Chaos Theory (2 page)

The powerboat’s engines died, and Noah circled around it to help Silja and the cameraman out of the sea. Silja was doing a slow backstroke and laughing, but the cameraman was frantically doggy-paddling around in circles. ‘My camera! Dropped my camera!’

Silja climbed up on to the jet ski, and reached down to take the cameraman’s hand. But he kept on thrashing around, peering into the water for any sign of his Arriflex. The sea was shallow here, and very clear, but the Arriflex was grey and white, and wouldn’t have been easy to see.

‘Noah, what’s going on?’ asked Richard Bullman.

‘Sorry, Richard. I kind of misjudged my speed.’

‘You’re not bloody joking. Get back to your first position and we’ll see if we can try it one more time, before we lose the light altogether.’

‘We have a slight problem here, Richard. Mac’s dropped the Arri.’

‘Shit. Is it damaged?’

‘I’m not sure. He’s dropped it into the ocean.’

There was a lengthy pause. Noah imagined that Richard Bullman was probably finding it difficult to speak. The sun was already half-eclipsed by the Rock, and it was obvious that they weren’t going to be able to shoot this scene again – not today, and not tomorrow, if the weather forecast was accurate. They might even have to come back again, after they had finished filming in Morocco.

The next voice that Noah heard was Kevin Langan’s. Kevin was the production manager. He sounded dry and unemotional, as if he were reading out a list of technical specifications, but then he always spoke like that, even when he was furious.

‘Noah . . . you’ll find a marker buoy on board the cruiser. Underneath the seats on the sun deck, third locker on the starboard side. Take it out and mark your position.’

‘OK, then what?’

‘Tomorrow morning, first light, you put on your scuba gear and you go down and you find that camera for us.’

‘It ain’t going to be easy, Kevin. There’s a whole lot of weed down there.’

‘I don’t care, Noah. You’re going to find it. If you
don’t
find it, I shall be quite unhappy.’

Noah knew what that meant. Several cameramen and technicians who had made Kevin Langan ‘quite unhappy’ hadn’t worked again for years.

‘I’m hearing you, Kevin. Over and out.’

 

T
hey were out on the Alboran Sea at first light the next morning, in a small diving-launch which smelled strongly of sardines and diesel oil. As predicted, the cloud was high and hazy, and there was scarcely any wind.

Noah had a hangover like a head-on car crash. Last night the crew had all gone to La Bayuca for a long and noisy dinner, and he had drunk two bottles of Rioja too many, which meant a total of four.

Silja said, ‘You don’t have to do this, if you’re not up to it. I can do it.’

Noah blew out cigarette smoke and shook his head. ‘No. It was my fault, so I have to do it. Kevin will never let me forget it, otherwise.’

The boat’s owner nudged up to the marker buoy and cut the engine. ‘You ready, mate?’

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

He stood up. He was wearing bright green shorts with palm trees and parrots on them, which he had bought last year in Honolulu, when he was filming
Hurricane Force.
His body was stringy and muscular and tanned to a light oak colour, with scars and welts all across his chest and a Seabees tattoo on his upper arm – a cartoon bee in a Navy cap, flying through the air with a power drill and a collection of wrenches.

He checked his regulator, fitted his mask over his face, and then tipped himself backward into the sea.

Even though it was only mid-September, the water was surprisingly cold. Summer had been a long time coming this year, and the Mediterranean had never warmed up to its usual temperature. Noah twisted around and gave a strong kick which took him vertically downward.

He swam through a glittering school of rainbow sardines. The ocean here was less than eighteen metres deep, and he could see the bottom clearly. Most of it was covered with seaweed, which undulated like pale green hair. This was the mutant seaweed
caulerpa taxifolia
– originally bred for aquaria in Monaco – but which had now choked up thousands of acres of the Mediterranean seabed.

He saw something shining through the weeds, and swam towards it. It was one of dozens of empty wine bottles, which must have been thrown overboard from somebody’s party, as well as countless broken dinner plates. Greeks, probably, having a crockery-smashing session. But no sign of Mac’s Arriflex.

