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The black hair was dense and wavy and slightly unkempt The shoulders were broad and tapered to a sliave his body size as six feet, three inches, 185 pounds The hands looked like the hands of a field worker, the pal The eyes, it was stated, were green and not blue

"You have an inner sense about s others like me cannot see Look at this picture Look inside the man and tell me what you find"

Su Zhong swept her long black hair back froazed at the photograph "He is handsonetism about hi the unknown, especially what lies under the sea No rings on his fingers suggests that he is unpretentious Women are drawn to him They do not consider him a threat He enjoys their company There is an aura of kindness and tenderness about hiood lover He is sentimental about old objects and probably collects them His life is dedicated to achieveain He thrives on challenges This is a man who does not like to fail but can accept failure if he has tried his best There is also a cold hardness in the eyes He also has the capacity to kill To friends he is extreerous All in all, a most unusual man who should have lived in another time"

"What you're saying is that he is a throwback to the past"

Su Zhong nodded "He would have been at ho in the crusades or driving a stagecoach through the deserts of the old American West"

"Thank you, ht"

"My pleasure is to serve you" Su Zhong bowed her head and quietly left the roo the door behind her

Qin Shang turned over the photograph and began reading the data in the file, noting with amusement that he and the subject were born on the same day in the same year There, any similarity ended The su

bject was the son of Senator George Pitt of California His ht He attended Newport Beach High School in California and then the Air Force Acade thirty-fifth in his class Played on the football tea, he achieved a distinguisheddays of the Vietna froency Later promoted to lieutenant colonel

A collector of old autoar at the edge of Washington's National Airport He lived in an apartment above the collection His acco as special projects director under his boss, Admiral Ja the project to raise the Titanic to discovering the long-lost artifacts fro a red tide in the oceans that would have ulti the past fifteen years the subject was directly responsible for operations that either saved a great y or the environment The list of projects he directed to successful conclusions covered nearly twenty pages

Qin Shang's agent had also included a list ofwas stunned by several of the names They consisted of men ealthy and powerful as well as co was correct in her evaluation This erous enemy

After nearly an hour, Qin Shang laid aside the docuure standing beside an old car intently, wondering what drove such aminute that their paths would cross

"So, Mr Dirk Pitt, you are the man responsible for the disaster at Orion Lake," said Qin Shang, speaking to the photograph as though Pitt were standing in the roo area and yacht is as yet a mystery to me But I have this to say to you: You have qualities that I respect, but you have come to the end of your career The next addendum and final postscript to your file will be your obituary"

13

ORDERS CAME DOWN froent Julia Lee to be flown immediately from Seattle to San Francisco, where she was placed in a hospital for ned to her audibly gasped when she reown so the doctor could make his examination There was hardly a square inch of Julia's body that wasn't black-and-blue or marked by reddish bruises The expression in the nurse's eyes also rotesque fro Julia's determination not to look at herself in a mirror for at least a week