The SUV pulled away from the Shui Building parking lot and headed away from the main street, going down back roads and making many turns that took advantage of traffic lights about to turn red so as to prevent any suspicious cars from following.  The Chinese were silent throughout the trip until they arrived in the Dadaocheng dock area of the city, where Guo gave them directions to a slip far from the main part of the port, then used his mobile phone to call someone.
         They arrived close to the end of an isolated dock, where two men were getting a trawler ready to depart, its engine still quiet. 
         “Oh, no,” said Katie, “not another boat ride!”
         “I guess so,” said David, remembering a similar sailing they took during the Capone caper.
         The Chinese thugs got into the boat first, then Guanting and Guo, nudging Katie and David forward, with the two boatmen helping them aboard.  The Americans were ushered below decks, where it was dark but with enough light from small portholes for Katie and David to see. 
         After a few more minutes, Guanting  and Guo doffed their suit jackets in favor of  life jackets, which the crew members also wore. None was offered to Katie and David.
        Hours passed until twilight and darkness came on fast. Finally the trawler was unhitched from the dock, its lights on, and started sailing slowly out of the harbor, then south into Taiwan Strait. The captain of the trawler knew not to sail beyond the twelve-nautical-mile legal limit of Taiwan’s territorial waters, where, only the year before, the Red Chinese had launched test missiles to intimidate the government of Taiwan prior to the 1996 elections. 
        Nevertheless, without Katie and David knowing it, Guo told the captain to go several miles beyond the limit, apparently to leave any evidence of any crime in Red Chinese waters.  He also knew the Taiwan harbor police did not patrol out that far.
         As the boat got about six miles out, the captain shut down its lights, with only the dashboard lights in his cabin glowing. There had been the sound of clanging buoys earlier and Katie tried to stifle the thought that they sounded like the knell of graveyard bells. Now there was just the sound of the lapping of the waves.
         At first Katie said little to David, watching his face trying to figure some way out, but it all seemed futile. 
         “What would 007 do in a situation like this?” she asked, feebly trying to sound upbeat.
         “Bond would punch all his captors out, then shoot them with their own guns,” said David, “but that’s because his idiot captors never bothered to handcuff him.  Instead they’d give him one of his own cigarettes, which blew up in their faces.  Our thugs are slightly smarter.”
         “Any friendly whales in these waters?” she asked, smiling weakly.  David smiled back but said nothing, then, “Fucking Coleman.”
         “I know,” said Katie. “It is unbelievable that he would be one of Shui’s stooges.”
         “Well, now, let’s think back. Coleman was eager to help us get an appointment with Shui, right? And that was before you alerted him to our theory about the accidents?  What did he say when you told him?”
         Katie thought back. “He sounded very surprised, and when I asked him if he thought I should bring it up with Shui, Coleman said maybe he should do it first, before we arrive in Taiwan. That would have alerted Shui, but Coleman didn’t know about Chin confessing to the feds.  We only found that out this morning. So, I’m thinking that Coleman maybe phoned Shui to tell him that we had this theory but no proof of anything. I refuse to believe John would hand us over to be murdered by Shui.”
         “Well,” said David, “remember one thing: Who besides Kiley and us had the list of six probable collectors?”
         “John did.”
         “And who did he get the list from?”
         Katie swallowed hard. “From me.  He got it from me.”
         “Exactly, so Shui got the list from Coleman. Saito was already dead, and Shui might well have guessed who his main competitors would be, but the violent acts have all been directed to the people specifically on that list. That became the kill list.”
         “And only John could give it to him,” said Katie. “Oh, my God!”  
         “Coleman suckered you, Katie, but listen, it’s probable Coleman gave Shui the list without any idea it would involve trying to knock the collectors off or cripple them. You never even told him anything about Lauden and Chin beyond what he’d read in the papers.
       “Coleman used the list for his own purposes, which, as it turned out, was to compromise everyone on it, under orders from Shui.  Then he gets invited first class to Taiwan by Shui, and Coleman goes light on him in the article.  I’m pretty sure that was the extent of Coleman’s involvement. I don’t think he shared our theory until you told it to him a few days ago.”
         “So, you don’t think he knew Shui would try to murder us in the hotel?”
         “I dunno,” said David. “It’s very, very tough for me to believe that.  Coleman’s not the type. I think he was just warning his Taiwanese benefactor to be careful during the interview because we had this theory about Shui’s involvement.”
         “God, I hope you’re right, David. But he’s still a bastard.”
         “And he’s probably going to be indicted as an accessory, if the feds can prove it.  I’m sure he’ll spill everything he knows and plead that he is innocent about the criminal part of the deal.”
         “Well, he’s sure as shit going to be fired and never work in journalism again. But I wanna see the little bastard get put away.”
         Guo came down to see his captives.
         “How much longer we going to be on this piece of junk?” asked David.
         “This is not a junk,” said Guo. “It’s a trawler. Junks have big sails.”
         “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” said David. “How much longer to get wherever the hell it is we’re going?”
         “You should be happy we are still moving.  It means you are still alive. But it will not be long now.”
         With that Guo called the two crew members and said something in Chinese that caused them to bring down four sand bags, looking to weigh about ten pounds each.
         Katie let out a scream. David cursed at Guo, who slapped him across the face.  Then the two crewmen began tying the sandbags on each leg of their captives. Katie was panic-stricken, wailing.  David tried to calm her down but she just kept looking at the sandbags and kicking her feet in a futile struggle.  Finally the tying up was done and the crewmen went back up on deck.