Using the marker-buoy anchor as his central point, Noah swam around in wider and wider circles. He would have enjoyed this, if his head hadn’t been hammering so hard. He had learned to dive when he was in the Gulf, with the Seabees, and he had become one of their best underwater fitters. His specialty used to be wet underwater welding – repairing the plates of bomb-damaged boats without having to tow them into dry dock.

Ahead of him lay a weed-filled depression, almost seventy metres wide. Noah swam over the edge of it, and there, amongst a tangle of nets and lines, he glimpsed the crescent-shaped gleam of a camera lens. He reached down, found the camera’s handle, and hefted it up. He hoped to God that Mac’s footage was still intact. The Arriflex and its accessories were worth upwards of $70,000, but the images on the film inside were worth a hundred times that.

He half-swam, half-jumped his way back towards the marker-buoy anchor, as if he were walking on the moon. Up above him he could see the hull of the fishing boat and the diamond-shaped patterns of the waves.

He crossed over a wide stretch of bare sand where divers had obviously been clearing away the
caulerpa taxifolia
with suction pumps. It was a losing battle: as fast as the divers sucked it up, the weed grew back again, far more rapidly than any native variety.

Noah found himself bounding in slow motion through a wide scattering of assorted debris – bits and pieces of wreckage and jetsam that must have been sucked out of the sand along with the weed, but which had sunk back down to the seabed.

He saw the aluminium armrest of an old-fashioned aircraft seat. Beside it lay the empty frame of a suitcase, with a handle and even a luggage tag, but no sides. There was a man’s lace-up shoe, once black probably, but now greyish-green. An enamel mug, rusted in half; an umbrella; a tangle of fishing-nets; and a whole variety of blocks and tackles that looked as if they had been used for hauling up sails.

He had almost reached the weed again when he saw a binocular case half-buried in the sand. It was canvas, bleached white by the sea, but there was a chance that the binoculars inside might have survived. Noah had lost an expensive pair of Nikon Premier binoculars when he was filming two months ago in Montreal, and he hadn’t had the chance to replace them yet. He swam over and picked the case up.

It didn’t seem heavy enough to contain binoculars, but when he gave it a shake he could hear something rattling inside it – something that weighed six or seven ounces at least. He tried to open it, but the catch was far too corroded, so he looped its straps around his belt.

He carried the Arri back towards the marker-buoy line. He tied the handle securely and then gave the line three sharp tugs downward, to indicate that he had found the camera and that the boatman could haul it up. Some inquisitive wrasse came swimming past him, but quickly scattered when he kicked his way up towards the surface.

Silja leaned over the side and helped to pull him out of the water. ‘Well done. Now you can buy me breakfast. I think full English, with fried bread and black pudding, too.’

‘You have to be joking. All I want is a large Bloody Mary – Stolichnaya, with extra Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.’

 

They took a taxi back to the O’Callaghan’s Elliot Hotel on Governor’s Parade, where the whole crew and cast of
Dead Reckoning
were staying, and went up to the Rooftop Restaurant for breakfast. Through the panoramic windows they could see the Straits of Gibraltar, Southern Spain and Morocco, although the hazy sky made the view appear strangely ghostly.

‘You amaze me,’ said Noah, as he watched Silja cutting up a fat British-style sausage.

‘I have a very efficient metabolism,’ she said, smiling at him. Without her dark Rayleigh Martin wig, she didn’t look so anaemic. Her own hair was so blonde that it was almost white, and cut into a feathery, elf-like style. She had high cheekbones and blue eyes that were pale like a winter’s sky. But Noah still found her physical strength to be the most attractive thing about her . . . the thought that he probably couldn’t beat her in unarmed combat.

Richard Bullman came over to their table, wearing a dishevelled green linen suit, John-the-Baptist sandals and yellow socks. He had a pouchy, sallow face like Deputy Dawg. His wiry black hair was uncombed and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for three days.

‘Just thought you’d like to know that Kevin’s had the Arri checked over. The bloody electronics are toast but the footage looks OK, no bloody thanks to you.’

‘Will we have to shoot that scene over?’ Noah asked him.

Richard Bullman wobbled his jowls. ‘No, thank God. I almost hate to say it, but I looked through the rushes last night and they’re bloody terrific. Not exactly what I had in mind, but the way Silja goes hurtling across that bloody deck – human bloody cannonballs aren’t in it.’

