Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

“And you say he’s tied to Suma?”

“Tighter than a banjo string,” answered Jordan. “Thanks to Jim’s bugs in Suma’s office, we learned Tsuboi juggled the funding for the construction of the nuclear arsenal behind the backs of Japan’s political leaders, and most certainly their people. We also heard the code name Kaiten Project for the first time.”

Pitt poured a cup of old, cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave. He stared through the glass window at the cup as it revolved, his eyes narrowed in thought.

Jordan broke the spell. “I know what you’re thinking, but I haven’t been given the manpower to rescue Diaz and Smith and break up the Kaiten Project in one operation.”

“I can’t believe the President is turning his back on them.”

“He’s not about to go public and threaten a war over the abductions when he’s at a distinct disadvantage. Our first priority is to dismantle the Kaiten Project. Once we’ve accomplished that matter, only then will the President give us his blessing to use whatever force it takes to free Smith and Diaz.”

“So we’re back to mystical Ajima Island,” Pitt said harshly. “You say it’s the only painting of the series Suma doesn’t own?”

“Yes,” Jordan replied. “Hanamura said he acted almost desperate to get his hands on it.”

“Any clue to where it might be?”

“The Ajima painting was last seen in the Japanese embassy in Berlin just before Germany fell. Old OSS records claim it was included with art the Nazis plundered from Italy, and transported by train to northwestern Germany ahead of the advancing Russian Army in the last weeks of the war. Then it disappeared from history.”

“No record at all of it having been recovered?’

“None.”

“And we have no idea as to the island’s general location or its appearance?”

“Not a scrap.”

“Unfortunate,” Pitt commented. “Find the painting, match the shape of the shoreline portrayed by the artist, and you have the location of Hideki Suma’s extortion hideaway, or so it says in a bedtime story.”

Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “It happens to be the best lead we’ve got going for us.”

Pitt wasn’t convinced. “Your spy planes and satellites should easily detect the installation.”

“The four main islands of Japan—Honshu, Kyushu, Hokkaido, and Shikoku—are surrounded by nearly a thousand smaller islands. Finding the right one can hardly be called easy.”

“Then why not isolate only those that can be connected by a tunnel to any of the four main islands?”

“Give us some credit for brains,” Jordan said irritably. “We’ve already eliminated any island farther than ten miles offshore and concentrated on the rest. First of all, no suspicious activities or structures appear above their surfaces. Not unusual when we assume the entire installation must be deep underground. And lastly, almost all the islands’ geology is made up of volcanic rock our sensors can’t penetrate. Have I answered your question?”

Pitt dug in. “No one can excavate a tunnel without hauling away dirt and rock.”

“Apparently the Japanese have. Analysis of our satellite photos shows no signs of a coastal tunnel excavation or roads leading into an entrance.”

Pitt shrugged his shoulders and waved the white flag. “So we’re back to a painting somewhere in the great beyond.”

Jordan suddenly leaned forward in his chair and stared hard at Pitt. “This is where you earn your pay.”

Pitt could see it coming, but not quite. “You’re going to send me to Japan to dive around islands, is that the pitch?”

“Wrong,” said Jordan with a patronizing smile Pitt didn’t like one bit. “You’re going to Germany and dive in a Luftwaffe bunker.”

36

“THEY SIMPLY DOVE in and vanished.”

Pitt crouched on one knee and stared past the half-submerged tractor into the black ominous water. He was tired from jet lag, and he’d barely slept a couple of hours on the plane from Washington. How rotten not to have time to enjoy a good breakfast at a local inn and sleep past noon, he wallowed in self-pity.

“Their safety lines were sliced apart.” The young officer who led the German naval dive team held up a nylon line whose end appeared razor-severed. “By what? We can’t begin to guess.”

“Communication line too?” Pitt slowly sipped at a cup of coffee. He picked up a small stone with his free hand and idly tossed it in the water, observing the ripples that spread from the splash.

“The phone line connected to the lead diver was also cut,” admitted the German. He stood tall and well muscled. His English carried only a slight trace of an accent. “Soon after the two man team dropped into the pond, they discovered an underwater tunnel leading to the west. They swam a distance of ninety meters before reporting the tunnel ended at a small chamber with a steel door. A few minutes later the phone and safety lines went slack. I sent another team in to investigate. They disappeared like the others.”

