“Goddamn it!” he growled, as he crossed from the tiny cabin to the master suite. He yanked his suit bag out from under the bed and folded his business suit and all his clean shirts into it. Then he hauled out his Louis Vuitton rolling luggage and crammed in his vacation clothing, shaving kit, and hair products.
Things were going along so well, and then suddenly it had all turned to shit. Oh, the marriage had gone cold years ago, but the business partnership had continued. He always had plenty of young women to fuck—would-be actresses looking for an agent, the occasional bar meetings and hired escorts—so he was never hard up. And if need be, he could still sometimes get Kaia drunk enough to let him have a quick poke at her.
But that was rare. He’d already lost his lust for her when she’d turned forty. He liked his women young and vivacious with tight little pussies and mouths that knew how to suck. Kaia had never shown much interest in anything kinky, so he began to look for it elsewhere. If he’d known she liked girls that might have extended his interest
in her.
Still, she was big box office, and they’d made a lot of money together. More money than he ever expected. This fucking divorce was going to be a disaster. With his main star gone from the roster, his office would be reduced to pushing the careers of perky, talentless twits and queer pretty-boy actors.
He snorted, cramming the last of his clean underwear into the corner of his luggage and zipping it shut. The screwing you get for the screwing you got. Well, it wasn’t over yet. No, it definitely wasn’t over.
“Jibril!” he shouted. When the crewman appeared, Bernie pointed to his luggage. “Take that up to the end of the dock, will you? And call me a taxi.”
“Yes, Mr. Allen,” Jibril replied mechanically, and began wrestling the bulky objects up the spiral staircase. Bernard had already turned away to snap his briefcase shut. He’d worry later about his diving and fishing equipment, but everything he’d need for the short term was packed, so he quickly perused the cabin. Nothing of interest was left.
Had Kaia stolen anything from him? She’d broken into his safe, so he wouldn’t put anything past the bitch now. He kicked open the door of the VP cabin and glared down at the still-unmade bed with its several damp spots. The sight aroused him, provoking an image of them doing what lesbians did—and he’d made enough porn to know what that was. For a brief moment, he fantasized fucking them both but then turned away, disgusted.
There on top of the bureau stood Kaia’s silly plaster figurine of the goddess Hina. He knocked it onto the floor with his fist and stepped on it, crushing it.
He climbed up to the salon deck, checked the dining table for keys or other things he might have forgotten, then strode through the glass doors. On the stern deck he spotted Kaia’s new diving gear, faintly registering annoyance that she was diving now with equipment just like his.
“I hope she fucking drowns in it,” he muttered, kicking her buoyancy vest in passing. Then he stopped and stared back at it for a long moment before turning away.
An idea took shape gradually as he made his way along the dock toward the path where Jibril stood with his luggage. He dismissed the crewman with a mumbled thanks but no tip and waved at the arriving taxi. He was changing his afternoon’s plan by the second, and by the time he was seated in the taxi, he’d altered his destination from “airport” to “Sheraton Hotel.”
*
Bernard propped himself up on pillows piled against the headboard of his hotel bed, stirring the ice in the remains of his scotch. His plans were beginning to gel, and he was feeling rather good now. He took a sip and winced. It wasn’t Johnny Walker Blue, but it was all the minibar had. He set it aside, lit a cigar, and made the first of several preparatory calls.
“Hello, Linda? Yeah, it’s me. Everything okay at the office? Good. Listen, we’re having some work done on the boat, so we’re staying for a while in a hotel. The Sheraton Miramar. Let me give you the number.” He recited the numbers of the hotel telephone and his room.
“Yeah, yeah. We’re fine. Kaia’s got a new hobby and is going nuts for scuba. Who’d a thought, huh? I keep warning her how dangerous it can be. It’s not like snorkeling. But you know how headstrong she can be.”
He grunted agreement with the cheerful platitudes coming from his secretary. “Anyhow, I just wanted to check in and see if I had anything urgent on my desk. No? Great. You’ll let me know if anyone calls in, right? I’m always reachable. Oookay. Bye for now.”
And it was done. He leaned back and took another puff on his cigar, calculating how to proceed. He was getting a clearer idea now and even made a sort of mental calendar, with all the steps and specific tasks for each day. They’re right, he concluded. Revenge is best served cold. He took another slug of the inferior scotch and felt in control again. And control made him horny.
It was time to put on an expensive suit and go down to the bar. He’d never met a hotel bar in any country that didn’t have at least one woman who suddenly became available when he let slip that he was a Hollywood agent. He knew how to spot them, too, and he always chose the youngest one, the one with the firmest tits and tightest little ass. Oh yeah. He was feeling better already.
Chapter Twenty-two
Seven o’clock and the sky was just turning from whorish orange-fuchsia-pink to respectable blue. Joanna resolved to dive more often in the early morning. More of the larger fish were visible, and in general, it did the soul good. This morning her soul was doing very well indeed, since all the pieces of her exhibit were in place, and Kaia was by her side. It had been a long, hard haul in the last few days, but with Charlie’s help, she’d cast a beautiful Atiyah and made her deadline. Now she had only one small addition to make before the opening the next day.
