Blind Reef

by Peter Tonkin

  There were two ambulances waiting for them under the day-bright dockside security lights, with two Terradyne Ghurka long-bodied armoured police vans and a white Ford Explorer SUV police car parked beside them. The ambulances and the Ghurkas were all positioned with their rears facing the dockside, doors open and motors running. Two pairs of hospital orderlies in cotton whites stood holding stretchers. Two pairs of policemen in protective vests stood holding what looked to Richard like Heckler and Koch UMPs with thirty-round magazines. Standing unmoving in the doorway that led out on to the deck, he changed his focus consciously without moving his head, taking in the nearer view on board. The four relatively undamaged men on Katerina’s deck, surrounded by empty Hayat water bottles, were all trying to make themselves look invisible. Hardly surprisingly, he thought. It was pretty unlikely that the ambulances were meant for them. Unless they put a foot wrong. Then, by the look of things, an ambulance would be the least of what they’d need.

  Robin joined him and the pair of them came out of the bridge house and on to the deck, side by side, like the old people figured in a German mechanical clock. Richard paused and looked around carefully once more, taking in the view and calculating dreamily, wondering, suddenly, whether some of the nitrogen bubbles had migrated from his knuckles and knees up into his brain. An image of his blood fizzing like warm champagne rose unbidden to his imagination. He shook his head, careful of the twinges in his neck, shoulders and back. And focused. The hospital was just at the rear of the dock facility. They wouldn’t even have to cross the road. The police station was a little more than a kilometre distant up behind the City Hall on El Benouk Road, not far from Anastasia Asov’s cliffside villa in the old Elseid district high on the hilltop, overlooking Katerina’s own private dock in the next eastward bay.

  As the gangplank was snugged into place by a couple of extremely nervous-looking harbourmaster’s men, the rear door of the SUV opened and a tall, slim officer in immaculate khaki uniform stepped out and walked down. The men with the guns came smartly to attention and the men with the stretchers shifted from foot to foot a little apprehensively. All of them watched as Captain Husan and Mahmood secured the plank’s lower end to Katerina and stood back. Richard gritted his teeth and made his way across the deck and up on to the dock, moving like a rusty robot. Robin followed him, both far too stiff and sore to even dream of changing out of their terry towelling robes and into something more formal, and both thanking God Almighty and Anastasia Asov that Katerina’s gangplank had handrails on either side of it.

  As soon as they were on the dock itself, the officer came forward and saluted courteously, taking them both in with the gesture before turning towards Richard. Richard had an instantaneous, oddly indelible impression of a long, lean face with kindly, dark brown eyes beneath quizzically raised eyebrows and a wide, thin moustache between a straight nose and a generous, humorous mouth. The jaw was square and the teeth as white and perfect as a film star’s. ‘Captain Mariner,’ he said smoothly in perfect English. ‘I am Major Ibrahim of the Egyptian Police Service. I have been in contact at some length with my colleague Coastguard Captain Mohammed of the Swiftship Class 93 patrol vessel Taba. I am fully apprised of your situation and that of the men you have rescued and brought aboard. I see from your deportment that the decompression sickness has begun to take hold. I will keep formalities brief, therefore.’ He glanced down at Richard’s hands knowledgeably. ‘And I will require no signatures at this stage.’

  Major Ibrahim’s wise eyes swept the dockside and Katerina’s increasingly crowded deck below it. ‘I am a diver myself and appreciate your situation. It is my intention to allow you and everyone aboard your vessel who is hurt or wounded in any way immediate access to the hospital. Anyone not requiring immediate hospitalization will come with me up to El Benouk where I have secure accommodation and a police doctor waiting. During the next day or so as you recover, I or my colleagues from Immigration and Security will interview everyone we hospitalize tonight. And to ensure that everyone remains available, we have arranged a secure ward and I will leave a detachment of my men as guards. Yourself, Mrs Mariner and the crew of your boat, who are here quite legally of course, will only need to give witness statements and you will be free to go about your business when you have done so. You will not be held anywhere. Except in the decompression chamber.’ The ends of the moustache lifted in a gentle smile. ‘And you will not have to consider repatriation of course, until your visas run out. The others will join their friends in El Benouk as soon as they are well enough, and their cases will be assessed from there. Now, have you any questions?’

