“Hop on a computer terminal and tell me if mercury is used in any kind of mining techniques.”

Used to obscure requests, Mark said he would get right on it and killed the connection.

“What’s this about mercury?” Tory asked.

“Julia found heavy doses of mercury poisoning when she performed autopsies on the pirates who tried to attack my ship — the ones who dumped the container carrying those Chinese immigrants.”

“You think they picked it up on Kamchatka?”

Cabrillo nodded. “The Chinese weren’t contaminated, just the sailors. If they’d been up there a lot, say dropping off other workers or on guard rotation, then its possible that’s the source.”

A companionable silence passed while they waited for the couple of minutes until Juan’s cell chimed. He answered it by saying, “What did you find?”

“Mercury is the only element that bonds with gold,” Mark replied. “It’s been used to separate raw gold from ore. The practice is banned in a lot of countries because of environmental and health concerns, but it is still widely employed by indigenous miners in South America.”

Juan mouthed the word gold to Tory. “Thanks, Murph. You can get back to your skateboard now.”

Tory leaned back in her seat. “So Anton Savich is using Chinese slave labor, provided to him by Shere Singh, to mine gold on the Kamchatka Peninsula, most likely under the nose of the Russian government.”

“I think that about sums it up,” Juan agreed, taking another healthy swallow of his beer.

“That solves that mystery, then. We know the who, the how, and now the why.”

“Appears that way.”

Something in Juan’s tone made Tory wary. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking, with Shere Singh out of the piracy business, your end of this investigation is over. I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get up there, but if our run-ins with Singh and his gang are any gauge, it’s going to get bloody.”

“And?” she asked, already suspecting what Juan was about to say.

“And you don’t need to come with us. We’d only lose an hour or so by choppering you off when we pass the northern tip of Japan and enter the Sea of Okhotsk.”

Her fury was at full gale by the time he’d stopped speaking. She came out of her chair, placed both hands on the armrests of his seat, and leaned in so her face was inches from his. “I’ve dedicated the last six months to this investigation. This has been my life, my every waking moment. I had to fight to get the Royal Geographic Society to let us join their expedition, only there wasn’t anything I could do once the pirates hit. I had friends on the Avalon who were butchered by these monsters, so don’t think for one second I’m not going to see this through to the bitter end, Mr. Chairman of the bloody Corporation.”

For several long seconds their eyes were locked, neither giving an inch. Juan had known her strength, understood her intelligence, and now saw her passion. If he could forget that he had grown attracted to her, he would have asked her to join the Corporation right then.

“Just so you know,” he said in a low, intimate voice, “I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Tory sensed the shift in tone, and her anger was replaced with something softer, gentler. Their mouths were still inches apart, but for both of them it was an insurmountable distance. “I’m not asking you to. I just want to be there when you put an end to this once and for all.” She straightened reluctantly.

Cabrillo’s throat was suddenly dry, and he needed to finish his beer. “Deal.”

23

IF nothing more, Eddie Seng had to respect his captors’ efficiency. The volcano looming over what had been dubbed Death Beach continued to rumble and belch ash that fell in a choking black blizzard across the facility. Earthquakes were an almost hourly occurrence, and the sea had turned into a writhing sheet of lead. Yet the overseers never relaxed the pace of work even as they implemented their evacuation plans. The boilers in the separating plant remained lit so that the last precious gram of gold could be extracted before they left. Guards exhorted the workers with clubs and whips to keep toiling up and down the hillside burdened with baskets of gold-bearing ore. And at night the slave laborers were locked in the beached cruise ships dreading the call to start working again in the morning.

Out in the bay the crew of the tugboat had succeeded in ballasting the huge drydock so that the ship in its hold could be floated free. The rough seas had caused numerous delays in the tricky operation, which explained why the evacuation had gone slower than Eddie had anticipated. He had seen a young turbaned Sikh arguing with the Russian, Savich, and assumed that he was refusing to sacrifice the expensive drydock when the volcano finally blew. Unloading the ship meant they wouldn’t have any incriminating evidence when they sailed away.

Like the other ships already littering the beach, the newest vessel brought to Kamchatka was a cruise liner. At around four hundred feet it wasn’t large, but she had rakish lines, a classic champagne-glass stern, and balconies for nearly all the cabins. In her prime she would have filled a niche market for only the wealthiest passengers, those willing to pay anything for a chance to visit the Galapagos or explore the Antarctic wastes.

Today she was just another derelict, her once bright hull smeared with the excrement of those poor souls who’d endured the harsh journey to Russia. Hundreds of Chinese immigrants crowded the rail as the cruise ship was left to drift in the bay. Because her engines had been removed and she was unballasted, she rode so high that a thick band of antifouling paint could be seen above her waterline. Even the smallest waves made her roll dangerously. Eddie could hear the cries of the people trapped aboard her when a big wave sent the vessel reeling.

Fortunately, the tide was coming in, and it drove the ship closer and closer to the beach. With the winds whipping up the frigid bay, Eddie knew that a storm was coming. Hopefully the vessel would soundly ground herself onshore before it hit; otherwise she would drift back to sea. If that happened he knew the liner would turn broadside to the wind and capsize when the swells hit above ten feet. She carried no lifeboats.

Eddie switched his attention from the drifting cruise ship back to the drydock. Her massive bow doors had been closed once again, and water jetted from pump outlets along her hull. It would take several hours for her hold to be drained of seawater and make her light enough for one of the tugs to take her away. The second of the two tugs that had brought the drydock north had been maneuvered into position about a hundred yards from the ore processing building.

As Eddie had noted earlier, the processing plant had been built on a flat barge that had been towed to the bay. They had used heavy equipment to drag the large structure high above the tide line. Under the watchful eye of armed guards, workers were now clearing debris and rocks that had washed onto the beach behind the plant so the tugboat could haul it back into the sea. Drums of machine oil were standing by to be poured onto the rocky shore to ease the barge’s progress back to the water. Paulus, the South African supervisor, had ordered that all the excess mercury be dumped in an area beyond the processing plant. Lakes of shimmering mercury collected in pools that eventually drained into the sea. Already wave action had claimed hundreds of gallons of the toxic metal.