Flood Tide

“For what purpose?”

“To blow the bottom out of the United States and scuttle her.”

“Now there's a possibility.” Cabrillo's eyelids were beginning to droop. “I do believe you may be onto something.”

“That could explain why Al found all the doors to the crew's quarters and lower cargo holds welded shut.”

“Now all you need is a crystal ball to predict where Qin Shang intends to sink her ...” Cabrillo murmured softly. His voice trailed off as he drifted off to sleep.

Pitt started to say something, but saw that he would only be talking to himself. He quietly stepped from Cabrillo's cabin and softly closed the door.

Three days later the Oregon picked up the harbor pilot, passed through the shipping channel and slipped alongside the dock at Guam's commercial terminal. Except for the stump where her aft mast once stood and her pulverized stern, the ship looked little the worse for wear.

A string of ambulances was waiting on the dock to receive the wounded and transport them to the hospital at the island's naval station. The Chinese marines were the first to be taken away, followed by the ship's crew. Cabrillo was the last of the injured to leave the ship. After saying their goodbyes to the crew, Pitt and Giordino muscled aside the stretcher bearers and carried him down the gangway themselves.

“I feel like the sultan of Baghdad,” said Cabrillo.

“You'll get our bill in the mail,” Giordino told him.

They reached the ambulance and gently set the stretcher on the dock before loading it onto a gurney. Pitt knelt down and stared into Cabrillo's eyes. “It was an honor knowing you, Mr. Chairman.”

“And a privilege to work with you, Mr. Special Projects Director. If you ever decide to leave NUMA and want a job sailing the seven seas to exotic ports, send me your resume.”

“I don't mean to criticize, but I didn't exactly find the cruise aboard your ship a benefit to my health.” Pitt paused and looked up at the rusty sides of the Oregon. “Sounds strange to say so, but I'm going to miss the old boat.”

“Likewise,” Cabrillo agreed.

Pitt looked at him questioningly. “You'll mend and be back on board in no time.”

Cabrillo shook his head. “Not after this trip. The Oregon's next voyage is to the scrap yard.”

“Why?” asked Giordino. “Are the ashtrays full?”

“She's outlived her usefulness.”

“I don't understand,” said Pitt. “She looks perfectly sound.”

“She's been what is called in the spy trade 'compromised',” explained Cabrillo. “The Chinese are wise to her facade. Within days every intelligence service around the world will be on the lookout for her. No, I'm afraid her days as disguised gatherer of classified information are over.”

“Does that mean you're going to dissolve the corporation?”

Cabrillo sat up, his eyes gleaming. “Not in your life. Our grateful government has already offered to refit a new ship with state-of-the-art-technology, bigger, more powerful engines and a heavier weapons system. It may take a few operations to pay off the mortgage, but the stockholders and I are not about to close down operations.”

Pitt shook the chairman's hand. “I wish you the best of luck. Perhaps we can do it again sometime.”

Cabrillo rolled his eyes. “Oh God, I hope not.”

Giordino took one of his magnificent cigars and slipped it into Cabrillo's shirt pocket. “A little something in case you tire of your smelly old pipe.”

They waited as the attendants transferred Cabrillo to the gumey and lifted him inside the ambulance. Then the door was closed and the vehicle moved across the dock. They were standing there watching for a moment until it disappeared onto a street lined with palm trees when a man came up behind them.

“Mr. Pitt and Mr. Giordino?”

Pitt turned. “That's us.”

A man in his middle sixties, with gray hair and beard, held up a leather-encased badge and identification. He was wearing white shorts, a flowered silk shirt and sandals. “I've been sent by my superiors to take you to the airport. An aircraft is waiting to fly you to Washington.”

“Aren't you a little old to play secret agent?” said Giordino, studying the stranger's identification.

“We oldies but goodies can often pass unnoticed where you younger guys can't.”

“Which way to your car?” asked Pitt conversationally.

The senior citizen pointed to a small Toyota van painted in the wild colors of a local taxi. “Your carriage awaits.”

“I had no idea the CIA cut your budget so drastically,” Giordino said sarcastically.

“We make do with what we've got.”

They piled into the van, and twenty minutes later they were seated in a military cargo jet. As the plane rolled down the runway of Guam's Air Force base, Pitt looked out the window and saw the senior intelligence agent leaning against his van as if confirming that Pitt and Giordino had departed the island. In another minute they were flying above the often overlooked island paradise of the Pacific with its volcanic mountains, lush jungle waterfalls and miles of white-sand beaches graced with swaying coco palms. The Japanese swarmed into the hotels and onto the beaches of Guam, but not many Americans. He continued staring down as the plane passed over the turquoise waters inside the reef surrounding the island and headed out to sea.

As Giordino dozed off, Pitt turned his thoughts to the United States, sailing somewhere on the ocean below him. Something terrible was in the works, a terrible threat that only one man on earth could prevent. But Pitt knew with crystallized certainty that nothing, except perhaps an untimely death, would deflect Qin Shang from his purpose.

The world may be a place that is scarce of honest politicians, white buffalo, unpolluted rivers, saints and miracles, but there is no shortage of depraved villains. Some, like serial killers, may slay twenty or a hundred innocent victims. But given financial resources they might kill many more. Those like Qin Shang who possessed enormous affluence could hold themselves above the law and hire homicidal cretins to do their dirty work for them. The evil billionaire was not a general who felt remorse over losing a thousand men in battle to achieve an objective. Qin Shang was a cold-blooded sociopathic murderer who could drink a glass of champagne and eat a hearty dinner after condemning hundreds of illegal immigrants, many of them women and children, to a horrible death in the frigid waters of Orion Lake.

Pitt was committed to stopping Qin Shang whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, even killing him if the occasion presented itself. He was drawn in too deeply to struggle back over the edge. He fantasized what it would be like if they ever met. What would the circumstances be? What would he say to a mass slaughterer?

For a long time, Pitt sat there staring up at the cabin ceiling of the aircraft. There was no sense in anything. Whatever Qin Shang's plan had to be, if nothing else it was mad. And now Pitt's own mind was running amok. There is nothing to do, he thought finally, but to sleep it off and hope to see things with a sane eye when we reach Washington.

April 23, 2000 Atchafalaya River, Louisiana

OF THE MAJOR RIVERS OF THE WORLD, THE NILE CASTS A romantic spell from an ancient past, the Amazon conjures up images of adventure and danger, while the Yangtze entwines the soul with the mysteries of the Orient. Images of pharaohs lounging on royal barges rowed by a hundred men past the pyramids come to mind... the Spanish conquistadors struggling and dying in a green hell... Chinese junks and sampans crowding water turned yellow-brown with flowing silt. But it is the Mississippi that truly captures the imagination.

Thanks to the stories of Mark Twain of big side-paddle riverboats coming around the bend with whistles blowing as they passed Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer on a raft, and of battles up and down the river by Union and Confederate ironclads during the Civil War, the Mississippi's past seems so near that one has but to pierce a thin veil to experience it.

“The Father of Rivers,” as the Indians called it, the Mississippi is the only river in North America that ranks in the top ten of the world. Third in length, third in drainage, fifth in volume, it stretches from the headwaters in Montana of its longest tributary, the Missouri, 3,484 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Almost as fluid as mercury, always searching for the path of least resistance, the Mississippi has changed course many times throughout the last five thousand years, especially after the seas finally reached their present levels at the end of the last ice age. Between 1900 B.C. and 700 B.C. it flowed almost forty miles west of its present course. Restlessly, the river shifted back and forth across the state of Louisiana, carving a channel before migrating and carving another. Almost half of Louisiana was formed by the Mississippi depositing tremendous amounts of silt and clay carried from as far north as Minnesota and Montana.

“The water looks quiet today,” said a man in an elevated seat who gazed from the pilothouse of the George B. Larson, an Army Corps of Engineers survey boat.

Standing at the control console, the boat's captain, Lucas Giraud, merely nodded as he piloted the craft past the cattle grazing on the levees of the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana.

This was Cajun country, the last outpost of French Acadian culture. Pickup trucks parked under spreading trees next to tar-papered cabins raised on pylons. Nearby, small Baptist churches rose from the damp countryside, their paint-peeled wooden sides overlooking cemeteries with weathered tombs rising above the ground. Soybeans and corn rose from the rich soil between man-made ponds for the farming of catfish. Little hardware and feed stores stood across narrow roads from auto garages surrounded by rusting wrecked cars half-buried in green underbrush that sprouted through their broken windows.

Major General Frank Montaigne studied the passing scene as the big survey boat cruised down the river that was textured by a light morning mist. He was late fiftyish and wore a light gray suit and a striped blue shirt with a burgundy bow tie. A vest, embellished with a large gold watch chain spanning the pockets, was displayed through the open coat. An expensive Panama hat was perched at a jaunty angle over steel-gray hair that flowed back from the temples. The eyebrows had managed to remain black and arched over limpid eyes that were gray-blue. There was a polished look about him, burnished with a hardness that you knew was there but couldn't see. His trademark, a cane carved from a willow tree with a leaping frog for its handle, lay across his lap.

Montaigne was no stranger to the capricious nature of the Mississippi River. To him it was a monster that was condemned to move through a narrow passage for eternity. Mostly it slept, but occasionally it went into a rampage, overflowing its banks and causing disastrous floods. It was the job of General Montaigne and of the Army Corps of Engineers, which he represented, to control the monster and protect the millions of people who lived along its banks and levees.

As president of the Mississippi River Commission, Montaigne was required to inspect the flood-control projects once a year on an Army Corps towboat that was fitted out almost as ostentatiously as a cruise ship. On those trips he was accompanied by a bevy of high-ranking officers of the Army as well as his civilian staff. Stopping at the many towns and ports along the river, he held conferences with the residents to hear their input and complaints about how the river was affecting their lives.

Montaigne disliked wining and dining local officials while surrounded by the pomp of his office. He much preferred unannounced inspection tours conducted from a workaday survey boat with no one but himself, Captain Giraud and his crew on board. Without distraction, he could study firsthand the workings of the revetments laid along the levees to reduce erosion, the condition of the levees themselves, the rock jetties and navigation locks leading to and from the river.

Why is the Army Corps of Engineers in command of the never-ending war against flooding? They launched their attack to tame the Mississippi River in the early eighteen hundreds. After building fortifications during the War of 1812 along the river to keep out British forces, it seemed expedient for them to turn their experience to civil works, and the Military Academy at West Point had the only school of engineering in the country. Today the organization almost seems like an anachronism when one considers that civilians who work for the Corps outnumber Army officers by a hundred and forty to one.

Frank (his birth certificate read Fra^ois) Montaigne was born a Cajun in Plaquemines Parish below New Orleans and spent his boyhood in the French Acadian world of southern Louisiana. His father was a fisherman, or to be more exact a crawfisherman, who built a floating house in the swamp with his own hands, and made a great sum of money over the years, hauling his catch and selling directly to the restaurants of New Orleans. And, like most Cajuns, he never spent his profits and died a rich man.

Montaigne spoke French before he learned English, and his classmates at the academy called him Potpourri because he often mixed the two languages together when speaking. After a distinguished career as a combat engineer in Vietnam and the Gulf War, Montaigne was rapidly promoted after receiving several academic degrees in his spare time, including a Ph.D. in hydrology. At the age of fifty-five he was appointed commander of the entire Mississippi Valley from the Gulf up to the Missouri River where it joins the Mississippi near St. Louis. It was a job he was born for. Montaigne loved the river almost as much as he loved his wife, who was also a Cajun, the sister of his best boyhood friend, and his three daughters. But mixed with his love for the flowing waters was a fear that someday Mother Nature would turn violent and wipe out his efforts, sending the Mississippi raging over the levees and flooding millions of acres while cutting a new channel to the Gulf.

Earlier in the morning just before dawn, the Larson, named after an Army Corps engineer long deceased, had eased into the navigation locks that were constructed by the Army Corps for flood control and to stop the Atchafalaya from capturing the Mississippi. Giant control structures that are basically dams with spillways were built fifty miles above Baton Rouge at an old bend hi the river where a hundred and seventy years before the Red River once entered into the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya flowed out. Then in 1831 a steamboat entrepreneur, Captain Henry Shreve, dug a channel across the neck of the bend. Now the Red River bypassed the Mississippi and flowed through remains of the bend that became known as the Old River. Almost as if it was a siren enticing an unwary sailor, the Atchafalaya, with only 142 miles to the Gulf versus the Mississippi's 315, beckons the main river into its waiting arms.

Montaigne had stepped out on deck as the gates swung and closed off the water of the Mississippi and watched as the walls of the lock seemed to rise toward the sky while the survey boat descended to the Atchafalaya. He waved to the lockmaster, who waved back. The waters of the Atchafalaya run fifteen feet lower than the Mississippi's, but it only took ten minutes before the west gates opened and the Larson moved out into the channel that led south to Morgan City and the Gulf beyond.

“What time do you estimate our rendezvous with the NUMA research ship below Sungari?” he asked the Larson^ captain.

“Around three o'clock, give or take,” answered Giraud without indecision.

Montaigne nodded at a big towboat pushing a string of barges downriver. “Looks like a cargo of lumber,” he said to Giraud.

“Must be heading for that new industrial development near Melville.” Giraud looked like one of the Three Musketeers with his hawklike French features and flowing black mustache waxed and twisted at the ends. Like Montaigne, Giraud had grown up in the Cajun land, only he had never left it. A big man with a belly seldom empty of Dixie beer, he possessed a sardonic humor that was known up and down the river.

Montaigne watched as a small speedboat filled with four teenagers darted recklessly around the survey boat and cut in front of the barges, followed by four of their friends astride a pair of watercraft.

“Stupid kids,” muttered Giraud. “If any of them lost their engines in front of the barges, there is no way the towboat could stop the momentum before running them over.”

“I used to do the same thing with my father's eighteen foot aluminum fishing skiff with a little twenty-five horsepower outboard motor, and I'm still alive.”

“Forgive me for saying so, General, but you were even dumber than them.”

Montaigne knew that Giraud meant no disrespect. He was well aware the pilot had witnessed his share of accidents during the long years he'd piloted ships and towboats up and down the Mississippi river system. Ships running aground, oil spills, collisions, fires, he'd seen them all, and as with most old river pilots, he was a cautious man. No one was more aware that the Mississippi was an unforgiving river.

“Tell me, Lucas,” said Montaigne, “do you think the Mississippi will flow into the Atchafalaya one day?”

“One great flood is all it will take for the river to tear away the levees and sweep into the Atchafalaya,” replied Giraud stoically. “One year, ten years, maybe twenty, but sooner or later the river will run no more past New Orleans. It's only a matter of time.”

“The Army Corps has fought a good battle to keep it hi control.”

“Man can't tell nature what to do for very long. I only hope I'm around to see it.”

“The sight won't be pretty,” said Montaigne. “The effects of the disaster will be appalling. Death, major flooding, mass destruction. Why would you want to be a witness to such devastation?”

Giraud turned from the wheel and stared at the general, a dreamlike look in his eyes. “The channel already carries the flow of the Red and Atchafalaya rivers. Just think what a mighty river will flow through southern Louisiana when the entire Mississippi breaks loose and adds its discharge to the other two. It will be a sight to behold.”

“Yes,” said Montaigne slowly, “a sight to behold, but one I hope I never live to see.”

AT FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THREE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON, Lucas Giraud slipped the throttles to the big Caterpillar diesels to quarter speed as the Larson cruised past Morgan City at the lower end of the Atchafalaya River. After crossing the Intracoastal Waterway and dropping below Qin Shang Mari-time's port of Sungari, the Larson entered the glassy-smooth waters of Sweet Bay Lake six miles from the Gulf of Mexico. He swung the boat toward a turquoise-colored research ship with NUMA painted in large block letters on the hull amidships. She has a no-nonsense, businesslike air about her, Giraud noted. As the Larson drew closer he could read the name on the bow, Marine Denizen. She looked like a ship that had seen her share of service. He judged her age at twenty-five years or more, old for. working ship.

The wind blew out of the southeast at fifteen miles an hour and the water had a light chop. Giraud ordered a crewman to drop the fenders over the side. He then eased the Larson against the Marine Denizen with a gentle bump, and held the survey boat against the research vessel just long enough for his passenger to step across a ramp that had been extended for his arrival.

On board the Denizen, Rudi Gunn raised his eyeglasses to the light streaming in through a porthole of the NUM A marine-survey ship, squinted his eyes and checked for smudges on the lenses. Seeing none, he replaced the rims and adjusted the earpieces. Then he looked down and studied the three-dimensional diorama of the Sungari shipping port that was beamed down on a horizontal surface by an overhead holographic projector. The image was processed from forty or more aerial photographs taken at low altitudes by a NUMA helicopter.

Constructed on newly made land in a swampland along both banks of the Atchafalaya River before it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, the port was hailed as the most modern and efficient shipping terminus in the world. Covering two thousand acres and stretching over a mile on both sides of the Atchafalaya River, it was dredged to a navigational depth of thirty-two feet. The Port of Sungari consisted of over one million square feet of warehouse space, two grain elevators with loading slips, a six-hundred-thousand-barrel-capacity liquid bulk terminal and three general-cargo handling terminals that could load and unload twenty container ships at one time. The steel-faced docks on opposite sides of the river channel backed by landfill provided twelve thousand feet of deep-water berthage for all ships except heavily laden super-tankers.

What made Sungari different from most port facilities was its architecture. No gray concrete buildings shaped in austere rectangles. The warehouses and office structures were constructed in the shape of pyramids, all covered with a gold galvanized material that blazed like fire when struck by the sun. The effect was electrifying, especially to planes flying overhead, and its glow could be seen from ships forty miles out in the Gulf.

A light rap came on the door behind Gunn. He stepped across the ship's conference room, used for meetings between the ship's scientists and technicians, and opened the door. General Frank Montaigne stood in the passageway outside, looking dapper in a gray suit with vest and leaning on his cane. “Thank you for coming, General. I'm Rudi Gunn.”

“Commander Gunn,” said General Montaigne affably, “I've looked forward to meeting you. After my briefing by officials from the White House and INS, I'm delighted to find that I'm not the only one who believes Qin Shang to be a deviously clever menace.”

“We seem to be members of a growing club.”

Gunn showed the general to a chair beside the three-dimensional image of Sungari. Montaigne leaned toward the projected diorama, his hand and chin resting on the leaping frog atop his cane. “I see NUMA also uses holographic imagery to demonstrate their marine projects.”

“I've heard the Army Corp of Engineers takes advantage of the same technology.”

“It comes in handy to convince Congress to increase our funding. The only difference is, our unit is designed to show fluid motion. When we brief the various committees in Washington, we like to impress them with a demonstration on the horrors of a disastrous flood.”

“What's your opinion of Sungari?” asked Gunn.

Montaigne seemed lost in the image. “It's as if an alien culture came down from space and built a city in the middle of the Gobi Desert. It's all so pointless and unnecessary. I'm reminded of the old saying, All dressed up and no place to go.”

“You're not impressed with it.”

“As a shipping terminus, I find it about as useful as a second belly button on my forehead.”

“Hard to believe Qin Shang got the necessary approval and permits for such a vast project with no profitable future,” said Gunn.

“He submitted a comprehensive development plan that was approved by the Louisiana state legislature. Naturally, politicians will jump on any industrial development they think will increase employment and revenue that won't tap the taxpayers' pockets. With no obvious downside, who can blame them? The Army Corps also approved their permits for dredging because we saw no interruption in the natural flow of the Atchafalaya River. The environmentalists raised hell, of course, because of the virtual destruction of a vast area of wetlands. But all their objections and those of my own engineers concerning the future alteration of the Atchafalaya Delta were quickly brushed aside when Qin Shang's lobbyists sweet-talked Congress into fully authorizing the project. I've yet to meet a financial analyst or port-district commissioner who did not think Sungari was a failure before its plans came out of the computers.”

