Headhunter Page 11

FORTY SEVEN

  He will pick it apart later but it will not take long to deconstruct it all. The way the two men squeezed themselves into the spaces next to them, the manner in which they were so ignorant and incommunicable to the point of splitting them up. Divide and conquer.

  And here it came. Here’s how it would play.

  The exercise that Campbell needs to execute is to remove and BCD whilst underwater, to slip entirely out of the bulky waistcoat and then replace it. It is a skill that is challenging and frightening under the circumstances but one that Campbell had performed before and it is not especially complicated if done with care. His particular task however, is to demonstrate this to the other man before observing him perform it. Once he's done this successfully, he's got enough credits to get his next badge.

  When his new dive buddy moves in mid way through this procedure Campbell hesitates a moment, wondering whether he is panicking, wishes to get his attention for something, or is just plain screwing things up again. He’s been a pain in the ass enough so far, so why not now?

  But then he feels the tug and pull on the BCD and after his initial confusion, he begins to realise. He is out of the BCD now, holding it in front of him with both hands as the regulator is gripped in his clenched teeth.

  The persistence and violence of the attack becomes clear fast, and Campbell fights the flaring panic as he recalls the sinewy toughness of the other man, the ripped muscles of his arms and shoulders as he squeezed himself into his wetsuit on the boat.

  The BCD is yanked and twisted and he clings desperately to it, bites down the harder on the regulator. The other man pulls hard and persistent and then begins to grab and crush Campbell’s fingers, wrenching his hands and wrists around with excruciating force.

  He grips and struggles but the fight is lost and he feels the initiative slip from him no matter how frantically he attempts to resist.

  He tries to bring his knees up between them and kick the man away and then grabs at the other man’s mask, but it is just one less hand on his own kit and the air supply he needs.

  It flashes through his mind then and he knows that his desperation to suppress the tingling sting of paranoia that’s been there since the two of them arrived late and started acting strangely has been a horrendous mistake. He was right to worry and right to suspect and simply wanting to be wrong is never a defence.

  He knows too that precious time has passed since they got in the water, following the man down and having to grab him to slow his descent, then correct his direction as he wandered off course. Campbell cursed himself for putting this down to stupidity. He’s been led away from everyone else. Away from safety.

  With a final ferocious tug the BCD is wrenched from him, air tank and all and then the looming bulk of his assailant fins upward, pulls a knife from inside his own buoyancy control device and rips it fast down the inside of Campbell’s BCD, releasing a large burst of air.

  The regulator is still gripped in his teeth, the hose stretched taut and in his desperation and panic he gulps as much as he can before he loses that too and then his attacker twists the hose in his fist, pulls at it and then raises the knife. Deciding on the quick decisive option, rather than playing tug o’ war with Campbell’s clenched jaw, he severs the hose.

  Campbell spits the regulator out and watches the other man drop the dead weight of the air tank and begin making his way to the surface.

  The rising sense of panic and adrenaline peak with a shrieking crescendo. The air is gone, the BCD is gone and the psycho with the knife has done his work.

  FORTY EIGHT

  Lisa is spared the charade that Campbell has been put through. No sooner has she unzipped the wetsuit and headed for the spot on the roof that the captain points out than her new dive buddy appears over her, leering down.

  He holds up the two now-separated BCDs and smiles as she hurriedly pulls the wetsuit back into place from around her waist.

  In no time they are in the water and dropping fast. She looks around for Campbell, but good as the visibility is, she cannot spot him. There are numerous dark shapes in the distant dimness but none of them distinct enough to be recognised.

  When she turns back, her mute dive buddy has come in very close, but gone is the grin and the leer, replaced by a dead-eyed coldness that would chill a shark.

  She jolts backward in surprise, but too quick he has taken her arms at the shoulder and grips hard, too hard for her to shake.

  For a moment she begins to struggle but he looks her in the eye and very slowly shakes his head. Then he turns his thumb down.

  This, in the underwater sign language of the scuba diver, simply indicates the intention to descend. Conversely, a thumbs up means to head upward. A circled finger and thumb gesture indicates, or asks, that things are OK. Lisa does not expect to see him make that sign anytime soon.

