Free The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid by Walter Jon Williams Page A

to irritate me. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” I asked. “I need to know if I’ll need a crane or truck or…”
    “A boat,” Jesse said. “And diving gear.”
    The organist played a snatch of Bach— the D Minor, I thought, and too fast.
    If you hang out in European churches, you hear the D Minor a lot. Over the years I had become a connoisseur in these matters.
    “Diving gear,” I said cautiously. “That’s interesting.”
    “Three days ago,” Jesse said, “the five-thousand-ton freighter Goldfish Fairy sank in a storm in the Pearl River Delta off Hong Kong. Our cargo was in the hold. After the Admiralty Court holds its investigation, salvage rights will go on offer. We need you to retrieve our cargo before salvage companies get to the scene.”
    I thought about this while organ pipes bleated above my head. “Five thousand tons,” I said, “that’s a little coaster, not a real ship at all. How do you know it didn’t break up when it went down?”
    “When the pumps stopped working, the Goldfish Fairy filled and sank. The crew got away to the boats and saw it sink on an even keel.”
    “Do you know where?”
    “The captain got a satellite fix.”
    “How deep did it sink?”
    “Sixty meters.”
    I let out a slow breath. A depth of sixty meters required technical diving skills I didn’t possess.
    “The Pearl River Delta is one of the busiest sea lanes in the world,” I said. “How are we going to conduct an unauthorized salvage operation without being noticed?”
    There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Jesse said, “That’s your department.”
    I contemplated this bleak picture for a moment, then said, “How big is your cargo again?”
    “We were shipping several crates— mainly research equipment. But only one crate matters, and it’s about two meters long by eighty centimeters wide. The captain said they were stored on top of the hold, so all you have to do is open the hold and raise the box. ”
    That seemed to simplify matters. “Right,” I said. “We’ll take the job.”
    “For how much?”
    I let the organist blat a few times while I considered, and then I named a sum. Jesse turned stern.
    “That’s a lot of money,” he said.
    “Firstly,” I said, “I’m going to have to bribe some people to get hernias, and that’s never fun. Then I’ve got to subcontract part of the job, and the ones I have in mind are notoriously difficult.”
    He gave me a look. “Why don’t I hire the subcontractors myself, then?”
    “You can try. But they won’t know who needs to get hernias, and besides, they can’t do the other things my group can do. We can give you worldwide coverage, man!”
    He brooded a bit behind his eyelids, then nodded. “Very well,” he said.
    I knew that he would concede in the end. If he was moving important cargo in a little Chinese coaster instead of by Federal Express, then that meant he was moving it illegally— smuggling, to use the term that would be employed by the Admiralty Court were Jesse ever caught. He had to get his job done quickly and discreetly, and for speed and discretion he had to pay.
    I told him which bank account to wire the money to, and he wrote it down with a gold-plated pen. I began to wonder if I had undercharged him.
    We left the church and made our way back to the square, where Jan Hus stood bleakly amid a sea of iron- gray martyrs to his cause. The band had begun playing without me— our Latin-Flavored Beatle Medley.
    “You’ll want to check this out,” I told Jesse. “My brother Sancho does an amaaazing solo on ‘Twist and Shout’ with his malta — that’s the medium-sized panpipe.”
    “Is pop tunes all you do?” Jesse asked, his expression petulant. “I thought you were an authentic folk band.”
    I must admit that Jesse’s comment got under my skin. Just because he’d bought our services didn’t mean we’d sold out.
    Besides, “El Condor Pasa” was an authentic folk tune.
    “We play what the public will