The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid Read Online Free Page B

smoke?”
    “Sandalwood?” he said, puzzled.
    “Like your incense,” I said, and pointed to his little shrine. “There were great gusts of sandalwood smoke coming over the rail along with Perugachi’s music.”
    Jesse puffed on his cigarette while considering this, and then he slammed his hand on the arm of his chair.
    “ Thunderbolt Sow! ” he said.
    I looked at him. “Beg pardon?”
    “The Thunderbolt Sow is a holy figure in Buddhism. But Thunderbolt Sow is also the name of another cruise ship— Buddhist-themed, with a huge temple to Buddha on the stern, and several very well-regarded vegetarian restaurants. I bet that temple pours out a lot of sandalwood incense.”
    “At this time of night?”
    “Do you know about the smoke towers? Those coils of incense that hang from the roofs of the temples? They burn twenty-four hours per day— some of them are big enough to burn for weeks.”
    “So Perugachi wasn’t taunting us,” I said. “He got a job like ours, on a cruise ship, and he was finishing his second show as the ship came into harbor.” I thought about this and snarled. “Copycat! What did I tell you!”
    “The question is,” Jesse said, “what kind of menace is this, and what are we going to do?”
    So we had an early-morning conference, with the water ballet guys and Jesse and the members of my band. Jesse connected with the Internet through the cellular modem on his notebook, and we found that Thunderbolt Sow belonged to the same cruise line as Tang Dynasty, and followed the same schedule, only a day later.
    “We’ll be anchoring in Macau in an hour or so,” Laszlo said from beneath the avocado green beauty mask he hadn’t bothered to wash off. “But we won’t be able to get our salvage gear till midmorning at the earliest.” He considered. “We’ll spend tomorrow clearing off that tangle of cable, and maybe get a start on shifting the mast. The day following, Tang Dynasty discharges most of its passengers, takes on a new ones, and heads for Shanghai to start the circuit all over again, so we won’t be able to dive.”
    “But the Ayancas can, ” I pointed out. “They can take advantage of all the preparatory work you’ve done and lift the package while we’re on our way to Shanghai and back.”
    “In that case,” Jesse said, “don’t do anything tomorrow. Just sit on the site to keep the Ayancas from pillaging it, and let them deal with the cable and the mast.”
    “We can spend the day rehearsing!” Laszlo said brightly, and the members of his troupe rolled their eyes.
    I rubbed my chin and gave this some thought. Jesse’s idea was good enough, but it lacked savor somehow. I felt it was insufficient in terms of dealing with the Ayancas. With Fidel Perugachi and his clique, I prefer instead to employ the more decisive element of diabolical vengeance.
    “Instead,” I suggested calmly, “why don’t we mislead the Ayancas and drive them mad?”
    Jesse seemed a little taken aback by this suggestion.
    “How?” he asked.
    “Let’s give them the Goldfish Fairy, but give them a Goldfish Fairy that will drive them insane!”
    “You mean sabotage the ship?” Jesse blinked. “So that they dive down there and get killed?”
    “It’s not that murdering the Ayancas wouldn’t be satisfying,” I said, “but practically speaking it would only motivate them toward reprisal. No, I mean simply give them a day of complete frustration, preferably one that will cause them in the end to realize that we were the cause of their difficulties.”
    I turned to Laszlo. “For example,” I said, “this morning you attached a buoy to the Goldfish Fairy that would make it easier to find. Suppose that tomorrow you move that buoy about five hundred meters into deeper water. They’ll waste at least one dive, possibly more, finding the ship again.”
    Laszlo grinned, his white teeth a frightening contrast to his green mask.
    “You can only dive that deep a certain number of times each