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  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “He said you wouldn’t defend yourself during the Court of Inquiry. The chief could have helped, but he didn’t say a word. You accepted full responsibility and resigned. The chief got to finish up his career. He’s kicking back in Florida now while you’re running a tramp ocean-salvage ship out of Taiwan.”

  “What do you mean, tramp ship?”

  “Isn’t that what you call a ship that can’t return to the U.S. without being seized for nonpayment of taxes?” she said.

  Matt stared at the pair of bureaucrats.

  “If there’s a point to this, I’d like to know what the hell it is.”

  “Sorry if this seems intrusive,” Cliff Howard said. “The record doesn’t always reveal the true story. We just had to find out what happened.”

  “Why? What do you want from me?”

  Cliff Howard nodded to the CIA agent. She opened her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers. On top was an eight-by-ten color photo she slid across the table.

  Without picking it up, Matt cocked his head and looked at the picture. Headshot of a young woman. Black dress, short string of pearls, short brown hair, exotic eyes, not much makeup.

  “What’s this?”

  “Her name is Elizabeth Grayson,” Susan Elliott said. “She’s the only daughter - only child, in fact - of Senator John Grayson.”

  Matt glanced at the picture again. “She looks Asian.”

  “Eurasian, actually, her mother is Chinese. One of the famous Tang sisters.”

  Matt shrugged.

  “Prominent Han Chinese family known for, shall we say, marrying well. The eldest sister married the top general in Beijing, the second married a billionaire real estate developer in Hong Kong. The youngest, Elizabeth’s mother, emigrated to the U.S. and married a wealthy politician.”

  Something about the young woman’s countenance pulled Matt into the photo. He picked it up. A senator’s daughter. It figured. The look on Elizabeth Grayson’s face reminded him of his ex-wife. Haughty, disdainful of anyone less intelligent, determined to get what she wanted. Like Barb, she was beautiful, but the look in her eyes said it all. Trouble. Someone I wouldn’t want to know. He tossed the picture back on the table.

  “So?”

  “She’s a scientist,” Howard said, “an expert in microlaser technology. That picture was taken while she was a grad student at MIT. After a teaching stint at UC Berkeley, her cousin, who heads up the largest tech company in China, invited her to do medical research at a lab in Canton - or Guangzhou, as it’s now called.”

  Matt’s head came up. Guangzhou was near Macau. He studied the two for a moment, then told himself to stop being paranoid. No one knew he was on his way to Macau, not even Sam.

  Howard said, “He convinced her they were on the verge of a breakthrough and that she could help - something to do with killing cancer cells with laser beams.”

  Matt glanced at his watch.

  “According to her parents, she’s a pacifist who feels caught between two saber-rattling countries,” Elliott said. “She jumped at the chance to do something that might improve relations between the U.S. and China.”

  “Look,” Matt said, “this is all very interesting, but I’m in kind of a hurry.”

  “Bear with us, Mr. Connor,” Howard said. “A cleaning woman found some secret documents from the lab hidden in her apartment and turned her in. The PLA arrested her and put her on trial for spying. She was convicted and sentenced to ten years in a laogai, a forced labor camp.”

  Laogai. Matt had heard the word whispered by refugees from the mainland. There were thousands of laogai throughout China. The literal translation was “reform prison,” but everyone knew the sentences meant nothing. Most people who entered the camps never came out. And those few who did were never quite the same. He shuddered at the thought of an American woman caught up in that system, then shook the feeling off. It wasn’t his problem.

  “Tough break,” Matt said, “but it seems to me if you go to another country and steal their secrets, they’ve got every right to throw your ass in prison.”

  “The documents were planted,” Howard said. “That’s not why she’s in prison.”

  “Whyever she’s there,” Matt said, “I can’t see what any of this has to do with me.” He started to come to his feet.

  “We want you to help get her out,” Susan Elliott said.

