A Death in Geneva (31 page)

“This will happen at nine. He will call down. I will tell him that we are heading out, working off the Western Shore, laying the first lines of the grid. He will be worried, because of Starring, but he is obsessed with that grid and the productivity experiment, so he will be pleased—”

“One more day for pleasure!” Tonasi slapped home the twenty-round magazine, fitted the silencer to the machine pistol. “One more . . .”

“Tooms's pleasure will be brief—the concern that we may not be back in time for today's obscenity. I will tell him that we will be there. When we are not, there will be a second call. He won't be able to come down at that point, to leave Starring before their ships pass. You will take that call, Paul. You will tell him you are supporting us, that we are on a second run. We have had luck. We should have an entire grid completed today—and, he will know that this will be far more important to Starring's interests than our presence on deck.

“If he presses you, tell him that you and he should resubmerge the second submersible for a test run as soon as he is free. He may or may not decide that is what he wants to do. If I am wrong, Paul, if he decides to make an appearance, he will probably call down, first. Whatever he does, stick with your story. We are on the first grid.”

They made coffee and rested. It would be light now on the surface. At 8:55, the call came from Tooms to Renfro. Starring had him in the traces topside, perplexed about their decision to make the grid run. See them in two to three hours . . .

“He's out of the way. The tanker is enroute, on schedule.”

“He does good work for a pig.” Tonasi clamped his arms around her, hugged her hard, and kissed the back of her neck. “You are a hungry hunter. You want that ship. I will get her for you. Breathe, Les, breathe. Relax. I will get her for you!” He let her go. The tension was broken. Together they traced the route on the chart of the main channel.

“They are planning to pass as close as possible. They navigate at all times at load depth, thirty-eight feet, even though the ship is in ballast. Allowing for shipping in the opposite direction, the tanker will be exactly here”—she made a mark on the chart, moved the calipers to the chart
scale—“when abreast of the catamaran, closest point of contact—we will be here—the shoreline, from here to here.” She placed the calipers beside the chart. “I
know
—we will sink this ship. You have to do everything required to achieve this victory. You have lived among these criminals. You have endured them to make this possible. By tomorrow night, your
victories
will be known to the world. Three swift cuts of the guillotine will have ridded the world of a criminal! You will lift the hearts of all in the struggle, and you will strike
terror
in the oppressors. What we do today and tomorrow is more than anything before. Our victory, the justice, will be remembered long after we are dead.”

“Paul, Filippo. The ship today is only the first blow. We have thirty-six more hours. Keep your heads. Do not reveal today's action in any way. My body will scream to cry out victory, but we cannot. Victory today! Victory tomorrow! Anything less will betray all who hunger for this blow. We cannot fail.” She took their hands in an act of communion.

There was one hour, now. Tonasi and Renfro zipped the jackets of their wetsuits, pulled on the hoods, gloves, and buoyancy compensator vests. Head inspected them. They moved the cargo to the deck of the work chariot. Their bodies slithered back and forth from the habitat. At noon, the work chariot rose from its cradle in the darkness of the bay, hovered, then proceeded in a slow circular run, climbing, descending. Head's masked face and clenched fist were illuminated as the chariot passed the habitat and then disappeared instantly, its lights doused.

From his after station, Tonasi kept watch on the cargo, which was riding well. The deep-green canvas sea anchor and surface buoy were lashed to the reel of nylon line. The tail of the line ran forward from a slot on the outer rim of the wheel, along the chariot's hull, through the padeye on the forward deck, to a metal ring in the grip of the claw. The mine rode top up, its shrouded propeller jutting into the cockpit, the powerful magnets insulated from the chariot's cargo grating by the lashed wooden cradle.

Instinctively, Tonasi worked his jaws to compensate for the changing pressure. The water above was a dark gray-green. They were running closer to the surface. He ran a gloved hand across the smooth curve of the mine's shroud, checked his position in the cockpit, the surfaces against which he would lock his legs. He felt no tension.
Only the physical sensations of the submerged run kept his interest before the attack. He allowed his body to bend with the water's steady pressure. His face moved close to the black skin of the mine, the raised white arrows of the settings. The chariot banked to starboard. The water was lighter. Renfro had made the turn east and was climbing on the final run into the main channel.

Renfro's occasional glance at the panel told her what she already knew; they were running smoothly, on course, on schedule. Her watch read twelve minutes into the mission when the bubble compass steadied on 90 degrees. The speed held at four knots. In five minutes she would slow to one knot, recheck her bearings. Life aboard the
Matabele
was finished. They would have to abandon Malta; that had already been decided. As the future fed through her mind, she nudged the joystick, increasing the upward glide of the submersible. The next day they would be ashore, would separate. They had money. Tooms and Starring had seen to that. She throttled back, hit “surface,” her thoughts still on their routes out of the country, cover stories, the separate arrivals in northern Europe, the rendezvous in Copenhagen. There they would decide, separate again—permanently?

