Treasure of Khan (32 page)

T
HE AIR OVER
K
HARG
I
SLAND
was hazy brown. Oily smoke spewed up by the holocaust at Ras Tanura a week before still choked the skies over the Persian Gulf. Even at Kharg Island, a rocky limestone spit on the Iranian side of the gulf one hundred eighty miles from Ras Tanura, taking a breath of the thick polluted air left the greasy taste of petroleum in one's mouth.

The toxic air was an environmental match to the waters east of the small island, which were topped with a perpetual layer of oil. The water pollution was homegrown, however, in the form of leaks and spills from the adjacent crude oil transport facility. A huge T-shaped jetty on the east side of the island held berths for up to ten tankers. Off the west coast, a man-made island could fill the bellies of several Ultra Large Crude Carrier supertankers, fed by gravity from an assortment of storage tanks built on the central heights of the island. Though just a tiny land mass, Kharg Island is Iran's largest oil export terminal, as well as one of the biggest oil transport facilities in the world.

Dusk was approaching when a battered black drill ship chugged past the fleet of tankers aligned in a row along the eastern terminal. Angling north, the drill ship turned and approached the island, mooring close to the bluffs at the tip of the northern coast. An Iranian military boat patrolling the coastal waters cruised by but paid no thought to the old ship, which flew the flag of India.

None of the oil workers ashore paid much attention either, especially after night fell. But that's when the drill ship quietly sprang to life. The ship moved slowly back and forth, surveying the black waters before settling on a desired spot. Fore, aft, and side thrusters were activated, gluing the ship to a stationary point despite the effect of wind and current. Under low-wattage deck lighting, the ship's crew scurried about wearing black jumpsuits. A short drill string was assembled beneath the derrick and lowered through an open moon pool. The end of the drill string didn't hold the usual roller cone drill bit for oil drilling, but rather an odd trio of oblong cylinders bound in a tripod fashion.

The tripod was lowered to the bottom, then the deck crew slowly disappeared and the ship grew quiet. But twenty minutes later, an explosive boom emanated from beneath the ship. A loud but muffled clap was all that could be heard on the surface, barely discernible to the neighboring ships and island workers. But fifty feet beneath the ship, a high-powered sound wave was blasted into the gulf floor. The downward-directed seismic wave bounced and refracted harmlessly through the earth's crust. Harmless, except for a single point of convergence from the three oblong cylinders, which focused their blast of sound at the exact depth and position of a marked fault line.

The brief acoustic burst was followed by a second discharge, then a third. The concentrated acoustic blasts bombarded the subterranean fault line with vibrating seismic waves until it reached a point of irreversible stress. Like Ella Fitzgerald shattering a glass with her voice, the pounding acoustic vibrations fractured the fault located a half mile beneath the surface.

The rupture reverberated to the surface with a savage shake. The U.S. Geological Survey would clock it at 7.2 on the Richter scale, a killer quake by all accounts. Loss of life was minimal, with major damage limited to just a few Iranian coastal villages near Kharg Island. Since the Persian Gulf waters were too shallow for a tsunami to form, the damage was restricted almost entirely to a section of Iranian shoreline near the gulf's tip. And to Kharg Island.

On the tiny oil-pumping island, the damage was catastrophic. The whole island shook as if a nuclear bomb had detonated beneath it. Dozens of oil storage tanks ruptured like balloons, spilling their black contents in rivers that slopped down the hillside and into the sea. The huge fixed oil terminal off the eastern shore broke into several free-floating pieces that battered and punctured the moored tankers. The supertanker terminal on the western side of Kharg Island disappeared altogether.

The small black drill ship didn't wait around to survey the damage, instead steaming south in the early hours of the morning. The flurry of helicopters and rescue ships streaming to the rocky island took little notice of the old vessel headed away from the destruction. Yet in its wake, the drill ship had single-handedly devastated Iranian oil exports, jolting the global petroleum market once again while plunging China into a state of chaos.

