Flood Tide dp-14

by Clive Cussler

  Working the controls of the MiniRover's handbox, Hall slowly sent the ROV along one side of the crane until the camera revealed a clear video image of a hull belonging to a large ship. He worked the ROV along the sides of the hull toward the bow, which still stood perfectly upright, as if the ship had refused to die and still dreamed of sailing the seas. Soon the outline of the ship's name became visible. It looked to have been painted crudely on the raised white gunwale atop the black bow slightly aft of the anchor, which still fit snug in its hawsehole. One by one the letters slid past the screen.

  A doctor will tell you that if your heart stops, you're dead. But it seemed everyone's heart paused for several seconds as the name of the sunken ship passed under the MiniRover's cameras.

  “Princess Yung Thi,” Giordino shouted. “We got her!”

  “The queen of the China Sea,” Julia murmured as if she was in a trance. “She looks so cold and isolated. It's almost as if she was praying we'd come.”

  “I thought you wanted a ship called the Princess Dou Wan,” said Wilbanks.

  “It's a long story,” Pitt replied with a big grin, “but they're one and the same.” He laid one hand on Hall's shoulder. “Move aft, keeping at least ten feet from the side of the ship so we don't entangle our tether and lose the ROV.”

  Hall silently nodded and worked the little joysticks on the handbox that controlled the camera and vehicle movement. Visibility was nearly fifty feet under the vehicle's halogen lights and showed that the exterior of the Princess Dou Wan had changed very little after fifty-two years. The frigid fresh water and deep depth had inhibited marine growth and corrosion.

  The superstructure came into view, looking surprisingly fresh. None of it had collapsed. Only a light coat of silt adhered to the paint, which had dulled somewhat but still appeared surprisingly fresh. The Princess Dou Wan looked like the interior of a haunted, abandoned house that had not been dusted for half a century.

  Hall maneuvered the MiniRover around the bridge. Most of the windows had been smashed from the force of the waves and the pressure of the deep. They could see the engine-room telegraph standing inside, its pointer still set on FULL AHEAD. Only a few fish lived in her now. The crew was no more, most all swept away by frenzied waves when she went down. The

  MiniRover crept alongside the ship on a horizontal course a short distance from the main promenade deck. The lifeboat davits were empty and twisted out, grim evidence of the chaos and terror that occurred that violent night in 1948. Wooden crates, still intact, were lashed down on every square foot of open deck. Her runnel was missing aft of the bridge, but could be seen where it had fallen beside the hull when the ship drove herself into the soft bottom.

  “I'd give anything to see what's inside those packing boxes,” said Julia.

  “Maybe we'll find one that's broken open,” said Pitt without taking his eyes off the screen.

  The hull aft of the superstructure had been ruptured and spread open, the steel twisted and jagged from when she had broken up from the battering of the giant waves. The stem section was completely torn away when the ship plunged under the water. It was as if a giant had squeezed the ship apart and then tossed her broken pieces aside.

  “Looks like mementos from the ship are scattered in a debris field that leads from one part of the wreck to the other,” observed Giordino.

  “Can't be,” said Pitt. “Every nonessential piece was stripped off before she was to go to the scrappers. At the risk of sounding like an irrepressible optimist, I'm betting we're looking at an acre or more of fabulous works of art.”

  On closer inspection the cameras on the MiniRover revealed a sea of wooden crates that had been spilled between the broken sections of the ship when she sank. Pitt's prediction was confirmed when the ROV soared over the debris field and honied in on a strange shape materializing out of the murk. They all stared astonished as a poignant artifact from the distant past slowly rose and met the camera lens. The walls of a large crate had burst open like petals of a rose, exposing a strange shape standing in eerie solitude.

  “What is it?” queried Wilbanks.

  “A bronze life-size horse and rider,” Pitt muttered in awe. “I'm not enough of an expert, but it must be the sculpture of an ancient Chinese emperor from the Han dynasty.”

  “How old do you reckon it is?” asked Hall.

  “Close to two thousand years.”