“And yet, all permits were approved,” said Gunn. “Blessings were given by high officials in Washington, including President Wallace, who greased the path,” conceded Montaigne. “Much of the acceptance was based around the new trade deals with China. Congress didn't want to upset the apple cart when Chinese trade reps threw Sungari into their proposals. And to be sure, there must have been heavy payoffs under the table by Qin Shang Maritime up and down the line.” Gunn moved around the three-dimensional projection and stared through a porthole at the actual complex two miles upriver from the Marine Denizen, The golden buildings were turning orange with the setting sun. But for two ships, the long docks were empty. “We're not dealing with a man who bets on a horse with long odds. There has to be a method to the madness for Shang to spend over a billion dollars to develop a terminus for overseas trade in such an impractical location.”

“I wish someone would enlighten me as to what it is,” Montaigne said cynically, “because I haven't a clue.”

“And yet, Sungari does have access to State Highway 90 and the Southern Pacific rail line,” Gunn pointed out.

“Wrong,” snorted Montaigne. “Presently, there is no access. Qin Shang has refused to build a link to the main rail line and a paved thoroughfare to the highway. He says he's done enough. He insists that it is up to the state and federal governments to build access to his transportation network. But because of voter unrest and new budget restrictions, state bureaucrats are balking.”

Gunn turned and looked at Montaigne, puzzled. “No means of ground transportation in and out of Sungari? That's insane.” Montaigne nodded at the holographic image. “Take a good look at your fancy display. Do you see an arterial roadway traveling north to Highway 90 or rail spurs connecting with the Southern Pacific tracks? The Intracoastal Waterway runs past a few miles north, but it's used mostly by pleasure craft and limited barge traffic.”

Gunn studied the image closely and saw that the only access for freight up the Atchafalaya River to the north was by barge traffic. The entire port was surrounded by marshland. “This is crazy. How did he build and develop such a vast complex without construction materials trucked or shipped in by rail?” “No materials came out of the United States. Virtually everything you see was shipped in from overseas on Qin Shang Maritime ships. The building materials, the construction equipment, all came from China, as did the engineers, supervisors and workmen. No American, Japanese or European had a hand in Sungari's development. The only material that didn't arrive from China was the landfill that came from an excavation sixty miles up the Atchafalaya.”

“Couldn't he find landfill closer to the development?” asked Gunn.

“A mystery,” replied Montaigne. “Qin Shang's builders barged millions of cubic yards of fill downriver by excavating a canal through the marshlands that goes nowhere.”

Gunn sighed in exasperation. “How in the world does he expect to ever show a profit?”

“Until now, the cargoes of the few Chinese merchant ships that dock at Sungari have been carried inland by barge and towboat,” explained Montaigne. “Even if he gave in and built a transportation system in and out of his dream port, who but the Chinese would come? Terminal facilities on the Mississippi have far superior access to major highways, rail links and an international airport. No shipping-company CEO with half a brain would divert vessels of his merchant fleet from New Orleans to Sungari.”

“Could he barge cargo up and down the Atchafalaya and Red rivers to a transportation center farther north?”

“A losing proposition,” Montaigne replied. “The Atchafalaya may be an inland navigable waterway, but it doesn't contain half the flow of the Mississippi. It's considered a shallow-draft artery and barge traffic is limited, unlike the Mississippi, which can accommodate great towboats with ten thousand horsepower pushing as many as fifty barges tied together in rows like a marching column stretching nearly a third of a mile. The Atchafalaya is a treacherous river. It may look calm and peaceful, but that is a mask that hides its true, ugly face. It waits like a gator with only its eyes and nostrils showing, ready to strike the unwary river pilot or pleasure-boat operator out for a weekend cruise. If Qin Shang thought he could build a commercial waterborne empire to support freight traffic up and down the Atchafalaya or across the Intracoastal Waterway, he was sadly mistaken. Neither channel has been improved to handle heavy barge traffic.”

“The White House and Immigration Service suspect the chief purpose behind the building of Sungari is for a dispersal point for smuggling illegal immigrants, drugs and illegal weapons.”

Montaigne shrugged. “So I was told. But why sink tons of money into a facility capable of handling millions of tons of ship cargoes and then use it only to smuggle illicit contraband? I fail to see the logic.”

“There is big money in alien smuggling alone,” said Gunn. “One thousand illegals brought in on one boat and ferried across the country at thirty thousand dollars a head, and you're talking real money.”

“Ah” right, if Sungari is a front for immigrant smuggling,“ said Montaigne, ”I'd be interested in knowing how Qin Shang is going to get the immigrants and goods from point A to point B without some sort of underground transportation system. U.S. Customs and Immigration comb every ship docking at Sungari. All barge traffic inland is carefully monitored. It would be impossible for undocumented aliens to slip through their fingers."

“The reason NUMA is here.” Gunn picked up a metal pointer and tapped the point inside the image of the Atchafa-laya River that divided Sungari East from Sungari West. “Because there is no way for him to send human and drug cargo over land and water, he must be shipping them under the surface.”

Montaigne sat erect and stared at Gunn through skeptical eyes. “By submarine?”

“Submarines capable of carrying large numbers of passengers and cargo are a possibility we can't ignore.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but there is no way in hell you can get a submarine up the Atchafalaya River. The shoals and bends are a nightmare for experienced river pilots. Navigating below the surface upriver against the current is unthinkable.”

“Then perhaps Shang's engineers have carved out hidden underwater-passage systems that we're not aware of.”

Montaigne gave a negative shake of his head. “No way they could have excavated a tunnel network without discovery. Government building experts scrutinized every square inch of the site during construction to make sure the approved plans were followed to the letter. Qin Shang's contractors were incredibly cooperative and either complied with our criticisms or took as gospel any and all suggested changes without argument. In the end it was almost as if we had all been in on the design stage. If Qin Shang dug a tunnel under the noses of men and women whom I consider the best engineering and structural inspectors in the South, he could get himself elected Pope.”

Gunn held up a pitcher and a glass. “Can I interest you in a glass of iced tea?”

“You wouldn't happen to have a bottle of bourbon lying about?”

Gunn smiled. “Admiral Sandecker follows Navy tradition and has a rule against alcohol on board NUMA research vessels. However, in honor of your presence, I do believe a bottle of Jack Daniels' Black Label whiskey somehow slipped on board.”

“You, sir, are a saint,” said Montaigne, his eyes gleaming in anticipation.

Gunn poured a glass. “Ice?”

“Never!” Montaigne held up the glass and studied the amber contents, then sniffed the aroma as if pondering a fine wine before sipping it. “Because nothing suspicious was observed above ground, I was told at my briefing that you're going to try your luck with an underwater search.”

Gunn nodded. “I'm sending in an autonomous underwater vehicle for an exploratory search first thing in the morning. If anything questionable is recorded by its cameras, divers will investigate.”

“The water is murky and running with silt, so I doubt if you'll see much.”

“With high resolution and digital enhancement, our cameras can distinguish objects in murky water up to twenty feet. My only concern is Qin Shang's underwater security.”

Montaigne laughed. “If it's anything like the security around the port,” Montaigne said with a chuckle, “you can forget it. A ten-foot-high fence runs around the perimeter, but there is only one gate that leads to nowhere in the swamp with no guard. Any passing vessel, especially fishing boats out of Morgan City, are welcome to tie up at a dock. And there is an excellent helicopter landing pad with a small terminal building on the north end. I never heard of Shang's security turning away anybody who dropped in for a guided tour. They go out of their way to make the place accessible.”

“Definitely not your ordinary Qin Shang operation.”

“So I've been told.”

“As a port,” Gunn continued, “Sungari must have offices for customs and immigration agents?”

Montaigne laughed. “Like the Maytag man, they're the loneliest men in town.”

“Dammit!” Gunn abruptly burst. “This has to be a gigantic scam. Qin Shang built Sungari to conduct criminal activities. I'd stake my government pension on it.”

“If it was me, and my aim was to conduct an illegal operation, I'd have never designed the port to stand out like a Las Vegas casino.”

“Nor I,” Gunn conceded.

“There was, come to think of it,” Montaigne said thoughtfully, “an odd bit of construction that puzzled inspecting engineers.”

“What was that?”

“Shang's contractor built the upper level of their docks a good thirty feet higher than necessary from the water's surface. Instead of walking down a gangway to the dock from the deck of a ship, you actually have to negotiate a slight incline.”

“Could it be insurance against hurricane tides or a hundred-year flood down the river?”

“Yes, but they magnified the threat,” explained Montaigne. “Oh sure, there have been flood stages on the Mississippi that have reached huge heights, but not on the Atchafalaya. Ground level at Sungari was raised to a level far beyond anything that nature could throw at it.”

“Qin Shang wouldn't be where he is by gambling with the elements.”

“I suppose you're right.” Montaigne finished off the Jack Daniels. He waved a hand at the image of Sungari. “So there it sits, a grand edifice to one man's ego. Look across the water. Two ships in a port built to take a hundred. Is that any way to run a profitable business?”

“No way that I'm aware of,” said Gunn.

The general rose to his feet. “I should be on my way. It'll be dark soon. I think I'll instruct my pilot to go upriver to Morgan City and tie up there for the night before heading back to New Orleans.”

“Thank you, General,” Gunn said sincerely. “I appreciate you taking the time to see me. Please don't be a stranger.”

“Not at all,” Montaigne replied jovially. “Now that I know where to go for a free shot of good whiskey, rest assured, you'll see me again. And good luck on your investigation. Anytime you require the services of the Corps, you have but to call me.”

“Thank you, I will.”

Long after General Montaigne returned to his survey boat, Gunn sat staring at the holographic image of Sungari, his mind seeking answers that never revealed themselves.

“If you're worried about their security hassling us,” said Frank Stewart, captain of the Marine Denizen, “we can conduct our survey from the middle of the river. They may own the buildings and land on both sides of the Atchafalaya, but free passage between the Gulf and Morgan City is guaranteed under maritime law.”

Stewart, with brown hair cut short and slickly combed with a precision part on the right side, was a mariner from the old school. He still shot the sun with his sextant and figured latitude and longitude the old-fashioned way when a quick scan of his geophysical positioning system could tell him within a yard of where he was standing. Slim and tall with deep-set blue eyes, he was a man without a wife whose mistress was the sea.

Gunn stood beside the helm, staring through the wheelhouse windows at the deserted port. “We'd look as obvious as a wart on a movie star's nose if we anchored in the river between their docks and warehouses. General Montaigne said that security around Sungari was no heavier than any other port facility on the East and West coasts. If he's right, I see no reason to play cagey. Let's simply call the port master and request dock space to make repairs, and work in their backyard.”

Stewart nodded and hailed the port master over a satellite phone, which had all but replaced ship-to-shore radio. “This is NUMA research ship Marine Denizen. We request dock space to make repairs to our rudder.”

The port master was most congenial. He gave his name as Henry Pang and readily gave permission. “Sure, maintain your position and I'll send a boat to lead you to dock seventeen, where you can tie up. If there's one thing we've got, it's vacant moorings.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pang,” acknowledged Stewart.

“You guys looking for weird fish?” asked Pang.

“No, we're studying Gulf currents. We bumped over an unmarked shoal off the coast and damaged our rudder. It responds but not to its full arc.”

“Enjoy your stay,” said Pang politely. “If you need a marine mechanic or parts, please let me know.”

“Thank you,” said Stewart. “Standing by for your guide boat.”

“General Montaigne was right,” said Gunn. “So much for tight security.”

A rainsquall rolled in and out during the night, leaving the decks of the Marine Denizen gleaming under the rising sun. Stewart had two of his crew lowered on a small platform over the rudder to act as though they were making repairs. The performance hardly seemed necessary. The docks and cranes were as dead as a football stadium in the middle of the week. Both of the Chinese cargo ships Gunn had observed the evening before had slipped out during the night. The Marine Denizen had the entire port to herself.

Inside the center section of the Denizen's hull was a cavernous compartment called the moon pool. Two sliding divisions parted like horizontal elevator doors, allowing water to flow inside the moon pool until it leveled out after rising six feet. This was the heart of the research vessel, where divers could freely enter the water without being knocked about by waves, where submersibles could be lowered to explore the depths, and where scientific equipment that monitored and captured sea life could be raised for study in the ship's labs.

Lulled by the cemetery-like atmosphere of Sungari, the crew and scientists ate a leisurely breakfast before gathering around the work platforms in the moon pool. A Benthos autonomous underwater vehicle hung in a cradle over the water. This vehicle was three times the size of the compact AUV that Pitt used at Orion Lake. A rugged, streamlined unit with two horizontal thrusters, it could move at speeds up to five knots. The imagery equipment consisted of a Benthos video camera with low-light sensitivity and high resolution. The AUV also featured a digital still camera and a ground-penetrating radar unit that could detect a void through the steel casings, indicating a passage. A diver, wearing a wet suit purely as protection against jellyfish, lazily floated on his back while he waited for the AUV to be lowered.

Stewart looked through a doorway at Gunn, who was sitting in front of a computer monitor that was mounted beneath a large video screen. “Ready when you are, Rudi.”

“Drop her in,” said Gunn with the wave of a hand.

The winch attached to the cradle hummed and the AUV slowly settled into the perpetual gloom of the river. The diver uncoupled the cradle, swam to a ladder and climbed onto the work platform.

Stewart entered the small compartment that was rilled from deck to roof with electronic equipment. He sat down next to Gunn, who was operating the AUV from a computer console while staring into the video monitor. All that was revealed was a long gray wall of steel casing that trailed off into the gloom. “Frankly, this seems like much ado about nothing.”

“You'll get no argument from me,” said Gunn. “The order to investigate Sungari from under the surface came direct from the White House.”

“Do they really think Qin Shang would conduct his smuggling operations through underwater passageways that connect to the hulls of his ships?”

“Some hotshot in Washington must think so. That's why we're here.”

“Like me to send for some coffee from the galley?” asked Stewart.

“I could use a cup,” said Gunn without turning from the monitor.

The cook's galley assistant soon brought a tray of cups along with a filled coffeepot. Three hours later the cups and pot were as empty as the inspection project. Nothing showed on the monitor except a seemingly unending wall of steel casings that were driven deep into the silt to act as a barrier for the landfill that in turn acted as a foundation for the dock and terminal buildings. Finally, just before noon, Gunn turned to Stewart.

“So much for the west side of the port,” Gunn said wearily. He rubbed his eyes to relieve the strain. “It gets awfully tedious staring at gray, shapeless casing for hours on end.”

“See any hint of a door leading to a passage?”

“No so much as a crack or hinge.”

“We can move the AUV across the river channel and, with luck, finish up the east side before dark,” said Stewart.

“The sooner we wrap this up, the better.” Gunn typed a command on the keyboard that sent the AUV on a course toward the opposite side of the port. Then he leaned back and relaxed in his chair.

“Sure you don't want to knock off for a sandwich?” asked Stewart.

Gunn shook his head. “I'll see it through and fill my empty stomach at dinner.”

It took only ten minutes for the AUV to cross under the river to the east side of the port. Gunn then programmed the AUV's controls to start the run at the end of the casing wall, working north to south. The AUV had only covered two hundred yards when the phone beside him buzzed. “Can you take that?” he asked Stewart.

The Marine Denizen's skipper picked up the receiver and then handed it to Gunn. “It's Dirk Pitt.”

“Pitt.” Gunn turned from the monitor, his eyebrows raised in surprise. He took the phone and spoke into the mouthpiece, “Dirk?”

“Hello, Rudi,” came Pitt's familiar voice. “I'm calling from an airplane somewhere over the Nevada desert.”

“How did your underwater search of the United States go?”

“Got a little hairy there for a while, but all Al and I found was a smooth hull and keel with no openings.”

“If we don't find anything on this end in the next few hours, we'll join you.”

“Are you using a submersible?” asked Pitt.

“Not necessary,” replied Gunn. “An AUV is doing the job just fine.”

“Keep a tight leash on it, or Qin Shang's underwater security people will steal it before your eyes. They're sneaky devils.”

Gunn hesitated before he replied, wondering what Pitt meant. He was about to ask when Stewart came back. “They're serving lunch, Rudi. I'll talk to you after we reach Washington. Good luck, and give my best to Frank Stewart.” Then the connection went dead.

“How is Dirk?” inquired Stewart. “I haven't seen him since we worked together on the Lady Flamborough cruise-ship search down off Tierra del Fuego a few years ago.”

“Testy as ever. He gave me a strange warning.”

“Warning?”

“He said Qin Shang's underwater security people might steal the AUV,” Gunn answered, obviously confused.

“What underwater security?” said Stewart sarcastically.

Gunn didn't reply. His eyes suddenly widened and he pointed at the video monitor. “My God, look!”

Stewart's eyes followed Gunn's outstretched finger and stiffened.

A face wearing a diver mask filled the screen of the monitor They stared in amazement as the diver pulled off the mask and revealed very Chinese-featured eyes, nose and mouth. Then he flashed a wide gnn and waved as a child waves bye-bye.

Then the image went dark and was replaced with jagged gray and white streaks. Gunn frantically commanded the AUV to return to the Marine Denizen, but there was no response. The AUV had disappeared as if it had never been launched.

PlTT KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG THE INSTANT THE NUMA driver stopped the car. A tiny indescribable alarm tingled inside his brain and traveled to the nape of his neck. Something was not as it should have been.

A life-threatening situation was the last thing on his mind on the ride from Andrews Air Force Base, where the NUMA jet had landed, to his home on a far corner of Washington's National Airport. Darkness had closed over the city, but he ignored the ocean of lights illuminating the buildings. He tried to relax and let his mind drift, but it kept returning to Orion Lake. He thought it odd that the story had not broken in the news media.

From the outside, the former aircraft-maintenance hangar that was built in 1937, the year Amelia Earhart disappeared, appeared forlorn and deserted. Weeds grew right up to its rusting, corrugated-metal walls, whose paint had long since vanished after decades of onslaught by the extremes of Washington's weather patterns. Though it had been condemned as an eyesore and scheduled to be demolished, Pitt had visualized the hangar's potential. Stepping in at the last minute, he thwarted FAA bureaucrats by winning a battle to have it placed on the national register of historic landmarks. Preventing its destruction, he purchased the building and surrounding acre of property and went to work on the interior, remodeling it into a combination living quarters and storage facility for his collection of classic automobiles and aircraft.

Pitt's grandfather had acquired a small fortune in developing Southern California real estate. On his death, he left his grandson a considerable inheritance. After paying the estate taxes, Pitt had chosen to invest in classic cars and aircraft rather than stocks and bonds. In twenty years, he had built up a collection that was highly unique.

Rather than bathe the hangar in a battery of floodlights, Pitt preferred that it appear desolate and empty. One small light atop an electrical pole that gave off a dim yellow glow was all that illuminated the unpaved road that ended at the hangar. He turned and stared through the car's window and studied the top of the pole. A red light that should have beamed from a concealed security camera was dark.

It was an indication as conspicuous to him as a blinking stop sign that something was drastically wrong.

Pitt's security system was designed and installed by a friend with an intelligence agency who was at the top of his trade. No one but a skilled professional could have come within a country mile of breaking the code and compromising it. He gazed around the barren landscape and detected the shadow of a van faintly visible fifty yards away under the reflected light from the city across the Potomac. Pitt didn't require the services of a psychic to know that someone or some group had gained entry into the hangar and was waiting to throw a welcome inside.

“What's your name?” Pitt asked the driver.

“Sam Greenberg.”

“Sam, do you carry a satellite phone?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Greenberg replied.

