"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."
30
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 in 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. "
lease 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. "
robably has a concussion."
"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.
31
JULIA HAD TO STRUGGLE to decipher Lin 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. He 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 their 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 there 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.
C
almly, 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 companionway 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.
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