Black Gold

by Chris Ryan

  A sound rose from the stadium as several thousand people shuffled and shifted, trying to get comfortable. They started to talk again – and to the three friends it felt like normality was returning. But on the floor of the stage where Bowman had been standing was a red, sticky pool: the bodyguard's blood.

  Lynn had put another battery in her camera and was reviewing her pictures. One was particularly interesting – a shot of three security guards chasing a fourth man up the steps of the stands. 'Darn, it's blurred,' she sighed.

  'I bet nobody else has got it,' said Danny, folding his long legs into a cross-legged position. 'You'll make the front page.' He looked nervously up at the exit in the picture. 'Let's just hope he doesn't come back.'

  Alex was looking in that direction too. 'I think the shooter's long gone.'

  'Well, thanks for an exciting evening,' said Li as Danny pulled up near the medical centre. 'We must go out with you guys again.' She slid open the door of the navy blue dive school people carrier and got out.

  Amber and Alex followed her.

  'Give our regards to Paulo and Hex,' said Danny.

  'Thanks for the ride,' said Alex, sliding the door closed.

  As Danny's tail lights dwindled away down the road they relaxed. Only now did they feel they could really talk about what had happened.

  'I can't say I'm surprised someone took a shot at ArBonCo,' said Li.

  'But an assassin?' queried Alex. 'This is getting a bit extreme.'

  'People are upset,' said Amber. 'It's what they do. Wait till we tell the others.'

  The night staff were on duty. As they pushed open the door, the nurse on reception recognized them and directed them to a room.

  Hex and Paulo had finished their decompression treatment for the evening and had been moved to a private room. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor, still in their white T-shirts and boxer shorts, playing a card game.

  Hex looked up. 'Hi,' he said, putting some cards down on the pile in front of him.

  Paulo cursed quietly in Spanish and prepared to put his cards down in reply.

  'Had a nice evening?' said Li.

  'Mm,' said Hex, but he was more interested in watching Paulo. The big Argentinian was still thinking about his next move. Without looking up he asked, 'Did you catch the assassin?'

  His remark took the wind right out of Amber's sails. 'How did you know what happened?'

  'We were listening to the broadcast of the concert on the internet,' said Hex. 'Then I looked it up on Reuters.' He reached for his palmtop on the bed and handed it to Alex. It was a short report, with little detail.

  Amber peered over Alex's shoulder as he read. 'Does it say what happened to Bowman?'

  Alex finished reading and passed her the palmtop. 'Just that his security chief got him away.'

  Amber skimmed the report. It didn't add much to what they already knew.

  Alex sat down on the bed. 'It looked like a professional job. The explosions beforehand, designed to distract the crowd. Do you remember that whistling noise?'

  Li and Amber hadn't thought about it, but now they remembered. 'Yes.'

  'My dad calls them flash-bangs. They're really distinctive – the loud bangs, then a whistle. It's designed to disorientate you. While you're trying to work out what's happened, something else can be going on that you're not looking at.'

  Li leaned over Paulo, plucked a card from his hand and put it down.

  'Hey,' protested Paulo.

  Hex stared at the card. 'You dirty rat. You had that all the time.' He threw down the rest of his hand.

  Li ruffled Paulo's hair triumphantly.

  'Thanks,' said Paulo, grinning up at her.

  Li plonked herself down on the floor next to him. 'So he was a professional. But something doesn't add up. He missed.'

  'He didn't miss,' said Alex. 'A bodyguard got in the way. And then he'd probably missed his chance. The chief of security was too good to let him get a second shot. The assassin was good too, though; he'd planned his escape route and he got away.'

  'Would ecologists hire a professional killer?' said Hex.

  Amber sat down and gathered the cards together. 'It doesn't have to be all of them. It only takes one.'

  'This is turning dirty,' said Li. 'How bad can it get?'

  'It's got bad already,' said Hex. 'We heard a few interesting things too from Andy, that guy in decompression.'

  Amber, shuffling the cards, suddenly had a thought. 'Oh – are you guys stable?'

  'Nice of you to remember to ask,' said Hex sardonically. 'Yeah, fine. All those frightening nasty sensations have gone. That chamber's magic.'

  'That poor guy Andy's not in such good shape,' said Paulo. 'They had to put him in a wheelchair to take him back to his bed.'

  The others were shocked. Had their friends come that close to serious damage?

  'When are you out?' asked Alex.

  'Tomorrow,' said Paulo. 'After another examination with Mistress Mara. Now, do you want to know what Andy told us or not?'

  Alex, Li and Amber walked back to the dive school. It was a warm night, the air still. Occasionally the sound of a vehicle far away drifted towards them on a gentle breeze.

  'A bomb,' said Li. 'Whoever planted it must have been out of their minds. It could have been an inferno.'

  'Is is me or is the smell of oil less strong?' said Li.

  Amber sniffed the air. 'Perhaps we're getting used to it.'

  They took the path down to the beach and soon came to the big wooden jetty that belonged to the dive centre. The moon was high and they could see the Fathom Sprinter bobbing gently. The water looked normal in the moonlight; the blackened shore could have been a trick of the light. But as they got closer they saw the small mounds on the beach as the sea brought its constant tide of birds and fish.

