Читать книгу Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 5

The first shot ripped the epaulette from the right hand shoulder of my hunting jacket, the second lifted the thermos flask six feet into the air. The third kicked dirt at my right heel, but by then I was moving fast, diving headfirst into the safety of the reeds on the far side of the dike.

I surfaced in about four feet of stinking water, my feet sinking into the black mud of the bottom. The smell was really quite something – as if the whole world had rotted. I tried hard not to breathe too heavily as I crouched to get my bearings.

The marsh had come alive, mallard, wild duck and widgeon lifting out of the reeds in alarm, calling angrily to each other, and down by the shore beyond the sand dunes, several thousand flamingoes took off as one, filling the air with the pulsating of their wings. I waited, but there was no further word from my unknown admirer and after a while things quieted down.

The punctured thermos flask lay about three feet in front of my nose on the edge of the dike, dribbling coffee, but apart from that everything looked beautifully normal. The open picnic basket, the neat white cloth spread on the ground, salad, sandwiches, a rather large cold chicken, the bottle of wine I’d been about to open and Simone’s easel with the water-colour she’d been working on, half finished.

Most interesting of all, and at that stage of things by far the most desirable item, the old Curtis Brown double-barreled sixteen-bore shotgun. It lay on the rug beside Simone’s tin of water-colour paints, fifteen or twenty feet away, but as I’d only expected a crack at the odd duck or two it was hardly loaded for bear.

I gazed at it morosely, debating the possibility of a quick dash to retrieve it, carrying straight on into the reeds on the other side of the dike, but he was one jump ahead of me even on that point, although I suppose it was the logical move. I pushed the reeds to one side cautiously and started to ease forward and a bullet drilled a neat hole through the stock of the shotgun.

The .303 No. 4 Mark I Lee Enfield service rifle was the gun that got most British infantrymen through the Second World War. Recently resurrected by the British Army for use by its snipers in Ulster, it is a devastating weapon in the hands of a crack shot and accurate up to a thousand yards, which explains its popularity with the IRA also. Once heard in action, never forgotten and I’d heard a few in my time.

Certainly the specimen which was inflicting all the damage at that precise moment was in the hands of an expert. I pulled back into the reeds and waited because quite obviously the next move was his.

I found cigarettes and matches in the waterproofed breast pocket of my hunting jacket and lit up. It was perfectly still again. Even the flamingoes had returned to the shallows on the far side of the dunes. A flight of Brent geese drifted across the sky above me in a V formation, calling faintly, but the only other sound was the strange eerie whispering of the wind amongst the reeds.

Somewhere thunder rumbled uneasily at the edge of things which didn’t surprise me for, in spite of the heat, the sky was grey and overcast and rain had threatened for most of the day.

About forty or fifty yards to my right on the same side of the dike there was a sudden crashing amongst the reeds and then a wild swan lifted into the air calling angrily. So, he was closer than I had imagined. A hell of a sight closer. I raised my head cautiously and became aware of the sound of an engine somewhere in the distance.

When I turned I could see the Landrover crossing the flooded causeway two hundred yards away, Simone at the wheel. She came up out of the water and drove along the top of the dike.

There wasn’t much that I could do except put my head on the block like an officer and a gentleman, so I came up out of the reeds fast, grabbed for the shotgun and ran along the dike waving my arms at her, expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades at any moment.

It was really very interesting. One bullet kicked dirt to the left of me, another to the right. I was aware of Simone’s face, wild-eyed in astonishment, and then as she braked to a halt, a third round drilled a hole through the windscreen to one side of her.

She stumbled out, white with fear. Another round thumped into the door panel behind her and I grabbed her hand and dragged her down over the edge of the dike into the cover of the reeds. She went in deep and surfaced, gasping for breath, her long dark hair plastered about her face. Another bullet slammed into the body of the Landrover.

She grabbed at the front of my jacket in blind panic. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

I took her hand, turned and pushed through the reeds until I was back in my original position. Another shot sliced through the reeds overhead and Simone ducked instinctively, going under again. She surfaced, her face streaked with filth and I took a couple of waterproof cartridges from one of my pockets and loaded the shotgun.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’

‘For God’s sake, Oliver,’ she said. ‘What is all this? Who’s out there?’

