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Mother Church, not Anthony Van Horne, was running the show. "Pier Eighty-eight . . ." In a flurry of movement the captain pulled on a pair of mirrorshades and a John Deere fits-all visor cap.
    "Excuse me, Padre. I gotta go visit my ship."
    "It's awfully late."
    "You don't have to come."
    "Yes, I do."
    "Oh? Why?"
    "Because the SS Carpco Valparaíso is currently under Vatican jurisdiction"—Thomas offered the scowling captain a long, meandering smile—"and no one, not even you, can board her without my permission."
    In his life and travels Anthony Van Horne had seen the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, and his ex-fiancée Janet Yost without her clothes on, but he'd never beheld a sight so beautiful as the rehabilitated Carpco Valparaíso riding high and empty in the moonlit waters off Pier 88. He gasped. Until that exact and magical moment, he'd not fully believed this mission was real. But there she was, all right, the canny old Val herself, tied to the wharf by a half-dozen Dacron lines, dominating New York Harbor with all the stark disproportionality of a rowboat sitting in a bathtub.
    In certain rare moments, Anthony thought he understood the general antipathy toward Ultra Large Crude Carriers. Such a ship had no sheer, no gentle ascending slope to her contours. She had no rake, none of the subtle angling of mast and funnel by which traditional cargo vessels paid homage to the Age of Sail. With her crushing tonnage and broad beam, a ULCC didn't ride the waves; she ground them down. Gross ships, monstrous ships—but that was precisely the point, he felt: their fearsome majesty, their ponderous glamour, the way they plied the planet like yachts designed to provide vacation crudes for rhinoceroses. To command a ULCC—to walk its decks and feel it vibrating beneath you, amplifying your flesh and blood—was a grand and defiant gesture, like pissing on a king, or having your own international terrorist organization, or keeping a thermonuclear warhead in your garage. They went out to her in a launch named the Juan Fernandez, piloted by a member of the Vatican Secret Service, a bearish sergeant with frazzledwhite hair and a Colt .45 snugged against his armpit. Lights blazed on every floor of the aft superstructure, its seven levels culminating in a congestion of antennas, smokestacks, masts, and flags. Anthony wasn't sure which of the present banners troubled him more—the keys-and-tiara symbol of the Vatican or the famous stegosaurus logo of Caribbean Petroleum. He resolved to have Marbles Rafferty strike the Carpco colors first thing. As the launch glided past the Valparaíso's stern, Anthony grabbed the Jacob's ladder and began his ascent to the weather deck, Father Ockham right behind. He had to say one thing for this control-freak priest: the man had nerve. Ockham climbed up the ship's side with perfect aplomb, one hand on his attaché case, the other on the rungs, as if he'd been scaling rope ladders all his life. The retrofitted towing rig rose sharply against the Jersey City skyline: two mighty windlasses bolted to the afterdeck like a pair of gigantic player-piano rolls, wound not with ordinary mooring lines but with heavy-duty chains, their links as large as inner tubes. At the end of each chain lay a massive kedge anchor, twenty tons of iron, an anchor to hook a whale, tether a continent, moor the moon.
    "You're looking at some fancy footwork." Ockham opened his attaché case and drew out a gridded pink checklist clamped to a Masonite clipboard. "Anchors brought down by rail from Canada, motors flown over from Germany, capstans imported from Belgium. The Japanese gave us a great deal on the chains—underbid USX by ten percent."
    "You put this stuff out on bid ?"
    "The Church is not a profit-making institution, Anthony, but she knows the value of a dollar." Boarding the elevator, they rose three stories to the steward's deck. The main galley was aswarm. Eager, robust, competent-looking women in