"It must have been a comfortable and relaxing experience sailing across the South Seas in those early days," said Julia.
"Passengers were not nearly so harried and occupied eighty years ago," Pitt agreed. He looked at Perlmutter. "When did the Lanai become the Princess Dou Wan?"
"She was sold to the Canton Lines out of Shanghai in nineteen thirty-one," Perlmutter answered. "From then until the war, she carried passengers and cargo to ports around the South China Sea. During the war, she served as an Australian troop transport. In nineteen forty-two, while unloading troops and their equipment off New Guinea, she was attacked by Japanese aircraft and severely damaged, but she returned to Sidney under her own power for repair and a refit. Her war record is quite impressive. From nineteen forty to nineteen forty-five, she transported over eighty thousand men in and out of the war zone, dodging enemy aircraft, submarines and warships and suffering extensive damage inflicted during seven different attacks."
"Five years of sailing through Japanese-infested waters," said Pitt. "It's a wonder she wasn't sunk."
"When the war ended, the Princess Dou Wan was returned to the Canton Lines and refitted as a passenger ship again. She then went into service between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Then in the late fall of nineteen forty-eight she was taken out of service and sent to the scrappers in Singapore for breaking up."
"Breaking up," Pitt echoed. "You said she sank off Central America."
"Her fate gets vague," said Perlmutter, pulling several loose sheets of paper from the book. "I accumulated what information I could find and condensed it into a brief report. All that's known for certain is that she didn't make it to the scrappers. The final account came from a naval station radio operator at Valparaiso, Chile. According to the radio operator's records, a ship calling herself the Princess Dou Wan sent out a series of distress signals, saying she was taking on water and badly listing under a violent storm two hundred miles west. Repeated inquiries brought no answers. Then her radio went dead and she was never heard from again. A search turned up no sign of her."
"Could there have been another Princess Dou Wan?" asked Julia.
Perlmutter shook his head negatively. "The International Ships Registry only lists one Princess Dou Wan between eighteen fifty and the present. The signal must have been sent as a red herring from another Chinese vessel."
"Where did the rumor originate that Chinese antiquities were on board?" asked Pitt.
Perlmutter held out his hands, palms upward in a sign of unknowing. "A myth, a legend, the sea is full of them. The only sources I'm aware of were unreliable dockworkers and Nationalist Chinese soldiers who were in charge of loading the ship. They were later captured and interrogated by the Communists. One claimed a crate broke open while it was being lifted aboard, revealing a life-size bronze prancing horse."
"How on earth did you find all this information?" said Julia, overwhelmed with Perlmutter's knowledge of maritime disasters.
He smiled. "From a fellow researcher in China. I have sources around the world that I rely on to send me books and information related to shipwrecks whenever they find it. They know that I pay top dollar for reports that contain new and uncovered ground. The story of the Princess Dou Wan came from an old friend who is China's top historian and researcher by the name of Zhu Kwan. We've corresponded and exchanged maritime information for many years. It was he who mentioned a legend surrounding the alleged treasure ship."
"Was Zhu Kwan able to give you a manifest of the treasure?" Pitt inquired.
"No, he claimed only that his research led him to believe that before Mao's troops marched into Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek cleaned out the museums, galleries and private collections of Chinese antiquities. Records of art and artifacts before World War II in China are sketchy to say the least. It is pretty well known that after the Communists took over, there were few antiquities to be found. All that you see in China today were discovered and excavated since nineteen forty-eight."
"Not one of the lost treasures was ever found?"
"Not to my knowledge," Perlmutter admitted. "Nor has Zhu Kwan told me any different."
Pitt took the last swallow from his glass of the forty-year-old port. "So a vast part of China's heritage may lie on the bottom of the sea."
Julia's expression altered to curiosity. "This is all most interesting, but I fail to see what good any of this has to do with Qin Shang's illegal immigrant-smuggling operations."
Pitt took her hand and held it tightly. "Your Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can strike Qin Shang and his rotten empire from the front and sides. But his obsession with the lost antiquities of China opens the door for the National Underwater and Marine Agency to strike him from the rear, where he least expects it. St. Julien and I will have to play catch-up. But we're very good at what we do. Together, we make a better search team than any Qin Shang can put together." Pitt paused, and his expression lightened. "Now the only trick we have to perform is to find the Princess Dou Wan before Qin Shang."
27
THE NIGHT WAS STILL YOUNG when Pitt and Julia left St. Julien Perlmutter's carriage house. Pitt turned the Duesenberg around and drove out the driveway toward the street. He stopped before entering the traffic. The two Ford vans driven by the special bodyguards from the security company hired by Peter Harper were not parked and patiently waiting at the curb. They were nowhere in sight.
"It seems we've been abandoned," said Pitt, his foot firmly on the brake pedal of the Duesenberg.
Julia looked puzzled. "I don't understand. I can think of no reason why they would desert us."
"Maybe they decided we were boring, and they drove to a sports bar to watch basketball."