  Matt froze. He stared at her for a minute and eased himself back down on the couch. His eyes went back and forth from Howard to Elliott.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Now, hold on,” Howard said. “Admiral Jacobs said you’d give us a fair hearing. That’s all we ask.”

  “Hell, you’re the State Department. She’s the daughter of a senator. Surely you can negotiate her release.”

  Cliff Howard said, “We’ve tried - repeatedly - but the Chinese are intransigent on the subject.”

  Matt looked at Susan Elliott. “Well, here’s an idea. You’re the CIA. You get her out.”

  “We’re an intelligence-gathering organization, Mr. Connor.”

  “Bullshit. I know what the CIA does.”

  “Whatever your perceptions of the CIA, there can’t be any U.S. government involvement in any of this.”

  “Okay. What about all those high-powered relatives she’s got in China? Her cousin? An uncle who’s a top general? Another uncle who’s a billionaire? They must have some influence. You just-”

  “They say their hands are tied.”

  “Well, then, there you are.” Matt stood up. “She stays where she is.” He looked at his watch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a job to get to.”

  “We know,” Howard said.

  “What do you mean you know?” Matt said. “You know what?”

  Elliott gave him a small, crooked smile. “You said you knew what the CIA does, Mr. Connor.”

  Matt stared at her.

  “We set it up as a cover,” she said. “The prison where she’s being held is on a small island off the coast of Macau. Escape-proof, like Alcatraz, or so they say. The only way we could get anywhere near it is to stage a shipwreck of a U.S. flag vessel on a neighboring island. That’s where you come in.”

  Matt sank into the soft leather of the couch. He rubbed his face in his hands, feeling more tired than he’d ever felt in his life.

  “Are you telling me you ran a damned freighter aground as a cover for this insane venture without even asking me if I’d do it?”

  Elliott nodded. “We contacted your salvage agent with instructions to transmit the information only to you. We withheld it from all your competitors.”

  Matt stared at her, clenching his hands into fists. He could see everything he’d worked for slipping away.

  “Why me?” he said finally.

  “We started asking around, your name came up,” Susan Elliott said. “Repeatedly.”

  “I can’t imagine why. This doesn’t make-”

  “You’re the perfect candidate,” Howard said. “You’ve got the expertise. You’ve got a way in, and a way out. And there’s nothing to link you to the U.S. government. You don’t even live in the U.S.”

  “What do you mean, I’ve got the expertise?”

  “We’ve gone over your record,” the CIA agent said. “All of it. As executive officer of a nuclear sub, you’ve had experience with covert operations involving SEAL teams.”

  “That’s the expertise you’re talking about? All I ever did was haul those guys around on the boat. I’m not a SEAL. I’ve never gone on a mission like that in my life.”

  “But you understand the process,” Elliott said. “You’ve managed some operations so sensitive they’ve been stricken from your record.” She moved to the edge of the couch. “The bottom line is, you can do it.”

  “At my age? Get real.”

  “You’re thirty-eight,” she said. “That’s the same age Neil Armstrong was when he landed on the moon. Look, we’re n
ot suggesting some commando-type raid where you charge in like Rambo, guns blazing. It’s an inside job. We’ve got people under contract who’ll deliver her to you. All you have to do is pick her up and sail away, get her out of there. We want this as low-key as possible. We-”

  “You people are something else. You believe everything you hear, you scrounge around in records you don’t understand, you take a piece from here and a piece from there and add them all up and come up with me. Damn you both - I was counting on that job.”

  “Look, this is a job,” Howard said. From his briefcase he retrieved a letter on heavy stationery and slid it across the table. “Senator Grayson is offering $5 million for the safe return of his daughter.”

  Five million dollars. With that kind of money, he could get Gray Wolf off his back for good. He picked the letter up.

  “Is this for real?”

  “Five million,” Howard said. “Deposited into any bank account you specify on the day you deliver the girl.”