Pitt turned his head and looked at the men of the German Navy dive team who stood helpless and saddened at the loss of their friends. They were clustered around the folding tables and chairs of a portable command post manned by a group of police underwater rescue divers. A trio of men in civilian clothes, who Pitt assumed were government officials, questioned the divers in low voices.

“When did the last man go in?” Pitt asked.

“Four hours before you arrived,” said the young dive officer, who had introduced himself as Lieutenant Helmut Reinhardt. “I had a devil of a time keeping the rest of my men from following. But I’m not about to risk another life until I know what’s going on in there.” He paused and tipped his head toward the police divers, who were attired in bright orange dry suits. “Those idiot police, however, think they’re invincible. They’re planning to send one of their teams inside.”

“Some people are born for suicide,” said Giordino with a yawn. “Take me for example. I wouldn’t go in there without a nuclear submarine. No daredevil ventures by Mrs. Giordino’s boy. I intend to die in bed entwined with an erotic beauty from the Far East.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, ” said Pitt. “Put him in a dark place and he hallucinates.”

“I see,” murmured Reinhardt, but obviously he didn’t.

Finally Pitt rose and nodded in Frank Mancuso’s direction. “Booby-trapped,” he said simply.

Mancuso nodded. “I agree. The entrances to the treasure tunnels in the Philippines were packed with bombs rigged to go off if struck by digging equipment. The difference is the Japs planned to return and retrieve the treasure, while the Nazis intended for their booby traps to destroy the loot along with the searchers.”

“Whatever trapped my men in there,” said Reinhardt bitterly, unable to say the word “killed,” “was not bombs.”

One of the official-looking men walked over from the command post and addressed Pitt. “Who are you, and whom do you represent?” he demanded in German.

Pitt turned to Reinhardt, who translated the question. Then he refaced his interrogator. “Tell him the three of us were invited.”

“You are American?” the stranger blurted in broken English, his face blank in astonishment. “Who gave you authorization to be here?”

“Who’s this mook?” Giordino inquired in blissful ignorance.

Reinhardt couldn’t suppress a slight grin. “Herr Gert Haider, Minister of Historic Works. Sir, Herr Dirk Pitt and his staff from the American National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington. They are here at the personal invitation of Chancellor Lange.”

Haider looked as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He quickly recovered, straightened to his full height, half a head short of tall, and attempted to intimidate Pitt with a superior Teutonic demeanor. “Your purpose?”

“We’ve come for the same reason as you,” replied Pitt, studying his fingernails. “If old interrogation records of Nazi officials in your Berlin archives and our Library of Congress are correct, eighteen thousand works of art were hidden in excavated tunnels under a secret airfield. This could very well prove to be that secret airfield with its art depository chamber extending somewhere beyond the water barrier.”

Haider wisely realized he couldn’t bluster the tough, purposeful-looking men dressed in loose blue-green Viking dry suits. “You know, of course, any art that is found belongs to the German Republic until it can be traced and returned to the original owners.”

“We’re fully aware of that,” said Pitt. “We’re only interested in one particular piece.”

“Which one?”

“Sorry, I’m not allowed to say.”

Haider played his last card. “I must insist the police dive team be the first to enter the chamber.”

“Fine by us.” Giordino bowed and gestured toward the dark water. “Maybe if one of your deputies is lucky enough to make it in and back, we’ll find out what’s eating people in that hell hole down there.”

“I’ve lost four of my men.” Reinhardt spoke solemnly. “They may be dead. You cannot allow more men to die through ignorance of the unknown.”

“They are professional divers,” Haider retorted.

“So are the men I sent in there. The finest divers in the Navy, in superior condition and more extensively trained than the police rescue team.”

“May I suggest a compromise,” said Pitt.

Haider nodded. “I’m willing to listen.”

“We put together a seven-man probe team. The three of us because Mancuso here is a mining engineer, an expert on tunnel construction and excavation, while Al and I are experienced in underwater salvage. Two of Lieutenant Reinhardt’s Navy men, since they’re trained in defusing any demolitions we might encounter. And two of the police divers as rescue and medical backup.”

Haider stared into Pitt’s eyes and saw only grim tenacity. It was a solid proposal fortified with logic. He forced a smile. “Who goes in first?”

“I do,” Pitt said without hesitation.

His two short words seemed to echo in the cavern for long seconds, and then the tension suddenly evaporated and Haider stuck out his hand.

