‘I can do this,’ she said. ‘Come on!’
Taking fast, shallow breaths, she gunned the boat into open water, checking behind her to see that there was nobody in pursuit. Only the owner of the boat had reappeared on the beach and was now a small speck standing at the far end of a strip of white, fringed with palms. Good. Hope the arsehole called the coast guard like I asked, else I’m going to be lost at sea myself once the fuel runs dry.
A mile out and the waves were rapidly becoming tall enough to make the keel of the boat slam into walls of water, sending spray everywhere. She was soaked in brine and parched with thirst in the remains of the day’s hot sunshine. But her only option was to plough on through. Darkness was not far off and if she didn’t find her father by sunset, her mission would be doomed in any case.
More than an hour passed. Though the seas had mercifully quietened to flat calm and the boat was ripping through the miles at speed, the sinking fuel gauge showed that George’s rescue attempt was coming to an end, whether she wanted it to or not. The sun was sinking in the west, its burnished light reflected in the water. Streaks of pink, orange, red in the sky as though somebody had taken a sharp knife and slashed open the belly of the firmament. With no drinking water on board, she touched her salty, cracked lips with melancholy resignation – thoughts of dying only just trumped by wonder at where that damned coast guard was.
‘Great. I’m going to be stuck here in the dark,’ she told the first star of the night that had appeared low in the sky. ‘I’m going to dehydrate and will be dead from sun exposure by this time tomorrow. And I’ll have missed my flight home and wasted the rest of my life. Shitting Nora. I’ve failed.’
Slumping into the driver’s seat, George started to weep. Wracking sobs shook her body as she thought of Van den Bergen shuffling round Amsterdam without her like a lost boy in an old man’s body. If Letitia was dead, she would soon be joining her in hell or whatever purgatorial replacement was offered for non-believers, though that notion gave her no comfort whatsoever. And her papa would almost certainly meet a brutish end – if not now, then soon, at the hands of the Silencer’s crocodiles or the predators that lurked in the depths of the Caribbean Sea.
As if their fates had now been intertwined, the under-fuelled boat ploughed on, burning through diesel with abandon in tandem with George’s already dry body, which was haemorrhaging precious moisture every time a fat tear rolled down her cheek. Pretty soon, they would both be running on empty.
Some fifteen minutes later, the engine started to sputter and lose power. She had no idea where she was or where her father’s semi-submersible might be in relation to her, though it surely couldn’t be far off by now, surely, given the huge difference in travel speeds. Holding up the high-powered binoculars that she had found in a kit box, she scanned the water on all sides. Not a ripple out of place in the minimal undulations of the sea.
‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it?’ George checked the time on her phone. Her flight home would leave in thirty-seven minutes. With maths never having been her strong suit, she had miscalculated the time she had needed to intercept her father’s sub. The gate would be closing now, if it hadn’t already. ‘Game over.’ She sucked her teeth. Started to thumb out a farewell message to Van den Bergen, though there was no phone signal this far out at sea. Perhaps one day, when her body was retrieved, they would charge up the phone and the message would find its way to him then. Her voice from the other side.
My darling Paul, she began, wondering how best to express her heartfelt longing to be with him on that plane home and regret that she had ever undertaken this foolhardy adventure. Alter ego George, the naysayer, was fully in charge of the narrative now.
Except her missive was interrupted by a whirring sound that cut through the sound of gentle lapping against the sides of the boat. George stuffed her phone into her pocket and scanned the fiery sunset skies for signs of a helicopter. Nothing. Though the rhythmic sound was growing louder. She lifted the binoculars once again and, after several fruitless passes, spotted a black dot coming from the direction of the Mexican coast. Growing larger by the second, though the wind made it seem like the sound was coming from a different direction entirely.
Grabbing at the flare gun she had found together with the binoculars, George aimed the weapon into the air and fired. Nothing but a click. No cartridge. She threw it onto her seat in disgust.
‘Tits! I don’t believe this!’
