Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  And now this, a mystery passenger. Or two! He couldn’t wait for the day to be over, when he could finally put his feet up, crack open a Kronenbourg, and watch the sun setting over the ocean.

  Still the day hadn’t been without its high points. Finding the wreck in the first place was one: his boss, Dominique Drayle had been over the moon, so to speak. Everyone had.

  And then finding the metal case – “the decagon” as Drayle called it. The Isfahan decagon in fact, if he’d heard him correctly. Drayle was keeping things under wraps though – no surprise, Bertrand was no fool, these dive tours for the adventurously inclined were a blatant front for Drayle’s illegal salvage operations – and Drayle rarely told Bertrand anything directly. Again, no surprise there either: Bertrand was pretty sure these salvage operations weren’t the only thing Drayle was up to, and frankly, the less Bertrand knew about all that the better. (He’d heard Drayle speaking Russian on his satellite phone on more than one occasion – unusual as no-one on board spoke anything other than French to each other, and maybe the odd word in English to a customer – and as far as Bertrand knew, Drayle didn’t have a Russian bone in his body.)

  So, yes, the less he knew the better, except when it came to the articles they recovered, because lost treasure was his thing, and his experience with underwater salvage was why Drayle had hired him in the first place.

  And the fact that he’d been the one to find the decagon, that was definitely a feather in his cap. Now if only he could work out what exactly it was. It was certainly beautiful, but supposedly it had some particular significance that he wasn’t yet privy to. He’d overheard some talk about a connection with an even older ship. A galleon? It didn’t really make sense, but one thing was clear: Drayle appeared to be even happier about the discovery of this decagon than that of the Prospero’s Dancer itself.

  12. 22° 56' 35" S 14° 30' 9" E

  (Walvis Bay, Namibia)

  Wednesday, 14 August

  A remarkable thing happened the next day, aboard the Diamond Moon. For Bertrand though, “remarkable” wasn’t really the word: things took a distinct turn for the worse.

  They’d sailed overnight and arrived at Walvis Bay at dawn, where they were now moored. During the morning, Bertrand had managed to do a pretty good job at cleaning up their much-prized, recent discovery.

  The Isfahan decagon – which seemed to be some kind of metal container – was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was about thirty centimetres across, and it was ten-sided (hence its name) which made it appear almost circular, despite there being not a curved line on it. The metal itself was silver, but it was heavily inlaid with hundreds of gemstone tiles covering all twelve surfaces. The tiles were cut into shapes outlined and separated by an intricate, rectilinear network of joining and intersecting silver lines.

  The decagon was undoubtedly an object of superior refinement and style, and demonstrated an extraordinarily high degree of craftsmanship.

  There was a hinge on one of the sides, and a keyhole, although the lock itself had rusted away, and the decagon was easily opened. There was nothing inside – or not anymore at least.

  But it was in remarkably good condition for something that had been imprisoned beneath the ocean for the best part of two centuries: there was barely a single tile missing and very little cleaning was required. This was, Bertrand decided, due to a combination of factors, including the temperature and mineral content of the waters in that part of the Atlantic; the fact that the metal was silver; the fact that the decagon had been enclosed in a larger container; and the quality of the article’s construction.

  A closer inspection revealed the majority of the tiles to be green jade and quartz, but there was also turquoise and amber and red garnet, as well as lapis lazuli and obsidian and even emerald. In particular, the mesh or web of silver lines bordering the gemstones formed angular geometric shapes, polygons – including decagons and star shapes, (some of the larger ones being ten-pointed stars) – and patterns, complex and intricate, some apparently repetitive, some seemingly irregular, and similar, he thought, to those seen on Islamic mosques and shrines.

  Indeed from his knowledge of art history – and Bertrand was no novice – he estimated the object was around five hundred years old. Fifteenth century maybe. And judging by the name Drayle had given it, it apparently hailed from Isfahan, Persia (now Iran).

  The more he looked at it, the more he found.