“As you wish.” He shook Pitt’s hand and puffed out his chest to regain an image of authoritative dignity. “But I hold you responsible, Herr Pitt, if you trip any explosive devices and destroy the artworks.”

Pitt gave Haider a contemptuous grin. “In that case, Herr Haider, you may have my head—literally.”

Pitt set the time on the microelectronic computer attached by a line to his air tank and made a final check of his regulator and buoyancy compensator. For the fiftieth time since dropping down the ladder from farmer Clausen’s field he stared into the beckoning black pool.

“Your gears are turning,” observed Giordino as he adjusted the straps to his tank pack.

Pitt rubbed his chin thoughtfully without replying.

“What do you think is going on in there?” asked Mancuso.

“I think I’ve solved half the puzzle,” answered Pitt. “But the cutting of the lines? Now that’s downright puzzling.”

“How’s your acoustic speaker?” asked Mancuso.

Pitt inserted the regulator’s mouthpiece and spoke into it. “Mary had a little lamb…” The words came out muffled but understandable.

“I guess it’s time, fearless leader,” grunted Giordino.

Pitt nodded at Reinhardt, who was accompanied by one of his men. “Ready, gentlemen? Please try to stay within two meters of the man in front of you. Visibility appears to be four meters, so you should have no trouble keeping the distance. My team will communicate with you through our acoustic speakers.”

Reinhardt acknowledged with a wave and turned, relaying instructions in German to the police divers behind him. Then he threw a brief military salute to Pitt. “After you, sir.”

There was no delaying it any longer. Pitt held out both hands at arm’s length, index fingers pointing outward. “I’ll take the center point. Frank, two meters behind and to my left. Al, you take the right. Keep a sharp watch on any unusual mechanisms sticking out of the walls.”

With nothing more to be said, Pitt switched on his dive light, gave a tug on his safety line to make sure it was clipped, and launched himself facedown into the water. He floated for a moment, and then very slowly ducked his head and dove toward the bottom, his dive light held ahead of him.

The water was cold. He glanced at the digital readout of the computer. The water temperature stood at 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The concrete bottom was covered with green slime and a thin layer of silt. He was careful not to drag his fins or kick them into the sediment, raising clouds that would block the vision of the men behind.

Pitt actually enjoyed it. Once again he was a man totally at home in his own element. He aimed the dive light upward and stared at the ceiling of the bunker. It had sloped downward, becoming fully submerged and narrowing into a tunnel as expected. The water along the bottom was murky, and the particles that floated past his mask dropped the visibility down to three meters. He stopped and advised the men behind to close up a bit. Then he continued, swimming easily and smoothly as the ghostly outline of the floor gradually dropped until it leveled out and became swallowed by the dark.

After covering another twenty meters, he paused again and hung suspended for a minute while he twisted around and looked for Giordino and Mancuso. They were only shadowy figures behind the dull glow of their lights, but they faithfully held their instructed positions. He checked his computer. The pressure readout indicated a depth of only six meters.

A short distance later the underwater tunnel seemed to narrow, and the bottom began to rise. Pitt moved cautiously, his eyes straining into the gloom. He lifted his free hand above his head and felt it break the surface. He rolled over on his back and shined the light. The surface flashed and rolled like unleashed mercury from his movements a few centimeters in front of his face mask.

Like some unspeakable creature rising from the deep, his rubber-helmeted head with mask and regulator, eerily illuminated by the dive light, broke the cold water into the musty damp air of a small chamber. He lightly kicked his fins and softly bumped into a short flight of concrete stairs. He crept up and pulled himself onto a level floor.

The sight he feared did not materialize, at least not yet. Pitt found no bodies of the German Navy dive team. He could see where they had scraped their fins across the slime of the concrete floor, but that was the only sign of them.

He carefully examined the walls of the chamber, finding no protrusion that appeared threatening. At the far end, the dive light lit up a large rust-coated metal door. He stepped awkwardly up the steps in his fins and approached the door. He leaned against it with his shoulder. The hinges turned in their pins with incredible ease and silence, almost as if they were oiled sometime in the past week. The door swung inward, and then quickly returned as Pitt released the pressure, forced back by springs.

“Hello, what have we got here?” The words were audible, but Mancuso sounded as if he was gargling through the acoustic speaker on his breathing regulator.

“Guess what’s behind door number one, and you win a year’s supply of Brillo pads,” said Giordino in a masterpiece of dry-rot humor.

