain of the security boat. Though the two men could have passed for cousins, he did not allow the guards to study the photo on the ID card too closely. “Han Wan-Tzu, captain of the dockside security,” he announced in Chinese.

One of the guards leaned in the rear window and peered at the two passengers in the rear seat who were wearing conservative blue pinstripe business suits. His eyes slightly narrowed. “Who is with you?”

“Their names are Karl Mahler and Erich Grosse. They are respected marine engineers with the German shipbuilding firm of Voss and Heibert, here to inspect and consult on the turbine engines of the great ocean liner.”

“I don't see them on the security list,” said the guard, checking names on a clipboard.

“These gentlemen are here at the personal request of Qin Shang. If you have a problem with that, you can call him. Would you like his direct and personal number?”

“No, no,” the .guard stammered. “Since you accompany them, their entry must have been cleared.”

“Contact no one,” Seng ordered. “The services of these men are required immediately and their presence here is a closely guarded secret. Do you understand?”

The guard nodded fervently, backed away from the car, lifted the barrier and waved them through onto a road leading to the dock area. Seng steered the luxurious old car past several warehouses and parts depots and under tall gantries arched over the skeletons of ships under construction. He had little problem finding the United States. Her funnels towered over nearby terminal buildings. The Rolls came to a silent halt at one of the many gangways that led up and into the hull of the ship. The ship appeared strangely lifeless. There were no crewmen, shipyard workers or security guards anywhere to be seen. The gangways were deserted and unguarded.

“Odd,” muttered Pitt. “All her lifeboats have been removed.”

Giordino looked up at the wisps of light smoke trailing from the funnels. “If I didn't know better, I'd say she's getting ready to sail.”

“She can't take passengers without carrying boats.” “The plot thickens,” said Giordino, looking up at the silent ship. Pitt nodded in agreement. “Nothing is what we were led to expect.”

Seng came around and opened the rear door. “This is as far as I go. You guys are on your own. Good luck. I'll come back in thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes,” Giordino complained. “You've got to be kidding.”

“A half an hour is not nearly enough time to inspect the interior of an ocean liner the size of a small city,” protested Pitt.

“The best I can do. Chairman Cabrillo's orders. The sooner we abscond, the less chance we all have of being discovered as fakes. Besides, it'll be dark soon.”

Pitt and Giordino stepped from the car and walked up a gangway leading through a pair of open doors and inside the ship. They entered what was once the purser's reception area. It seemed curiously bare of all furnishings and signs of life.

“Did I forget to mention,” said Giordino, “that I can't speak with a German accent?”

Pitt looked at him. “You're Italian, aren't you?”

“My grandparents were, but what has that got to do with anything?”

“If you're confronted, talk with your hands. Nobody will know the difference.”

“And you? How do you intend to pass as a kraut?”

Pitt shrugged. “I'll just say 7a' to anything I'm asked.”

“We don't have much time. More territory can be covered if we split up.”

“Agreed. I'll make a sweep of the cabin decks, you scan the engine room. While you're at it, look in the galley.”

Giordino looked puzzled. “Galley?”

Pitt smiled down at the shorter Giordino. “You can always tell a home by its kitchen.” Then he was walking swiftly up a circular staircase to the upper deck, which had accommodated the first-class dining room, cocktail lounges, gift shops and movie theater.

The etched-glass doors that opened to the first-class dining room had been removed. The walls, with their Spartan fifties decor and high-arched ceiling, stood guard over an empty room. It was the same everywhere he walked, his footsteps echoing on the salon deck, which had been stripped of its carpeting. The 352 seats of the theater had been torn out. The gift shops were bare of display shelving and cases. Each of the two cocktail lounges was little more than a hollow compartment. The ballroom, where the wealthy celebrities of their time danced their way across the Atlantic, was stripped down to the bare walls.

He hurried up a companionway to the crew's quarters and the wheelhouse. The bareness was repeated. The crew's cabins were devoid of any sign of furnishings or human presence. “An empty shell,” Pitt muttered under his breath. “The entire ship is one big empty shell.”

The wheelhouse was a different story. It was crammed from deck to ceiling with a maze of computerized electronic equipment whose multitude of colored lights and switches were mostly positioned in the ON mode. Pitt paused briefly to study the sophisticated ship's automated control system. He found it odd that the brass-spoked helm was the only piece of original equipment.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes was all he had left. Incredibly, he had seen no workers, no crewmen. It was as if the ship had become a graveyard. He dropped down the stairs to the first-class cabin deck and ran down the hallways separating the staterooms. It was the same as the salon deck. Where the passengers once slept in luxury from New York to Southampton and back, there was a ghostly emptiness. Even the doors had been taken from their hinges. What struck Pitt was the lack of trash or debris. The gutted interior appeared surprisingly immaculate, as if the entire interior had been sucked clean by a giant vacuum.

When he reached the entry door in the purser's reception area, Giordino was already waiting. “What did you find?” Pitt asked him.

“Damn little,” Giordino came back. “The cabin class decks and cargo holds are barren voids. The engine room looks like the day the ship left on her maiden voyage. Beautifully maintained with steam up and ready to sail. Every other compartment was stripped clean.”

“Did you get into the baggage and the forward cargo holds that were used to transport the passengers' cars?”

Giordino gave a negative shake of his head. “The cargo doors were welded shut. Same with entrances and exits to the crew's quarters on the lower deck. They must have been cleaned out as well.”

“I got the same picture,” said Pitt. “Did you run into any trouble?”

“That's the weird part. I didn't see a soul. If anyone was working in the engine room, they're either mute or invisible. You meet up with anyone?” “Never encountered a body.”

Suddenly the deck began to tremble beneath their feet. The ships big engines had come to life. Pitt and Giordino quickly headed down the gangway to the waiting Rolls-Royce. Eddie Seng stood beside an open door to the passengers' seat. “Enjoy your tour?” he greeted them.

“You don't know what you missed,” said Giordino. “The food, the floor show, the girls.”

Pitt motioned toward the dockworkers who were casting off the huge hawsers from the iron bollards on the dock. The big rail cranes lifted the gangways and laid them on the dock. “Our timing was right on the money. She's pushing off.” “How is it possible,” Giordino muttered, “with no one on board?”

“We'd better go too while the going is good,” said Seng, herding them inside the car and closing the door. He hurried around the Rolls-Royce's flying-lady ornament on the radiator shell and leaped behind the wheel. This time they were passed through the security gate with the mere nod of the head. Two miles from the shipyard, his eyes darting in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed, Seng pulled onto a dirt road and drove to an open field behind a school that was empty of children. A purple-and-silver unmarked helicopter was sitting in the middle of a playground, its rotor blades slowly turning. “We're not returning to the Oregon by boat?” inquired Pitt. “Too late,” replied Seng. “Chairman Cabrillo thought it wiser to raise the anchor and put as much water as possible between the ship and Hong Kong before the fireworks start. The Oregon should be passing out of the West Lamma Channel into the China Sea about now. Thus, the helicopter.”

