Ship of Gold

The authors of the biography Rickover know their military stuff, and they've come up with a fast-moving, sometimes funny caper. During World War II, a U.S. submarine sinks a Japanese freighter carrying medical supplies that had Allied assurances of safe passage. Thirty-five years later, a Japanese consortium engages the Glomar Explorer to raise WW II hulks ""for scrap.'' When the retired skipper of the sub, trying to clear his name, is murdered in Washington, exCIA operative Gunnison, now a consultant for the agency, is qui+etly brought in to find out what's going +on. The consortium, it develops, knows +that the ship was loaded with gold, not +medicine. Gunnison is hired by the Jap+anese, but plans to get a bigger cut of +the billions involved by throwing in +with a Taiwanese wheeler-dealer. After +a series of betrayals, the book climaxes +with the Glomar in the Formosa Strait +surrounded by submarines, surface +ships and aircraft from China, Japan, +Taiwan, the Soviet Union and America. +The situation is at flash-point, and, as +one character says, the world's only +hope ``is that they're as fouled up as +we are.'' Plausibly scary and great, +whiz-bang fun. (March 27q+