66 Metres (25 page)

He needed a serious drink, but his flask had emptied onto the floor; besides, he needed to clear his head. He made coffee. How to turn this around?
Nadia.
She was the key. She would retrieve the device, but then Adamson would get it, so he had to get to her before she retrieved it. An idea came into his mind. He locked up Mrs Higgs' place and began walking into town, the Luger in his pocket. At least it had stopped raining so hard.

Arriving in Hugh Town, he passed a few lager louts singing in the streets, though mostly the town was asleep. As he neared the inn, he saw someone he recognised, walking out late, alone. The blonde.

Bait.

He followed her until she reached the end of the quay, where she gripped the railings and stared out into the darkness. Waves sploshed noisily against the harbour wall. Making sure there was no one around, he spotted a battered old car he could steal, then silently approached the girl from behind. He raised the handle of the Luger, and aimed at the exact point on the base of her neck that would knock her out cold.

Chapter Fourteen

Nadia awoke early, took one look at the rain pelting the skylight, and cursed. She slipped on some clothes and her anorak, and headed downstairs. Wind and rain lashed the frosted glass panels on the door. She took a breath and ventured into the deserted cobbled street. A few people cowered under a shop awning, smoking while waiting for the bad weather to ease off, which didn't look like it was going to happen any time soon. At first she thought it wasn't so bad, that maybe further out to sea there would be swells, not breakers, but as she reached the harbour wall her worst fears were confirmed. The waves were like trenches, white-topped with spray and foam. No boats out, not even sturdy fishing vessels. The white and blue Scillonian Ferry was making its way slowly back towards the safety of the harbour walls.

Already soaked, she decided to walk anyway. At least it wasn't too cold. As she neared the end of the shops, she spied Jake next to the promenade railing, staring out to sea. He hadn't seen her. She thought about turning around, but kept going. He was still her best shot if the weather changed. If he didn't turn her in. Maybe the Tsuba tomorrow. That was past the deadline, but until the device was retrieved or she was killed, she was still in play, and Katya was still breathing.

‘Hello,' she said.

He turned his head. ‘Hi.' He held her gaze.

She stood next to him, surveying the chaos.

‘Force six,' he added. ‘No diving today.'

He said it like it was no big deal, just part of the diver's lot.

‘I thought you might be wrapped up warm in Elise,' she said.

He turned to see her face. ‘Would you care if I was?'

‘No,' she said, then realised it was a lie.

He turned back to the sea. ‘We talked till one in the morning, then she went back to her room.'

It was her turn to study his face. Truth, as far as she could tell. It made her feel better, and then that realisation made her feel worse.
We're not on the same side
.

She decided to try and lighten the mood, and spoke in a mocking tone. ‘You never talked to
me
for three hours.'

He turned to her again, this time a smile on his face. ‘Women. Why are you all so impossible?'

‘Men,' she said, as if it covered everything. Mostly it did.

He clearly wasn't going to raise
the
issue, so she did. ‘How'd the phone call go?'

‘The diner over there is open,' he said. ‘Want a coffee, or should we just stand here and catch pneumonia?'

She took a deep breath of the salty air, droplets of rain forming on the tip of her fringe before leaping down to land on her nose. The odds stacking up against her – a rogue CIA agent, a sadistic torturer, a dangerously deep dive, and MI6 perhaps to arrive at any moment and hustle her into the back of a white van as Jake watched – were like the waves: relentless, implacable. She was actually a little envious of Elise, who'd be around long after she was gone – to a cell or a grave – and could claim Jake.

But something was clearly eating away at him. Nadia wanted some closure, to know who she'd slept with.

‘Coffee,' she said. ‘If you tell me about Sean. Full disclosure.'

He didn't reply, but headed to the café.

She followed.

She watched him stir his macchiato, while she nursed an espresso. He downed his in four seconds, then wiped his lips. The place was deserted except for a trendy young waitress, Pop music played low, a video screen flickered above the bar. They were sitting at the back, in a corner, less likely to be disturbed. Jake watched the waitress go to set up some chairs at the front of the shop, then he bent down beneath the table as if to tie a shoelace. When he reappeared he placed down a knife on the table between them.

