66 Metres (9 page)

‘I'm here for some diving and sightseeing,' she said. She knew there were plenty of Russians on holiday in Cornwall at this time of year, many of them divers. In Russia, she'd probably be taken into custody on suspicion, but in England the burden of proof was higher.

He shone a flashlight onto her passport, then to her face, then back to the document. Without taking his eyes off hers, he handed the passport to the other sailor, who dashed back over the gangplank as if everything was perfectly stationary, not two boats pitching in darkness, locked in a frenzied embrace.

She tried to stay calm, suppressing thoughts of Janssen's bloated corpse, probably already found by police divers.

‘How long are you here, Miss Laksheva?'

‘Until Friday,' she said, ‘then to London, then back home to Russia.' She showed him the tickets. The flights were booked, so they could check her story, though she wouldn't be taking those particular planes. She smiled, but his face remained stern, which meant he knew blood had been spilled.

Mike watched her from the steering console. She could see he was wondering.

‘Let me see your bag, miss,' the captain said.

She handed him the backpack and he rooted around inside. He was thorough. But there was nothing inside to worry about. He handed it back to her. He didn't look happy. From his pocket he pulled out something that looked like a phone, but was clearly a detector of some sort, and wandered around the boat, opening up the two small cupboards under the console. The detector made a small pinging noise. It was hunting for the Rose. Sammy had been right. She wondered what the detector's range was. Thank God she'd tossed it over the side. The captain walked past her again. She held her breath as she suddenly remembered the Beretta hidden on the underside of the ledge where she sat.
Shit!
How the hell would she explain that? The gun was smaller and slimmer than the Rose, but if the captain bent down to look… The pings continued as normal, and he didn't search further. She breathed out, trying to keep her face normal, not showing the wave of relief she was feeling. After a minute he put the device back in his pocket, and turned to Nadia.

‘Where are you staying?'

She'd booked yesterday. ‘Old Smithy's Inn, Hugh Town.'

He called back to the boat. ‘Check her reservation. Old Smithy's.'

The captain stared at her. She studied her toenails.

The other sailor returned, and they moved away from her, conferring. Nadia caught Mike glancing at her backpack. Had he seen inside it? Maybe nothing detailed, but might he sense there was less inside than before?

The captain returned her passport. ‘Have a nice stay, Miss Laksheva.' He half-turned away, then came back to her. His tone of voice changed. ‘Are you all right, Miss? You seem a little shaken.'

‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘Really.'

Without turning his head, his eyes flicked briefly to the left, where Mike was standing behind him. ‘Because if anything… anything improper, that is, uninvited –'

She made eye contact. ‘No, really. Thank you. I'm fine.' She glanced at Mike. ‘He's the perfect gentleman.' Maybe not quite true, but everything was relative.

He gave her a measuring look, then turned to Mike. ‘We'll escort you into the harbour.' He paused, then added, ‘I'll be calling Old Smithy's at eleven to check her safe arrival.'

Mike nodded, looking a little shaken himself, and started the engine. The captain and his mate crossed back to their boat. Nadia sat down heavily. Once underway, when she was sure no one was looking, she put her head in her hands.

As they followed the grey patrol boat, she watched Mike. He'd said little since the boarding. She'd asked him what was going on, and he'd said the captain had told him there'd been a drugs-related Mafia killing in Penzance yesterday. Mike was clearly rattled. There was little eye contact or chat during the rest of the trip. She stayed at the back of the boat. He seemed to take that as a signal. As they neared the harbour, the patrol boat turned abruptly and headed back out to sea. Mike got busy, and she bent down as if re-arranging the contents of her backpack, retrieved the Beretta, and hid it amongst the clothes in her bag.

After they'd moored, she and Mike walked along the quay, next to each other but not too close, and without discussing their destination, he led her to Old Smithy's Inn.

‘Are you okay?' he asked. He stared at the inn, then back to her. ‘Listen,' he started, ‘about tonight –'

‘Mike, I'm sorry, I led you on, but the thing is, I'm not really ready for…' She felt she owed him more, and let out a half-truth. ‘Something bad happened to me back in Penzance… you know, a guy.'

Mike nodded knowingly. ‘Must have been a real arsehole.'