Scrambling to the back of the boat, she fumbled in the kit box to find a cartridge. The helicopter was visible with the naked eye, now, though it was impossible to tell if it was making for her specifically or merely flying nearby coincidentally. She prayed silently that it would be the coast guard and not one of the Silencer’s men, coming to snuff her out before she caused any more trouble.
‘Where’s the fucking cartridge?’ she shouted, hurling the contents of the kit box onto the deck.
Skimming perhaps only 100 feet above the sea’s surface, the black behemoth sliced through the air with a deafening sound. Making right for her, seeming to suck the remaining daylight from the sky as it approached. A giant sinister bug of a thing, suddenly upon her with machine guns pointed downwards like deadly, accusatory fingers. George threw herself flat onto the deck, blasted by the wind from its rotating blades. Surely it had spotted her! But she had glimpsed its livery – Policía Federal. This was no coast guard. This thing was armed. And some of the police were reputed to be in the pay of the cartels. Would this be her end instead?
The beat of its blades remained directly above her boat as it hovered. Daring to look up, George was surprised to glimpse a familiar face peering out of the window. Holding up a large hand in greeting. Pressing his face momentarily to the window. The door of the helicopter slid back and there he was, looking positively green, even in the twilight.
‘You are fucking kidding me!’ George sprang to her feet, jumping up and down and waving back like an overexcited child. Tears of relief streaming down her face. ‘Paul!’
A rope ladder unfurled from the helicopter and dangled just out of reach, being blown hither and thither by the gusting wind.
‘Grab the ladder!’ she heard Van den Bergen yell above the din of the whirring blades. Just.
‘I’m bloody well trying!’ George screamed. It was too high above her. She was too short to reach. It was too dangerous to stand on the driver’s seat and try to jump. Then, the ladder hit her squarely in the head. But when she tried to grasp a rung, it was wrenched upwards, as the helicopter rose several feet.
‘Oh Jesus.’ There was nothing for it but to perch on the bow of the boat, risking falling into the water.
Leaving her rifle behind, George donned her rucksack and stuffed the handgun into her waistband. Mounted the slippery bow. After three attempts, she finally grabbed the ladder and clung on.
‘Climb up!’ Van den Bergen bellowed.
The helicopter rose into the air, leaving her swinging helplessly over the sea. She willed her limbs to respond to her brain’s demand that she climb. But not only was her upper body not strong enough, she reluctantly admitted to herself that she was paralysed by fear. Clinging, clinging to the rope and the bottom rungs like an anxiety-ridden koala.
‘For God’s sake. Climb!’
The helicopter was moving forwards now, leaving her spinning and drifting at an untenable angle.
‘I can’t!’ she shouted. ‘Find the sub.’
‘What?’
‘Find the fucking sub!’ She couldn’t even bring herself to look up at Van den Bergen who was presumably hanging out of the aircraft, battling with his own demon of motion sickness.
With the light failing in earnest, the helicopter’s searchlight came on, probing the darkening waters with its strong beam. George steeled herself to search the surface for any trace of a sub. But the sea was vast and her father could have drifted off course entirely. At that point, as her arms screamed with the effort of holding on, she realised their search wa
s in vain.
A second voice shouted down at her. One she didn’t recognise. A Mexican man’s voice. ‘Dr McKenzie, I’m sorry. We’ve gotta turn back. Try again tomorrow.’ His words, whipped away on the wind, were barely audible.
‘No!’ George shrieked. ‘Five more minutes.’
‘It’s a waste of time. Try to climb the ladder. You’ll not last the journey, hanging on like that.’
In truth, the waves had begun to gain power and momentum, spraying her bottom half with foamy water. George realised the helicopter’s blades were not the only thing generating a gust. Bad weather was setting in. But then, just as she was about to attempt to climb to the safety of the helicopter, she spotted something that crested very briefly with a wave some hundred metres away.
I don’t believe it, she thought, blinking hard into the murk.