T
O THE TEETERING OIL FUTURES
market, the report of the destruction at Kharg Island hit like an atomic blast, unleashing a fear-driven free-for-all. Frenzied traders jumped over the oil futures contracts, bidding the price of sweet crude up to a stratospheric one hundred fifty dollars per barrel. On Wall Street, the Dow headed in the opposite direction. A reeling stock market was forced to shut down early as trading curbs halted activity after a massive sell-off erased twenty percent of the market's value in half a day.

Across the U.S., anxious motorists reacted to the news by racing to the nearest gas station to fill their cars up on cheaper fuel. The stampede buying quickly exhausted the thin margin of surplus refined gasoline and fuel shortages soon sprouted across every state. Sporadic violence flared over the waning supply in some regions as a sense of panic gripped the country.

At the White House, the president called an emergency meeting of his top security and economic advisers in the Cabinet Room. A no-nonsense populist elected from Montana, the president listened quietly as his chief economic adviser recounted a litany of disastrous consequences resulting from the oil shock.

“A near doubling of oil prices in less than a month will produce unprecedented inflationary pressures,” touted the adviser, a balding man with thick glasses. “Aside from the obvious distress to the entire transportation sector, there are countless industrial and manufacturing bases that rely on petroleum content. Plastics, chemicals, paint, textiles…there's hardly an industry that is not directly impacted by the price surge. The dramatic rise in oil costs will have to be passed on to the consumer, who is already suffering from shock at the gas pump. An immediate recession is a foregone conclusion. My fear is that we are standing at the precipice of a deep and prolonged economic depression of global proportions.”

“Isn't this price hike a knee-jerk reaction?” the president asked. “After all, we don't import a drop of oil from Iran.”

“There is a major element of panic, no doubt about it. But the damage to Kharg Island disrupts the global supply of oil, which impacts the price in the U.S. even if our own import supply remains steady. Of course, we are already seeing a shortfall in imports from the destruction at Ras Tanura. As a result, the markets are on edge. The anxiety is partly being fueled by rumors, one of which says that a terrorist element was responsible for the damage to both Persian Gulf facilities.”

“Anything to those claims?” the president asked his national security advisor, a studious man with a lean face.

“None that we've ascertained,” the man replied in a staid voice. “I'll task Langley with a further look, but all evidence points to naturally occurring earthquakes. The fact that two damaging rattles took place in close relative proximity appears to be a fluke of nature.”

“Fair enough, but let's not take chances with any homegrown fanatics who want to capitalize on the situation here for a headline. Dennis, I'd like Homeland Security to elevate the terrorist threat advisory for all seaports. Let's make sure surveillance is boosted at our oil terminals, particularly along the Gulf Coast.”

“Consider it done, Mr. President,” replied the director of homeland security, seated opposite of the chief executive.

“Garner, I think a quick means to quell the public hysteria would be to immediately release some stocks from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” The suggestion came from Vice President James Sandecker, a retired admiral and former head of NUMA. He was a small but intense man with blazing eyes and a fiery red Vandyke beard. An old friend of the president, he seldom addressed his boss by title. “The oil markets should cool down over time. Releasing a portion of the reserves should dampen the immediate public fear of an outright oil shortage, and perhaps boost confidence in the markets.”

The president nodded. “Write up a Presidential Order to that effect,” he barked at an aide.

“A sales pitch from the bully pulpit might not hurt, either,” Sandecker added, glancing toward a large portrait of Teddy Roosevelt hanging on a side wall.

“I'll do my part,” the president agreed. “Contact the networks and schedule a televised address for tonight,” he directed. “I'll advocate voluntary gas rationing for the next thirty days. Might help the refineries catch up on supplies. We'll get the public calmed down first, then try to figure a way out of this mess.”

“There must be some options to consider,” mused the chief of staff. “Temporary price freezes and mandatory fuel rationing could be instituted quickly.”

“Might be wise to promote some conservation measures publicly while privately twisting some arms,” Sandecker said. “We can probably entice some of our other foreign suppliers to boost oil production. Maybe our domestic producers can help as well, though I understand the Alaska Pipeline is now operating at capacity again.”

