by Keith Weaver
In a situation like that, it’s impossible not to be afraid, but it is possible to keep a lid on panic. I started going through the facts of my situation. I had been down about fifteen seconds and probably could not hold my breath more than about another twenty seconds. I was in roughly twelve to fifteen feet of water. The guy who had hold of me was strong. The situation was not good, and as the seconds passed it was rapidly getting much worse.
Despite my efforts, the black thoughts of panic were pressing in. The urge to breathe was becoming very strong. My lungs were now on fire and my heart rate was climbing. I glanced up briefly, and I could see the bottom of my canoe, looking small, forlorn, and distant on the surface. But at least the other boat, which was probably where this bugger had started out from, had not moved in. Things were not all that clear in a visual sense either, because our thrashing about dispersed his exhaled air into many small bubbles, and I was very much aware of these bubbles moving past me, over all my skin. This in itself alarmed me even more because the fact of me spending any effort recording that detail signalled distraction, dissociation, and loss of focus. I tried giving one more kick to free at least one leg. Nothing.
Come on, Whelan! Pull it together! You haven’t much time now! Andrea would not be impressed!
Andrea.
Rather than straining in panic to reach the surface, which is what the guy below me was almost certainly expecting, I doubled down, smashed the faceplate of his mask, then sliced through the heavy rubber tube that brought air from his regulator to his mouthpiece. Thank heaven for sharp knives. Never go anywhere without a knife.
Things changed quite a bit then. All at once, there was a lot more thrashing, and my legs were suddenly freed. I raced to the surface, burst through to the atmosphere, ripped off my face mask, and took in huge lungsful of air. Beautiful, sweet, life-charged air. Balsam Lake air. In my hand was my knife, the haft of which I had used on the diver’s mask. In my youth, a knife carried while I was swimming would have been used to pry open a treasure chest, and I had been convinced back then that dozens of them probably awaited discovery at the bottom of Balsam Lake. But as a matter of practicality, it is surprisingly easy to become entangled in something when underwater, and a knife can be one’s best friend in that circumstance.
I make it all sound very calm, but it was nothing of the sort, more like five or six action movies playing at the same time. My immediate need for oxygen satisfied, my fear quickly turned now to cold anger. I pulled on my mask again and looked down. The man below was struggling, but he knew not to panic as well. He had evidently hit the release on his weight belt, which had been counteracting the buoyancy of his wet suit, and was surfacing while undoing his scuba harness. I watched as his tank fell away and joined his weights on the bottom.
Okay, you bastard, I thought. The tables had turned, and that was confirmed when he broke the surface coughing and spluttering desperately. In his condition, it would have been quite possible for me to come at him from below, grab his legs, and pull him under.
But I had a better idea.
He had his coughing almost under control and had begun swimming along the surface toward the “fishing” boat, not making good time because of the water he was still trying to clear from his lungs. That boat would almost certainly begin coming to pick him up. I took several deep breaths, submerged, and then approached him from below.
Even underwater I could hear his scream, and it was much louder than I expected.
The sharp metallic underwater sound of the “fishing” boat’s motor starting up came to me immediately, and still submerged, I swam back to the canoe and surfaced on the side of it facing away from them. Moving to the front of the canoe, and peering around, I could see that my attacker had resumed a slow swim to his mother ship, which was now coming toward him quickly. The question now was, could I do it.
Reaching into the canoe, I cut through the strap that held my waterproof plastic bag to the front thwart, took four or five very deep breaths, and submerged again. The fins I was wearing were the best quality, and they drove me through the water at a speed I found hard to believe. But on the other hand, it was a hell of a long way to go.
Stop thinking! Just swim!
To this day, I think it was Stan Rogers who came to my rescue. Because, looking back, all I can now recall is my legs pumping to the beat of “The Mary Ellen Carter” and the indomitable message of that song rising again and again in my head. It surprised me when one of my knees struck a rock painfully, signalling that I had reached the shore of Indian Point. I turned under water toward the way I had come and slowly raised my face above the surface, breathing heavily. The swimmer, my would-be executioner, was almost at the boat; hands were reaching down to grab him.
Thinking that nobody would be looking for me just then along the shore of Indian Point, I quickly sat on the bottom, tore open the waterproof bag, fumbled out my cellphone, and began taking picture after picture. I had no idea of the quality of what I was getting, or what use the images might be, but better something than nothing. Two or three of these pictures were shot when one or more of the men on the boat had his head raised and was looking out over the water.
I quickly stuffed the cellphone back in the bag, sealed it, took a few more deep breaths, and struck off again underwater southward along the shore of Indian Point, looking for one of the numerous spots where large rocks offered a good place where I could hide, concealed from the gaze of the swine on that boat, who might cruise down the shore to try to find me, or just scan the shore using good binoculars. Whatever their mode of search, I wanted to have disappeared before they began it.
In my mind, there was doubt that they would come looking for me, or perhaps hope that they wouldn’t, not when one of their number had a deep knife gash in his left calf, at about the point where the calf muscle, the gastrocnemius, tapers down to become the Achilles tendon.
