The quarry was staying low, hugging the ground, heading for the lake, banking sharply, its white fuselage stark against the skyline. They followed.
The fighters caught up within seconds. They were more difficult to see, given away only by their movement against the dull background. The fugitive levelled off just above the lake surface, heading for German waters. The fighters seemed to be right on top of it. Just when I thought that I might lose sight of them, there was a huge splash out on the lake; then another; and another. Three splashes, like a stone being skipped across a pond. The fighters pulled up sharply and began circling. The aeroplane that they were chasing had disappeared. The fighters orbited the area twice and then turned and climbed away, heading southwest; no doubt returning to base.
We both looked out in silence at the spot where the business jet had disappeared. The lake was calm, as if nothing had happened.
Chapter 11
We sat there for a while doing nothing, saying nothing, just staring at the area where the business jet had disappeared: where the osmium had disappeared. Martina broke the silence,‘Ježíš Maria!’
I wanted to mark the position. Without taking my eyes off the place where I had seen the last splash, I tried to pick up any prominent landmarks in my peripheral vision. I could barely see the far shore; the visibility was poor and I couldn’t make out any details. But just to the left there was a small promontory on the Swiss side. It looked like there was a town there. It should be easy to identify. I stretched out my arm and made a fist. I placed a knuckle on the promontory and estimated where the jet had disappeared. The position was just beyond the third knuckle. There was not much else I could do.
Martina looked at me. ‘The jet crash?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ježíš. What we do now?’
‘I don’t know.’ I replied. ‘I really don’t know. Let’s drive up the lake and see if we can see anything.’ Martina nodded.
We drove in silence. The road followed the shoreline most of the way. When we reached Arbon, the next town, the main road curved away from the lake, so I battled through side streets, trying to keep the lake in sight. But there was still a way to go. It was only when we were approaching Romanshorn, about ten kilometres further on, that we saw a group of boats milling around on the water. I guessed it must be the crash site and put my foot down.
I found the Romanshorn harbour easily. There was a parking lot between the main harbour and a small yacht basin. It was full. A crowd had gathered at the water’s edge. They were all looking out in the direction of the boats. I eventually found a parking place and we joined the rubberneckers. The boats were more than a kilometre off shore. Some were stationary, others pottering around in circles.
I put my arm around Martina and we stood there for a while in silence, just watching the boats. A thin wind from the lake bit through our clothes; we both shivered.
Martina noticed the police cars first. There were two of them, parked next to the yacht basin. We wandered over to see what was happening there.
Below the police cars, tied up to the side of a small slipway, was a police motor launch. The crew were all wearing blue overalls with POLICE in big white letters stencilled across their backs. They were pulling the covers off and getting ready to go out.
There was a small crowd of spectators there too; Martina and I joined them, two more gawkers.
The crew cast off and the launch burbled out of the basin. Typical Swiss: an aeroplane had just crashed in the lake and they stuck scrupulously to the speed limit.
We returned to the promontory to watch the boat go out to the crash site. The crowd was thinning already, driven away by the cold. There was a silver coin-operated telescope that no one was using. I pushed two franks into the slot, lined it up on the accelerating police launch.
It headed directly to where the boats had congregated. Martina tugged at my sleeve, ‘Let me see. Let me see.’ she pleaded. I relinquished the eyepiece. She bent forward slightly to bring her eye level with the telescope. The movement pulled her jeans tight across her bum and for a moment I forgot why we were there.
I waited patiently for her to finish. When I looked again the police launch was in amongst the other boats.
After about twenty minutes the boats began to leave the area. Some returned to the Romanshorn harbour. Others headed south towards Arbon or Rorschach. One set off in to opposite direction, towards Friedrichshafen on the German side of the lake.
I examined the police launch through the spidery lens of the telescope. I was expecting divers to kit up and climb into the frigid water. But there was only one small splash and then the launch headed back to Romanshorn. I followed its progress through the telescope for a while, then panned back along the wake to where it had been. All that remained was a small orange buoy bobbing in the grey water, marking the spot where the aeroplane had disappeared.
Martina and I returned to the car. We drove in silence for a while. Then Martina looked at me sadly. ‘No Osmium?’
I shook my head, ‘I guess not.’
‘No Louis Vuitton.’
I looked across at her. She looked really upset: like she’d just lost a family member. I thought for a moment that she was taking the Mickey; but she was genuinely distraught.
‘Two pilots just died.’ I said.
Martina just rolled her eyes at me. The pilots were not on her list of priorities.
‘No Louis Vuitton!’ I said, making sure that she understood.
Martina pushed out her bottom lip. ‘So what we do now?’
‘Go back to the hotel. I’ll make some calls. I guess the Iranians still want their Osmium. I’ll see if I can organise another shipment.’
That perked her up. Her smile returned. She leaned across to give me a peck on the cheek,‘Dobře. Noah still make money for hismiláčka.’
The hotel’s central heating was stuffy after all the fresh air. While Martina disappeared into the bathroom for a service, I settled down with my cell phone.