  But in her fear, she wonders whether she has misread him. Perhaps, she thinks, he mistook her head-swivelling scan for Campbell as a sign of panic and is merely trying to take control and instil calmness.

  He disabuses her of this notion swiftly as he snakes a thick arm around her and then begins swimming deeper at pace.

  She kicks and twists but he has a hundred pounds on her and the added advantage that they are both wearing weight belts.

  She surrenders the fight, knowing that she has lost this round, or cannot win, hoping that she might save her energy to snatch any opportunity that presents it self from here to escape. Pull his mask off, scratch his eyes. A good solid kick in the nuts maybe, or if the fins on her feet ruled that out, a simple grab and crush of a handful of whatever she could get hold of between his legs. The thought that she was not done yet consoled her momentarily.

  At thirty meters, he slowed his pace and began to search around below him, his arm clamped tight around her the whole time. She may just as well have been tied up.

  They headed off level at thirty meters for a distance and then he seemed to spot something in the darkening murk and changed course.

  Stopping after a little more distance he looked at her and pointed out into the gloom at two shapes. This deep, with more sediment and less sunlight, it was not obvious who she was looking at, but she had a good idea. Then her eyes began to adjust and she recognised him. The shape of him, the bright orange fins he had insisted on pulling from the rack of yellow ones, the black hair.

  She watched as Campbell slipped himself out of the buoyancy control device and wondered for a minute why he would surrender so readily before it hit her; he didn’t know.

  Of course not. He wasn’t supposed to.

  But perhaps now it would be dawning on him, as the other man set about him, pulling away the black waistcoat with the air tank attached. She could see the thin black line of the hose running back through the water to his mouth, a literal lifeline.

  Then a cloud of bubbles erupted into the water as the glint of a knife slashed through the material and then moments later again as it sliced through the hose.

  The mute turned back to her and slid off his own weight belt and then slipped it around her hips and pulled it tight. Lisa stared wild-eyed. What was this now? Was he getting rid of his own gear, the better to go to Campbell’s aid? Was he really here to help, after dragging her down here and making her watch? No chance.

  Deftly, no sausage fingers now, he unfastened her BCD and motioned that she slip out of it.

  Shaking her head frantically she grabbed at it with her hands and tried to refasten the clips.

  Even with the slowing effects of the water, the punch landed with exceptional force, crunching into her solar plexus, only half absorbed by the thick padding of the inflated garment.

  Gasping furiously on the regulator she tried to suck air and fight the winded sensation and the panic rising in her like a balloon from the depths.

  She felt her own BCD ripped and dragged from her, tugged over her shoulders, her arms pushed through the holes and then finally, though she clung to it with e
very shred of her fear-fuelled strength, her own regulator was yanked free and her air supply was gone.

  The weight belts did their work and as she sank, the feeling of acceleration was all the more pronounced as the mute headed away from her for the surface, like a falling skydiver watching someone else pull their ripcord.

  FORTY NINE

  Watching his attacker rise like a cork whilst staring down and flashing the knife as he went, Campbell finally knew what fear felt like. Pure and undiluted, it was a hit of adrenaline and naked terror unlike anything he had known before. The ropes and the blindfold in the east London lock-up, the shoot-out in the house, any of the bungee jumps, deep-jungle treks into dangerous guerrilla territory in South East Asia, or trapped in the unyielding grasp of a tiny funnel of rock, all of them combined would have fallen short of this.

  The worst of it was he had put himself here. His determination to escape the drudgery of life, to seek out something to replace that lost buzz after the incident and all the threat and peril that had stalked his life. That had driven his decision-making to find new thrills, new risks to take, new experiences to fill his days. It had driven him to go travelling, taken him to Scorpio and now it had put him here, meters from the sea bed, several lungfuls from the surface and no air supply.

  No air?

  He slapped at his weight belt and his hip and looked down desperately through the swirling silt. Had he attached it?