  The silver lines, he could now see, were of two kinds: some fine, and others less so. The latter more prominent set of lines zigzagged across the larger shapes and formed their own, separate pattern. The more delicate lines revealed smaller shapes, all angular, all various types of polygon. On this smaller scale, six different polygons could be identified, including pentagons, kite-shaped rhombuses, and bowtie-shaped hexagons.

  And then, surprisingly, a third layer of patterning revealed itself, formed by the outlines of the gemstones themselves, each of which were in the shape of one of the six polygons appearing on the slightly larger scale.

  The patterns in the three layers of networked lines contained, to his eye at least, no obvious repetition, or nothing uniform at least. There was repetition of the various shapes, but the design continued to change the further it extended. It was a kind of geometric pattern with no pattern, in other words. Such geometry, he was aware, was something Islamic mathematicians had discovered hundreds of years before Western Europe.

  He’d read about this recently in fact. Before they’d set out on their trip, Drayle had suggested he do some research on the topic, and now he knew why.

  Islamic art in the period dating from the 12th to the 15th centuries commonly employed so-called girih tiling and lines (“girih” meaning “knot” in Persian), which essentially consisted of a changing pattern of jagged lines – or ‘strapwork’ – in combination with a set series of standard shapes, and was based on highly advanced principles of geometry and mathematics. Examples of the use of girih lines ranged from the Gunbad-i Kabud tomb tower in Maragheh, Iran (1197) and the Mustansiriya Madrasah in Baghdad (13th century) to the Darb-i Imam shrine in Isfahan (completed in 1453) and the Topkapi Scroll (late 15th to early 16th centuries). It wasn’t until the 1970s and the discovery of ‘Penrose Tiling’ (named after British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose) that the advanced mathematical concept behind the girih patterns was finally recognised by Western mathematicians.

  After seeing Drayle’s excitement the day before, Bertrand had realized straight away that the decagon’s value lay in something other than its precious stones and silver. He now wondered if it had some particular historical significance, beyond its age or its use of fifteenth century Islamic geometry. Drayle didn’t excite easily. Historical significance, or was it something else, something intrinsic?

  Which is when, all of a sudden, he saw it.

  It was gone almost as quickly as it appeared: it was like an optical illusion that you needed to stare at for a while before the hidden image revealed itself. The irregular patterning of the silver lines and stone tiling seemed to morph, for an instant, into a person’s face. It was a woman’s. In Bertrand’s mind at least, it was as clear as a photograph, or a painting, but by the time it registered, his eyes were no longer seeing it. The only evidence of it, frustratingly, lay there, in his memory, the disappearing beauty fading fast, and no amount of effort could bring it back.

  But that wasn’t the truly remarkable thing that happened. That was coming.

  He waved his hand in the air, beckoning, catching the attention of the Japanese girl who had just walked in. She was ambling casually, carrying a fruit juice, looking for something to do. He was pleased she chose his company to find it. And now, just in time, he remembered her name too: Ishiko. He shouldn’t have forgotten it, Ishiko meant “child of stone” in Japanese, and he liked that.

  ‘Look at this, Ishiko.’ He spoke to her in English. ‘Tell me if you can see a woman’s face.’

  She walked over to him and s
miled, and looked at the decagon. When she did, he took in her figure: she was wearing skinny jeans and she looked great in them. Great, despite her legs being a little shorter than he would have preferred. That was the deal with Japanese girls, but it wasn’t a bad trade-off, it was a compromise Bertrand was happy to make. She had a pretty face, too. Exquisite, you could even say.

  ‘It is beautiful!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It is that.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Apparently it’s the Isfahan decagon, whatever that is. We’ll need some help on this one.’

  ‘The… decagon,’ she repeated, following his lips.

  Bertrand stood up and made his way over to the other table. He glanced back for a moment, and while Ishiko admired the decagon, he admired his colleague’s pear-shaped buttocks and the unmistakable outline of her panties. He then began looking for a book he’d seen, something on Islamic art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although he doubted it would help him.

  He was, in fact, just about to discover that nothing would help him.