“Did Cabrillo work a deal on the helicopter too?” said Giordino.

“A friend of a friend runs a charter service.”

“He must not believe in advertising,” observed Pitt, looking vainly for a name on the side of the tail boom.

Seng's mouth stretched in a broad smile. “His clientele prefers to travel in obscurity.”

“If we're any example of his clientele, I'm not at all surprised.”

A young man in a chauffeur's uniform stepped up to the Rolls and opened the door. Seng thanked him and slipped an envelope into his pocket. Then he motioned Pitt and Giordino to follow him into the aircraft. They were in the act of tightening their seat belts when the pilot lifted off the playground and leveled off at only twenty feet before ducking under a network of electrical power lines as if it was an everyday affair. He then set a course to the south and flew out across the waters of the harbor, passing over an oil tanker no more than a hundred feet above its funnel.

Pitt gazed with longing at the former crown colony in the distance. He would have given a month's pay to walk the winding streets and visit the multitude of small shops selling everything from tea to intricately carved furniture, dine on exotic Chinese cuisine in a suite at the Peninsula Hotel overlooking the lights of the harbor with an elegant and beautiful woman and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin brut champagne ...

His reverie was shattered into a kaleidoscope of pieces when Giordino suddenly exclaimed, “God, what I wouldn't give for ataco and a beer.”

The sun was down and the western sky was a bluish gray when the helicopter caught up to the Oregon and landed on one of her cargo-hatch covers. Cabrillo was waiting for them in the galley with a glass of wine for Pitt and a bottle of beer for Giordino. “You two must have had a hard day,” he said. “So our chef is fixing up something special.”

Pitt removed the borrowed coat and loosened the tie. “A hard day and an extremely unproductive one.”

“Discover anything of interest on board the United States?” asked Cabrillo.

“What we found was a ship that has been gutted from stem to stern,” answered Pitt. “The entire interior is nothing but a vacuum with an operational engine room and a wheelhouse filled with automated navigation and control systems.”

“The ship has already left her dock. She must be operating with a skeleton crew.”

Pitt shook his head. “There is no crew. If, as you say, she's sailing out of the harbor, she's sailing without benefit of human hands. The entire ship is operated by computer and remote command.”

“I can vouch for the fact there isn't a scrap of food in the galley,” added Giordino. “Nor stove nor refrigerator nor even a knife and fork. Anybody taking a long voyage on that ship will surely starve.”

“No ship can sail across the sea without an engine-room crew and seamen to monitor the navigation systems,” Cabrillo protested.

“I've heard tell the U.S. Navy is experimenting with crew-less ships,” said Giordino.

“A ship void of a crew might cross the Pacific Ocean, but she would still require a captain on board to take on a pilot and handle payment with Panamanian officials for the passage through the Canal into the Caribbean.”

“They could put on a temporary crew and captain before the ship reached Panama—” Pitt suddenly paused and stared at Cabrillo. “How do you know the United States is heading for the Panama Canal?”

“That's the latest word from my local source.”

“Nice to know you have a man inside Qin Shang's organization who keeps us up-to-date on current events,” said Giordino caustically. “A pity he didn't bother to tell us the ship was converted into a remote-operated toy. He might have saved us a boatload of trouble.”

“I have no man on the inside,” explained Cabrillo. “I wish I had. The information was obtained from the Hong Kong agent for Qin Shang Maritime Limited. Commercial ship arrivals and departures are not classified secrets.”

“What is the United States's final destination?” asked Pitt.

“Qin Shang's port at Sungari.”

Pitt stared at the wine in his glass in long silence, then said slowly, “For what purpose? Why would Qin Shang send a fully robotic ocean liner with its guts removed across an ocean to a miscarriage of a shipping port in Louisiana? What can be rolling around in his mind?”

Giordino finished off his beer and dug a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa. “He could just as well divert the ship somewhere else.”

“Possibly. But she can't hide. Not a ship her size. She'll be tracked by reconnaissance satellites.”

“Do you suppose he intends to fill it with explosives and blow up something,” offered Cabrillo, “like maybe the Panama Canal.”

“Certainly not the Panama Canal or any other shipping facility,” said Pitt. “He'd be cutting his own throat. His ships need access to ports on both oceans as much as any other shipping company. No, Qin Shang must have something else in mind, another motive, one just as menacing and just as deadly.”

THE SHIP PLOWED EASILY THROUGH THE SWELLS IN A SLOW rocking motion under a sky so brightly lit by a full moon that one could read a newspaper under its beam. The scene was deceptively peaceful. Cabrillo had not called for the ship's full cruising speed, so she loafed along at eight knots until they were far beyond the Chinese mainland. The whisper of the bows cutting the water and the aroma of fresh baked bread wafting up from the galley might have lulled the crew of any other cargo ship on the China Sea, but not the highly trained men on the Oregon.

Pitt and Giordino stood in the surveillance and counter-measures control room in the raised forecastle of the ship, acting strictly as observers while Cabrillo and his team of technicians focused their eyes and minds on the radar detection and identification systems.

“She's taking her sweet time,” said the surveillance analyst, a woman by the name of Linda Ross who was seated in front of a computer monitor that showed the three-dimensional display of a warship. Ross was another prize from Cabrillo's headhunting expeditions for superior personnel. She had been chief fire-control officer on board a U.S. Navy Aegis guided missile cruiser when she fell under Cabrillo's spell and an offer of incredible compensation that went far beyond any money she could make in the Navy. “With a maximum speed of thirty-four knots, she'll overhaul us within a half an hour.”

“How do you read her?” asked Cabrillo.

“Configuration indicates that she's one of the Luhu Type 052 Class of big destroyers launched in the late nineties. Displaces forty-two hundred tons. Two gas turbine engines rated at fifty-five thousand horsepower. She carries two Harbine helicopters on her stern. Her complement consists of two hundred and thirty men, forty of them officers.”

“Missiles?”

“Eight sea-skimming surface-to-surface missiles and a surface-to-air octuble launcher.”

“If I was her captain I wouldn't be concerned with preparing a missile strike against a helpless-looking old scow like the Oregon. Guns?”

“Twin one-hundred-milh'meter guns in a turret aft of the bow,” said the analyst. “Eight thirty-seven millimeters mounted in pairs. She also carries six torpedoes in two triple tubes and twelve antisubmarine mortar launchers.”

Cabrillo wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “By Chinese standards, this is an impressive warship.”

“Where did she come from?” asked Pitt.

