It was a miracle that his air hose had not parted, but whatever happened, he could not last long like that. A couple of lengths of old iron drifted down from above in slow motion. I put my mask up against the face plate of his helmet and he actually smiled. The cavalry arriving in the nick of time was how it must have looked to him, but then, he didn’t know about my lack of air.
His face suddenly seemed distorted, my mouth was dry, my heart pounding. I had stayed too long already. I went up fast. I barely made it and broke through to the surface beside the Seytan’s ladder just in time. I spat out the rubber mouthpiece and gulped in lots of clean sea air.
Yassi and Abu hauled me over the side and I unbuckled the aqualung and slumped to the deck. Sara dropped to her knees beside me: “You look awful, what happened?”
“I think I made the last fifty feet on a dry tank.” I turned to Yassi. “He’s still alive, but not for long. About half the ship seems to have come down across his lines.”
Muslims are supposed to be cheerful about that kind of thing and leave it all to Allah, but when your father is going to go the slow way, inch by inch, nobody is much good at keeping a stiff upper lip.
Abu dropped to his knees, hands together as in prayer, and screamed at me hysterically in Turkish. I didn’t need any translation to know what he was saying.
“Can we get help from anywhere?” Sara asked.
“No one near enough with the right equipment and he can’t last long in any case. Bits and pieces were still coming down when I left him. The whole damn lot might collapse at any moment now that it’s started. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen before.”
I’d spoken to her in Greek, mainly for Yassi’s benefit, his English being almost non-existent. Now he straightened and said calmly, “Then there is nothing to be done. It would have been a kindness if you had severed his air hose with a knife, Mr. Savage.”
It took a moment for it to hit me, the one possible solution. I got to my feet. “That helmet of your father’s, it’s a lot newer than the rest of his equipment. It’s got a check valve—right?”
“That is so, Mr. Savage.”
I turned to Sara and said in Greek, again for Yassi’s benefit, “The more modern type of helmet has a safety check valve. It automatically shuts off if the air supply stops and the exhaust valve does the same. It means the diver still has whatever air there is in his suit.”
“And how long will that last?”
I frowned, trying to remember the tables. “In shallow water eight minutes or so, but it goes down rapidly the deeper you go. A hundred and thirty feet. He should be good for two minutes.” Suddenly I was excited. “And two minutes should be ample.”
“For what?” She looked puzzled.
“To get him to the surface,” I explained patiently. “All he needs is a fresh lifeline, then I cut his air hose. The check valve closes automatically as I’ve explained and Yassi and Abu haul him up just as fast as they can.”
It was Yassi who was frowning now. “But how do you get to him, Mr. Savage, I don’t understand?”
“I’ll free dive,” I said. “I’ve cleared a hundred feet plenty of times in the past.”
And come straight up again. But I didn’t tell him that because there was already hope in his eyes. But Sara knew me better, I think, than I knew myself.
She pulled me round to face her. “That was a lot of drinks ago, Savage, am I right?”
“No good arguing, I’ve got to try,” I said.
But she was right. I’d be lucky to get down half that distance under my own steam and then, as I turned from her, my foot caught in an old sand anchor, half a hundred-weight of stone worn smooth by the years with a ring hole through the top for a line. It was all I needed.
“I’ll use the stone to take me straight down like the petra divers,” I told Yassi. “Get a rope through it for me and have another line ready for me to take with me.”
A petra diver uses a heavy stone to take him straight to the bottom, thus saving his energy for the task in hand. A technique as old as time and still used extensively by pearl divers in Japan and the Polynesian islands. There were still a few Arab divers operating that way in the Red Sea working regularly at around a hundred feet although I’d never seen them myself.
“You must be mad.” Sara clutched at my arm. “This isn’t Alexandria. This isn’t your doing.”
Which was fair enough. I’d warned Ciasim and he had not listened, but that wasn’t the point. “He’s a friend of mine, angel,” I said. “A man I like more than most people I’ve ever met. If I don’t go down there, if I leave him to go the hard way, then I’m finished. I might as well cut my throat.”
Her eyes went very wide. She stared at me blankly and then sighed and the sound was like a small wind through trees at nightfall. “I should have known.”
“As long as you do. Now come with me. There’s something I want you to handle, something very important.”
I called to Yassi to join us and went over the rail to the Gentle Jane and entered the deck house where I stored my diving gear. I switched on the generators, plugged in the portable decompression chamber that some engineering marvel in Switzerland had produced, and dragged it forward.
“The moment he surfaces, get him out of that suit and into here.” I turned to Yassi. “I want your promise on it. He will die otherwise.”
“I swear it, Mr. Savage. How long?”
I found a notepad and pencil and did a quick calculation. At a hundred and thirty feet he would have needed at least fifty-six minutes of decompression time. He’d been down there over an hour and I had to consider the speed at which he’d be coming up. His blood would be bubbling like soda water.
“Three hours,” I said, “and be careful to alter the pressures in the chamber as I’ve indicated. That’s important.”
Sara’s face was very white now. “And you? What about you?”
“I won’t be down there long enough to worry about decompression if I come up.”
A slip of the tongue, that.
