by Simon Mayo
She had brought her diving sled with her, which could help get her to a predetermined depth, but she was beginning to think that it would be useless here. This would be a climb and a dive; she just wasn’t sure how much climbing and how much diving were involved.
A moment’s hesitation … How much did she really want this? Was it worth risking everything for? She thought of the Ikoyi Prison and the daily humiliations she had faced there. She thought of the life Flowerdew had enjoyed while she languished. And then she thought of the unparalleled power and wealth that lay in front of her. She was here first, and it was there for the taking.
With the ropes around her and her fins tied around her neck, Shivvi Tan Fook stepped down onto the first rung.
Walking swiftly toward the Fitzherbert School, Flowerdew, Loya, and Voss were looking at their text messages. They had all received the news from their driver, now parked a few streets away.
Police arriving from everywhere.
“They can’t be here for us, but it’s not good news.” Flowerdew was frowning.
“Maybe someone has recognized you, Dr. Flowerdew?” suggested Voss.
“Maybe. But unlikely,” he said. “There hasn’t been a photo of me on the news or anything. No, it’s Shivvi, I’m sure of it. She must have found the location of the rocks after all. And, in her own stupid, bumbling way, has been found out. Damn it to hell.” He kicked the hubcap of a nearby car.
“Let’s not get overexcited,” Loya said.
“I thought that’s what you Latin types did all the time,” snapped Flowerdew. “I’ll kick what I want.”
The two agents exchanged glances, and Loya shook his head, urging silence.
Flowerdew was striding up the school drive. “Either Shivvi is on her way,” he muttered, “and they have arranged a welcome party, or … she’s already here.”
“And diving?” asked Voss, following close behind.
“It’s what she does,” replied Flowerdew. “That and losing.”
“Let’s find her,” said Voss as they hurried up the steps. “And remember—we say we are from the hotel group Mondo if we are challenged. Assessing development …”
Shivvi wasn’t sure how deep she was when she came to the water. She had stepped and sometimes slithered her way down the rungs built into the well wall by its nineteenth-century constructors. She looked up—she was maybe three hundred feet down from the horizontal shaft, and the black, impenetrable water was now at her feet. She adjusted the lights on her helmet with one hand as she fitted her fins with the other. The rubber foot pockets slipped over her feet, the long blades pointing down toward the water.
She continued the pre-dive breathing routine that she had started in the car. She was in a hurry, but if she got this wrong she could die. She had done this all her life, and it came naturally to her. She took big breaths from deep in her stomach, focusing first on the exhale, then on the inhale. She emptied her lungs completely, then filled them to capacity. After two minutes she put on her black silicone mask and shrugged the empty black duffle onto her shoulders.
Calm. Steady. Focus. One enormous breath.
She slipped into the water.
The cold was shocking. Even though she was prepared for it, and her suit was the finest money could buy, it still hit her like a punch in the face. She knew that the cold would channel most of her available oxygen to her heart and brain, also that the clock was ticking. Her record was nine minutes and forty seconds, but that was in warm water, with no baggage. This time the water was freezing and she would have to carry the rocks back to the surface.
She pushed down. Her lights penetrated only a short distance in the total blackness of the well water, but just far enough to see each row of bricks as she descended. Her fins cut huge swathes through the water, giving great thrust with little effort, her legs staying as straight as possible and kicking once per second. She was streamlined, her chin tucked into her chest as she concentrated on the rows of passing bricks. Instinctively, she emptied her mind.
Bricks … blackness … kick. Bricks … blackness … kick.
She felt the familiar chest pain that stayed with her for the first couple of hundred feet ease off, only to be replaced by a constant pain between her ears. As she sped lower, she used air held in her mouth and throat to feed into her cheeks, using them as an air reserve. Moving her tongue, neck, and jaw, she moved the air into airspaces in her sinuses and ears; here the pressure wouldn’t compress the air as much as in her chest. It was a trick called mouthfill, which she had learned as a teenager, diving in the South China Sea. Without it she would have had to return to the surface by now.
Bricks … blackness … kick.
Shivvi was feeling dizzy now; her eyesight blurred; she had to fight away the stupor. Bricks … blackness … kick.
How deep was she? Surely the bottom was not far away; she noticed that the well walls were crumbling and dissolving.
Bricks … blackness … kick.
Her lungs were being squeezed down to the size of fists and the pain was overwhelming. She hadn’t experienced pressure on her eardrums like this before, but she stuck to her routine. Lights were popping in her eyes, and finally her rhythm faltered.
The first thought of failure entered her mind now: her chest wall was on the point of collapse; her lungs would be filling with fluid, mostly blood. Getting back to the surface—for her, always the start of the dive, where the real work began—was going to be a mighty struggle.
She had given herself just three more kicks when she hit the bottom. It happened very quickly—she had clearly been falling faster than she realized—and suddenly she was in the mud, surrounded by old rusty winch machinery. Terrified of tearing her suit, she floated back up a few feet and, with all the control she could muster, pushed down again. This time the well bottom emerged slowly, and she saw wooden planks, rusted chains, and a large circular cable. And, there, half submerged in mud and slime, amid the tattered remains of an old backpack, a polyethylene and lead radiation box.
