Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  Contents

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  1

  Nick Russell idled the engine of the Foxy Lady and let the boat drift on the placid water. The sun was dropping towards the horizon, flooding the ocean with gold, and he wanted to savour the moment.

  As the edge of the molten disc touched the distant horizon, he half expected to hear a loud hiss and to see a plume of steam rise up towards the high, feathery clouds.

  Russell had spent his day off in the usual manner, exploring the coral reefs which surrounded the island of Providenciales. Once he had thought that the sense of wonder would gradually wear off, that not even the reefs could keep their magic for ever, but so far there was no sign of any such diminution. The blends of light and colour and movement and mystery seemed just as potent as on the very first day.

  The sun slid from sight, and for a few minutes he just sat there, listening to the gentle lap of the water against the hull, and the occasional sound of a car or boat engine drifting across from the direction of the Leeward Marina. The western sky moved from orange to lime green, as the cirrus clouds overhead turned pink against the darkening sky. Above the island the evening star grew more piercing with each passing second.

  Russell sighed with pleasure, and then laughed. He engaged the engine and aimed the boat towards the narrow channel known as the Leeward Going Through, which ran between Little Water and Mangrove Cays to the north-west and Providenciales to the south-east. The latter island was known as Provo to almost everyone who lived on it, but even after seven years Russell felt vaguely uncomfortable with the abbreviation – he had come too close to dying at the hands of its Northern Irish namesakes.

  That had been a long time ago, though: nearly fifteen years. It was now almost eight since he had worn a military uniform.

  Ahead of the boat a lone pelican flew across the channel, headed north towards Little Water Cay. In the distance the lights of the marina were growing brighter against the gathering darkness. At that moment a car started up the slope away from the mooring area, its headlights shining hopefully up at the sky.

  Coming here was the best thing he had ever done, Russell thought, and grinned to himself again. The same thought seemed to pass through his brain at about this stage of each journey home from the reef.

  But it was true enough. When Worrell Franklin had come to him with the offer of a job his first inclination had been to dismiss the idea. It had sounded great – living in a tropical island paradise, getting paid good money for doing useful and interesting work, able to indulge in all of the outdoor pleasures he loved – but it had also seemed too good to be true. After eleven years in the Marines, the last six of them as a captain with the Special Boat Squadron, Russell had begun to distrust his own good fortune. He had already survived more close encounters with sudden death than seemed natural, and he found it hard to believe that such a run of luck could last for ever.

  Even his first meeting with Franklin had been pure chance. A few days before the Argentinians surrendered in the Falklands, Russell had been leading an SBS reconnaissance patrol in the hills above Port Stanley and had just discovered what seemed like the perfect location for an observation post, when a voice came out of the dawn mist, advising him and his men in a Brixton-accented Spanish to lay down their weapons. The SAS, it turned out, had beaten them to it.

  In the event the eight men had shared the cramped hide through the hours of daylight, teaching each other regimental slang, listening to each other fart, and wondering out loud whether their respective superiors would ever acquire the skills needed to organize a piss-up in a brewery.

  As leaders of their respective patrols, the two men had talked a great deal through the day, and, somewhat to their mutual surprise, had found that they liked each other. They could hardly have come from more divergent backgrounds: Russell was from a merchant banking family and public school, while Franklin was the son of a London Underground guard who had arrived in Britain from Jamaica in 1957. In fact, Franklin had probably been the first black man with whom Russell had exchanged more than half a dozen sentences. Nowadays it was white friends he could count on the fingers of one hand.

  Not that it mattered a damn, but it did say something about the way his life had changed. One of the great things about the clinic where he worked was its melting-pot atmosphere, what with Franklin’s African wife and the Chinese herbalist and the Puerto Rican doctor . . .

  A noise like serrated metal on wood cut through Russell’s reverie.

  ‘Shit!’ he growled, and instantly cut the engine. It sounded like the keel had scraped a reef, but that was impossible. The Foxy Lady was in the middle of the channel, approaching its southern exit. Russell had been through here a hundred times before. There were no reefs, no shallows.

  The noise had sounded nasty enough to cut the boat in two, yet there was no sign of damage inside the hull. He would have to take a look at the outside. And right then, he decided. It might make more sense to wait until he was back at the Caicos Marina, but the water wouldn’t be so clear, and the Foxy Lady was about the only thing he owned in this world. He wanted to know what the damage was.

  His determination was frustrated. He had changed back into his wetsuit before he remembered that he had lost his torch the previous week. It would be too dark to see anything under the boat without one.

  He restarted the engine and headed for home. The boat wasn’t taking any water, and with any luck the damage was considerably less than he had first feared.

  Darkness was falling with its usual tropical efficiency, and as he headed south-west, with Long Bay’s four-mile stretch of empty sands away to starboard, the heavenly illuminations were gearing up for the night ahead.

  After tying up the boat Russell walked down to the office, which was already closed. Fortunately no one had bothered to lock the door, and after a short search he managed to locate a suitable-looking torch. This in hand, he walked back along the slip, past the row of darkened boats. This was the off-season for tourists and part-time residents, and in any case most of the former kept to the island’s north coast, where all the new hotel developments were sprouting.