“Contact Admiral Sandecker and tell him I have uninvited visitors and to please send a security force as quickly as possible.”

Greenberg was young, no more than twenty, a student studying oceanography at a local university while earning extra money under a marine educational program with NUMA created by Admiral Sandecker. “Shouldn't I call the police?”

The kid is sharp, Pitt thought; he'd quickly grasped the situation. “Not a matter for local law enforcement. Please make the call as soon as you're away from the hangar. The admiral will know the drill.”

“Are you going in alone?” the student asked as Pitt exited the car and retrieved his well-traveled duffel bag from the trunk.

Pitt looked at the young man and smiled. “A good host always entertains his guests.” He stood and waited until the NUMA car's taillights faded into the dust cloud trailing the rear bumper. He paused to unzip his duffel bag to retrieve his old Colt .45 before remembering that he'd failed to obtain any cartridges after Julia Lee had emptied the gun at the ultralight aircraft on the Orion River.

“Empty!” he said through his teeth. As he stood alone in the night he began to wonder if he had a permanently dislocated brain. There was nothing left but to act dumb and enter the hangar as if he suspected nothing, then attempt to reach one of his collector cars where he kept a shotgun secreted inside a walnut cabinet originally crafted to contain an umbrella.

He pulled a small remote transmitter from his pocket and whistled the first few bars of “Yankee Doodle.” The sound-recognition signal electronically shut down the security systems and unlocked a shabby side door that looked as if it was last open in 1945. A green light on the remote flashed three times in series. It should have flashed four, he observed. Someone who was very clever at neutralizing security systems had broken his code. He closed his eyes, paused for a few moments and took a deep breath. As the door cracked open, he dropped to the ground on his hands and knees and reached around the frame and flicked on the interior lights.

The inside walls, floor and curved roof were painted a glossy white that accented a spectrum of vivid colors gleaming off the thirty beautifully painted cars spaced throughout the hangar. The visual effect was dazzling, which was what Pitt counted on to blind whoever was waiting in the blackened interior to ambush him. He reminded himself that the orange-bodied and brown-fendered 1929 Duesenberg convertible sedan containing the shotgun was the third car from the door.

The intruders were not on a social visit. His suspicions were abruptly confirmed when he heard what sounded like a series of muted pops and sensed rather than felt a torrent of bullets spraying the doorway. The suppressors on the killers' guns changed the character of the gunfire in such a way that it was not identifiable as gunshots. They were using silencers even though there wasn't another soul within a mile. His arm whipped around the door again, and he flicked the lights. Then he slithered like a snake under the hail of fire around the doorway and then crept beneath the first two collector cars, a 1932 Stutz and a 1931 L-29 Cord, blessing the old vehicles for sitting high off the ground. Reaching the Duesenberg unscathed, he leaped over the side door onto the floor of the rear seat. In almost the same motion he turned the knob on the door of the cabinet behind the front seat and pulled it open. Then he removed an Aserma 12-gauge Bulldog self-ejecting shotgun that held eleven rounds. The deadly, compact firearm lacked a buttstock but was mounted with a flash hider/muzzle brake. It was one of four guns Pitt secreted throughout the hangar for just such an occasion.

The interior of the hangar was as dark as the deepest reaches of a cave. If these guys are pros, Pitt considered, and there was almost no uncertainty about their being highly trained, they'll be using night-vision scopes and infrared laser sights. Assessing the trajectory of the bullets as they whistled through the doorway, Pitt guessed that there were two assassins probably armed with fully automatic machine pistols. One was somewhere on the ground floor, the other on the balcony to his living quarters thirty feet above one corner of the hangar. Whoever wanted him dead made certain there was a backup in case one assassin failed.

There was no attempt to rush the door. The killers knew that Pitt had entered and was somewhere on the floor of the hangar. Realizing their intended quarry had knowingly entered the trap would make them apprehensive and wary.

With no place to go, Pitt quietly cracked both rear doors on the Duesenberg, peered into the darkness and waited for his assailants to make the next move.

He tried to slow his breathing to hear any sounds of stealth, but all his ears could detect was the beat of his own heart. There was no overpowering sense of fright, no feeling of hopelessness, only a slight mist of fear to be sure. He wouldn't be human if he didn't experience a degree of dread at being a target for two professional killers. But he was on home ground, while the assassins were in a strange environment. If they were

to fulfill their mission and kill him, they had to find their target in the dark amid thirty antique automobiles and airplanes. Whatever advantage they had before Pitt walked in the hangar was lost. And what they didn't know was that he was armed and deadly. All Pitt had to do was sit it out in the back of the Duesenberg and wait for them to make a mistake.

He began to wonder who they were and who sent them. The only enemy that came to mind whom he had antagonized in the past few weeks, and who was still among the living, had to be Qin Shang. He could think of no one else who wanted him dead. It was evident to him the Chinese billionaire nurtured a f vindictive streak.

He laid the shotgun across his chest, cupped his ears and listened. The hangar was as quiet as a crypt at midnight in the middle of a churchyard. These guys were good. There was no soft patter of stockinged or bare feet, but then stockinged or bare feet did not make noise on concrete if stepped on carefully. They were probably biding their time, also listening. He decided against the old movie trick of throwing something against a wall to draw their fire. Master assassins were too savvy to give their position away with random gunfire.

One minute dragged by, two, then three—it seemed far longer than that. Time seemed to flow like a stream of molasses. He looked up and saw the beam of a red laser sweep across the windshield of the Duesenberg and move on. He was betting his assailants were beginning to wonder if he might have slipped out of the hangar and escaped the trap. There was no way of knowing when Admiral Sandecker, backed by a team of federal marshals, would arrive on the scene. But Pitt was prepared to wait all night if need be while he laid there waiting i for a sound or shadow that betrayed movement.

A plan began to form in his mind. He normally made a habit of removing the batteries from all his collector cars because of f the danger of creating a fire from an electrical short. But since he planned on driving the Duesenberg when he returned from Orion Lake, Pitt had arranged for the chief mechanic of NUMA's fleet of vehicles, who was entrusted to enter the hangar, to charge a battery and install it in the car. It now struck him that if the opportunity presented itself, he could use the headlights of the Duesenberg to illuminate the floor of the warehouse. Prudently keeping his eyes locked on the laser beams that swept around the hangar like tiny guard-tower lights from an old prison movie, he silently rolled over the backrest and slipped into a horizontal position on the front seat. Taking a calculated gamble, he aimed the spotlight on the outer cowling beside the steering wheel upward until the lens faced in the general direction of the balcony on the outside of his apartment. Then he raised the shotgun over the upper frame of the windshield and switched on the light.

The bright beam shot aloft and pinpointed a figure in a black ninja suit with a hood covering the head and face crouched at the balcony railing and clutching a tactical machine pistol. The assassin's hand instinctively flew up to shield his eyes from the unexpected blinding glare. Pitt barely had time to adjust his aim before firing off two shots and blinking out the light, throwing the hangar into darkness again. The twin blast from the shotgun sounded like the firing of a cannon inside the metal-walled hangar. A surge of satisfaction swept through him as he heard the thud of a body against the concrete floor. Reckoning the second assassin would be expecting him to hide by throwing himself under the car, he stretched out horizontal on the wide running board and waited for a hail of gunfire. It never came.

The second killer failed to react because he was searching for Pitt inside an antique Putfman coach parked at one side of the hangar on a pair of rails. The car had once been part of the crack express train called the Manhattan Limited that ran between New York and Quebec, Canada, between 1912 and 1914. Pitt had acquired the old coach after finding it in a cave. The killer barely perceived the brief flash of light through a glass window of the Pullman before hearing the explosive roar of the shotgun. By the time he rushed to the rear platform, the hangar had been plunged back into blackness. He was too late to hear the impact on the floor of his accomplice's body or know what target to fire at. He crouched behind a massive Daimler convertible and panned his night-vision goggles around and beneath the maze of parked cars. As he peered through the binocular eyepiece connected to a single objective lens that was attached to his head with straps, giving him the look of a robotic Cyclops, the pitch-black interior of the hangar appeared bathed in a green light that distinguished surrounding objects. Twenty feet ahead of him he spotted the body of his accomplice crumpled on the cold, hard floor, a pool of blood spreading around the head. Any confusion as to why their prey had willingly and knowingly walked into the trap evaporated. He now realized Pitt had somehow armed himself with a weapon. They were warned that their target was a dangerous man, and yet they had still badly underestimated him.

It was essential for Pitt to make a move while he had an advantage, and move as quickly as possible before the remaining killer pinpointed his location. Pitt made no attempt at stealth. Speed was what counted. He scrambled around the front end of the cars toward the entrance door, keeping low and using the wheels and tires to shield his movement from the view of a night scope probing the floor beneath. He reached the door, threw it open and fell back behind a car as bullets sped through the opening into the night outside. Then Pitt crawled along the wall of the hangar until he could huddle against the wheel of a 1939 540-K Mercedes-Benz sedan.

The move was foolhardy and reckless, but he only paid a small price. Pitt could feel blood streaming from his left forearm where the flesh had been nicked by a bullet. Had the remaining assassin been given five long seconds to divine Pitt's intention, he would have never rushed headlong toward the door in the certain belief that his quarry had tried to escape from the hangar.

Pitt heard the soft drumming of supple rubber soles against concrete. Then a figure dressed from the top of the head to his feet in black became outlined in the doorway by the dim light outside on the electrical pole. All's fair in love and war, Pitt thought, as he pulled the trigger and cut down the killer with a shotgun blast through the back below the right shoulder.

The arms flew upward and outward, his tactical machine pistol clattering to the walkway in front of the hangar. The killer stood there a moment, tore off his night-vision goggles and slowly turned. He stared disbelievingly into Pitt's face as the hunted approached the hunter and saw the muzzle of vicious-looking shotgun aimed at his chest. The shocked realization of his deadly blunder, the awareness that his death was only seconds away, seemed more to anger than frighten him. The bitter, stunned expression in his now visible eyes gave Pitt a chill. It was not the look of a man afraid to die, it was the desperate look of a man who had failed his mission. He staggered toward Pitt in a hopeless gesture of tenacity, the lips that were faintly visible through the open slit in his black hood hideous in a blood-flecked snarl.

Pitt did not send another burst from the shotgun into the assassin's body. Nor did he use his gun as a club. He stepped forward and lashed out with one foot, kicking the man's legs out from under him and sending him crashing heavily to the ground.

Picking up the killer's weapon, Pitt did not immediately recognize it as Chinese-manufactured, but he was impressed with its advanced innovations: a plastic frame with integral electro-optics, a fifty-round magazine in line with the bore, and cased, telescoped cartridges with the ballistics of a rifle shell. It was a handgun for the twenty-first century.

He stepped back inside the hangar and switched on the lights again. Despite the harrowing ordeal, Pitt felt strangely unaffected. He walked the aisle separating the cars until he stood below the balcony of his apartment. Then he stared down at the second killer's body. The partner of the man he dropped in the doorway was as dead as a rat in a sprung trap. One of Pitt's shots had missed, but the other had taken off the top of the killer's head. Not a sight to remember at the dinner table.

Wearily, Pitt climbed a circular metal staircase and entered his apartment. There was no sense in calling 911. He expected federal marshals to come bounding up the road any minute. Methodically, he rinsed a glass with water, shook it partially dry and inverted it in a bowl of salt. Then he added crushed ice, a sliced lime, and two shots from a bottle of Don Julio silver tequila. Relaxing in a leather sofa, he savored the drink like a thirst-stricken bedouin who staggered onto an oasis.

Five minutes and a second tequila later, Admiral Sandecker arrived with a team of marshals. Pitt came down to the hangar floor and met them, drink in hand. “Good evening, Admiral, always good to see you.”

Sandecker grunted something appropriate and then nodded at the body beneath the apartment. “You really must leam to pick up after yourself.” The voice was caustic, but there was no mistaking the concern in his eyes.

Pitt smiled and shrugged. “The world needs murderers like it needs cancer.”

Sandecker noticed the streak of blood on Pitt's arm. “You took a hit.” “Nothing a Band-Aid won't fix.”

“Let's have the story,” demanded Sandecker, all preliminaries over. “Where did they come from?”

“I haven't a clue. They were waiting for me.”

“A miracle they didn't kill you.”

“They didn't plan on me coming to the party prepared after I saw that my security system had been tampered with.”

Sandecker looked at Pitt cautiously. “You might have waited until I arrived with the marshals.”

Pitt motioned through the door toward the road and barren land outside the hangar. “If I made a run for it, they'd have cut me down before I got fifty yards. Better to go on the offensive. I felt my only chance was to do something quickly and catch them off balance.”

Sandecker stared at Pitt shrewdly. He knew his special projects director would never attempt anything without a solid reason. His eyes took in the bullet-riddled doorway. “I hope you know a good handyman.”

At that moment a man wearing casual clothes and a wind-breaker over a ballistic armor vest with a Smith & Wesson model 442 .38 revolver in a shoulder holster approached. In one hand he held a hooded mask worn by the killer whom Pitt had dropped in the doorway. “Won't be easy to ID them. They were probably imported for the hit.”

Sandecker made the introduction. “Dirk, this is Mr. Peter Harper, executive associate commissioner of field operations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

Harper shook Pitt's hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Pitt. It seems you had an unexpected homecoming.”

“A dubious surprise I wasn't counting on.” Pitt was not at all sure he could warm to Harper. The associate commissioner of the INS struck him as a man who spent his spare time working algebra problems. Despite the fact he carried a weapon, Harper looked benign and scholastic. “There is a van parked a short distance from the hangar.”

“We already checked it out,” said Harper. “It belongs to a \ rental-car agency. The name on the agreement is fictitious.” “Who do you suspect was behind this?” Sandecker asked. “The name Qin Shang comes to mind,” said Pitt. “I'm told he has a retaliatory nature.”

“The obvious choice,” Sandecker agreed. “He won't be happy when he finds out his assassins failed,” added Harper.

Sandecker's expression turned foxlike. “I think it only appropriate that Dirk tell him in person.”

Pitt shook his head. “I hardly think that's a sensible idea. I'm persona non grata in Hong Kong.”

Sandecker and Harper exchanged glances. Then Sandecker said, “Qin Shang saved you the trip. He recently arrived in Washington to grease his way out of any connection with Orion Lake. As a matter of fact, he's throwing a party at his residence in Chevy Chase to stroke congressmen and their staffers. If you hurry and dress, you can just make it.”

Pitt looked as if he'd been sandbagged. “I hope you're joking.”

“I was never more serious.”

“I believe the admiral makes a good case,” said Harper. “You and Qin Shang should meet face-to-face.”

“Why? So he can provide a first-hand description of me to the next team he sends out to put me in a cemetery?”

“No,” said Harper seriously. “To let Qin Shang know that despite his wealth and power he can't outclass the United States government. The man is not infallible. If your appearance can shake him up, he probably won't get the word you're alive until you walk in on him. The shock just might make him mad enough to make a mistake in the future. And that's when we step in.”

“In essence you want me to create a chink in his armor.” Harper nodded. “Exactly.”

“You realize, of course,” said Pitt, “that what you're proposing will compromise my further involvement in investigating his illegal activities.”

“Think of yourself as a distraction,” said Sandecker. “The more Qin Shang concentrates on you as a threat to his operations, the easier it will be for the INS and the other intelligence services to nail him to the cross.” “Distraction hell. You want a decoy.” Harper shrugged. “A rose by any other name.” Pitt made as if to appear uneasy with the idea despite the fact it intrigued him. He thought of the bodies strewn on the bottom of Orion Lake, and the anger rose inside him like an uncontrollable flood. “Whatever it takes to hang the murdering scum.”

Harper sighed in relief, but Sandecker never doubted for an instant that Pitt would acquiesce. The admiral had never known

Pitt to turn down a challenge, no matter how impossible. Some men were indifferent, impassive. It was difficult to tell what they were thinking. Not Pitt. Sandecker understood him like no other man except Al Giordino. To women he was a mystery, a man they could reach out and touch but never restrain. He knew there were two Dirk Pitts, one that could be tender, considerate and humorous, the other cold and ruthless as a winter storm. Unvaryingly competent to the point of brilliance, his perception of events and people was uncanny. Pitt never made a conscious error. He had a knack for doing the right thing during incredibly difficult circumstances that was almost inhuman.

Harper was unable to read Pitt. All he saw was a marine engineer who had unbelievably killed two professional assassins who had come to murder him. “So you'll do it.”

“I'll meet Qin Shang, but I wish someone would tell me how I'm going to crash his party without an invitation.”

“It's all been arranged,” explained Harper. “A good agent I always has connections with the company that prints invitations.”

“You were pretty sure of yourself.”

“I admit I wasn't, but the admiral here assured me that you never turned down free drinks and food.”

Pitt threw Sandecker a peevish look. “The admiral has mads victimization an art form.”

“I've even taken the liberty of arranging an escort for you,” Harper continued. “A most attractive lady who will back you up in case of trouble.”

“A baby-sitter,” Pitt muttered, rolling his eyes upward. “As a matter of pure optimism I have to ask if she's seen combat.” “I'm told she shot down two aircraft and saved your ass on the Orion River.” “Julia Lee.” “The same.”

Pitt's lips stretched into a wide grin. “It looks as if the evening won't turn out to be a bust after all.”

PITT KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE ADDRESS GIVEN HIM BY Peter Harper. After a short wait, it was opened by Julia Lee. She stood radiant in a white silk cashmere dress that came slightly below the knees with open shoulders and back to the curve above her hips and was held up by a thin strap around the neck. Her black hair was swept back in a wrapped ponytail high on the head with spiky ends. Her only jewelry was a thin gold chain around her waist and a gold cuff necklace. Her legs were nude, her feet showing in open gold shoes.

Her eyes widened and she murmured, “Dirk, Dirk Pitt!”

“Oh, I hope so,” he replied with a devilish grin.

After her initial shock at seeing Pitt standing there resplendent in a tuxedo with vest and gold watch chain, she recovered and threw herself against him, her arms encircling his neck. He was so surprised he barely caught himself from tumbling over backward down the steps. Impetuously, she kissed him hard on the mouth. Now it was Pitt's turn for his eyes to widen. He had never expected such a spontaneous reception.

“I thought I was the one who said I'd kiss you full on the mouth when next we meet.” Reluctantly, he gripped Julia by the upper arms and gently eased her away. “Do you greet all your blind dates in that manner?”

Suddenly, she cast her dove-gray eyes to the ground shyly. “I don't know what came over me. Seeing you came as a shock. I wasn't told who was escorting me to Qin Shang's party. Peter Harper only said he arranged for a tall, dark, hand- r some man to act as my backup.”

“The dirty sneak led me to believe that you were my backup, He should have been a theatrical producer. I'll bet he's drooling in anticipation of Qin Shang's reaction when the two people who queered his operation at Orion Lake walk in uninvited to j his party.”

“I hope you're not disappointed at having to escort me. I Under all this makeup, I still look pretty awful.”

He gently lifted her chin until he could look down into her I misty eyes. He might have said something witty and clever, I but it wasn't the moment. “About as disappointed as a man who has discovered a diamond mine.”

“I didn't know you could say nice things to a girl.”

“You wouldn't believe the hordes of women my silver i tongue has seduced.”

“Liar,” she said softly as her lips broke into a smile.

“Enough of this endearing talk,” he said, releasing her. “We'd better get a move on before the food runs out.”

After Julia briefly returned inside the house to find her purse f and coat, Pitt led her to the stately and majestic machine parked at the curb in front of the townhouse where she was staying with an old sorority sister from college. She stared in open astonishment at the mammoth car with its big chrome wire wheels and wide whitewall tires.

“Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “What kind of a car are we I going in?”