"Not funny," Julia said grimly."Then it's deja vu all over again," Pitt noted with deceptive calm. He leaned across Julia, reached into a side pocket on the door, pulled out the old .45 Colt that he had reloaded, and handed it to her. "I hope you haven't lost your touch since our escapade on the Orion River."
She shook her head vigorously. "You're exaggerating the danger."
"No, I'm not," he argued. "Something is seriously wrong. Take the gun, and if you have to, use it."
"There must be a simple explanation for the vans' departure."
"One more prognostication of Pitt's precognition. The pockets of the Immigration and Naturalization Service are not as deep as the pockets of Qin Shang Maritime Limited. I suspect Harper's private security guards were paid double to pack up and go home."
Julia snatched the radio transmitter from her purse. "This is Dragon Lady. Come in, Shadow, and give me your position." She patiently waited for a response, but her only reply was static. She repeated the message four times but received no answer. "This is inexcusable!" Julia snapped.
"Can you raise anyone else with your call box?" Pitt asked cynically.
"No, it's only good for about two miles."
"Then it's time to-" Pitt stopped in midsentence as the two vans suddenly turned the corner of the block and pulled up at the curb, one on each side of the Duesenberg, which was still sitting in the driveway. They left barely enough room for the Duesenberg's wide, flowing fenders to pass into the street between them. They showed no headlights, only parking lights. The figures inside looked vague and shadowy through the darkened, solar-coated windows.
"I knew nothing was wrong," said Julia, squinting at Pitt with a know-it-all look. She spoke into her radio transmitter again. "Shadow, this is Dragon Lady, why did you leave your positions around the carriage house?"
This time a voice answered almost immediately. "Sorry Dragon Lady, we thought it best to circle the block and look for any suspicious vehicles. If you are ready to leave, please give us your destination."
"I don't buy it," Pitt said, eyeing the distance between the two parked vans while gauging the passing traffic on the street. "One van should have remained in position while the other circled the block. You're an agent. Why am I tellin
g you?"
"Peter would not have hired irresponsible people," Julia said firmly. "He doesn't work that way."
"Don't answer just yet!" said Pitt harshly. Danger, like a red warning sign, began to flash in Pitt's brain. "We've been sold out. A dime will get you a dollar those are not the same men Harper hired."
For the first time Julia's eyes reflected a growing apprehension. "If you're right, what do I tell them?"
If Pitt thought their lives were in deadly peril, he didn't show it. His face was cool, his mind focused. "Say we're going to my place at the Washington National Airport."
"You live in an airport?" Julia asked, baffled.
"For almost twenty years. Actually, I live on the perimeter."
Julia shrugged in bewilderment and gave the instructions to the men in the vans as Pitt reached under the seat and produced a cellular phone. "Now get a hold of Harper. Explain the situation and say we're on our way toward the Lincoln Memorial. Tell him I'll try to stall off our arrival until he can arrange an intercept."
Julia dialed a number and waited for the party on the other end to answer. After giving her identification, she was put through to Peter Harper, who was at home relaxing with his family. After she gave him Pitt's message, she sat and listened in silence before punching off the phone. She looked at Pitt expressionless. "Help is on the way. Peter also said to tell you that considering what happened at your hangar earlier this evening, he regrets not being more alert to possible problems."
"Is he sending law-enforcement teams to the Memorial for the intercept?"
"He's contacting them now."
"You never told me what happened at your hangar."
"Not now."
Julia began to say something, thought better of it and said simply, "Shouldn't we have waited right here for help?"
Pitt studied the vans parked quietly and ominously at the curb. "I can't sit here any longer looking like I'm waiting for the traffic to ease or our friends will begin to think we're onto them. Once we reach Massachusetts Avenue and merge into the main stream of traffic, we'll be reasonably safe. They won't risk exposure by attacking us in front of a hundred witnesses."
"You could call nine-one-one on your cell phone and ask them to respond with a patrol car cruising the area."
"If you were a dispatcher, would you buy some bizarre story and take responsibility for ordering a fleet of patrol cars to charge to the Lincoln Memorial and look for an orange and brown nineteen-twenty-nine Duesenberg that is being pursued by killers?"
"I suppose not," Julia admitted.
"Better we left it to Harper to call out the posse."
He slipped the big stick shift on the floor into first gear and accelerated out into the street, turning to the left so the vans would lose time swinging a U-turn to follow him. He gained almost a hundred yards before he caught the lights of the lead van coming up on his rear bumper. Two blocks later he whipped the heavy Duesenberg onto Massachusetts Avenue and began snaking in and out of the nighttime traffic.
Julia tensed as she looked through the steering wheel and saw the needle creep up and waver at seventy miles an hour. "This car doesn't have seat belts."
"They didn't believe in them in nineteen twenty-nine."
"You're going awfully fast."
"I can't think of a better way to attract attention than by exceeding the speed limit in a seventy-year-old car that weighs almost four tons."
