37 Hours

by J. F. Kirwan

  It was almost empty. At the bottom was a triangular zipped-up case made of Kevlar. Almost certainly a pistol and ammunition. Leaning against the inner side was a spear gun and a rack of five spears. He sealed the case, reset the reels to where they had been, and proceeded to the next one. Same routine, took a while longer. Inside: a longer Kevlar case. Probably a folded-up sniper rifle.

  It had been too easy, if these were Salamander’s men, as he suspected. He reinspected every inch of the room. Nothing. The bathroom. The shelves, the chest of drawers. Back to the bathroom. Something didn’t seem quite right. Toothbrushes, closed razors, toothpaste, and a small bottle of contact lens fluid, next to a flat plastic lens holder, with two circular capped moulds. He opened it. A single lens – the right one; the left mould empty.

  He put his forefinger into the lens in its sticky fluid, scooped it from the mould, and put it in his eye, then waited a few seconds for his eye to accommodate to the difference created by the lens. Except there was no difference. Maybe it was a little darker. Sure enough, in the mirror his right iris looked a darker shade of grey than the left.

  He went back into the room, and stopped dead. The chest of drawers, the door hinges, and the luggage were all littered with bright pink fingerprints. His.

  It took him twenty minutes to wipe the prints off everything, return the lens to its case, and then retreat from the room without leaving any trace. He headed for the bar.

  ‘Soda water,’ he said to the barman. ‘No ice.’

  He stared towards the sea. His theory had proven correct. Salamander wanted Nadia dead. Because of the Rose, though only indirectly. She would die without even knowing the real reason. The colonel had been right to snatch her at the airport before she’d gone through customs. She’d never have made it home.

  Ironic that the colonel, of all people, had saved her. Surely he knew…

  Vladimir walked with his drink to a table in the shade. The waiter had dropped a slice of lime in it. A nice touch. He pulled out a phone and dialled a number. It rang a long time, then someone picked up, though there was no greeting.

  ‘Hide Katya,’ Vladimir said in Russian, then hung up.

  ***

  Nadia glided down through the menagerie of fish and coral that was the South China Sea. What more could she want for her birthday? After two years in a grey cell, the vibrant reds, yellows and greens almost stung her eyes. In her head she began recording the intense variety – orange and black clownfish sheltering amongst the swaying tentacles of tangerine anemones; black and purple surgeonfish sailing over massive clumps of beige brain coral; bright yellow, youthful butterfly fish darting here and there; glassfish hovering in the mouth of a cave; Picasso triggerfish nibbling on brilliant sky blue staghorn coral; green and red rainbow wrasse hassling other fish, as usual.

  As she and Jake slipped deeper down the slope, hitting fifteen metres, it changed to a cliff face, a sheer drop down to around fifty metres. A very large turtle headed straight up towards them, almost the size of a small car. Its lazy, slanted eyes watched them as it rose, its carapace battered and scarred, too old to worry about humans’ constant rushing about.

  Jake pointed down to two white-tip reef sharks traversing the cliff ten metres below. As he and Nadia freefell in slow motion to thirty metres, the colours shifted to blues and greens, no more yellows and reds, as the longer-wavelength colours were leached out by the seawater. A spotted moray eel undulated in the current, most of its body hidden inside a crevice in the reef. Nadia put her forefinger at risk, dangling it close to those razor teeth. The eel came out towards her. She stroked its silky skin, though she knew it was not advised, look don’t touch being the golden rule. But she had a special rule of her own: all rules can be broken on birthdays.

  Jake swam up close and pointed to his air gauge. She found hers and read the remaining air, then held up one finger, then seven. One-seventy bar left in her tank. Plenty. He gave the thumb-down signal and they descended. Giant, forest-green gorgonian fans, as tall as her, shivered in the current. Jake pointed and she gazed down to where the cliff became a slope again. She didn’t see it at first, so simply followed him, trying to pick out what he had seen. It looked like sand and boulders. But there was a curve…

  She accelerated, realising what it was, never having seen one in real life. A leopard shark, the same colour as the boulder, was lying there, its gills working in the current. Its grooved body lay flat on the sand while its tail curved up like a Japanese sword, half the length of its body. Jake had said these were class 1, so she took him at his word and drew very close to it. The shark’s pale eyes followed her. As she landed, it thrashed its tail and launched from the bottom. She reached out, and brushed three fingers along its sandpaper hide before it got away.