“A nineteen-twenty-nine Duesenberg,” answered Pitt, “Since we've been ordered to crash a party thrown by one of the world's richest men, I thought it only fitting and proper that we arrive in style.”

“I've never ridden in a car this grand,” said Julia admiringly as she slid onto the soft tan leather seat. She marveled at the hood that seemed to stretch halfway down the block as Pitt closed the door and came around behind the big steering wheel, “I've never heard of a Duesenberg.”

“The Model J Duesenbergs were the finest examples of American automating,” Pitt explained. “Manufactured from nineteen-twenty-eight until nineteen-thirty-six, they were considered by many automobile connoisseurs as the handsomest cars ever built. Only about four hundred eighty chassis and engines came out of the factory and were sent to the most esteemed coachmakers in the country who produced magnificent designs. This car was custom-bodied by the Walter M. Murphy Company in Pasadena, California, and styled as a convertible sedan. Not cheap, they sold as high as twenty thousand dollars when the Ford Model A sold for around four hundred. They were owned by the wealthy celebrities of their day, particularly the Hollywood crowd, who bought Duesenbergs as a show of pride and prestige. If you drove a Duesy, you had made it big-time.”

“She's beautiful,” said Julia, admiring the artistically flowing lines. “She must be fast.”

“The engine was an outgrowth of the Duesenberg racing engines. A straight eight-cylinder engine displacing four hundred twenty cubic inches, it produced two hundred sixty-five horsepower when most engines at the time put out less than seventy. Although this engine doesn't have the supercharger that was installed on later models, I made a few modifications when I restored the car. Under the right conditions she could touch one hundred forty miles an hour.”

“I'll take your word for it without a demonstration.”

“A pity we can't drive with the top down, but it's a cool night and I put it up to protect milady's hair.”

“A woman loves a considerate man.”

“I always aim to please.”

She looked at the flat windshield and noticed a small hole in one corner of the glass with tiny cracks spreading from it. “Is that a bullet hole?”

“A souvenir from a couple of Qin Shang's flunkies.”

“He sent men to kill you?” asked Julia, staring in fascination at the hole. “Where did this take place?”

“They dropped by the aircraft hangar where I live earlier in the evening,” Pitt answered impassively.

“What happened?”

“They weren't the least bit sociable, so I sent them on their way.”

Pitt hit the starter and the big engine turned over with a soft purr before the eight cylinders fired and broadcast a mellow roar through the big exhaust pipe. The low gears gave out a muted whir as Pitt shifted through the sequence from first to third. The great luxury car that has never been surpassed rolled through the streets of Washington, regal and majestic.

Julia decided it was hopeless to pry any more information out of Pitt. She relaxed in the wide leather seat and enjoyed the ride and the stares of other drivers and the people walking on the sidewalks.

Shortly after traveling up Wisconsin Avenue out of the District of Columbia, Pitt turned onto a meandering residential street canopied by huge trees sprouting new spring leaves until he reached the gate of the drive leading to Qin Shang's Chevy Chase mansion. The iron gates were a monstrosity of Chinese dragons entwined around the bars. Two Chinese guards dressed in elaborate uniforms stared strangely at the huge car for sev- j eral moments before stepping forward and asking to see invitations. Pitt passed them through the open window and waited while the guards checked his and Julia's names against those on a guest list. Satisfied that Pitt and Julia were indeed invited, they bowed and pressed the code on a remote transmitter that opened the gates. Pitt threw them a brief wave and tooled the Duesenberg up the long driveway and stopped under the portico at the entrance to the house, whose exterior was lit up like a football stadium.

“I must remember to compliment Harper,” said Pitt. “He not only provided us with invitations, but he somehow managed to sneak our names onto the guest list.”

Julia's expression was that of a young girl approaching the Taj Mahal. “I've never attended a major-league Washington party before. I hope I won't embarrass you.”

“You won't,” Pitt assured her. “Just tell yourself that it's strictly a social theater. The powerful Washington elite throw posh functions because they have something to sell. It all comes down to people milling around, swilling booze, looking influential and exchanging gossip mixed with explicit information. Mostly, the city's society chronicles the foolish events from their petty little political worlds.”

“You act as if you've been to them before.”

“As I told you on the dock at Grapevine Bay, my father is a senator. In my bon vivant younger days I used to tag along and attempt to pick up congressional mistresses.”

“Were you successful?” “Almost never.”

A stretch limo was disgorging several of Qin Shang's guests, who turned and gazed in frank admiration at the Duesenberg. Valet parking attendants appeared as if summoned. The valets were immune to limousines and expensive cars, most of them foreign, but this one staggered their minds. Almost reverently, they opened the doors.

Pitt eyed a man standing off to the side who took a particular interest in the newcomers and their means of transportation. Then he turned and hurried inside. No doubt, Pitt thought, to alert his boss to the arrival of guests who didn't fit the normal pattern.

As they swept arm in arm through the elegant colonnade entrance, Julia whispered to Pitt, “I hope I don't lose it when I meet that murdering bastard and spit in his face.”

“Just tell him how much you enjoyed the cruise on his ship, and how you're looking forward to the next one.”

The gray eyes flashed with fire. “Like hell I will.”

“Now don't forget,” said Pitt, “as an agent in good standing with the INS, you're here on assignment.”

“And you?”

Pitt laughed. “I'm just along for the ride.”

“How can you be so lackadaisical?” she snapped. “We may be lucky to get out of here with our heads.”

“We'll be all right so long as we're in a crowd. Our problems come after we leave.”

“Not to worry,” she assured him. “Peter has arranged for a team of security people to stand by outside the house in case of trouble.”

“Should Qin Shang get nasty, do we send up flares?”

“We'll be in constant communication. I have a radio in my purse.”

Pitt stared at the tiny purse skeptically. “And a gun too?”

She shook her head. “No gun.” Then she smiled slyly. “You forget, I've seen you in action. I'm counting on you to protect me.”

“Dearheart, you're in big trouble.”

They passed through the foyer into a vast hallway filled with Chinese art objects. The centerpiece was a seven-foot-tall bronze incense burner inlaid with gold. The upper section depicted flames leaping toward the sky interspersed with women, their arms and hands uplifted with offerings. Aromatic incense wreathed the flames in billowy clouds that scented the entire house. Pitt stepped up to the bronze masterwork and studied it closely, examining the inlaid gold that decorated the base.

“Beautiful, isn't it?” said Julia.

“Yes,” Pitt said quietly. “The craftsmanship is quite unique.”

“My father has a much smaller version that isn't nearly so ancient.”

“The smell is a bit overwhelming.”

“Not to me. I grew up surrounded by Chinese culture.”

Pitt took Julia by the arm and led her into an immense room rilled with Washington's rich and mighty. The scene reminded him of a Roman banquet out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie: j slim women in designer dresses, congressmen, senators and the aristocracy of the city's attorneys, lobbyists and power brokers, all trying to look sophisticated and distinguished in their formal evening wear. There was such an ocean of fabrics between the guests and the furniture that the room was unnatu-rally silent despite a hundred voices talking at once.

If the furnishings had cost less than twenty million dollars, then Qin Shang had bought them at a discount house in New Jersey. The walls and ceiling were intricately carved and paneled in redwood, as was most of the furniture. The carpet alone must have taken twenty young girls half their adolescent lives to weave. It flowed in blue and gold like an ocean at sunset, and the depth of its pile made it seem as if one had to wade through it. The curtains alone would have put those in Buckingham Palace to shame. Julia had never seen so much silk in one space. The opulent upholstered chairs and settees looked like they might have been more at home hi a museum.

No less than twenty stewards stood behind a buffet linel whose mountains of lobster, crab and other seafood must have cleaned out the entire catch of a fishing fleet. Only the finest French champagne was served alongside vintage wines, none of which had labels from later than 1950. In one comer of the: ornate room a string orchestra played themes from motion; pictures. Though Julia had come from a wealthy family in Si Francisco, she had seen nothing to compare with this affair.

She stood in solemn awe as her eyes scanned the room. Finally, she recovered enough to say, “I can see what Peter mean when he said Qin Shang's invitation was the most desired in Washington aside from the White House.”

“Frankly, I prefer the ambiance at the French-embassy parties. More elegant, more refined.”

“I feel so... so plain among all these beautifully dressed women.”

Pitt gave Julia an adoring look and squeezed her around the waist. “Stop belittling yourself. You're a class act. You'd have to be blind not to notice that every man in the room is devouring you.”

Julia blushed at the flattery. It embarrassed her to see that he was right. The men were staring at her openly, as were many of the women. She also observed a dozen exquisite Chinese women dressed in silk sheath dresses mingling with the male guests. “It seems I'm not the only woman with Chinese ancestry.”

Pitt made a passing, offhand glance at the women Julia referred to. “Daughters of joy.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Hookers.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Qin Shang hires them to work the men who came along without their wives. You might call it a subtle form of political patronage. What influence he can't buy, he slips through the back door with sexual favors.”

Julia looked bewildered. “I have a lot to learn about government lobbying.”

“They are exotic, aren't they? A good thing I'm with someone who puts them to shame or they might prove a temptation I couldn't resist.”

“You've got nothing Qin Shang wants,” Julia said testily. “Perhaps we should find him and make our presence known.”

Pitt gazed at her as if shocked. “What, and miss out on all the free food and drink? Not on your life. First things first. Let's head to the bar for champagne, and then indulge ourselves at the buffet. Later, we'll enjoy a cognac before making ourselves known to the arch-villain of the Orient.”

Julia said to him, “I think you're the craziest, most complex and reckless man I've ever met.”

“You left out charming and cuddly.”

“I can't imagine any woman putting up with you for more than twenty-four hours.”

“To know me is to love me.” The mirth lines around his eyes crinkled, and he gave a tilt of his head toward the bar. “All this talk makes me thirsty.”

They strolled across the crowded floor to the bar and casually sipped the offered champagne. Then they wandered to the buffet table and filled their plates. Pitt was profoundly surprised to find a large platter of fried abalone, a shellfish that was on the verge of extinction. He spotted an empty table by the fireplace and commandeered it. Julia could not keep her eyes from exploring the throng in the immense room. “I see several Chinese men, but I can't tell which one is Qin Shang, Peter failed to give me a description of him.”

“For an investigative agent,” said Pitt between bites of lobster, “your powers of observation are sadly lacking.” “You know his appearance.”

“Never laid eyes on him. But if you look through the doorway on the west wall, guarded by a giant dressed in a dynastic costume, you'll find Qin Shang's private audience room. My guess is he sits in there and holds court.”

Julia began to rise to her feet.

“Let's get this over with.”

Pitt held out a hand and restrained her.

“Not so fast. I haven't had my after-dinner cognac yet.”

“You're impossible.”

“Women are always telling me that.” A steward took thek plates, and Pitt left Julia momentarily for the bar, returning in a few minutes with two crystal snifters containing a fifty-year-old cognac. Slowly, very slowly, as if he hadn't a care in the world, he savored the smooth flavor. As he held the snifter to his lips, he saw a man, reflected in the crystal, approach their table.

“Good evening,” he said in a soft voice. “I hope you're enjoying yourselves. I am your host.”

Julia froze as she looked up into the smiling face of Qin Shang. He looked nothing like what she imagined. She did not envision him as tall and stout. The face was not that of a cruel, cold-blooded murderer with vast power. There was no hint of authority behind the friendly tone, and yet she could sense an underlying coldness. He stood immaculate in a beautifully cut tuxedo embroidered with golden tigers.

“Yes, thank you,” said Julia, barely able to remain polite, “It truly is a magnificent affair.”

Pitt rose to his feet slowly in a conscious effort not to appear patronizing. “May I present Ms. Julia Lee.”

“And you, sir?” asked Qin Shang.

“My name is Dirk Pitt.”

There it was. No skyrockets, no drumroll. The guy has style, Pitt had to give him that. The smile remained fixed. If there was surprise at finding Pitt alive and breathing, Qin Shang didn't show it. The only detectable response was a slight shift of the eyes. For long moments jade-green eyes locked with opaline-green, neither man willing to break off. Pitt knew damned well it was stupid and saw no purpose in the staredown other than egotistical satisfaction by the winner. Gradually, his gaze lifted to Qin Shang's eyebrows, then forehead, lingered and moved to the hair. Then Pitt's eyes widened a fraction as if he found something, and his lips broke into a slight grin.

The ruse worked. Qin Shang's concentration was broken. He involuntarily raised his eyeballs to look upward. “May I ask what you find so amusing, Mr. Pitt?”

“I was just wondering who your hairstylist was,” Pitt answered innocently.

“She is a Chinese lady who attends me once a day. I'd give you her name, but she is in my private employ.”

“I envy you. My barber is a mad Hungarian with palsy.”

There came a brief icy stare.

“The photo of you in your dossier does not do you justice.”

“I applaud a man who does his homework.”

“May I have a word with you in private, Mr. Pitt?”

Pitt nodded toward Julia. “Only if Ms. Lee is present.”

“I'm afraid our conversation may not be of interest to the lovely lady.”

Pitt realized that Qin Shang did not know Julia's credentials. “On the contrary. Rude of me not to mention that Ms. Lee is an agent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She was also a passenger on one of your cattle boats and had the misfortune of enjoying your hospitality at Orion Lake. You are familiar, I trust, with Orion Lake. It's in the state of Washington.”

For an instant there was a red glare in the jade eyes, and then it was just as quickly extinguished. Qin Shang remained as impenetrable as marble. His voice came even and calm. “If you both will please follow me.” He turned and strode away, knowing unquestionably Pitt and Julia would trail in his wake.

“I think the time has come,” said Pitt as he helped Julia from her chair.

“You crafty dog,” she murmured. “You knew all along he would seek us out.”

“Shang didn't get where he's at without a healthy dose of curiosity.”

Obediently, they followed Qin Shang through the milling congregation until he came to the costumed giant who opened the door for him. They entered a room unlike the heavily furnished and decorated one they just left. This room was modest and austere. The walls were merely painted in a soft blue. The only furnishings were a settee, two chairs and a desk whose surface was barren except for a telephone. He motioned for them to sit on the settee as he took his place behind the desk. Pitt was amused to see that the desk and chair were slightly elevated so that Qin Shang looked down at his visitors. “Forgive me for mentioning it,” Pitt said offhandedly, “but the bronze incense burner in the main entry. From the Liao dynasty, I believe.”

“Why yes, you are quite correct.”

“I assume you know that it's a fake.”

“You are most observant, Mr. Pitt,” said Qin Shang without taking offense. “The piece is not fake, but a well-executed replica. The original was lost in nineteen forty-eight during the war when the People's Army of Mao Tse-tung crushed the forces of Chiang Kai-shek.”

“The burner is still in China?”

“No, it was on a ship with many other ancient treasures stolen from my country by Chiang that were lost at sea.”

“The ship's final resting place is a mystery?”

“A mystery I have worked many years to solve. To find the ship and its cargo is my life's most passionate desire.”

“It's been my experience that shipwrecks are never found until they want to be found.”

“Very poetic,” Qin Shang said, pausing to glance at his watch. “I must return and tend to my guests so I'll be brief before I have my security people escort you to the door. Please tell me the purpose behind your uninvited presence.”

“I thought the purpose was transparent,” Pitt replied conversationally. “Ms. Lee and I wanted to meet the man we're going to hang.”

“You're very succinct, Mr. Pitt. I appreciate that in an adversary. But it is you who will be a casualty in the war.”

“What war is that?”

“The economic war between the People's Republic of China and the United States. A war for extraordinary power and wealth for the winner.”

“I have no ambitions on that score.”

“Ah, but I do. That's the difference between us and between our countrymen. Like most of the rabble in America, you lack determination and zeal.”

Pitt shrugged his shoulders. “If greed is your god, then you possess very little of true value.”

“You think of me as a greedmonger?” Qin Shang asked pleasantly.

“I've seen little of your lifestyle that persuades me otherwise.”

“All the great men of history were driven by ambition. It goes hand in hand with power. Contrary to public opinion, the world is not divided by good and evil, but between those who do and those who do not, the visionaries and the blind, the realists and the romanticists. The world does not turn on good deeds and sentiment, Mr. Pitt, but on achievement.”

“What do you ultimately hope to gain in the end besides a pretentious edifice over your coffin?”

“You misunderstand me. My goal is to help China become the greatest nation the world has ever known.”

“While you become even more filthy-rich than you already are. Where does it end, Mr. Shang?”

“There is no end, Mr. Pitt.”

“You'll have a tough fight on your hands if you think China can surpass the United States.”

“Ah, but the deed is done,” Qin Shang said matter-of-factly. “You country has died a slow death as a world power while my country is in its ascendancy. Already we have passed the United States to become the largest economy in history. Already we have passed your trade deficit with Japan. Your government is impotent despite its nuclear arsenal. Soon it will be unthinkable for your leaders to intervene when we assume control of Taiwan and the rest of the Asian nations.”

“So what does it really matter?” asked Pitt. “You'll still be playing catch-up to our standard of living for the next hundred years.”

“Time is on our side. Not only will we erode America from the outside, but with the help of your own countrymen we will eventually cause it to crumble from within. If nothing else, future division and internal race wars will seal your fate as a great nation.”

Pitt began to see Qin Shang's direction. “Aided and abetted by your doctrine of illegal immigration, is that it?”

Qin Shang looked at Julia. “Your Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that nearly a million Chinese enter America and Canada legally and illegally each year. Actually, the figure is closer to two million. While you concentrated on keeping out your neighbors to the south, we have been flooding masses of my countrymen across the sea and across your shoreline. One day, sooner than you think, your coastal states and the Canadian provinces will be an extension of China.”

To Pitt the concept was inconceivable. “I'll grade you with an A for wishful thinking and an F for practicality.”

“Not as ridiculous as you may think,” Qin Shang said patiently. “Consider how the boundaries of Europe have changed in the past hundred years. Migration through the centuries has shattered old empires and built new, only to have them fall again from new waves of migrants.”

“An interesting theory,” said Pitt. “But a theory nonetheless. The only way for your scenario to become reality is for the American people to lie down and play dead.”

“Your countrymen have slept through the nineteen nineties,” Qin Shang replied, a visceral, even menacing quality in his voice. “When they finally wake up, it will be a decade too late.”

“You paint a grim picture for humanity,” said Julia, visibly shaken.

Pitt went silent. He did not have the answer nor was he Nostradamus. His brain told him that Qin Shang's prophecy might indeed come to pass. But his heart refused to reject hope, He came to his feet and nodded at Julia. “I think we've heard enough of Mr. Shang's meaningless drivel. It's plain to see that he's a man who loves to hear himself talk. Let's clear out of this architectural monstrosity and its phony decor and breathe fresh air again.”

Qin Shang leaped to his feet. “You dare mock me,” he snarled.

Pitt moved to the desk and leaned across the surface until his face was bare inches away from Qin Shang's. “Mock you, Mr. Shang? That's putting it mildly. I'd rather have my Christmas stocking filled with cow dung than listen to your retarded philosophy on future affairs.” Then he took Julia's hand. “Come on, we're out of here.”

Julia made no effort to move; she appeared dazed. Pitt had to pull her along behind him. At the doorway he paused and looked back.

“Thank you, Mr. Shang, for a most provocative evening. I enjoyed your excellent champagne and seafood, especially the abalone.”

The Chinese's face was tight and cold, twisted in a mask of malevolence. “No man speaks to Qin Shang in this manner.”

“I'm sorry for you, Shang. On the surface you are fabulously rich and almighty, but underneath you're only a self-made man who worships his inventor.”

Qin Shang fought to regain control of his emotions. When he spoke, his voice came as though out of an arctic mist. “You have made a fatal error, Mr. Pitt.”

