He was edgy and couldn’t say why. He had done clandestine searches under more precarious conditions than these. And with less apprehension. Yet the nearer he got to the boat, the less he felt like boarding her. Something within him was warning him away. Through the years he had come to recognize a certain instinct for danger; listening to it had kept him alive in a dangerous profession. That instinct was ringing frantically with alarm right now.

Jack shrugged off the feeling of impending disaster as he took the binoculars and camera from around his neck and laid them at the base of the piling. The rope that ran from the piling up to the bow of the ship was a good two inches thick. It would be rough on his hands but easy to climb.

He leaned forward, got a firm two-handed grip on the rope, then swung out over the water. As he hung from the rope, he raised his legs until his ankles locked around it. Now began the climb: Hanging like an orangutan from a branch with his face to the sky and his back to the water below, he pulled himself up hand-over-hand while his heels caught the finger-thick strands of the rope and pushed from behind.

The angle of ascent steepened and the climb got progressively tougher as he neared the gunwale of the ship. The tiny fibers of the rope were coarse and stiff. His palms were burning; each handful of rope felt like a handful of thistles, especially painful where he had started a few blisters playing tennis yesterday. It was a pleasure to grab the smooth, cool steel of the gunwale and pull himself up to eye-level with its upper edge. He hung there and scanned the deck. Still no sign of life.

He pulled himself over the gunwale and onto the deck, then ran in a crouch to the anchor windlass.

His skin prickled in warning—danger here. But where? He peered over the windlass. There was no sign that he had been seen, no sign that there was anyone else aboard. Still the feeling persisted, a nagging sensation, almost as if he were being watched.

Again, he shrugged it off and set his mind to the problem of reaching the deckhouse. Well over a hundred feet of open deck lay between him and the aft superstructure. And aft was where he wanted to go. He couldn’t imagine much going on in the cargo holds.

Jack set himself, then sprinted around the forward cargo hatch to the kingpost and crane assembly that stood between the two holds. He waited. Still no sign that he had been seen… or that there was anyone here to see him. Another sprint took him to the forward wall of the deckhouse.

He slid along the wall to the port side where he found some steps and took these up to the bridge. The wheelhouse was locked, but through the side window he could see a wide array of sophisticated controls.