"While you become even more filthy-rich than you already are. Where does it end, Mr. Shang?"
"There is no end, Mr. Pitt."
"You'll have a tough fight on your hands if you think China can surpass the United States."
"Ah, but the deed is done," Qin Shang said matter-of-factly. "You country has died a slow death as a world power while my country is in its ascendancy. Already we have passed the United States to become the largest economy in history. Already we have passed your trade deficit with Japan. Your government is impotent despite its nuclear arsenal. Soon it will be unthinkable for your leaders to intervene when we assume control of Taiwan and the rest of the Asian nations."
"So what does it really matter?" asked Pitt. "You'll still be playing catch-up to our standard of living for the next hundred years."
"Time is on our side. Not only will we erode America from the outside, but with the help of your own countrymen we will eventually cause it to crumble from within. If nothing else, future division and internal race wars will seal your fate as a great nation."
Pitt began to see Qin Shang's direction. "Aided and abetted by your doctrine of illegal immigration, is that it?"
Qin Shang looked at Julia. "Your Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that nearly a million Chinese enter America and Canada legally and illegally each year. Actually, the figure is closer to two million. While you concentrated on keeping out your neighbors to the south, we have been flooding masses of my countrymen across the sea and across your shoreline. One day, sooner than you think, your coastal states and the Canadian provinces will be an extension of China."
To Pitt the concept was inconceivable. "I'll grade you with an A for wishful thinking and an F for practicality."
"Not as ridiculous as you may think," Qin Shang said patiently. "Consider how the boundaries of Europe have changed in the past hundred years. Migration through the centuries has shattered old empires and built new, only to have them fall again from new waves of migrants."
"An interesting theory," said Pitt. "But a theory nonetheless. The only way for your scenario to become reality is for the American people to lie down and play dead."
"Your countrymen have slept through the nineteen nineties," Qin Shang replied, a visceral, even menacing quality in his voice. "When they finally wake up, it will be a decade too late."
"You paint a grim picture for humanity," said Julia, visibly shaken.
Pitt went silent. He did not have the answer nor was he Nostradamus. His brain told him that Qin Shang's prophecy might indeed come to pass. But his heart refused to reject hope. He came to his feet and nodded at Julia. "I think we've heard enough of Mr. Shang's meaningless drivel. It's plain to see that he's a man who loves to hear himself talk. Let's clear out of this architectural monstrosity and its phony decor and breathe fresh air again."
Qin Shang leaped to his feet. "You dare mock me," he snarled.
Pitt moved to the desk and leaned across the surface until his face was bare inches away from Qin Shang's. "Mock you, Mr. Shang? That's putting it mildly. I'd rather have my Christmas stocking filled with cow dung than listen to your retarded philosophy on future affairs." Then he took Julia's hand. "Come on, we're out of here."
Julia made no effort to move; she appeared dazed. Pitt had to pull her along behind him. At the doorway he paused and looked back.
"Thank you, Mr. Shang, for a most provocative evening. I enjoyed your excellent champagne and seafood, especially the abalone."
The Chinese's face was tight and cold, twisted in a mask of malevolence. "No man speaks to Qin Shang in this manner."
"I'm sorry for you, Shang. On the surface you are fabulously rich and almighty, but underneath you're only a self-made man who worships his inventor."
Qin Shang fought to regain control of his emotions. When he spoke, his voice came as though out of an arctic mist. "You have made a fatal error, Mr. Pitt."
Pitt smiled thinly. "I was about to say the same about the two cretins you sent to kill me earlier this evening."
"Another time, another place, you may not be so fortunate."
Pitt said coldly, "Just so we keep a level playing field, please be advised that I have hired a team of professional assassins to terminate you, Mr. Shang. With luck, we'll never meet again."
Before Qin Shang could respond, Pitt and Julia were walking through the mass of guests toward the front entrance. Julia discreetly opened her purse, held it close to her face as though searching for cosmetics and spoke into the tiny radio.
"This is Dragon Lady. We're coming out.""Dragon Lady," said Pitt. "Is that the best you could dream up for a code name?"
The dove-gray eyes gazed at him as if he was thick between the ears. "It fits," she said simply.
If Qin Shang's paid killers had any plans of following the Duesenberg and blasting its occupants at the first stoplight, they were quickly laid to rest as two unmarked vans fell into a convoy behind the big car.
"I hope they're on our side," said Pitt.
"Peter Harper is very thorough. The INS protects its own with specialists outside the service. The people in the vans are from a littleknown security force that supplies teams of bodyguards on request from different branches of government."
"A great pity."
She looked at him quizzically. "Why do you say that?"
"With all these armed chaperons watching our every move, I can't very well take you to my place for a nightcap."
"Are you sure a nightcap is all you had in mind?" Julia replied in a sultry voice.
Pitt took one hand off the wheel and patted her bare knee. "Women have always been an enigma to me. I had hoped you might forget you were an agent of the government and throw caution to the winds."