‘Now there you have me,’ I said. ‘He’s a professional, I know that, but for the rest, it’s really rather peculiar. You see, I have the distinct impression that he could have killed me any one of a dozen times and didn’t. I wonder why?’

Her mouth opened in astonishment, the wide eyes above the high cheek-bones widened even more. She said in a hoarse voice. ‘You’re actually enjoying this.’

‘Well it’s certainly enlivened a rather dull afternoon, you must admit that.’

Our friend fired again, shooting off the right hand leg of the easel so that it toppled over the dike into the water.

‘Damn his eyes,’ I said. ‘I liked that painting. It was coming along fine. The way you were soaking the blues into the background wash was particularly pleasing.’

She turned, her face contorted with fear, looking as if she might break into pieces at any moment. ‘Please, Oliver, do something! I can’t take any more of this!’

The wine bottle exploded like a small bomb, showering glass everywhere, staining the white cloth scarlet.

‘Now that really does annoy me,’ I said. ‘Lafite 1961. A really exceptional claret. I was going to surprise you. Here, hold this.’

I gave her the shotgun and took off my hunting jacket. ‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded.

I told her and when I’d finished, she seemed a little calmer, but was still obviously very frightened. I kissed her briefly on the cheek. ‘Can you handle it?’

She nodded slowly. ‘I think so.’

I slipped the jacket over the muzzle of the shotgun and eased it up over the top of the reeds. There was an immediate shot and as the jacket was whipped away, I cried out in simulated agony.

I turned to Simone who waited, white-faced, waist-deep in that foul water. ‘Now!’ I whispered.

She screamed out loud, scrambled up on to the dike, got to her feet and started to run toward the Landrover. He fired once, chipping a stone a couple of yards in front of her. It was all it took and she stopped dead, crying out in fear and stood there, waiting for the ax to fall. There was a movement in the reeds to my right and then boots crunched in the gravel of the dike top.

‘What happened?’ a voice called in French.

He moved past me toward her, a young, sallow-faced man with shoulder-length hair and a fringe beard. He wore a reefer jacket and rubber waders and carried the Lee Enfield at waist level.

The oldest trick in the book and he’d fallen for it.

I slipped up out of the reeds and moved in close. I don’t know whether it was the expression on Simone’s face or – more probably – the distinct double click as I cocked the shotgun, but in any event, he froze.

I said in French, ‘Now put it down very carefully like a good boy and clasp your hands behind your neck.’

I knew he was going to shoot by the way his right shoulder started to lift, which was a pity because he didn’t really leave me much choice.

He turned, crouching, to fire from the hip and Simone screamed. Having little choice in the matter I gave him both barrels in the face, lifting him off his feet and back over the edge of the dike into the reeds.

The marsh came alive again, birds rising out of the reeds in alarm, calling to each other, wheeling endlessly. Simone stood there transfixed, her face very white, staring down at the body. Most of him was submerged, only the legs from the knees to the feet encased in the rubber waders floated on the surface.

The next bit wasn’t going to be pleasant, but it had to be done. I said, ‘I’d go back to the Landrover if I were you; this won’t be nice.’

Her voice was the merest whisper and she shook her head stubbornly. ‘I’d rather stay with you.’

‘Suit yourself.’

I handed her the shotgun, got down on my hands and knees, secured a firm grip on each ankle and hauled him up on to the dike. Simone gave an involuntary gasp, and I didn’t blame her when I saw his face, or what was left of it.

I said, more to get her out of the way than anything else, ‘Bring me the rug, there’s a good girl.’

She stumbled away and I opened the jacket and searched him, whistling softly between my teeth. It didn’t take long, mainly because there was nothing to find. I squatted back on my heels and lit a cigarette and Simone returned. She still clutched the shotgun in one hand, the rug in the other which she handed me mutely.