  'Hey, guys,' said Amber. 'What's that?'

  There was an urgent note in her voice. She was pointing to a large object on the blackened beach below. A white hunk of something was lying in the surf, the sea washing in and over it, rolling it gently, then drawing out again. It was large, still – and ghostly white in the moonlight. Alex thought it looked like the tip of a rocket – cone-shaped and smooth – but as they got closer they saw it wasn't metal.

  'It's flesh,' said Alex quietly.

  Their footsteps crunched as they met the coral beach. They picked their way along carefully to avoid treading on the dead birds and fish. The sea washed in, covered the white object and moved it gently, then withdrew again. Now they could see a pointed head with a black dot of an eye. An open mouth with rows of teeth like shards of shattered glass. A pectoral fin.

  'It's a shark,' said Li. 'A bit of a shark.'

  Alex switched on the torch on the end of his mobile.

  It wasn't even half the shark – just a head, a ragged piece of backbone and one pectoral fin. It must have been big; this part alone was nearly a metre long. The sea came up over their ankles and Amber stepped back as the ripped skeins of the shark's entrails floated towards her like tentacles. The sea retreated, taking dark swirls of blood into the oily water. Down the beach was a trail of mangled flesh as each wave washed more of the dead shark away.

  Amber voiced what they were all thinking. 'What on earth did that to a shark?'

  Alex played his torch over the corpse. 'This is fascinating.'

  'You are disgusting,' said Amber.

  'No, look. You can see its spine. It's made of cartilage, not bone. It looks like plastic. I'm going to take a picture.' There was a flash. Then he inspected the photo and thumbed away at the buttons.

  Li peered over his shoulder. She pulled a face at Amber. 'He's sending it to the others.'

  Amber rolled her eyes. 'A nice "get well" card.'

  The sea came in and went out again.

  Alex was looking at his picture, then at the shark carcass. There was something strange that showed up more clearly on the photo – a big black stain. And something else. He went in closer with the torch. Yes,
it was there on the carcass; he just hadn't noticed it in the moonlight.

  'Come and look at this.'

  The girls looked at Alex. His face was less than twenty centimetres away from the corpse. They stayed firmly where they were.

  'Must we?' said Li.

  'There's a big black shadow inside its body cavity. It's really weird.'

  Li folded her arms, determined not to move. 'It's probably eaten something containing ink. It might even be paint. Some of these sharks are real scavengers.'

  Alex looked up. 'This doesn't look like something it's eaten. You've got to actually see it.'

  Reluctantly Amber bent over the carcass.

  'You have to get really close,' said Alex. He was practically sniffing the flesh.

  Amber sighed and crouched down. 'If this is a joke I'm going to rub your nose in it.' Alex moved back to give her room.

  She'd expected it to smell bad, but it didn't – it was clean and fresh, like the sea. But she could see why Alex was curious. Embedded into the exposed interior of the skeleton were fragments of metal, twinkling against the glistening flesh. She touched one piece. It was sharp. Definitely metal.

  'I know it's weird,' said Alex, 'but that looks like the debris from a bomb blast.'

  Li came nearer and Amber moved aside so that she could get a good view. 'There were sharks like this in the tanker,' she said. 'One of them must have found the bomb.'

  'That's why it didn't blow up the tanker,' said Amber softly. 'This shark swallowed it and swam away.'

  12

  ECO-WARRIORS

  Paulo and Hex went into the examination room to wait for Mara. It was only seven-thirty in the morning but the clinic was already busy. A figure was waving from the porthole in the decompression chamber, trying to attract their attention.

  'Andy's back in the chamber, back to work early,' said Hex. They went over to say hello.

  'Did you hear about the drama last night?' asked Paulo.

  Close up, Andy looked haggard. 'No, I was asleep.' He yawned, the extravagant, cavernous yawn of someone who would rather still be asleep. 'What happened?'

  'The concert was cancelled. Someone tried to shoot the head of ArBonCo.'

  Andy yawned again. 'Bill Bowman?'

  Paulo nodded. 'Yes, I think that's what his name is.'

  Andy looked confused. 'Someone tried to shoot Bill Bowman? Man, it doesn't make sense.'

  'Why not?' said Paulo.

  Andy yawned again. He shook his head. 'Man, it doesn't make sense,' he repeated. A bleeper went off. He reached for his oxygen mask and gave them a little wave. Time to go.

  Mara pushed open the swing doors. They went over to the examination couch.

  'Is Andy all right?' said Paulo. 'He seems rather confused.'

  'I'm just about to check him.' Mara put down the files she was carrying and went over to the decompression chamber. She caught Andy's attention and made a gesture with her hand. Andy copied it and she nodded and made another gesture. Paulo and Hex recognized the moves – they were a sequence of tests for nerve damage that they'd done themselves the day before. They would take a few minutes to complete.

  Hex turned away. 'Did you get that picture from Alex?' he asked Paulo.

  'Yes. What was it?'

  'Some part of his anatomy, I reckon,' said Hex. 'The resolution was terrible. I sent him a close-up of my big toe in return. And you'd never believe what I sent Amber!'