She stared right back at him, and thought of Janssen. ‘He was.' Saying it outright, she
acknowledged that Janssen was dead and gone, could do no harm to her or anyone else. In her mind she imagined Janssen, Toby and Kilroy beneath the waves where Sammy had disposed of them.

Mike shifted on his feet. ‘If you need anything…' he glanced at the inn again, at the door. She realised he was worried someone might come out and see him with her. It was a small town, after all.

She took his left hand. ‘You're married, Mike, aren't you?'

He froze, then laughed, and for the first time since the boarding looked relaxed. He nodded, and fished a wedding ring out of his pocket.

She let go of his hand. ‘Don't worry, what happens at sea, stays at sea.'

He nodded again. ‘Agreed, and… thanks.' He kissed her on the cheek, then turned and walked away quickly.

Nadia went into Smithy's and registered, picked up her room key, avoided the raucous smoke-filled bar, and ascended narrow wooden stairs to the top floor, amongst the roof beams. After a long shower she collapsed naked on the soft bed, switched off the lights, and gazed through the skylight to the stars. She thought of the family home back in Uspekh, and happier days when she'd been too young to understand what was going on, what was going wrong between her parents.

She focused on what mattered: the Mafia-drugs cover story would hold for a few days. Until word leaked out about what had really been stolen. Police were one thing, but others – far less civil – would come looking. Sixty-six metres. Before the heist in the Thames, Sammy had told her the Rose was originally destined for use on a submarine, waterproof-rated to a significant depth, so she wasn't worried about it being damaged. But she'd need a good diver to help her find it. Someone she could trust, someone prepared to dive deep.

She typed the memorised GPS coordinates into a map program on her phone, and then sat up when it found the location. A WWII wreck, the
Tsuba
, lying near-vertical after being sunk atop an underwater promontory. She Googled it. The propeller was at sixty-six metres. Recommended only for technical divers on mixed gases or rebreathers. Nadia wasn't trained for either, and that type of training took at least a week, time she didn't have. But she had to be on the dive to retrieve the Rose.

Something about sixty-six metres snagged in her memory, so she Googled that in the context of diving. Sixty-six metres – 218 feet – was the depth at which oxygen poisoning started if diving on air. It would kill you, though not straight away. How was she going to find someone who was both experienced enough, and reckless enough, to dive with her to that depth on air?

She switched off the phone, too tired to think it through. Instead she thought of Katya, imprisoned in Kadinsky's luxury dacha in the Khimki forest outside Moscow. Maybe Sammy was right: this time. After this job, Kadinsky would let Katya go, let them both go. Her mother would have called it magical thinking. But Nadia needed something to hold onto, and anyway
she didn't want her mother in her head.

Instead she thought of how Katya used to sing her the Cossack lullaby at bedtime. Never had the verses made more sense than now. Nadia hummed the simple melody in her mind, mouthing a few of the words until she fell asleep on her side, her fists clenched underneath the pillow, next to her Beretta.

I will cry because I will miss you,

I will wait for you forever for your return,

I will always pray for you whilst I am waiting,

And in the evening and when night comes,

I will wait and dream of where you are,

I will worry about you and fear for your troubles in some distant land.

Sleep now, and do not think of such sadness and sorrows,

Maybe it will never be

Bayushki bayu

Chapter Five

Danton nursed his big right knuckle. The blood on it wasn't his. But his flesh had been grazed. So the soon-to-be-dead Irish shit in front of him, Sammy, was going to pay. He picked up the hammer and watched the bloodied and battered curly-haired prick's eyes go wide.

‘I've told you everything, Christ Almighty. For the love of God, please!' His supplication descended into sobbing.

Danton smirked. This was the point he liked best, when they realised that even after confessing everything, they were still going to die, and painfully too.

‘Not his jaw. I want to go through everything one more time.'

Danton turned and glowered at the CIA spook, seated far away enough to avoid getting bloodstains on his Hermes suit. He'd like to get one of them under the hammer one day, just to show them what it felt like. But this agent clearly had ideas above his station, paying a couple of grand for a suit. Danton doubted he wore it back at the office. No, he probably saved it for his European trips, believed he was a cut above the rest. His bosses back home would recognise it meant he was a risk. But for Danton it meant he knew the guy's weak spot, his ego. Which meant they could do business together.