Pitt smiled thinly. “I was about to say the same about the two cretins you sent to kill me earlier this evening.”

“Another time, another place, you may not be so fortunate.”

Pitt said coldly, “Just so we keep a level playing field, please be advised that I have hired a team of professional assassins to terminate you, Mr. Shang. With luck, we'll never meet again.”

Before Qin Shang could respond, Pitt and Julia were walking through the mass of guests toward the front entrance. Julia discreetly opened her purse, held it close to her face as though searching for cosmetics and spoke into the tiny radio.

“This is Dragon Lady. We're coming out.”

“Dragon Lady,” said Pitt. “Is that the best you could dream up for a code name?”

The dove-gray eyes gazed at him as if he was thick between the ears. “It fits,” she said simply.

If Qin Shang's paid killers had any plans of following the Duesenberg and blasting its occupants at the first stoplight, they were quickly laid to rest as two unmarked vans fell into a convoy behind the big car.

“I hope they're on our side,” said Pitt.

“Peter Harper is very thorough. The INS protects its own with specialists outside the service. The people in the vans are from a little-known security force that supplies teams of bodyguards on request from different branches of government.”

“A great pity.”

She looked at him quizzically. “Why do you say that?”

“With all these armed chaperons watching our every move, I can't very well take you to my place for a nightcap.”

“Are you sure a nightcap is all you had in mind?” Julia replied in a sultry voice.

Pitt took one hand off the wheel and patted her bare knee. “Women have always been an enigma to me. I had hoped you might forget you were an agent of the government and throw caution to the winds.”

She moved across the leather bench seat until her body was pressed against his and slid her hands around his arm. She found the muffled roar of the engine and the smell of the leather sensual. “I went off duty the minute we walked out of that scumbag's house,” she said lovingly. “My time is your time.”

“How do we get rid of your friends?”

“We don't. They're with us for the duration.”

“In that case, do you think they'd mind if I took a detour?”

“Probably,” she said, smiling. “But I'm sure you'll do it anyway.”

Pitt went silent as he shifted gears and drove the Duesenberg effortlessly through traffic, watching in the rearview mirror with a touch of pride at seeing the vans struggle to keep pace. “I hope they don't shoot out my tires. They don't come cheap for a car like this.”

“Did you mean what you said when you told Qin Shang you'd hired a team of hit men to kill him?”

Pitt grinned wolfishly. “A big, fat bluff, but he doesn't know that. I take great satisfaction in tormenting men like Qin Shang who are too used to having people jump at their beck and call. Do him good to stare at the ceiling nights and wonder if someone is lurking outside waiting to put a bullet in him.”

“So what's with the detour?”

“I think I found the chink in Qin Shang's armor, his Achilles' heel if you'll pardon the cliche. Despite the seemingly impenetrable wall he's formed around his personal life, he has a vulnerable crack that can be pried open a mile wide.”

Julia pulled her coat tightly around her bare legs to ward off the late-evening chill. “You must have divined something from what he said that escaped me.”

“As I recall, his words were, 'My life's most passionate desire.' ”

She looked curiously into his eyes, which never left the road. “He was talking about a vast cargo of Chinese art treasures that vanished on a ship.”

“The same.”

“He possesses more wealth and Chinese antiques than anyone else in the world. Why should a ship with a few historical objects be of serious interest to him?”

“Not a mere interest, gorgeous creature. Qin Shang is obsessed like all men down through the centuries who have searched for lost treasure. He won't die a happy man no matter how much wealth and power he's accumulated until he can replace every one of his art replicas with the genuine pieces. To own something no other man or woman on earth can own is the ultimate fulfillment to Qin Shang. I've known men like him. He'd trade thirty years of his life to find the shipwreck and its treasures.”

“But how does one go about searching for a ship that vanished fifty years ago?” Julia asked. “Where do you begin to look?”

“You start,” Pitt said casually, “by knocking on a door about six blocks up the street.”

PITT STEERED THE BIG DUESENBERG OVER A NARROW DRIVE-way between two homes with brick walls entirely blanketed with climbing ivy. He stopped the car in front of a spacious carriage house that fronted an expansive courtyard that was now roofed over.

“Who lives here?” asked Julia.

“A very interesting character,” Pitt replied. He motioned toward a large bronze knocker on the door cast in the shape of a sailing ship. “Give it a rap, if you can.”

“If you can?” Her hand reached for the knocker hesitantly. “Is there a trick to it?”

“Not what you're thinking. Go ahead, try to lift it.”

But before Julia could touch the knocker, the door was swept open, revealing a huge, roly-poly man dressed in burgundy paisley silk pajamas under a matching robe. Julia gasped and took a step backward, bumping into Pitt who was laughing.

“He never fails.”

“Fails to do what?” demanded the fat man.

“Open the door before a visitor knocks.”

“Oh, that.” The big man waved airily. “A chime sounds whenever someone comes up the drive.”

“St. Julien,” said Pitt. “Forgive the late visit.”

“Nonsense!” boomed the man, who weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. “You're welcome any hour of the day or night. Who's the lovely little lady?”

“Julia Lee, may I present St. Julien Perlmutter, gourmet, collector of fine wines and possessor of the world's largest library on shipwrecks.”

Perlmutter bowed as far as his bulk allowed and kissed Julia's hand.

“Always a pleasure to meet a friend of Dirk's.” He stood back and swept out an arm, the silk sleeve flapping like a flag in a stiff breeze. “Don't stand out there in the night. Come in, come in. I was just about to open a bottle of forty-year-old Barros port. Please share it with me.”

Julia stepped from the enclosed courtyard that once served to harness teams of horses to fancy carriages and gazed enraptured at the thousands of books that were massed over every square inch of open space inside the carriage house. Many were neatly spaced on endless shelves. Others were piled along walls, up stairs and on bateonies. In bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, they were even clustered in the kitchen and dining room. There was barely enough room for a person to walk through a hallway, they were so thickly stacked.

Over fifty years, St. Julien Perlmutter had accumulated the finest and most extensive collection of historical ship literature ever assembled in one place. His library was the envy of every maritime archive in the world and second to none. What books and ship records he could not possess, he painstakingly copied. Fearful of fire or destruction, his fellow researchers pleaded with him to put his immense archive on-line, but he preferred to leave his collection in bound paper.

He generously shared it all without cost to anyone who came to his front door seeking information on a particular shipwreck. As long as Pitt had known him, Perlmutter had never turned down anyone who sought his extensive knowledge.

If the staggering hoard of books wasn't a colossal sight, Perlmutter was. Julia gazed openly at him. His face, turned crimson from a lifetime of excessive good food and drink, barely showed under a curly mass of gray hair and a thick, heavy beard. His nose under the sky-blue eyes was a little red knob. His lips were lost under a mustache twisted at the ends. He was obese but not sloppy-fat. No flab hung. He was solid as a massive wood sculpture. Most people who first met him thought he was probably much younger than he looked. But St. Julien Perlmutter was a year past seventy and as hearty as they came.

A close friend of Pitt's father, Senator George Pitt, Perlmutter had known Dirk almost from the time he was born. Over the years they had formed a close bond to the point where Perlmutter was like a favorite uncle. He sat Pitt and Julia down around a huge latticed hatch cover, reconstructed and lacquered to as high a sheen as a dining table's. He offered them crystal glasses that had once graced the first-class dining room of the former Italian luxury liner the Andrea Doria.

Julia studied the etched image of the ship on her glass as Perlmutter poured the aged port. “I thought the Andrea Doria rested on the bottom of the sea.”

“She still does,” said Perlmutter, twisting one end of the gray hair flowing from his lips. “Dirk here brought up a rack of wineglasses during a dive he made on the wreck five years ago and graciously gave them to me. Please tell what you think of the port.”

Julia was flattered that such a gourmet would want her opinion. She sipped the ruby contents of the glass and made an expression of delight. “It tastes wonderful.”

“Good, good.” He gave Pitt a look reserved for a derelict on a park bench. “You I won't ask, since your taste runs to the mundane.”

Pitt acted as if he was insulted. “You wouldn't know good port if you drowned in it. While I, on the other hand, was weaned on it.”

“I hate myself for ever letting you through the front door,” Perlmutter moaned.

Julia saw through the charade. “Do you two always go on like this?”

“Only when we meet,” Pitt said, laughing.

“What brings you here this time of night?” asked Perlmutter, winking at Julia. “It couldn't have been my witty conversation.”

“No,” Pitt agreed, “it was to see if you ever heard of a ship that left China sometime around nineteen forty-eight with a cargo of historical Chinese art and then vanished.”

Perlmutter held the port in front of his eyes and swirled it around in his glass. His eyes took on a reflective expression as his encyclopedic mind delved into his brain cells. “I seem to recall that the name of the ship was the Princess Dou Wan. She went missing with all hands somewhere off Central America. No trace of ship or crew was ever found.”

“Was there a record of her cargo?”

Perlmutter shook his head. “The word that she was carrying a rich cargo of antiquities came from unsubstantiated reports only. Vague rumors actually. No evidence ever came to light to suggest it was true.”

“How do you call it?” asked Pitt.

“Another mystery of the sea. There is very little I can tell you except the Princess Dou Wan was a passenger ship that had seen her day and was scheduled for the scrap yard. A pretty ship, in her prime she was known as the queen of the China Sea.”

“Then how did she end up lost off Central America?”

Perlmutter shrugged. “As I said, another mystery of the sea.”

Pitt shook his head vigorously. “I disagree. If there is an enigma, it is man-made. A ship simply doesn't vanish five thousand miles from where she is supposed to be.”

“Let me dig out the record on the Princess. I believe it's in a book stacked under the piano.” He lifted his bulk off a thankful chair and ambled out of the dining room. In less than two minutes, Pitt and Julia heard his voice roar out through the hall from another room. “Ah, here it is!”

“With all these books, he knows exactly where to find the one he's looking for?” she asked in amazement.

“He can tell you the title of every book in the house,” said Pitt with certainty, “its exact location and what number it lies from the top of its stack or from the right side of its shelf.”

Pitt had no sooner finished speaking than Perlmutter came into the room, his elbows brushing both frames of the doorway simultaneously. He held up a thick, leather-bound book. The title, lettered in gold, read, History of the Orient Shipping Lines. “This is the only official record I've ever come across on the Princess Dou Wan that gives details of her years afloat.” Perlmutter sat down at the table, opened the book and began reading aloud.

“She was laid down and launched in the same year, nineteen thirteen, by Harland and Wolff shipbuilders of Belfast for the Singapore Pacific Steamship Lines. Her original name was Lanai. Gross tonnage of just under eleven thousand tons, over-all length of four hundred and ninety-seven feet and a sixty-foot beam, she was rather a good-looking ship for her day.” He paused and held up the book to show a photograph of the ship sailing over a flat sea with a trailing wisp of smoke from her single smokestack. The photo was tinted and revealed the traditional black hull with white superstructure topped by a tall green funnel. “She could carry five hundred and ten passengers, fifty-five of them first class,” Perlmutter continued. “She was originally coal-fired but converted to oil-firing in nineteen twenty. Top speed of seventeen knots. Her maiden voyage took place in December of nineteen thirteen when she left Southampton for Singapore. Until nineteen thirty-one, most of her voyages were between Singapore and Honolulu.”

“It must have been a comfortable and relaxing experience sailing across the South Seas in those early days,” said Julia.

“Passengers were not nearly so harried and occupied eighty years ago,” Pitt agreed. He looked at Perlmutter. “When did the Lanai become the Princess Dou Wan?”

“She was sold to the Canton Lines out of Shanghai in nineteen thirty-one,” Perlmutter answered. “From then until the war, she carried passengers and cargo to ports around the South China Sea. During the war, she served as an Australian troop transport. In nineteen forty-two, while unloading troops and their equipment off New Guinea, she was attacked by Japanese aircraft and severely damaged, but she returned to Sidney under her own power for repair and a refit. Her war record is quite impressive. From nineteen forty to nineteen forty-five, she transported over eighty thousand men in and out of the war zone, dodging enemy aircraft, submarines and warships and suffering extensive damage inflicted during seven different attacks.”

“Five years of sailing through Japanese-infested waters,” said Pitt. “It's a wonder she wasn't sunk.”

“When the war ended, the Princess Dou Wan was returned to the Canton Lines and refitted as a passenger ship again. She then went into service between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Then in the late fall of nineteen forty-eight she was taken out of service and sent to the scrappers hi Singapore for breaking up.”

“Breaking up,” Pitt echoed. “You said she sank off Central America.”

“Her fate gets vague,” said Perlmutter, pulling several loose sheets of paper from the book. “I accumulated what information I could find and condensed it into a brief report. All that's known for certain is that she didn't make it to the scrappers. The final account came from a naval station radio operator at Valparaiso, Chile. According to the radio operator's records, a ship calling herself the Princess Dou Wan sent out a series of distress signals, saying she was taking on water and badly listing under a violent storm two hundred miles west. Repeated inquiries brought no answers. Then her radio went dead and she was never heard from again. A search turned up no sign of her.”

“Could there have been another Princess Dou Wan?” asked Julia.

Perlmutter shook his head negatively. “The International Ships Registry only lists one Princess Dou Wan between eighteen fifty and the present. The signal must have been sent as a red herring from another Chinese vessel.”

“Where did the rumor originate that Chinese antiquities were on board?” asked Pitt.

Perlmutter held out his hands, palms upward in a sign of unknowing. “A myth, a legend, the sea is full of them. The only sources I'm aware of were unreliable dockworkers and Nationalist Chinese soldiers who were in charge of loading the ship. They were later captured and interrogated by the Communists. One claimed a crate broke open while itXwas being lifted aboard, revealing a life-size bronze prancing horse.”

“How on earth did you find all this information?” said Julia, overwhelmed with Perlmutter's knowledge of maritime disasters.

He smiled. “From a fellow researcher in China. I have sources around the world that I rely on to send me books and information related to shipwrecks whenever they find it. They know that I pay top dollar for reports that contain new and uncovered ground. The story of the Princess Dou Wan came from an old friend who is China's top historian and researcher by the name of Zhu Kwan. We've corresponded and exchanged maritime information for many years. It was he who mentioned a legend surrounding the alleged treasure ship.”

“Was Zhu Kwan able to give you a manifest of the treasure?” Pitt inquired.

“No, he claimed only that his research led him to believe that before Mao's troops marched into Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek cleaned out the museums, galleries and private collections of Chinese antiquities. Records of art and artifacts before World War n in China are sketchy to say the least. It is pretty well known that after the Communists took over, there were few antiquities to be found. All that you see in China today were discovered and excavated since nineteen forty-eight.”

“Not one of the lost treasures was ever found?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Perlmutter admitted. “Nor has Zhu Kwan told me any different.”

Pitt took the last swallow from his glass of the forty-year-old port. “So a vast part of China's heritage may lie on the bottom of the sea.”

Julia's expression altered to curiosity. “This is all most interesting, but I fail to see what good any of this has to do with Qin Shang's illegal immigrant-smuggling operations.”

Pitt took her hand and held it tightly. “Your Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can strike Qin Shang and his rotten empire from the front and sides. But his obsession with the lost antiquities of China opens the door for the National Underwater and Marine Agency to strike him from the rear, where he least expects it. St. Julien and I will have to play catch-up. But we're very good at what we do. Together, we make a better search team than any Qin Shang can put together.” Pitt paused, and his expression lightened. “Now the only trick we have to perform is to find the Princess Dou Wan before Qin Shang.”

THE NIGHT WAS STILL YOUNG WHEN PlTT AND JULIA LEFT ST. Julien Perlmutter's carriage house. Pitt turned the Duesenberg around and drove out the driveway toward the street. He stopped before entering the traffic. The two Ford vans driven by the special bodyguards from the security company hired by Peter Harper were not parked and patiently waiting at the curb. They were nowhere in sight.

“It seems we've been abandoned,” said Pitt, his foot firmly on the brake pedal of the Duesenberg.

Julia looked puzzled. “I don't understand. I can think of no reason why they would desert us.”

“Maybe they decided we were boring, and they drove to a sports bar to watch basketball.”

“Not funny,” Julia said grimly.

“Then it's deja vu all over again,” Pitt noted with deceptive calm. He leaned across Julia, reached into a side pocket on the door, pulled out the old .45 Colt that he had reloaded, and handed it to her. “I hope you haven't lost your touch since our escapade on the Orion River.”

She shook her head vigorously. “You're exaggerating the danger.”

“No, I'm not,” he argued. “Something is seriously wrong. Take the gun, and if you have to, use it.”

“There must be a simple explanation for the vans' departure.”

“One more prognostication of Pitt's precognition. The pockets of the Immigration and Naturalization Service are not as deep as the pockets of Qin Shang Maritime Limited. I suspect Harper's private security guards were paid double to pack up and go home.”

Julia snatched the radio transmitter from her purse. “This is Dragon Lady. Come in, Shadow, and give me your position.” She patiently waited for a response, but her only reply was static. She repeated the message four times but received no answer. “This is inexcusable!” Julia snapped.

“Can you raise anyone else with your call box?” Pitt asked cynically.

“No, it's only good for about two miles.”

“Then it's time to—” Pitt stopped in midsentence as the two vans suddenly turned the corner of the block and pulled up at the curb, one on each side of the Duesenberg, which was still sitting in the driveway. They left barely enough room for the Duesenberg's wide, flowing fenders to pass into the street between them. They showed no headlights, only parking lights. The figures inside looked vague and shadowy through the darkened, solar-coated windows.

“I knew nothing was wrong,” said Julia, squinting at Pitt with a know-it-all look. She spoke into her radio transmitter again. “Shadow, this is Dragon Lady, why did you leave your positions around the carriage house?”

This time a voice answered almost immediately. “Sorry Dragon Lady, we thought it best to circle the block and look for any suspicious vehicles. If you are ready to leave, please give us your destination.”

“I don't buy it,” Pitt said, eyeing the distance between the two parked vans while gauging the passing traffic on the street. “One van should have remained in position while the other circled the block. You're an agent. Why am I telling you?”

“Peter would not have hired irresponsible people,” Julia said firmly. “He doesn't work that way.”

“Don't answer just yet!” said Pitt harshly. Danger, like a red warning sign, began to flash in Pitt's brain. “We've been sold out. A dime will get you a dollar those are not the same men Harper hired.”

For the first time Julia's eyes reflected a growing apprehension. “If you're right, what do I tell them?”

If Pitt thought their lives were in deadly peril, he didn't show it. His face was cool, his mind focused. “Say we're going to my place at the Washington National Airport.”

“You live in an airport?” Julia asked, baffled.

“For almost twenty years. Actually, I live on the perimeter.”

Julia shrugged in bewilderment and gave the instructions to the men in the vans as Pitt reached under the seat and produced a cellular phone. “Now get a hold of Harper. Explain the situation and say we're on our way toward the Lincoln Memorial. Tell him I'll try to stall off our arrival until he can arrange an intercept.”

Julia dialed a number and waited for the party on the other end to answer. After giving her identification, she was put through to Peter Harper, who was at home relaxing with his family. After she gave him Pitt's message, she sat and listened in silence before punching off the phone. She looked at Pitt expressionless. “Help is on the way. Peter also said to tell you that considering what happened at your hangar earlier this evening, he regrets not being more alert to possible problems.”

“Is he sending law-enforcement teams to the Memorial for the intercept?”

“He's contacting them now.”

“You never told me what happened at your hangar.”

“Not now.”

Julia began to say something, thought better of it and said simply, “Shouldn't we have waited right here for help?”

Pitt studied the vans parked quietly and ominously at the curb. “I can't sit here any longer looking like I'm waiting for the traffic to ease or our friends will begin to think we're onto them. Once we reach Massachusetts Avenue and merge into the main stream of traffic, we'll be reasonably safe. They won't risk exposure by attacking us in front of a hundred witnesses.”

