- -
- 100%
- +
‘It was the financial crisis,’ said Ricky. ‘My people in Beijing suddenly had more urgent uses for their money. But they recommended me to a guild instead.’ He gave a bright false smile. ‘A commercial and industrial guild. Very big in Nanjing, which is where the treasure fleet was built; and also in Guangdong, where a lot of the ironwork was done. That’s why they were so keen to be a part of this.’
‘A commercial and industrial guild?’ frowned Miles, who’d spent several years salvaging wrecks in the South China Seas. ‘Which one exactly?’
‘I forget their name. The guild of peace and righteousness. Something like that.’
‘The New Righteousness and Peace Guild?’ suggested Miles.
‘Yes,’ said Ricky uneasily. ‘I think that may have been it.’
‘You’re telling me that we’re in business with the Sun Yee On?’
Ricky didn’t reply, other than for his smile to grow a little grislier. But that was enough for Knox. ‘The who?’ he asked Miles.
‘They’re triads,’ said Miles, in a matter-of-fact tone that accentuated rather than concealed his underlying cold fury. ‘I came across them quite a bit in Macao. They’ve been trying to clean up their image and reputation recently. Lots of joint ventures with the police and local party officials, that kind of thing. Buying political goodwill with patriotic projects like this. But they’re still triads.’
‘They were recommended by the culture ministry,’ protested Ricky. ‘How bad can they be?’
‘They’re fucking triads!’ yelled Miles. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘Jesus! I can’t believe this. We’re screwed.’
‘He’s screwed,’ said Knox, nodding at Ricky.
‘No. We’re screwed.’ Miles glared furiously at Ricky. ‘He only ever hired us because he’d already used up all his own credibility, so he needed ours. Frank and me flew out here ourselves, remember? We talked to the fisherman who found the first cannon. We dived the site ourselves and took the sonar readings. Without our endorsement, he’d never have raised the money, not even from scum like the Sun Yee On. So they’re not just going to blame him when they find out the truth. They’re going to blame us too. And, trust me on this, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of these people.’
‘Hell,’ muttered Knox.
Ricky gave a ghastly smile then got to his feet and went to the sideboard for a bottle of whisky and some glasses. ‘We rather seem to be in the same boat,’ he said, as he splashed out shots for them all with a slightly trembling hand. ‘So what do you say we put our heads together and see if we can’t come up with some kind of solution?’
II
Rebecca was in her bedroom packing for Madagascar when she suffered a stomach cramp so severe that she had to crouch down and bite her finger not to yell out. She’d been trying to avoid the memory ever since her conversation with Pierre, but it was no use, she couldn’t suppress it any longer.
Some eighteen months ago, her sister Emilia had called to let her know that she was thinking of attending a forestry fieldwork course in southern England. Though she’d said it casually enough, they’d both known it was a big deal. Rebecca had left home many years before after a rift with her father of such bitterness that she’d never been back since, hadn’t so much as set eyes on her father or sister. Emilia had been working diligently towards a reconciliation, and this had been her boldest effort yet. But the timing had been awful. Rebecca’s programmes had made her an overnight sensation, in great demand on the chat-show circuit. Her Madagascan upbringing was so exotic that she was constantly being asked about it. The truth had been too difficult for her to face, so she’d sidestepped these questions by fabricating a false idyll of her childhood. But should Emilia come to town, she was terrified the whole story would worm its way out, and she hadn’t been ready for that. ‘I’m not sure where I’ll be,’ she’d blurted out. ‘I may be away filming.’
‘Of course,’ Emilia had said woodenly. ‘Maybe some other time.’
But there’d never been another time. And now there never would be. She breathed in deep, then quashed that treacherous thought. She was going to get Emilia and her father back alive. That was all there was to it. She zipped up her bags, carried them downstairs, handed them to her taxi-driver to pack away in his boot. ‘We off, then?’ he asked.
‘Five minutes,’ she told him. ‘I need to lock up.’
‘You’re the boss.’
