Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  He’d even offered to cut the holiday short, take her back to Perth, but again, no thanks. She had some “business” to attend to in Broome, whatever that was. (Lena always had “business” to attend to and in this case he suspected it was looking into buying up the Broome pearling industry. She was just that kind of girl!)

  If it had been Roy’s best friend missing out there, he’d be in his four-wheel drive in a second and off searching. He offered this too, but it was another offer declined. No point, she said. They’d just get in the way. Leave it to the police, They’ll show up.

  They probably would show up, but in what state?

  Out a porthole, he could see the lights of the Diamond Moon moored about seventy metres away. He wondered how they were all getting along, they hadn’t spoken to them since yesterday. He’d suggested dropping over that evening, but Lena hadn’t been keen, despite claiming that she really liked Diane. Maybe it was Brian’s presence, her ex, and frankly Roy couldn’t have blamed her. Brian was a bit of a loser and Roy had trouble understanding what Lena saw in him in the first place. (She met him in a Perth night club, perhaps she was drunk.) She married him for fuck’s sake. For his money? She would have been better off going for Bob if money was the goal. Lena and Bob did always seem to get along pretty well now he came to think about it. Not that he was jealous – Roy prided himself in not having a jealous bone in his body. But there looked to be a bit of shared history, or at least a similar view of the world, or something. He couldn’t quite place it, but good luck to them was his attitude. The more friends Lena had in Roy’s world, the more likely it was she’d hang around. Not that he’d be heartbroken if she didn’t. No fear.

  The Diamond Moon though, what a spectacular vessel. Lucky for Roy that Bob had found it, otherwise Roy’d still be lumbered with his previous boat, sluggish old thing that she was, bless her barnacle-encrusted keel. The Seaking was a step up, no doubt about it, but the Diamond Moon… it was another proposition altogether. Bob had been a bit cagey about how he’d got it – all Roy knew was he’d had to go to Réunion to collect it and he refused to say who the previous owner was. Why? What was he, a drug baron?

  Bob hadn’t been as cagey about where he’d got Peta from though – snatched her from the guy who ran West Ocean Metals. Nice one! Roy could never really be sure though which girl was Bob’s favourite: Peta or the Diamond Moon.

  Actually yes he could.

  40. 23° 15' 15" S 64° 41' 36" E

  (Over the Indian Ocean, east of Mauritius)

  2.30am Mauritius Time (22:30 UTC)

  Sunday, 20 October

  Ruart was sorry he didn’t get to spend even a single night in Saint-Denis.

  While he wasn’t going to admit to himself the blonde at reception might have contributed to that regret – even if it briefly crossed his mind – on any measure it did seem just a little bit crazy to be jumping on a plane the very evening of the day of his arrival. But he had to remind himself he had a job to do. Not to mention, speaking of receptions, the inexplicably hostile attitude of the locals, acting, as they were, like it was still the nineteenth century. (Acting like Ruart was some despicable colonialist: an officer, perhaps, fresh off the Napoleonic battlefields, exploring the southern oceans, mocking the natives and in need of a good spearing, was that the situation? Was that what it felt like for these unenlightened retards?).

  So here he was on another plane: this time it was Air Mauritius, an hour out of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport in Mauritius, and heading for Perth. After that it was on to Broome to see if he could track down this Bob Walman guy and his fancy boat.

  He opened his window shade. The lights in the plane’s interior had been dimmed for sleep and movies, but there was still almost nothing to see outside. Just the benighted Indian Ocean below, no more welcoming than his friends in the Jardin de L’État, spreading out to the forbidding southern extremity of the globe like a creeping, unstoppable spillage of something black and malevolent.

  41. 31° 58' 44" S 115° 46' 4" E

  (Peta’s bedroom, Perth)

  3.30pm Western Australian Time (07:30 UTC)

  Sunday, 20 October

  Later that day, when Ruart’s Qantas flight to Broome was taxiing down the runway at Perth Airport, about twenty kilometres away Bob was removing Peta’s corset and Peta’s nextdoor neighbour, Maggie, was feeding celery to her pet rabbit Snowy.