“I’m going to find you, you bastards, and there will definitely be payback. Count on it.”
As I had hoped, less than a minute after the casualty had been dragged into the boat, it roared off to the north. They wouldn’t go to a population centre like Coboconk. They would likely land at some cottage, get their guy into a car, and take him to a doctor who didn’t ask too many questions. I waited about half an hour, in case they off-loaded their guy, then came back. But it was just a quiet Sunday. I swam back to my canoe and made the crossing back to Largs in record time.
There were two important things left to do. Harvey Wilder kept a modest power boat in our boathouse. When I asked him, he said sure, that I should go ahead and use it. Soon I had retrieved the scuba tank and weight belt, before their owners could recover them, and had safely stored them in the lock-up Jimmy used for his gardening tools.
And it was time to speak to Mike.
Seventeen
On Monday morning, I awoke in a quandary. And not a trivial one.
Would I tell Andrea about yesterday’s adventure? My immediate instinct was to tell her everything, since secrets can be corrosive to all involved, even the information, revealed later, that a secret had been kept. It wasn’t clear whether the guys who attacked me knew who I was. If they did, might they come after Andrea? Would knowing about yesterday’s incident be an advantage to her if they did?
But she would certainly have questions. Who are these guys? What were they trying to do? What is causing all this? And I had no answers to these questions. I was almost completely in the dark. So would telling Andrea just cause her to worry about something that, at the moment, neither of us could do anything to combat? Far from this line of thinking being just an idiotic rationale for doing nothing, I was acutely aware that I had to understand and neutralize this threat, no matter what. And I had to do it very soon. The thought of Andrea being at any risk, no matter how slight the possibility or how unlikely the thought, was something that left me deeply uncomfortable.
It seemed unlikely to me that they had come after me because they thought I knew so
mething and they wanted to get it out of me. Drowning me wouldn’t do that, and even if that hadn’t been their objective, an elaborate underwater kidnapping would be just about the most awkward way imaginable of doing whatever they wanted to do. Much easier to try to nab me somewhere off the street. No. An underwater snatch was too improbable to consider any further. There was a much more likely theory.
They had seen me nosing around that reef yesterday, or that section of shoreline, so I was a loose end that had to be tied off. The implication of this was that they had been keeping at least an intermittent watch on the place, which implied in turn that they were trying to protect something there, or keep something secret. The fact that Harold had been snooping in the same area, and that he had suffered the fate that almost befell me, made this theory hard to rebut. But if my theory about Harold was correct, that his death really was to cover up an abduction gone wrong, then they must have thought that Harold knew something they didn’t, and that they believed I knew something as well.
This train of thought led immediately to some decisions. And these decisions all meant that I could no longer afford to be passive about what was going on. I had to get my ass in gear.
I needed to make a trip to Toronto to take George home, but now I would be doing several other things while I was there: speaking to Jocko face to face, taking a look in Harold’s safety deposit box, paying a visit to an old colleague from the police, Mike Jefferson, now also a private investigator. And one other thing: I wanted to visit the offices of the company where my one-time trustee, now deceased, had worked.
In preparation for all this, I had sent out the e-mails first thing requesting these meetings.
There was one final important decision. I wasn’t going to say anything to Andrea. Not just yet.
George would probably make a delayed appearance, putting off the time when he would need to be on the way back to Toronto. It was flattering the way he had taken to Largs, but I had told him that we had to be on the road by eight o’clock at the latest. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was still only six thirty, but I got the coffee going while I waited for Andrea, then opened my laptop to update my notes and the electronic diary I keep. I had been working on my laptop for about an hour when my phone rang.
“Mark, you old bastard! Got your e-mail.” It was Mike Jefferson.
“Mike! Good to hear your mellow tones.”
This brought a short burst of abuse.
“What’s going on there? I couldn’t believe your e-mail message. Almost impossible to imagine something like that happening up in coma-land? What have you set up in the way of physical security for yourself? For Andrea? And how is my favourite water nymph?”
“We’re both fine, Mike. It was the physical security bit, along with other stuff, that I wanted to talk to you about.”
“So. Let me guess. You have no security in place yet. What are you doing, Mark? You’re not invincible! It’s time old Jefferson got in there on your behalf. I can be at your place by just before eight.”
“Just before eight! This morning? Got your own helicopter, Mike?”
“No. Just my trusty Volvo. Which I’m in now. Just north of Lindsay. Why don’t you fill me in while I drive?”
It took me a second to overcome my surprise and to hold off the obvious questions until later, so my immediate response was just an odd whine.
“Isn’t that illegal, Mike?”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right! Wait, though. There’s a Catholic church just ahead. I’ll stop there and confess. Come on, Mark! Ditch the puritan prick act!”
“Okay, Mike. But understand that this is a business deal. No favours.”
“You’re preaching to the converted, Bub. I’ve got a mouth to feed, rent to pay, and at least three local pubs to support.”
