He shook his head. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘It was just for a second there. Probably my imagination.’ Mark brought his hand to his eyes. ‘The sea looks toxic.’
Adam straightened and his gaze followed Mark’s. In the distance, past the still waters of the lagoon in front of them, the ocean was stained a strange, electric-coloured turquoise. Adam did not need the turquoise bloom of the sea to tell him what was happening. His nose had already picked up the rotten-egg odour, which warned that they were in for a bad period. Over the next few days, fish and rock lobsters were going to die by the hundreds. This happened every now and then. The southerly winds, assisted by the Earth’s rotation, were transporting surface water in an offshore direction. The surface water was being replaced by cold deep-lying water, which sometimes contained very low oxygen levels because of the rapid degradation of the organic-rich material of the bottom sediment that was welling upward. This process of sulphate reduction by anoxic bacteria produced poisonous hydrogen sulphide. They would be finding beached, dead fish for days to come. The wind that was blowing today was truly an ill wind.
With a last look at the deadly water sparkling blue-green in the distance, Adam turned his back on the ocean. He stretched out his hand toward his harness. ‘Shall we get going?’
The two men donned their dive gear slowly, methodically, each attaching to himself equipment weighing almost ninety kilograms. On came the diving harnesses with tanks and a myriad of hoses leading to gauges, inflators and mouthpieces. Neatly stowed around their bodies were knives, backup lights and line reels—everything duplicated in case of loss or failure. On their arms they carried dive computers, compasses, depth gauges and watches. The number of items they were taking with them was stupendous, but nothing was carried that was not needed. The process of kitting-up took time, but they each had their own routine that never varied, a self-imposed discipline that was a vital part of the mental preparation for the dive and which prevented them from inadvertently leaving behind something important.
They were just about to start moving in the direction of the water when Mark’s radio crackled ominously from where he had left it underneath his canvas trousers.
‘Shit.’ Mark staggered toward the pile of clothes.
Adam continued moving backward toward the water. Maybe he was going to make the dive alone, after all. This call could only be from Rita or Kobus informing Mark of an emergency.
He stopped at the water’s edge. Mark was standing with his back to him and Adam could not see past the bulky tanks. From this distance the static crackle of the radio didn’t make much sense either.
After listening for a few more moments, Mark slowly lowered the radio and replaced it underneath the clothes. Adam watched as his friend waddled awkwardly toward him.
‘What is it? Bad news?’
Mark’s face split into a grin. ‘No, good news, buddy, good news: the best. And it’s for you.’
‘For me?’
‘That was Rita. She has just had a call from, and I quote, “a friend of Adam’s who has been trying to reach him and was very anxious that he should get this message at once”.’
Adam stared at Mark, his mind suddenly touched by hope. ‘Is it…?’
‘Yes, it’s Justine. She’s just arrived in Windhoek and will be taking the flight into Kepler’s Bay tomorrow. She should be here by ten at the latest.’
For a moment Adam was stunned. Then he gave an enormous whoop of joy. ‘Justine,’ he called and laughed. ‘Justine, Justine.’ His voice sailed into the air, echoed off the rock face, mingled with the cries of the birds who were joining in. ‘Justine, Justine.’
• • •
FROM WHERE he was watching, hidden behind an outcrop of rock, Grachikov could clearly see the figures of Mark Botha and Adam Williams within the sights of his binoculars. He watched uncomprehendingly as the two men clasped each other by the arms and started to do a clumsy ring a ring o’ roses dance, laughing all the while. He was too far away to hear what they were saying, but this was clearly a celebration.
He lowered the binoculars. He had no idea what had given rise to the bizarre behaviour of the two men and he didn’t care. All he cared about was whether they were going to do the dive.
He brought the binoculars to his eyes again. Good. It looked as though they were going to go ahead with it. Adam Williams was hobbling backward toward the water, his swim fins turning his feet sideways. Botha was following. Both men were wearing a staggering array of tanks and bottles clipped to their harnesses and dangling from underneath their arms. Clearly, this was going to be a long dive. Grachikov smiled.
He didn’t plan on going that deep or staying that long. Only long enough to do what he had come for, and he would make it quick. He wanted to keep his decompression time to a minimum and get out of there and away as soon as possible. That’s why he had taken a chance using the noisy motorboat. A rowing boat simply would not have been an option.
He blinked and tightened his grip on the binoculars. The two men had turned and were splashing into the water. One moment they were still within his sights—lumbering into the water and looking like visitors from an alien world—the next moment they had vanished as though they had never been.
• • •
GLIDING SLIGHTLY ABOVE and behind Adam, Mark watched as Adam carefully checked the line belay around the solid branch of a gnarled tree that had fallen—who knows how many years ago—into the cave’s entrance. The tree looked like a giant figure that had drowned, its arms yearningly outstretched toward the water’s surface. Light from the sun still penetrated the water at this level, but on the other side of the tree, beyond the slitted mouth of the cave system, the colour of the water deepened into black.