"I hope she has good brakes." Julia resigned herself to the chase, uncertainty still in her mind.
"They're not as sensitive as modern power brakes, but if I stomp on them they do the job just fine."
Julia gripped the Colt automatic but made no effort to remove the safety or aim it. She balked at accepting Pitt's assertion that their lives were in jeopardy. That their bodyguards had turned on them seemed too incredible to believe.
"Why me?" Pitt moaned as he careened the monster around Mount Vernon Square, the big tires howling in protest, heads turning on the sidewalks, people staring incredulously. "Would you believe this is the second time in a year a pretty girl and I had to escape sharks who chased us over the streets of Washington?"
She stared at him. "This happened to you before?"
"On that occasion I was driving a sports car and had a much easier time of it."
Pitt aimed the polished hood ornament on the radiator cap down New Jersey Avenue before hammering a right turn onto First Street and accelerated toward the nation's Capitol and its Mall. Cars that got in his way, he frightened aside with warning blasts from the big twin horns mounted beneath the massive headlights. He spun the thick rim of the steering wheel violently as they raced between the traffic on the crowded street.
The vans were still on his tail. Because of their faster acceleration, they had closed until their reflections loomed in the rearview mirror atop the center of the windshield. Although the Duesenberg could out-pull them if given a long enough straight stretch, it was not a car that would set records at a drag strip. Pitt had yet to shift from second to third, and the gears wailed like a banshee.
The giant engine with its twin overhead cams turned effortlessly at high rpms. The traffic on the street ahead thinned, and Pitt was able to push the Duesenberg as hard as she could go. He slewed the car into the circle around the Peace Monument behind the Capitol building.
Then another quick twist of the steering wheel and the Duesy drifted on all four wheels around the Garfield Monument, skirted the Reflecting Pool and shot down Maryland Avenue toward the Air & Space Museum.
From behind them, over the exhaust roar of the Duesenberg, they heard a brief staccato of gunfire. The mirror attached to the top of the spare-tire cover mounted in the left front fender abruptly disintegrated. The shooter quickly adjusted and a stream of bullets shredded the top frame of the windshield, shattering the glass, which showered across the hood of the car. Pitt slipped down low behind the wheel, his right hand grabbing Julia by the hair and yanking her horizontal on the leather seat.
"That concludes the entertainment part of the program," muttered Pitt. "No more chicken-hearted maneuvers."
"Oh, God, you were right!" Julia shouted in his ear. "They are out to kill us."
"I'm going to make a straight run so you can return their fire."
"Not in traffic, not on these streets," she retorted. "I couldn't live with myself if I hit an innocent child."
Her reply was a frenzied sideways motion as the car rocketed across Third Street. Instead of turning with the traffic, Pitt cut across the pavement and sent the Duesenberg leaping over the curb onto the grass of the Capitol Mall. The big 750-by- 17-inch tires took the raised concrete as casually as a minor speed bump. Sod was ripped out of the ground by the spinning rear wheels and sprayed out and under the rear fenders like shrapnel.
Julia did what any sane woman would do under the same circumstances. She screamed and then cried out, "You can't drive down the middle of the Mall!"
"I damned well can and will so long as we live to tell about it!" Pitt shot back.
His seemingly crazy and totally unexpected maneuver had the desired results. The driver of the lead van tenaciously chased the Duesenberg over the curb onto the grassy Mall, and blew all four tires in the attempt. They struck the concrete barrier with such force that they exploded in a rapid series of loud pops. The much smaller, more modern tires on the vans could not jump over the curb with the ease of the Duesenberg's big doughnuts.
The second van's driver elected for discretion, checked his speed in time, braked and slowly drove over the curb without damaging his tires.
The men in the first van-there were two-frantically abandoned their vehicle and flung themselves through the open side door of the second one. Then they all stubbornly took up the chase again, pursuing the Duesenberg across the middle of the Mall to the astonishment of hundreds of onlookers who were heading for home after an open-air Marine Corps band concert at the Navy Memorial. The shocked expression on their faces ranged from frozen incomprehe
nsion to stunned astonishment at seeing the huge car with the artistically flowing lines tearing across the Mall between the National Air & Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art. Groups of people strolling or jogging along the Mall's paths were suddenly galvanized into chasing the speeding vehicles on foot, certain they were about to witness an accident.
The Duesenberg was still accelerating with Pitt's foot flat on the gas pedal. The long car flared as it tore across Seventh Street, skidding around passing cars, Pitt fighting the wheel with grim tenacity. The mammoth car was incredibly responsive. The faster the speed, the more solid the feeling of stability. All he had to do was point the car where he wanted to go, and she went. He breathed a brief sigh of relief at seeing no cross-traffic on Fourteenth Street, the next thoroughfare across the Mall. The sidemount mirror and the rearview mirror on the windshield had both been blown to pieces by the earlier burst of gunfire, and he could not spare a brief glance to see if the pursuing van was closing within accurate firing range again.