  Richard might have and Robin certainly did. But they both felt as though a power drill was piercing every joint their body possessed, including the joints that controlled their jaws. Even the act of breathing was becoming agonizing. Speaking was currently out of the question. And both were becoming light-headed, almost on the verge of narcosis. ‘I’m sure you do,’ continued Major Ibrahim, nodding. ‘But this is clearly not the best moment to ask them. The situation in which we all find ourselves will not have altered significantly when you get out of the decompression chamber some time tomorrow. We can address any matters you wish to raise then. In the meantime, I will take charge of the situation.’

  Major Ibrahim gestured to the hospital orderlies, who came forward with the stretchers and, with the assistance of some colleagues from the back of the ambulances, helped Richard and Robin to lie down. The last thing Richard saw as the pair of them were loaded into the first ambulance was another set of stretcher-bearers hurrying down the gangplank followed by yet more men in white. They were closely followed in turn by the men in the bulletproof jackets with a lot more well-armed colleagues from the backs of the armoured cars.

  Richard and Robin were soon joined in the first ambulance by Ahmed and, a little later, by the two unconscious men. Meanwhile, the five of them were separated from the two with lung and airway damage on the dockside. Those two joined the four with more superficial wounds. The five with decompression sickness were clearly to travel in the first ambulance, the other six in the second. As he had said he would, Major Ibrahim took the other four up towards the Central Police Station on El Benouk Road. Captain Husan and Mahmood would then take Katerina round to her private berth beneath Anastasia’s villa, Richard reckoned. But everything other than his personal experiences began to take a back seat in his mind after the doors of the ambulance closed and the five-minute ride to hospital got under way.

  Richard had hardly registered that the ambulance doors were closing and the vehicle was in motion before it stopped and the doors were opening again. Abruptly, he was surrounded by lights, bustle, strange faces and white coats. The specialist doctor on call introduced himself as Dr Zabr as he went about assessing the situation of the first five arrivals swiftly and with a practised eye. He prescribed Ibuprofen as he talked through the triage with a younger colleague and the male nurses manning the decompression suite. Under the circumstances, the anti-inflammatory was injected. A pin-prick that, in comparison with the agony in their joints, they could literally hardly feel. As he and the others were wheeled through to the hyperbaric section, Richard lost sight of the six walking wounded from the second ambulance, bound, no doubt for assessment and more advanced treatment than he and Robin had offered, and then the secure ward under police guard.

  As the five of them were wheeled through to the hyperbaric area, Dr Zabr’s conversation with his young colleague – courteously conducted, like the introduction, in English – thoroughly refreshed his understanding of decompression procedures. The three who were awake were type two patients in the international triage system, Dr Zabr was explaining, but because they had taken so long to get here, he was happy to treat them as potential type three casualties like the two unconscious men, who might well be at serious risk of permanent damage or even death. Joint pain such as the three waking patients were experiencing – and the tell-tale welts and skin rashes evident when their robes
were opened – could well lead to dangerous spinal or pulmonary damage, which was already threatened by the pain they were experiencing moving their heads and breathing. Even if the type three victims had not necessitated the use of the decompression chamber, it would hardly have been appropriate at this stage to insist on the more usual type two treatment of repeating the dive – this time being careful to observe decompression stops dictated by the dive computers. It was a procedure often recommended in less serious type two cases because, unlike decompression in the hyperbaric chamber, it was free. That was as far as the conversation got before they were at the chamber itself. The three who could – just about – walk, were helped inside. The other two were rushed in beside them. And it was at this stage that Richard began to look around himself once more, made more alert by the resurgence of knee pain when he bent his legs in order to sit down.