  The effect of the horse and rider standing proud on the bottom was so profound, they all gazed solemnly at its image on the screen for the next two minutes without speaking. To Julia it was as if she had been carried back in time. The horse's head was turned slightly in the direction of the MiniRover, its nostrils flared. The rider sat stiffly upright, his sightless eyes staring into nothingness.

  “The treasure,” whispered Julia. “It's everywhere.”

  “Steer toward the stern,” Pitt said to Hall.

  “I've got the tether at its maximum length now,” Hall replied. “Ralph will have to move the boat.”

  Wilbanks nodded, measured the distance and direction on the computer, and moved the Divercity, dragging the Mini-Rover until it was sitting atop the detached stern section. Then Hall deftly steered the ROV past the ship's propellers, whose upper blades rose from the silt. The huge rudder was still set on a direct course ahead. The lettering across the stern could be distinctly seen to identify the vessel's home port as Shanghai. The story was the same—the bent and shredded hull plates, the disemboweled engines, the scattered art treasures.

  Midnight came and went as the first humans to lay eyes on the Princess Dou Wan in fifty-two years studied the two broken hulks and their priceless cargo from every angle. When they finally decided that there was no more to see, Hall began reeling in the MiniRover.

  No one tore his gaze away from the screen until long after the MiniRover ascended toward the surface and the Princess Dou Wan was lost to view in the black void. The ship was once again alone on the bottom of the lake, her only companion an unknown sailing ship that rested only a mile away. But the solitude was temporary. Soon men, ships and equipment would be probing her bones and removing the precious cargo she had carried so far across the world and jealously guarded through the years since she steamed from Shanghai.

  The ill-fated voyage of the Princess Dou Wan had not ended, not quite yet. Her epilogue was still to be written,

  HISTORIAN ZHU KWAN

  SAT AT A DESK ON A STAGE IN THE middle of a huge office and studied reports gathered by an international army of researchers hired by Qin Shang. The Princess Dou Wan project took up half of one floor in the Qin Shang Maritime office building in Hong Kong. No expense was spared. And yet, despite the massive effort, nothing of substance had been found. To Zhu Kwan, the loss of the ship remained a mystery.

  Zhu Kwan and his team scouted every maritime source for leads while Qin Shang's survey-and-salvage ship kept up its search of the waters off the coast of Chile for the elusive passenger liner. Built in his Hong Kong shipyard, the vessel was a marvel of undersea technology and the envy of every maritime nation's oceanographic science and research institutions. Named the Jade Adventurer rather than a Chinese name to make documentation simpler when operating in foreign waters, the ship and its crew had previously discovered the wreck of a sixteenth-century junk in the China Sea and salvaged its cargo of Ming-dynasty porcelain.

  Zhu Kwan examined a description of works of art from a private collection of Chinese art owned by a wealthy merchant

  in Peking that had disappeared in 1948. The merchant had been murdered, and Zhu Kwan had tracked down his heirs in what turned out to be a successful hunt for an inventory of the lost art. He was studying a drawing of a rare wine vessel when his assistant's voice came over the speakerphone.

  “Sir, you have a call from the United States. A Mr. St. Julien Perlmutter.”

  Zhu Kwan laid aside the drawing. “Please put him on.”

  “Hello, Zhu Kwan, are you there?” came the jovial voice of Perlmutter.
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  “St. Julien. What an unexpected surprise. I am honored to hear from my old friend and colleague.”

  “You'll be more than honored when you hear what I have to tell you.”

  The Chinese historian was bewildered. “I am always happy to hear of your archival discoveries.”

  “Tell me, Zhu Kwan, are you still interested in finding a ship called the Princess Dou Wan?”

  Zhu Kwan sucked in his breath, a fear rising inside him. “You are also searching for her?”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Perlmutter said carelessly. “I have no interest in the ship whatsoever. But while researching another lost ship, a missing Great Lakes car ferry, I ran across a document by a ship's engineer, since deceased, that told of a harrowing experience while he served on board the Princess Dou Wan.”

  “You found a survivor?” asked Zhu Kwan, unable to believe his luck.

