66 Metres (16 page)

Opposite the stairs a fire door had been wedged open with a brick to let in some air. She spied Jake, his back to her, sitting at one of the sturdy tables next to the arch, with four other people. Across from Jake was a wiry young man with a mocking face and short black hair that looked like it could break combs. On Jake's right was a blond muscular male, who took a good look every time a girl – pretty or not – passed through the arch. On Jake's left was a brunette who occasionally stole a glance behind Jake's head at the blond guy when he wasn't looking her way. At the other end of the table was an attractive blonde with a porcelain face and hawkish green eyes. She was staring straight at Nadia. She wasn't smiling.

Nadia quickened her step and walked towards the arch. She caught the blonde's voice through the banter as she approached Jake's seat.

The blonde turned to Jake, nodding in Nadia's direction. ‘I think this girl knows you.'

Nadia stopped as Jake turned around and stood up, raking his wooden chair across the tiled floor. His face flushed momentarily.

‘You came,' he said in a low voice, as if they were alone.

His eyes struck home. She tried not to react, though probably the blonde saw it, because straight afterwards she stared into her pint as if it was a good book.

Everyone else on the table stopped talking, all eyes on Nadia. ‘I'm staying here, actually. I just came down –'

‘To join us!' It was the blond male, who shoved his hand in her direction, right across Jake, who seemed used to it. They all did.

‘I'm Claus,' he said as he squeezed her palm, as if that said it all. Maybe it did. She decided that was too unkind, she'd reserve judgement. Not his fault, a heart-breaker for sure, a product of genes, hormones and social proclivities. Not her type.

As if recalling they weren't alone, Claus continued, pointing around the table, and she memorised the names and faces as she'd learned to at Kadinsky's training camp: Fi, the one interested in Claus, Elise, the blonde who had some kind of relationship – maybe a past one – with Jake – and Gary, the wiry one.

‘Nadia,' she said.

‘Russian?' Claus asked, then threw his head back and laughed.

She nodded. She was used to it. A lot of British men seemed to believe that all Russian women were great at sex, or easy, or both. Some kind of weird positive racism.

Jake elbowed past Claus and begged a chair from the table opposite, swinging it around between him and Fi, who had already moved hers aside.

‘Please,' Jake said, as if ready to accept her saying no. That disarmed her. She sat down.

After a few minutes' Spanish Inquisition – (Fi)
Where was she from?
(Gary)
How long was she staying?
(Fi)
Who was she diving with?
(Claus)
What was her room number?
(Gary)
What did she think of Putin?
(Claus)
Okay, at least which floor was she on?
– things settled down, and a pint of brown ale appeared before her. The only two people who didn't ask anything were Jake and Elise. Nadia sensed that Elise was the leader of this group in some way, and after hearing the acronym D.O. once or twice, asked what it was.

‘Diving Officer,' Gary said. ‘Leader of this branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, BSAC. No American-style PADI divers here,' he added. Nadia had been PADI-trained out in Sharm, but said nothing.

Claus stood up, waved his hand theatrically, then pointed as he spoke. ‘So, here are the introductions that matter. You've already met Jake – used to be our Advanced Training Officer. Now he travels the world as a freelance diving instructor and occasionally graces us with his presence.' Claus pointed one by one around the table. ‘Elise, Diving Officer, Fi, Training Officer, and Gary, Equipment Officer and Skipper. Best dive team on the planet.' He laughed again, the way people do when they know they are supposed to be having the best time of their lives, only they're not, not really. Something missing in his life, masked by laughter, drink and sex. Claus reminded her of quite a few Russian boys she'd known.

Fi nodded towards him. ‘And Claus is our chief entertainment officer.'

‘Actually,' Jake added, ‘he's pretty good underwater, just an arse on land.'

Nadia smiled while the others laughed normally. They were harmless, especially Claus, and in other circumstances she could get to like this group. Elise must have seen Nadia relax, a moment of vulnerability, because of what came next.

‘What's the fascination with the Tsuba?'