“Bad luck on our part,” said Cabrillo. “She just happened to be cruising across our path when the alarm went out and harbor officials notified their navy. I timed our departure so that we sailed in the wake of an Australian freighter and a Bolivian ore carrier to confuse Chinese radar. The other two were probably stopped and searched by fast attack patrol craft before being allowed to continue to their destinations. We had the misfortune to draw a heavy destroyer.”

“Qin Shang has a long arm to get that kind of cooperation from his government.”

“I wish I had his influence with our Congress.”

“Isn't it against international law for a nation's military to stop and search foreign ships outside their territorial waters?”

“Not since nineteen ninety-six. That was when Beijing implemented a U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, expanding China's territorial waters from a twelve mile limit to two hundred miles.”

“Which puts us well within their waters.”

“About a hundred and forty miles inside,” said Cabrillo.

“If you have missiles,” said Pitt, “why not blast the destroyer before we come in range of its guns?”

“Although we carry a small, older version of the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile with more than enough explosive power to blast a light attack craft or a patrol boat out of the water, we'd have to get incredibly lucky with our first launch to take out a forty-two-hundred-ton destroyer bristling with enough weaponry to sink a fleet. Disadvantage belongs to us. Our first missiles might take her launchers out of action. And we can slam two Mark 46 torpedoes into her hull. But that still leaves her with enough thirty-seven and hundred-millimeter guns to blast us into the nearest scrap yard.”

Pitt looked at Cabrillo steadily. “A lot of men are going to die in the next hour. Is there no way to avert the slaughter?”

“We can't fool a naval boarding party,” said Cabrillo solemnly. “They'll see through our disguise two minutes after setting foot on deck. You seem to forget, as far as the Chinese are concerned, Mr. Pitt, you and I and everyone on board this ship are spies. And as such, we can all be executed in the blink of an eye. Also, once they get their hands on the Oregon and her technology and realize her potential, they won't hesitate to use her for intelligence operations against other nations. Once the first Chinese marine sets foot on our deck, the die is cast. We fight or die.”

“Then our only option is surprise.”

“The key is that we won't constitute a threat in the eyes of the captain of that Chinese destroyer,” Cabrillo explained gruffly. “If you were him, standing on your bridge looking at us through night glasses, would you be trembling in your boots at what you saw? I doubt it. He might train the hundred millimeters on our bridge or one of the thirty-seven-millimeter twins at any crewman showing on deck. But once he sees his marines come on board and begin seizing the ship, he'll relax and call off the ship's alert, provided he even bothered to order one.”

“You make it sound as cut and dried as a snowball fight,” ventured Giordino.

Cabrillo gave Giordino a patiently worn look. “A what fight?”

“You'll have to excuse Al's regressive display of humor,” said Pitt. “He gets mentally unstable when things don't go his way.”

“You're just as weird,” Cabrillo growled at Pitt. “Doesn't anything ever faze you two?”

“Think of it as a response to a nasty situation,” Pitt said in mild protest. “You and your crew are trained and prepared for a fight. We're merely helpless bystanders.”

“We'll require the services of every man and woman on board before this night is over.”

Pitt studied the image on the monitor over Linda Ross's shoulder. “If you don't mind me asking, just how do you intend to trash a heavy destroyer?”

“My plan, elementary as it is, is for the Oregon to come to a stop when ordered. Then comes a demand to board and inspect us. Once we sucker him into standing off within spitting distance, we act like innocent, ill-tempered seamen while they observe us at close range. Once the Chinese boarding party climbs on deck, we'll lull the captain even deeper into a state of inertia by lowering our Iranian ensign and raising the People's Republic of China flag.”

“You have a Chinese flag?” asked Giordino.

“We carry flags and ensigns of every maritime country in the world,” answered Cabrillo.

“After your show of surrender?” said Pitt. “Then what?”

“We hit him with everything we've got and pray that when we're through he has nothing left to throw back at us.”

“It beats a long-range duel with missiles we couldn't win,” said Max Hanley, who was sitting in a chair beside an electronics specialist manning a tactical data unit.

Like a football coach in the lockers before the kickoff, Cabrillo went over his game plan carefully with his players. No contingency was left undevised or unpolished, no detail overlooked, nothing left to chance. Tension was nonexistent. The men and women on board the Oregon prepared to go about their jobs as if it was a typical Monday morning in the big city. Their eyes were clear and fixed, they did not have the frightened look of the hunted.

When Cabrillo finished, he asked, “Any questions?” His voice was deep and low, with the tiniest trace of a Spanish accent, and although he was far too experienced and perceptive not to accept fear, no hint showed in his face and manner. Hearing no inquiries from his crew, he nodded. “Okay, that's it then. Good luck to you all. And when this little scrape is over, we'll throw the biggest party the Oregon has ever known.”

Pitt raised a hand. “You said you needed every man. How can Al and I help?”

Cabrillo nodded. “You two gave evidence the other night that you're not afraid of a fight. Go to the ship's armory and pick up a pair of automatic weapons. You'll need more fire-power than that forty-five-caliber popgun of yours. Also check out a couple of sets of body armor. After that check with the costume department for some grungy old clothes. Then join the deck crew. Your talents will come in handy in stopping the Chinese marines once they come on board. I can only spare a few men from more important duties, so you'll be slightly outnumbered. There probably won't be more than ten of them, not enough to matter since you'll have the element of surprise. If you're successful, and I'm counting on it, you can lend a hand at damage control. And you can bet there will be plenty of damage to go around.”

“Will it be absolutely necessary to shoot down the boarding party without warning?” asked Linda Ross.

“Keep in mind,” Cabrillo said to her bluntly, “these people do not intend to allow anybody on board this ship to reach port. Because they are no doubt aware of our involvement with the underwater search of the United States, there is not the slightest doubt they mean for all of us to sleep with fishes before morning.”

Pitt's eyes raked Cabrillo's, searching for a tinge of regret, a sign that he thought that what they were about to do was a colossal mistake, but there was none of it. “Does it bother you that we might be mistaken about their intentions and commit an act of war?”

Cabrillo pulled his pipe out of a breast pocket and scraped the bowl. Then he said, “I don't mind admitting that I'm a bit worried on that score, but we can't run from then air force, so we have no option but to bluff our way out, and if that fails, we must fight.”

Like a gray ghost gliding over a black sea streaked by the full moon, the big Chinese destroyer overhauled the slow-moving Oregon with the malevolence of an Orca killer whale stalking a friendly manatee. But for its ungainly array of navigation, surface- and air-search detection and countermeasure systems that were perched above ugly towers, the ship might have had a sleek appearance. As it was, it looked like it was glued together by a small child who wasn't sure where all the pieces went.

Hali Kasim, the Oregon's vice president in charge of communications, called through the speakerphone on the bridge wing to Cabrillo, who now stood observing the destroyer through night glasses.

“Mr. Cabrillo, they've ordered us to heave to.”

“In what language?”

“English,” answered Kasim.

