Disguised as one of the Coast Guard boarding crew, Julia walked directly into the galley, where she found Lin Wan Chu dressed in white shirt and pants leaning over a stove, a long wooden spoon in one hand, stirring a large copper vat of boiling shrimp. Under her captain's orders to cooperate with the Coast Guard inspectors, she looked up from the steam rising from the vat and flashed a toothy, friendly smile. She went on working unconcerned as Julia walked behind her, eyes routinely darting into pantries and storerooms.
Lin Wan Chu did not sense the needle of the syringe enter the flesh of her back. After a few seconds her eyes took on a puzzled look as the steam over the vat suddenly seemed to thicken into a dense cloud. Then a solid blackness swept over her. Much later, when she awoke on board the Weehawken, her first thought was whether she had overboiled the shrimp.
In less than a minute and a half, and thanks to the results of well-practiced exercise, Julia was dressed in the cook's white kitchen clothes while Lin Wan Chu lay on the deck in the uniform of the U.S. Coast Guard. Another thirty seconds passed as Julia cut short the cook's hair before pulling a baseball cap with the Coast Guard insignia and the word Weehawken down over Lin Wan Chu's head. “Take her away,” Julia said to Cochran, who was patiently guarding the doorway to the passage outside.
Cochran and the other member of his boarding party quickly picked up the Chinese cook, one on each side, and hung her arms over their shoulders so her head would sag on her chest and make identification difficult. The baseball cap was pulled down over her face before he gave Julia a final nod and said softly, so only she could hear, “I wish you a great performance.” Then they half-dragged, half-carried, Lin Wan Chu back to the boarding launch.
Julia picked up the wooden spoon and continued stirring the boiling shrimp as if she'd been at it all afternoon.
“One of your men seems to have injured himself,” said Captain Hung-chang at seeing the boarding party lower a limp body into the launch.
“The fool didn't watch where he was going and cracked his head on an overhead pipe,” Stowe explained. “Probably has a concussion.”
“Have you found anything interesting aboard my ship?” asked Hung-chang.
“No sir, your ship is clean.”
“Always happy to oblige the American authorities,” said Hung-chang condescendingly.
“Your destination is Sungari?”
“According to my sailing orders and the documents provided by Qin Shang Maritime.”
“You may get under way as soon as we're clear,” said Stowe, giving the Chinese captain a courtesy salute. “I regret that we had to detain you.”
Twenty minutes after the Coast Guard launch had pulled away, the pilot boat arrived from Morgan City and swung alongside the Sung Lien Star. The pilot climbed aboard and made his way up to the bridge. Soon the container ship was moving through the deep-water channel of the lower Atchafalaya River and across Sweet Bay Lake toward the docks of Sungari.
Captain Hung-chang stood on the bridge wing beside the Cajun pilot as he took the automated helm and expertly guided the ship through the marshlands. Out of curiosity Hung-chang peered through a pair of binoculars at the turquoise ship anchored just out of the channel. Bold letters across the hull designated the vessel as a research ship belonging to the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Hung-chang had often seen them on scientific marine expeditions during his voyages around the world. He idly wondered what manner of experiments they were conducting here on the Atchafalaya River below Sungari.
As he panned the glasses along the deck of the research ship, he suddenly stopped and found himself peering at a tall man with thick, curly black hair who was staring back through his own binoculars. What struck Li Hung-chang odd was that the crewman on the research vessel wasn't focused on the container ship itself.
He seemed to be studying the wake directly behind the stern.
JULIA HAD TO STRUGGLE TO DECIPHER LlN WAN CHU'S MENUS and recipes. Although Han Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, there are several different dialects reflected by regional differences. Julia's mother taught her to read, write and speak Mandarin, the most important of these, when she was a young girl. She had learned the most widespread of the three Mandarin variants, known as the Peking dialect. Because Lin Wan Chu had grown up in Jiangsu Province, she wrote and spoke another variant of Mandarin, the Nanking dialect. Fortunately, there were enough similarities for Julia to fake it and get by. As she worked over the stove she kept her head down and face away from anyone nearby.
Her two helpers, an assistant cook and a dishwasher/galley cleanup man, showed no sign of suspicion. They went about their business, speaking only when it concerned the evening meal, offering no small talk or gossip from the crew. Julia thought she caught the baker studying her with a peculiar look on his face, but when she ordered him to quit staring and get back to deep-frying wontons, he laughed, made a ribald remark and went back to work.
The stoves and the boiling pots and woks that were vigorously stirred soon turned the galley into a steam bath. Julia could not remember when she had sweat rivers. She drank glass after glass of water to maintain her bodily liquids. She gave a little prayer of thanks at watching the assistant cook take the initiative and prepare the watercress soup and the shredded chicken with bean sprouts. Julia gave a worthy performance of making the roast pork and noodles and the shrimp fried rice.
Captain Hung-chang wandered into the galley briefly for a quick snack of sesame-seed puffs after the Sung Lien Star was safely moored to the dock at Sungari. Then he returned to the bridge to receive the American customs and immigration officials. Fie looked Julia square in the face, but his eyes betrayed no sign other than simple recognition of who he thought was Lin Wan Chu.
Julia joined the rest of the crew as they lined up and produced then- passports to the immigration official who came on board. Ordinarily, the captain would present the documents so the crew could go about their duties, but the INS was particularly strict with vessels entering the port owned by Qin Shang Maritime. The official examined Lin Wan Chu's passport, which Julia had uncovered in the cook's cabin, without looking up at her. All neat and very professional, she thought. By looking her in the face, the official might have made an expression of recognition no matter how inconsequential.
Once the crew cleared immigration, they came down for their evening meal. The galley was located between the officer's wardroom and the crew's mess. As chief cook, Julia served the ship's officers while her assistants ladled out food to the crew. She was anxious to roam about the ship, but until the crew was fed she had to play out her role to avoid suspicion.
Julia remained quiet throughout the meal, scurrying about the galley, occasionally flashing a smile at a crewman as they complimented her on the food and asked for seconds. She did not merely act like Lin Wan Chu; to everyone on board she was Lin Wan Chu. There was no scrutiny, no incredulity. No one took notice of the negligible differences in mannerisms, appearance or speech. To them, she was the same cook who prepared their meals on board the Sung Lien Star since the night they cast off in Qingdao.
Item by item, she went over her mission in her mind. So far things had gone smoothly, but there was a major hang-up. If three hundred illegal immigrants were on board the ship, how were they being fed? Certainly not out of her galley. According to Lin Wan Chu's menu and recipe entries, she only prepared food for thirty crewmen. It didn't make sense for mere to be another shipboard galley to feed passengers. She checked out the storage compartment and lockers, finding the correct amount of food supplies to feed the Sung Lien Star's crew for the voyage from China to Sungari. She began to wonder if Peter Harper's CIA source in Qingdao had been mistaken and somehow gotten the name of the ship confused with another.