‘Okay, you've got my attention,' she said.

‘Close your eyes,' he said.

Her pulse quickened. Her Beretta was back in her room. She'd only intended to come out for five minutes. All kinds of scenarios flashed through her mind: Jake had decided to kill her here and now; he was working with Bill, or Danton; Kadinsky had sent him. The list was endless. But in a beachside cafeteria?

‘Why?' she asked.

He looked troubled. ‘I can't tell it if you're looking at me. I've never told anyone the whole story.'

Truth again, she decided.

She closed her eyes, but listened intently to his breathing, for any tell-tale rustle of clothes, or the knife scraping off the table as he snatched it up, ready to stab her. But there was only his voice.

‘It was three years ago, almost to the day – next Wednesday in fact. My marriage to my school-time sweetheart was already on the rocks. An affair. Not mine. Anne – my ex – had a fling that developed into an affair that grew into a relationship. We separated. But we had a fourteen-year-old son, Sean. He'd be seventeen now.'

He paused. She'd assumed Sean was a close friend. But a son? She thought about reaching out to touch his hand, but didn't.

‘I got to see him every other weekend, and holidays. In any case, since he'd been twelve, we'd learned to dive together – his idea actually – and then each year we'd go somewhere. Malta, Cyprus… we'd been planning to dive Sipadan, Borneo…'

He paused again, this time so long she took a peek. He was rigid, tense, marble about to crack. His breathing became laboured, and when he did speak, his usually strong tenor voice quavered.

‘I let Sean down… I let my son drown.'

This time she took his hand. ‘Continue, Jake,' she said.

His voice was shaky. ‘There's a place in North Wales, a remote limestone quarry called Dorothea. I used to drive Sean there early in the morning, when there's no sound, no birds, no wind, no people, just the morning mist on chill waters tinged green at the outer edges, blue fading to black as the water descends to just over a hundred metres. Of course you don't have to dive deep. There's an old stone cottage above twenty.'

He took a sip of water. She kept her eyes closed, willing him to continue.

‘The day it happened, the accident, I was working. I had a ton of work to do, something big at the office, didn't matter that it was Sunday.'

‘Sean was being picked up early, six in the morning. He forgot to pack his dive knife. We used to pack together, but I was already online to work… so he didn't have it with him. He went with some good friends of mine, Tom and Rachael. They were experienced. Still, I told them all twenty metres, no more. You see, the water's very clear there. It's easy to slip much deeper if you're not paying attention.'

She heard him make an effort to swallow, as if his throat had gone dry. His voice became taut. ‘I was emptying the rubbish when I heard it on the local radio. A diving emergency at Dorothea. I was out the door so fast I forgot to lock up the place, classified documents littering the kitchen table. While driving I tried Sean's number – no reply – so then I called Mark, from another dive club, I knew he was going to be there that day.'

Jake's voice turned scratchy. ‘Mark said they hadn't surfaced. They were overdue by an hour. Two professional divers with rebreathers had gone down to investigate.'

His breathing sped up. She squeezed his hand.

‘I couldn't drive any more, so I pulled over, still half an hour from the site. I couldn't fucking breathe. They were dead. No way they were still alive. I was so mad, I got out of the car, kicked the damned thing, punched it, then saw my reflection in the mirror.'

He stopped, still breathing heavily. She knew he needed to say it, whatever it was, the part he'd never told anybody. ‘What did you do, Jake?'

He squeezed her hand hard, hurting her. She ignored it.

‘I punched myself, right in the face. It was just work, not even that important that time.
Jesus fucking Christ!
' His voice was raised. For sure the waitress could hear him, but Nadia kept quiet
.
‘I kept imagining Sean down there, all three of them drowning, icy water pouring into their lungs, choking…' He let go of her hand. ‘I still dream about it. Nightmares, always the same, Sean's falling away from me, drifting deeper, drowning, and I'm reaching but I can't catch him.'

