66 Metres: A chilling thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!. J.F. Kirwan

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СКАЧАТЬ fine.’ She glanced at Mike. ‘He’s the perfect gentleman.’ Maybe not quite true, but everything was relative.

      He gave her a measuring look, then turned to Mike. ‘We’ll escort you into the harbour.’ He paused, then added, ‘I’ll be calling Old Smithy’s at eleven to check her safe arrival.’

      Mike nodded, looking a little shaken himself, and started the engine. The captain and his mate crossed back to their boat. Nadia sat down heavily. Once underway, when she was sure no one was looking, she put her head in her hands.

      As they followed the grey patrol boat, she watched Mike. He’d said little since the boarding. She’d asked him what was going on, and he’d said the captain had told him there’d been a drugs-related Mafia killing in Penzance yesterday. Mike was clearly rattled. There was little eye contact or chat during the rest of the trip. She stayed at the back of the boat. He seemed to take that as a signal. As they neared the harbour, the patrol boat turned abruptly and headed back out to sea. Mike got busy, and she bent down as if re-arranging the contents of her backpack, retrieved the Beretta, and hid it amongst the clothes in her bag.

      After they’d moored, she and Mike walked along the quay, next to each other but not too close, and without discussing their destination, he led her to Old Smithy’s Inn.

      ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. He stared at the inn, then back to her. ‘Listen,’ he started, ‘about tonight –’

      ‘Mike, I’m sorry, I led you on, but the thing is, I’m not really ready for…’ She felt she owed him more, and let out a half-truth. ‘Something bad happened to me back in Penzance… you know, a guy.’

      Mike nodded knowingly. ‘Must have been a real arsehole.’

      She stared right back at him, and thought of Janssen. ‘He was.’ Saying it outright, she acknowledged that Janssen was dead and gone, could do no harm to her or anyone else. In her mind she imagined Janssen, Toby and Kilroy beneath the waves where Sammy had disposed of them.

      Mike shifted on his feet. ‘If you need anything…’ he glanced at the inn again, at the door. She realised he was worried someone might come out and see him with her. It was a small town, after all.

      She took his left hand. ‘You’re married, Mike, aren’t you?’

      He froze, then laughed, and for the first time since the boarding looked relaxed. He nodded, and fished a wedding ring out of his pocket.

      She let go of his hand. ‘Don’t worry, what happens at sea, stays at sea.’

      He nodded again. ‘Agreed, and… thanks.’ He kissed her on the cheek, then turned and walked away quickly.

      Nadia went into Smithy’s and registered, picked up her room key, avoided the raucous smoke-filled bar, and ascended narrow wooden stairs to the top floor, amongst the roof beams. After a long shower she collapsed naked on the soft bed, switched off the lights, and gazed through the skylight to the stars. She thought of the family home back in Uspekh, and happier days when she’d been too young to understand what was going on, what was going wrong between her parents.

      She focused on what mattered: the Mafia-drugs cover story would hold for a few days. Until word leaked out about what had really been stolen. Police were one thing, but others – far less civil – would come looking. Sixty-six metres. Before the heist in the Thames, Sammy had told her the Rose was originally destined for use on a submarine, waterproof-rated to a significant depth, so she wasn’t worried about it being damaged. But she’d need a good diver to help her find it. Someone she could trust, someone prepared to dive deep.

      She typed the memorised GPS coordinates into a map program on her phone, and then sat up when it found the location. A WWII wreck, the Tsuba, lying near-vertical after being sunk atop an underwater promontory. She Googled it. The propeller was at sixty-six metres. Recommended only for technical divers on mixed gases or rebreathers. Nadia wasn’t trained for either, and that type of training took at least a week, time she didn’t have. But she had to be on the dive to retrieve the Rose.

      Something about sixty-six metres snagged in her memory, so she Googled that in the context of diving. Sixty-six metres – 218 feet – was the depth at which oxygen poisoning started if diving on air. It would kill you, though not straight away. How was she going to find someone who was both experienced enough, and reckless enough, to dive with her to that depth on air?

      She switched off the phone, too tired to think it through. Instead she thought of Katya, imprisoned in Kadinsky’s luxury dacha in the Khimki forest outside Moscow. Maybe Sammy was right: this time. After this job, Kadinsky would let Katya go, let them both go. Her mother would have called it magical thinking. But Nadia needed something to hold onto, and anyway she didn’t want her mother in her head.

      Instead she thought of how Katya used to sing her the Cossack lullaby at bedtime. Never had the verses made more sense than now. Nadia hummed the simple melody in her mind, mouthing a few of the words until she fell asleep on her side, her fists clenched underneath the pillow, next to her Beretta.

       I will cry because I will miss you,

       I will wait for you forever for your return,

       I will always pray for you whilst I am waiting,

       And in the evening and when night comes,

       I will wait and dream of where you are,

       I will worry about you and fear for your troubles in some distant land.

       Sleep now, and do not think of such sadness and sorrows,

       Maybe it will never be

       Bayushki bayu

Chapter Five

      Danton nursed his big right knuckle. The blood on it wasn’t his. But his flesh had been grazed. So the soon-to-be-dead Irish shit in front of him, Sammy, was going to pay. He picked up the hammer and watched the bloodied and battered curly-haired prick’s eyes go wide.

      ‘I’ve told you everything, Christ Almighty. For the love of God, please!’ His supplication descended into sobbing.

      Danton smirked. This was the point he liked best, when they realised that even after confessing everything, they were still going to die, and painfully too.

      ‘Not his jaw. I want to go through everything one more time.’

      Danton turned and glowered at the CIA spook, seated far away enough to avoid getting bloodstains on his Hermes suit. He’d like to get one of them under the hammer one day, just to show them what it felt like. But this agent clearly had ideas above his station, paying a couple of grand for a suit. Danton doubted he wore it back at the office. No, he probably saved it for his European trips, believed he was a cut above the rest. His bosses back home would recognise it meant he was a risk. But for Danton it meant he knew the guy’s weak spot, his ego. Which meant they could do business together.

      He raised the hammer backwards in a theatrical arc, then shattered Sammy’s knee. The screaming soothed him as it always had. He sat back, watched him writhe against the chains, incoherent with pain, and then the spook went to work, talking in soft tones, asking СКАЧАТЬ