“An amateurish attempt to get us to tip our hand. Answer them in Arabic.”

There was a short pause. “They called our bluff, sir. They have someone on board who can speak Arabic.”

“String them along for a little while. We don't want to appear too anxious to appease. Ask why we should obey their orders in international waters.”

Cabrillo lit his pipe and waited. He looked down on the deck where Pitt, Giordino and three of his crew had assembled, all armed for a knock-down, drag-out fight.

“They're not buying it,” came Hali Kasim's voice again. “They say if we don't stop immediately, they will blow us out of the water.”

“Are they jamming in anticipation of us sending out a distress signal?”

“You can make book on it. Any message we transmit outside the immediate area will be received garbled.”

“What are the chances of a friendly warship cruising in the neighborhood, like a nuclear submarine?”

“None,” came the voice of Linda Ross in the countermea-sures and surveillance room. “The only vessel within a hundred miles is a Japanese auto transporter.”

“All right,” Cabrillo sighed. “Signal them that we will comply and heave to. But inform them that we will protest this outrage to the World Board of Trade and International Maritime Council.”

Cabrillo could then do nothing but wait and watch the Chinese destroyer emerge from the gloom. Besides his pair of unblinking eyes, the big warship was covered by the two concealed Harpoon missiles mounted in the center of the Oregon's hull, the two Mark 46 torpedoes in their underwater tubes and the muzzles of twin Oerlikon thirty-millimeter guns that could spit seven hundred rounds per minute out of each barrel.

All that could be done in preparation had been done. Cabrillo was proud of his corporate team. If there was unease, none of them showed it. What was visible was a determination, a grim satisfaction, that they were going to tackle an opponent twice their size and ten times as powerful and see it through to the end. There would be no turning of the cheek after a slap. The point of no return had been passed, and it was they who were going to slap first.

The destroyer came to a stop and drifted no more than two hundred yards away from the Oregon. Through his night glasses, Cabrillo could read the big white numbers painted near the bow. He called down to Ross, “Can you give me an ID on Chinese destroyer number one hundred sixteen? I repeat, one sixteen.”

He waited for a reply as he watched a boat being lowered from the destroyer's midships and clearing her davits. The boarding operation went smoothly, and the boat pushed off from the destroyer and headed across the gap between the two ships, coming alongside the hull of the simple-looking old freighter within twelve minutes. He noted with no little satisfaction that the turreted twin one-hundred-millimeter guns on the bow were the only weapons trained on the Oregon. The missile launchers appeared deserted and secured. The thirty-seven millimeter gun mounts had their barrels trained fore and aft.

“I have your ED,” came back Ross. “Number one sixteen is called the Chengdo. She's the biggest and the best the Chinese Navy has to offer. She is captained by Commander Yu Tien. With enough time I could get you his bio.”

“Thank you, Ross, don't bother. It's always nice to know the name of your enemy. Please stand by to fire all weapons.” “All weapons ready to fire when you are, Mr. Chairman,” Ross answered, cool and unruffled.

The boarding ladder was thrown over the side, and the Chinese marines, led by a naval lieutenant and a captain of the marine contingent, quickly scrambled from their boat onto the deck. There was an almost festive air about the boarders, a complacency bordering more on a Boy Scout camping trip than an operation conducted by tough fighting men.

“Damn!” Cabrillo cursed. There were more than twice as many of them as he figured, and all armed to the teeth. He agonized over not being able to spare any more men for the approaching fight on the main deck. He looked down at Pete James and Bob Meadows, the ship's divers and former Navy SEALs, and at Eddie Seng, all three of them standing at the railing, their machine pistols held under their coats. Then he spotted Pitt and Giordino standing squarely in front of the Chinese officers, their hands held high in the air.

Cabrillo's immediate reaction was one of infuriation. With Pitt and Giordino surrendering without a fight, the other three crewman wouldn't stand a prayer against over twenty combat-trained marines. The Chinese would brush them aside and be all over the ship in a matter of minutes. “You yellow-bellied wimps!” he exploded, shaking his fist at Pitt and Giordino. “You dirty traitors.”

“What's your count?” Pitt asked Giordino as the last of the Chinese marines came over the railing.

“Twenty-one,” Giordino answered complacently. “Four to one against us. Not exactly what I'd call 'slightly outnumbered.' ”

“I make the same odds.”

They stood awkwardly, wearing long winter coats, their hands raised over their heads in apparent surrender. Eddie Seng, James and Meadows stared at the boarding Chinese sullenly, like crewmen irritated by any interruption of their normal shipboard routine. The effect had the results Pitt counted on. The Chinese marines, seeing the feeble reception, relaxed and held their weapons loosely, not expecting any resistance from a disreputable crew on a shabby ship.

The naval officer, arrogant and staring as if in disgust at the motley crew that greeted him, strutted up to Pitt and demanded to know in English where he could find the ship's captain.

Without the slightest indication of malice as he looked from the naval lieutenant to the marine captain, Pitt purred politely, “Which of you is Beavis and which is Butt-head?”

“What was that you said?” demanded the lieutenant. “If you don't want to get shot, lead me to your captain.”

Pitt's expression took on a mask of pure fright. “Heh? You want captain? You should say so.” He turned slightly and made a production of tilting his head toward Cabrillo on the bridge wing, who was cursing a blue streak in anger.

In a moment of sheer reflex, all heads and every eye followed Pitt's gesture toward the shouting man.

Then from the bridge, with sudden, startling clarity, Cabrillo understood what the two NUMA men were up to and gazed hypnotized at the bloody fight that erupted before his eyes. He watched in dazed astonishment as Pitt and Giordino suddenly sprouted another pair of hands from under their coats, each hand gripping a machine pistol, fingers locked on the triggers. They cut a deadly swath through the Chinese marines, who were caught totally off balance. The two officers were the first to fall, followed by the next six men behind them. They could never, never have been prepared for such a vicious onslaught, certainly not from men who appeared frightened and cowering. In a fraction of a minute the unexpected assault had cut the odds from four to a little more than two to one. An arrogant confrontation quickly turned into a gory rampage of chaos.

Aware in advance of the phony-arms deception, Seng, James and Meadows instantly leveled their weapons and opened fire less than a second after Pitt and Giordino. It was bedlam. Men falling, scattering, frantically trying to cut each other down. The Chinese marines were professional fighting men and a brave lot. They recovered quickly and stood their ground on the deck, now heaped with their fallen comrades, and fired back. In a lightning stroke of time every clip in every gun had gone empty in almost the same instant. Seng was hit and down on one knee. Meadows had taken a bullet in one shoulder but was swinging his gun like a club. With no time to reload, Pitt and Giordino threw their weapons at the eight Chinese marines still fighting and waded in slugging. Yet even during that raging flash when the two forces fell on each other in a cursing, punching horde of twisting bodies, Pitt was aware of Cabrillo's cry from the bridge.