  The decompression chamber, entered through a round, pressure-proof bulkhead door, was surprisingly neat, bright and well fitted out. It was long and spacious, more like a waiting room than a treatment area, with comfortable chairs, piles of magazines and even some books. It was tubular, however, and in spite of its size felt a little like a submarine. The nautical effect was further emphasized by the fact that there was a series of round windows resembling port holes in one wall that looked out into the control room. All in all, had he been more like his old self, however, Richard would have been making wisecracks about Hobbits and their holes.

  Once he was seated and the Ibuprofen began to kick in, Richard became dreamily detached once more, watching as both doctors and the medical staff placed Robin and the other patients inside speedily and efficiently, indicating the oxygen masks that were available to help with breathing, settling them over noses and mouths, pulling elastic fittings behind their ears and strapping or clipping monitors to wrists and fingers so that blood pressure, respiration and heart rate could be monitored from outside while compressed air gently elevated the pressure in here at about the same speed as the pressure in an airplane cabin was varied after take-off and before landing. Pressurizing any faster would endanger their eardrums. Eventually the overall pressure would rise to the equivalent of three atmospheres – the ambient pressure at twenty metres underwater. And then, slowly, begin to reduce.

  Before Dr Zabr closed the door and began the procedure, his young colleague entered the chamber and sat in the last spare chair. ‘I am Doctor Adel,’ he said quietly. ‘I will stay with you throughout the procedure in case there is any emergency. I suggest you keep the oxygen masks in place – though I know they are not very comfortable – as breathing oxygen helps to rid the nitrogen from your systems. The entire procedure will take about six hours, so I suggest you relax.’ He picked up a magazine and began to glance through it.

  Neither Robin nor Ahmed availed themselves of any of the reading material, Richard observed, the oxygen giving him a short-term surge of energy and focus. Doubtless because, like him, they were finding every attempt to move any part of their bodies excruciating. And the pain seemed to be most intense where it had first manifested itself – in the knuckles. Though, he thought, in his case his knees ran his hands a close second. Both knees had been injured in a terrorist incident some time ago, and had been repaired with sufficient titanium to set off security alarms at every airport he ever travelled through. The bends seemed to have targeted the injuries with particular force. Dreamily, he considered that, in his case at least, the term ‘bends’ was wildly inappropriate. It was trying to bend his fingers, toes, hips and knees that really caused the most acute agony. As the air pressure began to rise, however, the pain began to recede, attacked not only by the reduction of nitrogen bubbles but by the gathering effect of the anti-inflammatory drug. And, perhaps not too surprisingly, given the nature of their adventure so far, the stress, the pain and the mildly narcotic effect of the Ibuprofen, once the pain was reduced to bearable levels he found himself beginning to nod off.

  Richard jerked awake, unusually disorientated. Blinking owlishly, he looked around himself, registering the featureless, clinical brightness of his surroundings. Some partially recalled memory deep in his subconscious felt mild surprise that he could move so freely and without pain. But he was cold. The wetsuit top and rash vest beneath it were clammy. In spite of the robe they were wrapped in, his legs were covered in goose bumps. The Speedo boots felt like lumps of ice – and the shorts felt little warmer. The next thing after the chill that he registered was the fact that he was ravenous. Visions of thick bacon and sausage sandwiches dripping with butter, mustard and HP sauce filled his head.

  It was these mouth-watering fantasies that helped him remember where he was. He had been dreaming occasionally of bacon, sausages, pork chops and crackling since he arrived in the strictly Muslim country where such things were utterly forbidden. He glanced at the dive computer on his wrist. Isolated from the rest of his equipment, it told little more than the time, which was seven a.m. local. His waking mind raced. It must have been nearly three by the time they reached the hospital. The young doctor – what was his name, Adel? – had said the procedure would take six hours, and yet he felt absolutely fine after four. He reached up – glorying in the pain-free movement of his fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders – and removed the oxygen mask from his numb ears. He reached out as though preparing to embrace a giant and stretched luxuriously. Better than fine, in fact. Rejuvenated. Almost reborn. He had never felt so alive and full of fizzing vitality. He looked around himself. Robin and Ahmed were also sound asleep – as was the young doctor. Richard found himself smiling indulgently, overflowing with cheery good-nature. In this kind of mood, he thought, I could give Father Christmas a run for his money.

