Treasure

Green motioned at the computer lens. "Take a look and tell me if something looks out of place."

Patton pressed his face against the rubber eyepiece and peered at the speck that was the Lady Flamborough. "Too damned blurred to discern incidentals. What am I missing?"

"Check the bow section."

"How can you tell the back from the front?"

"By the wake behind the stern," Green answered patiently.

Okay, I've got it. The deck behind the bow looks obscured, almost as if it was covered."

"You will first prize at the fair," said Green.

"What are they up to?" Patton mused.

"We'll know when the film from the Casper comes in."

On board the C-140, now cruising over Bolivia, there was an atmosphere of bitter disappointment. The photo minus the cruise ship came over the aircraft's laser receiver and caused as much agitation inside the cramped command center as in Washington's power circles.

"Where in hell did it go?" Hollis demanded.

Dillenger could only mutter blankly, "She can't be gone."

"Well, she sure is. See for yourself."

"I did. I can't spot her any more than you can."

"This makes three times in a row we've been shut out at the gate by bad information, lousy weather or equipment breakdown. Now our target ups and plays hide-and-seek."

"She must have sunk," munfoled Dillenger. "I don't see any other explanation."

"I can't see forty hijackers all agreeing on a suicide pact."

"What now?"

"Beyond requesting instructions from Readiness Command, I see little else I can do."

"Shall we abort the misssion?" asked Dillenger.

"Not unless we're ordered to turn back."

"So we keep going."

Hollis nodded dejectedly. "We fly south until ordered otherwise."

The last to know was Pitt. He was sleeping like the dead when Rudi Gu

"Come alive," said Gu

Pitt popped his eyes open and checked the dial of his watch. "Did we get a speeding ticket coming into Punta Arenas?"

Gu

"The ship won't enter the harbor for another hour yet."

"Good, I can doze a while longer."

"Get serious!" Gu

"She's really dropped out?"

"Enhanced magnification can't find a sign of her. I've just talked. to Admiral Sandecker. The White House and Pentagon are spitting out orders like slot machines gone mad. A Special Operations Force rescue team is on the way, steamed and primed for action, but with no place to go.

They're also sending a spy plane to produce some decent aerial pictures."

"Ask the Admiral if he can arrange a meeting between the SOF team leader and me as soon as they land."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Because I'm going back to sleep," Pitt replied with a loud yawn.

Gu

"Yes," said Pitt, his eyes flashing a caution light, "I give a damn. But I don't see what I can do about it at the moment."

Gu

Pitt pulled the blanket under his armpits, rolled over and faced the bulkhead. "Yes, as a matter of fact. You can tell him I know how the Lady Flamborough vanished. And I can make a pretty good guess as to where she hides."

If any other man had spoken those words, Gu

"Mind giving me a clue?"

Pitt half-turned. "You're an art collector of sorts, aren't you, Rudy?"

"My small collection of abstracts won't match the New York Museum of Modern Art, but it's respectable." He looked at Pitt in uncomprehending curiosity. "What has this got to do with anything?"

"If I'm right, we may be getting into art in a big way."

"Are we on the same frequency?"

"Christo," said Pitt as he turned and refaced the bulkhead.

"We're about to review a Christo-inspired sculpture."

A light snow had turned to a miserable, wind-driven sleet over the southernmost large city in the world. Punta Arenas had flourished as a port of call before the Panama Canal was built, and died afterward. The city gradually returned as a sheepraising center and was now booming after productive oil fields were discovered close by.

Hollis and Dillenger stood on a harbor pier, waiting anxiously to board the Sounder. The temperature had dropped several degrees below freezing; it was a damp, harsh cold that bit at their exposed faces.

They felt like cornels in the Arctic. Through the cooperation of Chilean authorities, they had gone undercover and exchanged their battle dress for the uniforms of immigration officials.

As scheduled, their aircraft had landed at a nearby military airport while it was still dark. The storm came as an added bonus, holding visibility to a few hundred meters and keeping their arrival unobserved.

The Chilean military command was most generous in their hospitality and provided hangar space for Hollis's small flight of C-140s and Ospreys to park out of sight.

They moved from the shelter of a warehouse as the research ship's mooring lines were dropped over the dock bollards and the gangway lowered. Both men flinched as the full force of the icy wind struck them.

A tall man with a craggy face and a friendly grin, wearing a ski jacket, appeared on the bridge wing. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Senor L6pez?" he shouted through the sleet.

"Si!" Hollis yelled back.

"Who's your friend?"

"Mi amigo es Sefior Jones," Hollis answered, nodding at Dillenger.

"I've heard better Spanish in a Chinese restaurant," Dillenger muttered.

"Please come on board. After you'reach the main deck, take the ladder to your right and come up to the bridge."

"Gracias.

The two leaders of America's elite fighting force dutifully walked up the slanted gangway and climbed the ladder as directed. Hollis's curiosity was eating him up. An hour before reaching Punta Arenas, he'd received an urgent coded communication from General Dodge ordering him to covertly meet the Sounder when she docked in port. No explanation, no further instructions. He knew only from a hurried briefing in Virginia that the survey ship and its crew were responsible for discovering the deception between the Mexican container ship and the Lady Flamborough. Nothing else. He was most interested in learning why she suddenly appeared in Punta Arenas at almost the same time as his SOF

team.

Hollis did not like being left in the dark, and he was in an intensely testy mood.

The man who hailed him was still standing on the bridge wing. Hollis looked into mesmeric green eyes-very opaque green indeed. They belonged to a lean, broad-shouldered man whose uncovered black hair was speckled with white flakes of ice. He stared at the two officers for all of five seconds, time enough to complete a survey. Then he removed his right hand slowly from a coat pocket and stuck it out.