“The jalapeño cheese grits alone were worth waking up for,” Hanley noted. “I just wish the chef would have consulted with my ex-wife. I might still be married.”

“How’s the divorce going?” Cabrillo asked.

“Pretty good,” Hanley admitted, “considering my reported income last year was only thirty thousand dollars.”

“Just be fair,” Cabrillo cautioned. “I don’t want any lawyers snooping around.”

“You know I will,” Hanley said as he refilled their coffee cups from a silver thermal carafe on the table. “I’m just waiting for Jeanie to calm down.”

Cabrillo lifted his cup of coffee and then stood up. “We’re less than twenty-four hours from port. How are things going in the Magic Shop?”

“Most of the props are constructed and I’m starting on the disguises.”

“Excellent,” Cabrillo said.

“Do you have any preferences for your look?” Hanley asked.

“Try to keep the facial hair to a minimum,” Cabrillo said. “It can be muggy in Macau.”

Hanley rose from the table. “Sahib, your wish is my command.”

WHEN the Oregonhad been refitted by the Corporation in the shipyard in Odessa, two decks had been installed inside the hull, giving the interior a total of three levels, not including the raised pilothouse. The lowest level housed the engines and physical plants, along with the moon pool, machine shops, armory and storage rooms. One level above, reached by metal stairs or the single heavy-lift elevator amidships, was the deck containing communications, weapon systems, a variety of shops and offices, a large library, a computer room and a map room. The third level housed the dining room, recreation rooms, a full gym, plus crew cabins and meeting and boardrooms. Level three was surrounded by a two lane running track for exercise. The Oregonwas a city unto itself.

Hanley walked from the dining room and across the running track, then eschewed the elevators for the stairs. Opening the door, he started down. The stairway was paneled with mahogany and lit by sconces. At the bottom Hanley stepped onto a thick carpet in a room with insets in the walls that held plaques and medals awarded by grateful customers and nations to the men and women of the Oregon.

He made his way forward toward the bow until the walls in the hallway turned to glass on the port side. Behind the glass was what could have passed for a Hollywood costume and set shop. Kevin Nixon raised his head and waved.

Hanley opened the door to the shop and entered. It was cool inside and the air was scented with the smells of grease, vinyl and wax. A Willie Nelson CD was seeping from hidden speakers.

“How long have you been here?” Hanley asked.

Nixon was sitting on a three-legged stool in front of a metal-framed, wood-topped workbench that had a ring of hand tools around the perimeter. In his hands he held an ornamental headdress with silken gold fabric that flowed down his right side to the floor.

“Two hours,” he said. “I woke up early, checked my e-mail and got the preliminary specs.”

“Did you eat breakfast?” Hanley asked.

“I just grabbed some fruit,” Nixon said. “I need to drop ten pounds or so.”

Nixon was a big man, but he carried his weight well. If you saw him on the street, you would think him stocky but not fat. But he was in a constant battle, his weight running from 240 pounds to 210, depending on his vigilance. Last summer, when he’d taken a few weeks off and hiked the Appalachian Trail, he’d gotten down to 200, but his sedentary life aboard ship and the charms of the chef’s cooking had caught up to him.

Hanley walked over to the bench and stared at Nixon’s work. “That’s religious garb?”

“For a Macanese in a Good Friday parade, it is.”

“We’ll need a total of six sets,” Hanley said.

Nixon nodded. “I figured two shaman and four penitents.”

Hanley walked over to the wall, where several more benches were abutting the bulkhead. “I’m going to start on the masks.”

Nixon nodded and reached for a remote control for the CD player. He punched a button and Willie stopped. Johnny Rivers’s “Secret Agent Man” began to play.

“Kevin,” Hanley said easily, “you just love to do that, don’t you?”

“There’s a man who lives a life of danger,”Nixon sang in a baritone.

“TRUITT sent a map showing the parade route for Good Friday,” Cabrillo said. “We lucked out—traffic in the downtown area will be at a standstill.”

Eddie Seng reached across the table for one of the folders. “It’s surprising that the Chinese would have such a large celebration for something that concerns Christianity.”

“Macau was a Portuguese possession from 1537 until 1999,” Linda Ross noted. “Roughly thirty thousand of the population is Catholic.”

“Plus the Chinese love festivals,” Mark Murphy said. “They’ll form a parade at the drop of a hat.”

“Truitt said they are going to do the same as last year and put on a massive fireworks display over the city,” Cabrillo said, “fired from a series of barges in the bay.”

“So the cover of night and a waning moon no longer apply,” Franklin Lincoln noted.

Lincoln’s friend Hali Kasim couldn’t resist. “A real shame, Frankie—you blend in so well when the sky is dark.”

Lincoln turned toward Kasim and brushed his nose with his middle finger. “That’s okay, Kaz, the fireworks also make it harder for you lily-white Hugh Grant types.”

“There’s still the question of weight,” Cabrillo said, ignoring the exchange. “The Golden Buddha weighs six hundred pounds.”

“Four men on each side could lift that weight without too much strain on their backs,” Julia Huxley said.

“I think I’ll have Hanley and Nixon fabricate something,” Cabrillo said. “Any suggestions?”

The crew continued planning the operation—Macau was just about a day’s sail away.

THE chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Legchog Raidi Zhuren, was reading a report on the fighting just across the border in Nepal. Last night, government forces had killed nearly three hundred Maoist insurgents. The ferocity of the attacks on the communist rebels had been increasing since spring 2002. After several years of growing rebel activity, the Nepalese government had begun to feel threatened and finally started to take firm action. The United States had sent army Green Beret advisors to the area to coordinate strikes, and almost immediately the body count had begun to grow.

To prevent the fighting from spilling over across the border into Tibet, Zhuren had needed to call Beijing for additional troops to station them on the high mountain passes that led from Nepal to Tibet. President Jintao had not been happy about the development. In the first place, the cost to secure Tibet was increasing at a time the president wanted to cut costs. In the second place, the Special Forces advisors added a dimension of danger to the mission. If a single American soldier was wounded or killed by Chinese forces protecting the Tibet border, Jintao was worried the situation might spiral out of control and China would be embroiled in another Korea.

What Legchog Zhuren did not know was that Jintao was starting to consider Tibet more of a liability than an asset. The timing was critical—if the Tibetan people launched a popular uprising right now, China might have another Tiananmen Square on its hands, and the world mood was not the same as in 1989. With the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and their increasingly close relations with the United States, any heavy-handed action against the Tibetan population might be met with force from two fronts.

American forces could be launched from carriers in the Bay of Bengal and from bases in occupied Afghanistan, while Russian ground forces could sweep in from the republics of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, as well as the area of far eastern Russia where it bordered northern Tibet. Then there would be a free-for-all.