  There. His hand hit the cylinder and he tugged at it frantically, disconnecting it from the clasp as his lungs began to burn and his throat began to tighten, like instinct was battling with reason. He would breath in again, no question. It was only a question of when.

  He held the cylinder in his hand up to his face and peered at the instructions but he’d read them over several times already and though he’d not used it before, knew how to. The day-glo writing down the side was bright as sunshine here in the depths. Spare Air. It was the size of a large aerosol can and rather than a spray nozzle, it had a small rubber regulator at the top, just like the one that attacked to his lost air tank, the one that Shark-fin had torn from his mouth.

  Like any good insurance policy, it was better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. He worked the functions fast and jammed it into his mouth.

  Nothing.

  For a moment that crashing riot of panic was back and his eyes went wide as his throat strained to open but it was merely the delay and suddenly, blissfully, the air erupted through the regulator and into his mouth. It tasted foul and delicious all at once.

  Campbell gulped it in and rolled his head back in relief, looking up at the distance to the surface, he knew he could make it now, even with a decompression stop.

  Then he saw it.

  The dark shape dropping toward him was too small to be his assailant returning and his brain could not process the information. Then he noted the swirl of hair around her head and the petite frame and he realised. Of course.

  Both of them.

  Her arms were waving frantically, grasping at the water and Campbell swam to her and caught her, surprised at the weight as he fought to arrest her descent.

  She looked at him, unadulterated panic, and he had to grab her hands to stop her clawing at his face and knocking the Spare Air away. He wrapped his legs around hers and felt them both begin to slide lower again, then jammed the regulator into her mouth.

  She wasted little time in sucking in deep lungfuls of air and Campbell released her legs and tried to kick against the downward momentum. He felt her fingers dig hard into his flesh through the wetsuit, still gripped by the terror of their predicament and he looked at her, fixed her eyes with his and then with forefinger and middle finger pointed at her eyes, then his. Watch me. Keep your eyes on me.

  She did and the sudden narrowed focus seemed to calm her. She pulled hard on the Spare Air again before Campbell gestured for its return. She yielded it reluctantly.

  Taking two deep breaths he handed it back and she grabbed it and sucked hard again. He could see that he would need to leave it with her as much as possible to quell her raging panic if they were to deal with this situation and after another couple of exhalations he made the thumb and forefinger circle to ask if she was OK now. She nodded and then responded in kind with the sign, remembering the training she’d had years before. Be clear, use the signals.

  As they drifted and sank he kept the relay going with the canister, two and pass, two and pass. He could feel her tension ebb away, her fingers loosen a little as she calmed. It was essential that she relax. If she spooked again she might do something that he couldn’t control. Important to get her calm and focused.

  Campbell took another hit on the canister and then saw what was dragging them down; two weight belts. The other guy had not only taken her equipment, but weighted her down too, like a cat in a bag.

  He looked up at her and positioned himself to better get at the buckle when he spotted the gauge on the side of the Spare Air.

  Down by half already.

  In their desperation and panic they had used up half the tank. It was not designed to last very long and it was certainly not designed for two. Campbell looked up again at the receding surface and tried to calculate how far it might get them if they shared it. He didn’t take long to figure it out. The only way would be to go so fast that they’d give themselves decompression sickness and at this depth - and how far further had they sunk since he’d last checked? - it would most likely prove fatal.

  He went back to the belts, keen to avoid letting his worry show or give her anything more to panic about. Then he made a decision.

  Holding both weight belts in his fist he looked at her and made the watch-me sign. She nodded and offered the Spare Air.

  Taking three big hits, he handed it back and began to attach the weight belts to himself.

  She frowned and raised a questioning palm. What are you doing?

  He pointed at the canister then at himself and then at her. Then he wagged his finger in a clear No-No gesture.

  She stared at him as it registered, then he pointed at the canister again and then just her and made the OK circle.

  Not us. Just you.

  She shook her head at him, the fear blazing in her eyes again but he grabbed her shoulders, nodded vigorously and made the Up sign with his thumb, jabbing it toward the surface.

  She did not understand what he was thinking but there was no more time to try to explain it to her.