He watched as Adam swept his light in a slow deliberate circle. It was the signal that it was OK for Mark to follow him through the entrance. Mark returned the signal, and the two men dropped weightlessly through the narrow entrance and into deeper darkness. Almost simultaneously their powerful diving lights shot out bright beams of white. The blackness of the water gave way to a green glow, retreating from the wash of light as if in panic. But, as always, it felt to Mark as though he could sense the weight of the darkness where it lurked just outside the edge of his vision.
They were in the Waiting Room, the large submerged cavern that acted as an entrance portal to the continuing cave system. He and Adam would do their three- and six-metre decompression stops in this chamber on the way out and this was where they would leave behind their oxygen bottles. Breathing oxygen at depth was a big no-no because the resulting oxygen poisoning could push the diver into convulsions, causing him to drown. But he and Adam would only be using the oxygen at these shallow decompression stops. At this depth the oxygen would work wonders in helping their bodies eliminate the excess nitrogen that builds up during a dive and would significantly reduce their decompression time.
Pitching forward, they started to drop down swiftly.
• • •
YURI GRACHIKOV was searching for the entrance to the cave system. Cave diving held little appeal to him. He preferred wreck diving where you could gather artefacts during your dive to hold as souvenirs and exhibit to your brother divers once you were back on the surface. Trophies: that was the way to earn respect and admiration.
The bottom of the lagoon was soft and muddy. Right below him was a burrowing hagfish. The creature looked blind, its reduced eyes covered with skin. He had a brief glimpse of fleshy barbels encircling a jawless mouth before the snake-like body disappeared in a swirl of brown water.
A few metres in front of him, a black shadow was taking on shape. The tree. He had found the entrance to the caves.
He swam closer, his eye caught by a gleam of white. Tied to one of the branches was a nylon guideline. Ah yes, Ariadne’s thread. If it weren’t for the regulator stuck between his lips, he would have smiled widely.
• • •
ADAM WAS CONTINUING to follow the gui
deline with a practised hand. Mark admired the skill with which Adam had laid and belayed the line. Guidelines were not easy to use. When they’re set poorly, they could pull into every nook and crevice and lead the diver beneath an impossibly low undercut to the side of the passage. Adam had laid the line perfectly, making good use of natural and artificial belays to keep them on a central course. Mark knew exactly the kind of patience it required to attach the line firmly and securely at regular intervals; it was an exercise which he, himself, never relished doing. Suitable projections never seemed to exist when he was looking for them. Adam, on the other hand, operated as if he’d been born with line reel in hand.
Adam was now rounding a bend, his shadow in the beam of light expanding and retreating sinuously as it wrapped itself around the curve of the cave wall. The slow-moving water in these tunnels had created fantastic sculptures in its wake. In the wash of light Mark noticed a rock formation that looked like a weeping woman: the face weirdly elongated, the brows lowered in despair, the mouth open in anguish. A portrait of grief sculpted in darkness over millions of years.
He brought the dive computer up to eye-level. Still a long way to go.
• • •
GRACHIKOV ENTERED the first chamber of the system, leaving the light from the sun behind. He did not switch on his diving lights. For a few moments he hovered, trying to see if he could spot the diving lights of the two men who had entered the caves before him. But around him was only blackness.
Good. They were out of immediate range. He clicked on his lights and the water lit up.
Snaking downward in front and to the side of him was the men’s white guideline and clipped to it were the oxygen bottles. He had plans for this line, but not yet. He needed it to guide him in the direction of the two divers; without it, he would never find them in this maze where tunnels branched off, twisting and turning unpredictably.
He glanced at his watch. If he could keep his time underwater to ten minutes, he may not even have to decompress on the way up.
With a powerful kick, he started his descent.
• • •
ADAM EXAMINED the pressure gauges attached to his side-mounted tanks and consulted his dive computer. The readings indicated that it was time to unburden themselves of the stage tanks, which contained the air they’d need for exit and decompression. They would clip the stage tanks to the guideline and from here on proceed relatively unencumbered.
Up till now the tunnels had been roomy and the water quite clear with good visibility. There was a current here, and Adam was convinced there were other entrances and exits to this system, as yet undiscovered by them. The water was slow-moving but the constant movement helped to disperse disturbed silt particles. As they penetrated deeper, however, they would encounter tight openings and, try as hard as they might to prevent it, their movements would dislodge clouds of silt. Visibility would become a real problem.
Nothing they couldn’t handle. So far the dive was going well. And why shouldn’t it? From now on, everything would work out well. It felt to him as though his blood was fizzing with joy; as though joy was pumping his heart—as life-giving a substance as the air he was sucking in through his regulator. Justine—tomorrow he would see her, draw her into his arms, feel her breath against his cheek. They would start their life together.
The magnitude of the idea suddenly gripped him.
A life together.
Mark had taken out his knife and was now scratching a large Z in the surface of the rock. The lines—a deep mustard colour—stood out against the dun-coloured cave wall. This was not vandalism: the lines were not permanent; on their next dive they would probably already have vanished because of the movement of the water.
Adam swam toward his friend and scribbled on Mark’s slate: The Mark of Zorro?
Mark was nodding vigorously; his eyes behind the mask crinkling with mirth.
Yes, a good dive. A good day.
