Flood Tide

“General Hui left the ship with you?”

“Yes, but he froze to death a few hours later. The cold was unbearable. The waves tall as houses. It was a miracle we survived.”

“You and lan were picked up?”

“No, we drifted ashore. I was within an inch of death from hypothermia, but he broke into a vacation cabin, started a fire and brought me back to life. Several days later, we made our way across the country to the house of a cousin of lan's who lived in New York. He took us in until we could stand on our own feet. We knew we couldn't go back to China after it had been taken over by the Communists, so we decided to remain in the United States, where we were married. After obtaining the proper documents, I won't say how, lan went back to sea while I raised our family. Most of those years we lived on Long Island, New York, but we vacationed every summer around the Great Lakes when the children were young and grew to love the west coast of Lake Michigan. When lan retired, we built this house. It's a good life, and we enjoy boating on the lake.”

“You were both very lucky people,” said Julia.

Katie looked longingly at a photograph of her with their children and grandchildren taken during their last Christmas reunion. There were other photos. One of a young lan standing on a dock in the Orient next to a tramp steamer was in a frame next to a beautiful blond Katrina holding a small dachshund under her arm. She wiped a tear that formed in one eye. “You know,” she said, “every time I look at that picture I feel sad. lan and I had to abandon the ship so quickly that I left my little dachshund Fritz behind in the cabin. The poor little thing went down with the ship.”

Julia looked at the two little dogs that followed Katie everywhere, tails wagging. “It looks as if Fritz is still with you, at least in spirit.”

“Do you mind if I talk to Mr. Gallagher?” asked Pitt.

“Not at all. Just go through the kitchen to the back door. You'll find him down on the boat dock.”

Pitt stepped from the kitchen door onto a long porch overlooking the lake. He walked across a lawn that sloped toward the shore and ended at a small pier that jutted out about thirty feet into the lake. He found lan “Hong Kong” Gallagher sitting on a canvas stool at the end of the pier, a fishing pole propped on a small handrail. An old, weathered slouch hat was puUed down over his eyes, and he appeared to be dozing.

The gentle movement of the pier and the sound of footsteps awakened him to Pitt's approach. “That you, Katie?” he asked in a rumbling voice.

“Afraid not,” Pitt answered.

Gallagher turned, peered at the stranger a moment from under the brim of his hat, and then refaced the lake. “I thought you might be my wife.” The words came with a soft Irish accent.

“Doing any good?”

The old Irishman reached down and pulled up a chain from the water with six good-sized fish dangling from it. “They're hungry today.”

“What do you use for bait?”

“I've tried them all, but chicken livers and worms still work the best.” Then he asked, “Do I know you?”

“No, sir. My name is Dirk Pitt. I'm with NUMA.”

“I've heard of NUMA. You conducting research on the lake?”

“No, I've come to talk to 'Hong Kong' Gallagher about the Princess Dou Wan,”

There it was. No fireworks, no drumroll, just the plain simple fact. Gallagher sat immobile. Neither the twitch of a muscle nor the tic of an eye gave away what Pitt knew had to be a shocking surprise. Finally, Gallagher sat up stiffly on his canvas stool, pulled the hat to the back of his head and fixed Pitt with a melancholy gaze. “I always knew you'd come someday, asking questions about the Princess. Who'd you say you were with again, Mr. Pitt?”

“The National Underwater and Marine Agency.”

“How did you track me down after all these years?”

“It's almost impossible to hide from computers nowadays.”

Pitt moved closer and observed that Gallagher was a big man, weighing close to 230 pounds and every bit as tall as Pitt at six feet, three inches. His face was surprisingly smooth for an old seaman, but then most all his time at sea had been spent in the engine room where it was warm and the air heavy with the smell of oil. Only the red skin and bulbous nose gave away the effects of a love for alcohol. The stomach was round and hung over his belt but the shoulders were still strong and broad. He had kept most of his hair and let it go white along with a mustache that hid his upper lip.

The fishing pole gave a jerk, and Gallagher grabbed the grip and reeled in a nice three-pound coho salmon. “They stock the lake with trout and salmon, but I miss the old days when you could pull in a big pike or muskie.”

“I talked to your wife,” said Pitt. “She told me how the two of you survived the storm and the sinking.”

“A bit of a wonder, that one.”

“She said General Hui died on the raft.”

“The scum got what he deserved,” Gallagher said, smiling tightly. “You must be aware of Hui's role in the last voyage of the Princess or you wouldn't be here.”

“I know General Hui and Chiang Kai-shek stole China's historic heritage and seized the Princess Dou Wan with the intention of secretly smuggling the treasure to the United States, where it was to be hidden.”

“That was their plan until Mother Nature stepped in.”

“It took a team of dedicated people to dig through the subterfuge,” Pitt informed him. “The fake distress signal about the ship sinking off Valparaiso, salting the water with the ship's life vests, altering the Princess Dou Wan to pass for her sister ship the Princess Yung Tai during her passage through the Panama Canal and down the St. Lawrence into the Great Lakes. The only missing piece of the puzzle was your destination.”

Gallagher cocked an eyebrow. “Chicago. Hui had arranged through the American State Department to unload the treasures at the terminal facilities at the Port of Chicago. Where they were to be sent from there, I haven't the foggiest idea. But foul weather swept in from the north. As a man familiar with the oceans, I had no conception that the Great Lakes in North America could brew up worse storms than any at sea. By God, man, since then I've seen saltwater sailors get seasick and heave their guts out during an inland-water storm.”

“They say there are over fifty-five thousand recorded shipwrecks in the Great Lakes alone,” said Pitt. “And Lake Michigan wins the prize for having swallowed more ships than all the other lakes combined.”

“The waves on the Lakes can be deadlier than those on any ocean,” Gallagher maintained. “They pile up thirty feet and come at you much faster. Ocean waves swell and roll from only one direction. Great Lakes waves are more treacherous and relentless. They seethe and gyrate like a maelstrom from every direction at once. No sir, I've seen cyclones in the Indian Ocean, typhoons in the Pacific and hurricanes in the Atlantic, but I'm telling you, there is nothing more terrible than a winter tempest on the Great Lakes. And the night the Princess went down was one of the worst.”

“Unlike the sea, there is almost no room to maneuver a ship on the Lakes,” said Pitt.

“That's a fact. A ship can run before the storm at sea. Here she must continue on course or founder.” Gallagher then told of the night the Princess Dou Wan broke up and sank. He spoke of it as though it was a recurring dream. The fifty-two years since had not dimmed his memory of the tragedy. Every detail seemed as fresh as if it happened the day before. He told of the suffering he and Katie had endured, and how General Hui froze to death in the raft. “After we came ashore, I pushed the raft with Hui still in it back into the raging waters of the lake. I never saw him again and often wondered if his body was found.”

“Can I ask you where the ship foundered? In which Great Lake?”

Gallagher hooked the fish through the gill on the chain and dropped it in the water beside the pier before answering. Then he raised his hand and pointed toward the east. “Right out there.”