So I spent about ten minutes bringing Mike up to date.
“And that’s the thumbnail sketch of things”, I said in conclusion.
“Okay! Great talking to you, kid. We likely won’t see each other for another fifteen minutes.”
“Who was that?”
Andrea had made a soundless entrance, surprising me, but her question was just idle interest as she headed for the refrigerator to get a yogurt.
“That was Mike Jefferson. He’s going to help in the Harold Barbour case and some other stuff. He’ll be here in twenty minutes or so.” I was digging myself a hole here but, at least in my own mind, I felt it couldn’t be helped.
“What do you plan to do today”, I asked, trying to change the subject.
“I’m going to do a first inspection of the remaining four unusables. Get some idea of the scope of work that will be needed.”
“You’re really getting stuck into this”, I said, genuinely pleased that she had latched onto these projects with such enthusiasm.
“Well, it doesn’t beat lying in the pool, but it does avoid attacks of Protestant guilt.”
I smiled and nodded, it being evident that Andrea’s case of mild workaholism was just surfacing in a different guise.
“The drywalling is probably shot in those four cottages, so I’ll expose as much of the wiring as I can and we can take a look at it later.”
“Well”, I said, “it will really be only a second opinion. I’m not an electrician.”
“You know what to look for though. But, you’re right. Neither of us is an electrician, and we probably should have someone else check it.”
I nodded. “We’ll take it as it comes.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, Andrea slowly spooning out her yogurt, me scanning the day’s news. I looked up once and observed, with pleasure, the little smile of anticipation on Andrea’s lips, almost certainly reflecting her eagerness to get started on her survey of the unusables. As I switched off and closed my laptop, my cellphone vibrated.
“Whelan.”
It was Jocko, and he had some information to send me.
“Do you have it in a state you can send it right now, Jocko?”
He did.
“Okay. Please e-mail it to me. I’ll have a look at it before I leave. Will you have time to get together at, say, noon today?”
He would.
“Perfect. Thanks, Jocko. Could we meet at C’est What?”
We could.
As soon as Andrea recognized the call was business, she retired to the sitting room. I restarted my laptop and found Jocko’s e-mail. I opened the attachment and began to read, but it turned out to be surprise after surprise. I hadn’t got even halfway through the material when there was a shave-and-a-haircut knock at the door.
Mike.
He blew into the house in the only way Mike knows, in friendly authority and irresistible bullish charm.
“There she is! How’s my favourite little heartbreaker?” and he headed for Andrea in what appeared to be rugby-tackle mode.
“Hold it, Mike! Hands up! Hands where I can see them!”
“Aw, now, Andrea! You don’t think that I’d …”, but he broke off partway through and turned to me.
“Mark! What does a weary traveller have to do to get a cup of coffee?”
Mike had been my mentor in the police, and is not quite fifteen years my senior. He’s a powerfully built man. At just shy of six feet and 210 pounds, everything about him pulses out the warning “Don’t mess with me, you asshole!” He has buzzed blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, hands as large as dinner plates and as strong as bolt cutters, surprisingly fine features, and a mobile face that can radiate anything from the sympathy of maudlin tears to the grimace of barbarian cruelty. Needless to say, he’s a fearsome interrogator, pursues his cases with pitbull tenacity, and is someone you don’t want to face in a street fight, not even if you’re backed by five friends, strong and true. Mike and I are close professional confidants, and we share drinks regularly, but beyond that I know little about him. Mike evidently keeps his private life very private.
“Let’s go outside and have our coffee there, Mike. Is that okay with you, Andrea?”
‘That’s fine. Go. Go.”
Once we were seated at the picnic table, Mike was all business.
“How many of them were there?”
“Four, including the diver.”
“What was the boat?”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“Did you get the registration number?”
“No. It was covered up.”
“What about the motor?”
“It was a Mercury. Looked like ninety horse. But look, Mike, I did manage to take thirty-four pictures using my cellphone. The boat was more than fifty metres away when I took those shots, and I don’t know what quality I got, but there were at least six pictures taken when one or more of the three guys in the boat had their heads up and looking vaguely in my direction.”
As I was answering this last question, I pulled up the photos on my laptop, and we both examined them for the first time. Some were simply too blurry, but at least half of them were quite clear.
“I’ll send these to you, Mike. You might be able to blow them up, get enhanced images. One other thing.”
“What?”
“I got the guy’s scuba tank and weight belt. I’ll show you where I’ve stashed them. I’d be grateful if you could take them away. I’m worried about Andrea getting anxious.”
“The tank! Great! We might be able to get somewhere using the tank’s serial number.”
We sat there briefly, both thinking.
“Let’s plan the day”, Mike said at length. “I’m going to put the word out here locally that we’re onto these charlies, and that any further threat against you or yours will be nipped in the bud, or maybe a bit lower. I’m going to follow up on medical treatment first, then on the scuba tank. Do you know where there are tank charging stations?”