Sandecker studied the smoke that curled from his cigar. “You make it sound more valuable than the Inca treasure Dirk found in the Sonoran Desert.”

“Like comparing a cup of rubies to a carload of emeralds,” Perlmutter said, sipping his port. “Impossible to set a value on such a grand hoard. Moneywise, you're talking billions of dollars, but as historical treasure, the word priceless becomes inadequate.”

“I can't imagine riches of such magnitude,” said Julia wonderingly.

“There's more,” Perlmutter said quietly, adding to the spell. “The icing on the cake. What the Chinese would consider as their crown jewels.”

“More precious than rubies and sapphires,” said Julia, “or diamonds and pearls?”

“Something far more rare than mere baubles,” Perlmutter said softly. “The bones of Peking man.”

“Good lord!” Sandecker expelled a breath. “You're not suggesting that the Peking man was on the Princess Dou Wan.”

“I am,” Perlmutter nodded. “Colonel Hui Wiay swore that an iron box containing the long-lost remains were placed on board the Princess Dou Wan in the captain's cabin minutes before the ship sailed.”

“My father often spoke of the missing bones,” said Julia. “Chinese adoration of our ancestors made them more meaningful than tombs still containing early emperors.”

Sandecker sat up and gazed at Perlmutter. “The saga behind the loss of the Peking man's fossilized bones remains one of the great unexplained enigmas of the twentieth century.”

“You're familiar with the story, Admiral?” asked Gunn.

“I once wrote a paper on the missing bones of Peking man at the Naval Academy. I thought they vanished in nineteen forty-one and were never found. But St. Julien is now saying they were seen seven years later on the Princess Dou Wan before she set sail.”

“Where did they come from?” asked Harper.

Perlmutter nodded at Sandecker and deferred. “You wrote the paper, Admiral.”

“Sinanthropus pekinensis,” Sandecker spoke the words almost reverently. “Chinese man of Peking, a very ancient and primitive human who walked upright on two feet. In nineteen twenty-nine the discovery of his skull was announced by a Canadian anatomist, Dr. Davidson Black, who directed the excavation and was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Over the next several years, digging in a quarry that had once been a hill with limestone caves near the village of Choukou-tien, Black found thousands of chipped-stone tools and evidence of hearths, which indicated Peking man had mastered fire. Excavations carried out over the next ten years found the partial remains of another forty individuals, both juveniles and adults, and what has been acknowledged as the largest hominid fossil collection ever assembled.”

“Any relation to Java man, who was found thirty years sooner?” asked Gunn.

“When the Java and Peking skulls were compared in nineteen thirty-nine, they were seen to be very similar, with Java man arriving on the scene a shade earlier and not as sophisticated in toolmaking as Peking man.”

“Since scientific dating techniques didn't come into play until much later,” said Harper, “is there any idea as to how old Peking man is?”

“Because he cannot be scientifically dated until he's re-found, the best guess to his age is between seven hundred thousand and one million years. New discoveries in China, however, indicate that Homo erectus, an early species of human, is now thought to have migrated out of Africa to Asia two million years ago. Naturally, Chinese paleoanthropologists hope to prove that early man evolved in Asia and migrated to Africa instead of the accepted other way around.”

“How did the remains of Peking man disappear?” Julia asked Sandecker.

“In December of nineteen forty-one, invading Japanese troops were closing in on Peking,” narrated Sandecker. "Officials at the Peking Union Medical College, where the irreplaceable bones of Peking man were stored and studied, decided they should be removed to a place of safety. It was also evident, more so in China than in the West, that war between Japan and the United States was imminent. American and Chinese scientists agreed that the fossils should be sent to the United States for safekeeping until after the war. After months of negotiation, the American ambassador in Peking finally arranged shipment by a detachment of U.S. marines that was under orders to sail for the Philippines.

“The ancient bones were carefully packed in two Marine Corps footlockers and, along with the marines, were put aboard a train bound for the port city of Tientsin, where both living and dead were to board the S.S. President Harrison, a passenger ship belonging to the American President Lines. The train never arrived hi Tientsin. It was halted by Japanese troops who ransacked it. By now it was December the eighth, nineteen forty-one, and the marines, who had thought themselves neutrals, were then sent to Japanese prison camps to sit out the war. It can only be assumed that after lying underground for a million years, the remains of Peking man were scattered around the rice paddies beside the railroad track.”

“That was the last word on their fate?” Harper inquired.

Sandecker shook his head and smiled. “Myths thrived after the war. One had the fossils secretly hidden in a vault under the Museum of Natural History in Washington. The marines who guarded the shipment and survived the war came up with at least ten different stories of their own. The footlockers went down on a Japanese hospital ship that in reality was loaded with weapons and troops. The marines buried the footlockers near an American consulate. They were hidden in a prisoner-of-war camp and then lost at the end of the war. They were stored in a Swiss warehouse, in a vault on Taiwan, in the closet of a marine who smuggled them home. Whatever the true story, Peking man is still lost in a fog of controversy. And how they somehow found their way into Chiang Kai-shek's hands and onto the Princess Dou Wan is anybody's guess.”

“All very tantalizing,” said Julia, setting a pot of tea and cups on the center table for anyone who wanted some. “But what good is all this if the Princess can't be found?”

Pitt smiled. “Leave it to a woman to cut to the heart of the matter.”

“Any details surrounding her loss?” asked Sandecker.

“On November twenty-eighth, she sent out a Mayday signal that was picked up in Valparaiso, Chile, giving her position as two hundred miles west of the South American coast in the Pacific. Her radio operator claimed a fire was raging in her engine room and she was rapidly taking on water. Ships in the general area were diverted to the location given, but the only trace that was ever found were several empty life jackets. Repeated signals from Valparaiso brought no response, and no extensive search was undertaken.”

Gunn shook his head thoughtfully. “You could look for years with the Navy's latest deep-sea-penetrating technology and not find anything. A vague position like that means a search grid of at least two thousand square miles.”

Pitt poured himself a cup of tea. “Was her destination known?”

Perlmutter shrugged. “None was ever given nor determined.” He opened another file and passed around several photos of the Princess Dou Wan.

“For her time, she was a pretty ship,” observed Sandecker, admiring her lines.

Pitt's eyebrows raised in speculation. He rose from his chair, walked to a desk and picked up a magnifying glass. Then he studied two of the photos closely before looking up. “These two photos,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” Perlmutter murmured expectantly.

“They are not of the same ship.”

“You're absolutely right. One photo shows the Princess Dou Wan's sister ship, the Princess Yung Tai.”

Pitt stared into Perlmutter's eyes. “You're hiding something from us, you old fox.”

“I have no rock-hard proof,” said the big history expert, “but I do have a theory.”