“You could call nine-one-one on your cell phone and ask them to respond with a patrol car cruising the area.”

“If you were a dispatcher, would you buy some bizarre story and take responsibility for ordering a fleet of patrol cars to charge to the Lincoln Memorial and look for an orange and brown nineteen-twenty-nine Duesenberg that is being pursued by killers?”

“I suppose not,” Julia admitted. “Better we left it to Harper to call out the posse.” He slipped the big stick shift on the floor into first gear and accelerated out into the street, turning to the left so the vans would lose time swinging a U-turn to follow him. He gained almost a hundred yards before he caught the lights of the lead van coming up on his rear bumper. Two blocks later he whipped the heavy Duesenberg onto Massachusetts Avenue and began snaking in and out of the nighttime traffic.

Julia tensed as she looked through the steering wheel and saw the needle creep up and waver at seventy miles an hour. “This car doesn't have seat belts.”

“They didn't believe in them in nineteen twenty-nine.” “You're going awfully fast.”

“I can't think of a better way to attract attention than by exceeding the speed limit in a seventy-year-old car that weighs almost four tons.”

“I hope she has good brakes.” Julia resigned herself to the chase, uncertainty still in her mind.

“They're not as sensitive as modern power brakes, but if I stomp on them they do the job just fine.”

Julia gripped the Colt automatic but made no effort to remove the safety or aim it. She balked at accepting Pitt's assertion that their lives were in jeopardy. That their bodyguards had turned on them seemed too incredible to believe.

“Why me?” Pitt moaned as he careened the monster around Mount Vernon Square, the big tires howling in protest, heads turning on the sidewalks, people staring incredulously. “Would you believe this is the second time in a year a pretty girl and I had to escape sharks who chased us over the streets of Washington?”

She stared at him. “This happened to you before?” “On that occasion I was driving a sports car and had a much easier time of it.”

Pitt aimed the polished hood ornament on the radiator cap down New Jersey Avenue before hammering a right turn onto First Street and accelerating toward the nation's Capitol and its Mall. Cars that got in his way, he frightened aside with warning blasts from the big twin horns mounted beneath the massive headlights. He spun the thick rim of the steering wheel violently as they raced between the traffic on the crowded street.

The vans were still on his tail. Because of their faster acceleration, they had closed until their reflections loomed in the rearview mirror atop the center of the windshield. Although the Duesenberg could outpull them if given a long enough straight stretch, it was not a car that would set records at a drag strip. Pitt had yet to shift from second to third, and the gears wailed like a banshee.

The giant engine with its twin overhead cams turned effortlessly at high rpms. The traffic on the street ahead thinned, and Pitt was able to push the Duesenberg as hard as she could go. He slewed the car into the circle around the Peace Monument behind the Capitol building. Then another quick twist of the steering wheel and the Duesy drifted on all four wheels around the Garfield Monument, skirted the Reflecting Pool and shot down Maryland Avenue toward the Air & Space Museum.

From behind them, over the exhaust roar of the Duesenberg, they heard a brief staccato of gunfire. The mirror attached to the top of the spare-tire cover mounted in the left front fender abruptly disintegrated. The shooter quickly adjusted and a stream of bullets shredded the top frame of the windshield, shattering the glass, which showered across the hood of the car. Pitt slipped down low behind the wheel, his right hand grabbing Julia by the hair and yanking her horizontal on the leather seat.

“That concludes the entertainment part of the program,” muttered Pitt. “No more chicken-hearted maneuvers.”

“Oh, God, you were right!” Julia shouted in his ear. “They are out to kill us.”

“I'm going to make a straight run so you can return their fire.”

“Not in traffic, not on these streets,” she retorted. “I couldn't live with myself if I hit an innocent child.”

Her reply was a frenzied sideways motion as the car rocketed across Third Street. Instead of turning with the traffic, Pitt cut across the pavement and sent the Duesenberg leaping over the curb onto the grass of the Capitol Mall. The big 750-by-17-inch tires took the raised concrete as casually as a minor speed bump. Sod was ripped out of the ground by the spinning rear wheels and sprayed out and under the rear fenders like shrapnel.

Julia did what any sane woman would do under the same circumstances. She screamed and then cried out, “You can't drive down the middle of the Mall!”

“I damned well can and will so long as we live to tell about it!” Pitt shot back.

His seemingly crazy and totally unexpected maneuver had the desired results. The driver of the lead van tenaciously chased the Duesenberg over the curb onto the grassy Mall, and Wew all four tires in the attempt. They struck the concrete barrier with such force that they exploded in a rapid series of loud pops. The much smaller, more modern tires on the vans could not jump over the curb with the ease of the Duesenberg's big doughnuts.

The second van's driver elected for discretion, checked his speed in time, braked and slowly drove over the curb without damaging his tires. The men in the first van—there were two —frantically abandoned their vehicle and flung themselves through the open side door of the second one. Then they all stubbornly took up the chase again, pursuing the Duesenberg across the middle of the Mall to the astonishment of hundreds of onlookers who were heading for home after an open-air Marine Corps band conceit at the Navy Memorial. The shocked expression on their faces ranged from frozen incomprehension to stunned astonishment at seeing the huge car with the artistically flowing lines tearing across the Mall between the National Ak & Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art. Groups of people strolling or jogging along the Mall's paths were suddenly galvanized into chasing the speeding vehicles on foot, certain they were about to witness an accident.

The Duesenberg was still accelerating with Pitt's foot flat on the gas pedal. The long car flared as it tore across Seventh Street, skidding around passing cars, Pitt righting the wheel with grim tenacity. The mammoth car was incredibly responsive. The faster the speed, the more solid the feeling of stability. All he had to do was point the car where he wanted to go, and she went. He breathed a brief sigh of relief at seeing no cross-traffic on Fourteenth Street, the next thoroughfare across the Mall. The sidemount mirror and the rearview mirror on the windshield had both been blown to pieces by the earlier burst of gunfire, and he could not spare a brief glance to see if the pursuing van was closing within accurate firing range again.

“Take a peek over the seat and see how close they are,” he yelled to Julia.

She had thumbed off the side safety on the Colt and had it aimed over the backrest of the seat. “They slowed when bouncing over the curbs on the last two cross streets,” she answered, “but they're gaining. I can almost see the whites of the driver's eyes.”

“Then you can begin shooting back.”

“This isn't the wilderness around Orion River. There are pedestrians all over the Mall. I can't risk striking anyone with a stray shot.”

“Then wait until you can't miss.”

The men firing out the sides of the van were not as considerate. They unleashed another burst at the Duesenberg, drilling the big trunk mounted on the rear of the body, the thuds of the bullets mingling with the pulsing bursts erupting from the guns' muzzles. Pitt wrenched desperately on the wheel, dodging the fusillade that whistled past the right side of the car.

“Those guys don't have your sensitivity toward others,” he said, thankful that he had managed to swerve around any car that crossed his path without accident.

Wishing he had a magic wand to stop the traffic, he hurtled across Fifteenth Street, narrowly missing a newspaper truck and throwing the Duesenberg into a four-wheel slide to avoid a black Ford Crown Victoria sedan, which had replaced most of the government limousines. Fleetingly, he wondered what government VIP was riding inside. He felt a small surge of comfort at knowing the van had to drop back to negotiate the curbs.

The towering Washington Monument rose in front of the car's path. Pitt guided the car around the floodlit obelisk and sped down the slight slope on the opposite side. Julia was still unable to get a clear shot as Pitt concentrated on getting the Duesenberg past the Monument without losing control on the slippery grass. And then they were heading toward the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Mall.

Seconds later he came to Seventeenth Street. Thankfully, there was a slot in the middle of the traffic and he shot toward the other side without endangering passing cars. Despite the violent chase through the avenues of Washington and across the Mall, he saw no flashing red lights nor heard sirens from pursuing police cars. If he had attempted the mad ride across the Mall on any other occasion, he'd have been stopped and arrested for reckless driving within the first hundred yards.

Pitt had a short breathing spell as they roared between the Reflecting Pool and Constitution Gardens. Almost directly ahead loomed the brilliantly illuminated Lincoln Memorial and the Potomac River beyond. He turned and looked over his shoulder at the van, which was corning up fast on the Duesen-berg again. The van's twin headlights were so close he could have read a newspaper under them. The contest was too uneven. Despite the Duesenberg being a magnificent automobile by which all others were measured, it was a case of a big-game hunter in a bush vehicle chasing an elephant. He knew that they knew he was running out of space. If he cut and swung right toward Constitution Avenue, they could easily cut him off. To his left the long Reflecting Pool stretched almost to the great white marble Memorial. The water barrier looked impassable. Or was it?

He roughly pushed Julia off the seat onto the floor. “Keep down and hold on tight!”

“What are you going to do?”

“We're going boating.”

“You're not only deranged, you've gone berserk.”

“A rare combination,” Pitt said calmly. His features were fixed in concentration, his eyes glistening like those of a hawk circling over a hare. There was a look of unfathomable detachment about him. To Julia, who stared up from her position on the floorboards under the dashboard, he looked as relentlessly determined as a comber surging toward a beach. Then she saw him snap the wheel to the left, sending the Duesenberg sliding sideways in the grass at nearly seventy miles an hour, the big rear wheels spinning crazily, ripping up the turf like giant meat grinders and just missing the large trees spaced twenty-two feet apart along the pool.

After what seemed like ages, the tires dug in and gripped the soft ground, sending the car beyond the point of no return, her immense bulk lunging forward into the Reflecting Pool.

The heavy steel chassis and aluminum body, driven by the full force of the powerful engine, smacked into the water with an enormous white explosion that leaped from her front and sides like Niagara Falls turned upside down. The sickening thump jarred the Duesenberg from bumper to bumper as her great weight sank, pushing her balloon tires onto the concrete bottom where their rubber treads bit and hurled the car forward like a bull whale charging through the sea after a female in heat.

The water gushed over the hood and flooded through the shattered windshield into the front compartment, drenching Pitt and nearly inundating Julia. Unaware exactly of Pitt's intentions, she was petrified at finding herself suddenly submerged under a deluge. To Pitt, taking the full brunt of the torrent, it seemed as if he was driving into raging breakers only a surfer could love.

There was no growth on the bottom of the Reflecting Pool. It was drained and cleaned by the Park Service on a regular basis. The distance between the surface of the water and the top of the edge along the sides measured only eight inches. The bottom of the pool was not flat but sloped from a depth of one foot around the walls to a maximum depth of two and a half feet in the middle. The distance from the pool floor to the top edge of the wall measured twenty inches.

Pitt prayed the engine wouldn't flood and die. The distributor, he knew, was a good four feet from the ground. No problem there. Nor with the carburetors, as they sat well over three feet high. But his main concern was the spark plugs. They rested between the twin overhead cam shafts at three feet on the nose.

The Reflecting Pool was exactly 160 feet in width. It seemed impossible for the Duesenberg to navigate such an obstacle. But she bulldozed a gaping valley through the water, her engine gamely producing torque to the rear wheels and not drowning out. She had pushed her way to within ten yards of the opposite edge of the pool when the water around her suddenly erupted in a cloud of small geysers.

“Obstinate bastards!” Pitt muttered to himself. He gripped the big steering wheel so hard his knuckles bleached white.

The chase van had stopped at the edge of the Reflecting Pool, her occupants tumbling out and firing wildly at the big car crashing through the water. Their shock and disbelief had cost them nearly a full minute, giving Pitt time almost to reach the other side. Realizing this was their final chance, they pumped shot after shot at the floundering Duesenberg seemingly deaf and dumb to the sirens and flashing lights that were converging on them from Twenty-Third Street and Constitution Avenue. Too late did they finally sense their predicament. Unless they followed Pitt across the Reflecting Pool, an act about

as conceivable as producing wings and flying to the moon because of their modern, smaller wheels and tires, they were left with no alternative but to try to evade the rapidly approaching police patrol cars. Without the luxury of a conference, they leaped back in the van and spun a 180-degree turn before tearing back across the Mall toward the Washington Monument.

The Duesenberg was coming up the slope of the pool toward the edge now. Pitt slowed the car, carefully judging the height of the wall in relation to the size of the front tires. He back-shifted the transmission into first, actually crammed it into gear. The gears inside the three-speed nonsynchromesh crash box shrieked in protest before they finally meshed in place. Then, ten feet before meeting the wall, Pitt stamped the gas pedal into the floorboard as hard as he could, taking advantage of the upward slope of the pool to lift the front end of the car. “Do it!” he implored the Duesenberg. “Go over the wall!”

As though she had a mechanical brain and heart, the old Duesenberg responded with a burst of acceleration that lifted the front end, barely clearing the bumper over the edge of the pool, the tires rolling up the wall until they shot over the edge onto flat ground.

The Duesenberg's ground clearance was almost a foot, but not high enough for the bottom of her chassis to run clear. She canted steeply, followed by a rendering crash. Then an ungodly scraping, tearing sound ripped the air. For a moment she seemed to hang, then her momentum propelled her forward and she leaped ahead, as if grinding her guts out over the concrete wall until all four wheels were on the grass of the Mall again.

Only at that instant did the engine begin to miss. Almost like a golden retriever exiting a river with a bird in its mouth, the Duesenberg shuddered, shook herself free of the water that filled her body, and limped ahead. After only a hundred yards the fan behind the radiator and the heat from the engine worked in unison to blow-dry the water that had splashed and shorted four of her spark plugs. Soon, she began hitting on all eight cylinders again.

Julia came up off the floor sputtering and peered over the back of the car at the van speeding away under pursuit by four police cars. She wrung the water from the hem of her dress and ran her fingers through her hair in a vain attempt to look presentable. “I'm a mess. My dress and coat are ruined.” She looked at Pitt with a look of pure anger. Then her expression softened. “If you hadn't saved my life for the second time hi as many weeks, I'd make you buy me a new outfit.”

He turned to her and smiled as he set the Duesenberg on a course down Independence Avenue and across the Memorial Bridge toward the Washington National Airport and his hangar. “Tell you what. If you're a good girl, I'll take you to my place, dry your clothes and warm you up with a cup of coffee.”

Her gray eyes were soft and unblinking. She laid a hand on his arm and murmured. “And if I'm a naughty girl?”

Pitt laughed, partly from the relief of escaping another death trap, partly from seeing Julia's bedraggled appearance and partly because she was trying without success to cover the parts of her body that were revealed through the wet dress. “Keep talking like that and I'll skip the coffee.”

SUNLIGHT WAS SLIDING OVER THE SILLS OF THE SKYLIGHTS when Julia slowly pushed aside the mist of sleep. She felt as if she was floating, her body totally weightless. It was a pleasurable sensation left over from the ardor of the night. She opened her eyes, shifted her mind into gear and began studying her surroundings. She found herself lying alone. The bed was king-size and sat in the middle of a room that looked like the captain's cabin from an old sailing ship, complete with mahogany-paneled walls and a small fireplace. The furnishings, including the dressers and cabinets, were nautical antiques.

Like most women, Julia was curious and intrigued about male bachelor apartments. She felt that the opposite gender could be read by their surroundings. Some men, ladies observed, lived like pack rats and never cleaned up after themselves, creating and preserving strange alien life-forms in their bathrooms and inside their refrigerators. Making beds was as foreign as processing goat cheese. Their laundry was piled beside and over washers and dryers that still had the instruction booklets attached to the knobs.

And then there were the neatness freaks who lived in an environment only a decontamination scientist could love. Dust, food scraps and toothpaste droppings were all furiously attacked and energetically eliminated. Every piece of furniture, every object of decor, was positioned with precision, never to migrate. The kitchen would have passed a white-glove inspection by the most diligent of sanitation inspectors.

Pitt's apartment was somewhere in between. Tidy and uncluttered, it had a masculine casualness about it that appealed to the women who visited occasionally rather than frequently. Julia could see that Pitt was a man who preferred to live in the past. There was nothing modern in the entire apartment. Even the brass plumbing fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen seemed to have come out of some old passenger liner that once traveled the seas.

She rolled over on her side and stared through the doorway into the living room, where shelves on two walls were filled with delicately built ship models of wrecks that Pitt and his NUMA crew had discovered and surveyed. The remaining walls held dockyard builders' half models and four seascape paintings by Richard DeRosset, a contemporary American artist, of nineteenth-century steamships. There was a feeling of comfort about the apartment, not the formal and grandiose atmosphere produced by an interior decorator.

Julia soon came to realize that Pitt's home made no allowances for a woman's touch. It was the sanctuary of an intensely private man who adored and admired women but who could never be fully controlled by them. He was the kind of man women were drawn to, had wild adventures and amorous affairs with, but never married.

She smelled coffee coming from the kitchen but saw no sign of Pitt. She sat up and set her bare feet on a wood-plank floor. Her dress and underwear were neatly hung in an open closet, dried and pressed. She padded across the plank floor into the bathroom and smiled at herself in the mirror when she found a tray with an unopened new toothbrush, women's moisturizers, bath gels, body oils, makeup accessories and an assortment of feminine hairbrushes. Julia could not help but wonder how many women had stood and looked into the same mirror before her. She showered inside of what looked like an upended copper tank, toweled and dried her hair with a blow-dryer. After she dressed, Julia stepped into the empty kitchen, helped herself to a cup of coffee and moved out onto the balcony.

Pitt was down on the main floor in coveralls replacing the shattered windshield on the Duesenberg. Before she greeted him, Julia's gaze swept over the immaculate machinery on the spacious floor below.

She did not recognize the makes of the classic cars parked in even rows, nor did she recognize the Ford Trimotor aircraft and the Messerschmitt 262 jet plane sitting side by side at one end of the hangar. There was a large, old-fashioned Pullman car sitting on a short section of track, while behind it a small bathtub with an outboard motor stood perched on a small platform beside a strange-looking craft that resembled the upper half of a sailboat that had been tied to the buoyancy tubes of a rubber boat. A mast rose from the middle with what seemed like palm fronds woven into a sail. “Good morning,” she called down.

He looked up and gave her a killer smile. “Nice to see you, lazybones.”

“I could have stayed in bed all day.” “No chance of that,” he said. “Admiral Sandecker called while you were in dreamland. He and your boss want our bodies at a conference in one hour.”

“Your place or mine?” Julia asked in a humorous tone. “Yours, the INS headquarters office.” “How did you ever clean and press my silk dress?” “I soaked it in cold water after you fell asleep last night and hung it to dry. This morning I lightly ironed it through a cotton towel. As far as I can tell, it looks good as new.”

“You're quite a guy, Dirk Pitt,” she said. “I've never known a man so thoughtful, or innovative. Do you perform the same services for all the girls who sleep over?”

“Only exotic ladies of Chinese descent,” he answered. “May I fix breakfast?”

“Sounds good. You'll find whatever you need in the fridge and on the upper cupboards to your right. I already made coffee.”

She hesitated as Pitt began removing the fragmented mirror on the side-mounted spare tire. “I'm sorry about your car,” she said sincerely.

Pitt merely shrugged. “The damage is nothing I can't fix.” “Truly, she's a lovely car.”

“Fortunately, the bullets failed to strike any vital parts.” “Speaking of Qin Shang's thugs ...”

“Not to worry. There are enough hired guards patrolling outside to stage a coup on a third-world country.”

“I'm embarrassed.”

Pitt looked up at Julia leaning on the balcony railing and saw that her face was genuinely red with chagrin. “Why?”

“My superiors at INS and fellow agents must know I spent the night and are probably making snide remarks behind my back.”

Pitt looked up at Julia on the balcony and grinned. “I'll tell anybody who asks that while you slept, I spent the night working on a rear end.”

“That's not funny,” she said reprovingly.