  Sometimes you have to hit bottom first. Campbell pushed her up and dropped fast into the darkness.

  FIFTY

  Horner has got the hovering technique just right. There was time enough once they got in and under the water to drop to the right depth and start adjusting the buoyancy control, adding and then releasing air to the BCD until he just hung there in the water, buffeted gently by the waves.

  It was calm and tranquil this far from the surface and he watched the schools of fish skim the seabed and a turtle spot him as it swam and turn away. After a moment, Rookes intruded and pointed up at the splash from above as more bodies entered the water and started to descend.

  They began to go through the motions so as not to attract Campbell’s attention, and then set off slowly in pursuit as Shark-fin led Campbell away from the main group who had all spread out in search of their own little patch of ocean. There was no need to adjust his position in the water, maintaining the same depth and enjoying the view from up high as the show began.

  His excited mind was locked on this moment, intent on savouring it all, on remembering everything. He had to resist the burning urge to drop closer to get a better view as it played out but as it was Rookes had got them in a perfect spot to watch the attack.

  Horner wondered again about whether the young couple would be missed in the count back on the boat but Rookes was nothing if not thorough and had tampered with the list on the dive guide’s clipboard when everyone was watching Lisa and the other man trying to untang
le their gear. No doubt he’d be sure and follow up later with some distraction or other to make sure that nobody stopped to look for them.

  There was a burst of bubbles beneath them as Shark-fin’s knife tore open Campbell’s BCD and Horner felt a strange compulsion to head for them as they rose. To take out his regulator and inhale them maybe or just feel them surge over him, like he was immersing himself in this exalted revenge.

  He watched as the struggle came to an end, the hose pulled tight, the knife slicing through it and Campbell set adrift in the deep, lost and finished.

  He almost didn’t see Lisa, so fixated was he on Campbell’s distress but Rookes tapped him on the leg and pointed her out, being dragged lower by the other man they’d sent for the job, an arm clamped around her slender frame.

  Horner felt that this was a more distasteful experience to witness but a necessary one all the same. The girl had overstepped the mark and seemed to have involved herself with Campbell far more intimately than was convenient. He didn’t know how much she knew about everything but he had neither the time nor inclination to find out. She was expendable and so he watched as the other man got to work and then gestured to Rookes that he had seen enough.

  Rookes gave him the OK thumb-and-finger circle and they headed off, keen to be away from the scene as soon as possible and surface elsewhere just in case somebody else saw something that they weren’t supposed to.

  Back on the boat Rookes went to work chattering busily with the dive guide as he tried to tick off the names of people as they emerged from the water in pairs and before he could double check his form or question himself Rookes was up on the seating round the edge of the boat and pointing off at the horizon.

  ‘Look, there! Over there! What’s that?’ he shouted excitedly and suddenly everyone was up and staring off into the distance at a calm ocean.

  ‘What was it?’ someone asked.

  ‘There. Right there,’ Rookes said again pointing at the same spot. ‘Did you not see it?’

  ‘Where? See what?’ the dive guide is next to him and coaxing him back down onto the deck.

  ‘Something breached. About a hundred yards. Quite big,’ Rookes keeps on and even Horner finds himself looking to catch a glimpse of the imaginary creature.

  ‘Something breached?’ asked the dive guide but then the others are clamouring to see and they are all on one side of the boat and it pushes deeper into the waves, listing with the shifting weight.

  ‘OK, wait a sec everyone please. No standing up on the seats,’ he says. ‘And let’s get back to our spots on this side too, let’s get spread out a bit.’

  Everyone does as they are bid, but reluctantly and with eyes fixed on the horizon where Rookes was pointing. There are raised voices and people are demanding that the boat head over there, fast before they miss it.

  The dive guide relents as he herds people back into position and nods at the Captain who starts up and swings the boat round in the direction that everyone is still looking in.

  Rookes settles back down next to Horner and smiles.

  ‘Well, that was exciting.’

  FIFTY ONE

  He does not know how far away the boat is until he sees the boil and churn of propellers in the vanishing distance. He is amazed at how far it is but then remembers the long diverting meander that he was led on their way down. The little lost sheep all the time the shepherd.