Pitt pulled off his fins and knelt down and cracked the door a few more centimeters. He studied the threshold for a moment and gestured at the bottom edge of the rust-encrusted door. “This explains the severed phone and safety lines.”

Giordino nodded. “Cut by the sharp bottom edge of the door after the divers entered and the spring system slammed it closed.”

Mancuso looked at Pitt. “You said you solved the other half of the puzzle.”

“Yeah,” muttered Giordino, “the choice part, like what killed the German Navy’s finest.”

“Gas,” Pitt answered curtly. “Poison gas, triggered after they passed beyond this door.”

“A sound theory,” agreed Mancuso.

Pitt flashed his light on the water and saw the approaching air bubbles of Reinhardt and his teammate. “Frank, you stay and keep the others from entering. Al and I will go it alone. And whatever happens, make damn sure everyone breathes only the air from their tanks. Under no circumstance are they to remove their regulators.”

Mancuso held up an acknowledging hand and turned to greet the next team.

Giordino leaned against a wall, crooked one leg, and removed a fin. “No sense traipsing in there like a duck.”

Pitt removed his fins too. He scraped his rubber boots across the rough concrete floor to feel what little grip they had across the slick surface. The friction was nil. The slightest loss of balance and he’d go down.

One final check of his tank pressure on the computer. Enough breathing time at atmospheric pressure for another hour. Free of the cold water, the air temperature stood at a point where he was reasonably comfortable in his dry suit.

“Mind your step,” he said to Giordino. Then he pushed the door half open and stepped inside as lightly as though he was walking a tightrope. The atmosphere went abruptly dry, and the humidity dropped off to almost zero percent. He paused and swept the light beam on the concrete floor, carefully searching for trip-strings and cables leading to explosive detonators or poison gas containers. A thin broken fish line, gray in color and nearly invisible in the dim tight, lay snapped in two almost under his toes.

The light beam followed one end of the line to a canister marked PHOSGENE. Thank God, Pitt thought, deeply relieved. Phosgene is only fatal if inhaled. The Germans invented nerve gas during World War II, but for some reason lost in the dim past, they failed to rig it here. A fortunate stroke for Pitt and Giordino and the men who followed them. The nerve-type agent could kill on contact with flesh, and they all had skin exposed on their hands and around their face masks.

“You were right about the gas,” said Giordino.

“Too late to help those poor seamen.”

He found four more poison gas booby traps, two of them activated. The phosgene had done its deadly work. Bodies of the Navy divers lay in contorted positions only a few meters apart. All had removed their air tanks and breathing regulators, unsuspecting of the gas until it was too late. Pitt did not bother trying for a pulse. Their blue facial color and unseeing eyes gave evidence they were stone dead.

He played the light into a long gallery and froze.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball a woman stared back at him, her head tilted in a coquettish pose. She smiled at him from an adorable face with high cheekbones and smooth pink skin.

She was not alone. Several other female figures stood beside and behind her, their unblinking eyes seemingly locked on Pitt. They were naked, covered only by long tresses that fell almost to their knees.

“I’ve died and gone to Amazon heaven,” Giordino muttered in rapt awe.

“Don’t get excited,” Pitt warned him. “They’re painted sculptures.”

“I wish. I could mold them like that.”

Pitt stepped around the life-size sculptures and held the dive light over his head. Gold gleamed in an ocean of gilded picture frames. As far as the light could reach and beyond, way beyond, the long gallery was filled with tier upon tier of racks containing an immense cache of fine paintings, sculpture, religious relics, tapestries, rare books, ancient furniture, and archeological antiquities, all stored in orderly bins and open crates.

“I think,” Pitt murmured through his acoustic speaker, “we’ve just made a lot of people very happy.”

37

THE GERMANS WERE characteristically efficient. Within four hours, decontamination experts arrived and set up pumping equipment and laid hose into the treasure gallery. The poisoned atmosphere was quickly and safely drawn into a chemical tank truck parked on the surface. While the cleanup process was in operation, Reinhardt and his men deactivated the phosgene release mechanisms and turned the canisters over to the decontamination crew. Only then did the Navy divers carry their dead to waiting ambulances.

Next, a large aluminum pipe was fed through the opening in the ground like a giant straw and attached to a huge suction pump that soon began draining the water from the subterranean tunnel into a small nearby stream. An excavating crew appeared with their equipment and began digging into the original entry ramp leading down to the bunker that had been filled in at the end of the war.