• • •
GRACHIKOV HAD FOUND what he was looking for. There, in the beam of his light, neatly clipped to the guideline, were the tanks containing the air the two men would need to finish their staged decompression and surface safely. Grachikov ran his hand over one of the bottles with satisfaction.
Up till now he had been following the men’s guideline. Now he tied his own shorter search reel to a knobbly projection of rock. Clipping the men’s decompression tanks to his harness, he swam away, following a tunnel that was twisting off to the left. He wouldn’t need to go far. He could park these tanks only a few yards beyond the curve in the cave wall here and the odds against the two men finding them would still be huge. There were several tunnels branching off and they wouldn’t even know where to start looking. And, with what he had in mind for their guideline, they may never even reach their original spot anyway.
He turned around and started to swim back, carelessly stirring up the muddy floor behind him. Now all that was left was to take care of the guideline.
Using his knife, he cut through the men’s line and, line in hand, headed in the opposite direction. After swimming for a minute, randomly selecting tunnels and chambers, he found a suitable outcrop of rock and tied the line off. The men would be following this line, thinking it was going to lead them to their decompression tanks and eventually to the outside. But they would end up stranded here. And even if they managed to find their way back, by this time there would not be enough air for them to reach the surface. Their death-bloated bodies would hang suspended until someone—who knows when—found them.
Using his own guideline, Grachikov swam back to the original chamber. Taking a last look around him, he prepared to start his ascent.
• • •
MARK CHECKED his pressure gauge and dive computer. What it showed him made him feel concerned. He seemed to be consuming air faster than he usually did. This was irritating. If his air supply was used too quickly, they would have to turn the dive early and they wouldn’t be able to go as far as they had hoped. They had already passed the spot which marked the limit of Adam’s previous exploration, and were now entering uncharted territory, the most exciting part of the dive. He certainly did not want to head for the exit now.
Mark wondered if the beating his body had received was somehow responsible. His fitness level was probably not what it should be. Of course, he had never been able to match Adam’s low level of air consumption. His friend’s lungs had always been able to draw methodical breaths of air with incredible breathing efficiency. Still, in the past he had managed to hold his own. Today, though, the gauge was dropping far too quickly.
The shaft suddenly narrowed sharply, but Mark could see that it widened again after a few yards. For a moment he wondered if they’d have to remove their tanks, push the tanks through ahead of them and reattach them. They occasionally had to do that during a dive such as this.
But, as they inched forward, it turned out not to be necessary after all. They just managed to squeeze through, their tanks giving a hollow clunk as they tapped the cave roof. But their movements and their exhalation bubbles had stirred up a dense swirl of opaque silt.
Suddenly his diving lights were of no use. In front of him was only a green haze. He couldn’t see Adam at all. He knew they were both holding the same line—he could feel the twitches down the fine cord transmitted from his friend—but his senses seemed to be shutting down. He couldn’t see, sounds were muted, his hands were numb. For a few moments he felt unwelcome and surprising pangs of alarm.
His heart was starting to beat faster—he could feel it—and that, of course, was causing his breathing to increase and his air consumption to rise. Not good, he chided himself. Get it together. But controlled fear continued to lurk at the edges of his consciousness. As he swam forward, unable to see, his eyes stretched open in an unblinking stare, he remembered Adam once saying that in a silt-out the best way forward was to close your eyes.
Close his eyes. How could he do that? Some part of his brain registered that Adam was right
. If you kept your eyes open, you started imagining things, became even more disoriented. And as it was, his light was simply reflecting off a madly swirling curtain of silt and sand and he was effectively blind anyway. But the idea of going forward with his eyes shut seemed utterly unacceptable. It took several moments before he managed to force his eyelids together.
Darkness. Better, but the unknown forces were still there. His hand was on the guideline, following it inch by inch. It felt like an eternity before he felt something grasp his arm.
He opened his eyes. Adam was looking at him, making a hand gesture. His meaning was obvious: Adam wanted to know if he was all right. Mark brought his thumb and forefinger together to form a circle. Yes, he was OK.
But was he really? As he continued to follow Adam, he thought back to those moments of rising fear. What the hell had happened to him back there? This was certainly not the first blackout he had experienced. Had his run-in with Grachikov somehow affected him at some deeper level? Was he losing his nerve? Or maybe the martini effect was to blame as nitrogen continued to travel from his lungs to his blood, and from his blood into the tissues of his brain. Maybe his brain was getting fogged up from the narcosis, causing him to become paranoid.
He glanced at his gauges once more and was alarmed. He had almost finished the first third of his air supply and would soon be on his second third. But this air was not to be used on the way in. That was the golden rule: one-third of your air supply for entering, one-third for leaving and one-third for emergencies. He should signal to Adam that it was time for them to turn the dive and head for the entrance.
But he held back. There was still a small margin remaining and he didn’t want to let Adam down after such a poor show back there of his own making. He also didn’t want his friend to think he was slurping up air at unacceptable levels—always bad form in a diving buddy.
No, he was going to hold off. He knew it was risky, pushing his air margins, but they would probably use less air on the exit. The guideline was already laid. They need only follow it back. Besides, the slight current would be in their favour on the way out. Just a few more minutes…
Writ in Water Page 92