  He’s got one chance now, wafer thin, but at least he’ll have spared Lisa from drowning in the salty depths. She may have to fend for herself up there but at worst she could swim back to shore. He recalls the talk from the dive guide about the relative calm of the inshore waters this side of the wall and knows she can make it so long as she ascends to the surface in time.

  Campbell drops and knows it needs to be faster so he upends himself and thrusts his hands in front and kicks hard for the sea-bed, the double weight belt like a turbo charger.

  Somewhere on the approaching sea-bed will be his sliced up BCD and so too will the air tank.

  As the murk clears a little and the floor opens out he searches desperately for a sign of it. From higher up he has an overview of the area it will have dropped onto, but the closer he gets to it, the narrower his field of vision.

  Finally he spots it, a black smudge in the grey sand and drifting seaweed. He sprints through the water to the discarded garment and sees the vicious tear in the lining that the blade opened up, a wound that could as easily have been ripped across his flesh.

  He grabs at it and flips it over but he does not need to see any more, the weight of it tells him that the tank is not attached.

  He looks around frantically and he feels his lungs beginning to strain again. He tries not to think about it but his mind starts doing calculations anyway.

  Twenty seconds since his last big hit of air and his farewell to Lisa, thirty maybe. Another thirty before it gets bad. Twenty, thirty more before it cannot be held any longer and nature takes over? He can almost hear the ticking stopwatch in his head, marking off time.

  He scans the swirling gloom, tries to do so systematically, in sections, fighting the urge to dart his head around in every direction.

  No tank.

  Tick… tick… tick…

  He tries to fin up a few metres, fighting the weight belts and looks around again from a better angle. It’s not enough and he realises that to go higher will just expend time and energy. He needs to catch a break.

  Tick… tick… tick…

  He is looking for the inanimate shape of the aluminium grey of the tank on the sand but something in his field of vision, some movement in the dark distance doesn’t fit.

  Tick… tick… tick…

  Bubbles.

  A column of bubbles is rising in the water thirty yards away, straight and regular. That must be it, must be.

  He bolts for it and notes that he is heading for a deeper bank of colour than he has been used to, swirled with grey movement as the strong ocean tides hit the surging cliff face.

  The Wall.

  He pushes down his clamouring fear like he has many times before and he arrows through the water for the foreboding darkness and the single trickle of air winding its way up from somewhere below.

  Tick… tick…

  He draws closer and feels the churn and pull of the deeper water and the furious currents lurking there.

  Without hesitation Campbell shoots out over the lip and into the maw of the deep. His eyes are down and his hands are pulling at the rolling current as it hits the sharp sudden rise of the wall, Campbell finds and follows the bubble column and knows that whatever happens now, he cannot stop and give in to doubt.

  Tick…

  Another meter, another. The bubbles keep coming and the light keeps fading. The ferocious churn of the water out here pounds and saps him as he fights against it and as the extraordinary strain in his lungs and the burning in his chest overtakes the pain in his muscles he finally sees it.

  Tick…

  Sitting on a ledge on the sheer drop of the wall is the discarded air tank, leaking out bubbles through the severed hose.

  He kicks and strains down further and watches as the buffeting water rocks the tank back into the rock face and then out again, toward the very edge.

  Tick…

  Not now. Not like this, he thinks.

  The gap closes agonisingly slowly, the seething fury of the ocean smashing up against the cliff face does all it can to keep him from his prize but Daniel Campbell is unwilling to accept defeat in the black desolation down here. He will not accept anything other than his own will to triumph.

  He grabs at the tank as it rolls to the lip of the ledge again and he snatches at the bubbling hose. The tank is sucked away into space and hovers there for a moment, suspended by the competing currents moving in different directions.

  Tick.

  But the hose is in his fist now and he pulls it in, wrapping the tank into a tight embrace, like a lost child returned. He j
ams the hose into his mouth and lets the air spray in.

  It forces water in too, cold and salty and heavy with silt, but that’s of no interest.

  He breathes.