A pleasant breeze wafted through her hair as she stood on the lower stern deck pulling on her new wetsuit. Next to her, Kaia struggled with hers, becoming familiar with the deceptive tightness of neoprene. Jibril came onto the stern with two fresh bottles of compressed air and stood expressionless over them while they connected the cylinders to their buoyancy-control vests.
Joanna closed her weight belt and hefted on her vest-cum-tank, glancing at Kaia who, with Jibril’s help, succeeded in doing the same. She patted her pockets to check she had the necessary tools: tubing, underwater adhesive, cutter. She spit-cleaned her mask to prevent fogging, then wiggled her feet into her fins. Together they flapped the last two steps to the edge of the deck.
They knew the routine. Guarding their masks and mouthpieces with one hand, they leapt together, submerged briefly, then bobbed to the surface. “Everything okay?” Joanna asked. Kaia signaled fine, and they descended slowly, feet first and face to face.
In a few minutes they were at the underwater site, just above the train station. Joanna hovered awhile, giving Kaia time to scan the buildings and objects that made up the City on the Plain. There was no diver’s sign for wow, but Kaia invented one, spreading the fingers of both hands and holding them out in front of her. Seeing the exhibit through Kaia’s fresh eyes, Joanna couldn’t help but feel proud of the collective achievement by artists of a dozen nations
Kaia swam first around Gil’s locomotive, running her hand along the rim of the smokestack, then paddled a short distance into the middle of the city square and made a circle. She returned to Joanna and once again made her wow sign.
Joanna had seen most of the exhibits, either in the holding lot or under water, but she hadn’t seen Charlie’s wall, and he’d been very mysterious about it. She motioned to Kaia to follow her and paddled toward the arcade.
A long building with a solid wall along the back and a series of eight columns running along the front, it housed several works. Joanna led the way past Rami’s acrobats at one end and Japhet’s Band of Brothers at the center. Then they reached Charlie’s wall.
Under the roof of the arcade the light was much reduced, and Joanna shone her flashlight on the display. In the murky half-darkness, a skeleton rested on an elbow, one bon
y hand clutching a tablet and the other a stylus. Its skull, thrown back and facing the onlooker, was startling. The slightly open jaws seemed to laugh. More disturbing were the eye sockets that should have been hollow, but instead held pupil-less white balls that caught the light and stared up at them, blind and shimmering.
Joanna gazed for a few moments upon the eerie memento mori, then raised her light to illuminate the wall. She read only the first two lines of the text chiseled in lovely calligraphy before memory tightened her throat.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Joanna hadn’t read or even thought about Shakespeare’s The Tempest in decades, and she had completely forgotten Ariel’s little song. But now the recollection came to her from over a quarter of a century and struck her hard. Prospero was her father’s last role, and the celebration of the play’s success had marked the last night of his life.
She’d told Charlie of his drowning, as she had told Kaia, simply in passing, but she had never made the connection with the song. Her lips trembled around her mouthpiece. So like Charlie, to hold on to a little detail like that and give it back to her as a gift.
Kaia also seemed moved by the verse, for she drifted down near the skeleton and studied it until Joanna nudged her shoulder. They emerged then from the colonnade and Joanna led the way past the works of the other artists—the Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, the Saudi stallions, Sanjit’s animal gods, Yoshi’s dragon, Marion’s underworld balance. They’d study them in detail on another day. Today she had a final job to do.
After curving around the periphery of the exhibit, they arrived at the fountain at the northwestern corner. Seeing it again, Joanna was all the more grateful that George had rejected the slope. The two levels suited the drama of her scenario perfectly, with the murder of Atiyah high on the slope and the fountain and girls at the foot.
Kaia paddled up the slope and hovered in front of the statue of herself. Joanna joined her, noting with pleasure the shafts of sunlight that penetrated the water and sparkled around it like a blessing.
Presumably bored of admiring her own image, Kaia let herself sink down toward the two girls at the fountain, and Joanna seized the opportunity to inspect the last-minute alterations she had made to the statue. Her final idea, of a way to bring Atiyah “alive” once more, had been an inspiration, but it had taken all her skill and hours of work to execute it. And there was no way to test it before opening day without ruining the surprise. Everything did seem to be in place, though. The fine plastic tubing and the holes she’d drilled were all discreet.
Satisfied she descended to the foot of the slope to prepare her final coup.
She circled the fountain, her chest nearly on the seabed, and brushed the sand from around its base until she located the pipe leading to the internal reservoir. Coming to a halt, she withdrew a six-inch length of fiberglass tubing and a syringe of underwater adhesive from her pocket. With deft movements, she smeared a collar of the glue around one end of the tubing and thrust it into the pipe. Once the bonding agent had set, the tube would sit firmly and would not be dislodged by the constant handling of divers.
Still lying on her chest in the limestone sand, she searched along the base of the fountain with her fingers for the end of the duct tape she had attached in the workshop. Ah, there it was, still holding tightly. It would certainly stay in place until opening day.
All tasks accomplished, she lifted herself from the sea floor and prepared for the ascent. Suddenly a hand on her arm swung her around, and before she could react, Kaia removed both their mouthpieces and pressed a brief kiss on her mouth.
