He stepped across a narrow wooden pier leading from the beach to a boathouse that floated on the water. He selected a key on a ring and sprung the heavy padlock sealing the weatherworn wooden door. The interior was dark. No bugs or cameras in here, he thought as he pushed the door wide open. Suspended over the water by cradles attached to an electric hoist, a little ten-foot sailboat and a twenty-one-foot 1933 Chris-Craft runabout with a double cockpit and a gleaming mahogany hull hung inside the boathouse. Two kayaks and a canoe sat in racks along both walls.
He walked over to an electric-circuit box and snapped on a single breaker. Then he took the control unit that was wired to the hoist and pushed a button. The hoist whirred as it moved over the sailboat. Pitt slid the hook that dangled from the hoist though a metal loop on the cradle and lowered it. For the first time in many months, the sailboat's fiberglass hull settled into the water.
Pitt removed the neatly folded sails from a locker and assembled the aluminum mast and added the rigging. Then he set the tiller in its spindles and inserted the centerboard. After nearly half an hour, the little boat was ready to fill her sails with wind. Only the mast had to be stepped, a small chore that could only take place after the hull was pushed from under the roof of the boathouse.
Satisfied everything was in order, Pitt casually walked back to the cabin and unpacked one of the two large cartons air-expressed by Yaeger. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the chart of Orion Lake he had requested. The depth soundings showed the lake bed sloping gently from the shore, then leveling off for a short distance at a depth of thirty feet before dropping off steeply in the middle of the lake to over four hundred feet. Far too deep for a diver without the proper equipment and a surface crew, Pitt figured. No man-made obstructions were marked. The only wreck shown was an old fishing boat that had sunk off the cannery. The lake's average water temperature was forty-one degrees Fahrenheit, far too cold for swimming but ideal for fishing and boating.
Pitt barbecued an elk steak for an early dinner, mixed a salad and ate at a table on the porch overlooking the lake. He leisurely sipped an Olympia beer before setting the bottle on the table and stepping into the kitchen, where he extended the tripod legs on a brass telescope. He set it in the middle of the kitchen away from the window to make it difficult for anyone from the outside to observe his activity in the shadows. He crouched over the eyepiece and focused on Qin Shang's retreat. The high-powered magnification made it possible for Pitt to observe two players on the golf course behind the house. Duffers, he deduced. They took four putts apiece to send their balls into the cup. His circular field of vision strayed to the guesthouses nestled under a grove of trees growing behind the main house. Except for a maid making the rounds, they looked unoccupied. There was no neatly manicured lawn in the open spaces. The grounds were left natural with meadow grass and wildflowers.
A huge porte cochere extended from the building over the driveway so VIP guests could get in and out of automobiles without getting wet in bad weather. The main entry was guarded by two great bronze reclining lions on each side of a stairway that led to rosewood doors standing the height of three men. He refocused the telescope and discerned the beautifully carved dragon motif on the panels. The expansive golden-tiled, pagoda-styled roof seemed utterly incongruous with the walls of copper-tinted solar glass that wrapped the entire lower structure. The three-story house itself was set in a spacious clearing a stone's throw from the shoreline.
He lowered the telescope a fraction and studied the dock that extended half the length of a football field into the waters of the lake. Two boats were tied alongside. Nothing fancy about the smaller one. The stubby twin catamaran hulls held a large, boxlike cabin with no portholes or windows. A wheelhouse was perched on the roof, and the entire vessel was painted as black as a hearse, not a color often seen on the upperworks of a boat. The second could have qualified as a ship. She was a looker, an elegant motor yacht with a skylounge on a hull over 120 feet in length, the kind that stopped people in their tracks. Pitt estimated her beam at nearly thirty feet. Designed for luxurious comfort, her classic lines enhanced her from a mere yacht to a floating masterwork. Probably built either in Singapore or Hong Kong, Pitt guessed. Even with a shallow draft, it would take a good pilot to navigate her through the river running from the lake to open water.
As he watched, diesel smoke trailed from the stack of the work boat. In a few moments its crew cast off the mooring lines, and it began moving across the lake toward the river outlet. A very strange craft, Pitt thought. It looked like a wooden shipping crate on two pontoons. He could not begin to imagine what its builder had in mind.
On land, except for the maid and two golfers, the premises looked deserted. There was no hint of security systems. He could find no visible sign of mounted video cameras, but he knew they had to be there. No guards patrolling the grounds either, unless they had learned the art of invisibility. The only objects that seemed out of place with the landscape were several windowless structures built out of logs. Similar to the hostel-type huts used by hunters and hikers, they were spaced at strategic locations around the lake. He counted three and guessed that more were hidden in the woods. The third one seemed curiously mislaid. It floated at the end of the dock and looked like a small boathouse. As with the strange black boat, there were no windows or doors. He gazed at it for nearly a full minute, trying to fathom its purpose and speculate on what was inside.
