by John Connor
Uri Zaikov. Ten years ago. He couldn’t recall the date or even the season now. But he could remember Uri Zaikov collapsing in front of him, blood pouring out of a stab wound to his back. Had he done that? He struggled to fill in the gaps, before and after, but trying didn’t do it. Like when you had some forgotten word or detail on the tip of your tongue.
He closed his eyes, tried to empty his mind, make space for it. He could see Uri Zaikov’s shocked white face, the eyes staring up at him, the voice pleading softly, in Russian. He had gone down on one knee right beside the man, pulled his clothing away and turned him on his side, found the wound. He had a clear image of it, the tiny slit with all that dark blood running out of it. The Russian’s clothing had been soaked with it. He had staggered through the doors just behind Carl – big, wooden, ornate doors – then collapsed at his feet. Where was it? What place?
He couldn’t get there, couldn’t build the rest of the picture. Just the wound and the pleading voice. The wound was near the heart, between the ribs. Had it actually pierced his heart? There had been blood bubbling through his lips too. Flecks of it had spattered Carl’s face as he leaned over to hear him speaking. So the lung must have been punctured, or the throat.
What had happened next?
He had taken his own jacket off – a light, canvas summer jacket, so the season must have been summer, the weather hot – and had started to tear it to pieces, intending to bind the wound, to try to stop the bleeding.
He had been trying to save the guy, not kill him. He had even said that to him, tried to reassure him. Then Viktor had got there, out of breath, blood all over him. Because there had been two others with Uri Zaikov, and Viktor had chased and caught them outside somewhere, shot them. Carl hadn’t seen it, but had seen the bodies, later. Viktor had the pistol he had used in one hand.
He had walked up and pushed Carl out of the way. Then bent over and cursed Zaikov, put the gun against his face and pulled the trigger.
Carl saw it all, right now, saw it happening. Viktor had shot Uri Zaikov when he was already down, already mortally wounded. Then stepped back and spat on the body.
36
He thought it was maybe twenty minutes more before he could be sure of his legs. Then he started to properly feel his way around the compartment. He found a potential weapon quite quickly, clipped to the bulkhead below the hatch – a kind of wrench, heavy, with a handle about two metres long. He tried to remember whether he had seen one before in this area of a boat, and what it would be for. Obviously there was something that you could loosen with it.
He considered banging on the outer hull with it but guessed that would only make them lean through the hatch to tase him again. Besides, from the position of the engine noises he was on the port side of the boat, and it was moored to starboard. And in any case, who would care about a banging noise from a boat? Passers-by would assume someone was doing repairs. The crew might respond, but they wouldn’t be able to help if the big guy was standing guard above the hatch.
He eased himself lower down, breathing carefully. The engines were turning over continuously, either in readiness to leave or because they needed them to turn a generator or power some other system. He moved over three sets of the iron ribs, towards the stern of the boat. He decided – from the noise – that he was in a compartment right at the stern, alongside the engine room. He lay back against the outer hull with his feet submerged in the bilge water and thought about it.
There would be a bilge pump somewhere down there, in the water. He tried to listen for it and decided it was switched off, if there was one. The water level wasn’t going down. Where had the water come from?
The raw water intake vents. The engines on almost every boat were water-cooled. They needed to take in cold sea water constantly from an intake below the waterline, then pump it out through a vent above the waterline. The intakes needed a fair bit of maintenance. Usually there would be a filter of some sort, a pump in the engine room to suck the water in, tubes to bring the water from the intakes to the engine system. He started looking for them.
It didn’t take long. There were five of them, thick PVC material, at waist height if he stood as near the bottom as he could, all about the diameter of his wrist. There were big nuts fixing the piping to metal intake fittings that would protrude through the hull, allowing in the sea water. One of them was leaking slightly – a broad, steady trickle of water – confirming that this compartment was below the waterline.
The wrench would be to undo the nuts, to get the pipes off for maintenance. He guessed they might be using only one intake right now, while the engines were just ticking over, and felt to see if there were any temperature differences or vibrations to give a clue as to which.
He thought he could detect movement inside two of them, including the one with the leak. If he used the wrench on them then sea water would flood into the compartment, quite quickly. It would fill to the level of the sea outside. Would that be enough to unbalance the boat, set off some warning system? Maybe not, but if the compartment was wholly below the waterline there was a danger it would fill entirely. He might drown if they didn’t work out what was happening and respond. He judged they would – not because of the extra ballast but because the engine would very quickly start to overheat if he took away its coolant supply. That might prompt a response. What else was there he could do? It was a risk. But if they didn’t respond he could always close the vent again, when the water got too high.
He set to work on the nuts, trying to get the wrench in place, without worrying about what the second part of the plan would be, if they did respond. He saw now why the wrench had such a long handle. It was easy to lever the nuts loose. After a few turns water started to flow in. He could hear it running down the hull, splashing into the bilge below. He kept going and got the first one off. A thick jet of water started to pour in, instantly soaking him. He had to fight a moment of panic, force himself to get to work on the second intake.