“Sorry, I meant to say differential.”

“That's better,” Julia said, turning flippantly with a toss of her ebony hair and strutting into the kitchen, having enjoyed Pitt's teasing of her.

Accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sedan, Pitt and Julia were driven to her sorority sister's apartment so she could change into attire more fitting for a government agent. Then they were taken to the stark-looking Chester Arthur Building on Northwest I Street, which housed the headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. They entered the beige seven-story stone structure with its blackened windows from the underground parking area and were escorted up an elevator to the Investigations Division where they were met by Peter Harper's secretary, who showed them into a conference room.

Six men were already present in the room: Admiral San-decker; Chief Commissioner Duncan Monroe and Peter Harper of the INS; Wilbur Hill, a director with the Central Intelligence Agency; Charles Davis, special assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Al Giordino. They all rose to their feet as Pitt and Julia entered the room. All, that is, except Giordino, who simply nodded silently and gave Julia an infectious smile. Introductions were quickly made before everyone settled in chairs around a long oak table.

“Well,” said Monroe to Pitt, “I understand you and Ms. Lee had an interesting evening.” The tone of his voice strongly suggested a double meaning.

“Harrowing would be closer to the truth,” Julia answered quickly, prim and proper in a white blouse and blue business suit with the skirt cut just above her shapely knees.

Pitt stared evenly at Harper. “Things might have gone smoother if our hired bodyguards hadn't tried to send us to the morgue.”

“I deeply regret the incident,” said Harper seriously. “But circumstances went beyond our control.”

Pitt noticed that Harper looked far from sheepish. “I'd be interested in knowing the circumstances,” he came back coldly.

“The four men Peter hired to protect you and Ms. Lee were murdered,” revealed Davis of the FBI. A tall man who sat half a head above the other men around the table, he had the eyes of a Saint Bernard that had just come across a garbage can behind a barbecue-steak restaurant.

“Oh God,” murmured Julia. “All four?”

“Because then” concentration was focused on observing Mr. Perlmutter's residence they left themselves vulnerable for an assault."

“I regret their deaths,” said Pitt. “But it doesn't sound like they operated as true professionals.”

Monroe cleared his throat. “A full investigation is under way, of course. Initial analysis suggests that they were approached and murdered by Qin Shang's men, who posed as city police officers checking on reports of suspicious behavior in the neighborhood.”

“You have witnesses?”

Davis nodded. “A neighbor across the street from Mr. Perlmutter reported seeing a patrol car and four uniformed officers entering the vans and driving them away.”

“After shooting the bodyguards with silenced weapons,” Harper added.

Pitt looked at Harper. “Can you identify the men who attacked me at the hangar?”

Harper glanced at Davis, who turned up his palms in a dismayed gesture. “It seems their bodies disappeared on the way to the morgue.”

“How is that possible?” demanded Sandecker explosively.

“Don't tell me,” Giordino said sarcastically, “an investigation is under way.”

“That goes without saying,” replied Davis. “All we know is that they went missing after being unloaded from the ambulances at the morgue. We were lucky, however, in obtaining a make on one of your assassins when a paramedic pulled off a glove so he could try for a pulse. The corpse's hand lay flat on your polished hangar floor and left a set of three fingerprints. The Russians identified the killer for us as a Pavel Gavrovich, a former high-level Defense Ministry agent and assassin. For a marine engineer with NUMA to take out a professional hit man, Mr. Pitt, a man who had killed at least twenty-two people that we know of, is a polished achievement.”

“Professional or not,” said Pitt quietly, “Gavrovich made the mistake of underestimating his prey.”

“I find it incredible that Qin Shang can make fools of the entire United States government with such ease,” said San-decker acidly.

Pitt sat back and stared down as if seeing something beneath the surface of the conference table. “He couldn't. Not unless he had inside help from the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government.”

Wilbur Hill of the CIA spoke for the first time. He was a blond man with a mustache, the pale blue eyes set widely apart, as if he could observe movements off to his sides. “I'll likely get into trouble for saying this, but we have strong suspicions that Qin Shang's influence reaches into the White House.”

“As we speak,” said Davis, “a congressional committee and Justice Department prosecutors are looking into tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent contributions by the People's Republic of China that were funneled into the President's future election campaign through Qin Shang.”

“When we met with the President,” said Sandecker, “he spoke as if the Chinese were the greatest scourge on the country since the Civil War. Now you tell me his fingers are in Qin Shang's wallet.”

“There is simply no underestimating the morals of a politician,” Giordino said with a sardonic twist of his lips.

“Be that as it may,” Monroe said gravely, “political ethics are not the job of INS. Our primary concern at the moment is with the huge numbers of illegal Chinese aliens that are being smuggled into the country by Qin Shang Maritime Limited before being killed or enslaved by criminal syndicates.”

“Commissioner Monroe is quite correct,” said Harper. “The duty of INS is to plug the flow, not prosecute murders.”

“I can't speak for Mr. Hill and the CIA,” said Davis, “but the Bureau has been heavily involved with investigating Qin Shang's domestic crimes against the American people for three years.”

“Our inquiries, on the other hand, are focused more on his overseas operations,” offered CIA's Hill.

“An uphill battle on any front,” said Pitt thoughtfully. “If Shang has forces within our own government working against your efforts, it will make all your jobs that much tougher.”

“Nobody here thinks it will be a piece of cake,” said Mon-roe formally.

Julia jumped in. “Aren't we overlooking the fact that besides being an international body smuggler, Qin Shang is a mass murderer. I experienced his ruthlessness firsthand. There is no counting the untold numbers of innocent people and children who lie dead because of his greed. The atrocities his henchmen have committed under his direction are hideous and monstrous. He deals in crimes against humanity. We must put an end to the slaughter, and quickly.”

For a long moment no one said a word. Every man at the table knew of the horrors Julia had witnessed and suffered. Finally, Monroe broke the silence.

“We all understand your feelings, Ms. Lee, but all of us are working under laws and regulations that must be followed. I promise you that every possible effort is being made to stop Qin Shang. As long as I am at the helm of the INS, we won't rest until his operation is destroyed and he is arrested and convicted.”

“I can safely say that goes for Mr. Hill and myself as well,” added Davis.

“Not good enough,” said Pitt quietly, turning every head.

“You doubt our resolve?” asked Monroe indignantly.

“No, but I totally disagree with your methods.”

“Government policy dictates our actions,” Davis said. “All of us must work under guidelines set by the American justice system.”

Pitt's face went dark as a midnight sky. “I saw for myself a sea of dead on the bottom of Orion Lake. I saw the poor wretched souls locked up in cells. Four men died protecting Julia and me—”

“I know what you're driving at, Mr. Pitt,” said Davis. “But we have no evidence directly linking Qin Shang to those crimes. Certainly not enough to call for an indictment.”

“The man is shrewd,” said Harper. “He's shielded himself from direct involvement. Without solid proof that he is in some way responsible, we can't nail him.”

“If he's laughed in your face every step of the way,” said Pitt, “what makes you think he's going to suddenly play dumb and fall into your waiting arms?”

“No man can defy the far-reaching investigative powers of our government indefinitely,” said Hill earnestly. “I promise you that he will be tried, convicted and sentenced quite soon.”

“The man is a foreign national,” said Sandecker. “You arrest him anywhere in the United States and the Chinese government will raise every kind of hell with the White House and State Department. Boycotts, sanctions on trade goods, you name it. No way are they going to let you take their fair-haired boy out of circulation.”

“The way I see it, Mr. Hill,” said Giordino, “you whistle up one of your CIA hit squads and eliminate Shang neatly and cleanly. Problem solved.”

“Despite what many think, the CIA does not do assassinations,” said Hill testily.

“Madness,” muttered Pitt. “Suppose Shang's hit men were successful last night and killed Julia and me. You'd still be sitting here claiming you didn't have enough cold evidence to indict the man who ordered our murders.”

“Unfortunately, that's the way it is,” said Monroe.

“Qin Shang isn't about to stop there,” Julia said in frustration. “He fully intends to kill Dirk. He said as much at his party last night.”

“And I informed him that it's only fair that we play by the same rules,” said Pitt. “He now thinks I've hired a team of assassins to take him out too.”

“You threatened Qin Shang to his face?” Harper asked incredulously. “How could you dare?”

“It was easy,” Pitt answered casually. “Despite his wealth and power, he still puts his pants on one leg at a time the same as me. I thought it might be nice if he looks over his shoulder like the rest of his intended victims.”

“You're joking, of course,” said Monroe, scorn in his tone. “You don't really conspire to murder Shang.”

Pitt answered in a smooth voice. “Oh, but I do. As they say in the old western movies, it's either him or me, and next time I intend to shoot first.”

Monroe looked worried. He looked across the table at Hill and Davis. Then he focused on Sandecker. “Admiral, I called this meeting in the hope of enlisting Mr. Pitt in cooperating with our operation. But it seems he has become a loose cannon. Since he is under your authority, I strongly suggest you give him a leave of absence. Peter here will arrange for his protection in a safe house on the coast of Maine.”

“What about Julia?” demanded Pitt. “How do you intend to keep her safe from further harm?”

“Ms. Lee is an agent with INS,” said Harper in an official tone. “She will continue to work the case. A team of our agents will stand guard over her movements. I guarantee that she will be safe.”

Pitt stared across the table at Sandecker. “How do you call it, Admiral?”

Sandecker pulled his red Vandyke to a point. Only Pitt and Giordino recognized the wolfish glint in his eyes. “It would appear we have little choice in the matter. A safe house might be the best place for you to lay low until Qin Shang and his criminal activities are terminated.”

Pitt said soberly, “Well, I guess I have little say in the matter. A safe house it is.”

Sandecker wasn't fooled for an instant by Pitt's easy acceptance. He knew his special projects director did not have the slightest intention of leaving the room like a lamb. “Then it's settled.” Suddenly he laughed sharply.

“May I ask what you find so funny, Admiral?” asked Monroe irritably.

“Sorry, Mr. Monroe. But I'm relieved to assume that the INS, the FBI and CIA have no further use for NUMA.”

“That is correct. After your people bungled their underwater investigations of Qin Shang Maritime's facilities in Hong Kong and Sungari, I see it as a wasted effort to involve your agency any further.”

Monroe's cutting words produced no fury, no outrage, nor did they incite wrath. Pitt and Giordino sat there and took it in stride, expressing no emotions. Sandecker barely managed to reply to the commissioner's insulting remarks. He settled for clenching his fists out of sight under the table.

Pitt rose to his feet, followed by Giordino. “I know when I'm not wanted.” He grinned at Sandecker. “I'll wait in the car.” He paused to grasp lightly one of Julia's hands, raise it to his lips and kiss it. “Have you ever lain on the beach at Maza-tlan and watched the sunset over the Sea of Cortez?” he whispered in her ear.

She looked self-consciously up and down at the faces around the table, her face reddening. “I've never even been to Mexico.”

“You will,” he promised, “you will.” Then he released her hand and leisurely strolled from the conference room, trailed by Giordino and Sandecker.

Unlike most directors of U.S. governmental agencies, who demanded to be carried around Washington by limousine, Admiral Sandecker preferred to drive himself. After leaving the INS headquarters building, he steered the turquoise Jeep, which was one of the NUMA fleet of transportation vehicles, along the east side of the Potomac River on the Maryland shore. After dropping several miles below the city, he turned off the road and stopped the Jeep in a parking lot next to a small boat dock. Locking the car, Sandecker led the way across the floating wooden dock to a sixty-year-old double-ender whaleboat that had once served as Admiral Bull Halsey's shore boat during the war in the Pacific. After finding it in shabby condition, he had lovingly restored it to its original state. While he turned the handle that kicked the four-cylinder Buda diesel engine to life, Pitt and Giordino cast off the mooring lines. Then they climbed aboard as the little boat chugged out into the river.

“I thought we'd hold a little private talk before we returned to the NUMA building,” Sandecker said above the exhaust as he held the long tiller in the stern under one arm. “As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm leery of conversing in my own office.”

“It does tend to make one gun-shy, knowing Qin Shang can and has bought off half the city,” said Pitt.

“The guy has more tentacles than ten squids joined together at birth,” added Giordino.

“Unlike the Russians, who paid paltry sums for secret information during the cold war,” said Sandecker, “Qin Shang thinks nothing of paying out millions of dollars to buy people and information.”

“Backed by the Chinese government,” said Pitt, “his cash reserves are bottomless.”

Giordino sat on a bench seat facing Sandecker. “What magic have you conjured up, Admiral?”

“Magic?”

“I've been around you too long to know you're not the kind to sit back and take contempt and ridicule. Something is cooking in your Machiavellian mind.”

Pitt grinned. “I suspect the admiral and I are running on the same wavelength. We're not about to let NUMA be shut out of hanging Qin Shang from the nearest tree.”

Sandecker's lips curled in a taut smile as he swung the boat in a wide arc to avoid a sailboat that was tacking upriver. “I hate it when I'm second-guessed by the hired help.”

“Sungari?” asked Pitt.

Sandecker nodded. “I've kept Rudi Gunn and the Marine Denizen on station a few miles below Qin Shang Maritime's port facility in the Atchafalaya River. I'd like you two rogues to fly down and join him. Then wait for the United States to show up.”

“Where is she now?” asked Giordino.

“The last report put her two hundred miles off the coast of Costa Rica.”

“That should put her at the dock at Sungari in three days,” remarked Pitt.

“You were right about a crew coming on board to take her through the Panama Canal.”

“Did they remain on board?”

Sandecker shook his head. “After transit through the Canal, they disembarked. The United States is continuing toward Louisiana under remote control.”

“A 'robo ship,' ” Giordino muttered thoughtfully. “Hard to believe a ship the size of the United States is cruising the seas with no one on board.”

“The Navy has been developing the 'robo ship' concept for ten years,” explained Sandecker. “Ship designers and engineers have already built an arsenal ship that is basically a floating missile pad able to launch as many as five hundred missiles by remote control from another ship, an aircraft or a facility thousands of miles away, a radical departure from present aircraft carriers that require a five-thousand-man crew. It's the newest concept from the Navy since the nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Totally contained warships and bomber aircraft are not far behind.”

“Whatever Qin Shang has in mind for the United States,” said Giordino, “it's not as a missile platform. Dirk and I searched it from engine room to wheelhouse. There are no missile launchers.”

“I read your report,” said Sandecker. “You also found no indication that it would be used to smuggle illegal immigrants.”

“That's true,” acknowledged Pitt. “When Shang's operations are examined at first glance they appear to be conceived by a genius with a flair for sorcery, but tear away the veneer and you find a logical exercise. He has a valid function for the ship, you can bet on it.”

Sandecker pulled the throttle lever another notch and increased the speed of the whaleboat. “So we're no closer to a solution than we were two weeks ago.”

“Except for my personal theory that Shang intends to scuttle her,” said Pitt.

Sandecker looked dubious. “Why scuttle a perfectly good ocean liner after he spent millions refitting her?”

“I don't have an answer,” Pitt admitted.

“That's what I want you to find out. Take care of your immediate affairs and sign out a NUMA jet to fly yourselves to Morgan City. I'll call Rudi and tell him you're coming.”

“Now that we're working without an endorsement from the INS and other investigative agencies, how far can we go with this thing?” Pitt asked.

“Do whatever it takes without getting yourselves killed,” responded Sandecker firmly. “I'll be responsible and answer for your actions once Monroe and Harper get wise that we haven't stumbled off into the fog and gone home like good little boys.”

Pitt studied Sandecker. “Why are you doing this, Admiral? Why are you jeopardizing your job as head of NUMA to stop Qin Shang?”

The admiral stared back at Pitt astutely. “You and Al were going to go behind my back and keep dogging Qin Shang anyway. Am I right?”

Giordino shrugged. “Yes, I guess you are.”

“The instant Dirk played the cowardly lion and timidly submitted to Monroe's demand that you go to a safe house, I knew damned well you were going to jump ship. I'm only bowing to the inevitable.”

Pitt had long ago become a shrewd judge of Sandecker's character. “Not you, Admiral. You never bow to anything or anybody.”

The fire in Sandecker's eyes blazed for a moment, then j smoldered. “If you must know, those spooks around the table pissed me off so bad that I'm counting on both of you and Rudi Gunn and every resource at NUMA to take out Qin Shang before they do.”

“We're up against some pretty heavy competition,” said Pitt.

“Maybe,” said Sandecker, his eyes becoming urgent, commanding. “But Qin Shang Maritime operates on water, and that's where we have the advantage.”

After the meeting broke up, Harper escorted Julia to his office and closed the door. When she was seated he came around and sat down behind his desk. “Julia, I have a tough assignment for you. Strictly on a volunteer basis. I'm not sure you're quite up to it just yet.”

Julia's interest was piqued. “It won't hurt to give me a rundown.”

Harper handed her a file folder. She opened it and examined a photograph of a woman her own age who was facing the camera with a blank expression on her face. Except for a scar on her chin, she and Julia could have passed for sisters. “Her name is Lin Wan Chu. She grew up on a farm in Jiangsu Province and ran away when her father wanted her to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. After finding work in the kitchen of a restaurant hi the port Qingdao, she eventually became a chef. Two years ago she signed on as a cook with Qin Shang Maritime and has since crewed on a container ship called the Sung Lien Star,”

Julia turned to a dossier on the woman and noted that it came from the CIA. She began reading as Harper sat back silently until she finished. “There is a definite resemblance,” said Julia. “We're the same height and weight. I'm only four months older than Lin Wan Chu.” She kept the file open in her lap and stared across the desk at Harper. “You want me to take her place? Is that the assignment?”

He nodded. “It is.”

“My ID was made on the Indigo Star. Thanks to a double agent on Qin Shang's payroll, his security people have a file on me a mile long.”

“The FBI thinks they have a prime suspect and are maintaining surveillance on him.”

“I don't see how I could take Lin Wan Chu's identity and not be caught,” Julia said solemnly. “Especially during a long voyage.”

“You only have to be Lin Wan Chu for four, maybe five, hours at the most. Just enough time to slip into the ship's routine and hopefully discover how Qin Shang is smuggling his illegal cargo of immigrants onto land.”

“You know for a fact the Sung Lien Star has aliens hidden on board?”

“A CIA undercover agent in Qingdao reported that he observed over a hundred men, women and children with luggage being unloaded from buses in the dead of night who were herded into a warehouse on the dock beside the ship. Two hours later, the Sung Lien Star sailed. At daylight, the agent found the warehouse empty. A hundred-some-odd people had mysteriously disappeared.”

“And he thinks they were smuggled on board the ship?”

“The Star is a large container ship with the capacity to hide a hundred warm bodies, and its destination is the port of Sun-gari in Louisiana. There seems little doubt that she's another one of Qin Shang's illegal-immigrant smuggling vessels.”

“They make me this time,” said Julia seriously, “and I'll be shark bait in less time than it takes to tell about it.”

“The risk is not as high as you think,” Harper assured her. “You won't be working alone like you did on the Indigo Star. You'll carry a concealed radio and be monitored every minute. Backup will be no less than a mile away.”

When it came to daring the unknown, Julia was as fearless as any man, more so than most. Her adrenaline was already rising at the thought of walking a tightrope.

“There is one problem,” she said quietly.

“What is that?”

A little grimace twisted the shapely red mouth. “My mother and father taught me gourmet cooking. I've never prepared basic slop in quantity before.”

THE MORNING WAS BRIGHT WITH A HIGH CLEAR SKY FLECKED by small cloud puffs scattered about like popcorn spilled on a blue carpet as Pitt leveled out the little Skyfox flying boat and flew over the terminal buildings and docks of Sungari. He circled and made several passes, skimming less than a hundred feet above the tops of the big cranes that were lifting wooden cargo crates from the holds of the only freighter moored along an otherwise deserted dock. The merchant ship was sandwiched between the dock and a barge with a towboat.