Mancuso paced the bunker impatiently, stopping every few minutes and peering at the instruments that measured the decreasing levels of the poison gas. Then he’d move to the edge of the ramp and stare at the rapidly receding water. Back and forth, watching the progress, counting the minutes until he could safely enter the gallery containing the Nazis’ plundered loot.

Giordino, true to form, slept the whole time. He found a musty old cot in a former Luftwaffe mechanic’s quarters and promptly sacked out.

After Pitt made his report to Haider and Reinhardt, he killed time by accepting an invitation to a home-cooked meal prepared by Frau Clausen in her warm and comfortable farmhouse. Later he roamed the bunker examining the old aircraft. He stopped and circled one of the Messerschmitt 262s, admiring the slim cigar shape of the fuselage, the triangular vertical stabilizer, and the ungainly jet pods that hung from the razor knifelike wings. Except for the black crosses outlined in white on the wings and fuselage, and the swastika on the tail, the only other marking was a large numeral 9 painted just forward of the cockpit.

The world’s first operational jet fighter, it was produced too late to save Germany, though it scared hell out of the British and American air forces for a few short months.

“It flew as though the angels were pushing.”

Pitt turned at the voice and found Gert Haider standing behind him. The German’s blue eyes were wistfully gazing at the cockpit of the Messerschmitt.

“You look too young to have flown her,” said Pitt.

Haider shook his head. “The words of one of our leading aces during the war, Adolf Galland.”

“Shouldn’t take much work to get them airworthy.”

Haider gazed at the fleet of aircraft that sat in spectral silence in the vast bunker. “The government rarely provides funding for such a project. I’ll be lucky if I can keep five or six of them for museum display.”

“And the others?”

“They’ll be sold or auctioned off to museums and collectors around the world.”

“I wish I could afford to place a bid,” Pitt said yearningly.

Haider looked at him, the arrogance was gone. A canny smile curved his lips. “How many aircraft do you count?”

Pitt stood back and mentally totaled the number of jet craft in the bunker. “I make it forty even.”

“Wrong. It’s thirty-nine.”

Pitt re-counted and again came up with forty. “I hate to disagree, but—”

Haider waved him off. “If one can be removed when the entry ramp is cleared and transported across the border before I take the official inventory…”

Haider didn’t need to finish his sentence. Pitt heard, but he wasn’t sure he interpreted the meaning. A Me-262 had to be worth over a million dollars in good restorable condition.

“When do you expect to take inventory?” he asked, feeling his way.

“After I catalog the contents of the plundered art.”

“That could take weeks.”

“Possibly longer.”

“Why?” Pitt put to Haider.

“Call it penitence. I was most rude to you earlier. And I feel obligated to reward your courageous effort in reaching the treasure, saving perhaps five lives and preventing me from making a blue-ribbon ass of myself and quite probably losing my job.”

“And you’re offering to look the other way while I steal one.”

“There are so many, one won’t be missed.”

“I’m grateful,” Pitt said sincerely.

Haider looked at him. “I asked a friend in our intelligence service to run a file on you while you were busy in the tunnel. I think a Messerschmitt two-six-two will make a nice addition to your collection and complement your Ford trimotor.”

“Your friend was very thorough.”

“As a collector of fine mechanical relics, I think you will give it the proper respect.”

“It will be restored to original condition,” Pitt promised.

Haider lit a cigarette and leaned casually against a jet pod as he exhaled blue smoke. “I suggest you see about renting a flatbed truck. By tonight the bunker entrance will have been widened enough to tow a plane to the surface. I’m certain Lieutenant Reinhardt and his surviving team will be happy to assist you in removing your latest acquisition.”

Before a stunned and thankful Pitt could say another word, Haider had turned and walked away.

Another eight hours passed before the massive pump suctioned off most of the water and the air in the gallery of wartime loot was safe to breathe. Haider stood on a chair with a bullhorn, briefing his staff of art experts and historians and a gathering of German government officials and politicians who wanted to be in on the discovery. An army of TV and newspaper correspondents was building in Clausen’s now ravaged lettuce field, demanding to enter the bunker. But Haider was under orders from his superior in Bonn. No entry by the news media until the hoard was surveyed.

Beginning at the steel door, the gallery stretched a good half a kilometer. The racks and bins were filled to the far wall and rose four meters high. Despite the water in the tunnel, the entry door had been sealed tightly and the concrete construction was of top quality, so no moisture had penetrated inside. Even the more delicate objects had survived in excellent condition.