  “His name is lan Gallagher. His friends called him 'Hong Kong.' He was the chief engineer on the Princess when she went down.”

  “Yes, yes, I have a file on him.”

  “Gallagher was the only survivor. He never went back to China for obvious reasons and dropped out of sight in the United States.”

  “The Princess,” gasped Zhu Kwan, unable to contain his growing expectation. “Did Gallagher give an approximate position off Chile where the ship sank?”

  “Brace yourself, my Oriental friend,” said Perlmutter. “The Princess Dou Wan did not go to the bottom of the South Pacific.”

  “But her final distress call?” muttered a confused Zhu Kwan.

  “She lies under Lake Michigan in North America.”

  “Impossible!” Zhu Kwan gasped.

  “Believe me, it's true. The distress signal was a fake. The captain and crew, under the direction of a General Kung Hui, altered the name to that of her sister ship, the Princess Yung Tai. Then they sailed through the Panama Canal up the East Coast of the United States and down the St. Lawrence River into the Great Lakes. She was overtaken by a horrendous storm and went down two hundred miles north of Chicago, her ultimate destination.”

  “This is incredible. Are you sure of your facts?”

  “I'll fax you Gallagher's report of the voyage and sinking.”

  A sick feeling began to spread in the pit of Zhu Kwan's stomach. “Did Gallagher make mention of the ship's cargo?”

  “He made only one reference,” replied Perlmutter. “Gallagher said that General Hui told him the numerous wooden cases and crates loaded on board in Shanghai were filled with personal furnishings and clothes of high-ranking Nationalist Chinese officials and military leaders who were fleeing mainland China ahead of the Communists.”

  A wave of great relief settled over Zhu Kwan. The secret appeared safe. “Then it seems the rumors of a great treasure are not true. There was no cargo of great value on board the Princess Dou Wan.”

  “Perhaps some jewelry, but certainly nothing that would excite a professional salvage hunter. The only artifacts that will ever be retrieved will probably surface in the hands of local sport divers.”

  “Have you given out this information to anyone besides me?” asked Zhu Kwan warily.

  “Not a soul,” Perlmutter answered. “You're the only one I know who had any interest in the wreck.”

  “I would be grateful to you, St. Julien, if you did not reveal your discovery. At least not for the next few months.”

  “From this moment on, I promise not to disclose a word.”

  “Also, as a personal favor—”

  “You have but to name it.”

  “Please do not fax Gallagher's report. I think it would be better if you sent it by private courier. I will, of course, take care of any expense.”

  “Whatever you wish,” said Perlmutter agreeably. “I'll hire the services of a courier the minute I lay down the phone.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” Zhu Kwan said sincerely. “You have done me a great service. Though the Princess Dou Wan is of no great historical or economic value, it has been a mosquito in my ear for many years.”

  “Believe me, I've been there. Some lost shipwrecks, no matter how insignificant, captivate and consume a researcher's imagination. They're never forgotten until answers behind their disappearance are finally found.”

  “Thank you, St. Julien, thank you.”

  “My best wishes to you, Zhu Kwan. Good-bye.”

  The Chinese historian could not believe his luck. What had seemed an impossible enigma only minutes ago had suddenly been solved and dropped in his lap. Though exhilarated, he decided to put off informing Qin Shang until the courier arrived with lan Gallagher's narrative of the final moments of the Princess Dou Wan and he had an hour or two to study it.

  Qin Shang would be highly pleased to learn that the fabulous art treasure stolen from the country had been lying safe and preserved in the fresh water of a lake all these years and was now within reach. Zhu Kwan fervently hoped that he would live long enough to see the artifacts on display in a national gallery and museum.

  “You do nice work, St. Julien,” said Sandecker as Perlmutter put down the phone. “You missed your calling as a used-car salesman.”

  “Or a politician running for election,” Giordino muttered.

  “I feel like a low-down skunk, misleading that nice old man,” said Perlmutter. He paused and looked around Sandeck-er's office at the four NUMA men seated around him. “Zhu Kwan and I go back many years. We've always had the highest respect for each other. I hated lying to him.”