         Oddly enough, David was thinking about how this method of killing an enemy had long been used by the mobsters he chased back in New York, and how the NYPD had dragged the waters around Manhattan and Brooklyn, only to find rotted corpses fed on by the fish. Nothing he’d ever seen all his years on the job ever prepared him for that sight, and he started to hyperventilate.
         “David, what’s the matter?” screamed Katie, thinking her only hope was having a heart attack.
         “S’okay, s’okay, I’m okay now,” he said, calming himself down. “Katie, I just want you to know, that after everything we’ve been through, I’m crazy about you.”
         “I love you too, David. You’ve been like a big brother to me.”
         That was not what David was hoping to hear, but before he could say anything else, the night’s silence was broken by the startling loud blast of a fog horn, followed by the whooping sounds of what David recognized as a police boat.
         “What’s that?” asked Katie, her eyes as wide as they could open.
         “It’s a police boat!  It’s a fucking police boat!” 
         For a brief, irrational moment David imagined it would be his cop friend Bobby Bao riding the prow of a Taipei police boat, or maybe Gerry Kiley with a squad of Interpol cops.  The sound of the whoops and the boat’s motor were getting closer very fast, and Katie and David heard a man speaking Chinese loudly through a bullhorn. 
        They also saw Guo, Guanting and the crewmen of the trawler scrambling.  Guo was clearly telling the others to get the Americans from below decks and throw them into the sea as quickly as possible, but both Katie and David used all their strength and adrenaline to kick back. Then they heard the crack of a rifle coming from the police boat and more shouts through the bullhorn.  A moment later, they felt the police boat hit the side of the trawler hard enough to knock everyone onboard down.
         More Chinese shouts, another rifle shot, and the men on the trawler put their hands up, having failed to get Katie and David off the boat. Then there was the sound of men boarding the trawler, speaking Chinese forcefully and rapidly.  Guo, Guonting and the crew got down on their stomachs, and David could just see the police standing over them with what looked like MP5 semi-automatic guns.
         The police aimed the rifles below decks until they heard Katie and David shout, “Americans! Don’t shoot!” raising their hands high above their heads.  An officer descended and told his men to untie the sandbags but to leave the handcuffs for the time being.
         “Do any of you speak English?” asked Katie. One of the younger policemen said, “I speak little.”
         “Thank God, listen”—she spoke very clearly and as calmly as she could—“these men kidnapped us in Taipei and were going to kill us. Throw us into the ocean.”
         The policeman didn’t answer but told the officer what he heard.  The officer nodded, spoke back, and soon they were brought aboard the sleek and obviously very fast police boat. Katie and David, still in cuffs, motioned to the officer to have them removed, which he did.  The two Americans rubbed their wrists, which showed considerable chafing.
        “Sheh-sheh,” said Katie, approximating the sounds of xièxiè, “thank you.” David gave the word a try, too, then, his hands free, David went up to Guo and smashed a fist into his face, breaking the man’s nose.  “That’s for shoving my friend to the ground back on land.”
         The police pulled David away but released him.
         Order restored, the four men were brought below decks and locked in a very small, cramped cell.
         “So you are the Taipei harbor police?” asked Katie.
         The officer looked at his younger colleague, who translated then said, “No, no, we not Taipei. We Hong Kong. Hong Kong.”
         David looked at Katie and said, “Hong Kong? How far away from Taipei could we be?”
         The young policeman struggled to say, “You cross line, too far, too far. This China water. No Taiwan water.” Then he pointed towards a red, white and blue flag of the Chinese maritime police and the words ‘HONG KONG” printed below Chinese characters on the boat’s tower.  “See, Hong Kong.”
         So Katie and David had been rescued by the Hong Kong maritime police, apparently because they were in what they claimed were the sovereign waters of the People’s Republic of China. The policeman continued: “We go back Hong Kong. You talk there.”
         “Something tells me we are out of the frying pan and into the fire,” said Katie.
         “Maybe, maybe not,” said David. “We’re just going to have to wait and see.  Any idea how far Hong Kong is from where we are?”
         “Not close. I’d say, like 500 nautical miles.”
         “We’re going to sail 500 miles on this boat?”
         His question was answered by the young policeman, who told them as best he could that another larger boat was coming in a few hours and they would be transferred to that and on to Hong Kong but the next evening.  The Americans were offered some tea and rice, and within three hours sailing southwest, the police boat met the much larger vessel. 
         After being checked out by the ship’s medical personnel, who spoke English, Katie and David were given separate cabins and told they would be in Hong Kong the following day.
         “You will be interviewed in the morning before we land. Meanwhile, we will take your passports, if you please.  They will be returned in Hong Kong.”
         Katie was bold enough to ask, “Is there any way we could make calls to the United States?”
         “Perhaps later.  Not until you have your interview and we learn details of what happened tonight.”
         “We’d be happy to tell you right now,” said David, fending off post-adrenaline fatigue and the aches from being bound for so long.
         “Tomorrow morning,” the man said, got up and walked off.
         “Everyone’s got his own protocol,” said David to Katie. “I guess this is what they call a slow boat to China. Guess the only thing to do is get a good night’s sleep.”
         “I think that is going to be very easy,” said Katie, who was already yawning.  Within a half hour, after showers and fresh clothes—Katie fit quite well into a sailor’s white fatigues—that were in their rooms.  As soon as she put her head on the pillow, her eyes closed. Then she bolted straight up and screamed, “Damnit!  That bastard Guo has my tape recorder!”