He raised the hammer backwards in a theatrical arc, then shattered Sammy's knee. The screaming soothed him as it always had. He sat back, watched him writhe against the chains, incoherent with pain, and then the spook went to work, talking in soft tones, asking Sammy the same questions, promising not freedom, not even survival, merely an end to the pain. This was how it usually went, when the truth came out, as if the victim saw Death standing in front of him. Lies were no longer an option. They no longer held currency, because they belonged to life, not to where this prick was headed.

Danton heard nothing new, but the spook seemed content, nodded to him, deposited a stack of bills on the table by the heavily padded door, and left. Danton crouched down so his face was close to Sammy's blood-and-tear-stained cheeks. The shivering wreck stank of fear, and wouldn't look at his torturer, his lips trembling, murmuring the Lord's prayer.

Danton walked behind him and uttered two words. The only kindness he ever offered. The last words those in the chair ever heard. The same ones his pig of a father had always said to him after the beatings, until at fifteen Danton had stuck a knife in his old man's drunken guts and watched him die.

‘Sleep now,' he said, as he raised his arm one last time, and aimed the hammer at the back of Sammy's skull.

***

Adamson left the terraced three-storey house, and walked up the short steps onto the maple-lined street in one of the southern suburbs of Frankfurt. He was hugely relieved to step into the daylight, out from Danton's soundproofed, below-ground interrogation chamber. Away from the stench of Sammy's sweat and fear, and most of all, away from his screams. He inhaled the scent of drying leaves after last night's rain, and gazed around, eager to reinsert himself into the normal world most people inhabited. Mothers walked their kids to school, hurried them along, and bent over every now and again to talk to them. A garbage truck jerked to a stop in front of him, its yellow lights flashing. Two black men leapt off the back to empty the environmentally-sorted trash from black, blue and yellow bins. The truck's engine whined, and the men shuffled another ten metres down the street. Normality. Not reality for him. He'd seen too much to ever forget. But this was where he wanted to be, where he needed to be, with his family, with Sandy and little Arnie. Hence his retirement plan. He walked towards the city centre.

He still had time to turn back. It wasn't too late. And now things had gotten complicated. Janssen was supposed to have killed Sammy and the girl, and then handed over the Rose to him, so he could take it to South America where one of the major drug cartels, the Kilanoa family, wanted it for leverage with the US authorities, to stop them fucking with their cosy cocaine business model.

The Rose should have been in his hands by now. He'd be boarding a plane to Bogota, and his CIA partner back in Langley, Jorgenson, also in on the deal for a cool two million, would meet him there with Sandy and Arnie. And then… No more reality. Instead, a lifetime of luxury in a coastal villa. But now it was complicated. But what the hell wasn't these days? He'd handled complicated all his life. He closed his eyes a moment, recalled the hilltop villa near Cartagena where the deal had been sealed. He could almost smell the sea, feel the sun burning on his forehead in the warm breeze, the buzzing of the cicadas in the afternoon, fresh crushed mint in the mojitos.

Screw it, it was worth a little risk.

He called Jorgenson on the scrambled cell. ‘Her name is Nadia Laksheva. Probably not her real name, but he swore he'd seen her passport… He said Land's End, Cornwall, south-west England, that's where she was headed… It fits… All right. Listen, I have to call in… Right, next call in twenty-four.'

He pulled out the other phone, called the office at Langley, to give an update. The Joint Chiefs were seriously pissed that the Brits had developed the Rose without sharing. Hence his
mission, to keep an eye on the Rose from a distance. Sweet. But now the office knew it was missing, and it was just a matter of time before they put more patent leather soles on foreign soil. He spoke to the boss's aide, said he was following a new lead, needed seventy-two hours. Told her he was headed to London. Nothing doing in Frankfurt. He hung up. Closing his eyes, he rubbed the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. Danton had rattled him as usual. But now, more than ever, he needed to stay focused. He headed towards a Thai massage parlour, one of several he knew in the district. The door jangled as he entered. A forty-something Thai woman appeared and beamed, recognising him.