“Fire, for God's sake, fire!”

A section of the Oregon's hull snapped open in the blink of an eye and the two Harpoon missiles burst from their launchers in almost the same instant as the Mark 46 torpedoes shot from their tubes. A second later the twin Oerlikons opened up, aimed and fired by command from the combat control center, spitting a hail of shells against the Chengdo's missile launchers, that knocked their systems out of action before they could be activated and launched against the unarmored freighter. Time froze to a stop as the Oregon's first missile tore into the big destroyer's hull below the large single funnel and burst into the engine room. The second Harpoon struck the tower mounting the Chengdo's communications systems, effectively silencing any transmission to her fleet command.

The slower torpedoes came next, exploding as one no more than thirty feet apart, throwing up a tremendous pair of geysers beside the Chengdo, rocking it nearly over on its beam ends. It settled back on an even keel for a moment, and then began to list to starboard as the water rushed in through two holes as large as barn doors.

Captain Yu Tien of the Chengdo, normally a cautious man, fell for the sleight of hand as he peered through binoculars at the seemingly innocent old ship, observing his marines board without the slightest show of resistance. He watched as the green, white and red Iranian national flag was lowered and replaced with the red ensign of the People's Republic of China, with its five gold stars. Then suddenly Captain Yu Tien was paralyzed in disbelieving shock. One minute his seemingly invincible ship was calmly overhauling what appeared to be a rusty old tramp steamer, the next the helpless tramp had inflicted a horrifying amount of damage to his vessel with sophisticated precision. Struck by missiles, torpedoes and a hail of small-weapons fire almost simultaneously, his ship was instantaneously mortally wounded. He thought it outrageous that such an innocent commercial vessel could possess so much ftrepower.

Yu Tien stiffened as he saw death and dishonor creeping out of the ventilators, hatches and companionways leading down to the bowels of his ship. What began as white puffs and orange flickers quickly became a torrent of red fire and black smoke from the shambles that had been an engine room but had now become a crematory of helpless men.

“Fire!” he cried out. “Destroy those deceiving dogs!”

“Reload!” Cabrillo yelled through the communications system. “Hurry and reload—”

His orders were interrupted by a tremendous roar followed by concussions reverberating all around him. The big guns on the destroyer's undamaged forward turret belched a torrent of fire as it sent its shells screaming toward the Oregon.

The first shrieked between the loading cranes and burst against the base of the aft mast, sheering it clean and sending it crashing over the cargo deck while hurling a fiery core of white-hot fragments and debris in every direction, causing several small fires but little serious damage. With a convulsive explosion, the second shell slammed into the fantail on the Oregon's stern and tore it away, leaving a gaping hole above the rudderpost. The destruction was severe but not catastrophic. Cabrillo involuntarily ducked as a storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells from the Chengdo's lighter gun mounts began raking the Oregon from forecastle to shattered stern. Almost immediately he was hailed by Ross, who was also manning the ship's fire-control systems.

“Sir, the Chinese light guns have knocked out the missile launcher's firing mechanisms. I hate to be the bearer of sad tidings, but our one-two punch is history.” “What about the torpedoes?” “Three more minutes before they're ready for firing.” “Tell the men loading the tubes to do it in one!” “Hanley!” Cabrillo shouted through the speakerphone to the engine room.

“I'm here, Juan,” Hanley answered with quiet calmness. “Any damage to your engines?”

“A few pipes have sprung leaks. Nothing we can't handle.” “Give me full speed, every knot you can coax out of your engines. We've got to get the hell out of here before the destroyer rips us apart.” “You got it.”

It was then Cabrillo realized his Oerlikons had gone silent. He stood still and stared at the twin guns sitting dead in the center of a large wooden shipping crate with its four walls peeled out. The barrels pointed impotently at the destroyer as if neglected, their automated electronic controls severed by thirty-seven-millimeter shells. He knew with sick certainty that without its covering fire, their chances for survival were rapidly going down the drain. Too late did he feel the Oregon's stern dip and her bow raise as Hanley's big engines kicked the ship forward. For the first time he felt fear and hopelessness as he stared down the twin throats of the destroyer's one-hundred-millimeter guns, waiting for them to destroy his dedicated crew and ship.

Having momentarily forgotten the fight raging on the deck in the midst of the destruction, he blinked and glanced downward. Bloodied bodies were heaped and scattered like a truckload of human refuse dumped in the street. He stared with bile welling up in his throat. The appalling carnage had taken less than two minutes, a gory rampage that had left no man still alive uninjured. Or so he thought.

Then, like the flicker of a camera shutter, he saw a figure sway to his feet and begin staggering drunkenly across the deck toward the Oerlikons.

Although protected by the body armor around their torsos, James and Meadows were both down with wounds in the legs. Seng had taken two bullets through his right arm. Sitting with his back against the railing, he tore off a shirtsleeve, wadded it up and calmly pressed it against his wounds to stem the flow of blood. Giordino lay beside him, barely conscious. One of the Chinese marines had clubbed him on the top of his head with the butt of an automatic rifle in almost the same instant as Giordino had savagely sunk his fist into his opponent's stomach nearly to the vertebra. Both men had toppled to the deck together, the marine withering in pain and gasping for air, Giordino knocked nearly senseless.

Pitt, seeing that his friend was not seriously wounded, threw off the coat with the mannequin arms and struggled painfully toward the silent Oerlikons, muttering to himself. “Twice. Would you believe it. Twice in the same place.” He held one hand over the entry wound only an inch above the still-bandaged hole in his hip where he'd taken a bullet at Orion Lake. The other hand gripped a Chinese machine pistol he'd snatched off a dead marine.

From his vantage point on the bridge wing, Cabrillo stood rooted in awe of the unbelievable sight of Pitt contemptuously brushing aside the air filled with the maddening clatter of the Chengdo's storm of thirty-seven-millimeter shells that scythed across the Oregon's cargo deck. The fire splattered all around him like rain, chewing up the wooden crates stacked on the deck. He heard them shriek past his head and felt their demented breeze as they passed within inches of his face and neck. Miraculously, none struck him during his harrowing journey to the Oerlikons.

Pitt's face was not pleasant to see. To Cabrillo it seemed like a mask of unholy rage, the vivid green eyes burning with furious determination. It was a face Cabrillo would never forget. He had never seen a man with such a sardonic contempt for death.

At last, after achieving what seemed the impossible, Pitt lifted the machine pistol and shot away the shredded remnants of the cable leading to the fire-control room, giving the twin barrels freedom of movement. Then he moved behind the twin guns and took manual control, his right hand clutching the trigger grip, which had been installed but never operated. It was as if the old Oregon had come to life again, like a badly battered fighter who rose from the canvas at the count of nine and began punching. His aim was not what Cabrillo expected. Instead of spraying the Chengdo's bridge and thirty-seven-millimeter-gun mounts, Pitt unleashed the Oerlikons' combined 1,400-round-per-minute firepower against the turret, whose hundred-millimeter guns were aimed at and about to devastate the freighter.