“Must be a slow business day,” observed Giordino from the copilot's seat.

“One ship offloading cargo at a port facility built to handle an entire fleet,” said Pitt.

“Qin Shang Maritime Limited's profit-and-loss ledger must be awash in red ink.”

“What do you make of the barge?” asked Pitt.

“Looks like trash day. The crew appears to be throwing plastic sacks over the side into the barge.”

“See any signs of security?”

“The place sits in the middle of a swamp,” said Giordino staring down into the surrounding marshlands. “The only duty for security guards would be to shoo off itinerant alligators, which I hear are hunted around these parts.”

“A big business,” Pitt said. “Their skins are used for shoes, boots and purses. Hopefully, laws will be passed to restrict the alligator killing long before they become an endangered species.”

“That tugboat and garbage barge are beginning to pull away from the hull of the freighter. Make a swing over them when they get into open water.”

“Not tugboat, you mean towboat.”

“A misnomer. Why call them towboats when they push instead of pull barges through inland waterways?”

“A collection of connecting barges is called a tow, hence, towboat.”

“They should be called pushboats,” Giordino grumbled.

“I'll take your suggestion up at the next river pilot's annual high-water ball. Maybe they'll give you a free pass on a ferryboat.”

“I already get one of those every time I buy ten gallons of gas.”

“Coming around.” Pitt tilted the control column slightly, banking the Lockheed Skyfox two-seater jet aircraft and leveling out for a few hundred yards before flying over the five-story-high towboat with its square bow burrowed against the stern of a single barge. A man stepped from the towboat's wheelhouse and furiously motioned the aircraft away. As the Skyfox skimmed over the towboat, Giordino caught a quick glimpse of a dirty, unfriendly look on a face that harbored suspicions.

“The captain acts paranoid about prying eyes.” “Maybe we should drop him a note asking directions to Ireland,” Pitt said facetiously as he banked the Skyfox for another pass. Formerly a military jet trainer, the aircraft was purchased by NUMA and modified for water landings with a waterproof hull and retractable floats. With twin jet engines mounted on the fuselage behind the wings and cockpit, the Skyfox was often used by NUMA personnel when one of their larger executive jets was not required, and because it could land and take off from water, it was especially useful for offshore transportation.

This time Pitt came in no more than thirty feet over the towboat's funnel and electronic gear, which sprouted from the roof of the wheelhouse. As they flashed past the boat and over the barge, Giordino spotted a pair of men throwing themselves prone amid the trash bags in an effort to make themselves indiscernible.

“I've got two men carrying automatic rifles who made a bad job of trying to look invisible,” Giordino announced as calmly as if he was calling guests to dinner. “Methinks there is skulduggery afoot.”

“We've seen all we're going to see,” said Pitt. “Time to meet up with Rudi and the Marine Denizen.” He made a sweeping turn and set the Skyfox on a course down the Atcha-falaya River toward Sweet Bay Lake. The research ship soon came into view, and he lowered the flaps and dropped the floats in preparation for landing. He flared the aircraft, allowing it gently to kiss the calm water and throw up a light sheet of spray from the floats. Then Pitt taxied alongside the research ship and killed the engines.

Giordino raised the canopy and waved up to Rudi Gunn and Captain Frank Stewart, who were standing at the railing. Stew-art turned and shouted an order. The boom from the ship's crane swung around until it was hovering over the Skyfox. The cable was lowered and Giordino attached the hook and lines to the lifting rings on the top of the aircraft's wings and fuselage before catching guy ropes from the crew. A signal was given and the crane's engine shifted into gear and hoisted up the Skyfox. Water fell in cascades from the hull and floats as the Coast Guard crew manning the guy ropes pulled the aircraft into the proper attitude. Once clearance was achieved, the crane swung the aircraft over the side and lowered it onto a landing pad on the stern deck next to the ship's helicopter. Pitt and Giordino climbed from the cockpit and shook hands with Gunn and Stewart.

“We watched through binoculars,” said Stewart. “If you had circled Sungari any lower you could have rented a headset and cassette and taken a self-guided tour of the place.”

“See anything interesting from the air?” asked Gunn.

“Odd that you should mention that,” said Giordino. “I do believe we just might have viewed something we weren't supposed to.”

“Then you've seen more than we have,” muttered Stewart.

Pitt gazed at a pelican that folded its wings and dove cleanly into the water, emerging with a small fish in its scooplike beak.

“The admiral told us that you failed to find any openings in the landfill casings under the docks before their security snatched your AUV.”

“Not so much as a crack,” admitted Gunn. “If Qin Shang is planning on smuggling illegal aliens through Sungari, it isn't from a ship through underground tunnels to the warehouse terminals.”

“You warned us they could be cagey,” said Stewart. “And, we found out the hard way. Now NUMA is out an expensive piece of equipment and we don't dare ask for it back.”

Gunn said bleakly, “We've accomplished nothing. All we've done for the last forty-eight hours is stare at empty docks and vacant buildings.”

Pitt placed a hand on Gunn's shoulder. “Cheer up, Rudi. While we stand here feeling sorry for ourselves for acting deaf, dumb and blind, a boatload of illegal immigrants from China was offloaded at Sungari and are now on their way inland to a staging center.”

Gunn stared into Pitt's eyes, startled, and saw them twinkle. “So tell us what you saw.”

“The towboat and barges that left Sungari a short time ago,” replied Pitt. “Al observed a couple of men on board the barges who were carrying weapons. When we passed over them they tried to hide.”

“Nothing shady about a towboat crew carrying arms,” said Stewart. “It's a fairly common practice if they're transporting valuable cargo.”

“Valuable?” Pitt said, laughing. “The cargo was trash and garbage thrown off the ship that had accumulated after a long voyage across the sea. Armed men weren't on the barge to protect trash, they were there to keep their human cargo from escaping.”

“How could you know that?” asked Gunn.

“A process of elimination.” Pitt began to feel good. He was on a roll. “At the present time, the only way in and out of Sungari is by ocean ships and riverboats. The ships smuggle in the immigrants, but there is no way to secretly transport them to a staging area for dispersion around the country. And you've proven they're not herded from the ships through hidden passages under the docks and warehouses. So they must be carried inland by barges.”

“Not possible,” stated Stewart flat out. “Customs and immigration agents come on board the minute the ship docks and search it from bow to stern. All cargo must be offloaded and stored in the warehouses for inspection. Every bag of trash is examined. So how do Qin Shang's people deceive the inspectors?”

“I believe the illegal immigrants are secretly housed in an underwater craft beneath the hull of the merchant ship that transported them from China. After the ship comes into port, the submerged craft is somehow transferred under the barge tied alongside to receive the trash and garbage. While this is going on, the customs and immigration agents do their job but find no evidence of illegal immigrants. Then, moving to a landfill up the Atchafalaya River to dispose of the trash, they make a stop at some out-of-the-way place to disembark the aliens.”

Gunn looked like a blind man whose sight had suddenly been restored by a faith healer in a revivalist tent. “You figured that out by simply flying over a garbage barge?”

“A theory at best,” Pitt said modestly.

“But a theory that can easily be verified,” pointed out Stewart.

“Then we're wasting time talking,” said Gunn excitedly. “We put a launch over the side and follow the towboat. You and Al can keep an eye on them from the air.”

“Worst thing we could do,” cut in Giordino. “We've already put them on guard by buzzing the barge. The towboat captain will know if he's being tailed. I vote we lay low temporarily and play inconspicuous.”

“Al's right,” said Pitt. “The smugglers are not dumb. They have calculated every option. Their uncanny intelligence sources in Washington may have already given the Sungari security force photographs of everyone on board the Marine Denizen. It's best we take our time and keep any scouting expedition as discreet as possible.”

“Shouldn't we at least notify the INS?” inquired Steward seriously.

Pitt shook his head. “Not until we can show them hard evidence.”

“There's another problem,” Giordino added. “Dirk and I are prohibited from working your side of the street.”

Gunn grinned perceptively. “Admiral Sandecker told me. You're AWOL from a government safe house in Maine.”

“They've probably got an all-points bulletin out on me for fleeing across state lines,” Giordino said, laughing.

“So what do we do to keep busy?” asked Stewart. “And for how long?”

“Keep the Marine Denizen anchored right where she is for now,” Pitt ordered. “After Qin Shang's security people stole your AUV, any cover you had as an innocent NUMA research project was blown. Maintain observation of Sungari as close as you can anchor.”

“If they're onto us, wouldn't it be better to move the ship further downriver toward the Gulf?”

Pitt gave a negative shake of his head. “I don't think so. Stay in close. I'm betting they're overconfident and think their smuggling tactics and strategy are undetectable and foolproof. Qin Shang believes he is untouchable. Let him go right on thinking Chinese are artful and crafty devils while Americans all attend village-idiot school. Meanwhile, Al and I mount a little clandestine operation of our own upriver and pinpoint the staging center. Immigration agents will want to know where the smuggled aliens are unloaded and held before boarding buses or trucks for circulation around the country.” Pitt paused. “Any questions, any comments?”

“If you've pegged Qin Shang's modus operandi,” Stewart said happily, “we're halfway home.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” said Gunn. “How should we proceed?”

“Subterfuge will be the order of the day,” explained Pitt. “Al and I will move into Morgan City, merge in with the locals and charter a fishing boat. Then head up the Atchafalaya and search out the staging center.”

“You'll probably need a guide,” Stewart suggested. “There are a thousand inlets, sloughs and bayous between here and the canal locks above Baton Rouge. Not being familiar with the river could cost you much time and wasted effort.”

“Good thinking,” agreed Giordino. “I do not wish to go off and perish in a quagmire and become a mystery like Amelia Earhart.”

“Little danger of that,” Stewart said, smiling.

“Detailed topographical maps should be the only guide we'll need.” Pitt nodded at the Marine Denizen's captain. “We'll keep you apprised of location and any progress over my satellite phone. You alert us to the next departure of the barge and towboat from the next ship to hit port.”

“Won't hurt for you to pass on the information regarding the United States too,” added Giordino. “I'd like to be around when she docks at Sungari.”

Gunn and Stewart exchanged confused looks. “The United States isn't bound for Sungari,” said Gunn.

Pitt's green eyes narrowed and his shoulders stiffened slightly. “I've heard nothing from Admiral Sandecker. Where did you get that bit of information?”

“The local newspaper,” answered Stewart. “We send a launch up to Morgan City once a day for any needed supplies. Whoever volunteers for the trip always brings back a newspaper. The story has been big news around Louisiana.”

“What story?” Pitt demanded.

“You haven't been told?” asked Gunn.

“Haven't been told what?”

“The United States,” Gunn muttered quietly. “She's heading up the Mississippi to New Orleans, where she's going to be remodeled into a hotel and gambling casino.”

Both Pitt and Giordino looked as if they had been told their life's savings had vanished. Giordino twisted his mouth in a wry grimace. “It seems, old buddy, that we have been led down the garden path.”

“That we have.” When Pitt spoke again his voice carried a windchill factor of minus twenty, and he smiled a grim smile that seemed to portend something. “But then, things aren't always what they seem.”

LATER THE SAME AFTERNOON, THE COAST GUARD CUTTER Weehawken moved easily over the low, breeze-ruffled waves and slowed as the order came down from the wheelhouse to the engine room to reduce speed. Captain Duane Lewis peered through his binoculars at the big container ship that was approaching from the south less than a nautical mile away. His expression was calm and relaxed, his cap tilted slightly back over a thicket of sandy hair. He lowered the glasses, revealing deep-set ivory brown eyes. He turned and smiled thinly at the woman standing beside him on the bridge wing who was dressed in the uniform of the United States Coast Guard.

“There's your ship,” he said in a bass voice, “sailing as smugly as a wolf in sheep's clothing. She looks innocent enough.”

Julia Lee gazed over the railing at the Sung Lien Star. “A deception. God only knows the human suffering that's being endured hidden within her hull.”

She wore no makeup, and a fake scar ran across her chin. Her beautiful long black hair had been cropped short and styled like a man's, and was covered by a ship's baseball cap. In the beginning, she had second thoughts about clandestinely switching roles with Lin Wan Chu, but her burning hatred of Qin Shang, along with an unyielding confidence that she could succeed, made her more determined than ever to make the attempt. She felt a surge of optimism at knowing that she was not alone hi this mission.

Lewis turned and aimed the binoculars toward the flat green shoreline and the mouth of the lower Atchafalaya River only three miles away. Except for a few shrimp boats, the water was empty. He gestured at a young officer standing at his side. “Lieutenant Stowe, signal her to come to a stop and stand by for a boarding inspection.”

“Aye, sir,” acknowledged Stowe as he stepped into the radio room. Tanned, blond and tall, Jefferson Stowe had the boyish good looks of a tennis instructor.

The Weehawken heeled slightly in response to her rudder as the helmsman brought the cutter around on a parallel course with the container ship that was flying the flag of the People's Republic of China. The decks were piled high with containers, and yet she rode strangely high in the water, Lewis observed. “Did they reply?” he asked loud enough to be heard across the wheelhouse.

“They answered in Chinese,” Stowe called from the radio room.

“Shall I translate?” offered Julia.

“It's a dodge,” Lewis said with a grin. “Half the foreign ships we stop have a habit of acting dumb. Most of their officers speak better English than we do.”

Lewis waited patiently as the seventy-six-millimeter Mark 75 remote-controlled, rapid-firing gun on the bow turned and ominously aimed its muzzle at the container ship. “Please inform the captain, in English, to stop engines or I will fire into his bridge.”

Stowe returned to the bridge wing with a smile stretched across his lips. “The captain answered in English,” he said. “He reports he is stopping.”

As if to underscore the compliance, the foam that spilled from around the bows fell away as the big container ship slowly drifted to a stop. Lewis looked at Julia with care written in his eyes. “Ready, Ms. Lee?”

She nodded. “Ready as I'll ever be.”

“You've checked your radio.” It was a statement rather than a question.

Julia glanced down at where the miniature radio was taped inside the cleavage of her breasts under her bra. “Working perfectly.” Without being obvious, she pressed her legs together, feeling the little .25-caliber automatic that was strapped to the inside of her right thigh. A short Smith & Wesson First Response knife, whose blade could spring open in an eye blink and was strong enough to rip through sheet metal, was taped to her biceps under the sleeve of her uniform.

“Keep your transmitter on so we can monitor your every word,” said Lewis. “The Weehawken will remain within range of your radio until the Sung Lien Star docks at Sungari and you signal that you are ready to be picked up. Hopefully the substitution will go as planned, but should you encounter a problem after you take the cook's identity, call out and we'll come running. I'll also have our helicopter and crew in the air ready to drop on board.”

“I appreciate your concern, Captain.” Julia paused, turned slightly and motioned to a burly man with a walrus mustache whose deep-set gray eyes peered from under the brim of a baseball cap. “Chief Cochran has been a dream to work with during our rehearsals for the switch.”

“Chief Mickey Cochran has been called many names,” said Lewis, laughing, “but never a dream.”

“I'm sorry for putting everyone to so much trouble,” Julia said softly.

“All on board the Weehawken feel responsible for your safety. Admiral Ferguson gave me strict orders to protect you regardless of the consequences. I don't envy you your job, Ms. Lee. But I promise we will do everything in our power to keep you out of harm's way.”

She looked away, her face very controlled despite the tears forming in her eyes. “Thank you,” she said simply. “Thank them all for me.”

As Stowe gave the order to swing out the cutter's launch, Captain Lewis looked down at Julia and said, “It's time.” Then he firmly shook her hand. “God bless, and best of luck.”

Captain Li Hung-chang of the Sung Lien Star was not unduly annoyed at being stopped by the American Coast Guard and boarded. He had expected it long before now. He had been warned by Qin Shang Maritime directors that the United States's immigration agents were stepping up their efforts to halt the rise in illegal-alien smuggling. He felt impervious to any threat. The most diligent inspection would never discover the second hull attached beneath the bilges and keel of his ship that housed three hundred immigrants. Despite the cramped and insufferable conditions, he had not lost one. Hung-chang was assured that a generous Qin Shang would reward him with a fat bonus after his return to China, as in the past. This was his sixth voyage combining the legal transportation of cargo with smuggling, and already his compensation had built a fine house for his family in the upper-class section of Beijing.

He watched the bow wave fall off the Coast Guard cutter, his expression calm and outwardly relaxed. Hung-chang was still in his late forties, yet his hair was a gleaming salt-and-pepper under the sun, though his narrow mustache was still black. He stared through kindly-grandfather, dark-amber eyes, his lips tight with silence as the two ships drifted closer. Then a boat was lowered and began to motor toward the Sung Lien Star. He nodded to his first officer.

“Go to the boarding ladder and greet our guests. About ten by the look of it. Give them your fullest cooperation and allow them free access throughout the ship.”

Then, as calm and relaxed as if he was sitting in the garden of his home, Captain Li Hung-chang ordered a cup of tea from the galley and watched the Weehawken's boarding party climb onto the deck of his ship and begin their inspection.

Lieutenant Stowe paid his respects to Captain Hung-chang on the bridge and requested to see the ship's papers and manifest. The crew from the Coast Guard cutter began to split up, four searching the ship's compartments, three examining the cargo containers, and another three who headed for the crew's quarters. The Chinese acted indifferently to the intrusion and paid little attention to the three coast guardsmen who seemed more interested in the ship's mess, particularly the galley, instead of their individual cabins.

Only two of the Sung Lien Star's crew were present in the mess room. Both were dressed in the white uniform and hats of galley workers. They sat around a table, one reading a Chinese newspaper while the other spooned a bowl of soup. Neither protested when Chief Cochran, using sign language, asked them to step into the passageway while a search of the dining area was conducted.

Disguised as one of the Coast Guard boarding crew, Julia walked directly into the galley, where she found Lin Wan Chu dressed in white shirt and pants leaning over a stove, a long wooden spoon in one hand, stirring a large copper vat of boiling shrimp. Under her captain's orders to cooperate with the Coast Guard inspectors, she looked up from the steam rising from the vat and flashed a toothy, friendly smile. She went on working unconcerned as Julia walked behind her, eyes routinely darting into pantries and storerooms.

Lin Wan Chu did not sense the needle of the syringe enter the flesh of her back. After a few seconds her eyes took on a puzzled look as the steam over the vat suddenly seemed to thicken into a dense cloud. Then a solid blackness swept over her. Much later, when she awoke on board the Weehawken, her first thought was whether she had overboiled the shrimp.

In less than a minute and a half, and thanks to the results of well-practiced exercise, Julia was dressed in the cook's white kitchen clothes while Lin Wan Chu lay on the deck in the uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard. Another thirty seconds passed as Julia cut short the cook's hair before pulling a baseball cap with the Coast Guard insignia and the word Weehawken down over Lin Wan Chu's head. “Take her away,” Julia said to Cochran, who was patiently guarding the doorway to the passage outside.

Cochran and the other member of his boarding party quickly picked up the Chinese cook, one on each side, and hung her arms over their shoulders so her head would sag on her chest and make identification difficult. The baseball cap was pulled down over her face before he gave Julia a final nod and said softly, so only she could hear, “I wish you a great performance.” Then they half-dragged, half-carried, Lin Wan Chu back to the boarding launch.

Julia picked up the wooden spoon and continued stirring the boiling shrimp as if she'd been at it all afternoon.

“One of your men seems to have injured himself,” said Captain Hung-chang at seeing the boarding party lower a limp body into the launch.

“The fool didn't watch where he was going and cracked his head on an overhead pipe,” Stowe explained. “Probably has a concussion.”