“It's all so incredibly beautiful,” said Julia, staring at the ancient wonder. Then she gestured at the other crates, their contents still hidden. “I'm amazed the wooden containers did not rot away after being submerged all these years.”
“General Hui was a thorough man,” Pitt said. “Not only did he insist that the crates be built with an outer wall and an inner lining, he specified teak instead of a more common wood. It was probably transported to Shanghai from Burma by freighter for use in the shipyards. Hui knew that teak is extraordinarily strong and durable, and he undoubtedly seized the shipment to construct the crates. What he couldn't have predicted at the time was that his foresight paid off in protecting the treasures for the fifty years they were resting underwater.”
Julia raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun on the water. “A pity he couldn't have made them watertight. The lacquerware, wooden carvings and paintings cannot have survived without some damage or disintegration.”
“The archaeologists will know soon enough. Hopefully, the icy, fresh water will have preserved many of the more delicate objects.”
As the tugboat maneuvered into position to tow the barge to the receiving dock in Chicago, a crewman stepped from the wheelhouse with a paper in his hand. “Another message for you, Ms. Lee, from Washington.”
“Must be another message from Peter,” she said, taking the communication. She studied the wording for a long time, her facial expression turning from surprise to utter frustration to downright anger. “Oh, good God,” she muttered. “What is it?”
Julia held out the message to Pitt. “The INS operation to apprehend Qin Shang has been called off by order of the White House. We are not to molest or harass him in any way. Any and all treasure recovered from the Princess Dou Wan is to be turned over to Qin Shang as acting representative of the Chinese government.”
“That's crazy,” Pitt said wearily, too tired to display outrage. “The man is a proven mass murderer. Give him the treasure? The President must have a brain hemorrhage.”
“I've never felt so helpless in my life,” Julia said, furious. Suddenly, unpredictably, Pitt's lips spread in a crazy grin. “I wouldn't take it too badly if I were you. There's always a bright side.”
She stared at him as if he was certifiably insane. “What are you talking about? Where do you see a bright side in allowing that scum to roam free and steal the art masterpieces for himself?”
“The orders from the White House definitely state that the INS is not to molest or harass Qin Shang.” “So?” “The orders,” Pitt said, still grinning but with a hard edge to his voice, “make no mention of what NUMA can or cannot do—”
He broke off as Gunn ran excitedly from the control room onto the bridge wing. “Al thinks he's got them,” the words rushed out. “He's coming to the surface now and wants to know how you want them handled.”
“Very carefully,” said Pitt. “Tell him to rise slowly and maintain a good grip. When he surfaces, we'll lift the Sappho IV aboard with them.”
“Who is them?” asked Julia.
Pitt gave her a quick glance before he rushed down a ladder to the submersible recovery deck. “The bones of Peking man, that's who.”
Word quickly spread throughout the salvage fleet, and the Ocean Retriever's crew began assembling on the stern work deck. The crews of the other vessels crowded their railings, watching the activity aboard the NUMA ship. There was a strange silence as the turquoise Sappho TV broke the surface and rolled slightly from the low waves of the lake. Divers waited in the water to attach the crane's cable hook to the lifting ring on top of the submersible. Every eye was on the large wire-mesh basket between the twin articulated arms. Two wooden boxes sat in the basket. They all held their breath as the submersible was slowly lifted from the lake. The crane operator used great caution in swinging the underwater craft over the stern before lowering it gently into its cradle.
The crowd on deck gathered around the sub as the ship's archaeologist directed the unloading of the crates on the deck. While the archaeologist, a blond lady in her forties by the name of Pat O'Connell, was engaged in exposing the interior of the crates, Giordino threw back the hatch from inside the submersible and pushed his head and shoulders into the open air.
“Where did you find them?” Pitt shouted up at him.
“Using a diagram of the deck plans I managed to force entry into the captain's cabin.”
“The location sounds right,” said Gunn, peering through his eyeglasses.
With the help of four eager pairs of hands, archaeologist O'Connell pried off the top of the crate and peered inside. “Oh my, oh me, oh my,” she muttered in awe.
“What is it?” Pitt demanded. “What do you see?”
“Military footlockers with U.S.M.C. stenciled on the top.”
“Well, don't stand there. Open it up.”
“It really should be opened in a laboratory,” O'Connell protested. “Proper methodology, you know.”
“No!” Pitt said flatly. “Proper methodology be damned. These people worked long and hard. And by God they deserve to see the fruits of their labor. Open the footlocker.”
Seeing that Pitt was not to be denied, and glancing at the sea of faces around her reflecting expressions of hostility, O'Connell knelt down and began working open the latch on the front of the footlocker with a small crowbar. The wall around the latch quickly fell away as if it were made of clay, and she lifted the lid open very, very slowly.
Inside the footlocker the upper tray held several objects neatly wrapped in sodden gauze and exactingly placed in little individual compartments. As if she was unwrapping the Holy Grail, O'Connell delicately removed the covering from the largest object. When the last piece of gauze fell away, she held up what looked like a yellow-brown circular bowl.
“A skullcap,” she said in a hushed voice, “from Peking man.”
THE CAPTAIN OF THE JADE ADVENTURER, CHEN JlANG, HAD served Qin Shang Maritime Limited for twenty of his thirty years at sea. Tall and thin with straight white hair, he was quiet and efficient in the operation of his ship. He forced back a smile and spoke to bis employer.
“There is your ship, Qin Shang.”
“I can't believe after all these years I'm seeing her at last,” said Qin Shang, his eyes locked on the video monitor receiving images from an ROV that was moving over the sunken wreck.
“We are very lucky the depth is only four hundred and thirty feet. If the ship had, indeed, foundered off the coast of Chile, we'd have found ourselves working in ten thousand feet.”
“It appears the hull is separated in two parts.”
“Not unusual for ships caught in storms on the Great Lakes to break up,” explained Chen Jiang. “The Edmund Fitzgerald, a legendary ore carrier, was twisted apart when she sank.”
During the search, Qin Shang had paced the deck of the wheelhouse restlessly. He appeared impassive to the captain and officers of the ship, but beneath the cold exterior, his adrenaline was pumping madly. Qin Shang was not a patient man. He hated doing nothing but waiting while the ship swept back and forth before finally striking the wreck he hoped was the Princess Dou Wan. The tedious search was a torment he could have happily done without.
The Jade Adventurer did not look like the usual businesslike survey-and-salvage ship. Her sleek superstructure and twin catamaran hulls gave her more the look of an expensive yacht. Only the stylized, contemporary A-frame crane on her stern suggested that she was anything but a pleasure cruiser. Her hulls were painted blue with a red stripe running around the leading edges. The upperworks gleamed white.
A big ship with a length of 325 feet, elegant and brutishly powered, she was a marvel of engineering, loaded from the keel with the latest and most sophisticated equipment and instrumentation. She was Qin Shang's pride and joy, expressly designed and constructed to his specifications for this moment, the salvage of the Princess Dou Wan.