She moved across the leather bench seat until her body was pressed against his and slid her hands around his arm. She found the muffled roar of the engine and the smell of the leather sensual. "I went off duty the minute we walked out of that scumbag's house," she said lovingly. "My time is your time."
"How do we get rid of your friends?"
"We don't. They're with us for the duration."
"In that case, do you think they'd mind if I took a detour?"
"Probably," she said, smiling. "But I'm sure you'll do it anyway."
Pitt went silent as he shifted gears and drove the Duesenberg effortlessly through traffic, watching in the rearview mirror with a touch of pride at seeing the vans struggle to keep pace. "I hope they don't shoot out my tires. They don't come cheap for a car like this."
"Did you mean what you said when you told Qin Shang you'd hired a team of hit men to kill him?"
Pitt grinned wolfishly. "A big, fat bluff, but he doesn't know that. I take great satisfaction in tormenting men like Qin Shang who are too used to having people jump at their beck and call. Do him good to stare at the ceiling nights and wonder if someone is lurking outside waiting to put a bullet in him."
"So what's with the detour?"
"I think I found the chink in Qin Shang's armor, his Achilles' heel if you'll pardon the cliche. Despite the seemingly impenetrable wall he's formed around his personal life, he has a vulnerable crack that can be pried open a mile wide."
Julia pulled her coat tightly around her bare legs to ward off the late-evening chill. "You must have divined something from what he said that escaped me."
"As I recall, his words were, 'My life's most passionate desire.' "
She looked curiously into his eyes, which never left the road. "He was talking about a vast cargo of Chinese art treasures that vanished on a ship."
"The same."
"He possesses more wealth and Chinese antiques than anyone else in the world. Why should a ship with a few historical objects be of serious interest to him?"
"Not a mere interest, gorgeous creature. Qin Shang is obsessed like all men down through the centuries who have searched for lost treasure. He won't die a happy man no matter how much wealth and power he's accumulated until he can rep
lace every one of his art replicas with the genuine pieces. To own something no other man or woman on earth can own is the ultimate fulfillment to Qin Shang. I've known men like him. He'd trade thirty years of his life to find the shipwreck and its treasures."
"But how does one go about searching for a ship that vanished fifty years ago?" Julia asked. "Where do you begin to look?"
"You start," Pitt said casually, "by knocking on a door about six blocks up the street."
26
PlTT STEERED the big Duesenberg over a narrow driveway between two homes with brick walls entirely blanketed with climbing ivy. He stopped the car in front of a spacious carriage house that fronted an expansive courtyard that was now roofed over.
"Who lives here?" asked Julia.
"A very interesting character," Pitt replied. He motioned toward a large bronze knocker on the door cast in the shape of a sailing ship. "Give it a rap, if you can."
"If you can?" Her hand reached for the knocker hesitantly. "Is there a trick to it?"
"Not what you're thinking. Go ahead, try to lift it."
But before Julia could touch the knocker, the door was swept open, revealing a huge, roly-poly man dressed in burgundy paisley silk pajamas under a matching robe. Julia gasped and took a step backward, bumping into Pitt who was laughing.
"He never fails."
"Fails to do what?" demanded the fat man.
"Open the door before a visitor knocks."
"Oh, that." The big man waved airily. "A chime sounds whenever someone comes up the drive."
"St. Julien," said Pitt. "Forgive the late visit."
"Nonsense!" boomed the man, who weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce. "You're welcome any hour of the day or night. Who's the lovely little lady?"
"Julia Lee, may I present St. Julien Perlmutter, gourmet, collector of fine wines and possessor of the world's largest library on shipwrecks."
Perlmutter bowed as far as his bulk allowed and kissed Julia's hand. "Always a pleasure to meet a friend of Dirk's." He stood back and swept out an arm, the silk sleeve flapping like a flag in a stiff breeze. "Don't stand out there in the night. Come in, come in. I was just about to open a bottle of forty-year-old Barros port. Please share it with me."
Julia stepped from the enclosed courtyard that once served to harness teams of horses to fancy carriages and gazed enraptured at the thousands of books that were massed over every square inch of open space inside the carriage house. Many were neatly spaced on endless shelves. Others were piled along walls, up stairs and on balconies. In bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, they were even clustered in the kitchen and dining room. There was barely enough room for a person to walk through a hallway, they were so thickly stacked.
Over fifty years, St. Julien Perlmutter had accumulated the finest and most extensive collection of historical ship literature ever assembled in one place. His library was the envy of every maritime archive in the world and second to none. What books and ship records he could not possess, he painstakingly copied. Fearful of fire or destruction, his fellow researchers pleaded with him to put his immense archive on-line, but he preferred to leave his collection in bound paper.
He generously shared it all without cost to anyone who came to his front door seeking information on a particular shipwreck. As long as Pitt had known him, Perlmutter had never turned down anyone who sought his extensive knowledge.