Given the steel tanks on their backs and the buoyancy vests protruding from their chests, an embrace of any sort was impossible, but the kiss was not. Kaia flicked her tongue into Joanna’s mouth, along with a shot of salty water. Playful and emboldened, she tugged the two of them together and entwined her legs in Joanna’s.
Joanna used her free hand to grab Kaia by the buttocks, and inside her own neoprene suit, she felt the sudden warmth of sexual awareness.
The kiss quickly reached its natural end, as their oxygen depleted, and they once again sucked compressed air. But they still hovered playfully with legs entwined, neither one wanting to separate from the other. Then Kaia pointed to her own heart, crossed her arms, and touched the center of Joanna’s chest. The universal sign for I love you.
*
Bernard took one final look at his list and his calculations before tearing the paper into tiny pieces and flushing them down the toilet.
It seemed foolproof. He had been watching the yacht for days, noting the rhythm of the two women. They generally dove early in the morning, then left the water around ten to go to the workshop. They presumably took meals with the other artists, because they never returned to the boat before eight. A visit to the yacht one afternoon on the pretense of collecting forgotten items revealed that only Jibril was working, and that his last duty each day was to fill their air tanks at the compressor before leaving about five.
Bernard knew what to do now, when to do it, and, most important, how. He needed only a length of hose of the right diameter, and he had already measured for that. A quick rummage through the locker and through the engine room the day before had yielded nothing useful, but with a few brief inquiries, he had located a marine-supply shop. Allowing himself another cigar, he headed for the commercial street in El Gouna.
A few tourists wandered among the shops, buying the pharaonic kitsch, or jewelry, or souvenir beach towels that had EL GOUNA DIVER embroidered across the bottom. A few people, not many, sat at tables on the various restaurant terraces drinking beer or cola. He was perspiring, more from nerves than exertion, and could have used a beer himself, but he didn’t have any time to waste. The opening ceremonies for the underwater city were the next day so this was his last opportunity to pull everything together. He spotted the marine-supply shop and flicked his half-smoked cigar into the street.
The shop was empty of customers and the proprietor himself was absent, so Bernard searched out the relevant aisle and rummaged among the boxes of plastic and rubber tubing.
A slender man of about forty with deep acne scars came through a rear door with a glass of tea. He set it down on the counter and approached Bernard. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for tubing. About five centimeters in diameter.”
The shopkeeper bent down and drew two hoses, both of plastic, from a lower shelf. “What length? We have three, five, and ten meters.”
“Three meters will be fine. And I need a collar clamp to hold it in place.”
“Right here,” the man said, fishing the item from a box of miscellaneous hardware.
“Not much business today,” Bernard observed as they walked together to the front counter.
“Not much business any day. Too many shops and not enough tourists. Nobody buy anything.”
“But a shop like this isn’t for tourists. All those yachts in the marina need stuff like this.” Bernard tilted his head in the general direction of the harbor.
“No. They bring everything themselves. They need maybe screws, nails, some oil, or a little hose like this.” He held up Bernard’s purchase. “Maybe after the underwater city is open, things will get better. Inshallah.” He added the usual appeal to God.
“You think it’s going to make that much of a difference, a bunch of statues?”
“Statues and treasure. Everybody is hoping for a big treasure.”
“Treasure? What do you mean?” Bernard suddenly thought of George something-or-other, the pathetic diver he’d shared a late-night whiskey with. Could it be the same thing?
“Everybody is talking about the treasure, but nobody knows where to find it.”
“
I don’t understand. How do you know about it then?”
“The cousin of my wife works for the committee, and he saw things in the committee office. Gold cups, plates. They said they were from under water. But nobody knows where. He’s not a diver, so he asked someone to look but nobody knows where. Maybe the committee knows but is not telling. Everybody waits to find out the story. Maybe tomorrow when all the divers are go down.”
“When all the divers go down? Oh, right. The opening ceremonies. They’re at noon, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Cousin of my wife asked someone to go look, but I think too many people all at once is not good. So for my shop, I just hope many more boats to come to El Gouna.”
“Yes, thank you,” Bernard said, scarcely paying attention as he handed over a wad of Egyptian pounds for his purchase and wandered out of the shop into the evening sunlight. Damn, he thought. George was right. What was it he said? Oh yeah, it was at the bottom of the drop-off under the sign for Site 13. Right behind the dragon.
This changed the schedule somewhat. He’d planned to carry out his strategy in the early evening, then go to the hotel bar for a celebratory dinner and, with a little luck, find himself some late-night nooky. He’d already checked out the bar and seen several likely candidates among the hotel clientele. But now he’d have to hurry to finish the preparations in time to dive while it was still light. That would be a bit more complicated. Celebration and bar conquests would have to wait.
But it was a great plan in which he’d never be a suspect. He imagined Kaia losing consciousness under water in front of a hundred people, her lezzie girlfriend unable to save her. It would be her best performance yet. Then he’d stand on the shore, holding gold artifacts and gloating, while the emergency services hauled her body in a plastic bag into an ambulance.
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