"One of the most stubborn mysteries of the northern seas. The Pilottown tramped back and forth between Tokyo and the West Coast until ten years ago, when her crew reported her sinking in aston. A search was launched and no trace of the ship was found.

Two years later an Eskimo stumbled on the Pilottown caught in the ice about ninety miles above Nome. He went aboard but found the ship deserted, no sign of the crew or cargo. A month later, when he returned with his tribe to remove whatever they could find of value, it was gone again. Nearly two years passed, and she was reported drifting below the Bering Strait. The Coast Guard was sent out but couldn't locate her. The Pilottown wasn't sighted again for eight months. She was boarded by the crew of a fishing trawler. They found her in reasonably good shape. Then she disappeared for the last time."

"I seem to recall reading something," Pitt paused. "Ah, yes, the 'Magic Ship.' "

"That's what the news media dubbed her," Dover acknowledged.

"They described her disappearing act as a 'now you see it, now you don't' routine."

"They'll have a field day when it gets out she was drifting around for years with a cargo of nerve agent S."

"No way of predicting the horror if the hull had been crushed in an ice pack or shattered on a rocky shore, creating an instant spill," Dover anded.

"We've got to get in her cargo holds," said Pitt. "Contact Mendoza, give her the position of the wreck and tell her to airlift a team of chemists to the site. We'll approach from the water."

Dover nodded. "I'll see to the launch."

"Throw in acetylene equipment in case we have to cut our way inside."

Dover bent over the chart table and stared solemnly at the center of the marked circle. "I never thought for a minute I'd stand on the deck of the Magic Ship."

"You're right," said Pitt, staring into his coffee mug, "the Pilottown is about to give her last performance."

THE SEA HAD BEEN CALM, but by the time the Catawba's launch was a quarter-mile from the lonely, forbinding coast, a twenty-knot wind kicked up the water. The spray, tainted by the nerve agent, struck the cabin windows with the fury of driven sand. Yet where the derelict lay beached, the water looked reasonably peaceful, protected as it was by jagged pinnacles of rock that rose up a hundred yards offshore like solitary chimneys from burned-out houses.

Far above the turbulent waters Augustine Volcano seemed calm and serene in the late afternoon sun. It was one of the most beautifully sculptured mountains in the Pacific, rivaling the classic contour of Mount Fuji in Japan.

The powerful launch surfed for an instant on a whitecapped swell before diving over the crest. Pitt braced his feet, gripped a railing with both hands while his eyes studied the shore.