  Matt thought hard for a moment, then pushed the letter back across the table.

  “This is crazy. Even if I could get her aboard, how far do you think we’d get, once they know she’s gone?”

  “All you need to do is get out beyond the 200-mile limit. They can’t touch you out there.”

  “The hell they can’t. The PLA Navy thinks it owns the South China Sea.” Matt shook his head slowly, as if steeling himself against his own impulses. “No. Forget it. I could lose my ship, my crew, my freedom, maybe my head, with a stunt like this.”

  Susan Elliott leaned forward and looked him directly in the eyes. “We’ve worked it out very carefully, Mr. Connor. There’s not as much risk as you think.”

  “Like hell. You’d have to send a brigade of marines to break someone out of a Chinese prison.”

  “It’s a forced labor camp, not a full-blown prison,” Howard said. He nodded to Susan Elliott, who pulled a satellite photo out of her stack.

  “It’s an island. Right here.” She pointed a red fingernail at the largest speck in a chain of specks.

  Matt knew exactly where it was. A dozen tiny islands clustered together fifty miles east of Macau. He’d been plotting his course there behind closed doors since he’d received the fax.

  “The locals call it Turtle Island,” she said. “Not because it has any, but because it’s sort of shaped like one.”

  “I’ve seen it from a distance. Fiji has nothing to worry about.”

  “All it’s good for is growing peppers,” she said. “The prisoners are usually out working in the fields all day. The Chinese think the prison is escape-proof because it’s on an island. Security’s light. We’ve beached the freighter on the island farthest from it so as not to arouse suspicion. We’ll have a contact on the island, someone to get her out of her cell and deliver her to the north shore at midnight. All you’ve got to do is pick her up with a Zodiac, get her aboard your ship, and get out of there.”

  “You think the Chinese won’t be watching us? I’ve done salvage work in Chinese waters before. They watched us like a hawk, every move.”

  “They’ll watch you, but from a distance. The freighter’s an American flag vessel. There’s a trade meeting scheduled for next month between the Chinese prime minister and the president. The Chinese don’t want anything that looks like an incident right now.”

  “The more I think about this, the less sense it makes,” Matt said. “Even a senator can’t dispatch someone from the State Department and the CIA to initiate something like this on his own authority. There’s more to this than the senator, and his daughter, and his money.” He looked at the pair, eyes narrowed. “Why would the U.S. go to so much trouble to get one person out of a Chinese prison?”

  “The senator wants his daughter back, and he’s willing to pay $5 million to make it happen,” Howard said. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Matt said. “Something like this would have to come from a much higher authority.”

  Susan Elliott smiled, almost imperceptibly, but said nothing. Howard shot her a sharp look.

  “How high?” Matt said. “The secretary of defense?”

  Elliott grinned and lifted her eyebrows, playing with him now.

  “The president?”

  Howard glared at Elliott and said, “Unacknowledged and undocumented, of course. The president asked the secretary to work with the CIA to find a way to get her out of there. Without any official U.S. involvement.”

  “Why? I understand Senator Grayson’s concern. What I don’t understand is why the president of the United States would get involved.”

  Elliott said, “Senator Grayson is threatening to withhold crucial support from a tax bill the president wants passed unless he sees some movement in getting his daughter out of China.”

  “Politics? You’re asking me to risk my neck so the president can get some bill passed? Come on. I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”

  Elliott sighed. “That’s the story we were supposed to give you if you balked. I didn’t think you’d buy it.”

  Matt felt a touch of relief at her candor. His eyes went back and forth between the two.

  “You might as well level with me. I’m not going anywhere unless I know the full story.”

  Susan Elliott took a deep breath, then said, “I can’t be more specific, but we have reason to believe Elizabeth Grayson accidentally learned something during her tenure at the lab in Guangzhou that the Chinese don’t want us to know. We have indications that they’re up to something. We need to know what it is, and we believe she can tell us.”