I phoned Van Graan first. He was surprised to hear from me. ‘Is it really necessary to use the phone?’ he asked. His English was very good but the Dutch accent was unmistakeable, like his mouth was full of cotton wool.
‘Yes. There’s a problem with the delivery.’
There was a long silence on the other end. I was just about to look at the screen to see if we had been cut off when I heard him breathing in the background. ‘What problem?’
‘The roses failed to reach their destination safely.’ I felt like an arse having to talk in riddles. But considering the police and the Swiss Air Force, even I could appreciate the need for caution. ‘Keep an eye on the news,’ I said. ‘It’ll be on soon I’m sure.’ I hung up.
The only English news channel on the TV in the room was CNN, so I tuned to that and settled down to wait for the ‘Breaking News.’
I did not have to wait long. Martina hadn’t emerged from the bathroom yet when Ralitsa Vassileva looked earnestly into the camera and announced that a Russian registered business jet had just crashed in Lake Constance. The news crew was obviously still rushing through from Zurich or Geneva because the screen just showed a basic map of Switzerland showing the location of the lake.
I’d had the hots for Ralitsa Vassileva for a long time. Slavic women: the high cheekbones and pouting lips really did it for me. But she was getting a bit long in the tooth. Martina emerged from the bathroom; there must have been a remnant of Vassileva lust in my eyes because she glared at me when she saw who was on the screen.
‘It’s on CNN already,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘I need to call Jahangir. I don’t want him to hear about it from the television.’
Jahangir didn’t take the news well. He was stressed; talking fast. I tried to calm him down. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it right now Jahangir. I’ll organise another shipment.’ I told him.
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to my supplier.’
‘I cannot
wait another week. I need the goods now or the deal is cancelled.’
That got my attention. ‘I’ll organise it. Don’t worry. I’ll call you.’ I cut the connection and began worrying. The phone rang again. It was Van Graan. He was calling me. We really were in trouble.
‘We have a problem.’ he said.
No shit. ‘I know.’
‘No. Not that problem. Another one. The consignment was not insured.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No. I am not joking.’ It was like talking to a Swiss banker.
‘What about your letter?’ I asked. ‘You said you would organise the CIF.’
‘Roses are difficult to insure.’
‘And that’s my problem?’
‘The seller needs to recover the goods before anyone else does.’
He didn’t seem to understand, ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘It will take too long for them to send someone with the necessary expertise. The authorities will have discovered everything by then.’
‘And?’
‘And they wondered if there was some way that you could assist with the recovery.’
‘They want me to salvage the goods?’
‘Can you?’
Martina had been listening and was looking at me with a worried expression. I pushed the phone between my legs without cutting off Van Graan; my mind was racing.
The seller had not insured over one hundred and forty million dollars of osmium. The osmium was at the bottom of the lake and if nobody fished it out quickly the Swiss would.
It didn’t take a member of Mensa to work out that there was a lot more money to be made if I could salvage the osmium.
But I would have to do it quickly, get to it before the Swiss police did.
There was a muffled bleating from between my thighs and I remembered that Van Graan was still on the other end of the line.
I put the phone to my ear again. ‘I think I can work this.’ I said. ‘But if I do, my commission just doubled.’
‘Ja, ja. Just do it quickly.’ There was a smell of fear in his voice and I wondered if he was also in over his head.
There wasn’t much time. It wouldn’t be long before the Swiss police dived on the site. Then the game would be over. The clock was ticking.
I thought that winter would be the biggest obstacle. The water was probably less than ten degrees. I thought that if I could find a way to stay warm, the dive would be easy. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 12
On the way back from Romanshorn I’d seen a small ship’s chandler, stopped, bought a chart of the lake. After I’d made the calls we took the chart down to the restaurant, ordered lunch. While we waited for the food to arrive I moved the cutlery out of the way and spread the chart over the table.
We found Romanshorn on the chart quickly enough. All the towns around the lake were indicated clearly. Around the outside of the chart there were larger scale maps of all the harbours on the lake. There was not much detail of the lake itself; the only contour lines were close to the shore. The rest of the lake was divided into blocks of four square kilometres each. Numbers in blue indicated the maximum depth for each square.
I plotted roughly where I thought the aeroplane had hit the water, wrote down the co-ordinates. The depth there was 120 metres, way beyond the reach of recreational divers. The square next to it showed a depth of 191 metres and the one beyond that went down to 247 metres. I had never imagined that the lake was that deep, had no idea how to get to that depth. The whole thing seemed to be falling apart.
The deepest I had ever dived was 50 metres. I thought that 120 metres was close to the limit for any dive from the surface. As far as I knew, divers had gone deeper, but needed special equipment: diving bells, support vessels, decompression chambers. I would have none of those luxuries, and would’t know what to do with them if I did. I was going to need help.
There was only one person I could think of who might have the ability to do a dive like that: Denis Savin. Denis was my closest friend while in the Legion, an Algerian born to apied noire father and Algerian mother.