She went back inside, was about to record a new message for her answer-phone when she realised she didn’t know how long she’d be away. She had ten days at the most in Madagascar, for her first series was about to debut on American cable and she’d booked a gruelling promotional tour to give it its best shot. She left the message as it was, then she went through her house room by room, turning off appliances at the wall, looking for anything she might have forgotten. It seemed to take forever; all these rooms she never used. She’d bought the house from a City couple with four young children, another on the way. Her viewings had been chaotic, toys everywhere, broken furniture and crayon daubs upon the wall, yet the pervasive joy and life and companionship had intoxicated her. She’d somehow convinced herself that she’d be buying all that along with the house; but all she’d actually bought was more emptiness.
She turned on her conservatory lights, looked out over her small garden. Her first night here, she’d heard a baby crying. Her heart had stopped on her; she’d imagined for a moment that the previous owners must have left one of their brood behind. But when she’d hurried outside, it had only been a black cat. Its mewing had sounded so like an infant in distress that it had made her wonder whether it was deliberately taking advantage of maternal heartstrings. Nature was ingenious at finding such weaknesses to exploit. She’d made a documentary on the subject, featuring similar cases such as cuckoos, those brood parasites that laid their eggs in the nests of other birds to pass on the cost of child-rearing, taking advantage of a glitch in the mental software of some songbirds that made parents give most of their food to the biggest and most aggressive of their nestlings, so as not to waste resources on sickly offspring. They did this irrespective of what their nestlings actually looked like, so they’d end up feeding cuckoo chicks larger than themselves, while their true offspring starved.
Rebecca had always revelled in such uncomfortable truths. She loved to cause consternation, to jolt people into contemplation of their darker nature, hurry them past their mirrors. Exploring such behaviour wasn’t just her career, it was how she now understood the world. Whenever she saw people doing the most mundane things, queuing at the supermarket, holding a door open for somebody, walking their dog … she’d wonder why they were doing it, what the payoff was. And the deeper she’d dug into evolutionary psychology, the more uncompromising her view of the world had become. We were carbon-based breeding machines, that was all. Our consciousness was merely the hum and glow of organic computers at work. Reasoning and emotion were chemically induced. Virtue and vice were survival strategies; free will an illusion. Her work had had a subtle impact on her own life, as though a psychological uncertainty principle was at work, allowing her either to experience or to understand a particular emotion, but not both simultaneously. Whenever she felt any unusual emotion, she’d examine herself like a specimen. Is this envy? she’d wonder. Is this greed? Is this what other people feel? Am I a freak? And whenever any new man tried to get close to her, she’d scrutinise them with almost scientific zeal, examining their conversation and behaviour in minute detail, sometimes even deliberately provoking them with outrageous comments and actions simply to see their response, until invariably she’d drive them away. She did this even though she’d bought herself a house large enough for a family, and yet lived in it alone.
A bang upon her front door. ‘You okay in there, love?’ called out her driver. ‘Only if you want to catch your plane …’
‘Coming.’ She switched off her conservatory lights and turned to go.
SIX
I
‘We’ve leased the Maritsa for six weeks, right?’ asked Knox. ‘All the equipment too?’
Ricky knocked back his whisky, pulled a sour face. ‘So?’
‘So we won’t be saving your Chinese friends much of anything by calling the project off now.’
Miles shook his head. ‘You don’t know these people. If they find out that we knew this was a bust and didn’t tell them—’
‘But we don’t know it’s a bust,’ countered Knox. ‘Not for sure. We have a sea-bed studded with Chinese artefacts, remember, not to mention a very compelling sonar reading.’
‘Which has been refuted by a more recent one,’ pointed out Miles. ‘And by the magnetic imaging.’
‘Yes. And by the sediment samples too. But what if someone had tampered with those readings and those samples?’
‘What?’ asked Ricky. ‘Who?’
‘Don’t get ahead of me,’ said Knox. ‘I’m just asking: isn’t it possible? I mean, how hard would it have been for someone to have switched our samples with sediment from elsewhere?’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘To trick us into giving up the site, of course, so that they can come back later and plunder it at their leisure. I mean, if we’re right about there being a treasure ship here, its cargo could be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Wouldn’t that be worth switching some samples for?’
