"You and your crew paid a high price."

"Maybe so, but the corporation was damn well rewarded for it. In fact, we're already guaranteed a fat bonus."

"Still—"

"Still, hell. The mission would have been a bust if you and Giordino hadn't learned what you did. To someone, somewhere in the hallowed halls of our intelligence agencies the information will be considered vital to the nation's interest."

"All we really learned," said Pitt, "is that a former ocean liner, gutted of every nonessential piece of equipment and owned by a master criminal, is sailing without a crew to a port in the United States owned by the same master criminal."

"I'd say that's quite a store of information."

"What good is it if we've yet to fathom the motivation?"

"I have confidence you'll divine the answer when you get back to the States."

"We probably won't learn anything solid until Qin Shang tips his hand."

"The Ancient Mariner and the Hying Dutchman had ghostly crews."

"Yes, but they were works of classic fiction."

Cabrillo set his pipe in an ashtray; he was beginning to look tired. "My theory about the United States blowing up the Panama Canal might have held water if you'd found her bowels filled with high explosives."

"Like the old lend-lease destroyer during a commando raid at Saint-Nazaire, France, in World War II," said Pitt.

"The Campbeltown. I remember. The British packed her with several tons of explosives and rammed her into the big dry dock at the Saint-Nazaire shipyard so the Nazis couldn't use it to refit the Tirpitz. With the help of a timing device, she blew to pieces several hours later, destroying the dry dock and killing over a hundred Nazis who came to stare at her."

"You'd need several trainloads of explosives to blow a ship the size of the United States out of existence and everything within a mile around her."

"Qin Shang is capable of most anything. Could it be he got his hands on a nuclear bomb?"

"Suppose he did?" suggested Pitt. "What's his upside? Who'd waste a good nuclear bomb unless you've got a target of conspicuous magnitude? What could he gain by leveling San Francisco, New York or Boston? Why spend millions reconverting a nine-hundred-and-ninety-foot ocean liner into a bomb carrier when he could have used any one of a thousand old obsolete ships? No, Qin Shang is not a fanatical terrorist with a cause. His religion is domination and greed. Whatever his grand design, it has to be devious and brilliant, one that you and I wouldn't have thought of in a million years."

"You're right," Cabrillo sighed. "Devastating a city and killing thousands of people is a no-win situation for a man of wealth. Especially when you consider that the bomb carrier could be traced back directly to Qin Shang Maritime."

"Unless," Pitt added.

"Unless?"

Pitt gave Cabrillo a distant look. "Unless the scheme called for a minimal amount of explosives."

"For what purpose?"