The Chalmette remained obstinate to the end. As she entered the main channel, she was surrounded by a wolf pack of buzzing aircraft and circling pleasure yachts and fishing boats crawling with reporters blasting questions through bullhorns. To their utter frustration, the Korean seamen simply waved and shouted back in their native tongue.

Slowly approaching the docking terminal at Dodge Island in the Port of Miami, the Chalmette was greeted by a massive crowd of over a hundred thousand people surging against a police cordon blocking the entrance to the pier. A hundred vineo and film cameras recorded the scene as the giant container ship's mooring lines were dropped over rustin-, bollards, gangways were rolled against the hull, and the survivors stood at the railings, astounded at the turnout.

Some appeared overjoyed to see dry land once again, others displayed solemn grief for husbands or wives, sons or daughters, they would never see again. A great hush suddenly fell on the mass of spectators. It was later described by an anchorman on the evening TV news as "the silence one experiences at the lowering of a coffin into the ground."

Unnoticed in the drama, a host of FBI agents dressed in the uniforms of immigration officials and customs inspectors swarmed aboard the ship, confirming the inentities of the surviving passengers and crewmen of the Leonin Andreyev, interrogating each on the whereabouts of Congresswoman Smith, and searching every foot of the ship for any sign of her.

Al Giordino questioned the people whose faces he recalled seeing in the lifeboat. None of them could remember what happened to Loren or the Oriental steward after climbing aboard the Chalmette. One woman thought she saw them led away by the ship's captain, but she couldn't be sure. To many of those who had narrowly escaped death, their minds conveniently blanked olit much of the catastrophe.

The captain and his crew claimed to know nothing. Photos of Loren provoked no recognition. Interpreters interrogated them in Korean, but their stories were the same. They never saw her. Six hours of in-depth search -turned up nothing. At last the reporters were allowed to scramble onboard. The crew were acknowledged heroes of the sea. The image harvested by Bougainville Maritime and their courageous employees, who braved a sea of blazing oil to save four hundred souls, was a public relations windfall, and Min Koryo made the most of it.

It was dark and raining when Giordino wearily made his way across the now emptied dock and entered the customs office of the terminal.

He sat at a desk for a long time staring out into the rainsoaked murk, his dark eyes mere shadows on his face.

He turned and looked at the telephone as though it was the enemy.

Hyping his courage by a drink of brandy from a half-pint bottle in his coat pocket and lighting a cigar he had stolen from Admiral Sandecker, he dialed a number and let it ring, almost hoping no one would answer.