‘Holm!’ spat Ricky. ‘I never trusted that bastard.’
‘Calm down,’ said Knox. ‘I’m only suggesting it’s a possibility. And if so, shouldn’t we make certain, one way or the other, before we call off the expedition? Wouldn’t our most prudent and responsible course be to take new tests and samples, but this time make sure they can’t be interfered with, maybe even fly some duplicate samples back to Europe for checking. Who knows, maybe we’ll get different results. But, even if not, it’ll buy us another week in which to start managing the expectations of your friends back in China. And we’ve also got Miles and me and fourteen other professional divers on board, we’ve got a motor-boat and two inflatables and all the survey equipment we could wish for. Maybe the wreck isn’t where we thought, maybe it’s five hundred metres west, or a kilometre south. Let’s use our extra time to find it.’
‘You’re right,’ said Miles. ‘We’ll survey the whole damned sea-floor.’
Knox stood and went to the window. The sea was still too rough for the motorboat, and it was getting dark. No way would it be heading back to Morombe tonight. He turned to Ricky. ‘I’ll bet Holm’s still on board,’ he said. ‘He could really screw us if he wants to. Might be worth trying to smooth things out with him.’
‘Leave him to me,’ said Ricky. ‘What about you two?’
‘We need to brief the guys, thrash out a new schedule.’ He looked at them both for approval. ‘Agreed?’
‘Yes,’ said Miles.
‘Yes,’ said Ricky.
‘Good,’ nodded Knox. ‘Then let’s go do it.’
II
Boris felt a mild euphoria as the plane took off on the first leg of his journey to Madagascar, pressing him gently back into his seat. Part of it was simple relief: he’d had to show his passport three times already, and not a sniff of trouble. The Nergadzes knew better than to skimp on such things, of course, but he was an old enough hand never to trust equipment until he’d used it in the field. And it felt good simply to be working again. He was by nature a man of action, and these past few months had chafed badly. But he was buzzing for another reason too.
Fifteen months he’d spent in his various Greek hellholes before the Nergadzes had finally sprung him. Fifteen months. Boris had always fancied himself tough enough to handle serious time. It hadn’t proved that way. Prison had ripped him apart. Part of it had been simply a consequence of being abroad, unfamiliar with the language and the ropes. Another part of it had come from not backing down from a fight with the wrong person on his third day, and being punished for it thereafter in unspeakable ways. But it had been more than that. The Athens fiasco had ruined his whole life. Even after getting out, it had been nothing but shit. As head of security for Sandro Nergadze, he’d been powerful and feared. Now he was nothing. People who’d once cowered from him pushed past him as if he wasn’t there. This world was all about respect. He needed to earn that back. And the best way of doing that was by making someone else pay full price for it, and so let the world know he wasn’t to be messed with. And who better a victim than Daniel Knox, the man who’d caused him all this grief?
The seat-belt warning pinged off. A stewardess came flouncing down the aisle as if it was her personal catwalk. ‘Champagne?’ she asked.
‘Wine,’ he told her. ‘Red.’
He watched approvingly as she walked away, then closed his eyes and recalled that afternoon at Athens Airport when Knox had delivered him and Davit straight into the hands of the Greek police, despite swearing upon his girlfriend’s life that he’d take them to the golden fleece. His heart clenched a little at the memory. But when he thought about what he’d do to that man in revenge, and that he’d be well paid for it too, it soothed him wonderfully.
The stewardess returned with a balloon glass half-filled with dark red wine. He took a good mouthful. It tasted pleasantly raw and bold. Five hundred thousand euros! he thought. It had better damned well be Knox out there. But then he remembered that Sandro and Ilya had commissioned him to make precisely that determination himself. They’d believe whatever he told them. He laughed out loud and toasted himself in the faint reflection of his window.
Yes. Things were definitely looking up.