As I wrapped it around his head and shoulders, I said, ‘Curiouser and curiouser, just like Alice. Empty pockets, no identity marks in the clothing.’ I lifted his hand, ‘Indentation in the left finger where a signet ring has habitually been worn, but no ring.’

A professional all right. Stripped for action so that there would be no possibility of tracing him or his masters if anything went wrong. But I didn’t say so to Simone because when I looked up, the dark eyes burned in the white face and her hands were shaking. She tightened her grip on the shotgun as if making an effort to hold herself together.

‘Who was he, Oliver?’

‘Now there you have me, angel.’

‘What did he want?’ The anger in her was barely contained. It was as if she might blow up at any moment.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently. ‘I can’t help you. I’m as much in the dark as you.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ The anger overflowed now, all the tension, the fear of the past ten or fifteen minutes pouring out of her. ‘You weren’t afraid when you were out there, not for a single moment. You knew exactly what you were doing. It was as if that kind of thing was your business and you were too good. Too good with this!’ She brandished the shotgun fiercely.

I said calmly, ‘It’s a point of view, I’ll give you that.’

I knelt down beside the dead man, heaved him over my shoulder and stood up. She said quickly, ‘What are you going to do? Get the police?’

‘The police?’ I laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

I bent down and picked up his Lee Enfield then walked along the dike toward the Landrover. There was a patch of bog amongst the reeds on my right; black viscous mud. The sort of place that might be five feet deep or bottomless. When I tossed him in he slid beneath the surface instantly. There was a bubble or two, the stink of marsh gas. I threw the Lee Enfield after him and turned.

Simone was standing watching me, still clutching the shotgun, a kind of numbed horror on her face. Thunder rattled like distant drums again, overhead this time, and the rain which had threatened all day came with a rush, hissing into the reeds.

It was somehow symbolic, I suppose, for with a sudden fierce gesture Simone tossed the shotgun over my head, out into the reeds. She started to cry bitterly, shoulders shaking and I put my arms about her.

‘It’s all right,’ I said soothingly. ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll take you home now.’

I turned and led her along the dike toward the Landrover.

I half-filled a tall glass with crushed ice, added a double measure of Irish gin and topped up with tonic water. Then I switched on the radio and turned the dial to Madrid. A little flamenco music would have been appropriate, but all I got was an old Glen Miller recording of Night and Day.

I pushed open one of the glass doors and moved out onto the terrace. Rain dripped from the fringes of the sun awning and I could smell the mimosa, heavy and clinging on the damp air.

The villa was built to a traditional Moorish pattern and stood in splendid isolation, which was the main reason I’d bought it, on a point of rock a hundred feet above a horseshoe cove thirty or forty miles south-east of Almeria toward Cape de Gata.

I’d been here almost a year now and never tired of the view, even on an evening like this with rain falling. There were lights outside the cove, not too far away, where local fishermen were stringing their nets and a liner drifted through the darkness five or six miles out and beyond it, Africa.

It all filled me with a vague, irrational excitement or perhaps it was just the events of the afternoon catching up. Heavy beads of rain rolled down the door and Simone became part of the room’s reflection in the dark glass.

The black hair hung to her shoulders, she wore a plain linen caftan so long that it brushed her bare feet. It was an original, soaked in vegetable dyes in a back room in some Delhi bazaar until it had reached that exact and unique shade of scarlet so that it seemed to catch fire there in the half-shadows of the room.

I turned and toasted her. ‘You can cook, too. The meal was enormous.’

She said gravely, ‘I’ll get you another drink,’ and went behind the bar in the corner.

‘That sounds like a good idea.’ I sat on one of the high cane stools and pushed my glass across.

She took down the gin bottle. ‘I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Irish gin until I met you.’

‘As I remember, that was quite an evening.’

‘The understatement of this or any other year,’ she said lightly as she spooned ice into my glass.

Fair comment. I’d met her at a party in Almeria thrown by some Italian producer who was making a Western or unreasonable facsimile, up in the Sierra Madre. I was strictly uninvited, pulled in by a scriptwriter I’d met in a waterfront bar, someone I knew barely well enough to exchange drinks with.