  She knelt on the floor, watched it glide into the blue. She’d thought about committing suicide in prison more than once, had grown so depressed, everything black and grey and bleak. Yet here she was, in one of the best dive locations on the planet, with someone who cared about her. She realised it was mutual. Jake was opposite, watching her, watching over her. He smiled, and pointed upwards.

  What now? She couldn’t see how it could get any better. And then she looked up. A school of eagle rays flew overhead. White underneath, but as they dipped downward she saw the tops of their wings, dark green with white spots, their cat-like snouts as black as their long tails.

  They were at forty-five metres, though she could see the trail of a speedboat on the surface, and the light was still good. She felt no narcosis at all. She checked her dive computer. Two minutes left at that depth before she’d have to do a decompression stop, so she gave the ‘Up’ signal. Jake nodded, and like the leopard shark before her, she gave a kick with her fins and began the slow ascent.

  As they reached the top of the cliff at fifteen, she paused, and touched Jake’s fin. He stopped immediately and turned to her. She pointed out into the blue. He followed her gaze, saw nothing, then looked back at her, his eyebrows knitted in a question mark. She made a pistol shape with her right hand, put it to her temple, did an impression of pulling the trigger, lowered her hand, did an impression of spinning the chambers on a revolver, and put it to her head again. His eyes flattened. He’d got it.

  Anspida Roulette.

  He checked his computer, looked her over again, and ran his right palm down his left arm, then pointed to her. She understood. The rule he’d stated earlier. Always know where the reef is. She gave the ‘OK’ signal and they set off from the reef at an angle, counter-clockwise around the island, the reef on their left, heading into the current, and into big shark territory.

  She glanced back several times, the reef just in sight, somewhere between fifteen and twenty metres away. Jake kept them at the same distance, two divers in perfect orbit around the island, two thousand feet of ocean beneath them. She stared straight ahead, into the blue. The sun’s rays lasered through the water, playing tricks on her brain. Several times she thought she saw something, and her heart skipped a beat, but it was nothing.

  And then it came for real. A shadow at first, morphing into a blue nose, the curved line of its mouth, its eyes, and its pectoral fins, outlining an ellipse just like in Jake’s drawing. If it opened its mouth she would fit inside. Fifteen metres away, closing. Not on a swing-by. Coming straight at her. Ten metres. It was massive. She could now see the dorsal fin and her brain extrapolated the rest; it was easily five metres long. Its pectoral fins dropped. Its mouth opened a little, revealing racks of backward-sloping teeth.

  Five metres.

  Jake grabbed her wrist and hauled her sideways. The shark tracked right, in her direction. Suddenly her brain woke up, and she finned furiously, fear ramping up. If those teeth closed on her legs, there’d be no escape. The safety of the reef was ten metres away, then five. Jake squeezed her arm, and they slowed, and she dared to look back.

  Blue. Endless blue.

  Now she understood why he’d called it
Anspida Roulette. He hadn’t mentioned the real danger, the fascination that tempted you to stay longer. He checked her air then took her to a spot just a few metres below the surface by a cluster of yellow and orange coral-festooned boulders. They stayed there five minutes, then ten. He kept looking at his dive watch. She signalled ‘Up’ several times, but he shook his head. He showed her his dive watch – not his dive computer, the actual watch. It said five p.m. So what?

  His eyes flattened, so she knew he was grinning. He pointed again, and when she saw them she tried to take a step backward. An avalanche of very large fish – hump-head parrotfish – hurtled past, thirty…make that fifty…why not a hundred? And then they were gone. She turned back to Jake. He was laughing. She joined in. He took out his regulator and mouthed: ‘Happy Birthday.’

  She took out hers and kissed him.

  ***

  ‘Normally only instructors go out there,’ Jake said. ‘We don’t take anyone else. Never know how they’re going to react.’