She took a deep breath and said in a harsh voice, “How long are you good for?”
“With that kind of weight, I’ll touch bottom in a few seconds. A minute down there is all I can afford if I’m to stand any chance of reaching the surface again.”
Which was being about as direct as I could be and she accepted that now with her own brand of fatalism. “I hope you find time to check your watch.”
“You could help me there, just in case I don’t.”
She followed me into the wheel house and I pressed the button to release the secret flap under the chart table and handed her the Walther automatic.
“Time the minute exactly from the moment I go over, then fire this into the water twice.”
“What’s that supposed to do?”
“It’s an old trick of Cousteau’s. The shock waves can be left quite distinctly. I assure you,” I added, with a feeble attempt at humour. “Don’t forget to take the safety catch off.”
Her answer was completely in character. “Damn you, Savage, I’ll never forgive you if you die on me.”
There was nothing I could say to that, nothing at all. I went back across to the Seytan, pulled on my flippers and adjusted the nose clip. I wore goggles as well as a mask simply because there was less likelihood of their being torn off in my rapid descent. Abu had the new lifeline coiled ready. There was a spring clip at the end which would help and I snapped it to my belt. Yassi brought the sand anchor across. He’d run about four feet of manilla hemp through the ring and had knotted it into a loop which was fine.
I was aware of Sara standing behind me, her watch in one hand, the Walther in the other, and then I lifted the anchor in both hands. I balanced it on top of the ladder, breathed in three times to really fill my lungs, then I simply leaned forward and let the great stone take me down.
The pressure increases at up to fifteen tons for every thirty-seven feet you descend. Strange how that interesting snippet of info
rmation ran through my head as I fell head-long into green darkness; for that is what it seemed like, so fast was my rate of descent.
I passed through a great shoal of silver fish, scattering them on either side, the stone plummeting down like some live thing. There was a story I’d read as a boy about Beowulf, the great Saxon hero, diving down through the dark waters to Grendel’s lair. I used to wonder what he’d done for air because he’d lasted a damned sight longer than I was going to do down there.
The mast loomed out of the gloom to spear me, flashed to one side, and the stone disappeared into the dark mouth of the centre hold as I released my grip on the rope.
I grabbed at one of the deck rails to steady myself, then started to swim forward across that great, twisted mass of old iron that hung across the side of the ship.
The weight of the whole world bore down on me. I was making no progress at all and yet, by some miracle, he was there beneath me and I went down and clutched at him.
I was close enough to see that he was still alive, to see the dismay on his face. He reached out to touch me and I was aware of a strange, tingling sensation like electricity running through my body. I felt it again almost at once. The shock waves as Sara fired into the water.
So I was too late? For me, perhaps, but not for Ciasim. I snapped the link of the new lifeline to his body harness, pulled out my knife and slashed through the old one. He knew then what was to happen. He raised a thumb and I jerked four times on his lifeline and sliced through the airhose. A great stream of silver bubbles rushed out and in the same moment he started to rise.
Everything had happened in slow motion, part of some strange dream and I followed him up, kicking rhythmically, though I knew it was no good.
A strange thing happened then. Sara Hamilton’s voice seemed to echo inside my head with surprising clarity. Damn you, Savage, I’ll never forgive you if you die on me. It had been a long time since anyone had needed me like that. Really needed me like she did.
I hung on to that thought and fought like hell, my eyes never leaving that small, doll-like figure, far, far above me. And then he seemed even further away like something at the wrong end of a telescope and then he disappeared altogether and I drifted into warm darkness.
eleven
THE RUM-RUNNER
Her perfume filled my nostrils and I floated up from the darkness into light very, very slowly, broke through to the surface and breathed again.
I was lying flat on my back on my bunk in the main cabin, no pillow at my neck, wondering who I was. I had been here before, felt exactly like this then, trapped in some strange limbo of the mind. Was it then or now? Time was a circle turning endlessly on itself. No beginning, no end.
But the perfume—that damned perfume? I moved restlessly and she was there, the golden hair brushing my face. She wore a blue cotton dress cut square at the neck. It gaped wide as she leaned over me and I put my hand inside and touched a breast.
“A hell of a temptation for any man.”
The voice echoed inside my head, the voice of a stranger. She managed a smile, but only just. “Oh, you bastard, don’t you ever frighten me that way again.”
She turned and went out quickly and I lay there, watching the pale sunlight drifting in through the porthole, alive and accepting that fact without any particular surprise. After a while the door opened and the local doctor came in. His name was Karakos, a nice little man with a goatee beard and round steel spectacles. We’d had dealings a couple of weeks earlier when I’d gashed my left leg rather badly on a coral out-crop and he’d put five stitches into it for me.
He put down his bag and felt my pulse. “Good,” he nodded. “Very good.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Just over four hours.”
“I didn’t expect to wake up at all. For a while there I thought it was the last act.”
“And so it would have been had it not been for Lady Hamilton. When you surfaced, you had stopped breathing. After the Turks had got you out of the water she gave you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
So, I had been dead in effect and she had brought me back to life? It was a hell of a thought to cope with.
“What about Ciasim Divalni?”