The party was a creepy sort of affair. Most of the men were middle-aged and for some reason found it necessary to wear sunglasses even at that time of night. The girls were mainly dolly birds, eager to comply with any and every demand that might lead along the golden path to stardom.

My scriptwriter friend left me alone and belligerent. I didn’t like the atmosphere or the company and I was already half-cut, a dangerous combina-tion. I pushed my way across to the bar which was being serviced by a young man with shoulder-length blond hair and a suit of purest white. His face looked vaguely familiar. The kind of cross between male and female that seems so popular these days. Anything from a manly aftershave advertisement to a second-rate movie and instantly forgettable.

‘Gin and tonic,’ I said. ‘Irish.’

‘You’ve got to be joking, old stick,’ he said loudly in a phony English public school voice, and appealed to the half-dozen or so girls who were hanging on his every word at the end of the bar. ‘I mean, who ever heard of Irish gin?’

‘It may not be in your vocabulary, sweetness,’ I told him, ‘but it certainly figures in mine.’

There was what might be termed a rather frigid silence and he stopped smiling. A finger prodded me painfully in the shoulder and a hoarse American voice said, ‘Listen, friend, if Mr Langley says there’s no such thing as Irish gin, then there’s no such thing.’

I glanced over my shoulder. God knows where they’d found him. A latter-day Primo Camera with a face that went with around fifty or so professional fights, too many of which had probably ended on the canvas.

‘I bet you went over big, back there in Madison Square Gardens,’ I said. ‘Selling programs.’

There was a second of shocked surprise, just long enough for the fact that I didn’t give a damn to sink in, and then his fist came up.

A rather pleasant French voice said, ‘Oh, there you are, cheri. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

A hand on my sleeve pulled me round. I was aware of the dark wide eyes above the cheekbones, the generous mouth. She smiled brightly and said to Langley, ‘I’m sorry, Justin. Can’t let him out of my sight for a moment.’

‘That’s okay, honey,’ Langley told her, but he wasn’t smiling and neither was his large friend as she pushed me away through the crowd.

We fetched up in a quiet corner by the terrace. She reached for a glass from a tray carried by a passing waiter and put it into my hand.

‘What were you trying to do, commit suicide? That was Mike Gatano you were arguing with back there. He was once heavyweight boxing champion of Italy.’

‘Christ, but they must have been having a bad year.’ I tried the drink she’d handed me. It burned all the way down. ‘What in the hell is this? Spanish whiskey? And who’s the fruit, anyway?’

‘Justin Langley. He’s a film actor.’

‘Or something.’

She leaned against the wall, arms folded, a slight frown on her face, a pleasing enough picture in a black silk dress, dark stockings and gold high-heeled shoes.

‘You’re just looking for it tonight, aren’t you?’

‘Gatano?’ I shrugged. ‘All he is is big. What are you trying to do anyway, save my immortal soul?’

Her face went a little bleak, she started to turn away and I grabbed her arm. ‘All right, so I’m a pig. What’s your name?’

‘Simone Delmas.’

‘Oliver Grant.’ I reached for another glass as a waiter went past. ‘You want to know something, Simone Delmas? You’re like a flower on the proverbial dung heap.’ I gestured around the room. ‘Don’t tell me you’re in the movies.’

‘Sometimes I do a little design work, just for the money. When I do what I prefer, I paint water-colours.’

‘And who needs them in this world of today?’

‘Exactly. It’s really very sad. And you – what do you do?’

‘Well, that’s a matter of opinion. Write, I think. Yes, I suppose you could say I was a writer.’

Langley’s voice was raised behind as he moved into another public performance. ‘Surely we’re all agreed that Vietnam was the most obscene episode of the century?’

I turned and found him in the centre of an eager group of girls. They all nodded enthusiastically. He smiled, then noticed me watching. ‘Don’t you agree, old stick?’ he demanded and there was a challenge in his voice.

