“Your turn, Toby. You are daydreaming.”
Toby came back to the present with a bump. He took aim at hole number one. His hands were surprisingly steady, his breathing even. The situation was at once banal and threatening. They were on the deck of a luxury yacht in the late evening sunshine, playing golf.
It must be like this on Death Row, he thought. Everything ticks along. You sleep, wake, eat regular meals, talk about the weather and the footie scores. Then one dawn is different. They lead you to the chamber for the lethal injection.
He could take a big backswing and club Spiegl. But the man sensibly stood well out of range. He could hurl the club like a caber. But Haase would surely anticipate any such move and prevent it.
So, instead, Toby took careful aim at the hole and swung his club gently. The club head connected with the ball with a little “chink.” The ball rolled smoothly towards the pin and stopped just short. He had got closer than Julia, anyway. Her yellow ball had overshot by a club’s length. Perhaps she was humouring Spiegl, letting him win.
“Good shot, Robinson!” Spiegl stepped to the tee.
This is our chance,
thought Toby. He glanced over his shoulder towards Haase. The man seemed to read Toby’s thoughts, or perhaps Toby’s body language had given him away. Anyway, the South African pursed his lips and shook his head slowly from side to side. To make his point completely clear, he then raised his weapon and aimed directly at Toby’s torso.
It was hopeless. Two men, at least one of them armed, against one man and one woman, both unarmed.
Toby turned back to the green. Spiegl’s club swung smoothly. His ball shot towards the pin, hit it with a clang and dropped in. “My lucky day! I knew it would be!” he exclaimed in a quiet voice and raised his left hand in a clenched first.
There were four holes on the livid green Astroturf course. As they played on, the sun disappeared beneath the hills opposite that framed the bay. The ship’s lights came on automatically, including up lighters all around the edge of the deck. Four lampposts, with carriage-style lanterns suspended from them, illuminated the pool surround.
During the third hole, Toby realised that the entire yacht reminded him of Walt Disney World in Orlando. It was an expensive attempt at style and grace which had woefully failed. The decor and fittings ticked all the boxes marked “wealth and luxury”, yet managed to create an overall impression of ignorance, crudity and lack of taste.
The former owner of this floating tribute to excess, greed and corruption could still be seen, a grotesque waterlogged carcass entangled in plastic in a pink-tinged pool. The underwater lighting accentuated the horror of the scene, clearly lighting up the eddies and swirls of blood which still seeped from Krigov’s body. It reminded Toby of a TV programme he had seen about whaling in the Caribbean. Apparently in Bequia, the islanders were still allowed to harpoon a few whales a year from small boats, and when they towed them into shore, the whole beach became bathed in blood.
Chapter 38
Toby stayed as alert as he could as the bizarre game progressed. Spiegl won most of the holes, with Toby usually second and Julia always coming in a poor third. Whenever Toby exchanged glances with Julia, she merely shook her head.
Don’t try anything—
that
was her clear signal.
“What happened to Natasha?” Toby asked at one point between holes. “And how long has Haase been working for you?”
“Haase has been working for me ever since he came aboard. Do you really want to know about the other whore, young man?”
“Yes.” Toby wanted to understand more about how this man’s mind worked. It could be useful information at any time.
“I invited her down to the boat bay, where I gave her a choice of clothing.”
“What choice?”
“Either a lifejacket or a diver’s belt with weights on. I explained that she was going in the water, and I was interested if she would choose a quick death or a slow one.”
“You heartless bastard. You’re like the Nazi doctor who experimented on children. Which did she choose?”
“The lifejacket, cowardly whore. Not a good choice. She could have drifted westward and stayed alive for several days, unless the sharks got her first.”
“It gave her a chance for life. She might have been picked up by a fisherman. She could have been seen. She could be alive now.”
“No, I put the diver’s belt on her anyway. We didn’t want even a one-in-a-million chance of a rescue. It’s just so instructive what people do when faced with death.”
What would I do?
Toby wondered.