A slight shift in the telescope, and the focal point of his interest was rewarded. Only a small piece showed from behind a stand of spruce. Not much, but enough to lay to rest his curiosity about the security setup. The roof of a neatly hidden recreation vehicle revealed a small forest of antennae and reception dishes. In a short clearing beyond, what appeared to be a small aircraft hangar sat beside a narrow runway that was only fifty yards in length. Definitely not the sort of layout that would facilitate the use of a helicopter. Ultralight aircraft, perhaps? Pitt conjectured. Yes, that had to be the answer.
"A state-of-the-art setup," he muttered softly to himself.
And a state-of-the-art setup it was, too. He recognized the RV as a mobile command post of the type that presidential Secret Service agents often operated from when the President traveled away from Washington. Pitt began to understand the purpose of the log huts. The next step was to provoke a response.
It seemed silly to go to so much effort out of bored inquisitiveness. He had yet to receive Yaeger's report. For all he knew, Shang was a humanitarian, a philanthropist and a spiritual inspiration, someone Pitt could respect. Pitt wasn't an investigator, he was a marine engineer. Most of his work took place beneath the sea. Why he even bothered was a mystery. But a tiny flag went up in his mind. Shang's lifestyle didn't hold water. This wouldn't be the first time Pitt had meddled in something that didn't concern him. The most compelling reason to jump in was that Pitt's intuition was almost always right on the money.
As if on cue, the tone on his Iridium phone sounded. Only Hiram Yaeger knew his code. He stepped a safe distance outside the cabin before answering. "Hiram?"
"Your boy Shang is a real piece of work," Yaeger said without preamble.
"What have you got on him?" asked Pitt.
"This guy lives like a Roman emperor. Huge entourage. Palatial homes around the world, yachts, a bevy of gorgeous women, jet aircraft, an army of security people. If ever someone qualified for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, it's Shang."
"What did you learn about his operations?"
"Damned little. Every time Max-"
"Max?"
"Max is my buddy. He lives inside my computer."
"If you say so. Go on."
"Every time Max tried to get into a data file with Shang's name on it, computers from just about every intelligence agency in town blocked our inquiries and demanded to know our business. It seems you're not the only one interested in this guy."
"Sounds like we opened a can of worms," said Pitt. "Why would our own government throw a security
lock around Shang?"
"My impression is our intelligence agencies are conducting a classified investigation and don't appreciate an outside probe slipping under their fence."
"The plot thickens. Shang can't be pure as the driven snow if he's under a secret government investigation."
"Either that or they're protecting him."
"Which is it?"
"Beats me," admitted Yaeger. "Until Max and I can carry out a heavy hacking project into the proper data sources, I'm in the dark as much as you are. All I can tell you is that he's not the second coming of the Messiah. Shang slithers around the world like an eel, making enormous profits from a myriad of what appear to be perfectly legal enterprises."
"Are you saying you have no evidence that he's involved with an organized-crime group?"
"Nothing shows on the surface," answered Yaeger. "Which doesn't mean he can't operate as an independent."
"Maybe he's Fu Manchu reincarnated," said Pitt lightly.
"Mind telling what you have against him?"
"His flunkies tossed my cabin. I'm not keen on strangers probing about my underwear."
"There is one thing you'd find interesting," said Yaeger.
"I'm listening."
"Not only do you and Shang have the same birthday, but you were born in the same year. Under his culture Shang was born in the year of the rat. In yours, under the sign of Cancer."
"That's the best the finest computer whiz in the business can come up with?" Pitt said dryly.
"I wish I had more to offer," Yaeger said regretfully. "I'll keep trying."
"I can ask no more."
"What do you plan to do now?"
"There isn't much I can do," said Pitt, "except go fishing."
He didn't fool Yaeger for an instant. "Watch your back," Yaeger said seriously, "or you may find yourself up that famous foul-smelling creek without means of propulsion."
"I'll be my old, usual cagey self."
He punched off the CALL button, reached up and set the Indium phone in the fork of a tree. Not the greatest of hiding places, but better than allowing it to lie around the cabin in the event of another search while he was away.
Pitt hated brushing off Yaeger's loyal concern, but it was better the head computer guru at NUMA knew as little as possible. For what Pitt was about to do he could get arrested. And if he wasn't careful, the probability was even greater of getting shot. He only hoped to God there were no unforeseen consequences. He had a leaden feeling in the pit of his stomach that if he made a mistake, his body might never be found.
There were two hours of daylight left when Pitt walked the dock to the boathouse. In his arms he carried a jumbo-sized ice chest and a large mounted salmon that had hung over the cabin's fireplace mantel. Once inside he opened the ice chest and lifted out a small autonomous underwater vehicle built by Benthos Inc., an undersea systems technology designer. Inside a black housing no more than twenty-five inches in length by six inches wide, the AUV held a high-resolution color video camera. Its battery power supply could propel two counterrotating thrusters for slightly over two hours.
Pitt laid the compact little unit in the bottom of the sailboat along with a fishing rod and a tackle box. Next he opened the outer doors to the boathouse, climbed down and took his place at the tiller. Pushing off the dock with a boat hook until it was free of the boathouse, he stepped the mast, raised the sail and lowered the centerboard.
