The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

“Cute little fellow,” Linda remarked.

“Not if you’re a penguin.”

Juan eyed the bottom profiler. The slope they had been traveling over was leveling out as it neared the shore, which was still about three miles away.

“Whoa,” Linda called.

“What do you have?”

“I just got a strong hit off the magnetometer to starboard.”

Cabrillo eased over the aircraft-style yoke, and the submersible swung right, not as elegantly as the seal, but she responded much better than their big Nomad. “Check out the sonar,” he said.

Directly in front of them was what to the electronics looked like a solid wall measuring three hundred and eight feet long and forty high. It was three hundred yards away—still too distant, in the poor lighting. The motors purred sedately as they neared. When it was fifty feet off, Juan toggled the floodlights mounted over the pressure hull.

Tamara put her hands to her mouth to stifle a gasp. In seconds, tears coursed down her smooth cheeks.

Though he hadn’t invested a lifetime studying the subject, Juan couldn’t help but feel emotional as he gazed across time and distance at the massive Chinese junk lying on the bottom of the Bellinghausen Sea.

The masts had long since vanished, most likely broken off by a passing iceberg, and there was a huge hole in her hull just below where her bottom had been clad in copper. Other than that, she looked perfectly seaworthy. The low salinity and frigid temperatures meant there was little life in these waters to attack the wood. She couldn’t have been better preserved if she’d been left in a windless desert.

Just above her waterline were dozens of ports. Juan asked about them because he doubted they were windows.

“For oars,” Tamara replied. “A ship this size would probably have twenty to a side, and each one would have at least two rowers, sometimes three. She would have had probably six or seven masts that were square-rigged like all junks.”

Nearer still, they could see that the long superstructure that ran almost the entire length of the ship had been painted a buttery yellow with red trim and possessed pagoda-like architectural details.

“The Emperor would have insisted that his ships be as ornate as possible,” Tamara continued, “in order to show off the wealth and sophistication of his kingdom. Only the finest artists and craftsmen would have been allowed to work on them.”

“And you said she was loaded with treasure?” Linda asked.

“You showed me that lump of gold you recovered. And those shards of jade.”

“The crewman who survived the sinking and died near Wilson/George must have pocketed them from the stores,” Juan said, and flew them up and over the huge ship. “It’s possible the prions hadn’t progressed that far yet, and he still had his wits about him.” Dr. Huxley had confirmed that the Chinese mummy and Andy Gangle were riddled with them.

Over the bow were two large cannons shaped like dragons. They were scaled-up versions of the pistol they had found next to Gangle’s corpse. There was so little slime on them that Juan could see teeth etched around the bore and wings carved along their flanks.

The aft deck was actually three stories taller than the main, and there was a square house dead in the middle with an elegantly sloped roof. Tamara pointed toward it. “That would be for the captain’s use.”

“His cabin?”

“More like an administrative office.”

Juan brought them down again and nosed the submersible up to where Admiral Tsai had placed the explosive charge that scuttled the ship and killed its ill-fated crew. The xenon lights threw what little of the interior they could see into sharp relief. The decks were wooden, as were the walls. The room they were looking into was too broad for them to see the far side and contained a veritable forest of support columns. Too many, in fact, and it was Tamara who recognized what they were seeing.

“This is one of the crew’s berths. They hung hammocks from the columns.”

Juan added, “They were still doing it that way into the twentieth century, at least on warships.”

“This is just amazing,” Tamara breathed. Her eyes were wide with wonder.

“Now for the bad news,” Juan said. She looked at him sharply. “We have to destroy it. I brought you along so you could see it with your own eyes, but we can’t let the Chinese find her.”

“But—”

“No buts. I’m sorry. Once we convince the Argentines that it’s in their best interest to abandon their plans here, we can’t leave a window open for Beijing to fill the vacuum. They’re riding on the Argentines’ coattails because they have no claim. This gives them one. A damned big one, at that. They discovered Antarctica three hundred and eighty years before the first European laid eyes on the continent.”

“I . . .” Tamara’s brow furrowed. “I hate politics. This is one of the most significant archaeological finds in history and it has to be sacrificed so some power-hungry men can’t get their hands on a bunch of oil.”