  ‘Ouch!’ She grimaced as Bob accidentally pinched the skin on her back.

  ‘Sorry.’

  They’d only just returned from their sailing adventure – up the Kimberley coast, and how beautiful was that place? – and Peta had been surprised when Bob suggested they catch up again so soon. Nicely surprised, but, still… yeah, surprised. She hadn’t thought he was exactly the type, to be overkeen… not that she was complaining. Anyway, they were meant to be going out to dinner, but Bob had turned up early. Real early. He made her get dressed in ten minutes flat, and then what did he do? Make her take it all off again! Still, that was Bob and this was fun.

  ‘I wear this for you, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Doesn’t mean I don’t prefer you out of it.’

  ‘Out of my clothes? Or pissed?’

  Bob just smiled and kept unlacing.

  Outside, in the nextdoor backyard, Maggie was making noises that you’d expect a rabbit to make. A cartoon rabbit, that is, going tch, tch, tch, tch and shaking her head as if she had ears that moved and flopped around. Snowy looked at her nonplussed, his attitude to the celery unchanged.

  ‘Do you ever speak to your neighbour?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Maggie? Sometimes. She’s very sweet― ow!’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘That’s my sore shoulder.’

  ‘Sorry. The massage will fix that.’

  ‘So you say.’

  Finally, the corset fell to the floor. Victory, she supposed. All hail mighty Bob.

  ‘Now lie down,’ said Bob. ‘On your stomach. Where’s the oil?’

  ‘On the bedside table.’

  Snowy hopped away – must have been one “tch” too many, had it up to here with the freaky noises and the head shaking – and his little white butt disappeared into a hedge. Before she lay down, Peta caught Bob’s smile as he watched Maggie crossly toss the celery aside and stomp off, before turning his attention back to another white butt: the one in the room, on the bed. The one that was all his.

  ‘Does she call in often?’ he asked her.

  ‘Who? Maggie? Hardly ever.’

  ‘So I guess you wouldn’t get many visitors.’

  She turned around to see what expression Bob had on his face, it was an odd statement.

  ‘Face down,’ Bob instructed. He was stern. She kind of liked that.

  ‘Liked the dress you had on tonight, by the way.’ And with that, Bob began rubbing oil into Peta’s back.

  ‘Mmmm. Oh that is so nice. Aaah, just there, ohh…’

  Bob applied pressure, gently, to her sore shoulder, and then worked his way down her spine – he had wonderfully strong hands. Then it was back up her sides, lightly touching her breasts in passing, and up to her neck.

  ‘You’re good.’

  Bob said nothing. He pulled away. She waited for the cold sensation of fresh oil dripping onto the middle of her back, but nothing happened. After about fifteen seconds, she began to twist her neck around to see what Bob was doing, but Bob – a little roughly, she thought – pushed her head back down into the pillow.

  ‘Hey―’

  ‘Don’t look.’

  ‘Yeah, but you don’t have to be so rough! What are you doing anyway, the crowd’s getting restless.’

  Bob didn’t answer, but Peta could feel him sliding her panties off.

  ‘Oh I get it. One of those types of massages.’

  Bob again said nothing, but thank heavens, a few seconds later she could feel the cool tingling of the oil as it dribbled down onto her from above – this time onto her buttocks. Sh
e almost groaned, no, scratch that, she groaned all right, as those wonderful hands began massaging the oil in, with firm, downward-sweeping strokes, right down into the crack, and down to the insides of her upper thighs. She could feel herself getting turned on, becoming wet… my God, she was so horny, she didn’t see that coming!

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ she said, trying her hardest not to moan. But it was hopeless and the whimpers began to flow.