I was a fool to respond, I suppose, but the last two drinks were like fire in my belly. I didn’t like him and I didn’t like his friends and I wasn’t too bothered about letting the whole world know.

‘Well now,’ I said, ‘if you mean was it a dirty, stinking, rotten business, I agree, but then most wars are. On the other hand as a participant I tend to have rather personal views.’

There was genuine shock on his face. ‘You mean you actually served in Vietnam?’ he said. ‘My God, how dare you. How dare you come to my party.’

I was aware of Gatano moving in behind me and Simone Delmas tugged at my sleeve. ‘Let’s go!’

‘Oh, no,’ Langley told her sharply. ‘He doesn’t get off that easily. I know he didn’t come with you, sweetie.’ He moved closer. ‘Who brought you?’

‘Richard Burton,’ I said and kicked him under the right kneecap.

He went down hard, but without making much of a fuss about it which surprised me, but I had other things on my mind. Gatano grabbed my shoulder and I gave him a reverse elbow strike that must have splintered three of his ribs.

I wasn’t too sure what happened after that. There was a great deal of noise and confusion and then I surfaced to find myself leaning against the wall in an alley at the side of the house. It was raining slightly and Simone was pulling my coat collar up about my neck.

‘So there you are.’ She smiled. ‘Do you do this kind of thing often?’

‘Only on Fridays,’ I said. ‘My religion forbids me to eat meat.’

‘Have you got a car?’

‘A white Alfa. It should be around here somewhere.’

‘Where do you live?’ I told her and she frowned. ‘That’s forty miles away. You can’t possibly drive that far in the state you’re in.’

‘You could.’ I fished the keys from my pocket and held them out. ‘Nice night for a drive. You can stay over if you like. Plenty of room and bolts on all the bedroom doors.’

I followed this up by starting to slide down the wall and she caught me quickly. ‘All right, you win, only don’t pass out on me.’

I leaned heavily, on her all the way to the car and only passed out when she’d got me into the passenger seat.

When I woke up the following day it was almost noon and she was painting on the terrace using some old oil paints she’d found in a cupboard in the living room. It seemed she liked the view as much as I did. She was still there at sunset. And after that …

Two months – probably the happiest I’d known in years, I told myself as I sipped the drink she pushed across the bar to me.

‘Is it all right?’ she said.

‘Perfect.’

She folded her arms and leaned on the bar. ‘What do I know about you, Oliver? Really know?’

I raised my glass. ‘Well, for a start, I drink Irish gin.’

‘You write,’ she said, ‘or at least you once showed me a detective novel under another name and claimed it as yours.’

‘Come on, angel,’ I said. ‘If I’d been lying I’d have chosen something good.’

‘You have a scar on your right shoulder and another under the shoulder blade that suggests something went straight through.’

‘A birthmark,’ I said lightly. ‘Would you like me to describe yours? Strawberry and shaped like a primula. Back of the thigh just under the left buttock.’

She carried straight on in the same calm, rather dead voice. ‘An American who could just as easily pass as an Englishman. A soldier because you did let slip at Justin’s party that night in Almeria that you’d been in Vietnam, although you’ve never mentioned it since. An officer, I suppose.’

‘And gentleman?’

‘Who can half kill a professional heavyweight boxer twice his size in two seconds flat.’

‘Poor old Gatano,’ I said. ‘He shouldn’t have joined.’

She seemed genuinely angry now. ‘Can’t you ever be serious about anything?’

She moved to the end of the bar as if to put distance between us, took a cigarette from an ivory box and lit it with shaking fingers. She inhaled deeply once then stubbed it out in the ashtray.

There was a direct challenge now as she turned to confront me. ‘All right, Oliver. This afternoon. What was it all about?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ I told her with perfect truth.

For a moment I thought she might make a frontal assault. Instead she hammered on the bar with a clenched fist in fury. ‘I’m frightened, Oliver! Scared to death!’

I moved to take her hand. ‘No need to be, I promise you. Not as long as I’m here.’

She gazed at me, eyes wide for a moment, then sighed, shaking her head slightly, and moved across to the window. She stood looking out into the night, arms folded in that inimitable way of hers, rain drifting across the terrace.