The Germans immediately began setting up a photo and conservation laboratory, a workshop, and a records area. After the briefing, Haider moved into the art chamber and directed the activities from a prefabricated office hurriedly assembled and furnished complete with telephones and fax machine.

Unconsciously almost, Pitt shook his head and walked through the now dry tunnel with Mancuso, marveling that so much had been accomplished in less than twenty-four hours.

“Where’s Al?” asked Mancuso.

“Off scrounging a truck.”

Mancuso stared at him with an arched eyebrow. “Not thinking of absconding with a load of masterpieces, are we? If so, I don’t recommend it. The Krauts will shoot you down before you’ve cleared the farm.”

“Not when you have friends in high places.” Pitt smiled.

“I don’t even want to know about it. Whatever your evil scheme, do it after I leave.”

They passed through the entry door into the gallery and stepped into Haider’s closet office that was set off to one side. Haider waved them in and motioned to a pair of camp stools as he conversed in German over one of four telephones. He hung up as they sat down.

“I fully realize you have permission from Chancellor Lange to search for whatever it is you’re after, but before you begin digging through the bins and crates, I’d like to know what it is.”

“We’re only interested in art objects removed from the Japanese embassy in Berlin,” Pitt answered.

“You think they’re here?”

“There was no time to transport them to Japan,” Mancuso explained. “The Russians were encircling the city. The ambassador locked up the building and barely escaped with his staff into Switzerland. Historical records show the antique art that decorated the interior of the embassy was entrusted to the Nazis for safekeeping, and they hid it under an airfield.”

“And you think it may be included with the cache discovered here.”

“We do, yes.”

“Can I ask why the American government is so interested in lost works of Japanese art?”

“I’m sorry,” Pitt said honestly. “We can’t give out that information. But I can assure you our search poses no problems for the German government.”

“I’m thinking of the Japanese. They’ll demand their property be returned.”

“Possession is not our intent,” Mancuso assured Haider. “We only wish to photograph a few pieces.”

“All right, gentlemen.” Haider sighed. He gave Pitt a hard stare. “I trust you, Herr Pitt. We have an agreement. Do what you say, and I’ll guarantee to look the other way.”

As they left Haider’s office, Mancuso whispered, “What was he talking about? What agreement?”

“Recruitment.”

“Recruitment?” Mancuso repeated.

Pitt nodded. “He talked me into joining the Luftwaffe.”

They found the rack containing the inventory from the Japanese embassy about fifty meters back of the sculptured figures that once graced the museums of Europe. The Germans had already installed a string of lamps that ran off a portable generator, throwing light on the great hoard that seemed to stretch into infinity.

The Japanese section was easy to identify, the packing boxes having been marked by kana characters and handcrafted with far more finesse than the crude crates knocked together by the Nazi looters.

“Let’s start with that one,” said Mancuso, pointing to a narrow container. “That looks to be about the right size.”

“You spent time prospecting in Japan. What does it read?”

” ‘Container number four,’ ” Mancuso translated. ” ‘Property of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan.’ “

“That’s a big help.” Pitt went to work and carefully lifted the lid with a hammer and pry bar. Inside was a small, delicate folding screen depicting birds flying around several mountain peaks. “Definitely not an island.” He shrugged.

He opened two more, but the paintings he pulled into the dim light were of a later period than the sixteenth-century master Masaki Shimzu. Most of the smaller crates were carefully packed with porcelain. There was only one more crate in the rear of the rack that might conceivably hold a painting.

Mancuso showed signs of stress. Sweat was glistening on his forehead and he nervously fidgeted with his pipe. “This better be it,” he muttered. “Or we’ve wasted a lot of time.”

Pitt said nothing but went about his work. This box seemed more heavily constructed than the others. He pried the lid and peered inside. “I see water. I think we’ve got a seascape. Better yet, it’s an island.”

“Thank God. Pull it out, man, let’s see it.”

“Hold on.” There was no ornate outer frame, so Pitt gripped the painting under its rear support and painstakingly eased it out of the crate. Once free, he held it up under the light for inspection.

Mancuso hurriedly pulled a small catalog showing color plates of Masaki Shimzu art from his pocket and flipped through the pages, comparing the photos with the painting. “I’m no expert, but that looks like Shimzu’s style.”