  Soon, Bob’s hands were going into all sorts of places, and she knew she shouldn’t, but she let him, and craved more, much more…

  And more he gave her. His fingers slid inside her, in and out, rhythmically, like the ocean – that’s what it felt like – a restless, pulsing sea, pounding the cliffs, the rocks, the caves of her grateful body, and then steadily, gradually, becoming more insistent, and then impossibly urgent, before that desperately-anticipated, crashing tidal wave of ecstasy overwhelmed her and she yelled out.

  It must have been a full minute afterwards before she looked up, and realised there was no-one in the room. Languidly, and serenely comfortable now in her nakedness, she rolled over fully and looked around. Empty, except for…

  Except for the open laptop she hadn’t noticed before, with its red light, and next to the light, the built-in camera: that unblinking little eye that stared at her and kept staring.

  42. 7° 59' 49" N 109° 59' 29" E

  (Uncharted reef, Spratly Islands, South China Sea)

  The same time

  2.30pm Indochina Time (07:30 UTC)

  Sunday, 20 October

  The first thing Drayle saw when he woke was a blinking red light next to his face. Just as he had every morning for the previous four weeks. It was a daily reminder of where he was and what had happened. Thank fuck he was out of there today. He’d have to kill someone otherwise. He may anyway.

  * * *

  Four weeks earlier. Monday, 23 September

  It was the morning after he arrived, and the first thing he saw when he woke up was that blinking red light. It was part of the machinery beside his bed. Silent, but making its own brand of noise. And making him realise, like the little aide-mémoire that it was, that the next time he looked in a mirror, he wouldn’t recognise the person staring back.

  Morning. At least he’d assumed it was morning, but was it afternoon? a.m. or p.m.? antemeridian or postmeridian? His mind was running around trying to catch its tail. He wanted to kick it.

  The machine may have been the first thing he saw, but the first person was Laska, the surgeon’s assistant, who was suddenly smiling down at him. The surgeon’s beautiful assistant, it had to be said, with her straight quartz hair and arctic-ice-blue eyes and perfect body, always tightly contained behind one or two thin layers of white cotton. She was smiling too, so he guessed the results must have been at least OK. No disasters, in other words.

  ‘Laska―’

  She quietened him immediately, putting a delicate forefinger against his lips.

  ‘Dominique. No speaking, remember? Just nod or shake head. You are feeling good, yes?’

  She spoke to him in English. Her voice was crisp and clear. And she always called him Dominique. He loved this. If one of his team ever called him that, he’d have them keelhauled, but from her it was somehow soothing.

  He nodded.

  ‘Great. It went… really well. The doctor is very happy, Is very, very happy.’

  He was concerned about the repetition, and the extra “very”. It was one too many. Something was wrong.

  ‘And I will bet… you are wondering how you look.’

  My God how he loved her Russian accent. He nodded again.

  ‘Yes? And so very very soon we are able to show you.’ She paused for a moment. It wasn’t a natural pause. Something was definitely wrong.

  ‘However.’ It was said as a sentence on its own. The cruellest of sentences.

  ‘There will needs to be a little further procedure, so just lie back and relax and…’

  Drayle didn’t hear the rest. He couldn’t exactly lie back any further and relaxing was out of the question. Especially after seeing, in the polished steel of the machine next to his bed, his very very unfortunate-looking visage.

  * * *

  He decided soon afterwards that it was no cause for concern. Admittedly his eyes were closed when he was thinking this, but the machine probably had a slightly undulating surface which skewed the reflection. He had a right to be edgy, though. It was not a minor operation.

  Drayle was in a doctor’s surgery – a mini-hospital really – that was contained within a structure standing in the middle of the South China Sea, about halfway between Brunei and Vietnam. It was implanted into a reef attached to a section of the Prince Consort Bank, which in turn formed part of the infamous Spratly Islands. Not much bigger than an oil rig in area, the oddly shaped – and even more oddly positioned – structure stood in water only a few metres deep. It was L-shaped: a white building on stilts essentially, crouched over topaz shallows, with a large white sphere perched on the roof at the corner of the “L” (like an oversized globe plucked from a dusty study) and a helipad (Drayle’s point of entry) at the other end. The sphere, which housed radar and other ‘intelligence’ equipment, stood on top of an eight-sided section of the building, five stories high, while the remainder of the structure was of variable height, and housed variously apartments, offices, a gymnasium, a restaurant and, of course, a hospital. There was also a small mooring jetty although larger boats had to anchor beyond the ring of white surf in the distance.

