The Real Thing (17 page)

Two police cutters were already there, and were about to be joined by a ship from the Coastguard. Rescue helicopters and a ready-reaction force from the Australian SAS were on stand-by.

The problem was, ‘out to sea’ covered a very big area, thousands of miles of ocean and small islands stretching into the heart of the Pacific. The plane had a good range, and could have made it all the way to the Fiji islands if it had wanted.

So they searched, and they prayed. And so did Anastasia Borkin. There was nothing more she could do from Atlanta, Georgia to help the Coca-Cola Three, nor the two brave boys, who had somehow latched on to their trail and, having failed to get any assistance from the authorities, had launched some harebrained rescue attempt of their own. There was nothing more she could do to help apprehend the kidnappers either.

That just left her with the spy. But she had plans for him.

It was ironic, Clara thought, the amount of trouble they’d gone to, to save her life, just so they could kill her. Through the windows of the forward lounge she could see two crew members on the very tip of the bow, scanning the water anxiously. The water glowed ahead of the boat, lit by intense underwater spotlights.

She knew a little about boats, and she also knew a little about lagoons. Such knowledge came from having led an exciting and adventurous life. She knew they’d be watching carefully for coral reefs as they gingerly picked their way out of the labyrinth of the lagoon. She also knew that the depth sounder was next to useless in waters such as these, where the bottom could be perfectly flat one minute, then shear up in a jagged, hull-crushing spear of reef the next.

No wonder the two crewmen were studying the water with such intense concentration.

She would have bet any amount of money that the captain of the yacht was furious at having to take the ship out of the lagoon at night, when the reefs would lie hidden beneath the inky waves. But captain or not, he was obviously under orders from higher authorities, and so the boat picked its way slowly through the water.

There was an abrupt shout from one of the lookouts, and the boat shuddered into reverse. The sudden slowing was enough to tip Clara forward out of her seat, had she not caught herself with a quick grab at the arm of the sofa.

One of the interesting things Clara knew about boats had to do with the propellers, more correctly known as screws. Older ships had huge solid screws that turned in one direction when the boat was going forward and the opposite direction when the boat was reversing. In order to reverse the boat, the screws had first to be stopped, before they could start to turn backwards.

But the newer controllable-pitch screw always turns the same way. It is the blades of the screws themselves that change, swivelling on a shaft and turning forward thrust into reverse thrust in a few seconds, rather than a few minutes.

If the Titanic had had controllable-pitch screws, it might never have hit that iceberg, but of course they hadn’t been invented at that time.

The effect on board the
Turtle Dove
, which did have controllable-pitch screws, was like a car slamming on its brakes.

The boat began to reverse, and Clara’s thoughts turned again to rescue, although, by now, it seemed that it was all going to be a little too late.

Fizzer didn’t wait for the dinghy to wash up on the shore, but ran out along the end of the jetty, diving into the water and pulling the boat close by the rope that ran through small loops around the outside.

The ship was gliding away, slowly though, which seemed strange to Fizzer who knew very little about ships and reefs, despite having led an exciting and adventurous life of his own.

Tupai also raced out along the jetty and leaped into the boat as soon as Fizzer had it alongside. The boat almost bent in two under his weight, but it held together, and by the time Fizzer had clambered aboard, Tupai had wrenched the little engine into life.

Fizzer steered, Tupai knew even less about boats than he did. The bow rose as the dinghy surged through the water towards the brightly lit ship beyond.

Overhead, Fizzer thought he heard the drone of an aircraft, and glanced upwards for a moment, but there were no lights to be seen in the sky.

They caught up with the ship within a few short minutes, thanks to its slow pace, and Fizzer eased the dinghy up to the small platform at the rear. A loose rope trailed through the water behind the ship, no doubt the line that was supposed to have secured the dinghy.

A bright searchlight was probing the waters in front of the ship, and all attention seemed concentrated at that end of the vessel, which was lucky for them at the stern.

Tupai stood in the rocking dinghy and stretched out a leg on to the platform. He was standing like that, straddling the side of the dinghy, when the ship suddenly went into reverse. The dinghy smashed into the side of the ship and propelled Fizzer forward, rolling him over the bow of the dinghy on to the platform and slamming him into the flat side of the ship.

Tupai was not so lucky. He careened off the side of the platform and went flying backwards into the water beside the dinghy, which lurched away into the darkness.

Fizzer hauled himself to the edge of the platform, peering down into water as impenetrable as a sump tray full of old engine oil.

He wanted to shout out ‘Tupai!’ but stopped himself, knowing it would do no good, and would only draw attention to him. All he could think about were the big propellers that he knew were down there somewhere, and he didn’t have to know a lot about ships to know that if they were reversing, then those blades would be sucking in everything in the water behind them. Which had to include Tupai.

He stayed there, hoping against hope, long after the time passed that Tupai would reasonably have been expected to surface. Despair, blacker than the water around him, crept over him then, and he almost didn’t feel the boat hook that jabbed him in his left shoulder.

When he turned, though, he saw the pistol.

