Flood Tide Page 16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Thank you, my dear, for your extraordinary insight."

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

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

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

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

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

  "So, Mr. Dirk Pitt, you are the man responsible for the disaster at Orion Lake," said Qin Shang, speaking to the photograph as though Pitt were standing in the room before him. "Your motive for destroying my immigrant staging area and yacht is as yet a mystery to me. But I have this to say to you: You have qualities that I respect, but you have come to the end of your career. The next addendum and final postscript to your file will be your obituary."

  13

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

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

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

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

  "How about the rest of the damage? Is it reparable?"

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

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

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

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

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

  "Shall I stay?" asked the nurse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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