‘That’s a bloody relief.’

‘For you it is.’

He caught sight of Jean Bottaro, one of the movie’s producers, sitting on the other side of the restaurant, and raised his arm to her. ‘Jean. I must have a word with bloody Jean . . .’

Once he had gone, Noah lifted the binocular case on to the table. He picked up a butter knife and started to chisel at the catch.

Silja said, ‘You don’t seriously think there are any binoculars in there?’

He shook the case hard. ‘No. But there’s
something
.’

A waiter stood close by, frowning disapprovingly as Noah scraped black fragments of rust on to the tablecloth. Eventually, he managed to force the tip of the knife in between the catch and the canvas, and pry the lid open. First he took out a red-and-gold tobacco box, spotted with corrosion, and then he shook out a large black medallion, about seven centimetres in diameter and half a centimetre thick, attached to a heavy black chain.

He picked up the medallion and examined it closely. On one side it was engraved with an arrangement of parallel lines that looked like primitive drawings of arrows. On the other, he could make out a crescent moon shape, an arrangement of raised circles, and the letters P R C H A L.

‘What is it?’ asked Silja. She took out her rimless half-glasses and peered at it across the table.

‘I don’t have any idea. It looks pretty old though, doesn’t it?’

‘What is P R C H A L? Maybe initials for something . . .’

‘Who knows? Let’s see what’s inside this box.’

The box was enamelled, with a picture of a scarlet devil on the lid, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. It was embossed with the words
Tabak Cert
.

Noah slowly forced it open. Inside there was a small quantity of coarse black tobacco and six or seven pieces of blotchy-looking newsprint, carefully torn into rectangles.

‘Looks like somebody was running low on cigarette papers,’ he commented. He picked up one of the pieces of newsprint and tried to read it. ‘Can’t understand a word. What do you think it is? Hungarian, something like that?’

Silja took the piece of paper and said, ‘Czech. See here, this word “
nemocnice
”, that means “hospital”. I tore my Achilles’ tendon once when I was filming in Prague, and they took me to the “
nemocnice
”.’

‘So maybe P R C H A L means something in Czech. Maybe it’s not initials at all. Hey, maybe it’s the Czech for “prickle”. Well, hey, it
sounds
like it, doesn’t it – “
prchal
”?’

Silja looked at him over her half-glasses, unamused. She passed over another piece of newsprint and pointed to the edge of it. ‘Here, look, there’s a date here. 30 June 1943. This is more than sixty-five years old.’

‘So somebody lost this case during World War Two. Could have dropped it off a boat, I guess. Or maybe it came from a plane crash. There were all kinds of bits of aircraft wreckage down there, and it was pretty much in line with the end of the landing strip.’

Silja poured herself another cup of black coffee. ‘Well, I don’t think we’ll ever find out, will we? Whoever used to own this box, he died before he could enjoy his last cigarette.’

Noah took out two Marlboros, and lit them both. ‘My daddy always used to warn me that smoking kills.’

 

A
deola Davis woke up and stared at the alarm clock beside the bed. 5.57 a.m. Shit. She wouldn’t have time for her morning workout. She would hardly have enough time to take a shower.

She heaved Rick’s arm off her and sat up. ‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I have my first meeting at six forty-five.’

Rick was still sleeping. He mumbled, ‘
Don’t
 . . . you really don’t want to do that, dude . . .’

Adeola flung back the bedcover and bounced out of bed. ‘You said you’d wake me. You
promised
you’d wake me. Jesus Christ, it’s your
job
to wake me.’

Rick opened one eye and looked up at her, confused. ‘What’s the matter, baby? What’s happening?’

‘I need to be sitting across a table from the Ethiopians in forty-seven minutes, that’s what’s happening. I need to look fresh, and perfectly groomed, and I need to have my head together. I need to be utterly composed.’

She crossed the room, scooping up her blue silk bathrobe as she went, and opened the bathroom door. ‘I do not need to look puffy-eyed and dishevelled and exhausted, nor do I need to smell as if I’ve been having all-night sex with my head of security.’