By the time he got it off and there were two jets of water flooding the compartment, the level was up to his knees. He stripped off the fleece beneath his jacket and struggled for a few seconds to tear it into strips, then gave up and simply twisted the sleeves and forced one into the first gurgling intake pipe, the other into the second, at least partially blocking them. He tried to wedge them pointing upwards, so that the open ends weren’t in the steadily deepening water. Then he recovered the wrench and started to clumsily climb back to the furthest bulkhead, under the hatch. It was only then he found a ladder bolted to the inner wall, coming away from below the hatch. He got onto the bottom rung and waited.
Within five minutes the water was around his thighs. Now, if he let himself off the ladder, he would sink up to chest height. He tried to listen for signs that the engine was struggling but could no longer hear anything except the gush of sea water flooding in. In the enclosed space, the noise was deafening.
After a bit he had to climb further up the ladder. He thought the speed it was coming in must start to slow now. But instead he felt a slight movement of the boat. There was a drawn-out creaking sound. Had it listed slightly? Maybe the compartment below his feet continued under the bulkheads, letting more water in than he had planned for.
Even as he was considering it he felt his centre of balance again shift a little. That would be enough to get them looking, he thought. A heavy boat like this would snap the moorings before long. He listened for signs of them opening the hatch, started to wonder – for the first time – what he planned to do then.
But they didn’t open it, and the water kept rising. He had either miscalculated the height of this compartment or the depth of the boat below the waterline, because roughly ten minutes later he was right at the top of the ladder, his head pressed against the hatch, the water above his waist.
He managed to wedge the wrench behind the ladder, so he had both hands free. There was a definite lis
t now. He wasn’t imagining it. He started to worry the boat would capsize, with him trapped in there. It seemed unlikely, but nevertheless it was hard not to panic about it. He told himself the reason this compartment existed was to stop the boat capsizing by limiting the quantity of water that could enter through a punctured hull. It was a safety feature, so he was OK.
He pushed himself off the top of the ladder, keeping his feet on the rungs below the water but letting himself float back to the outer hull. He braced one hand there, fixing himself away from the area immediately below the hatch. The water crept up to his chest. The temperature had to be less than twelve degrees. The cold started to take effect, gripping his muscles. He started to shiver. If they didn’t come soon he was either going to drown or freeze to death.
Time to close the vents again.
37
He got the wrench from behind the ladder and started to take deep breaths. He would have to dive down to find the ends of the pipes. Now that there was less difference between outer and inner water pressure it should be easily possible to get them back on. But just then he heard something. The background noise was less now, because the water was above the intake pipes. He could hear voices from the other side of the hatch.
He pushed himself off the ladder – his head going under for a moment – and over to the bulkhead. Beneath the water his feet scrabbled to find the iron rib curving down below him. He managed to stand on it, pushing himself back into the furthest corner, so that he was braced against the outer hull, with a firm enough footing, the water up to his chest. He was about three metres along from the hatch, a metre back, and could hear them turning the release levers. He leaned back and tried to steady himself, held the wrench with both hands just under the water.
The light flooding through as the hatch was raised blinded him momentarily. If they had come through immediately, stepping onto the ladder, he would have been helpless. But instead he had a few seconds to recover before he saw hands on the rim, heard someone shouting in. A moment later a head peered through, at an angle, trying to look for him. It was the big security guy, looking in the opposite direction. Behind him Carl could sense movement in the play of light and shade. He heard someone saying in English that the compartment was almost flooded.
The head disappeared, then a foot appeared, feeling for the ladder, one trousered leg followed by the other. The man cursed in Russian, telling those above that the water was freezing. One of them told him that he should get out, that they had to get in and shut off the intakes. But the man kept coming down. He was in up to his chest, descending quickly. As his head got below the level of the hatch he stopped to look around and behind. But it was too dark – Carl could see him squinting into the gloom, no more than three metres away, cursing the water and the darkness, but knew he couldn’t see a thing. He shouted up for something – a flashlight. Carl changed his grip on the wrench, holding it like a pole-vaulter, both hands on it, to his side. The water was reaching his upper chest now. He held his breath.
There was a delay while they found a torch and passed it down. As the man switched it on Carl brought the long wrench out from under the water, holding it at head height, pointed right at the guy. The guy heard something and swung the torch towards Carl, blinding him, but by then Carl was already thrusting forward, pushing off with his feet and getting as much force into it as he could.
He rammed the wrench against the side of the man’s head. The man gave a strangled grunt, the torch dropping into the water, plunging them back into darkness. Carl sank beneath the surface. He heard a frantic splashing noise around his ears, then scrambled backwards, kicking against the inner hull with his booted feet. He couldn’t see anything now. But he knew he had hit the man’s head very hard.