  Slowly and carefully he feeds his starved lungs and ignores the burning urge to gulp it in, knowing he will choke and drown if he does so. Gradually the pain subsides and he becomes aware of where he is again, drifting lower down the abyssal drop of the wall.

  He fins upward, fighting the weight belts now as well as the water, and quickly gives up on the idea.

  Drawing his legs up he clasps the tank with his thighs and bites hard on the hose.

  He pulls one weight belt loose from his waist quickly and drops it into the deep and then removes the second. This one too is threaded with black lumpen weights like tumours but instead of dropping it all in one, he slides the weights off and keeps the belt.

  Kicking awkwardly, divested of the extra weight and with full lungs, he moves upward toward the top of the wall and then as he draws level, wraps an arm around the tank, stretches his legs and moves for the sheltered waters beyond. When he gets clear of the wall and into the relative shallows he feels the brutal mauling subside and takes a moment to rest and gather himself, savouring the respite.

  He takes the tank and straps it to his chest with the now weight-free belt. Easing more air through the hose into his mouth he begins his ascent.

  He has no idea what air is left in this tank, only that it has been leaking since he was separated from it. There will be no time for long decompression stops on the way up as his safety training dictates, and in any event, he has no idea how he would manage to pause and hover in the water at a constant depth for any length of time without the aid of the buoyancy control device.

  But what has hit bottom must now bounce back up and he will face whatever awaits him.

  FIFTY TWO

  ‘Caspar! Take a seat.’

  Caspar? Hogg doesn’t remember the last time Horner addressed him by his first name. He’s unusually chipper.

  Indeed as Hogg walks in and sits, he notes that there is a flush of colour in Horner’s cheeks, the embedded frown lines have softened significantly and there’s a tone in his voice that he’s not sure he’s heard before.

  ‘Coffee? Anyone coffee?’ asks Horner and then Hogg notices the other two men in the room standing at the window looking out. The squat Malaysian man and his flick-knife of a sidekick.

  Everyone nods and Horner sets about the coffee machine in the corner, starts doing it himself. The strangeness curdles and makes Hogg feel uncomfortable.

  He notes that the two men at the window are talking in low voices and more than once they flash a look at Horner that plants a thought in Hogg’s mind. So far he’s been worrying that he best not make himself too expendable. But if that look at Horner means anything like he thinks, then there may be very little he can do about it. If they decide to rid themselves of their reluctant ally, then what on earth would they need with the slobby tech guy who knows everything?

  Horner walks a tray around the room and when Hogg takes his, Horner has his back to the others and looks Hogg in the eye with an expression that cuts through all the bonhomie. There’s something afoot here, some sort of game playing out and Hogg wonders if he’ll be made to pick a side.

  ‘Caspar,’ Horner says as he spins on his heel and returns the tray to the coffee table. ‘Our guests are keen to know more about the operation. Specifically the security.’

  Hogg hesitates, wondering why he is here instead of Rookes, but then the penny drops.

  ‘The TOR. The Onion Router?’ he says.

  ‘Onion?’ says Dusan sharply.

  Hogg nods. ‘Yes, it’s an encryption process known as the TOR or The Onion Router.’

  ‘It refers to the multi-layered nature of it you see. Like an onion,’ Horner offers but Dusan scowls at him. His English may be a step or two behind but his mind isn’t.

  ‘That’s it. The messages bounce around different servers on their way to the destination and each one strips away a layer of encryption. Even then, the message delivered at the end is itself encrypted. Read-protected you might say.’

  ‘Like a password?’

  ‘Yep, sort of. We send out a gif file with the password embedded in it so you have to actually watch it to see it. Any surveillance software that picked it up and scanned it would only see code for a gif file, there’s no way that the surveillance software can actually read what’s in the file unless it watches it. Which it won’t.’

  ‘It won’t? For sure?’

  ‘No. They don’t have the capacity for that level of analysis. They scan for watchwords and stuff. The gif needs to be seen by a human so they know what to look for within the moving image. And that’s only if they’d penetrated the TOR deep enough to intercept.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘The gif tells you the password and which prompt to follow from the list you’ll have had at the early stage.