‘Rain, rain, go to Spain, never come my way again,’ she said in a lost little-girl voice.

I moved in behind her and slid my arms around her waist. ‘Come to bed.’

‘Do you know what’s the most frightening thing of all?’ she said without looking round.

‘No, tell me.’

‘That man out there in the marsh. He was a professional, you said so yourself, and yet he didn’t stand a chance, did he?’

She half-turned, looking up at me. I kissed her gently on the mouth. ‘Come to bed,’ I said again and took her hand and led her out of the room.

I came awake from a dreamless sleep to find her gone. The windows to the terrace stood open and the white nylon curtains rose and fell in the gray light of dawn. I reached for my watch. Six-thirty.

I got out of bed, found a bathrobe and went into the living room. There was no sign of her there either, but somewhere a car door banged. I went out on the terrace and looked down to the drive.

The Alfa stood outside the garage. Simone was standing beside it dressed in slacks and sweater. A black leather suitcase was on the ground at her feet and she was stowing another behind the driver’s seat.

‘Good morning,’ I called cheerfully.

She looked up at me. Her face was very pale and there were faint shadows under each eye as if she had not slept too well.

She hesitated and for a moment I thought she was going to get into the car, but she didn’t. Instead, she put the second suitcase inside and came toward the outside steps, her feet crunching in the gravel.

I returned to the living room, went behind the bar and poured myself a large gin and tonic. A bit early in the day, even for me, but I had a feeling I was going to need it.

She paused at the window, looking in. I raised my glass and smiled brightly. ‘Join me for breakfast?’

But she didn’t smile. Not then or later. I don’t think it was in her anymore.

‘I’m sorry, Oliver,’ she said. ‘I’d hoped you wouldn’t waken.’

‘What, not even a note?’

Her voice was full of pain, ragged and unsteady. ‘I can’t take it – not any of it. What happened yesterday afternoon especially.’

She shuddered visibly. I said, ‘Where are you going to go?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. Paris maybe. Do you mind if I take the Alfa?’

I wasn’t angry. There wouldn’t have been any point. I said, ‘You were going to anyway.’

‘I’ll leave it in Almeria. At the station.’

‘How are you for money?’

‘I’ll get by.’

I dropped to one knee behind the bar and prised up one of the ceramic tiles. Underneath was a black tin cash box containing my mad money, just in case of emergencies. An old habit. I counted out ten one hundred-dollar bills and put them on top of the bar.

She didn’t argue, simply walked across and picked them up. She looked around the room for a long moment and there was an infinite sadness in her voice when she said, ‘I was happy here. For the first time in years I was truly happy.’

I said, ‘One thing before you go. That night after Langley’s party when I passed out on you. Well, I didn’t. I just wanted you to know that.’

She said bitterly, ‘Damn you, Oliver! Damn you to hell!’

She walked out, her footsteps echoed across the terrace. I poured myself another large gin with a steady hand. From somewhere a thousand miles away a door slammed. There was a pause, the engine started and then she was gone.

So that was very much that. And why worry? As a great man once said, a woman was only a woman. I raised my glass and found that my hand was not so steady after all and that would never do. I put the glass down very deliberately on the bar top, went into my bedroom and found a pair of bathing shorts. Then I went out onto the end terrace and descended the three hundred and twenty-seven concrete steps which zig-zagged down the cliff to the beach below.

The morning was dull and grey and the white sand cold to my feet as I crossed to the boathouse by the small stone jetty. I opened the door and went in. Skin-diving being closer to a religion with me than a sport at that time, I carried a pretty comprehensive range of equipment. Everything from my own compressor for recharging air bottles to an Aquamobile.

I took down a neoprene wetsuit in black and pulled it on because from the look of that sky it was going to be cold down there this morning. I slipped my arms through the straps of a fully charged aqualung, found a face mask and went back outside.