‘There!’ she shouted, not daring to let go of the ladder to point. Willing the pilot to hear her feeble voice and spot the large object. Had she been mistaken? Had it been a large shark or a whale?
‘Climb, Dr McKenzie! We have to go back to shore.’
She could hear the urgency in the man’s voice above her but was too intent on trying to spot the object again to listen.
Where is it? Come on, for God’s sake! Show yourself, whatever you are.
The waves rose and fell but the helicopter’s searchlight had moved.
‘George!’ Van den Bergen was shouting now.
The searchlight swept to the left and there, in amongst the mounting waves, she saw it. Very definitely. And it was neither a whale nor a shark.
‘Down here!’ George shouted. ‘Look! The sub is there!’
‘No! You’ve got to come up!’ Van den Bergen’s companion shouted.
The helicopter started to climb and banked away from the object in the water. Looking back from her vantage point some twenty feet higher, George could see the shape clearly now. She had never felt more certain of anything.
This was her father’s sub.
The water was inky-black now. The waves were powered by some malevolent energy she could not comprehend. It was a shark-infested sea. What could possibly go wrong?
George let go of the ladder and hit the water with a stinging slap that knocked the breath out of her lungs with a violence she hadn’t anticipated. Salty bubbles pressing their way up her nostrils, making her head pound. She surfaced, barely having time to gasp for air before a wave crashed over her and pushed her beneath the water again.
Swim. Get swimming.
The helicopter’s searchlight was on her now. A buoyancy ring had been dropped just within reach. George grabbed onto it and started to swim in the direction of the sub. But where had it gone? She was disoriented, looking this way and that, unable to see anything at all in the troughs but whisked upwards when the waves peaked. There! She spotted the distinctive oval shape in the dark. Started to swim towards it, mustering all the strength she had left in her exhausted body. Were the waves carrying her closer or further away from the sub? She couldn’t tell at first. But after a minute of frantic, one-armed front crawl, a wave picked her up and threw her against the vessel. The pain in her arm as it bore the brunt of the impact was intense.
Would the sub sink with her weight on it? Hardly daring to contemplate what she was doing, George scrambled onto the deck and located the hatch. Slipped and slid her way towards it, praying a wave wouldn’t crash over her, whisking her back into the water and off in the opposite direction. Grabbing the handles, she used every last ounce of strength she possessed to loosen the heavy lid on this tub. She was vaguely aware of somebody climbing down the ladder from the helicopter, swaying on the rope above her. The searchlight illuminated her quest.
‘Come on, you bastard!’
With a final heave of the almost-defeated, George felt the handles on the hatch give. She levered the lid open and discovered in horror that the sub was almost entirely full of water. ‘Papa!’ she screamed.
Taking a deep breath, she plunged through the hole. Almost utterly black but for the strong shaft of white light that came from the helicopter above. And there, bobbing with its nose and mouth just out of the water, she saw a body. Those eyebrows were unmistakeable.
‘Papa! Oh my God. Oh my God. Please don’t be dead,’ she said, kicking hard to drag him along the tiny air gap that ran the length of the hull towards the hatch. His skin was cold. But there was not enough light to ascertain if his colour was that of a dead man or one who yet lived.
Clasping the edge of the hatch with one trembling arm, she caught her father under his left arm and hoisted him into the pool of dazzling light and the breathtaking wind.
‘Here! Let me take him!’ The voice of the man who had called to her from the helicopter. George barely registered the first thing about him, other than his being dressed in the black uniform of the Polícia Federale. He was peering into the sub. A kindly face.
She pushed her father upwards, kicking her legs with all the power she could muster to propel herself out of the water. The Federale grabbed him underneath his arms and dragged him onto the flat deck. But George could feel something pulling her back into the sub’s belly.
‘Hey! Help!’ Her foot was caught.
As she felt herself being sucked into the deathly trap of the flooded sub, she noticed Van den Bergen, dangling from the end of the rope ladder. They locked eyes. He let go and fell.
