Flood Tide

“Have you found anything interesting aboard my ship?” asked Hung-chang.

“No sir, your ship is clean.”

“Always happy to oblige the American authorities,” said Hung-chang condescendingly.

“Your destination is Sungari?”

“According to my sailing orders and the documents provided by Qin Shang Maritime.”

“You may get under way as soon as we're clear,” said Stowe, giving the Chinese captain a courtesy salute. “I regret that we had to detain you.”

Twenty minutes after the Coast Guard launch had pulled away, the pilot boat arrived from Morgan City and swung alongside the Sung Lien Star. The pilot climbed aboard and made his way up to the bridge. Soon the container ship was moving through the deep-water channel of the lower Atchafalaya River and across Sweet Bay Lake toward the docks of Sungari.

Captain Hung-chang stood on the bridge wing beside the Cajun pilot as he took the automated helm and expertly guided the ship through the marshlands. Out of curiosity Hung-chang peered through a pair of binoculars at the turquoise ship anchored just out of the channel. Bold letters across the hull designated the vessel as a research ship belonging to the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Hung-chang had often seen them on scientific marine expeditions during his voyages around the world. He idly wondered what manner of experiments they were conducting here on the Atchafalaya River below Sungari.

As he panned the glasses along the deck of the research ship, he suddenly stopped and found himself peering at a tall man with thick, curly black hair who was staring back through his own binoculars. What struck Li Hung-chang odd was that the crewman on the research vessel wasn't focused on the container ship itself.

He seemed to be studying the wake directly behind the stern.

JULIA HAD TO STRUGGLE TO DECIPHER LlN WAN CHU'S MENUS and recipes. Although Han Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, there are several different dialects reflected by regional differences. Julia's mother taught her to read, write and speak Mandarin, the most important of these, when she was a young girl. She had learned the most widespread of the three Mandarin variants, known as the Peking dialect. Because Lin Wan Chu had grown up in Jiangsu Province, she wrote and spoke another variant of Mandarin, the Nanking dialect. Fortunately, there were enough similarities for Julia to fake it and get by. As she worked over the stove she kept her head down and face away from anyone nearby.

Her two helpers, an assistant cook and a dishwasher/galley cleanup man, showed no sign of suspicion. They went about their business, speaking only when it concerned the evening meal, offering no small talk or gossip from the crew. Julia thought she caught the baker studying her with a peculiar look on his face, but when she ordered him to quit staring and get back to deep-frying wontons, he laughed, made a ribald remark and went back to work.

The stoves and the boiling pots and woks that were vigorously stirred soon turned the galley into a steam bath. Julia could not remember when she had sweat rivers. She drank glass after glass of water to maintain her bodily liquids. She gave a little prayer of thanks at watching the assistant cook take the initiative and prepare the watercress soup and the shredded chicken with bean sprouts. Julia gave a worthy performance of making the roast pork and noodles and the shrimp fried rice.

Captain Hung-chang wandered into the galley briefly for a quick snack of sesame-seed puffs after the Sung Lien Star was safely moored to the dock at Sungari. Then he returned to the bridge to receive the American customs and immigration officials. Fie looked Julia square in the face, but his eyes betrayed no sign other than simple recognition of who he thought was Lin Wan Chu.

Julia joined the rest of the crew as they lined up and produced then- passports to the immigration official who came on board. Ordinarily, the captain would present the documents so the crew could go about their duties, but the INS was particularly strict with vessels entering the port owned by Qin Shang Maritime. The official examined Lin Wan Chu's passport, which Julia had uncovered in the cook's cabin, without looking up at her. All neat and very professional, she thought. By looking her in the face, the official might have made an expression of recognition no matter how inconsequential.

Once the crew cleared immigration, they came down for their evening meal. The galley was located between the officer's wardroom and the crew's mess. As chief cook, Julia served the ship's officers while her assistants ladled out food to the crew. She was anxious to roam about the ship, but until the crew was fed she had to play out her role to avoid suspicion.

Julia remained quiet throughout the meal, scurrying about the galley, occasionally flashing a smile at a crewman as they complimented her on the food and asked for seconds. She did not merely act like Lin Wan Chu; to everyone on board she was Lin Wan Chu. There was no scrutiny, no incredulity. No one took notice of the negligible differences in mannerisms, appearance or speech. To them, she was the same cook who prepared their meals on board the Sung Lien Star since the night they cast off in Qingdao.

Item by item, she went over her mission in her mind. So far things had gone smoothly, but there was a major hang-up. If three hundred illegal immigrants were on board the ship, how were they being fed? Certainly not out of her galley. According to Lin Wan Chu's menu and recipe entries, she only prepared food for thirty crewmen. It didn't make sense for mere to be another shipboard galley to feed passengers. She checked out the storage compartment and lockers, finding the correct amount of food supplies to feed the Sung Lien Star's crew for the voyage from China to Sungari. She began to wonder if Peter Harper's CIA source in Qingdao had been mistaken and somehow gotten the name of the ship confused with another.

Calmly, she sat in Lin Wan Chu's little office and acted as if she was working on the menu for the following day. Out of the corner of one eye she watched as her assistant put away the leftover food in the locker and the cleanup man wiped off the tables before attacking the dirty dishes, pots and pans.

Casually, she left the office and walked through the officer's wardroom and into the passageway, pleased that the two galley men took no notice of her leaving. She climbed a companion-way and stepped out onto the deck below the wheelhouse and bridge wings. Already the big cranes on the dock were swinging into position to unload the containers stacked on the cargo decks.

She looked over the side and watched as a towboat pushed a barge alongside the hull of the ship. The crew looked to be Chinese. Two of them began throwing plastic bags bloated with trash through a cargo hatch into the barge. The procedure was conducted under the scrutiny of a drug-enforcement agent who probed and examined each sack before it was dropped overboard.

The entire dockyard scene appeared completely innocent of any illegitimate activity. Julia could see nothing that raised questions. The ship had been searched by the Coast Guard, customs and immigration officials for illegal aliens and drugs, and nothing illicit had been found. The containers were filled with manufactured trade goods, including clothing, rubber and plastic shoes, children's toys and games, radios and television sets, all produced by cheap Red Chinese labor to the detriment of thousands of American workers who had lost their jobs.

She returned to the galley and filled a bucket with the sesame-seed puffs (scallions and sesame seeds in a dough wrapper) that she knew were a favorite of Captain Hung-chang.

Then she began moving through the bowels of the ship, checking out the compartments below the waterline. Most of the crew were working above, unloading the ship's cargo containers. The few who remained below appeared pleased when she wandered past and offered them a snack from her bucket. She skirted the engine room, reasonably assured no immigrants were hidden there. No chief engineer worth his salt would have permitted passengers near his precious engines.

The only sickening moment of panic occurred when she became lost in the long compartment that held the ship's fuel tanks. She was startled by a crewman who came up behind her and demanded to know what she was doing there. Julia smiled, offered him her sesame-seed puffs and told him that it was the captain's birthday and he wanted everyone to celebrate. The ordinary seaman, having no reason to suspect the ship's cook, gratefully accepted a handful of puffs and smiled happily.

After a fruitless search looking into any compartment of the Sung Lien Star capable of holding and feeding scores of passengers and finding nothing suspicious, she made her way back to the open starboard deck. Standing at the railing as if she was idly wishing she could go ashore, and making certain no one was within earshot, she inserted a small receiver in her ear and began talking into the transmitter between her breasts.