“The Turk?” It was there in the way he said the words, that ancient antagonism so deeply rooted that it seemed that nothing could eradicate it. “I released him from your decompression chamber after three hours as she had instructed. He seemed his usual animal self.”
I ignored that. “What about me?”
He produced a bottle of pills from his bag and put them on the side. “You will undoubtedly feel the effects for a day or two. Severe headaches, nausea. The body has been subjected to an intolerable strain for a man of your age.” I loved him for that one. “These pills will help you with the pain. Stay on your back for a day or two and no alcohol.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Not a thing. I came at Mr. Aleko’s request. My bill is to go to him personally. He was most insistent on that point.”
He went out without closing the door and I shut my eyes. When I opened them again Sara was standing beside me. I smiled. “The kiss of life, that’s what the man said.”
She shuddered visibly. “When you came to the surface, you weren’t even breathing. It was horrible—really horrible. At first you didn’t seem to be responding…”
She started to shake and I took her hand and squeezed it hard. “All right, let it go. Just let it go. How is Ciasim?”
“Fine. We got him into the chamber like you said. He was kicking to get out after the first hour. I had to be pretty firm with him.”
“And how did we get back?”
“To Kyros?” She smiled. “I brought you and Yassi and Abu followed in the Seytan. I’m afraid I spoiled your paintwork coming in to the jetty.”
“Angel, you can spoil my paintwork any time you like,” I said.
We spent an emotional couple of minutes locked together, and finally she pulled free and said, “Dimitri was waiting on the jetty. He’d seen us coming in, of course. He had the doctor here within ten minutes.”
“That’s what comes of being a multi-millionaire.”
She frowned at that and ruffled my hair. “Try to like him, Savage, for my sake. It would make things a lot easier.”
“Who for?”
There was a difficult moment during which her eyes flashed with temper and an explosion threatened. I was saved by Morgan who appeared hesitantly in the doorway and stood there twisting his cap in his hands. He badly needed a shave, his eyes were tinged with yellow and I could smell the stink of that cheap wine mingled with his sweat, acrid and unpleasant. He waited, uncertain as a dog that seeks a kind word and I gave it to him.
“How goes it, Morg?”
He shuffled forward. “Hell, Jack, you had us worried. I thought you was for the deep six.”
“Not me, Morg, indestructible, just like you.”
I dug my fist into his shoulder and he wriggled with pleasure. “Yanni Kytros was here, Jack, about tonight’s run. I didn’t know about that.”
“You wouldn’t, Morg, I only took it on last night. What did he say?”
“He figured you wasn’t in no fit state. He said he’d look elsewhere.”
I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. “Like hell, he will. You go find him, Morg. Tell him to get those cases down here and loaded. A thousand dollars is a thousand dollars.”
He went out fast, bobbing his head at Sara who ignored him. “What are you up to?” she demanded.
I was beginning to feel a whole lot better and pulled open a drawer and found a clean pair of denims and a shirt. “Oh, a little business I’ve arranged with Kytros. Nothing to get worked up about. A milk-run.”
“I can just imagine what your version of a milk-run is.” She came very close and started to button my shirt. “Would it do any good for me to point out that you ought to be flat on your back for the next two days?”
“Not in
the slightest.” I put my arms around her and pulled her close enough to feel every line of that wonderful body all the way down. “You know, I thought I knew women, and God knows I’ve had enough of them in my time, but now, with you, I feel as if I’ve been missing out on a damned good thing all my life.”
She kissed me hard, her mouth opening, and beyond her, Aleko appeared in the doorway. He watched gravely for a moment, betraying no emotion worth mentioning, then moved forward as we came apart.
He held out his hand. “If there’s one thing I admire above anything else, it’s guts, Captain Savage. You certainly have your share.”
There was an awkward silence and he turned to Sara. “We should really be going, my dear, we’ve guests for dinner, remember.” He hesitated, then said to me, “Perhaps you’d join us? It would seem appropriate under the circumstances. Sara has signified her intentions to me. I understand you’ll be going to England together as soon as possible.”
He was so solemn, so pedantic, that I could have laughed out loud, but I would have been laughing at him, not with him, and that wouldn’t do at all.
“That’s very kind of you,” I said formally. “But I’m afraid I’ve already made other arrangements for tonight.”
“A pity. Some other time, perhaps.”
He went up the companionway without a word. Sara said, “What time will you be leaving?”
“I’m not sure. Some time after dark, but not too late. It’s a three- to four-hour run.”
She nodded in a strange abstracted manner, then reached up and patted my face. “Look after yourself.”
She started up the companionway, paused and turned. “You did pretty well for a man who’s supposed to have lost his nerve. I’m rather proud of you.”
And then she was gone and I stood there, taking in exactly what she had said and realising the implication. I could have shouted out loud, so great was the release of energy—energy which had been locked-up in that strange involuted pattern of neurotic fear ever since Alexandria.
Was it that deep in my subconscious, I felt that I had expiated my guilt for poor old Morg? There could be no real answer to that one. The only really important thing was that I was no longer afraid. At least, not in the same way.
Jack Higgins Page 13