They played on.
The Iridium phone rang on their second round, during the seventh hole they had played. Spiegl said, “I suspect we must stop our game here. You have both been most sporting.” Club in hand, he walked to the teak table and picked up the bulky phone. He thumbed the green “accept call” button, listened, and said “Understood,” in English. Then he took a small book from his pocket, opened it one-handed, and read off a string of numbers. Toby heard the word “Belize” at one point.
Spiegl disconnected the call and put down the phone and notebook. He called something to Haase in another language—Afrikaans, Toby guessed.
Toby kept his club in hand and walked towards Spiegl, trying to look nonchalant. “Good news?” he enquired.
“Extremely,” Spiegl said. “The cowards have agreed to pay. Their money will go to a noble cause, which will help to destroy them. Poetic justice, I feel. A small but holy republic has outsmarted two of the most wealthy nations on Earth, and left them utterly defeated. And this is merely round one of the great project. And they didn’t even enquire about the health and safety of you two.” He pointed his index finger first at Toby, then at Julia, who had also approached the table from the putting green. She too had her club in hand, Toby noted.
“When will you receive confirmation of the wires?”
“Within minutes,” Spiegl said. “As I said, it’s all done by telephone at this level.” He rested his club against the edge of the table.
“What about us?” Toby said. “Can we go now, please?”
“You can join your shipmates shortly, yes. Be patient.”
“Join them as Ivan Krigov joined his son? In the next world?”
Not a flicker of emotion passed over the face of the man who called himself Walther Spiegl.
“Of course not. You are both too young to die.”
But Toby could read body language. The way Spiegl tensed, just for a split second, on hearing Toby’s question was enough.
He glanced at Julia. She looked back at him.
The Iridium telephone rang.
Spiegl snatched at the device. There was a gleam of triumph in his eyes. And this time, in his haste to connect the call, he used both hands. The phone was in his left hand and with his right, he pushed the “call accept” button.
Toby looked at Julia and some sort of communication passed between them. Whether it was telepathy, a mutual raising of the eyebrows, or just a conclusion reached independently, but simultaneously, was something they would discuss later. Toby knew that no words passed his lips. But he also knew it was now or never.
He couldn’t really explain what he did next, either, except that it came to him instinctively. He bent double and raced in a weaving motion towards the swimming pool.
There was a thwacking sound and a grunt from behind him. He half turned his head, just enough to see that Julia had swung her golf club and connected with Spiegl’s left ear while he concentrated on the phone, which he held to his right ear.
What was Haase’s response to be? Toby found out immediately as a bullet zipped past his head like a buzzing bee on warp drive.
Julia let out a short, sharp cry.
Toby snapped his head around without stopping. Julia was down, splayed out on the deck, almost touching Spiegl. She didn’t seem to be moving at all. Neither did Spiegl, come to that.
The shot had hit her and his diversion had failed.
He took a deep breath and hurled himself towards the pool. He had planned to dive in, but there was some water on the pool surround, splashed there by Krigov during his death throes. Toby, barefoot, slipped and went feet-first into the blood-tinged water.
He hit his back hard on the pool edge as he went in. Unprepared for the sudden entry into the tepid water, he breathed out involuntarily, and had to surface for another breath almost immediately.
As his head broke the water, he saw Haase crouch in commando firing position and heard the “phttt” of his silenced weapon. A trail of bubbles appeared in the water just beside his head.
Time to get under again.
He breathed in as deeply as possible, jackknifed his body and kicked hard for the deeper water in the centre of the pool. He arced back up, and made for Krigov’s body and the remains of the plastic armchair, afloat in a tangle just below the surface. He grabbed at the body and pulled it close to him in a gruesome bear hug. The Russian’s dead eyes stared accusingly at him. The neat bullet entry wound in his forehead almost looked like a third small, piggy, bloodshot eye to match the man’s own.