In the lab and on his knees, Itch pulled desperately at the copper pipe that held him tightly. He knew he had only seconds before he would be overcome by the toxic cloud that was billowing around him. At first the copper was unyielding, but as he tugged, he felt it soften. With a new burst of energy, he pulled against the pipe, but he got the angle wrong and the handcuff slipped, shooting away from the corroding reaction. Frantic now, his chest beginning to burn and the heat from the reaction adding to his discomfort, he dragged the cuff back along the pipe until he felt it dip into the reacting metal. If his eyes had been open he would have seen the fumes enveloping his head and circle around the lab. With another powerful heave, he felt the pipe suddenly give way. Water shot everywhere and he fell backward, gasping.
He opened his eyes. The pipe had ruptured and the handcuff had been pulled through the broken copper, but the fumes were everywhere: as he breathed in, his lungs burned and he choked. Spinning around, then slipping in the water, Itch sprinted away from the lethal haze that had settled above the sink.
He stood in the corridor outside the science lab, wheezing and gasping for air. He was coughing and retching, and his eyes were stinging, but he knew he’d gotten away with it. A broken finger, a gouged hand and some inhaled NO2—but he’d escaped. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, the handcuffs banging against his chin.
You’re fine—now find Jack.
He ran past the metalshop and woodshop rooms, and came to the well opening. Remembering Shivvi’s threat to Jack, he tiptoed onto the metal plate and peered down.
Jack was about fifteen rungs down and, seeing the light change above her, she glanced up. She looked exhausted, her face tear-streaked. Itch put his finger to his lips and Jack saw the cuffs dangling from his wrist. She beamed, the relief lighting up her face.
“She’s down there,” she said softly. “Don’t know where exactly. But she’s been gone a while.”
“Can you get out?” Itch whispered.
“Nitric acid. But it’s no use down there—the fumes would kill you before you could get out.”
Jack suddenly saw Itch’s head whip around.
“Jack, there’s someone coming!” he said, and disappeared.
She tensed, and then saw Itch’s head above her again. “We’re gonna be fine,” he said quickly, and was gone.
The noise was coming from behind the new security doors that Shivvi had shut: first a rattling of the handle, then pushing, followed by fists banging. Itch could hear voices, indistinct but urgent. He stood there, frozen in indecision: if they were teachers, their ordeal could be over; if they were police they’d be safe, but the rocks would have to be handed over. That, he quickly concluded, would be better than Shivvi escaping with them, and he ran toward the double doors. He was about to call out when he felt the blood drain from his face and his legs go weak.
On the other side of the door he heard a voice shouting, “Come on—surely you’ve got something to get these doors open with!” and he knew he and Jack were in even more trouble.
It was Nathaniel Flowerdew.
A thousand thoughts and a thousand curses ran through Itch’s head.
He’s here! Shivvi didn’t kill him after all!
The last time he and Jack had seen their former science teacher was when they’d anaesthetized him with xenon gas. Soon after that, Flowerdew had been arrested but then freed by Greencorps agents. Itch had hoped never to hear that sneering, arrogant voice again. He remembered how Flowerdew had stolen his first piece of 126, the blinding pain when Flowerdew had banged his head repeatedly against the wall of the Cornwall Academy lab, his casual indifference to the radiation poisoning Itch and Jack had suffered.
Now Itch listened in horror to the conversation on the other side of the door and wondered what he could do.
“Let’s find another way in,” said a Spanish voice, and Itch heard the footsteps retreat. He ran back past the well to the science lab, where the corridor ended and a fire door marked the end of the school extension. That was the only other entrance, and he knew they’d be there in minutes.
What should I tell Jack? Oh help! He sprinted back to the well. He couldn’t think of any way to make this easier—she would find out soon enough anyway.
“Jack, it’s Flowerdew! He’s here and trying to get in through the fire exit.” Jack cried out in alarm but Itch said, “I’m going to hide. I’ve got a plan. Be brave.” He didn’t wait to discuss it with her—he didn’t actually have a plan yet, but he knew he had to think of something—and fast.
He grabbed his backpack from Shivvi’s pile of supplies, and, with greater force than was wise, pushed the crate of cesium tubes into the woodshop, avoiding a huge tub of sawdust by the door. Next he retrieved the tube that had been strapped to his chest from the science lab, adding it to the others. Running back to the well, he saw the tarp and grabbed it. Underneath were Shivvi’s discarded clothes and, in the pocket of her jeans, her phone. The sound of a door being forced made him jump. He hesitated. What would Cake do? Then he thought, To hell with it. He dialed the police and put the phone back under Shivvi’s crumpled T-shirt on the floor. As the fire door splintered, Itch dived into the woodshop room.
One thousand two hundred and eighty-five feet below, Shivvi Tan Fook had pulled the radiation-proof box free and managed to push it into the empty duffle. Even in her oxygen-depleted state, the significance of what she was doing—of what she had just claimed for herself—sent a kick of adrenaline through her body.
They were hers. All of them. The pieces of 126 that would change her life were finally hers.