  'I sent him the inside of my nose,' said Paulo with a laugh.

  'Could have been worse,' said Hex.

  Mara finished her tests and came back. 'Andy's suffering delayed shock. It's normal with cases like his. He'll be all right, given time.' She picked up a stethoscope from the desk. 'Now, who's first?'

  She listened to their chests, checked their blood pressure, watched them wiggle their toes and fingers and did the co-ordination tests they'd just seen her do on Andy, then she picked up a device like a pizza cutter and ran it up and down their arms and legs to check for numbness.

  'You guys seem fine,' she said at last. 'You were lucky. But remember, no diving for four weeks. You run a far higher risk of getting a bubble.' She went behind her desk and made some notes on her laptop.

  Paulo rubbed his arm. The pizza-cutter wheel was like having ants run over your skin. 'Is it today the inspector's coming from Barbados?'

  Mara sighed. 'They've had a change of plan, what with this assassin running around. It's a shame; I wanted them to see that video today.'

  'E-mail it,' said Paulo.

  'Isn't it a huge file?' Mara questioned.

  Hex smiled. 'Give me five minutes.' He had his palmtop on his knee and had opened it and booted up in seconds. His fingers flew over the keys, the screen blinking and changing as he hopped around from website to website. Then he went to Mara's laptop. 'Where did you save the film?'

  'On the c-drive.'

  Hex called up the file and tapped in more instructions. A few more minutes of digital dexterity and he was finished. 'OK – it's on a secure website so all you have to do is send the address and they can stream it.'

  Paulo asked, 'But could ArBonCo look at it?'

  Hex's smile played at the corners of his mouth. 'They could. But luckily it was set up by a genius.'

  'Hombre,' said Paulo, 'if Amber was here and you said that she'd put you in traction.'

  The phone rang. Mara picked it up. 'Hello?' A pause while she listened. 'I don't have time to talk to a journalist.' Her voice took on a note of outrage. 'No. The shooting was nothing to do with ABC Guardians.'

  Paulo looked at Hex. 'I think we're not wanted here,' he said quietly.

  Hex nodded. They got up, waving silently at Mara as they left. She acknowledged them, then returned to her phone call. 'That's ridiculous. We don't condone violence. We would never, ever hire assassins. We are a peaceful organization. And you'll find the other environmental groups are too.'

  'Hey,' said Amber, 'no wetsuits in the bar – house rules.'

  Paulo and Hex looked nonplussed. With no other clothes at the medical centre, they'd had to put on their wetsuits to walk back. Amber was alone in her criticism, however; wetsuits or no wetsuits, Paulo and Hex were welcome to join the others, as they sat round a long table in the bar, having breakfast. Carl gave them high fives, Danny stood up and pulled out more chairs and Lynn passed them a jug of orange juice and a pot of coffee.

  Danny sat down again. 'How was it, having the bends?'

  Paulo poured some orange juice. 'Something I never want to repeat.'

  Li handed him a copy of the daily paper. 'Look at this.'

  The front page was devoted to the previous night's events. MURDER AT THE FESTIVAL, said the main headline, and underneath were directions to a number of smaller stories inside: 'ArBonCo chief was target – page 2';'Brave bodyguard loses his life – pages 2 and 3'; 'Shooter took revenge for spill – page 4'; 'Editorial comment – page 8'; 'Letters – page 10'. Paulo spread out the paper so that Hex could see it too.

  'They used Lynn's photo,' said Danny.

  Lynn got up. 'Yeah, that'll help pay some of the bills while we don't have any customers. When's the next cliff diving championship? The money might be useful.'

  'September, in Rio,' said Danny. 'Oh – the compensation forms for the guest refunds arrived this morning. I put them on your desk.'

  Lynn picked up her plate and mug. 'Yeah, I'm going to go and do them right now. See you later, guys,' she said as she left the room.

  Li looked at her watch. It was eight o'clock. 'What time do the ArBonCo guys start on the beach?'

  'Most days it's been about eight-thirty,' said Carl.

  Li looked at the others. 'We'd better get cracking before they arrive.'

  Hex, Paulo and Amber stepped lightly on board the Fathom Sprinter, which Carl and Danny had brought in close to the beach. Alex and Li had already manhandled on board a large object wrapped in a blue tarpaulin.

  Hex noticed the smell. 'Phew, Alex, what is that?'


  Alex pulled back the tarpaulin and the smell intensified. A sharp smell of the sea and fish. But that wasn't nearly as bad as the sight of what was inside the tarpaulin: the head and fin of a shark, torn apart as if by some ferocious force. The air shrieked as seagulls got wind of the carcass lying below.

  Li got to work with the video camera. She filmed the head and then zoomed in on the blast marks like tiger stripes on the inside of the body cavity, the glint of shrapnel like embedded mirrors, the little trails of greyish flesh that were all that was left of its internal organs. From one angle she could see out through the mouth. The whole thing was glistening in the morning sun, the creases of the tarpaulin collecting pools of watery, oily blood. Although they could have filmed it the previous night with the underwater lights, it wouldn't have been as clear as it was in the morning sunlight.