"And Qin Shang?" Perlmutter probed deeper. "What happens when he shows up on site with his own salvage ship?"

Pitt grinned deviously. "We'll give him a reception fitting for a man of his sterling qualities."

THE OCEAN RETRIEVER, WITH PITT, GIORDINO, GUNN AND Julia on board, was the first to arrive and position herself over the wreck of the Princess Dou Wan. The Canadian salvage ship from Deep Abyss Systems Limited out of Montreal, Hudson Bay, arrived only four hours later. She was an older vessel converted from a powerful oceangoing salvage and tugboat. Aided by clear weather and smooth water, the salvage of the art treasures commenced immediately.

The underwater part of the project was handled by submers-ibles using articulated arms in cooperation with divers encased in deep-water atmospheric diving systems called Newtsuits that were similar in appearance to the Michelin tire man. Bulbous, constructed of fiberglass and magnesium, and self-propelled, the suit enabled a diver inside to work for long periods of time at the four-hundred-foot-plus depth without concern over decompression.

The artifacts were beginning to come up systematically and with rapid regularity once a routine was established. The operation continued at an even more rapid pace when the U.S. Navy salvage vessel Dean Hawes came charging down from the north end of the lake two days earlier than expected and took up station beside the other two ships. She was considered new, only two years from her launch date, and was constructed especially for deep-water work, the recovery of submarines in particular.

An immense open barge with long ballast tanks attached along its hull was parked in place by use of the global positioning system and sunk, falling to the lake bed a short distance from the forward section of the Princess Dou Wan. Then crane operators, working from the ships on the surface and employing underwater cameras, manipulated the clamshell claws on the end of their winch cables, deftly recovering the crates exposed on the outer decks of the ship, those deep inside the cargo holds and the artifacts littering the bottom between the two sections of the broken hull. The crates, together with their contents, were then lifted onto the sunken barge. When it was fully loaded, the ballast tanks were filled with pressurized air and the barge rose to the surface. A tugboat then took it in tow for the trip to the Port of Chicago, where it was met by a team of NUMA archaeologists who took charge of the art treasures. They very carefully removed them from the waterlogged packing cases and immediately immersed them in temporary conservation tanks until they could be transported to a more permanent preservation facility.

No sooner was one fully loaded barge towed off site than another one was maneuvered into position and sunk, repeating the process.

Six submersibles, three owned by NUMA, one by the Canadians and two by the Navy worked in harmony, meticulously lifting the crates with their invaluable contents into the specially designed cargo compartment of the sunken barge.