Elise's question choked off the laughter. Jake stared at Elise. At first Nadia thought he must have told her, but he was clearly curious too as to how she knew. Ben then, or maybe Pete. She reminded herself this was a close community. This group had obviously dived here before, knew the locals, and were known by them. She could never let her guard down here.

The lie came easily. Her defining family value had never been love; rather, survival.

‘I had a relative, by a great uncle's marriage, on that ship. A friend of mine in Moscow is a genealogist, knew I was coming here to dive, said I should come and take a look.'

Elise leaned forward, smiling. ‘What was this relative's name?'

Nadia took a sip. ‘Buschenko, Boris Buschenko.' She'd looked it up earlier, he'd perished when it had sunk after being torpedoed in WWII. Actually he was Ukrainian, but it was the best she had found. Uspekh wasn't that far from the Ukrainian border.

Elise didn't back down. ‘Deepest recent dive?'

Nadia remained relaxed. ‘Forty-eight, this morning.'

Claus laughed a bit nervously. ‘Hey, Elise, give the girl a break, she's not diving with us, remember?'

Elise sat back, maintaining eye contact. ‘Maybe not, but we're taking our boat to dive the Tsuba on Monday as well.'

The group all turned to Elise.

‘We are?' Gary asked.

Claus shouted ‘Yay!' and he, Gary and Fi clinked glasses across the table, spilling beer.

Jake looked troubled, but Elise continued to stare at Nadia. Nadia broke the connection. Elise had won this round. But Nadia had to save face. She needed this group as her alibi.

‘The more the merrier,' Nadia said, and raised her glass until everyone, including a reluctant Elise, clinked glasses with her. Jake seemed upset. Something was eating him. She'd seen a flash of it before, when she'd been kitting up and had no knife. Nadia knew that haunted look, her father had had it for months before he was taken. Without warning Jake stood, flourishing his phone.

‘I'll be back.' He walked outside.

Elise rose from her chair first. Nadia thought about getting up, but Fi placed a hand on her wrist.

‘Did you ever dive in Russia?' she asked. ‘What's it like? Claus has been ice-diving in Svalbard.'

The moment to follow Jake had passed, so Nadia talked about diving in almost freezing water, venturing under ice-floes, once without ropes. She left out the part about finding a corpse once under the river… and leaving it there without reporting it.

She glanced through the window to check that Jake and Elise were still outside, and hadn't gone anywhere. If they had, she'd have to go after them. She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes. Jake and Elise had been talking for twenty, long enough to clear the air or make it toxic – evidently they either were, or had been, an item. Nadia told herself to forget about Jake. If Claus had been ice-diving he must be a pretty good diver, too. She asked each of them their favourite dive. At one point Claus fixed her with a curious look.

‘Your English is almost perfect, better than mine, and I'm Danish; we grow up speaking it half the time. How come?

She leant back, smiling. ‘Spy school. You fail the grades, they shoot you.'

Everyone laughed. She joined in as best she could.

The explosion occurred right on time, rattling the window panes. Like the others, she got up and rushed outside. Elise and Jake stood with a few others gazing towards the tall flames Nadia knew were coming from Kennedy's Dive Store. They were much bigger than she'd imagined.

The whole gang – and half the pub – hurried to Kennedy's, only three blocks away, and watched the two fire engines arrive and then douse the inferno with water. Pungent, neoprene-fuelled black fumes, rendered grey in the fire-trucks' headlamps, billowed high into the sky, blotting out the stars. The shop's front windows had blown out in the initial blast. Beads of glass stretched like a carpet across the road, glimmering in the firelight. The shop was gutted. Racks of wetsuits hung like macabre headless corpses, melting and crackling as the fire raged.

Jake, Gary and Claus drew back some of the onlookers crowding the cordon, explaining what would happen if full air tanks exploded, while Elise and Fi coordinated with the Chief Fire Superintendent and the local police sergeant, who'd initially been reluctant, but then welcomed additional manpower to manage the inebriated crowd. Nadia had emptied the full tanks earlier.