Using Krigov as a shield, Toby kicked and pulled himself and his new buddy down towards the bottom of the pool. It wasn’t very deep, maybe five feet, a metre and a half. It would be enough to slow and deflect the shots, he hoped. Then there was the distortion caused by the water that would make aiming more difficult.
Another line appeared in the water like the vapour trail of a jet in the sky. Toby heard a chinking sound and saw the bullet, velocity expended, drop to the bottom. Then another trail appeared, and another bullet clinked to the pool bottom.
The next two shots hit Krigov’s body. Underwater, it sounded like a boxing glove hitting a punchbag. Toby’s plan was working—the rounds did not have enough velocity to travel though the water and the dead body.
How many more shots in the magazine? And would he have another full magazine with which to reload? All Haase had to do was wait until Toby could hold his breath no longer and was forced to surface. But the frenzy of shots suggested that the man was intent on a quick kill, and not worried about expending ammunition or going to help his boss. He’d already got Julia.
More shots came, in quick succession. Toby kicked and moved around on the bottom of the pool, manoeuvring Krigov’s body on top of him to shield him. This was hopeless. It was just a matter of time now.
More shots, more clinks as bullets dropped around the edges of the pool. How many now? Surely six or seven. And he had used three on Krigov and one on Julia. Toby thought that most pistol magazines held about a dozen rounds.
Toby’s chest was tight now. He had been underwater for at least thirty seconds. No more shots came. What was happening up there? Had Haase broken off to check that he had permanently disposed of Julia, realising that Toby would have to surface?
He couldn’t hold out much longer. Two more shots whizzed through the water. That was encouraging, sort of. Still no hits. But he needed to breathe. His chest was on fire. Only seconds more and he would have to rise, gasping, a sitting duck.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Then he was out of time. He had to go up. He pulled the dead body with him as he surfaced. It wasn’t too hard, thanks to the buoyancy of the water.
He was just below the surface now. He could see the carriage lights on the lampposts distinctly. No shots had come for several seconds. No time to consider what that meant. He kicked up, and his head broke the surface of the water. Still, he held the body in front of him.
Haase wasn’t there.
The next few seconds seemed to go by like one of those ultra slow-motion sequences in a wildlife TV programme, where the lion runs alongside the gazelle, and everything has a horrifying inevitability, and it takes about fifteen seconds for the lion to grab the throat and bring down its thrashing prey.
Where was Haase?
With a sudden, sickening realisation, Toby spun around in the water.
Haase had moved all the way round to the other side of the pool. Toby’s human shield was on the wrong side.
He was completely exposed.
Chapter 39
Toby Robinson blinked the water clear of his eyes. He watched the South African insert a new magazine into his pistol and raise the weapon. The man took his time. He was no more than ten feet away. He crouched back down into the ready position, knees slightly bent, gun now between his legs and loaded. He was smiling, too, savouring the moment.
Revenge for his boss.
And the pure enjoyment of killing.
Toby had no cover whatsoever. He would have to go straight down underwater again. But like in the wildlife films, he found he could not move fast enough. In fact, he seemed to have lost the power to communicate with his limbs entirely, like a deer in the headlights of a truck.
He could only watch, gasping for breath, completely paralysed with fear, horror and a sickening feeling of certain doom, as Haase brought his weapon up to the firing position. Toby was looking right down the barrel of the silencer. He even had time to notice its shiny, stainless-steel finish. The air was sharp with the odour of explosives, and there was a sort of hot, oily smell, too. All motion seemed to halt and everything went quiet as the movie camera in Toby’s brain raced through a thousand frames a second of sensations.
The final few moments of life. So this was what is felt like.
It was like those dreams, too, where your feet seem like lead and your muscles seize up and you can’t run, or dive, or shout a warning.
At least it would be over before he knew it. The last time he had been in the firing line was on the little island with Ski-Pants and Scott. He had remembered then the saying that you don’t hear the bullet that kills you. Now he had time to recall the same thing all over again.
Haase spoke. “I should have done this in the warehouse.”
Toby took a deep breath, ready to submerge.