Guilt. But it hadn't been his fault. She needed to haul him back out. Emotions are best countered by facts. ‘What happened? Why did they drown?'

His voice and breathing steadied. ‘Fishing line. Tom and Rachael got tangled up in some, and they fell deeper, one or both of them probably panicked due to narcosis until oxygen poisoning set in. Sean… he wouldn't leave them to die.' His voice quietened. ‘Wouldn't leave them.'

‘Like you with those two divers trapped in the wreck.' Like father like son. She traced a forefinger along the blade. It had a net-cutter hook in it, located near the hilt. Sean would have needed it to cut the fishing line. She removed her hand from the knife, and didn't touch it again.

He stopped talking. Nadia waited a moment then opened her eyes, in time to see the waitress, who'd clearly been listening, appear with two more coffees though they hadn't asked for them, then disappear again. Jake had gone very pale. Nadia thought of all the useless things she could say, the things others would have already tried, top of the list being
it wasn't your fault
or an even more banal automatism such as
sorry for your loss
. Besides, there was something she'd been wondering since his rescue stunt inside the destroyer.

‘Do you have a death wish?'

Jake met her eyes. ‘Did for a while. Maybe I still do. I don't want to have one. Sean wouldn't want me to. But Sean… it's like it happened last week, not three years ago. No matter what I do, it doesn't go away. I can be happy for a short time, but then it comes back.' He took a sip. ‘This is my shit, my problem, I only told you because… Well, things are closing in on us Nadia.'

‘Is there still an “us”?'

He told her about the phone call, and while she listened and colour slowly returned to his cheeks, she felt her own blood was draining out of her body. The more Jake talked, the more convinced she was that he was never going to allow her to hand over the Rose to Kadinsky. The big money was on major governments, but there was always a remote chance it was a more minor player – an
outlier
, he called it – who actually wanted to use it. And Jake was analytical, he couldn't ignore miniscule probabilities with massive fatalities, especially as he thought London might be the target, the MI6 cyber-attack a forewarning. She understood, but that didn't help her or Katya. She'd thought him opening up about Sean would bring them closer together, maybe to an understanding, but they were now further apart than ever.

There was no ‘us'. She was on her own.

The rain and wind were worse than before. They stood under the awning, waiting for any kind of lull so they could make a dash for it. Then Nadia spied a grey dinghy crossing the harbour, with two men kitted up in wetsuits. Jake followed her gaze.

‘I'll see you later, Jake, I want to check something out.'

He grabbed her hands. ‘Thanks for listening back there.'

She didn't know what to say, so she said ‘Later,' and he released her.

He let go and she ran, dodging the larger puddles, using her hand to shade her eyes from the driving rain in order to see where the boat would alight. She checked once to see if Jake was following. He wasn't.

As she approached the end of the harbour, she skidded to a stop and crouched down. Bill – or whatever his real name was – was ahead of her, going to meet the two divers. She ran behind the dive shack and stayed there, trying to see what was going on. The two men got out. They looked military: very short hair, fit, muscled. Bill had full waterproofs on and was gesticulating to them, occasionally pointing out to sea, but one of the men was shaking his head. She tried to see inside the boat. The stab jackets were taller and broader than usual, with extended wing sections. So, trimix, then, or maybe rebreathers. They'd be able to dive deep without fear of narcosis or oxygen poisoning, as long as they knew what they were doing, and they looked the type. There was something else too. Arrowheads.

Great, spear-guns
.

One of the men was in a face-off with Bill, but it was clear they weren't going out; the sea conditions were atrocious. Bill gave up and started walking back toward town. Nadia crept down the steps beneath the dive shack, and waited ten minutes, trying not to shiver. When she emerged, he was gone, and the boat was making its way back across the harbour, to where she didn't know, and soon it was lost behind curtains of rain.

She trudged back to town, her trainers squelching with every step. Navy divers, probably SEALs from Bill's CIA connections. How would they locate the Rose without her? Maybe they had a device, like the captain of the Navy patrol boat. She headed home.