in the loop about any discoveries you do make.”
Robert looked at Luke as though he was crazy, but he said nothing. Mr. Wu nodded. “Very well, Mr. Lucas, you shall have what you wish.”
———
TWO WEEKS LATER LUKE WAS back home in Monterey, and very happy to be there. It had taken about ten days to draw all the materials together in an easily workable format, which the Rodriguez brothers accomplished with remarkable proficiency and speed. Then Luke and Robert supervised the removal of the equipment to a commercial location in Palo Alto provided by Mr. Wu. The Rodriguez brothers were put on retainer, as was Francois Nuygen, and Robert supervised their work for his father. For the first few weeks Luke and Robert consulted almost daily, but for the most part Luke returned to his scholastic routine with little interruption.
Now that he had more than enough cash to invest, Luke went back to work on his shark-repelling surfboard. With the help of another enthusiastic surfing friend, Eddie Andrews, who made fine customized boards in his garage, Luke produced three viable prototypes. However, the problem of testing these under real conditions required that they find someplace where they could locate enough large sharks of the most dangerous species to use as test subjects.
After a little research Luke found a location off the west coast of Baja California that seemed to fit all their projected needs. They planned to take several regular boards, as well as the electrified models, rig them with wet- suited dummies well stuffed with chum, and tow them slowly behind a boat in shark-infested waters. Luke had seen films of this procedure being used by researchers wishing to study the method of shark attacks on surface- swimming sea lions, and the results had been spectacular. Some of the larger great whites had made steep ascending attacks with such speed and ferocity that they literally lifted themselves and their prey ten feet into the air. But when a shark realized that its intended victim wasn’t food, it usually ignored the target and moved off.
Luke and Eddie had planned to make the trip in three months’ time. If the tests proved successful, Luke and his friend intended to go into limited production. Luke even thought he knew where he could find a wealthy investor, but he never mentioned Mr. Lawrence H. Wu by name.
In the meanwhile, as time allowed, Luke went back to work on his paper concerning Dr. Gilbert’s discoveries. Robert did his part by supplying all the text translations, as well as his own analysis of the authenticity of the inscriptions, which he stated were unequivocally correct in every detail, and impossible to forge without a thorough knowledge of the ancient forms of the languages included in the stone inscriptions. In every other detail, the stone plaque was similar to markers found at other locations known to have been visited by Zheng He’s fleets. Robert also stated that Zhou Man’s seal would have been impossible to forge, in part because the size of the piece of pink- white jade used to make the seal would have carried a prohibitive price tag, and the skill to carve a piece of jade that size would require the talents of the finest Chinese craftsmen. Additionally, any forger would have needed access to information concerning Zhou Man’s chop and his imperial titles, which no longer existed in the official records anywhere.
About two days before Luke was to leave for Mexico with Eddie, he received a call from Robert. His friend said that his father had made all the necessary arrangements to have a salvage crew dive down and inspect the target wreck. He asked if Luke wanted to go along and see what they discovered. Believing that little or nothing would come of the search, Luke begged off and said he was on his way to Baja to do some important research, but that if anything turned up, Robert could text him. Otherwise he would be back in two or three weeks and they could talk then. He wished Robert and his father the very best of luck, but some intangible instinct told Luke that they would somehow be disappointed.
There was a quality of impenetrability in every detail of the mystery that Luke couldn’t quite put his finger on. There had obviously been strong motives for deception behind every element in the sequence of events that had led them this far, as though blind passages had been specifically designed to thwart all those looking for a clear exit. He didn’t know how he foresaw this, but he felt that no westerner would ever unravel the whole story, and perhaps that was as it should be.
LUKE AND EDDIE RETURNED TO Monterey wreathed in glory. Their experiments had been rewarded with total success. All three unelectrified boards, with their chum-packed dummies, had been victims of furious shark attacks, while Luke’s rigged boards remained totally unmolested despite the numerous sharks that had been drawn to the location by the odor of fish blood. Luke wished he could have watched the action from a submerged location, but that would have been impossible with anything other than a shark cage, which would have been impractical from a moving boat. Next time he would make arrangements to have some small video cameras mounted to the bottom of his boards so he could get a better picture of what was happening below the surface.
Luke was somewhat concerned that he hadn’t heard a word from Robert in the three weeks he’d been away, but he just assumed that Mr. Wu’s salvage divers had found nothing of interest. He was therefore surprised when he found a note from Robert pinned to his apartment door, dated the previous day. It said, “Your landlady says you should be back tomorrow afternoon. I’m staying at the Spindrift Inn down on Cannery Row. It’s important that I see you whenever you get back. I would have called, but I didn’t want to speak about the toys on the phone. Come find me as soon as you can, as I must return home tomorrow. All my best, RW.”
Luke knew the only thing that might be the cause of such secrecy was the long-odds possibility that Mr. Wu’s divers had indeed found Zhou Man’s treasures.
As soon as he had taken a shower to wash off the road, Luke changed his clothes and headed down to the Spindrift Inn. He asked for Dr. Wu and was directed to a large bay-view suite on the third floor. Robert was waiting for him, but he seemed to be in a strange mood. He led Luke out to the small balcony and offered him a beer.
“No thanks, Robert, I’ve been driving since early this morning, and a beer would just put me to sleep. I still have a bunch of unpacking to do. So what’s this all about?”
Robert gave a strange smile. “Well, first of all, you’ll be pleased to know that the program worked. We found the launch just where you said it might be, under the wreck of an old trawler.”
“That’s fantastic! So did you find the stones?”
Robert shrugged. “That’s the rub, Luke. The answer is yes and no.”
“What are you talking about? You either found them or you didn’t. Which is it?”
“Well, the divers found the rotting remnants of the box the treasure was shipped in, and it was approximately where you said it might be. But the contents weren’t quite what we expected.”
“What are you talking about, Robert?”
“Well, this’ll slay you. It seems that the Point Alones tong completely snookered the Three Corporations.”
“What?”
