James Barrington - Pandemic

‘To give you an example, sir, the US Navy tables list a total decompression time of only twenty-one minutes for a dive of half an hour down to a depth of one hundred and thirty feet. The Buhlmann tables give twenty-eight minutes as a minimum, and the DECOM tables, which are derived from the Buhlmann figures, recommend thirty-eight minutes, which is nearly twice as long as the US Navy suggest. Me, I’d go for the DECOM figures every time.’

‘So,’ the Director asked, ‘taking a hypothetical case, what would be your best guess at a dive depth that required three aqualung cylinders for the decompression pauses?’

‘It’s impossible to be sure,’ Elias replied, ‘but if I had to guess I’d say you were looking at either a very deep dive – down to maybe one hundred and fifty feet – or an unusually long dive at some intermediate depth.’

When the door had closed behind Elias, Nicholson opened the wide central drawer in his desk, pulled out the photographs and spread them out in front of him again. He was once more examining the fifth picture through his magnifying glass when the telephone rang.

‘This is the Duty Interpreter at N-PIC, sir, with a follow-up call. On the Keyhole’s next pass, the diving tender was no longer in the area. We’re doing a wide area survey to see if we can pick it up in port somewhere, but that might be difficult. That area of the Med is full of boats just like the one in question, and it’ll be a real needle-in-a-haystack job to find it.’

‘Did you have any other assets in range between the Keyhole’s passes?’

‘No, sir, sorry. It’s a low-interest area.’

‘OK, do the best you can. On my authority, identifying and finding that boat is now a Class Two priority task. Use all available assets, but do not deviate any of the birds from their normal routes.’

‘Understood.’

The Director replaced the telephone and bent again over the photographs. The fifth picture had been taken at a somewhat oblique angle, as the satellite was moving away from the target, which paradoxically made it slightly clearer than all but one of the preceding shots, because the sun was no longer reflected off the surface of the sea directly towards the camera. Of course, the surface of the Mediterranean was still dappled with light reflected from wavelets, but the area on the port side of the diving tender was comparatively dark.

But there in the water, close to the protuberance identified as a cleated-down rope by N-PIC, was a small bright blob. Even using the magnifying glass, Nicholson was unable to determine what it was. To his naked eye it looked like either an unusually square-shaped wavelet or something metallic hanging suspended just below the surface. Through the magnifying glass it looked exactly the same, only bigger.

He thought back over what Elias had just told him. This could be merely the weight the diver had used to anchor the rope to which he had attached his compressed air cylinders. But, in that case, why hadn’t he recovered the rope and its weight immediately? Why would he stop hauling in the rope with the weight so close to the surface, cleat it down and go to the wheel-house? Perhaps he’d received a call on his radio, if he possessed one. Or maybe he’d gone to make a radio call. An urgent call?

No, that didn’t make sense. Only one possible sequence of events made sense, and that was the one that for thirty years he had endured nightmares about.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he muttered grimly. He shook his head and reached out a hand to the black telephone.

Kandíra, south-west Crete

Spiros didn’t own a vice, so he clamped the flask as firmly as he could against the edge of the wooden table with his hands and a towel, while Nico began to use the hacksaw on its neck. The blade was blunt, with teeth missing, which didn’t help, and the steel was tougher than it looked. And Spiros’s hands shook a little after so much whisky.

But finally the blade began to bite, and after five minutes Nico had cut about a quarter of an inch into the neck of the flask. He stopped for another swig of beer, and then they turned the flask over to rest on its base before he continued cutting, just in case any contents escaped through the incision before he finished. Holding the flask upright against the pressure of the hacksaw was much more difficult, and it took another twenty minutes before the last unsevered fraction of steel finally parted and the top of the flask tumbled to the floor.

Nico put the hacksaw down on his chair and opened up the metal case resting on the table. Then he positioned the flask over the lid, carefully tipped it on its side and gently tapped its base. A thin trickle of grey-brown dust emerged, then with a rush a small piece of what looked like dried mud shot out of the flask, and landed on the centre of the case’s lid.

‘What is it?’ Spiros asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Nico replied, prodding at the strange lump with a screwdriver. As the blade touched it, the solid piece crumbled into the same grey-brown dust.

‘Drugs?’ Spiros inquired hopefully, pinching some of the powder between forefinger and thumb and smelling it.

‘I don’t know. It could be heroin, perhaps. I’ve heard that some of the very pure varieties are brown in colour.’

Nico was almost right. About ninety per cent of the heroin that finds its way to Western Europe, and particularly to Britain, is extracted from the opium poppies – Papaver Somniferum – of Anatolia in Turkey. Known as Turkish Brown, among other pseudonyms, this heroin looks something like Demerara sugar, and it’s usually either smoked or the fumes inhaled as the heroin is burnt in a spoon or piece of tinfoil held over a candle.

In contrast, the American addict’s heroin of choice is Thai White, culled from the poppy fields of Thailand’s Golden Triangle. Pure white, and suitable for snorting or injecting, this is gram for gram the most expensive heroin, and hence by definition the most expensive illegal drug, in the world, worth about three times as much as Columbian Pure, which is the very best quality cocaine.

Nico leaned forward to smell the powder and found it was almost odourless – perhaps just a slight hint of mushrooms. He dampened the end of one finger and applied it gently to the edge of the little heap of powder, then touched it to his tongue. He grimaced and spat. ‘This is not heroin,’ he complained. ‘Whatever it is, it’s disgusting.’

‘That’s it, then,’ Spiros muttered. ‘This can go to the dump.’ He tossed the two pieces of the opened flask into the steel case and snapped it shut, securing the lid with the over-centre catch. ‘Five days I’ve wasted on that aircraft wreck, and nothing at all to show for it.’

Nico shrugged and looked over at his uncle. ‘If you really don’t want it, I’ll take the case and see if I can get something for it.’

‘Take it, take it,’ Spiros grumbled. ‘And take the rest of this rubbish as well.’ He opened the case once again, dropped the three remaining flasks into their empty recesses, added the red file, and slammed the lid shut.

Ten minutes later, Nico left Aristides’s house and began the short walk to his own apartment – actually three rooms, accessed by an outside staircase, on the upper floor of a two-storey house owned by a friend – which lay on the northern edge of the village. As he walked through the silent streets, deserted but for a handful of near-feral cats noisily disputing their territorial rights, Nico became more conscious of the weight of the object he grasped with his right hand.

From what Spiros had told him, it seemed that the case had remained underwater for a long time, several years at least. It was therefore probably unlikely that anyone would take an interest in it now. And it was just a steel case after all, though specially constructed for carrying those strange flasks. The flasks themselves were something else. He still had no idea what the brown powder was, but it just had to be valuable to somebody somewhere, otherwise the comprehensive sealing and locking of the stoppers on the flasks made absolutely no sense. And if it was valuable, there was always the chance that someone might come looking for it.