The Stone Monkey

America: his wife, two sons and Chang’s widower father.
    A half-dozen times on the trip Chang and Sen had sat in the hold, sipped the potent mao-tai that the captain always had in good supply on his ship and talked about life in China and in the United States.
    Captain Sen now saw Chang sitting on a cot in a forward corner of the hold. The tall, placid man frowned, a reaction to the look in the captain’s eyes. Chang handed his teenage son the book he’d been reading to his family and rose to meet the captain.
    Everyone around them fell silent.
    “Our radar shows a fast-moving ship on course to intercept us.”
    Dismay blossomed in the faces of those who’d overheard.
    “The Americans?” Chang asked. “Their Coast Guard?”
    “I think it must be,” the captain answered. “We’re in U.S. waters.”
    Sen looked at the frightened faces of the immigrants around him. Like most shiploads of illegals that Sen had transported, these people—many of them strangers before they’d met—had formed a close bond of friendship. And they now gripped hands or whispered among themselves, some seeking, some offering reassurance. The captain’s eyes settled on a woman holding an eighteen-month-old girl in her arms. Her mother—whose face was scarred from a beating at a reeducation camp—lowered her head and began to cry.
    “What can we do?” Chang asked, troubled.
    Captain Sen knew he was a vocal dissident in China and had been desperate to flee the country. If he was deported by U.S. Immigration he’d probably end up in one of the infamous jails in western China as a political prisoner.
    “We’re not far from the drop-off spot. We’re running atfull speed. It may be possible to get close enough to put you ashore in rafts.”
    “No, no,” Chang said. “In these waves? We’d all die.”
    “There’s a natural harbor I’m steering for. It should be calm enough for you to board the rafts. At the beach there’ll be trucks to take you to New York.”
    “And what about you?” Chang asked.
    “I’ll head back into the storm. By the time it’s safe for them to board you’ll be on highways of gold, heading toward the city of diamonds. . . . Now tell everyone to get their belongings together. But only the most important things. Your money, your pictures. Leave everything else. It will be a race to the shore. Stay below until the Ghost or I tell you to come up top.”
    Captain Sen hurried up the steep ladder, on his way to the bridge. As he climbed he said a brief prayer for their survival to Tian Hou, the goddess of sailors, then dodged a wall of gray water that vaulted the side of the ship.
    On the bridge he found the Ghost standing over the radar unit, staring into the rubber glare shade. The man stood completely still, bracing himself against the rolling of the sea.
    Some snakeheads dressed as if they were wealthy Cantonese gangsters from a John Woo film but the Ghost always wore the standard outfit of most Chinese men—simple slacks and short-sleeved shirts. He was muscular but diminutive, clean-shaven, hair longer than a typical businessman’s but never styled with cream or spray.
    “They will intercept us in fifteen minutes,” the snake-head said. Even now, facing interdiction and arrest, he seemed as lethargic as a ticket seller in a rural long-distance bus station.
    “Fifteen?” the captain replied. “Impossible. How many knots are they making?”
    Sen walked to the chart table, the centerpiece of all ocean-crossing vessels. On it sat a U.S. Defense Mapping Agency nautical chart of the area. He had to judge the two ships’ relative positions from this and from the radar; because of the risk of being traced, the Dragon ’s global positioning system and her EPIRB emergency beacon and Global Maritime Distress and Safety System were disconnected.
    “I think it will be at least forty minutes,” the captain said.
    “No, I timed the distance they’ve traveled since we spotted them.”
    Captain Sen glanced at the crewman piloting the Fuzhou Dragon, sweating as he gripped the wheel in his struggle to keep the Turk’s head knot of twine, tied around a spoke, straight up, indicating that the rudder was aligned with the hull. The throttles were full forward. If the Ghost was right in his assessment of when the cutter would intercept them they would not be able to make the protected harbor in time. At best they could get within a half mile of the nearby rocky shore—close enough to launch the