  Although the surrounding water was only a few metres deep, you didn’t have to travel far before the seabed fell away dramatically, in some places to depths of over two thousand metres. The Spratly Islands were not just a hot spot of simmering international tensions and feuds – the main players being China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia/Brunei – it was also a notoriously dangerous area for shipping, being near major shipping lanes, with reefs and abruptly variable depths, and frequent typhoons. When Drayle first arrived he couldn’t help but admire the skill of the early mariners, including of course the captain of the Prospero’s Dancer (whose skill though – or was it just luck? – deserted him off Namibia; unlucky for him, lucky for Drayle). Those clippers might have been fast, but they were still just as vulnerable to the perils of nineteenth century shipping. And modern shipping too, it would seem. The reefs were littered with wrecks, although at least one of the rusting remains, he was aware, had been steered there intentionally, for strategic purposes, enabling the country responsible to man the vessel with soldiers and thus occupy the reef in question, in an effort stave off the relentless advances of the Chinese.

  The particular structure that had just become Drayle’s temporary home was located in a part of the Spratly Islands occupied by Vietnam, although in this case, the building, the facilities and the personnel were all Russian. Built with the tacit permission of the Vietnamese government (or explicit – money or weapons had no doubt changed ownership at some point), it was a useful (and unpublicised) foothold for the Russians. (And handy for Drayle as well, with all his Russian connections. Many of his ‘foot soldiers’ were still Russian after all, and he himself was, even now, still treated as an honorary Russian, despite returning to Paris and leaving that snowdome known as Moscow far behind him.) Given it was situated in such a lawless part of the world, it probably suited everyone that the Russians were there. Except perhaps the Chinese who, as everyone knew, had their eyes on total domination of the South China Sea.

  It certainly suited Drayle. Not just because it was a perfect ‘pit-stop’ for whenever things got a little hot – he knew he had a number of agencies on his tail by this point, the latest irritation being a cop from Paris – but also because it provided him with something he needed now more than ever: a facelift. Or rather, not merely a facelift, but a full-blown facial reconstruction. Plastic surgery.

  It wasn’t that he had a problem with his looks. On the contrary, he’
d always been quite pleased with them, although in recent years others may not have agreed. Apart from the distinctive mixture of a double-chin and a severe cleft chin, he had a horizontal scar across his face, halfway up his nose and extending from cheek to cheek, that looked like someone had tried to slit his throat with a large, sharp knife but aimed too high. Distinctive too, and almost as conspicuous, were his curly blond hair and boyish rosy complexion – you wouldn’t have picked him for French. More like German. And with his strong build – broad shoulders and narrow waist – you’d have thought him an athlete were it not for the double-chin. None of this bothered him in the slightest. He was actually quite proud of his scar, grown quite fond of it over the years if mainly for its shock value, and he’d always attributed his numerous sexual conquests, at least in part, to his atypical appearance. What did bother him, though, was the fact that his looks made him simply too visible: he was a gift for a police facial composite interviewer and the risk of his being identified at an airport or seaport was now unacceptably high. So plastic surgery it was.

  The doctor was, he’d been assured, one of the best. To be enticed to work in such an unusual location required, obviously perhaps, the offer of a sizeable amount of money (and frequent transfers to and from an expensive, state of the art, paid-for apartment in Bangkok). Drayle was willing to trust him. He was hoping though that the North East Monsoon held off, as it was supposed to, and that no late summer typhoons ventured their way. He wouldn’t be wanting any slips of the scalpel.