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Albufeira: Wednesday

Giorgio worked exactly on schedule. He began the search of the control room. The hull was badly silted up and Giorgio decided that looking around haphazardly wouldn’t do, so he began at the control bulkhead, port side. I’d told him to look for currency of any sort, or any documents, the log book or the metal cases that German naval ships’ papers were kept in.

Within a few days we had a comfortable routine. We would rise about 7.30 to watch the sun come up and have coffee. Then we would go out in the boat and Giorgio would do forty minutes. Singleton would go down for another forty, then Giorgio would do about twenty or so before they came back. By that time mud had been raised so badly that the beam of light wouldn’t penetrate the water. We’d get back for lunch about noon and Charlotte would have been to market, tidied the house and fixed lunch.

Singleton had been pressing for a second dive in the afternoons; but I thought it would look too odd, and Giorgio said that it would bring the air consumption over a twenty-four-hour period up to a point where slow surfacing would be necessary in order to be safe from ‘decompression sickness’. So afternoons everyone sunned themselves on the beach by order. But the following Saturday clouds were flitting around the sun like moths around a candle, and there was a bite in the air whenever the sun vanished. Charlotte said she’d go up to the house and make tea, when I noticed someone walking towards us up the beach. He was a muscular figure, perhaps a little overweight. His black hair was cropped close to his skull and his chest featured more hair than his head. A small gold crucifix dangled from a hair-fine chain around his neck. He wore a small pair of yellow swimming trunks and carried a white towel which he rubbed against his head as he walked. It was only the towel and shorts that marked him as a visitor, for he was tanned to the same ancient-furniture colour as were the local fishermen.