Borkin waited by the fax machine until all the pages had slid out the bottom into the plastic holding tray. There were over a hundred pages, but all the vital information was summarised in a few notes on the very first page. She stayed there, giving the evil eye to anyone else who tried to use the fax, until all the pages were through. Harry Truman and Mohammad Sarrafzadeh were nothing if not thorough.

Then she telephoned the rest of the board, calling another emergency meeting. It was time to let them know what was going on.

The mechanical organ grinder in the corner of the room had accusing eyes as she sat and waited, watching their faces as they trooped in. Even now, she thought, there was no trace of concern or guilt on the particular face she was looking at. Maybe he was a very good actor.

When they were all seated she said, ‘We think we’re close to locating Bingham, Clara, and Ralph.’

There was a murmuring, but she continued quickly. ‘We don’t yet know if they are alive or dead.’

That brought an immediate hush. She said, ‘Australian police are closing in on the kidnappers as we speak, and I’m sure you’ll all join me in praying for the safe return of our colleagues. Of immediate concern to me is the fact that one of our own has been largely responsible for the situation we now find ourselves in.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Ricardo blurted out, but her stare told him to shut up and sit back down, and he did.

‘It’s not ridiculous, it’s fact. Sad, terrible, almost unbelievable, yes, but fact. Treachery, treason, call it what you will, it is a vile poison.’

‘If you’re accusing someone in this room, I hope you have some proof,’ Reginald said with a grandfatherly concern in his voice. ‘This is a very serious accusation.’

Borkin dumped the fax on the table, all hundred pages of it. ‘I have plenty of proof, all circumstantial, but enough for me to be sure. Included in these documents is a list of the shareholders of Corker Cola Australia. A very good man in New Zealand did some research for me, well, actually he did it for young Fraser Boyd, but he has passed the results on to me.

‘There are no employees of Coca-Cola amongst these shareholders. But when you start checking into family records, sons, daughters, wives, especially …’ she paused for effect, ‘wives under their maiden names, then a picture starts to develop. Then we have FBI videotape of a member of this board making a call from a public phone box.’

‘That’s no crime,’ Ricardo remonstrated.

‘No,’ she conceded, ‘but when the call was traced to Corker Cola Head Office in Sydney, then it looks more than a little suspicious. The FBI certainly think there is enough evidence to lay holding charges.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘And they expect to lay more serious charges once they’ve had a little chat with the kidnappers.’

There was a long, long silence, during which everyone around the table stared at everyone else around the table, waiting for a sign, hoping against hope that Borkin was wrong.

‘Ricardo,’ she turned to the swarthy man, who looked more surprised than anything. There were gasps from around the table. ‘Ricardo, I don’t want to make a scene, so I’ve asked Special Agent Costello and Special Agent Johnson of the FBI to wait outside. Would you please escort Mr Fairweather out to them? They’re expecting him.’

All the eyes at the table turned from Ricardo to Reginald whose face was frozen. After a moment of indecision, Ricardo went to stand behind him, and, after a few moments of the staring and the silence, the accusing gazes, Vice-President Reginald Fairweather, next in line for the Presidency, stood up, white of face, and with Ricardo’s strong hand guiding his upper arm, left the room without a word.

Then the commotion really began.

The world disappeared with an almighty splash and there was only darkness and silence. Not darkness, well, just for a second, for then Tupai became aware of an eerie glow, reflected off a coral reef below and forward of him, shimmering in the light of the ship’s underwater spotlights.

The wall of the diving platform had felt like a sledgehammer, driving him backwards off the boat with barely enough time to grab a lungful of air before he plummeted into the silent dark.

Fish darted backwards and forwards in the glare of the underwater lights. Didn’t they sleep? Above the fluorescent ghostly glow of the reef was the black-bottomed hull of the ship. And movement, a slow, lazy, almost hypnotic movement. Around, and around, drawing him towards it. Come here, it seemed to say, come here.

The shock of the impact wore off then, and the movement crystallised into two huge black shapes revolving rapidly in front of him. Scraps of seaweed were being sucked towards the screws of the ship; as was the trailing rope from the diving platform; as was Tupai White.

The rope! He scrabbled frantically with his right hand and it mercifully closed on the loose nylon cord.

The screws were turning faster now and he could feel the water around him suctioning past into their turbulence. His feet were swinging towards the scything danger, closer and closer. He tried to haul himself up the rope, but the drag was too strong, and it was all he could do to hold on to the rope, with both hands now, his body spinning and tumbling like a rag doll, his feet almost touching the whirling slice of the blades.

Air. He needed air. He had managed a last lungful of precious oxygen before the plunge into the water, but it was not lasting. His throat burned. Why his throat? In adventure books it was always the hero’s lungs that were burning when they were trapped underwater.

Tupai’s throat burned, his head pounded, his lungs didn’t burn, they felt like they were going to explode. Had to breathe in. Had to breathe in. Couldn’t. All around was just water. Breathe in water and you wouldn’t even be allowed a final scream as you died. Let go of the rope. Let go and it will all be over, quickly, no more burning, no more pounding, no silent watery scream.

The rope slipped in his grasp, and he jerked even closer to the spinning blades. But something was different now. The blades were still spinning but the pull was less. Less. Then no pull at all.