With her chest bursting and her head feeling as though it would cave in with the pressure, she hooked the bag over her shoulders. The ascent was always more of an effort—fighting gravity with less oxygen in her system—but this would be the worst. She felt anchored to the well bottom and her vision was going again.
Routine. Method. Control.
Calm. Steady. Focus.
With a supreme effort of will, she pushed up. She never looked for the surface anyway, but this time she knew there would be no point: the only thing visible was the murky water right in front of her. Her headlamps were dimming slightly as she felt for the well wall.
Bricks … blackness … kick. Bricks … blackness … kick. There was hardly any air left anywhere in her body; lights were popping in front of her eyes, and her legs faltered. She knew she had to reach what divers called “neutral buoyancy,” the seemingly weightless state between floating and sinking. When you’re going down, after neutral buoyancy, you hit freefall; when you’re coming up, you can stop kicking. Ordinarily Shivvi knew where to expect it—about thirty feet from the surface—but the weight on her back had changed that. She felt she was kicking and clawing her way through molasses. Was she still going up? She checked the wall.
Bricks … blackness … kick. And now she felt light. Either she had started to hallucinate or she had reached neutral buoyancy. She stopped kicking and reached for the rungs on the well wall. “Shallow water blackout” often caused fainting as the lungs expanded again and the oxygen pressure dropped. The rungs steadied her as everything else wobbled.
She had seconds left, and she half clawed, half swam her way to the surface. She opened her mouth wide and sucked in the stale well air as though it were the sweetest, purest oxygen. After clinging to the rungs for a minute she felt strong enough to climb the rest of the way up to the horizontal shaft.
And then her headlamps went out.
The police commander’s officers alerted him to the three figures who had been seen running from the school entrance to the extension. They reported a tall young man in a suit, a larger bearded man in a coat, and a third wearing a black cap over his curly white hair. Photos had been taken, identification was underway.
Every hostage situation he had been called on to handle had involved engaging the hostage-taker as soon as possible. Negotiate. String it out. Get the hostages safe; it was the established procedure and it usually worked. But here he had a hostage-taker who didn’t want to see anyone, never mind actually talk. And now three unknown men were forcing their way into the school extension.
The police commander took a call from MI5. A man introducing himself as Colonel Jim Fairnie told him that a ferociously radioactive substance had been hidden under the school and was probably in the process of being brought to the surface. He explained that the hostage-taker was an escaped prisoner from a Nigerian jail and that she had two teenagers rigged as suicide bombers. Their safety was paramount, but he was to make sure his cordon held. He needed to keep the rocks right there.
The commander, stunned at the escalation of the threat facing his officers, volunteered the news of the three men who had run from the school for the extension. He repeated the descriptions he had been given; when he mentioned the man with a cap and white curly hair, the MI5 colonel’s sudden intake of breath was unmistakable.
Loya forced the emergency exit open, and Flowerdew and Voss charged in. Loya followed, pulling the door shut behind him. The three men looked around, and Flowerdew took charge.
“Science lab. Poky. Useless. And stinks—nitrogen dioxide, I’d say.” They walked slowly along the corridor. “Metalshop … woodshop. What a dump. No wonder they’re pulling it down.”
Loya and Voss entered each room tentatively, but Flowerdew strode on. He turned the corner past the woodshop. And stopped in his tracks.
“I think this is what we are looking for, gentlemen,” he said, taking in the discarded wooden planks, the wheelbarrow, the toolbox, and the pile of clothes on top of the discarded diving equipment. “I know who uses this gear …” He smiled as he picked up the inhaler-like respiratory sports trainer that Shivvi had used to strengthen her lungs and get her breathing going. He stepped onto the large metal plate and stared at the hole in the middle. Loya and Voss joined him.
“Th
e Woodingdean Well,” said Flowerdew, “and my guess is that our friend Ms. Tan Fook is down there doing our hard work for us.” He leaned over the hole.
“Well, well, well—if you’ll excuse the pun—she’s even gift-wrapped a present for us! Hello, down there!” The two agents appeared at his shoulder, staring down at the manacled figure of Jack. “This is, unless I’m very much mistaken, one of the hideous Lofte cousins. Jack, to be precise. And you’re right, it is a stupid name for a girl. Hello, Jack! Remember me? We have some unfinished business, don’t we? And where’s that half-witted boy? He down there too?”
Fifteen feet down, Jack had heard the approaching steps and knew what was coming. Her legs and arms were screaming with cramps, but she stood as still as she could, head down. She mouthed every foul word she had ever heard, but Flowerdew could see no reaction to his taunts. It drove him crazy, as she knew it would.
“Hey, Lofte, I’m talking to you! You are still alive, I suppose?” Finding the plastic respirator in his hand, he let it drop. His aim was straight, and it hit Jack on the head, bouncing off down the well. She flinched but still refused to look up. Flowerdew was about to throw more things at her when Loya pulled him back.
“What do you think you’re doing? Are you nuts? Not only do you appear childishly cruel, but if you’re right and Shivvi is down there, do you want to advertise our presence?” A string of Spanish curses, and Flowerdew got the message.
