“The plot thickens. For a guy who was battered to a pulp and just released from a hospital, don't you think you're overdoing it?”

“Play along with me and I'll mail you five pounds of smoked salmon.”

“I hate being a weenie,” Yaeger sighed. “Okay, I'll take care of your toys before I make inquiries through proper and unproper channels on Qin Shang. With luck, I'll give you his blood type.”

Pitt knew from experience that data buried and secreted in classified files was not immune to Yaeger's ferretlike talents. “Set those fat little fingers flying over your keyboard and call me at my Indium number when you turn up something.”

Yaeger hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for several moments. Yaeger looked more like a street-corner panhandler than he did a brilliant computer-systems analyst. He kept his graying hair in a ponytail and dressed like an aging hippie, which he was. Yaeger was head of NUMA's computer-data network, which contained a vast library on every book, article and thesis, whether scientific, historical fact or theory, ever recorded on the world's oceans.

Yaeger's computer domain took up the entire tenth floor of the NUMA building. It had taken years to put together the massive library. His boss had given him a free hand and unlimited funding for accumulating every recorded bit of knowledge on ocean science and technology so it could be available to ocean-science students, professional oceanographers, marine engineers and underwater archaeologists around the world. The job carried enormous responsibility, but it was a job Yaeger loved with a passion.

He turned his gaze on the expansive computer he had designed and built himself. “Fat fingers on a keyboard, hah!” There was no keyboard and no monitor. As with virtual reality, images were projected in three dimensions in front of the user. Instead of typing on keys, commands were spoken. A caricature of Yaeger, enhanced and fleshed out, stared back at him.

“Well, Max, you ready to go cruising?” Yaeger asked the image.

“I am prime,” replied a disembodied voice.

“Acquire all available information on a Qin Shang, a Chinese shipping-company owner, whose main office is in Hong Kong.”

“Data insufficient for a detailed report,” said Max in a monotone.

“Not much to go on, I admit,” said Yaeger, never quite getting the hang of talking to a nebulous image produced by a machine. “Do the best you can. Print out your findings when you've exhausted all the networks.”

“I will get back to you shortly,” droned Max.

Yaeger stared at the space vacated by his holographic likeness, his eyes narrow and questioning. Pitt had never asked him to research and build a file unless he had good reason. Something, Yaeger knew, was running around in his Mend's head. Quandaries and enigmas followed Pitt around like puppy dogs. He was drawn to trouble like salmon to their spawning grounds. Yaeger hoped Pitt would reveal the mystery. He always did, he always had to when his projects went beyond the mere realm of casual interest.

“What in hell is the crazy bastard up to this time?” Yaeger muttered to his computer.

ORION LAKE WAS SHAPED LIKE A SLENDER TEARDROP WHOSE lower end gently tapered into a small river. Not a large body of water but alluring and mystical, its shores were bordered by an ocean of dense green forests that sloped up the gray rock bluffs of the majestic, cloud-shrouded Olympic Mountains. Vividly colored spring wildflowers bloomed beneath the trees and in small meadows. Meltwater from high-country glaciers fed into the lake through several streams, carrying minerals that gave the water a crystal blue-green color. The cobalt sky above was garnished with fast-moving clouds, all reflecting off the water, which gave them a light turquoise tint.

The flow of water that drained from the lower tip of the teardrop was appropriately called the Orion River. Running peacefully through a canyon sliced between the mountains, the river traveled sixteen miles before emptying into the upper end of a fjordlike inlet called Grapevine Bay. Carved by an ancient glacier, Grapevine Bay opened into the Pacific Ocean. The river, once traveled by fishing boats that unloaded their catch at the old cannery, was now only used by pleasure boats and fishermen.

The next afternoon after his trip to town, Pitt stepped from the cabin onto the porch and inhaled. A light rain had come and passed, leaving the air like perfume to the lungs, pure and intoxicating. The sun had fallen behind the mountains, its final rays angling down through the ravines between the peaks. It was a timeless scene. Only the abandoned homes and cabins gave the lake a haunted look.

He stepped across a narrow wooden pier leading from the beach to a boathouse that floated on the water. He selected a key on a ring and sprung the heavy padlock sealing the weatherworn wooden door. The interior was dark. No bugs or cameras in here, he thought as he pushed the door wide open. Suspended over the water by cradles attached to an electric hoist, a little ten-foot sailboat and a twenty-one-foot 1933 Chris-Craft runabout with a double cockpit and a gleaming mahogany hull hung inside the boathouse. Two kayaks and a canoe sat in racks along both walls.

He walked over to an electric-circuit box and snapped on a single breaker. Then he took the control unit that was wired to the hoist and pushed a button. The hoist whirred as it moved over the sailboat. Pitt slid the hook that dangled from the hoist though a metal loop on the cradle and lowered it. For the first time in many months, the sailboat's fiberglass hull settled into the water.

Pitt removed the neatly folded sails from a locker and assembled the aluminum mast and added the rigging. Then he set the tiller in its spindles and inserted the centerboard. After nearly half an hour, the little boat was ready to fill her sails with wind. Only the mast had to be stepped, a small chore that could only take place after the hull was pushed from under the roof of the boathouse.

Satisfied everything was in order, Pitt casually walked back to the cabin and unpacked one of the two large cartons air-expressed by Yaeger. He sat down at the kitchen table and spread out the chart of Orion Lake he had requested. The depth soundings showed the lake bed sloping gently from the shore, then leveling off for a short distance at a depth of thirty feet before dropping off steeply in the middle of the lake to over four hundred feet. Far too deep for a diver without the proper equipment and a surface crew, Pitt figured. No man-made obstructions were marked. The only wreck shown was an old fishing boat that had sunk off the cannery. The lake's average water temperature was forty-one degrees Fahrenheit, far too cold for swimming but ideal for fishing and boating.

Pitt barbecued an elk steak for an early dinner, mixed a salad and ate at a table on the porch overlooking the lake. He leisurely sipped an Olympia beer before setting the bottle on the table and stepping into the kitchen, where he extended the tripod legs on a brass telescope. He set it in the middle of the kitchen away from the window to make it difficult for anyone from the outside to observe his activity in the shadows. He crouched over the eyepiece and focused on Qin Shang's retreat. The high-powered magnification made it possible for Pitt to observe two players on the golf course behind the house. Duffers, he deduced. They took four putts apiece to send their balls into the cup. His circular field of vision strayed to the guesthouses nestled under a grove of trees growing behind the main house. Except for a maid making the rounds, they looked unoccupied. There was no neatly manicured lawn in the open spaces. The grounds were left natural with meadow grass and wildflowers.

A huge porte cochere extended from the building over the driveway so VIP guests could get in and out of automobiles without getting wet in bad weather. The main entry was guarded by two great bronze reclining lions on each side of a stairway that led to rosewood doors standing the height of three men. He refocused the telescope and discerned the beautifully carved dragon motif on the panels. The expansive golden-tiled, pagoda-styled roof seemed utterly incongruous with the walls of copper-tinted solar glass that wrapped the entire lower structure. The three-story house itself was set in a spacious clearing a stone's throw from the shoreline.