  “Fair is fair,” said Pitt. “He conned you, too. All this time he's claimed his only interest in the Princess Dou Wan was strictly academic. He knows damned well the ship sank with a fantastic fortune in art on board. A fax line can be eavesdropped on. Why else would he insist you send Gallagher's story by courier? You can bet he's itching to give the news to j Qin Shang.” j

  Perlmutter shook his head. “Zhu Kwan is a hard-nosed scholar. He won't make any announcement to his boss until he's analyzed the document.” He looked into the other faces one by one. “Out of curiosity, who did write the report I'm sending him?”

  Rudi Gunn raised his hand almost sheepishly. “I volunteered for the chore. And a rather good job, if I may say so. Naturally, I took writer's liberty with the text. A footnote makes mention of lan Gallagher's death from a heart attack in nineteen ninety-two. So he and Katie's tracks are covered.”

  Sandecker looked at his special projects director. “Will we have enough time to properly bring up the art treasures before Qin Shang's salvage ship arrives?”

  Pitt shrugged. “Not if the Ocean Retriever is the only ship working the wreck.”

  “Not to worry,” said Gunn. “We've already chartered two more salvage vessels. One is from a private company in Montreal and the other is on loan from the U.S. Navy.”

  “Speed is essential,” said Sandecker. “I want the treasure raised before word leaks out. I want no interference from any quarter, including our own government.”

  “And when the salvage work is completed?” inquired Perlmutter.

  “Then the artifacts will be quickly turned over to facilities equipped to preserve them from damage after so many years of immersion. At that time we'll announce the discovery and stand back while the bureaucrats from Washington and Beijing fight over it.”

  “And Qin Shang?” Perlmutter probed deeper. “What happens when he shows up on site with his own salvage ship?”

  Pitt grinned deviously. “We'll give him a reception fitting for a man of his sterling qualities.”

  THE OCEAN RETRIEVER, WITH PITT, GIORDINO, GUNN AND Julia on board, was the first to arrive and position herself over the wreck of the Princess Dou Wan. The Canadian salvage ship from Deep Abyss Systems Limited out of Montreal, Hudson Bay, arrived only four hours later. She was an older vessel converted from a powerful oceangoing salvage and tugboat. Aided by clear weather and smooth water, the salvage of the art treasures commenced immediately.

  The underwater part of the project was
handled by submers-ibles using articulated arms in cooperation with divers encased in deep-water atmospheric diving systems called Newtsuits that were similar in appearance to the Michelin tire man. Bulbous, constructed of fiberglass and magnesium, and self-propelled, the suit enabled a diver inside to work for long periods of time at the four-hundred-foot-plus depth without concern over decompression.

  The artifacts were beginning to come up systematically and with rapid regularity once a routine was established. The operation continued at an even more rapid pace when the U.S. Navy salvage vessel Dean Hawes came charging down from the north end of the lake two days earlier than expected and took up station beside the other two ships. She was considered new, only two years from her launch date, and was constructed especially for deep-water work, the recovery of submarines in particular.

  An immense open barge with long ballast tanks attached along its hull was parked in place by use of the global positioning system and sunk, falling to the lake bed a short distance from the forward section of the Princess Dou Wan. Then crane operators, working from the ships on the surface and employing underwater cameras, manipulated the clamshell claws on the end of their winch cables, deftly recovering the crates exposed on the outer decks of the ship, those deep inside the cargo holds and the artifacts littering the bottom between the two sections of the broken hull. The crates, together with their contents, were then lifted onto the sunken barge. When it was fully loaded, the ballast tanks were filled with pressurized air and the barge rose to the surface. A tugboat then took it in tow for the trip to the Port of Chicago, where it was met by a team of NUMA archaeologists who took charge of the art treasures. They very carefully removed them from the waterlogged packing cases and immediately immersed them in temporary conservation tanks until they could be transported to a more permanent preservation facility.

  No sooner was one fully loaded barge towed off site than another one was maneuvered into position and sunk, repeating the process.