Though it seemed like a useless, defiant gesture—the hurricane of small shells merely splattered and ricocheted off the heavily armored turret—Cabrillo realized what Pitt was attempting to do. Stark madness, he thought, sheer, unfettered madness to attempt the impossible. Even with a solid support to rest the barrel of his rifle, only a superb marksman could have put a bullet down the barrel of any one of the turret's gun muzzles from a ship rising and falling on the ocean swells. But Cabrillo overlooked the awesome firepower of the Oerlikons at Pitt's command, not realizing the law of averages was on his side. Three shells, one directly behind the other, entered the muzzle of the center gun and swept down its barrel, impacting with the shell that had been freshly loaded in the breech and detonating its warhead at almost the same instant it was fired.

In a moment stolen from hell, the big one-hundred-millimeter shell burst, causing a sympathetic explosion inside that peeled the turret open like a tin can covering a Fourth of July cherry bomb, instantly turning it into a shambles of jagged steel. Then, as if on cue, the Oregon's last two torpedoes smashed into the Chengdo's hull, one of them miraculously entering through a previous hole made by one of its predecessors. The destroyer shuddered as a great thunderous roar exploded in her bowels, lifting her hull nearly clear of the water. A blossoming ball of fire bloomed around her, and then, like a great, mortally wounded animal, she shuddered and died. Three minutes later she was gone amid a great hissing sound and column of black smoke that spiraled upward and merged with the night sky, hiding the stars.

The shock wave swept against the Oregon, and the following tidal surge from the sinking destroyer rocked her as if she was landlocked in an earthquake. On the bridge, Cabrillo had not seen the final death throes of the Chengdo. Only seconds before Pitt's shrewdly directed fire turned her into a smoldering wreck, the destroyer's light guns had converged their fire on the bridge, pounding it into a shower of debris and shattered glass, as if struck by a thousand sledgehammers. Cabrillo felt the air tear apart around him in a concert of explosions. His arms flailed at the air as he was struck and hurled backward from the bridge into the wheelhouse. He fell to the deck, closed his eyes tightly and wrapped his arms around the brass binnacle and held on. A shell had smashed through his right leg below the knee, but Cabrillo experienced no pain. And then he heard a tremendous eruption and felt a rush of air, followed by an almost eerie silence.

On the deck below, Pitt released the trigger grip and retraced his steps through the wreckage littering the cargo deck. He reached Giordino and helped him upright. Giordino put his arm around Pitt's waist to steady himself, and then withdrew it, staring at a hand stained with red. “It appears to me that you've developed a leak.”

Pitt gave him a tight grin. “I must remember to stick my finger in it.”

Assured Pitt's wound was not serious, Giordino gestured at Seng and the others and said, “These guys are seriously injured. We must help them.”

“Do what you can to make them comfortable until the ship's surgeon can tend to them,” Pitt said as he looked up at the ruins of what had been the bridge, now a tangled mass of debris. “If Cabrillo is still alive I should try to help him.”

The ladder to the bridge wing from the cargo deck was a tangled piece of scrap, and Pitt had to scale the shell-riddled, twisted mass of steel that had been the aft superstructure to reach the wheelhouse. The shattered interior was deadly quiet.

The only sounds came from the racing beat of the engines and the rash of water along the hull as the badly punished ship raced from the scene of the battle, strangely enhancing the eerie silence. Pitt slowly entered Satan's scrap heap, stepping over the rabble.

There were no bodies of a helmsman or first officer in the wheelhouse—all fire-combat systems had been operated from the control center under the forecastle. Cabrillo had observed and directed the battle alone on the seldom-used bridge. Through the edge of unconsciousness he saw a vague figure approach and push aside the splintered remains of the door. Awkwardly, he straggled to sit up. One leg responded but the other proved powerless. His thoughts seemed lost in a fog. He was only dimly aware of someone kneeling beside him.

“Your leg took a nasty hit,” said Pitt as he tore off his shirt and tightened it above the wound to stop the bleeding. “How's the rest of you?”

Cabrillo held up the remains of a shattered pipe. “The bastards rained my best briar.”

“You're lucky it wasn't your skull.” Reaching up, Cabrillo grasped Pitt's arm. “You made it through. I thought you bought a tombstone for sure.”

“Didn't someone tell you,” he said, smiling, “I'm indestructible, thanks in large part to the body armor you suggested I check out.”

“The Chengdo?”

“Settling in the mud on the bottom of the China Sea about now.”

“Survivors from the destroyer?”

“Hanley has his engines wound as tight as they'll go. I don't think he has any inclination to slow down, turn around, go back and see.”

“How badly were we mauled?” Cabrillo asked as his eyes began to focus again.

“Other than looking like she was trampled by Godzilla, there isn't any damage a few weeks in a shipyard won't cure.” “Casualties?”

“About five, maybe six wounded, including yourself,” answered Pitt. “No dead or injured below decks that I'm aware of.”

“I want to thank you,” said Cabrillo. He could feel himself getting faint from loss of blood, and he wanted to get it in.

“You fooled both me and the Chinese boarding party with your fake-hands-in-the-air routine. If you hadn't taken them out, the outcome might have been different.”

“I had help from four good men,” Pitt said as he knotted the tourniquet on Cabrillo's leg.

“It took a ton of guts to ran across that shell-swept deck to man the Oerlikons.”

Having done all he could until Cabrillo could be carried to the ship's hospital, Pitt sat back and stared at the chairman of the board. “I believe they call it temporary insanity.”

“Still,” Cabrillo said in a weak voice, “you saved the ship and everyone on it.”

Pitt looked at him tiredly and smiled. “Will the corporation vote me a bonus at the next board-of-directors meeting?”

Cabrillo started to say something, but he passed out just as Giordino, followed by two men and a woman, entered the ravaged wheelhouse. “How bad is he?” asked Giordino.

“His lower leg is hanging by a thread,” said Pitt. “If the ship's surgeon is as skilled and professional as everyone else on this ship, I'm betting he can reattach it.”

Giordino looked down on the blood seeping through Pitt's pants at the hip. “Did you ever consider painting a bull's-eye on your ass?”

“Why bother?” Pitt retorted with a twinkle in his eyes. “They'd never miss it anyway.”

UNKNOWN TO MOST VISITORS OF HONG KONG ARE THE OUTLYing islands, 235 of them. Considered the other face of the bustling business district across from Kowloon, the old fishing villages and peaceful open countryside are embellished by picturesque farms and ancient temples. Most of the islands are less accessible than Cheung Chau, Lamma and Lantau, whose populations run from 8,000 to 25,000, and many are still uninhabited.