SEVEN
I
It was late by the time Knox made it to bed. He was worn out from his day, yet sleep eluded him. He’d been an archaeologist long enough to take his lows with his highs, so while he was disappointed by Holm’s bombshell announcement, he’d get over it just fine. But the longer the evening had gone on, the more he’d realised what a financial and reputational disaster it threatened to be for Miles and his brother Frank, his co-founder of MGS, currently holding the fort back in Hove. The two men had been good to Knox, giving him this job after Gaille died, sticking by him through his first year, though he’d done precious little to warrant such loyalty. He felt bad for their troubles, anxious to help.
Madagascar was barely a blur against the pre-dawn sky when he rose. He brewed coffee and took a cup to the control room, started revising the dive plan along the lines he and Miles had discussed with their divers the night before. He logged on as he worked. Internet access was via a local mobile phone network, and consequently expensive, sporadic and slow, but it was fine for email. His in-box was all routine, except for one message from Braddock at the Landseer Trust.
Dear Mr Richardson,
Just heard some troubling news and wanted to let you know asap. The Kirkpatricks’ sailboat has been found drifting, and Adam and Emilia are missing. Don’t get too alarmed—they often vanish into the forest for days at a time—but I thought it best to alert you at once as you may want to defer decisions on flights etc. I will, of course, update you when I hear anything more.
All best,
Braddock Lightman
He remembered Lucia’s remark the afternoon before, how she’d been trying to get hold of the Kirkpatricks, but had failed. No wonder. He tried to put the news aside as he worked on his schedules. He already had plenty to occupy him. But it nagged at him all the same. People vanished into the forest, sure, but not from boats, not unless something terrible had happened. A sudden vivid memory of Emilia Kirkpatrick on the afternoon some fourteen months before when she’d burst so suddenly into his life, jolting him from the malaise he’d been in since Mikhail Nergadze had murdered Gaille while he’d looked helplessly on. He owed her an incalculable debt for that. He couldn’t just ignore it.
Something else troubled him too. Their Eden project was only a few weeks away. Was it possible that the Kirkpatricks’ disappearance was connected to it in some way? It was another five minutes before he gave in. He printed off the email and took it to Miles’s cabin, banged on his door to wake him, then went inside and flipped on his light. ‘Read this,’ he said.
‘Oh, Christ,’ muttered Miles. ‘Those poor people.’ His heart wasn’t in his words, however, partly because he’d never got to know Emilia anything like as well as Knox had, partly because he had enough worries of his own. But then he realised why Knox had woken him, and he sat up abruptly. ‘No, mate,’ he said. ‘I need you here.’
‘Not as badly as she needs me there.’
‘There’ll already be a huge search going on. People who know the area. How much difference will you make?’
‘Maybe quite a lot, if it has something to do with the Winterton.’
‘How could it?’ frowned Miles. ‘No one else knows about that.’
‘Someone must. They got us our licences, remember? So people in the government must know. Anyway, it’s only thirty-odd metres deep. Some fisherman or diver could easily have found it by accident. And if they have, and that’s why Adam and Emilia have vanished, what chance will the police have?’
‘The Kirkpatricks wouldn’t want you telling the police,’ said Miles. ‘Not unless there was no choice. Don’t you remember how adamant Emilia was about secrecy?’
‘But that’s precisely why I need to go down there myself,’ said Knox. ‘If it’s got nothing to do with the Winterton, fine, I’ll come straight back. But if it does …’ He realised this wasn’t enough. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘She’s a friend. I owe her more than you realise. I’ll get the new schedules finished before I leave, and you don’t really need me otherwise, not really, not for a sea-bed search like this. You’ve got plenty of better divers than me.’
Miles shook his head, but in concession rather than disagreement. He looked wryly up at Knox. ‘We were going to fire you, you know,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Knox.
‘It wasn’t just that you weren’t pulling your weight—though you weren’t. You were so damn morose all the time; you were bringing everyone else down.’
‘I know.’
‘Morale matters in small businesses like ours.’
‘Yes, it does,’ acknowledged Knox. ‘Frankly, I could never figure out why you kept me on so long.’
Miles gave a dry laugh. ‘I guess we felt bad for you after … what happened. We figured you just needed time. And then she turned up.’ He squinted at Knox. ‘You never did tell us what happened that weekend.’
‘No,’ agreed Knox.
‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘Go check into it. Bring her and her father back, if you possibly can. But, whatever you may think, I need you here too. I’ve come to rely on you more than you realise. So I want your word you’ll shift your arse back here as soon as humanly possible.’
‘You’ve got it,’ vowed Knox. ‘And thanks.’
II
Rebecca landed midmorning at Antananarivo’s Ivato Airport, and emerged into the crowded, dingy arrivals hall to find Pierre himself waiting for her. He was easy to spot, standing nearly a head taller than most of the Malagasy thronging around him, and looking like some latter-day pirate, with his bulging goitre of black beard, his vast dark eyes and his gold hoop earring. He saw her at the same time, bulled his way through the crowd to her, took her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks,then reached around her and hugged her, his beard tickling her cheek. She was still holding her luggage, so she had to wriggle her shoulders to make him let go. ‘Any news?’ she asked.
He shook his head as he stepped back, brushed a finger beneath his eye. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘My little Becca.’
‘Please, Pierre. I need to know what’s going on.’
‘Nothing to tell,’ he shrugged. ‘I speak to the police in Tulear earlier; there’s no sign of them.’ And he took her bags from her, led the way towards the terminal doors.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘My car’s outside.’
‘Your car?’
‘If we leave now, we can be in Tulear tonight.’
‘I’m flying,’ she told him. ‘That way I’ll be in Tulear this afternoon. Why don’t you come with me?’
‘I can’t. I have my car.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ she said.
‘You want me to leave it?’
‘I want you to do whatever it takes to find my father and sister,’ she told him. ‘Emilia’s your lover, Pierre. She’s the mother of your child. My father’s been your closest friend for over thirty years. And you’re worried about your damned car?’ She shook her head at him. ‘What the hell are you still doing here? Why aren’t you back home already, leading the search?’
Pierre went a little red. ‘I wanted to be here for you,’ he said. ‘I cannot bear for you to arrive home with no one to greet you, not after all these years, not to news like this. And I think maybe you’ll need someone to drive you.’
‘I told you. I’m flying.’
‘Yes. But I didn’t know that.’
She shook her head at him, still indignant, yet finding it hard to justify. They were close enough to the automatic glass doors that they kept opening and then closing again, offering brief glimpses of bright sunshine. She turned and walked out through them. The newly laid tarmac in the car park was glistening from a recent shower, and the moisture had coaxed out a cocktail of pungent smells: from the brown-grey zebu pats, like amputated elephants’ feet, scattered as fertiliser on the grass verges; from the sweat-stiffened clothes of the porters, labourers and touts; from the choking silver-black exhaust fumes spewed by the ramshackle taxis, buses and trucks. Yet, deep beneath those, she could detect hints of gentler scents, of frangipani, vanilla and hibiscus. She breathed in deep. Smell was the most evocative of the senses, they said. Eleven years! Eleven years! Yet still it seemed instantly like home, oppressive with memory. For a moment she felt eighteen again, insecure and terrified, about to leave behind everything she’d ever known. She shivered as though a ghost had walked through her.
Madagascar: the Great Red Island, the Eighth Continent, land of her birth.
III
The Bayliner was already crowded by the time Knox heaved his dive-bag and overnight bag down the gangway and aboard. Garry was at the wheel, with Dieter Holm behind him, looking thunderous, alongside Ron, their ship’s steward, off into Morombe for fresh supplies, and Lucia on the cushioned rear seat. He added his bags to the general pile, went to sit beside her. ‘What’s this, then?’ she smiled. ‘Deserting the sinking ship?’
He debated a moment, decided he might as well tell her. She was headed to Eden too, after all, and was bound to find out eventually. ‘You know how you couldn’t get hold of the Kirkpatricks?’ he said. ‘Turns out they’ve gone missing. I’m going down to help with the search.’
‘I thought you didn’t know them.’
‘I didn’t say that. I only said that they were pretty well known along this coast.’
She threw him an amused look. ‘So should I now doubt everything you told me yesterday?’ But there was no sting in her voice. She was a journalist; she knew how the world worked. ‘So how do you know them?’