  ‘From there you go to any number of innocuous looking internet pages like dating sites or fan forums for pop stars or sports teams. Some have basic instructions in them - the stock ticker, the bid price, where to buy it or short it. There’s no step-by-step “Stock Trades For Dummies” kind of instructions, but the info is all there.

  ‘Then somewhere else there’s a link to the company in question and the password key gets you past the security wall and in there it tells you more about what to buy, how to buy it, why you buy and when to sell. Or at least when you’ll be told when to sell.’

  Horner looks at him as he talks and his eyes linger before he nods at Hari and Dusan.

  ‘It’s Russia as Churchill had it. A mystery in a riddle in an enigma.’

  ‘You talk in riddle sometimes.’ Dusan is not done scowling but Horner is looking again at Hogg.

  What, he thinks, did you not think I would check? All those days constructing the system, sitting at the machine, sending out messages that seemed like nonsense. Once you spot the pattern, the rest of the puzzle gets much easier. Hogg had noticed the similarity to some of the three letter codes and the numbers that were going out in the TOR messages when he browsed the internet in boredom. HTE, BVE, SES, BAT. There were more, with numbers and symbols too but one excruciating day of coding had led him on a wandering tour of internet pages trying to relieve the boredom, idly clicking links that seemed vaguely interesting, landing up from some clickbait news story into a news site, from there into the business pages and scrolling through the dry headlines about quarterly reports and M&A he spots more of them. They are stock tickers, he learns. The abbreviations attached to stocks on trading exchanges and databases, the better to list them in a uniform fashion, rather than their potentially lengthy full trading names. It would only take a typo to end up with a trade executed incorrectly when you were entering two or three words, perhaps not of your own tongue, into a computer screen somewhere. Better to standardise and simplify.

  The numbers, he reasoned, must be prices; the symbols denoting currency perhaps, or whether they were a buy or a short sell.

  Horner had not wanted anyone to know more than their allotted role within the cellular structure of his organisation, but Hogg saw no reason to let the other man hold all the cards.

  The Malaysian crime lord and his flick-knife sidekick weren’t supposed to be here either, so Hogg figured he’s best to start making his own plans now. Either you play the game or the game plays you.

  FIFTY THREE

  He goes slowly at first, hoping against hope that he might make it back to the surface without filling his bloodstream with expanding nitrogen bubbles that would kill him. Frequently he tries to equalise the pressure in his ears by pinching his nose and swallowing.

  But the higher he goes, the faster he seems to go. The easing water pressure and the air-filled lungs seem to be pushing him toward the light.

  He attempts a decompression stop at what he guesses to be halfway and feels that panic clawing its way into h
is chest. The urge to get to the surface, to fresh air and daylight, is almost impossible to suppress. The decompression stop lasts a minute, maybe a minute and a half, but he’s rising all the time, despite his attempts to stall the ascent. He’d have a weight belt and an air tank and a BCD with an adjustable level of buoyancy ordinarily with which he could alter and manipulate and attempt to maintain a hover for a designated spell and let his body adjust, let the nitrogen in his bloodstream normalise. Not this time.

  The rest of the climb is one way and beyond his control, he surrenders to it and kicks away with jelly legs like a long-distance runner stumbling for the line.

  When he breaks the surface the air is so crisp and fresh after the salty, silty mess he’s been pulling down, that he gags and chokes for a moment. The bright sun’s glare dazzles him after so long in the darkness.

  There’s another coughing fit and then he heaves and vomits, coughing up all the crap he’s been breathing and swallowing for God knows how long. His throat feels like sandpaper, which, given all the silt and sand he must have sucked in, makes some sense. When he’s spat the last of the vomit from his lips, he kicks away from it as it floats there in the water like a slick and after a few meters, flips onto his back to float and catch his breath. His lungs burn and protest at the sudden influx of volume and purity, a change from the filthy rations they have been permitted.

  Suddenly he flips back again and snaps his head around.

  Lisa.

  In his long fight to the surface he had been so focused, so delirious, that he had stopped thinking about her and whether she made it.