Four miles southwest of the town of Aberdeen on Repulse Bay, Tia Nan Island rises from the waters of the East Lamma Channel across a narrow channel from the Stanley Peninsula. It is small, no more than a mile in diameter. At its peak, jutting from a promontory two hundred feet above the sea, stands a monument to wealth and power, a manifestation of supreme ego.

Originally a Taoist monastery built in 1789 and dedicated to Ho Hsie Ku, one of the immortals of Taoism, the main temple and its surrounding three smaller temples were abandoned in 1949. In 1990 it was purchased by Qin Shang, who became obsessed with creating a palatial estate that would become the envy of every affluent businessman and politician in southeast China.

Protected by a high wall and well-guarded gates, the enclosed gardens were artistically designed and planted with the world's rarest trees and flowers. Master craftsmen replicated ancient design motifs. Artisans from all over China were brought in to remodel the monastery into a glorious showplace of Chinese culture. The harmonious architecture was retained and enhanced to display Qin Shang's immense collection of art treasures. His thirty-year hunt netted art objects from China's prehistory to the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644. He pleaded, cajoled and bribed People's Republic bureaucrats into selling him priceless antiques and artwork, any cultural treasure he could get his hands on.

His agents combed the great auction houses of Europe and America, and scoured every private collection on every continent for exquisite Chinese objects. Qin Shang bought and bought with a fanaticism that stunned his few friends and business associates. After an appropriate time span, what could not be purchased was stolen and smuggled to his estate. What he couldn't display because of lack of space, or was documented as stolen, he stored in warehouses hi Singapore and not Hong Kong because he didn't trust bureaucrats of the People's Republic government not to decide someday to confiscate his treasures for themselves.

Unlike so many of his superrich contemporaries, Qin Shang never settled into a “lifestyle of the rich and famous.” From the time he hustled his first coin until he made his third billion, he never stopped working at extending his thriving shipping operations, nor did he cease his maniacal, unending drive to collect the cultural riches of China.

When he bought the monastery, Qin Shang's first project was to enlarge and pave the winding foot trail leading up to the temples from a small harbor so that construction materials and later his artwork and furnishings could be carried up the steep hill by vehicles. He wanted more than to rebuild and remodel the temples, much more; he wanted to create a stunning effect never achieved in a private residence or any other edifice so dedicated to the accumulation of cultural art by an individual, except perhaps the Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California.

It took five years from start to finish before the grounds inside the walls were lushly landscaped and the decor inside the temples was completed. Another six months passed before the art and furnishings were set in place. The main temple

became Qin Shang's residence and entertainment complex, which included a lavishly decorated billiard room and a vast heated indoor/outdoor swimming pool that meandered in a circle for over a hundred yards. The complex also sported two tennis courts and a short nine-hole golf course. The other three smaller temples were turned into omate guesthouses. In the end, Qin Shang called it the House of Tin Hau, the patroness and goddess of seafarers.

Qin Shang was an extremist when it came to perfection. He never ceased fine-tuning his beloved temples. The complex seemed in a constant state of activity as he redesigned and added costly details that enriched his creation. The expense was enormous, but he had more than enough money to indulge his passion. His fourteen thousand art objects were the envy of museums around the world. He was constantly besieged with offers by galleries and other collectors, but Qin Shang only bought. He never sold.

When completed, the House of Tin Hau was grand and magnificent, looming over the sea like a specter guarding Shang's secrets.

An invitation to visit the House of Tin Hau was always accepted with great pleasure among Asian and European royalty, world leaders, society people, financial tycoons and movie stars. Guests, who generally arrived at Hong Kong's international airport, were immediately flown by a huge executive helicopter to a landing pad just outside the temple complex. High state officials or those of a special elite status were carried by water on Qin Shang's incredible two-hundred-foot floating mansion, actually the size of a small cruise ship, which he designed and built in his own shipyard. Upon arrival the guests were met by a staff of servants who would direct them to luxurious vans for the short drive to their sleeping quarters, where they were assigned their own private maids and valets during their stay. They were also informed about dinner schedules and asked if they preferred any special dishes or particular wine.

Properly awed by the scope and splendor of the rebuilt temples, the guests relaxed in the gardens, lounged around the swimming pools or worked in the library, which was staffed with highly professional secretaries and specially equipped with the latest publications, computers and communications systems for businessmen and government officials so they could remain in convenient contact with their various offices.

Dinners were always formal. Guests gathered in an immense antechamber that was a lush tropical garden with waterfalls, reflection ponds filled with vividly colored carp and a light perfumed mist that filtered from jets in the ceiling. Women, to protect their hairstyles, sat under artistically dyed silk umbrellas. After cocktails, they gathered in the great hall of the temple that served as a dining room and sat in massive chairs exotically carved with dragon legs and armrests. Flatware was optional—chopsticks for Oriental guests, gold-plated utensils for those used to Western tastes. Instead of the traditional long rectangular table with the host seated at its head, Qin Shang preferred a huge circular table with the guests comfortably spaced around the outer circumference. A narrow aisle was cut in one section of the table so gorgeous, svelte Chinese women in beautiful, form-fitting silk dresses with thigh-high slits in the skirts could serve a multitude of national dishes conveniently from the inside. To Qin Shang's creative mind, this was far more practical than the time-honored method of serving over a guest's shoulder.

After everyone was seated, Qin Shang made his appearance in an elevator that came up through the floor. He usually wore the expensive silk robes of a mandarin lord and sat on an ancient throne elevated two inches above the chairs of his guests. Irrespective of status or nationality, Qin Shang acted as if every meal was a ceremonial occasion and he was the emperor.

Not surprisingly, ranking guests loved every minute of a stylishly staged dinner that was actually more of a feast. After dinner, Qin Shang led them to a lavish theater where they were shown the latest feature films flown in from around the world. They sat in soft, velvet chairs and wore earphones that translated the dialogue into their native language. By the end of the program it was close to midnight. A light buffet was laid out, and the guests mingled among themselves while Qin Shang would disappear into a private sitting room with a selected guest or two to discuss world markets or negotiate business deals.

This evening Qin Shang requested the presence of Zhu Kwan, the seventy-year-old scholar who was China's most respected historian. Kwan was a little man with a smiling face and small, heavily lidded brown eyes. He was invited to sit in a thickly cushioned wooden chair carved with lions and offered a small Ming-dynasty china cup of peach brandy.

Qin Shang smiled. “I wish to thank you for coming, Zhu Kwan.”

“I am grateful for your invitation,” Zhu Kwan replied graciously. “It is a great honor to be a guest in your magnificent home.”

“You are our country's greatest authority on ancient Chinese history and culture. I requested your presence because I wanted to meet you and discuss a possible venture between us.” “I must assume you want me to do research.” Qin Shang nodded. “I do.” “How can I be of service?”