If the staggering hoard of books wasn't a colossal sight, Perlmutter was. Julia gazed openly at him. His face, turned crimson from a lifetime of excessive good food and drink, barely showed under a curly mass of gray hair and a thick, heavy beard. His nose under the sky-blue eyes was a little red knob. His lips were lost under a mustache twisted at the ends. He was obese but not sloppy-fat. No flab hung. He was solid as a massive wood sculpture. Most people who first met him thought he was probably much younger than he looked. But St Julien Perlmutter was a year past seventy and as hearty as they came.
A close friend of Pitt's father, Senator George Pitt, Perlmutter had known Dirk almost from the time he was born. Over the years they had formed a close bond to the point where Perlmutter was like a favorite uncle. He sat Pitt and Julia down around a huge latticed hatch cover, reconstructed and lacquered to as high a sheen as a dining table's. He offered them crystal glasses that had once graced the first-class dining room of the former Italian luxury liner the Andrea Doria.
Julia studied the etched image of the ship on her glass as Perlmutter poured the aged port. "I thought the Andrea Doria rested on the bottom of the sea."
"She still does," said Perlmutter, twisting one end of the gray hair flowing from his lips. "Dirk here brought up a rack of wineglasses during a dive he made on the wreck five years ago and graciously gave them to me. Please tell what you think of the port."
Julia was flattered that such a gourmet would want her opinion. She sipped the ruby contents of the glass and made an expression of delight. "It tastes wonderful."
"Good, good." He gave Pitt a look reserved for a derelict on a park bench. "You I won't ask, since your taste runs to the mundane."
Pitt acted as if he was insulted. "You wouldn't know good port if you drowned in it. While I, on the other hand, was weaned on it."
"I hate myself for ever letting you through the front door," Perlmutter moaned.
Julia saw through the charade. "Do you two always go on like this?"
"Only when we meet," Pitt said, laughing.
"What brings you here this time of night?" asked Perlmutter, winking at Julia. "It couldn't have been my witty conversation."
"No," Pitt agreed, "it was to see if you ever heard of a ship that left China sometime around nineteen forty-eight with a cargo of historical Chinese art and then vanished."
Perlmutter held the port in front of his eyes and swirled it around in his glass. His eyes took on a reflective expression as his encyclopedic mind delved into his brain cells. "I seem to recall that the name of the ship was the Princess Don Wan. She went missing with all hands somewhere off Central America. No trace of ship or crew was ever found."
"Was there a record of her cargo?"
Perlmutter shook his head. "The word that she was carrying a rich cargo of antiquities came from unsubstantiated reports only. Vague rumors actually. No evidence ever came to light to suggest it was true."
"How do you call it?" asked Pitt.
"Another mystery of the sea. There is very little I can tell you except the Princess Dou Wan was a passenger ship that had seen her day and was scheduled for the scrap yard. A pretty ship, in her prime she was known as the queen of the China Sea."
"Then how did she end up lost off Central America?"
Perlmutter shrugged. "As I said, another mystery of the sea."
Pitt shook his head vigorously. "I disagree. If there is an enigma, it is man-made. A ship simply doesn't vanish five thousand miles from where she is supposed to be."
"Let me dig out the record on the Princess. I believe it's in a book stacked under the piano." He lifted his bulk off a thankful chair and ambled out of the dining room. In less than two minutes, Pitt and Julia heard his voice roar out through the hall from another room. "Ah, here it is!"
"With all these books, he knows exactly where to find the one he's looking for?" she asked in amazement.
"He can tell you the title of every book in the house," said Pitt with certainty, "its exact location and what number it lies from the top of its stack or from the right side of its shelf."
Pitt had no sooner finished speaking than Perlmutter came into the room, his elbows brushing both frames of the doorway simultaneously. He held up a thick, leather-bound book. The title, lettered in gold, read, History of the Orient Shipping Lines. "This is the only official record I've ever come across on the Princess Don Wan that gives details of her years afloat." Perlmutter sat down at the table, opened the book and began reading aloud.
"She was laid down and launched in the same year, nineteen thirteen, by Harland and Wolff shipbuilde
rs of Belfast for the Singapore Pacific Steamship Lines. Her original name was Lanai. Gross tonnage of just under eleven thousand tons, overall length of four hundred and ninety-seven feet and a sixty-foot beam, she was rather a good-looking ship for her day." He paused and held up the book to show a photograph of the ship sailing over a flat sea with a trailing wisp of smoke from her single smokestack. The photo was tinted and revealed the traditional black hull with white superstructure topped by a tall green funnel. "She could carry five hundred and ten passengers, fifty-five of them first class," Perlmutter continued. "She was originally coal-fired but converted to oil-firing in nineteen twenty. Top speed of seventeen knots. Her maiden voyage took place in December of nineteen thirteen when she left Southhampton for Singapore. Until nineteen thirty-one, most of her voyages were between Singapore and Honolulu."