Denis and I had served with theDeuxième Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes in Corsica for most of our time in the Legion. The Legion is not that different to other armies; I was a strong swimmer, so they posted me to the 4th Company – sniping and demolitions. Denis, who couldn’t swim a stroke before he joined the Legion, was put the 3rdCompany – amphibious warfare. Denis became anageur de combat, a naval diver, and was one of the best they’d ever had. Maybe there was some sense in the posting. He was also one of those rare individuals who can organise almost anything with next to nothing.
Every army has at least one. They make contacts like a virus. They have the innate ability to beg, borrow steal or barter anything they need. If you were lucky enough to have such a scrounger in your unit, within days of arriving at some remote base the fixer would have sourced many of the little luxuries that make life bearable: despite having arrived with little more than the kit he was carrying.
While the other platoons had barely enough tents to house them, and relied on the slop from the mess to keep them alive, the scrounger’s platoon might be sitting watching the latest bootleg DVDs on a big screen television eating crisps and drinking cold beers from their own fridge. They would be connected to the headquarters Internet link and be visited by women of repute, ill or otherwise.
Denis was such a man. He had retired two years before me, found a security job in Iraq. I had not spoken to him almost three years; but I still had his number. I hoped he hadn’t changed it.
After lunch, Martina and I returned to the room and I phoned Denis. His gruff voice answered after only two rings, ‘Oui?’ Always the charmer.
‘Wotcher froggie?’ I said.
‘Putain de merde! Oo are you calling a frog you bloody Roastbeef.’ He obviously recognised my voice.
‘How’ve you been?’
‘Not bad. Getting shot and bombed by theputain de melons. Same shit. It’s time to retire.’
‘Fancy a holiday in Switzerland?’
‘Pah! ‘Oliday! Sure. Oo’s trying to kill you?’
‘No one. I fancied doing some diving in Lake Constance and thought you’d like to join me.’
‘Et mon cul c’est du poulet! At this time of year.T’est fou!’
‘No joke. It’s a deep dive. I need you.’
‘How deep?’
‘A hundred and twenty metres… or more.’
‘Merde. What’s the water temperature?’
‘Not sure exactly. Fucking cold.’
‘Money better be good.Combien?’
I thought about it for a while before answering. I could not recover the osmium without help, and Denis was the only person I knew that had the skills. And I could trust him. There was no point being greedy; if we were successful I was going to demand no less than ten percent of the value. ‘Half a million.’ I was giving money away at warp speed.
‘What… Zimbabwe dollars?’
‘Euro.’
There was a long silence.
‘Plus expenses.’
Still no response.
‘You still there?’
‘Oui.’ The voice was subdued. ‘What’s the catch?’
‘We need to start yesterday and the Swiss police might also be interested in diving on the same site.’
Denis did not hesitate, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow. Where are you staying?’
‘At the Hotel Weisses Rössli in Rorschach.’
‘Bon.We will need a boat, something with a cabin. I will bring all the other equipment. See you tomorrowinshallah.’ The line went dead.
I called Bill. Unusually, he answered the phone himself.
‘Hello.’
‘That’s not much of a greeting.’ I said.
‘What do you want me to say? I can’t even pronounce the name of my own company.’
‘Where’s Radka?’
‘Dunno. Proba
bly in the bog or something. Everything all right?’
‘Not really.’ I answered.
‘What happened?’
‘The roses went swimming.’
‘What the bloody hell are you alking about?’
‘The roses… you remember… what I’m here for?’
There was a pause before he answered. ‘Oh yeah. Them. Swimming?’
‘In the lake.’
‘Christ! You mean…?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now?’
‘I have a friend who’s a strong swimmer. He’s coming out to help me recover them.’
‘Let me know what happens.’ And he put down the phone.
Martina had been staring at me in silence throughout the calls. ‘Who is Denis?’
‘An old friend. We worked together a long time ago.’
‘You were diver?’
‘No. Soldier.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You will pay him half million euro?’
She had obviously not missed much of the conversation. ‘Yes.’
‘You have half million euro?’
‘No. But I will have. I’ll have much more when we get the Osmium.’
‘How much more?’
I did a quick calculation. ‘After expenses about six million.’
‘Euro?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ti vola!’
I held both her hands and looked her in the eyes. ‘But we haven’t got anything yet. There’s a lot to do before we can get the osmium. It might be dangerous; very dangerous. It will be better if you go home and wait for me in Prague.’
She pulled her hands away.‘Ne!You want me go so you leave yourmiláčka and not come back. You not want buy present for me. You take money and find new girl.’
I tried to put my arms around her, but she shrugged me off. ‘I don’t want to leave you Martina,’ I said. ‘I love you.Hodně. Je to pravda. I’m just worried that something might happen to you.’
Mascara-stained tears blackened her cheeks. ‘I don’t want go. I want stay here with you.’
Elements of Risk: A Noah Stark Thriller Page 6