  Had she been picked up by a passing boat? Had she panicked before she’d made it back? Perhaps the Spare Air had run out on her and her desperate breathing, so greedy for relief in her distress.

  Surely if she had been picked up she would have made the boat wait for him too, if indeed she could communicate. He was sure that the air in the canister would have done the job. If not all the way back to the surface, it would have got her close enough to do the rest whilst holding her breath.

  He could see nothing of note nearby, nothing useful on the horizon. Sea birds pitching and wheeling, a few whitecaps scattered across the dipping swell.

  He turns in stages to scan the ocean, dividing it up like the hands of a clock, one, two, three, four. At nine he spots something black rolling in the water and swims to it but sees before he reaches it that it is a discarded BCD which he surmises must have been hers. He last saw his own slashed open and on the sea bed.

  The hiss and splash of the water and the keening wails of seabirds cover the sound up at first but then he stops as it pushes through the noise. High pitched and sustained, unlike the staccato calls of the birds, he hears it twice before he lands on the answer. It’s a scream.

  He sees the fingers of her hand across an expanse of waves and she is impossibly far away. They had been nose to nose beneath the surface not so long ago. But since then he had swum away, toward and over The Wall, and the currents will have done their work to drag them apart as well.

  At first he thought she was screaming for help, her hand waving in desperation. But then as one wave picks him up and another drops her into a trough his line of sight is clearer and he sees that she is floating on the surface and waving at him. The scream is just the best way to get his attention.

  He waves at her and they both begin to close the wide blue gulf between them.

  When at last the gap is closed and they cling to each other she looks at him and says, ‘They left.’

  ‘Who? The bad guys? Good.’

  ‘The boat. The boat left. I thought they took names.’

  ‘I guess if those guys could get on board and split us up like that, a bribe or a threat wouldn’t be beyond them. Or maybe it’s just good old fashioned incompetence,’ says Campbell, his voice hoarse. ‘Maybe he counted everyone on at the beach and missed those two off when they came late.’

  ‘But someone would notice. Someone.’

  ‘Who knows? All the buzz of getting back from the dive, everyone busy stowing their gear away. Would you know who else was on that boat? It was busy.’

  ‘They’ll be back once they realise. They’ll be back for us.’

  ‘Let’s call that Plan B shall we? Besides, if they come back and those two are still there, I’d sooner not be rescued.’

  ‘What then? Just hope for someone else to turn up?’

  ’No. We swim.’

  She looks around her at the rolling swell of the ocean and wonders if they are going to be left to pick a direction and hope for the best.

  ‘That way,’ Campbell announces and points over her head. We had the sun behind us when we headed out. That was two hours ago and it will have moved in the sky so we head back that way.’

  ‘But we’ve moved too since then. The swimming and the currents.’

  ‘Same basic area. We swim for a while and we’ll see the shore and then we can just head straight for it.

  She offers no further resistance and they begin to swim for where they hope the shore will be. Buoyed up by the air trapped in their wetsuits it is a little easier and though the currents are pushing them east along the island, there is enough of the island left that they spot something after twenty minutes. In thirty it is clear enough that they can make out trees and buildings and they push through the shattering exhaustion and aim for beach.

  They hit a sand bar in the shallows and take a rest before pushing on for the final leg. Dusk is fading away into evening now and the warmth in the air and water is turning chill.

  ‘Daniel,’ she says as they head back in for the last hundred yards.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why? Why did they do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. If I had to guess, I would say it was something to do with what I’ve been turning up at Scorpio. Maybe someone thinks that I know more than I should. All these dodgy companies, some sort of scam, some big pyramid scheme.’

  She looks at him and he shrugs. ‘Crazy right? But here we are.’

  When she says nothing he looks back at her and sees that the water on her cheeks is from the tears in her eyes and not the sea.

  ‘Lisa? You OK?’

  She nods but then sees that’s ridiculous and shakes her head instead.

  The water is shallow enough to walk now so they stagger onto the sand and collapse next to each other.

  ‘What is it?’ he says.

  ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ACT III