"Suvorov gave us interior measurements." He leaned over the speaker phone. "Yaeger, and two feet all around and run it through again."

"You're getting warmer," Yaeger's voice rasped over the speaker.

"Try this on for size-no pun intended-one hundred and ninety-five by thirty-five by twelve feet."

"Beam and height correspond," said Pitt, "but your length is way off."

"You gave me interior length between perpendicular bulkheads.

I'm giving you overall length including a raked bow of twenty-five feet."

"He's right," said Sandecker. "We didn't allow for the scoop of the forward end."

Yaeger continued. "What we've got is a dry cargo barge, steel construction, two hundred and eighty to three hundred tons-selfenclosed compartments for carrying grain, lumber and so forth.

Probably manufactured by the Nashville bridge Company, Nashville, Tennessee."

"The draft?" Pitt pushed.

"Empty or loaded?"

"Empty."

"Eighteen inches."

"Thanks, pal. You've done it again."

"Done what?"

"Go back to sleep."

Pitt switched off the speaker and turned to Sandecker. "The smoke clears."

Sandecker fairly beamed. "Clever, clever people, the Bougainvilles."

Pitt nodded. "I have to agree. The last place anyone would look for an expensively equipped laboratory is inside a rusty old river barge moored in a swamp."

"She also has the advantage of being movable," said Sandecker.

The admiral referred to any vessel, scow or aircraft carrier in the feminine gender. "A tug can transport and dock her anywhere the water depth is over a foot and a half."

Pitt stared at the aerial photo pensively. "The next test is to determine where the Bougainvilles hin it again."

"The creek where she was tied leads into the Stono River," Sandecker noted.

"And the Stono River is part of the Intracoastal Waterway," Pitt added. "They can slip it into any one of ten thousand rivers, streams, bays and sounds from Boston to Key West."

"No way of second-guessing the destination," Giordino murmured dejectedly.

"They won't keep it in South Carolina waters," Pitt said. "Too obvious. The catch, as I see it, boils down to north or south, and a distance of six, maybe eight hundred miles."

"A staggering job," Sandecker said in a soft voice, "untangling her from the other barges plying the eastern waterways. They're thicker than leaves in a New England October."

"Still, it's more than we had to go on before," Pitt said hopefully.

Sandecker turned from the photo. "Better give Emmett a call and steer him onto our discovery. Someone in his army of investigators may get lucky and stumble on the right barge."

The admiral's words were empty of feeling. He didn't want to say what was on his mind.

If Lee Tong Bougainville suspected government investigators were breathing down his neck, his only option would be to kill the Vice President and Loren, and dispose of their bodies to cover his tracks.