  “If that’s true,” Matt said, “if she knows something so sensitive, why risk keeping her alive at all? Why don’t they just kill her and be done with it?”

  “The Chinese can’t afford to kill the daughter of a U.S. senator, but they can’t let her go, either. Her father has four years to serve before his retirement. Sending her to a forced labor camp is a way to keep her quiet in the short term and kill her in the long term. She’ll die quietly in prison, after her father is no longer in office.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “A handful at NSA and NGA. Two or three at State. About that many in Langley. Not even the senator’s wife knows about it.”

  Matt had never even heard of the NGA. He looked her straight in the eyes.

  “If this thing goes south, you won’t even know my name, will you?”

  “Afraid not. That’s why we’ve tried to structure it so the reward outweighs the risk.”

  Matt fell back against the couch and rubbed his eyes. Like it or not he had to make a decision, and the choices were lousy. If he accepted, he could lose everything. If he turned their offer down, there was no telling when the next big job would come along, and he knew he couldn’t hold Gray Wolf off for long. As it was, with one payment in arrears, his unsavory Chinese friend could show up at any time and seize his ship.

  “I need time to think-”

  “Five million,” Cliff Howard said. “In cash. We’re also authorized to tell you the IRS lien on your ship will be torn up, and you won’t be hassled anymore. You’ll be free to go home again.”

  Home. After almost five years of being out of the country, he missed the U.S. A lot. The deal was sounding sweeter, but . . .

  “I’d have to talk to my crew. I can’t take them into a situation like this without their okay.”

  “Not until you’re at sea,” Elliott said. “There can’t be any chance of a leak.”

  “You won’t have a problem with your crew,” Howard said. “We’ve checked them out. They’re out for the big score, and they’ll follow you anywhere.”

  Howard was right - they’d follow him anywhere, especially if the price was right, especially if the job was challenging and dangerous. Matt knew he was cut from the same cloth, but this time, there was something bigger pulling at him.

  He looked across the way at the black nuclear sub and suddenly knew wh
y it was there. Jake had sent it, a subtle reminder of the man who’d died on his watch six years ago. His old mentor was offering him a chance to redeem himself.

  Some chance. It was all or nothing, a chance to wipe the slate clean or lose everything in one roll of the dice, and he had no choice but to take it. He exhaled a long, weary breath.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Cliff Howard came to his feet, and Susan Elliott began stuffing papers into her briefcase. The telephone on the forward bulkhead rang. Matt picked it up.

  “Captain.”

  “Hey, Skipper.”

  Matt could tell by his first mate’s measured tone that there was a problem. Add it to the list. Problems were normal when you were getting a ship as old as CoMar Explorer ready to go to sea.

  “What’s up, Sam?”

  “More suits on the quarterdeck,” Sam said. “Only this time it is Gray Wolf’s boys. Six of ‘em. Bulges under their coats.”

  Steady. It was Gray Wolf’s usual show of force when Matt was behind on a payment. The old man was probably sitting in the back seat of his gray Mercedes limo on the dock, enjoying the show. All Matt had to do was sit down with him over dominoes and a cup of Oolong tea. He’d always been able to talk his way into an extension. He glanced at the pair of government agents getting ready to leave. As long a shot as it was, this job was his only hope now, and if Gray Wolf seized his ship, even that was gone. He turned away from them and spoke quietly into the phone.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to Gray Wolf.”

  “He ain’t here,” Sam said. “Not that I can see.”

  Matt winced. That was a bad sign.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “That loud-mouth muscle of his, the one with the messed-up face.”

  Matt felt his stomach slide. Popeye Zhang. The left side of his face had been blown off in an assassination attempt, leaving one eye bulging out. Matt didn’t know if it was true or not, but the story was that he’d hunted down everyone responsible and killed their entire families.

  “What does he want?”

  “I don’t speak the lingo,” Sam said, “but it looks like he’s here to take the ship.”