  She was dunking her waistcoat-like stab jacket in the large stone bath at the rear of the compressor hut, her regulator and shorty wetsuit already hung up to dry. She knew what he was trying to do. Make her feel better. What had happened out there with the blue shark? Frozen? Death wish? She didn’t know.

  Certain snakes mesmerise their prey, immobilise them, before they strike. She knew the phrase ‘fight or flight’ well enough, but there was something in between, and she’d just experienced it. The snake made her think of Salamander, and the missing warhead. Her birthday present, and her micro-holiday, were over.

  On their way back to their hut, she heard the Brit shout something at Jake, a jibe. Jake ignored him, and carried on walking. Nadia didn’t. She spun around and walked straight towards him as he sat between two of his mates, his legs wide open.

  She drew her knife, raised it, and swung it down so it hammered into the wooden bench, an inch short of his balls, making him ram his back against the table. ‘We saw a five-metre blue out there today. It would have had me, but that man saved my life. And if you stop being a dick and work really hard the rest of your life, maybe you could become half the man he is.’ She yanked the knife out of the wood. Anger flushed through her body. She knew it wasn’t really about this guy, but it had to come out somehow.

  She caught up with Jake. She heard two of the guy’s friends shout something to Dominic, all plaintive. Dominic turned, gave them a stern look, then drew a line across his neck with a flat palm – the out-of-air signal – and they shut up.

  ‘You okay?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Yep. This holiday is really helping.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Because now it’s time for work.’

  Chapter Eight

  Jake and Nadia told each other what they knew about Salamander. Nadia’s intel was more recent, Jake’s was deeper, but between them it remained full of gaping holes.

  ‘There’s no centre of gravity,’ Jake said. ‘No obvious base of operations.’

  ‘He’s itinerant, not loyal to any one country,’ Nadia ventured.

  Jake shook his head. ‘Everyone has a home, even if they left it. Even salamanders have a cave somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe his home was destroyed. He seems to have a grudge against the UK. Any misdeeds MI6 cares to put on the table?’

  Jake frowned. ‘Too many. Besides, we’ve looked at all of those, going back twenty years. Came up with nothing.’

  It was hot and airless in their hut, Jake’s face lit by the pale glow from his laptop. It displayed a mind map of possible connections. At the centre of the map was a figure of a salamander, with lines radiating outwards to four individuals who had been killed in various operations, including Cheng Yi, the buyer for the Rose. Although he hadn’t had the tattoo, the other three all had it somewhere on their body. From these four characters more lines radiated, but with no faces attached, only possible organisations and question marks.

  ‘What if he operates Medusa-style?’

  Jake leaned back. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Ultra-short lines of communication. Basically him at the centre, and those he’s in contact with. No one else. Only he knows what’s going on.’

  Jake was silent for a while. He steepled his fingers, rested his brow against his fingertips, then sat back and folded his arms. ‘It would explain why we have no secondary contacts. But it’s highly unusual, especially since he’s running an international operation. I mean, we’re talking about stealing a nuclear warhead. That takes –’

  ‘The right people. Senior enough to have tactical information and access rights, but below the political layer.’

  He smiled. ‘When did you get so smart at this?’

  ‘Your boss – and ex-girlfriend – Lorne interrogated me on a weekly basis for the first nine months.’

  His smile evaporated. He closed the laptop. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘No,’ he said, categorically. ‘Though I should have guessed. I’d slept with you, so wasn’t allowed to see your case files.’

  ‘You slept with Lorne. I mean, before.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. But that’s not on record.’

  ‘Maybe I should spill the beans.’

  He smiled. ‘Maybe you should.’

  She opened up the laptop. ‘Why did you go to Hong Kong?’

  ‘Cheng Yi had been based there. I was chasing a young woman… I mean a lead, a woman known as Blue Fan.’

  ‘Nice name. Find her?’

  ‘Almost. She got out just before I arrived.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  His forehead grew trenches. ‘Because I found three other agents dead, their bodies still warm.’

  ‘How did they die?’