  The boats moored here were mostly owned by full-time residents, and came in all sizes and shapes, from yachts to rowing boats, outboards to racing boats, canoes to converted shrimp boats like Russell’s own. The biggest craft by far was the Tiburón Blanco, the White Shark, which occupied the two moorings next to Russell’s. According to the locals the boat belonged to a Cuban-American gangster who owned one of the restored plantation villas behind Long Bay. Russell had never laid eyes on the man, but he had shared a brief conversation with the boat’s captain that morning, an Hispanic with a weathered face, hooked nose and longish hair.

  The topic of the conversation had been the twenty-foot submersible which was tethered alongside the boat’s starboard side. Russell had never seen one like it, and in his years with the SBS he had come into contact with most of the models used by the NATO navies.

  ‘What’s it for?’ he had asked the man in the captain’s hat.

  The man had grinned at him. ‘We go treasure hunting,’ he had said.

  ‘Anywhere in particular?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that’s a secret, right?’

  ‘Sí.’ The man was still grinning, but Russell didn’t get the feeling that there was much enjoyment behind the facial expression. He had restrained himself from asking about the origins of the submersible, thinking that the man might be in a friendlier frame of mind when he returne
d that evening.

  But there didn’t seem to be anyone aboard the Tiburón Blanco. Russell shone the torch on the tethered submersible. It was actually a submarine in the true sense of the word, with a dry working interior. The propulsion unit was out of sight, under the water at the end furthest from the dock, but he had the distinct feeling the craft was fast, without having any conscious reason for thinking so.

  Large front and side windows offered good visibility, and Russell supposed that for anyone searching through the myriad wrecks which littered the local ocean floor it would prove ideal. It looked smart too – the blue-green paint was obviously recent, as was the outsize figure three which adorned the side between the two panoramic windows.

  Why had they bothered to number it? Russell wondered, as he clambered back aboard his own, less elegant craft. After donning and checking the oxygen cylinder he adjusted his goggles and dropped himself backwards over the side and into the harbour waters.

  It was dark down below, and the powerful beam of light from the torch only seemed to emphasize how much crap there was in the water. After the crystal clarity of the open ocean the waters of the Caicos Marina felt like a microcosm of humankind’s treatment of the environment.

  He got down to work, methodically scanning the underside of the Foxy Lady from the bow backwards, and soon found what he was looking for – a gouge some eighteen inches long. He ran his finger along inside it, and found the cut wasn’t deep. Just a flesh wound, he thought with some satisfaction. It wouldn’t be hard to put right.

  There was nothing to indicate what had caused it, and he couldn’t begin to imagine what that might have been. Nothing floating freely in the water could have inflicted such damage. He would have to ask at the office whether anyone else had hit a non-existent reef.

  He swam back up to the surface, clambered aboard the boat, and changed back out of the wetsuit, feeling a huge sense of relief that no real damage had been done. A celebratory drink was in order, he decided, smiling to himself. And maybe Missie would give him a game of chess on her veranda, a bottle of rum within easy reach.

  In the old days they might have ended up in bed, but neither of them had been willing to make the relationship as exclusive as the other claimed to want. And though there wasn’t much doubt they had enjoyed sleeping together, in time both had come to realize they were better suited as friends.

  But first things first, he thought. Some supper and a pint at Suzie’s Bar. He locked up the boat, more out of habit than from any sense that it was really necessary, and walked back up to the rack outside the marina office, where the mountain bike which he had acquired secondhand from a homegoing American exile was waiting for him.

  It was about five miles to the bar, most of it along the unpaved track which snaked along Provo’s southern coast before turning inland to meet the island’s one major road – the two-lane Leeward Highway – about a mile east of Suzie Turn. Russell didn’t meet a single soul on the track, and treated himself to a spirited rendition of several sixties classics as he leisurely pedalled away the miles. The sea sparkled to his left, low, scrub-covered slopes to his right, and the Milky Way seemed to be pointing his way home. ‘To be a rock and not to roll,’ he sang, with every bit as much conviction as Robert Plant, though rather less in the way of attention to hitting the right notes.

  The mile stretch along the Leeward Highway was more problematic. Lacking any other road on which to practise potential Grand Prix skills, the islanders had turned the road into a formidable exercise of nerve, particularly for cyclists at night. Two trips into the ditch was about par for this stretch, but tonight Russell’s luck was working overtime, and only two cars went by, both in the opposite direction, and both travelling at less than Warp 9.

  Suzie’s Bar was almost empty. Two Hispanic men were sitting at a table near the bar, and a group of obvious tourists sat at one of the farthest-flung tables beneath the two Cuban pines. As Russell approached the bar one of the latter group headed for the toilet, shouting something over his shoulder in German which made his companions roar with laughter.

  Russell climbed on to a stool, remembering what an old Frenchman had told him during the previous tourist season – that these days the Germans were becoming as ubiquitous as the Americans had been ten years before. He’d had a theory about it too. This, he reckoned, was the generation of Germans who had been younger than sixteen at the war’s end, and who were now retiring, their pockets bulging with the wealth generated by Germany’s postwar success. They were the first guiltless Germans since the thirties, the Frenchman had said, and the richest. They were now showing the world the same arrogance their grandfathers had bestowed upon Europe between the wars.

