The menu was extraordinary. Giordino's tastebuds were mundane, so he settled for the boeuf & la mode, braised beef covered with aspic and glazed vegetables. Pitt opted for ris de veau ou cervelles au beurre noir, sweetbreads in brown butter sauce served with baked mushroom caps stuffed with crab enhanced by a boiled artichoke with hollandaise sauce. He allowed the chef to select for him a fine 1992 Ferrari-Carano Siena from Sonoma County. Pitt could not boast of having eaten a more savory meal, and certainly not on board a ship such as the Oregon.

After an espresso, Pitt and Giordino took a companionway up to the wheelhouse. Here pipes and iron fittings were stained with rust. Paint was flaking from bulkheads and window frames. The deck was deeply marred and spotted with old cigarette burns. Very little equipment seemed up-to-date. Only the brass on the old-fashioned binnacle and telegraph gleamed under the antiquated light fixtures still containing sixty-watt bulbs.

Chairman Cabrillo was standing on a bridge wing, pipe firmly clamped between his teeth. The ship had entered the West Lamma Channel leading to Hong Kong Harbor. Traffic was heavy, and Cabrillo ordered slow speed in preparation of taking on the harbor pilot. Her ballast tanks refilled when twenty miles out, the Oregon looked like any one of a hundred old freighters fully laden with cargo entering the busy harbor. The ruby lights on the television and microwave antennas atop Mount Victoria blinked on and off as a warning to low-flying aircraft. The thousands of lights decorating the palatial Jumbo Floating Restaurant near Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island sprinkled the water like clouds of fireflies.

If there was any risk and danger attached to the planned covert activity, the men and officers congregated in the wheel-house demonstrated an utter immunity to it. The chartroom and the deck around the helm had become a corporate boardroom. The merits of different Asian stocks and bonds were being weighed. They were savvy investors who followed the market with seemingly more interest than they showed for the coming spy job on the United States.

Cabrillo stepped in from the bridge wing, noticed Pitt and Giordino, and approached them. "My friends in Hong Kong have informed me that the United States is tied up at Qin Shang Maritime's terminal dock at Kwai Chung north of Kowloon. The proper harbor officials have been bribed, and we've been given a berth in the channel about five hundred yards from the liner."

"A thousand-yard round trip," said Pitt, mentally calculating the submersible's downtime.

"Sea Dog 7 has batteries—how far can you stretch them?" asked Cabrillo.

"Fourteen hours if we treat them gently," replied Giordino.

"Can you be towed behind a launch while underwater and out of sight?"

Pitt nodded. "A tow to and from would give us an extra hour under the liner's hull. I must warn you, though, the submersible is no lightweight. Its underwater drag will make ponderous going for a small launch."