“Have you taken a close look at some of my treasures?” “Yes indeed,” answered Zhu Kwan. “It is a rare treat for a historian to study our country's greatest artworks firsthand. I had no idea so many pieces of our past still existed. It is thought many of them were lost. The magnificent bronze incense burners inlaid with gold and gemstones from the Chou dynasty, the bronze chariot with life-size driver and four horses from the Han dynasty—”

“Fakes, replicas!” Qin Shang snapped in a sudden display of torment. “What you consider masterworks of our ancestors were re-created from photographs of the originals.”

Zhu Kwan was astonished and disillusioned at the same time. “They look so perfect, I was completely fooled.”

“Not if you had time to study them under laboratory conditions.”

“Your artisans are extraordinary. As skilled as those a thousand years ago. On today's market your commissioned works must be worth a fortune.”

Qin Shang sat heavily in a chair opposite Zhu Kwan. “True, but reproductions are not priceless like the genuine objects. That is why I'm delighted you accepted my invitation. What I'd like you to do is compile an inventory of the art treasures that were known to exist prior to nineteen forty-eight, but have since disappeared.”

Zhu Kwan eyed him steadily. “Are you prepared to pay a great sum of money for such a list?” “I am.” “Then you shall have a complete inventory itemizing every known art treasure that has been missing in the last fifty to sixty years by the end of the week. You wish it delivered here or at your office in Hong Kong?”

Qin Shang looked at him quizzically. “That is quite an exceptional commitment. Are you sure you can fulfill my request in so short a time?”

“I have already accumulated a detailed description of the treasures over a period of thirty years,” explained Zhu Kwan. “It was a labor of love for my own personal satisfaction. I only require a few days to put it in readable order. Then you may have it free of charge.”

“That is most gracious of you, but I am not a man who asks for favors without compensation.”

“I will accept no money, but there is one provision.”

“You have but to name it.”

“I humbly ask that you use your enormous resources in an attempt to locate the lost treasures so they can be returned to the people of China.”

Qin Shang nodded solemnly. “I promise to use every source at my command. Though I have only spent fifteen years to your thirty on the search, I regret to say I have made little progress. The mystery is as deep as the disappearance of the bones of the Peking man.”

“You have found no leads either?” inquired Zhu Kwan.

“The only key to a possible solution my own agents have turned up is a ship called the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I remember her well. I sailed on her with my mother and father to Singapore when I was a young boy. She was a fine ship. As I recall, she was owned by Canton Lines. I searched for clues to her disappearance myself some years ago. What is her connection with the lost art treasures?”

“Shortly after Chiang Kai-shek looted the national museums and plundered the private collections of our ancestors' art treasures, the Princess Dou Wan sailed for an unknown destination. She never reached it. My agents have failed to trace any eyewitnesses. It seems many of them also disappeared under mysterious circumstances. No doubt lying in unmarked graves, courtesy of Chiang Kai-shek, who wanted no secrets about the ship to leak to the Communists.”

“You think Chiang Kai-shek tried to smuggle the treasures away on the Princess Dou Wan?”

“The coincidence and odd events lead me to believe so.”

“That would answer many questions. The only records I could find on the Princess Dou Wan suggested that she was lost on the way to the scrappers at Singapore.”

“Actually, her trail ends somewhere in the sea west of Chile, where a distress signal was reported received from a ship calling herself the Princess Dou Wan before she sank with all hands in a violent storm.”

“You have done well, Qin Shang,” said Zhu Kwan. “Perhaps now you can solve the puzzle?”

Qin Shang shook his head dejectedly. “Easier said than done. She could have gone down anywhere within a four-hundred-square-mile area. An American would compare it to looking for a needle in a field of haystacks.”

“This is not a quest to cast aside as too difficult. A search must be conducted. Our most priceless national treasures must be recovered.”

“I agree. That's why I built a search-and-survey ship precisely for that purpose. My salvage crew has been crisscrossing the site for six months and has seen no indication of a hulk on the seabed matching the size and description of the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I pray you do not give up,” Zhu Kwan said solemnly. “To discover and return the artifacts for display in the People's museums and galleries would make you immortal.”

“The reason I've asked you here tonight. I wish for you to put forth your greatest effort in finding a clue to the ship's final whereabouts. I will pay you well for any new information you discover.”

“You are a great patriot, Qin Shang.”

But any expectation Zhu Kwan had that Qin Shang was on a noble quest for the people of China was quickly dashed. Qin Shang looked at him and smiled. “I have achieved great wealth and power in my lifetime. I do not search for immortality. I do it because I cannot die unfulfilled. I shall never rest until the treasures are found and retrieved.”

The veil shrouding Qin Shang's evil intentions was ripped away. The billionaire was no moralist. If he was fortunate enough to find the Princess and her priceless cargo, he had every intention of keeping it for himself. Every piece, no matter how large or small, would become part of a hidden collection that only Qin Shang would enjoy.

Qin Shang was lying in bed studying financial reports on his far-flung business empire when the phone beside his bed chimed softly. Unlike most unmarried men in his position, he usually slept alone. He admired women and summoned one when he occasionally felt desire, but business and finance were his passion. He thought smoking and drinking wasted time, as did seduction. He was too disciplined for a common affair. He felt only disgust for men of power and wealth who wasted themselves with dissipation and debauchery. He picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“You asked me to call you regardless of time of night,” came the voice of his secretary, Su Zhong.

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, his train of thought interrupted. “What is the latest report on the United States?”

“She left her dock at seven o'clock this evening. All automated systems are functioning normally. Unless she encounters heavy storms at sea, she should make Panama in record time.” “Is a crew standing by to board and to take her through the canal?”

“Preparations have been made,” answered Su Zhong. “Once the ship enters the Caribbean, the crew will reengage the automated systems for her journey to Sungari and disembark.”

“Any word on the intruders at the shipyard?” “Only that it was a very professional operation using a highly sophisticated submersible.” “And my underwater security team?” “Their bodies have been recovered. None survived. Most appear to have died from concussion. The patrol boat was found at the Harbor Authority dock, but the crew has vanished.”

“The Iranian-registered freighter that was moored nearby the shipyard—has she been boarded and investigated?”

“Her name is the Oregon. She departed slightly ahead of the United States. According to our sources at Naval Command, it was overtaken at your request by Captain Yu Tien of the cruiser Chengdo. His last message said that the freighter had heaved to and he was sending a boarding party of marines to inspect her.”

“Nothing from Captain Yu Tien since then?” asked Qin Shang. “Only silence.”

“Perhaps his boarding party found incriminating evidence and he has seized the ship and disposed of the crew under strict secrecy.”

“No doubt that is the situation,” agreed Su Zhong.

“What else do you have for me?”