To an observing eye he looked like a garden-variety businessman on holiday leisurely sailing on the lake. The climate was pleasant but cool, and he was dressed warmly in a red wool lumberman's shirt and khaki pants. On his feet he wore sneakers and sweat socks. The only contrast with serious fishermen was that they would have used a powerboat or a rowboat with an outboard motor to go after salmon and trout, certainly not a sailboat. Pitt chose the slower of the two boats because the sail made a good shield from any video cameras at the resort.
He propelled the little craft further away from the boathouse by pushing the tiller back and forth until the afternoon breeze filled the sail, and he began gliding across the blue-green waters of Orion Lake. He tacked easily, skirting the deserted shoreline while keeping a respectful distance from the huge home at the lower end of the lake. In the deepest part of the lake less than a quarter mile from Shang's boat dock, Pitt came into the wind and dropped the sail, leaving just enough raised to flap in the breeze and hide his movements. The rope on the anchor was not nearly long enough to reach the bottom, but he lowered it as far as it could reach to act as a drag to keep the wind from pushing the sailboat too close to shore.
With the lowered sail facing one shore and his back to the opposite, he leaned over the side and peered into a bucket with a transparent bottom. The water was so crystal clear that Pitt could see a school of salmon swimming a good hundred and fifty feet below. Then he opened a fishing tackle box and removed a hook and lead sinkers. The only fish Pitt had caught in the past thirty years, he caught underwater with a spear gun. He hadn't held a rod and reel in his hands since he fished with his father, Senator George Pitt, off the coast of California when he was a young boy. Still, he managed to tie on lead sinkers, slip an unfortunate night crawler over a hook and cast it into the deep.
While under the pretense of fishing, he also uncoiled a reel of thin wire and placed a coffee cup-sized transponder that sent and received electronic signals over the side of the sailboat. He lowered it to a depth of twenty feet to assure that it was out of the acoustic shadow of the boat's hull. A similarly sized transponder was housed in the aft end of the AUV. These two units and the electronics inside the AUV casing formed the heart of the system by talking to each other acoustically, allowing underwater control and video signals to be received by a small recorder.
Next, he removed the AUV from the ice chest, carefully lowered it into the water and watched as it silently slipped beneath the surface, its black casing giving the appearance of some ugly creature from the abyss. Pitt had over two hundred hours operating tethered robotic underwater vehicles, but this was only the second time he had operated an autonomous system. His mouth felt slightly on the dry side as he watched the little vehicle that had cost NUMA two million dollars sink out of sight into the lake. The autonomous underwater system was a marvel of miniaturization and for the first time enabled NUMA scientists to send a robotic unit into areas that were previously impossible to reach.
He unfolded a laptop computer with an oversized, high-resolution, active-matrix display, and powered up the system. Satisfied a secure acoustic link was established, he scrolled through the control menus and selected a combination of "remote and live video." Under normal circumstances he would have preferred to concentrate on a live video display of the images recorded by the camera under the water, but this trip it was vital that he focus his attention on the events that he hoped to incite at the retreat. He intended only to view the progress of the AUV from time to time to keep it on course.
He moved the joystick on a small remote handbox. The vehicle immediately responded and went into a dive. The acoustic telemetry and control system performed flawlessly, and the vehicle shot forward at almost four knots. The counterrotating thrusters were balanced perfectly, preventing the vehicle from corkscrewing through the water.
"Every move a picture," Pitt said, staring in the direction of Shang's retreat as he stretched out on a pair of vinyl seat cushions that doubled as safety floats should the boat's occupants be thrown in the water. Then he propped his feet on a bench seat and nestled the remote-control box of the AUV between his legs. Using the levers and joystick on the remote he directed the vehicle's movements like a model submarine. He leveled it out at a depth of sixty feet and worked it slowly toward Shang's boat dock, sweeping it back and forth as though he were plowing a field.
To the uninformed it might have looked as if Pitt was playing with a toy, but the exercise was more than a game. He meant to test Shang's security systems. The first experiment was to detect any underwater se
nsors. After running several lines that gradually closed to within ten yards of the boat dock with no response, it seemed apparent Shang's security systems did not extend into the lake. They apparently failed to consider penetration from the water as a threat.
It's show time, Pitt thought silently. He pulled gently on the lever that sent the AUV rising to the surface. The little submersible broke water in plain sight a few yards to one side of the dock. He timed the response. Surprisingly, a full three minutes passed before the walls on the windowless huts swung up and guards with Steyr tactical machine pistols slung over their shoulders came charging out across the grounds on off-road motorcycles. They looked to Pitt like Chinese-made copies of the Japanese Suzuki RM 250cc supercross bike. They spread out in formation and took up positions along the sandy beach. Thirty seconds later, the wall on the hut at the end of the floating dock facing the lake also flew open as two guards riding Chinese-built personal watercraft, these designed along the lines of the Japanese Kawasaki Jet Ski, sprinted after the AUV.
Not what Pitt called a rapid deployment. He expected better from veteran security specialists. Even the ultralights remained hidden in their hangar. It seemed the incursion by the AUV did not warrant an all-out search effort.
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