I had an inflatable with an outboard motor on the beach beside the jetty, but I didn’t bother with it. Simply pulled on the mask, waded into the sea and struck out toward the entrance to the cove. I did this most mornings. So much so that it had become a habit, mainly because of the fascinating wreck I’d discovered about a hundred yards beyond the point.

There was a heavy sea mist rolling in toward me pushed by the wind and it started to rain again, not that that bothered me. There wasn’t much of a current and it took little effort to reach the appropriate spot. I dropped under the surface, paused to adjust my air supply and went straight down.

Visibility was excellent in spite of the grey morning and the water was clear as glass. At fifty feet I entered a neutral zone, colours muted, a touch of autumn and then a ship’s stern moved out of the gloom.

I hung onto a rail with some care for they were covered with black mussels and her plates were encrusted with dog’s teeth, a razor-edged clam quite capable of opening you up like a gutting knife.

The name across the counter was clearly visible, S.S. Finbar. I’d checked up on her after that first discovery. A Clydeside freighter of three thousand tons. Strayed from a Malta convoy in the summer of 1942 and sunk by Stuka dive bombers.

She was tilted slightly to one side, her anti-aircraft gun still in place on the foredeck and remarkably well preserved. I moved toward it and paused, hanging on to the rail, adjusting my air supply again.

There was a sudden turbulence in the water and I glanced up and saw an Aquamobile descending, two divers hanging on behind. It drifted to a halt ten or fifteen feet above me. The divers were wearing bright orange wetsuits and black masks. One of them waved cheerfully, dived down and hung on to the rail beside me.

I leaned close, putting my mask close to his. The face seemed oddly familiar, which didn’t make much sense and then he reached over and in one quick gesture ripped my air hose away from my mouth.

The whole thing was so unexpected that I took in water at once. I started to struggle, instinctively clawing for the surface and he moved fast, grabbing for my ankles, pulling me down.

I was going to die and for what, that was my final thought as everything started to go. And then I became aware of the other diver dropping down, towing a spare aqualung, holding its air hose out towards me, silver bubbles spiralling out of the mouthpiece. It seemed to grow very large, to completely envelop me, then I blacked out.

I surfaced to a world of pain, my head twisting from side to side as I was slapped into life like a newborn baby. I suppose I must have cried out because somewhere, someone laughed and a voice said, ‘He’ll live.’

I opened my eyes. I was lying in the bottom of an inflatable boat. Justin Langley was bending over me wearing an orange wetsuit, his long blond hair tied at the nape of his neck in a kind of eighteenth-century queue. Gatano, in a similar suit, worked the outboard motor.

Langley smiled. ‘You don’t look too good, old stick.’

I tried to sit up and he pushed me down without the slightest effort. At the same moment his friend called, ‘We’re here,’ and cut the engine.

A Cessna seaplane drifted toward us through the mist, we slid in under the port wing and bumped against a float. I tried to sit up and Langley shoved me down again. There was a hypodermic in his right hand now and he smiled.

‘Go to sleep like a good boy and we’ll try to see you don’t get airsick.’

Whatever it was, it was good. I felt the needle going in, but he probably enjoyed that part. And then, total darkness. A split second in time that must have been in reality five or six hours before I returned to life again.

It was cold and damp and very dark. I was walking, supported on either side, descending some steps that seemed to go on forever. When we finally stopped, there was only a narrow circle of light. I was aware of Langley’s face looming very large, serious now and two men on their knees levering a round iron grid out of the floor. It was very dark down there and quiet.

Langley slapped my face. It didn’t hurt at all. He said, ‘Still with us?’ And then he turned and nodded to the others. ‘Down he goes.’

I didn’t attempt to struggle, I was incapable of that. A rope or a strap of some sort was looped around me and I was lowered perhaps ten or fifteen feet into darkness. There was a clang as the iron grid was replaced, footsteps echoed away.

I became aware of two things almost in the same instant. That I was only wearing the bathing shorts I had put on that morning and that when I stretched out my arms on either side, I immediately touched damp stone walls.

Not that it mattered, not then, for as yet, nothing touched me. I slumped down in a corner, knees to my chest in the fetal position and drifted back into my drugged sleep.