  ‘Sah!’

  The whispered word came as a complete surprise. So much so that he almost supposed it to be part of the returning sensation to his numb ears and not a real sound at all.

  Until it was repeated, more urgently and slightly more loudly. ‘SAH!’

  Richard looked across the chamber. The young man with the baggy white vest he had cut free from the anchor was awake and half on his right side, his torso raised, supported by his right arm. Huge dark eyes framed with thick, full lashes stared at him with a desperate fierceness. ‘Sah!’ spat the boy again, frowning with the effort, as though he was enraged with the entire world.

  Even after an adult lifetime in command of ships under all sorts of circumstances, it took a moment more for Richard to realize the young man was calling him sir.

  ‘Yes?’ Something in the man’s look and tone made Richard answer in the same almost-whisper as he was using.

  ‘Sah. See. See!’ Long, delicate black fingers were pulling desperately at the baggy vest around his middle.

  Intrigued, but still not quite certain of what was going on, Richard stood and took a step towards the gurney. He realized his right hand was still attached to the equipment that had been strapped and clipped on to it four hours ago. But the way he had reached out before stretching made him confident there was enough play in the wiring to let him cross the chamber without taking it off if he was careful. Silently on his Speedo dive boots, pulling at the wiring on his right hand with his left fist, he crossed to stand by the young African’s side.

  The fingers bunched the thin white cotton and pulled it up to his armpit, revealing a cavernous belly and a set of ribs that were separated by deep, dark valleys. Loose and low around his hips, which stuck out like mountain peaks, he was wearing a thick black rope knotted just about tightly enough to keep his baggy khaki shorts up. His skin was a deep, dull brown, mottled with bruising, scratched, scraped and welted. None of which really registered with Richard, whose gaze was simply arrested by the fact that between the black rope and the bowed ribs the man was wearing a makeshift rubber body or money belt. Its very existence was a surprise to Richard, who thought he must have seen or felt anything the man was wearing at some stage of the rescue. But clearly not.

  And the implication of the young man’s a
ction – let alone of the pleading expression on his fine boned face – was clear enough. Major Ibrahim or the men from Immigration and Security would search everyone taken aboard Katerina and brought here because they were at the very least illegal immigrants – whether they were being smuggled or trafficked in the first place. And anything they found was likely – no, certain – to be confiscated. But no one was likely to search Richard, Robin or Ahmed. And, to make things simpler still, Richard was wearing a baggy terry robe beneath which he could almost have hidden the young African – let alone his money belt.

  He met the young man’s desperate stare and nodded once, decisively. As the long, dark fingers hurriedly started to loosen the belt, Richard look a swift and secretive glance around. Robin, Ahmed and Dr Adel were all sound asleep. There was no one at the portholes through which the people in the control room could look in. The African on the second gurney also seemed deeply unconscious. Richard undid his robe left-handed and eased it open. The desperate young man pulled the money belt free – it was little more than a cleverly adapted combination of inner tubing from a tyre and more black rope. There was no way to see what it contained but it was clearly desperately important.

  Richard took it, assessing from the feel of it what the chances were that it had got water in it during last night’s adventure. It felt light and therefore he assumed it was probably dry. He crossed back to his seat and rolled up his dive vest – something made easier by the fact that he had dumped all his buckshot weights. The blue panelling ended at about navel-level. There was a broad black band which had contained the weights reaching on down to his hips. With fingers made clumsy by the clip-on attachments and wristband, he nevertheless managed to loop the belt round his hips over his rash vest and knot it tight. When he rolled the black band down again, the money belt beneath it simply vanished, black on black. And when he tightened his robe once more no one would ever have suspected that it was there.