  ‘Blades. Lots of them. Thin throwing knives, metallic blue. Presumably that’s why she’s called Blue Fan.’ He pressed a button until the laptop shut down. ‘They were good men.’

  ‘They often are.’ There was something wrong with Jake. The lightness had gone. ‘What happened to you in that second year, Jake?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I want to know.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Lorne knows, doesn’t she?’

  He drew back, but didn’t speak.

  ‘Two years, Jake. Of silence. Don’t do this to me.’ Her voice almost cracked. She still had a long way to go.

  He glanced at her sideways, sat up straighter, then took a breath. ‘I was meant to meet an informant, but it was a set-up. I was drugged, thrown in the boot of a car, and taken to a cell in a town in the Northern part of Kenya controlled by Al Shabaab. They beat me, tortured me…’ His voice grew hoarse, reed-like. ‘The worst part…they didn’t ask anything. I kept mentally preparing for the interrogation, judging what I would say, a mixture of truth and lies. But the questions never came, just the beatings.’

  ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘Lorne came with a group of commandos.’ His voice lightened for a moment. ‘Don’t ever get on her wrong side. It was a slaughter. Something…I’ve not told anyone. Keep it secret?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She interrogated the few captives left alive, then brought one down to me. I was still chained in the cell. They’d literally thrown away the key, so we had to wait for some heavy duty bolt-cutters. Anyway, she brought this guy in, his hands wired behind his back, already beaten. And she brought him to his knees in front of me, and asked if he’d been one of the torturers. I couldn’t talk. My mouth was busted up. But I could still nod.

  ‘She gutted him, right in front of me. Not a quick way to go. He didn’t hold up so well. She said it was therapy for me, that it would save a lot of taxpayers’ money on my rehabilitation. The other captives upstairs started squealing all sorts of intel when they heard this one screaming, begging to be killed. Nothing on Blue Fan or Salamander, but an imminent attack in Nairobi was thwarted.’

  ‘Did it help you
?’

  He took a swig of water from a bottle. ‘Not enough.’

  They heard German voices outside, close. Lars and Matthias. Could they have heard anything? She’d heard no footsteps, but then everyone was barefoot on the island. They were talking to someone, though she couldn’t hear what the other man was saying. Was that a Russian accent? Jake also listened. After a few pleasantries, they moved on.

  ‘Jake,’ she began.

  But without warning, Jake’s mouth was on her neck, and in the total darkness she stroked his hair and drew his mouth to hers. For two years she’d never considered that he could have been having a worse time than her, in an even darker place. She wanted to heal him. Everything else could wait till morning.

  ***

  Vladimir saw the two Germans approaching Nadia’s hut, so he came out of his own, greeted them, engaged them in idle banter, kept his own voice low, explained that he was completely out of sync due to jet lag, couldn’t dive, couldn’t sleep, too hot in the room, lucky there was a veranda and plenty of mosquito repellent, so he could read his book well into the night.

  They played nice, wished him luck diving tomorrow, said they were on an early dive so were going to get an early night. He even invited them for a drink of vodka, deepening the role of the sad, harmless, lonely old codger, but they declined. A shame.

  He could have killed them and disposed of their bodies in the ocean.

  Three hours later he stalked past their hut, but the door was jammed, the windows shut firm despite the balmy heat. He wished he could dive tomorrow, to protect Nadia, but it wasn’t an option. Not with only one lung left, courtesy of a sniper in Istanbul. Salamander had almost had him. It was why he’d opted for plastic surgery.

  The best he could do was what he’d already done earlier in the day during their second dive, namely mess with the spear guns’ aiming mechanism. Not so much they’d notice without a close inspection, but just enough that they’d miss their target. And if they fired the pistol or the rifle, they’d get a nasty surprise.

  What he didn’t yet know was how Salamander had tracked Nadia here so quickly. He was missing something. Nadia must have told someone else, unless Jake… But no. He’d run across Jake in Hong Kong, though Jake hadn’t seen him. They’d been after the same quarry. Blue Fan. Jake and MI6 considered her a lead, nothing more. But she wasn’t. She was the key. And she would return to Hong Kong. It was her home. And if he could find her, he could track Salamander.