“More treasure was seized than the ship could ordinarily hold. But since the Princess Dou Wan had been stripped of her furnishings and fixtures in preparation for her final voyage to the scrappers in Singapore, Kung Hui managed to cram over a thousand crates into the cargo holds and empty passenger staterooms. Most of the crates with large sculptures were tied down on the open decks. Then on November second, nineteen forty-eight, the Princess Dou Wan sailed from Shanghai into oblivion.”
“Vanished?” said Gunn.
“Like a midnight ghost.”
“When you say historical art treasures,” said Rudi Gunn, “is it known exactly what pieces were seized?”
“The ship's manifest, if there was one,” answered Perlmutter, “would make every curator in every museum of the world mad with envy and desire. A brief catalog would include the monumental designs of Shang-dynasty bronze weapons and vases. From sixteen hundred until eleven hundred B.C., Shang artists were advanced in the carving of stone, jade, marble, bone and ivory. There were the writings of Confucius inscribed in wood in his own hand from the Chou dynasty that reigned from eleven hundred to two hundred B.C.; magnificent bronze sculptures, incense burners inlaid with rubies, sapphires and gold, life-size chariots with drivers and six horses and beautifully lacquered dishes from the Han dynasty, two-oh-six B.C. to two twenty A.D.; exotic ceramics, books from China's classical poets and paintings by their masters living in the T'ang dynasty, six eighteen to nine-oh-seven A.D.; beautifully created artifacts from the Sung, Yuan, and the famous Ming dynasty, whose artisans were masters at sculptures and carvings. Their workmanship is widely known for the decorative arts, including cloisonne, furniture and pottery, and of course, we're all familiar with their famous blue- and white-porcelain.”
Sandecker studied the smoke that curled from his cigar. “You make it sound more valuable than the Inca treasure Dirk found in the Sonoran Desert.”
“Like comparing a cup of rubies to a carload of emeralds,” Perlmutter said, sipping his port. “Impossible to set a value on such a grand hoard. Moneywise, you're talking billions of dollars, but as historical treasure, the word priceless becomes inadequate.”
“I can't imagine riches of such magnitude,” said Julia wonderingly.
“There's more,” Perlmutter said quietly, adding to the spell. “The icing on the cake. What the Chinese would consider as their crown jewels.”
“More precious than rubies and sapphires,” said Julia, “or diamonds and pearls?”
“Something far more rare than mere baubles,” Perlmutter said softly. “The bones of Peking man.”
“Good lord!” Sandecker expelled a breath. “You're not suggesting that the Peking man was on the Princess Dou Wan.”
“I am,” Perlmutter nodded. “Colonel Hui Wiay swore that an iron box containing the long-lost remains were placed on board the Princess Dou Wan in the captain's cabin minutes before the ship sailed.”
“My father often spoke of the missing bones,” said Julia. “Chinese adoration of our ancestors made them more meaningful than tombs still containing early emperors.”
Sandecker sat up and gazed at Perlmutter. “The saga behind the loss of the Peking man's fossilized bones remains one of the great unexplained enigmas of the twentieth century.”
“You're familiar with the story, Admiral?” asked Gunn.
“I once wrote a paper on the missing bones of Peking man at the Naval Academy. I thought they vanished in nineteen forty-one and were never found. But St. Julien is now saying they were seen seven years later on the Princess Dou Wan before she set sail.”
“Where did they come from?” asked Harper.
Perlmutter nodded at Sandecker and deferred. “You wrote the paper, Admiral.”
“Sinanthropus pekinensis,” Sandecker spoke the words almost reverently. “Chinese man of Peking, a very ancient and primitive human who walked upright on two feet. In nineteen twenty-nine the discovery of his skull was announced by a Canadian anatomist, Dr. Davidson Black, who directed the excavation and was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Over the next several years, digging in a quarry that had once been a hill with limestone caves near the village of Choukou-tien, Black found thousands of chipped-stone tools and evidence of hearths, which indicated Peking man had mastered fire. Excavations carried out over the next ten years found the partial remains of another forty individuals, both juveniles and adults, and what has been acknowledged as the largest hominid fossil collection ever assembled.”
“Any relation to Java man, who was found thirty years sooner?” asked Gunn.
“When the Java and Peking skulls were compared in nineteen thirty-nine, they were seen to be very similar, with Java man arriving on the scene a shade earlier and not as sophisticated in toolmaking as Peking man.”
“Since scientific dating techniques didn't come into play until much later,” said Harper, “is there any idea as to how old Peking man is?”
“Because he cannot be scientifically dated until he's re-found, the best guess to his age is between seven hundred thousand and one million years. New discoveries in China, however, indicate that Homo erectus, an early species of human, is now thought to have migrated out of Africa to Asia two million years ago. Naturally, Chinese paleoanthropologists hope to prove that early man evolved in Asia and migrated to Africa instead of the accepted other way around.”
“How did the remains of Peking man disappear?” Julia asked Sandecker.
“In December of nineteen forty-one, invading Japanese troops were closing in on Peking,” narrated Sandecker. "Officials at the Peking Union Medical College, where the irreplaceable bones of Peking man were stored and studied, decided they should be removed to a place of safety. It was also evident, more so in China than in the West, that war between Japan and the United States was imminent. American and Chinese scientists agreed that the fossils should be sent to the United States for safekeeping until after the war. After months of negotiation, the American ambassador in Peking finally arranged shipment by a detachment of U.S. marines that was under orders to sail for the Philippines.
“The ancient bones were carefully packed in two Marine Corps footlockers and, along with the marines, were put aboard a train bound for the port city of Tientsin, where both living and dead were to board the S.S. President Harrison, a passenger ship belonging to the American President Lines. The train never arrived hi Tientsin. It was halted by Japanese troops who ransacked it. By now it was December the eighth, nineteen forty-one, and the marines, who had thought themselves neutrals, were then sent to Japanese prison camps to sit out the war. It can only be assumed that after lying underground for a million years, the remains of Peking man were scattered around the rice paddies beside the railroad track.”
“That was the last word on their fate?” Harper inquired.
Sandecker shook his head and smiled. “Myths thrived after the war. One had the fossils secretly hidden in a vault under the Museum of Natural History in Washington. The marines who guarded the shipment and survived the war came up with at least ten different stories of their own. The footlockers went down on a Japanese hospital ship that in reality was loaded with weapons and troops. The marines buried the footlockers near an American consulate. They were hidden in a prisoner-of-war camp and then lost at the end of the war. They were stored in a Swiss warehouse, in a vault on Taiwan, in the closet of a marine who smuggled them home. Whatever the true story, Peking man is still lost in a fog of controversy. And how they somehow found their way into Chiang Kai-shek's hands and onto the Princess Dou Wan is anybody's guess.”