  13. 22° 56' 35" S 14° 30' 9" E

  (Walvis Bay)

  Wednesday, 14 August

  While Bertrand was looking through the pile of books, Ishiko turned around and cast a sly glance back at him. She liked the way he stood – he was tall – and she had a thing for his shoulders and forearms. And his backside, his “ass”, as the Americans called it, he had a great ass.

  She marvelled at how all of our destinies were already written, long ago.

  And then she sprang into action, for the time had come.

  She pulled the cord out of the back of her jeans (she’d been wondering whether it showed) and twisted the ends around her hands and wrists. She wasn’t powerful, relatively speaking, but she was exceptionally, demonstrably, undeniably skilful.

  Bertrand was totally focussed on one of the books now – he was flicking through pages of diagrams and figures. Ishiko felt like telling him he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for, not in the time he had, and given his curtailed future, what was the point? And anyway, she was working – she had a job to do. And jobs, like everything else, like the trees and eating rice, were the building blocks of Destiny.

  Ishiko imagined his surprise when her pelvis pushed in against his buttocks… a second before the cord flew over his head. She wondered what he was thinking during that second, before the cord changed everything; she wondered what was going through his mind when she was, all of a sudden, grinding him from behind. She knew how much he lusted after her – or she had a good idea – and he must have thought he was getting luckier than he’d ever been before, or else he was dreaming.

  And while he was choking there, seconds from the end of his life, a vague feeling of regret passed over her. A feeling that she’d perhaps made a mistake. That this man she was in the process of killing could well have been the sort of man she could have lived with, had children with, got old with. He could have been the one. Crazy as it sounded, Ishiko wondered, was it not possible that she’d received a chemically coded signal from his body in those moments? A signal received by her body and subsequently decoded and analysed, with the result being a large, green light?

  Bertrand slumped lifelessly to the floor.

  The green light flickered and faded and disappeared altogether. Just like it always did.

  And Ishiko, the exquisite Japanese girl, lapsed fully into work mode again. After first double-checking the body was indeed dead, and then sliding it under the adjacent work bench and covering it with a tarpaulin, she collected the metal case – the decagon – and hurried out onto the deck, into the harsh African sun, banishing all further self-indulgent thoughts from her mind.

  14. 22° 56' 35" S 14° 30' 9" E

  (Walvis Bay)

  Wednesday, 14 August

  ‘Enter!’

  At the same time that Ishiko was making her hasty and furtive exit from the Diamond Moon (and before her and the decagon’s absence, along with the demise of Bertrand, had been discovered), Dominique Drayle was reading. Knowing Drayle, it was probably some obscure topic such as barter-trading with the Peruvian Indians in the sixteenth century, or perhaps, more appropriately, it was The Rise Of The Russian Mafia, but Arnaud couldn’t see the name of the book because he wasn’t close enough. And he wasn’t close enough because he was hanging around in the passageway outside because, yes, he was up to no good and yes, he was spying, and yes, it would get him killed one of these days but life was short anyway so what the hell. He got a kick out of it, OK?

  Gerhard had just knocked on Drayle’s cabin door. Bravely. Because everyone knew that Drayle – who insisted on being called “Mr Drayle” (and not “Monsieur”, note) by his crew and other employees, never by his first name, that was a hanging offence – hated being disturbed when he was in the middle of something. After receiving the one-word response, Gerhard had gone ahead and opened the door and stuck his head in. Which is when Arnaud had seen Drayle and his book, whatever it was.

  ‘Excuse me Mr Drayle, I was just…’ Gerhard paused at that point, presumably having seen the predictable look of annoyance on Drayle’s face. ‘I thought you should be informed. That the, er… the Namibians have found out. About us finding the Prospero’s Dancer. Over the radio just before, we―’

  ‘How.’

  ‘Sorry…?’

  ‘How did they find out.’

  ‘Well I’m guessing someone said something. When we were last here. In Walvis Bay. So maybe we can expect…’ Gerhard’s eyebrows were raised as he let his sentence hang there.

  There was a long pause this time. Drayle, who notoriously suffered anger management problems (to put it mildly), was probably feeling, once again, the familiar effects of that rising tide of crimson. All Gerhard could do was stand there and watch Drayle’s face turn a deep shade of red. Perhaps he said a little prayer.