They were running in pale green. She did not welcome the return of light. The blindness of the submerged run was also its invisibility. Silence enveloped the chariot in its slowing glide. The fathometer reported the increasing depth beneath them . . . eighty, eighty-two, eighty-four, eighty-eight feet. She could see the underside of the surface. It would not be rough, but there would be enough wave action, she could see it, to help conceal them.

Her body tensed with the first sound of the distant thudding. Early! she thought. Immediately, she rejected the notion, adjusted the chariot's trim. As they continued to rise, she forced her head back against the resistance of the tanks, gauging the surface. She did not want the upper blade of the rudder or the curve of the reel and sea anchor exposed. The chariot was steady, hovering. She pulled her legs up and stood on the seat. The wave action was greater than expected. Tonasi was also standing. She gestured upward, climbed into the submersible's compartmented divider. Held firmly by the legs, she studied their location. The thudding—crab boats off to the east—no interference. The red gong buoy marking the far side of the channel was rocking slowly, some five hundred yards to the northeast. She
turned; the profile of the
Octagon
was precisely where she wanted it, 180 degrees reverse bearing from the buoy. She turned again . . .

Tonasi felt her dive through his hands. She yanked him down into the cockpit. She had missed spotting the sailboat beating to windward from the southeast. It had been blocked by the rubber sidewall of her mask. When she did see it, the sloop was on them, no more than one hundred yards away, knifing diagonally up the bay. She waited. Forty-five seconds flicked by on her watch; then she stood again.

The yacht had already faded to a small patch of white. There was a merchantman barely visible to the south. They would have at least fifteen minutes. She took the controls, brought them closer to the surface, but she would not risk being spotted by binoculars from the catamaran. She knew their habits; the chariot's hull would stay completely submerged. She thumped Tonasi's tanks; they dodged waves as they spoke.

“The mine?”

“Ready . . . one hour?”

“Less. One ship closing from the south. We should deploy the anchor.”

He nodded yes.

“I will run to the north to stretch the line to its fullest. The freighter will have passed. When the line is out, signal.”

Both masks and regulators slid back into place. She swung the chariot onto the new course, taking it down to fifteen-foot running depth. The nylon line was attached to the rigid, circular opening of the canvas sea anchor. The anchor, eight feet in diameter, was weighted from the bottom, buoyed at the top to hang suspended at eight-to-ten feet beneath the surface, with only its white flotation buoy on the surface. It was away. Tonasi kept the canvas close to the hull until he was satisfied that the cone had filled and was towing unfouled. With the brake released, the metal reel on the cargo deck began to turn, paying out the line in response to the forward motion. He counted the yellow, one-hundred-foot interval markers emerging slowly. She knew the timing. He felt the chariot slow just before the tenth marker, one thousand feet of line, appeared. They surfaced. The red gong buoy was abeam. The freighter they had anticipated was passing. Another ship was southbound, heading toward them.

“Her?”

“No, container ship. We are well clear. I will run forward. Pay out the last of the line; jettison the reel. We will wait. I want to see her before we cross the channel.” They waited, heads above water, masks off, the bright chrome regulators on their chests beneath the surface to avoid betraying glints of sunlight. The vibrations of three passing ships throbbed through the chariot, the waves from the wakes washing over their heads. They waited. Then, they spotted her.

“One-forty-five? The bastards are early?”

“No. She will slow. The planning has called for three knots from the start. I checked that with Tooms and the lot on the bridge.”

“Slow and sexy for the great man—good, good for us, Les. She's high in the water, a goddamned wall of bottom paint—okay”

“She's alright. The nose is still beneath the surface. It will catch us.”

Tonasi scanned the horizon; a few distant sails, no other ships. “She's dead!”

“Activate switches; prepare to release tie-downs. Take manual control when you feel us begin to tow.” They were at their stations. The turns increased on the submersible's propeller. She held it on the northerly course to keep the line taut to the trailing sea anchor.

At 1:50 P.M., the chariot submerged with rudder hard over and swung to an easterly course across the channel.

The message from the
Partner
to the
Octagon
clattered from the catamaran's teleprinter. The communications officer clipped it neatly into a folder and took it to the captain for delivery to Starring, who immediately dictated a glowing response.

“My God, Oats, what a sight; what a stirring sight!” The details of the giant LNG tanker were emerging. She loomed larger and larger in making her slow, stately approach. “Where's your team, the divers? Have them join us. That bunting makes a show against the white. We're having this filmed, aren't we?”

“Three cameras, two motion grinding away, one still, Tommie. Higher duty has called our Maltese porpoises. They went below at the crack of dawn to lay the first research grid—spoke to Leslie a couple hours ago. She promised they'd be up, but they haven't made it yet.” Tooms fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, preparing for the blast.

“Bad planning, damn it, Oats. I'm damned well not pleased, wanted that shot of the expedition members with the
Partner
in the background—
who the hell can I rely on? Damn it Oats!” He slapped his hands together, turned his attention to the blue hull continuing to build. “Make sure that we get it tomorrow when the
Mayan
makes her pass up the bay—No, damn it, I won't be here. I'll be in Washington, and—I'm going to take that young Renfro with me. Have her see me as soon as they surface.”