  ‘Mr Nick, sir,’ a voice boomed, interrupting Russell’s thoughts.

  ‘Mr Jimmy, sir,’ he rejoined, mimicking the barman’s mock-Sambo act.

  They swapped appreciations of the evening and discussed the dance at Downtown on the coming Saturday while the first pint of draught Guinness was religiously pulled.

  ‘I don’t suppose I have to ask whether you been out diving?’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You becoming an addict.’

  ‘I hope so. Jimmy, do you know anything about the people who own the big boat down at the Caicos Marina? They’ve got a small submarine down there now. A guy who looked like the captain said they were going treasure hunting.’

  ‘It’s a Cuban owns it – name of Arcilla. He’s not often here though. Lives in Miami, I think. His sister lives here most of the time, though.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I hear she has an appetite.’

  ‘She’s fat?’

  ‘Not that kind of appetite,’ Jimmy said, moving away down the bar to serve one of the German tourists.

  Russell turned round idly on his stool, and found the two Hispanics staring at him. ‘Nice evening,’ he said.

  ‘Sí . . . yes,’ one of them said, and turned away. The other said nothing, but his eyes seemed to linger on the Englishman, almost like a challenge.

  Russell turned back to the bar, and studied the photomontage of fat, bronzed men standing next to fat, dead fish. He had never been able to take fishing seriously himself. He loved the sea too much to use it as a sports field.

  ‘Like I say,’ Jimmy continued, materializing in front of him. ‘The sister eats tourists. About one a week I’m told, though I expect she sometimes ups or slows the pace, depending on how tasty she finds a particular specimen.’

  There was disapproval behind the leer in Jimmy’s voice, which Russell didn’t find surprising. Afro-Caribbean men might like lives of sexual adventure for themselves, but they expected women to be monogamous. A female who fucked anyone she felt like fucking was almost too threatening to contemplate. Unless she was doing it for money, of course.

  ‘Have you heard about the treasure hunt?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but there’s always somebody out there looking for treasure. Funny thing is, it’s only the people who already have treasure that can afford to go looking for more.’

  More tourists arrived – Americans this time – and Russell called Missie on the phone. She would love to see him, she said, and there was a fish stew cooking in the oven. She would even give him a game of chess, though she thought seven defeats in a row should be enough for any man.

  He laughed, waved goodbye to Jimmy, and went back to his bike. An hour later he was being fed ladlefuls of steaming stew in Missie’s rambling Blue Hills home. Half bungalow and half shack, it seemed to straddle the centuries. Two of Missie’s grown-up sons still lived there, while the other two and her lone daughter were scattered across the western hemisphere. Her husband had been lost off a fishing boat in a storm almost twenty years before.

  Supper over, they played chess. Missie won both games, and then the two of them sat in silence looking out to sea, sipping their way through the bottle of rum which Russell had purchased on his way through Downtown. Sitting there, he had the momentary feeling that they were like an ol
d married couple, and wondered how that could be when he was only thirty-seven.

  He asked Missie.

  ‘That’s the big trouble with you folks,’ she said. ‘You think if something not moving it must be broken or dead. Hell, I been sitting here peaceful looking at the sea long as I remember. And I ain’t broken or dead.’

  After one more drink he climbed, somewhat unsteadily, back on to his bike. The three-mile ride home to the clinic was an exercise in keeping on the road, and this he successfully accomplished, eventually negotiating the open gates of the Caicos Research Clinic and Hospital with all the panache of a lion leaping through a blazing hoop. The front door of his bungalow presented rather more difficulty, but eventually he realized it wasn’t locked.

  From there to the bedroom it was all downhill, and with one last convulsive surge of energy he managed to remove both his shoes.

  Three hours later, when the man draped the cloth soaked in chloroform across his face, he came only briefly back to life, before a new and more terrifying darkness swallowed him up once more.

  2

  Worrell Franklin could feel the sunlight streaming in through the window without opening his eyes. He lay there contentedly, listening to his wife singing to herself in the shower, thinking about the day ahead. He had two classes to take, and a mountain of paperwork to finish, but even the latter failed to douse his sense of well-being. The new computer didn’t exactly turn admin into fun, but sometimes it came close.

  The noise of rushing water ceased, and he opened his eyes in time to see Sibou enter the bedroom wrapped in a towel. ‘Awake already?’ she asked, dropping the towel and drying her legs with it.

  She was past forty now, and seemed even more beautiful than when they had met, thirteen years earlier in the Gambia. On the wall behind her, now glowing in the sunlight, there hung the brown batik with the stencilled baobabs which they had bought on the Ile de Gorée, off Dakar, all those years ago, on the very day that they had decided to try to turn a love affair into a lifelong commitment. Since both were committed to their professions – she as an overworked doctor in Africa, he as a member of the SAS – their road had not been an easy one. The long separations had been particularly hard, but ultimately worth it. He had saved her life in the Gambia, but she had made his complete in the years that followed.