  And then, seemingly, a reprieve. Instead of a tirade of abuse, Gerhard was met with the sight of Drayle taking a deep breath in, and then a long, slow one out. When Drayle finally spoke, his voice was controlled and clear.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Gerhard just nodded. He’d seen enough to know when to disappear, but it was now Drayle who seemed to want to prolong things. Gerhard was retreating and closing the door when Drayle spoke again.

  ‘Gerhard.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get in here. And shut the door.’

  15. 48° 51' 14" N 2° 20' 48" E

  (Paris, 4th arrondissement)

  The present.

  8.45am French Summer Time (06:45 UTC).

  Wednesday, 16 October

  He was chewing his pen again – it was a bad habit and his teeth would pay the price one day, he knew it. But a habit was a habit.

  Whatever transpired in the remainder of that conversation two months ago between Drayle and Gerhard, Commandant Laurent Ruart, of the Préfecture de police in the Île de la Cité in central Paris, will probably never know. The witness to the conversation, Arnaud – the man from Marseilles who had been Ruart’s eyes and ears on the Diamond Moon – neither heard nor saw anything further after Gerhard entered Drayle’s cabin and closed the door behind him. And both Arnaud and Gerhard were now missing-presumed-dead. As for the other person present…

  Who knew where Drayle himself was by now, although there had been reported sightings of him about 1,300 kilometres away, in Cape Town, South Africa.

  What Ruart did know was that the Diamond Moon – a sleek forty-nine metre luxury motor yacht (technically, a “superyacht” and almost a “megayacht”) registered in the Cayman Islands, but frequently seen moored on the French Riviera in the summer months – after visiting the wreck of the Prospero’s Dancer and recovering an artefact referred to (by Drayle at least) as the Isfahan decagon, continued its journey south, hugging the desolate west coast of Africa, past Namibia and on to Cape Town, and four men (Bertrand, Gerhard, Arnaud and one other) plus a Japanese female disappeared in the space of two w
eeks. None had been seen since, with the exception of Arnaud, whose skeleton, it would seem (subject to further forensic testing), was found in a witchdoctor’s hut two hundred miles inland, in north-western South Africa, every trace of flesh scraped clean from his bones, by whom or what Commandant Ruart had, as yet, no idea.

  Whatever the Isfahan decagon was, too, was fairly unclear.

  Clearer was Dominique Drayle’s occupation. Despite his French origins, he’d originally been a member (a brigadier) of a Russian mafia group (or bratva) with its roots in a district of Moscow. After operating out of Moscow for many years, and taking a firm grip of a sizeable section of the art and antiquities black market, he’d formed a breakaway organization which he originally based in Paris, but which now had no central headquarters. His organization operated cells throughout Europe – including, as well as Moscow and Paris, London, Venice, Bucharest and Istanbul – and outside Europe as well, in Vladivostok in Russia’s far east, and even in South Africa (Cape Town). The organization was called Draylskaya Bratva, named after him (“bratva” meaning “brotherhood”). It had also come to be known as Black Star.

  Drayle himself was wanted for questioning in three countries: in France, concerning the rape of two women (on the same night); in Equatorial Guinea, in relation to the murder of two security personnel in Malabo; and in Gabon, over both the theft of approximately one tenth of that nation’s annual GDP and an attempted coup begun in the country’s second largest city, the isolated seaport of Port-Gentil. He had also dated Ruart’s sister, which made things interesting, to say the least.

  Commandant Ruart, as it happened, had just bought a plane ticket to Cape Town, although it wasn’t going to be travel in any official or state-sanctioned capacity: this trip was most definitely pleasure and not business (his leave had already been approved). Because pleasure was what he was going to get from wringing Drayle’s neck. And that was because one of the two women Drayle raped on that evil, moonless evening was none other than Ruart’s sister, Constance. It had happened in Paris only six months ago, and so for Ruart the wound was, metaphorically speaking, still particularly fresh.