Mark Kennedy, the thirty-something owner she'd met the day before, arrived late at the scene with a younger girl in tow, both of them bedraggled and half-dressed. Nadia studied his face in the flame-light and watched the emotions flicker from horror and disbelief, to dismay, all the way through to resignation and the knowledge that his insurance company would pay. Nadia didn't allow herself to feel sorrow or regret. It had been necessary.

She watched the firemen. Those closest to the fire wore full facemask protection and respirators to protect them against the heat and the smoke. They were sensible: no one was inside so no rescue was needed, and they were wary of secondary explosions. At one point a firework display erupted as a box of hand-held flares ignited, shooting bright orange fizzing comets into the sky, sputtering as they began their descent. Raucous cheers erupted with each new salvo.
Kennedy grimaced, but the girl comforted him.

Nadia stayed in the shadows. Although she'd been careful, there was always a chance someone would remember her accent and put the pieces together, or else find some piece of evidence at the crime scene that would implicate her. She knew how these things went – part of her education at Kadinsky's camp. Unlike in Russia, here the police would be careful for the first forty-eight hours, not risking rushing ahead and making flimsy accusations that would collapse later during a prosecution, but after that time-slot they'd not hesitate to bring people in to ‘assist with their enquiries.' So, she needed to be gone by then. Two dives tomorrow, the Tsuba on Monday morning, and then an improvised escape back to the mainland Monday evening.

Forty-eight hours
.

Something snagged her attention. Someone who didn't belong there was flagged by her subconscious radar. She searched the crowd. A stocky man wearing horn-rimmed glasses stood half-way around the diminishing flames from her. Dressed conservatively, as if he were a businessman on holiday. Alone. Out of place. He gazed into the fire. While others cowered, flinching from the heat, he was serene, as if warmed by the flames, comforted even. She made her assessment. He wasn't afraid, and was used to fire, to accidents, and probably death. That alone didn't mean anything, but her instincts told her to continue to watch. A crash of burning timber spat out a flurry of sparks in his direction, and he raised his left arm to shield his face, and… he had a holster under his left armpit. CIA-style.

Shit!

Fi arrived next to her, making her turn around. ‘It's under control, Nadia, we're going to head back to the pub.'

‘Sure,' Nadia said. She glanced back – the man was gone.

They walked back in a group, conversation focusing on whether it was an accident or arson. Apparently there had been a few cases in Hugh Town over the past six months. Nadia joined in a little mechanically – she was tired, and wanted to climb into that too-soft bed and fall asleep under stars that begged no questions.

When they arrived back at the inn, the barman announced there would be a lock-in, which meant his guests could carry on drinking. Nadia immediately declined and said she was going to hit the sack. Fi said the same and followed her up the stairs, while the others headed to the bar. Nadia knew Jake was looking in her direction, but probably so too was Elise, so she didn't look back.

Although Nadia was tired, the fire and the CIA agent had roused her, and she couldn't sleep. She spent the next hour online and found the layout of the Tsuba wreck, and matched her recollection from the dive to the online map. She visualised everything, including where the device should be, how many fin strokes it should take to reach it, the direction from the propeller
to the device and the reciprocal route back, whether there should be any appreciable current that day and in which direction, a possible direct ascent to the surface, the likely air usage, and how much reserve air she'd have left.

All of this was the mechanics. What she hadn't worked out yet was how to either persuade Jake to come with her to retrieve it, or else part company with him mid-dive without him seeing where she went. She noticed it had gone quiet downstairs, presumably everyone had gone to bed. She switched off the small laptop, finally ready for sleep.

A soft rap sounded on her door. At first she wasn't sure she'd heard it. Probably Claus. But she remembered the CIA agent. Would he knock? Of course not. She glanced at her pillow concealing her Beretta, then remembered she was naked; it was hot and humid in her room.

‘Who is it?' she asked, quietly.

‘Jake.'

She chewed her lip, thought about putting some clothes on, but didn't. She cracked open the door, leaned around it so he couldn't see her body.

‘It's late,' she said.

He gazed down at her face, his brow touching the door and the doorframe, the fingers of his left hand resting lightly against the wood. He didn't push. His breath smelled slightly sweet, some kind of liqueur. His eyes weren't bloodshot. She inhaled his scent.