He came up again, breathed, then had to drop the wrench to find a handhold on the bulkhead. He expected to see the man coming for him but instead saw only the ladder and the light through the hatch. For a second he was confused. Could the guy have got back out so quickly?
Something heavy rolled on the surface a couple of metres to his right, a hand raised and thrashing at the surface. The guy was over there, beneath the surface. The blow must have stunned him, dropped him into the water. There was room to get past him, if he was quick, so he kicked off the outer hull, got his hands on the rungs and heaved.
He expected to see a gun pointed in his face as his head came up through the hatch, or feel the guy’s hands tugging at him from below. Instead he saw two startled, uniformed crew members backing off. No weapons. He got his feet clear without being pulled back and risked a glance back down. He could hear frantic splashing, but couldn’t see anything.
He stood with some pain in the stiff knee – the one he’d banged falling into the compartment – and heard the water pouring off him. He wasn’t sure if the guy down there was fully conscious or not. He wanted to do something else, to take him out of the picture, stop him giving chase, or at least shut the hatch on him, but there was no time. The crew members were both silent and frightened, watching him like he might be armed, backing away as he came towards them. He pushed past them without saying anything and started to run as best he could along the corridor.
He took the companionway at the end two steps at a time, almost slipping in the water coming off his trousers, feeling the knee loosening up. He could hear a loud bellowing back by the hatch now. He didn’t know what deck he was on, or how many decks there were, but saw another companionway directly ahead and went straight up.
He came out onto a floodlit deck, open to the sky, at the stern, a round swimming pool in front of him, no one using it. He went round it to the starboard side and saw he was a deck higher than where the gangway would be. He ran past crew struggling to loosen one of the mooring lines and leaped a small rail to drop two metres to the deck below. As he landed, a pain shot up from his knee and for a few seconds he was stuck. Ahead he saw two suited men running towards him. He realised that the gangway had been hauled in.
He climbed awkwardly onto the guardrail right next to him and leaped across the metre gap, landing badly on the concrete dock, rolling, jarring his shoulder. As he stood, his left leg gave way, the knee refusing to take any more weight. He started to limp away, people shouting at him from the boat. He risked a look and saw the suits standing at the guardrail, one of them speaking into a radio, the other pointing at him. The line of Mercs was gone but there was still a small group of bystanders. He elbowed his way through them and kept going, headed for where he’d left the bike. The sky was dark already.
38
The flight to Helsinki was full aside from business class. She got a ticket using the credit card Drake had given her, in the name of Alice Rogers. It was very expensive. The girl at the counter said her nose was bleeding, and pointed at it – not out of human concern, but because they had rules about it. Julia asked for some tissue and poked it up the nostril, telling the girl it would stop in seconds. A couple of days before, she realised, she would have felt terrified that the girl would suspect something. She had killed two men, was travelling on false papers, paying with a credit card that wasn’t hers. But she felt no fear at all. Not any more.
She felt a new kind of cold-bloodedness. She didn’t think anyone was going to stop her, or even look for her. How would they know she was here? There wouldn’t be adequate enough descriptions of her, because everyone had been looking at the crash. There might be images of her on CCTV systems, but that would take more time to process, and she would be airborne in thirty minutes, on the last flight to Helsinki for that day.
In the coffee bar nearest the gate she drank three coffees in fifteen minutes, sitting by herself at one of the tables, trying to put together everything that had happened. She placed both phones on the table in front of her and watched as the one Drake had given her flashed every five minutes with a message from him. But she didn’t trust Drake now, didn’t trust Michael Rugojev either. They had brought her to
London and Rebecca wasn’t here. They had brought her to the wrong place.
Rebecca was in Helsinki. She knew she was in Helsinki not just because Jones had told her that but because she had searched through Molina’s phone and found the number she had been called from while standing outside Bowman’s apartment. Whoever it was had been careless, because the number had been communicated with the call, like it was recognised by the device. Maybe it was in the phone’s memory already, in some bit of it she hadn’t managed to find. It was a mobile number with a country code: 00358. That was the country code for Finland. She had been almost certain of it as soon as she saw it, but to be sure she had sat at an Internet terminal here and checked, so there was no doubt now – she had been speaking to someone in Finland. Someone who had said, I wish it didn’t have to be like this.
She drained the last dregs of the last cup of coffee as she thought about that voice. She could hear it in her head now, clear as day. It brought a foul taste to her mouth, made her feel like she would start shivering again. In front of her, across from the coffee bar, they had just announced boarding for her flight.
She stood up, pulling the jacket around her and fastening it.
I wish it didn’t have to be like this. The line had been clear – like he was speaking into her ear, right there beside her, an intimate kind of threat. He had spoken quietly, calmly. Why hadn’t she recognised him immediately?
Because she hadn’t expected to hear that voice. She had expected Zaikov’s voice, a voice she would never recognise because she had never met or spoken to Zaikov. But it wasn’t Zaikov who had taken Rebecca and tried to kill her. She knew that now. Because she had recognised the voice – she knew exactly who it was.