“Yes, the arctic drilling has increased production,” the economic adviser confirmed. “We would otherwise be in a lot worse shape right now. But that just means the upside from our present condition is limited. The measures mentioned are all fine and good, but they will only have a minor effect on domestic demand. The ugly reality is that they will have almost no impact on the global markets. A major supply fix is what's needed and that will take months for Saudi Arabia and Iran to sort out. I'm afraid to say, there is very little we can do right now to impact the global price of oil in a meaningful manner.”

The dire assessment silenced the room. Finally, the president spoke.

“All right, gentlemen, put everything on the table. I want to look at all options and every worst-case scenario. And I suspect we'll have to move fast. With the oil price holding at the current level, exactly how much time do we have before completely losing the economy?” he asked, his dark eyes boring into the economist.

“Difficult to say,” the adviser replied nervously. “Perhaps a thirty-day window before we see the first major work stoppages and associated layoffs. Once the markets have digested this initial shock, the price pressure may abate. But we'll need to see a price retreat of at least thirty to forty dollars to avoid a severe recession. The flip side is that the markets are in a very tenuous state. Another shock of any sort and we could have a global calamity on our hands.”

“Another shock,” the president said softly. “God help us from that.”

T
HE EMPTY PATCH OF SAND
that yielded Summer's porcelain figurine now looked like an underwater construction site. Aluminum grids and yellow ropes stretched in all directions across the seabed, punctuated by tiny orange flags staked into the ground. What had started as a sample test pit dug near the rocky outcropping had grown into a full-blown excavation project after Dirk and Summer uncovered a large framing timber buried two feet under the sand. Additional test pits confirmed that the porcelain figure and stone anchor were no random objects tossed over the side but part of an entire wreck buried between the two coral reefs.

Beautifully crafted blue-and-white porcelain plates and bowls, along with votives and carvings of jade, all hinted at a wreck of Chinese origin. Portions of the ship's frame also correlated with the design of a massively sized Chinese junk. To Summer's amazement and chagrin, the potential discovery of an early Chinese ship in Hawaiian waters had caused a sensation. Media representatives from around the world descended on her like vultures to capture the story. After a slate of repetitive news interviews, she was only too happy to slip on a tank and fins and escape the bedlam underwater. The newshounds would lose interest in the story quick enough, she knew, and then the excavation could be resumed uninterrupted.

Summer floated over the grids and past a pair of divers blowing sand away from a large timber believed to be the sternpost. A few yards away, manual probes driven into the sand had detected another large section of wood that might be the rudder. Gliding to the edge of the work site, she kicked toward the surface alongside a drop line, holding a balled fist over her head until she broke the surface.

A brown metal barge was now moored over the site, and Summer swam the few yards over to its side ladder. Tossing her fins onto the deck, she climbed up and onto the small barge. It was little more than an open deck, with a dingy tin hut constructed at one end. A wall rack full of dive gear hung against the side of the hut, while the deck rail was lined with a generator, water pump, and several compressors. A pair of surfboards lying on the tin shack's roof offered the only hint of frivolity to the work site. The boards belonged to Dirk and Summer and were deemed standard equipment whenever they worked in Hawaii.

“How's the water?” drawled the voice of Jack Dahlgren. He was hunched over one of the compressors, screwdriver in hand, as Summer stowed her tank and dive gear.

“It's Hawaii,” she smiled. “Always a delight.” She toweled her hair off, then walked over to Dahlgren.

“Be up and running soon?” she asked.

“Just waiting for a final fuel and supply drop from the
Mariana.
We've got one compressor to run an airlift and another to provide surface-supplied air. They'll make diving in these purty waters a breeze.”

“I'm more excited about applying the airlift to the last few buried areas.”

The airlift was little more than a hollow tube with compressed air fed into the lower end. The pressurized air ascended up the tube, producing a vacuum effect ideal for sucking away sand and loose debris from a wreck site.

“Mariana Explorer
to
Brown Bess,”
crackled a handheld radio strung to the side rail. Dirk's voice was instantly recognized on the other end.

“
Bess
here. Come on back,” Dahlgren replied.

“Jack, we've got the fuel and hot dogs and are ten miles away. The captain says we'll tie up on your leeward side to off-load the fuel.”