CHAPTER 47
Amsterdam, Paradijs restaurant, Amstel, 2 June
‘Would sir like to see the wine menu?’ the waiter asked, clasping his hands together deferentially, wearing an enthusiastic shit-eating grin.
‘No. I’ll just have tap water, I think. Thanks.’
Ad sat at his table for one in the Michelin-starred Paradijs restaurant, feeling rather more like he was in hell, as opposed to paradise. Why on earth was he doing this? It was bullshit. He was a fool.
The waiter seemed unconvinced as Ad’s phone pinged yet again with some nagging request or other from Astrid about nappies or a DIY-fail that was all his fault. She had no idea that he had absconded to Amsterdam for the day. It felt like a small victory.
‘Actually, yes. I’ll see the wine menu. That would be great.’
The grin was back as the immaculately dressed waiter nodded and retreated, the derision and lack of comprehension that Ad should ever have requested tap water in a place like this tacit behind the show of approval.
Glancing at the food menu, he noticed that the starters were more expensive than the mains he might choose in the local eaterie where he took Astrid for the occasional date. If one of their parents had agreed to babysit. If. He examined the slightly worn cuffs of his striped work shirt and the ghost of a toothpaste stain on his polyester tie. Studied the cool elegance of the clientele in this place, with its plush velvet chairs and quiet ambience of extreme wealth. It was the sort of fine dining that only captains of industry, old money and politicians forked out for. Ad knew he didn’t belong here. His clandestine meal was going to cost him two days’ pay at least. But he was doing it for George. He blushed at the thought and switched his phone off.
As the waiters drifted to and fro past his table without coming back to take his drink order, Ad realised he was almost invisible in that place. Handy, because he was seated at the table adjacent to that of Bram Borrink, the Chief Executive of Chembedrijf. Borrink, an immaculately dressed man in his fifties, whose perfectly round paunch served as evidence of many a boozy business lunch in similarly luxurious surroundings, was sipping at a glass of red wine. At a glance, he was a grey-haired man, wearing a grey tailored suit with a grey complexion that said he didn’t see much of the outdoors apart from through the generous picture windows of places like Paradijs. And yet, Ad could see his incredible wealth shining through the grey veneer of respectability. He was staring through a pair of bifocal glasses at a business broadsheet.
When Borrink glanced back to the entrance, presumably looking for his lunch date, Ad found himself in the Chie
f Executive’s eye line. He felt his cheeks flush bright red and held the menu up hastily to cover his face.
Shit, he thought. I’m going to get the sack, at best, and get myself killed, at worst. What an idiot I am. The last time I pulled a stunt like this, I lost a finger. Will I never learn that George McKenzie is bad news? Forgive me, Astrid. Sorry Daddy’s such an emotionally unfaithful arsehole, kids.
‘Would sir like to order some wine, now?’ the waiter asked, having suddenly reappeared at his side.
Lowering the menu, Ad cleared his throat and took a deep breath. ‘I’ll have a small glass of Chardonnay,’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately low, lest he draw attention to himself.
‘Sir?’
Too quiet.
‘Chardonnay, please.’
The waiter wafted off, leaving him alone once again. Ad’s thunderous heartbeat slowed somewhat as he reasoned that, having only ever met the big boss in passing at some IT presentation some two years earlier, it was fair to assume that this man from the top wouldn’t afford him a second glance, let alone recognise him.
You can do this. Calm down.
Glancing furtively at the maître d’ who stood behind the reception desk by the entrance like a sinister penguin, Ad balked when a man with bleached blond hair and a deep mahogany tan walked through the rotating door. Just as George had described him. This had to be the man he awaited. The enigmatic Rotterdam Silencer.
‘Mr Bebchuck?’ the maître d’ said, all charm and obsequiousness in his tone and body language.
The Silencer nodded, handing him his coat.
‘Your table is this way, sir. Mr Borrink is waiting for you.’
At the next table, Borrink rose, hand extended. ‘Nikolay,’ he said. ‘So pleased to see you. Thanks for coming.’
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 29