“We'll be waiting.” Dahlgren peered across the horizon, spotting a turquoise dot cruising toward the barge. Then the radio crackled once more.

“And tell Summer that she has yet another visitor who would like to talk to her about the wreck.
Explorer
out.”

“Not another reporter,” Summer cursed, rolling her eyes in disgust.

“Summer says she'll be happy as a clam to host another interview.
Bess
out,” Dahlgren replied into the microphone, laughing at Summer's taciturn look.

The NUMA vessel arrived within the hour and tied up alongside the barge. While Dahlgren oversaw the loading of a fifty-five-gallon drum of gasoline, Summer climbed aboard the
Mariana Explorer
and made her way to the wardroom. There she found Dirk having coffee with a dark-skinned Asian man wearing slacks and a navy polo shirt.

“Summer, come meet Dr. Alfred Tong,” Dirk said, waving her over.

Tong stood up and bowed, then shook Summer's outstretched hand.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Pitt,” he said, looking up into the gray eyes of the taller woman. He had a powerful grip, she noted, and skin like her own that had seen much of the sun. She tried hard not to stare at a prominent scar that ran down his left cheek, instead gazing at his intense walnut-colored eyes and jet-black hair.

“Thank goodness,” Summer blushed. “I was expecting another TV reporter.”

“Dr. Tong is a conservator with the National Museum of Malaysia,” Dirk explained.

“Yes,” Tong said and nodded, then continued in choppy English. “I was attending a seminar at the University of Hawaii when I heard of your discovery. An associate at the university put me in touch with a local NUMA representative. Your captain and brother were kind enough to invite me out for the day.”

“The logistics were well timed,” Dirk explained. “The
Mariana Explorer
happened to be in Hilo picking up fuel and supplies for the barge and will be returning that direction this evening.”

“What is your interest in the wreck?” Summer asked.

“We have a sizeable collection of Southeast Asian artifacts in the museum, as well as an extensive exhibit from a fourteenth-century Chinese vessel excavated from the Straits of Malacca. Though it is not my specific area of expertise, I have some knowledge of Yuan and Ming dynasty pottery. I am interested in what you have retrieved, and thought I might offer assistance in identifying the age of the vessel through its artifacts. I, like many others, would revel in the discovery of a thirteenth-century Chinese royal vessel in the western Pacific.”

“Identifying the age of the vessel is a key question,” Summer replied. “I'm afraid we've uncovered just a limited number of ceramic artifacts. We sent a sampling to the University of California for analysis, but I'd be happy to let you examine the remaining items.”

“Perhaps the context of the artifact finds will be useful. Can you share with me the condition and configuration of the wreck?”

Dirk unrolled a large script of paper sitting on the table. “I was just going to walk you through the excavation profile before Summer walked in.”

They all took a seat at the table and examined the chart. It was a computer-aided diagram of the wreck site from an overhead view. Sections of timbers and scattered artifacts were displayed in a horseshoe-shaped region next to the lava bed. Tong was surprised by the tiny amount of remains and artifacts documented in the drawing, hardly indicative of a large sailing vessel.

“We've worked with the archaeologists from the University of Hawaii to excavate nearly all of the accessible portions of the wreck. Unfortunately, we are only seeing about ten percent of the entire vessel,” Dirk said.

“The rest is under coral?” Tong asked.

“No, the wreck actually lies perpendicular to two reefs under a sandbar, with her nose to the shore,” Summer said. She pointed to the diagram, which showed two coral mounds on either side of the excavation field. “The sand has protected the existing artifacts from consumption by the coral. We think this section of sand may have been a natural channel cut through the reef eons ago when the seas were lower.”

“If the coral has not imprisoned the wreck, then why are there not more remains visible?”

“In a word, lava.” Summer pointed to the closed end of the horseshoe, which showed a rocky bed that ran off the chart in the direction of the shoreline. “If you look out the window, you can see that this section of coastline is one big lava field. The rest of the wreck, I'm sorry to say, is buried under a bed of lava rock.”

“Remarkable,” Tong said with a cocked brow. “So the rest of the wreck and its cargo is intact under the lava?”

“The rest of the ship is either under the lava or was consumed by it. If the ship sank and was buried under sand before the lava flow arrived, then it may well be preserved intact beneath the lava field. The timbers we've found adjacent to the lava field are well buried, which suggests that the rest of the ship may indeed still be there.”

“The upside is that we may be able to use the lava to help age the wreck,” Dirk said. “We have a local volcanologist studying the historical record of volcanic eruptions and associated lava flows on this part of the island. So far, we know that there has been no volcanic activity in this immediate area for at least two hundred years, and possibly much longer. We hope to receive more definitive information in a few days.”

“And what of the actual ship have you identified?”

“Just a few pieces, which appear to be from the stern section. The timbers are thick, indicating a potentially large ship, perhaps even two hundred feet or more. Then there is the anchor stone, which is consistent with known Chinese design, and also indicative of a sizeable vessel.”

“A vessel that size and age would most certainly be Chinese,” Tong said.

“Yes,” Dirk replied, “the European vessels of the day were half as large. I've read of the legend of the Chinese admiral Zheng He, who purportedly sailed around the world with his massive Treasure Fleet in 1405. This is no six-masted, five-hundred-foot behemoth, though, like Zheng He supposedly sailed, if such massive ships even existed.”

“History tends to exaggerate,” Tong said. “But crossing half the Pacific a hundred years before Zheng He's purported voyage would be an astounding accomplishment.”

“The ceramic artifacts recovered present the most intriguing evidence that the wreck is that old,” Summer said. “We've found comparable design patterns in our research which suggest the ship may date to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. Perhaps you can confirm our assessment with an examination of the ceramics?”

“I am most interested to see what you have recovered.”

Summer led them down a flight of stairs to a brightly illuminated laboratory. Racks of plastic bins lined the back bulkhead, all filled with various artifacts recovered from the wreck and now soaking in fresh water.

“Most of the items recovered were fragments of the actual ship,” she explained. “The cargo holds and living quarters must all be under the lava, as we recovered few personal artifacts. We did find a few everyday cooking utensils and a large pot,” she said, pointing to an end rack, “but you will probably be most interested in these.”

She pulled two trays off one of the racks and set them on a stainless steel table. Inside the trays were several plates, a bowl, and numerous fragments of porcelain. Most of the items were sugary white in color, though the bowl was made of black clay. Tong's eyes lit up as he slipped on a pair of reading glasses and began examining the artifacts.

“Yes, very nice,” he muttered as he quickly ran through the inventory.

“What can you tell us about the design?” Summer asked.

“The patterns and material are consistent with the product of the Chinese kilns at Jingdezhen and Jianyang. The overall quality appears less advanced than the work produced during the later Ming Dynasty. The fish emblem here,” he said, holding up one of the plates. “I have seen this before on a Yuan-period bowl. I would concur with your assessment, these ceramics are characteristic of items manufactured in the Song and Yuan dynasties of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.”

A broad smile crossed Summer's lips and she gave a happy wink to Dirk. Tong reached over and pulled the last artifact from the tray, a large teal-and-white plate with a pie-slice section missing from the platter. The glazed image of a peacock strutted across the center, while smaller images of a cheetah chasing a herd of deer circled the plate's perimeter. Tong studied the plate with a renewed intensity, looking again and again at the ornate glazing and animal portrayal.

“One of the lab conservators found a similar design in the database used by Yuan royalty,” Dirk said.

“Yes, it is,” Tong muttered, then put the plate down and backtracked. “Similar, that is, but surely not made for royalty. A close design used for trade, most likely,” he added. “But I would agree that it is from the Yuan era, which, as you know, lasted from 1264 to 1368. Well ahead of Admiral Zheng.”

“That's what we believe, remarkable as it is to think a ship of that era found its way to Hawaiian waters.”

The door to the lab opened and in walked the
Mariana Explorer
's captain. A towering sandy-haired man, Bill Stenseth commanded the respect of the entire ship by his quiet intelligence and his good-natured sense of fair play.

“Dahlgren has completed loading the fuel and supplies onto your floating hotel. Whenever you two are set to jump ship, we'll be on our way.”