Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

His gaze hardened, revealing actual anger. ‘Dr Wilde, you do not tell me what to do.’

‘Yeah, I get told that all the time. Only as “Mommy” rather than “Dr Wilde”. And I don’t take it from a three-year-old either. So just remember that the point of being here is rescue, not revenge, and let’s see if we can get everyone back safely without having to, y’know, murder anyone. Okay? If you start shooting, Trakas might kill his hostages. That includes Eddie — and Anastasia.’

De Klerx’s mood did not improve when he saw that some of his men were smirking at his telling-off. ‘Of course this is a rescue operation. And I have a plan.’ He pointed at the wreck. ‘We will take the boat in behind the sunken ship so we are not seen, then swim in. There is a ladder at the end of the open dock. We will climb up it and conceal our scuba gear in the hut there,’ his finger shifted towards a small brick ruin close to the dry dock, ‘then use the shadows to make our way to the big building.’

Nina gave the rest of his team a dubious look. ‘You won’t have much chance of sneaking through the place unseen with a squad of huge guys with machine guns.’

‘You are going to suggest again that you come with me, aren’t you?’ said the disapproving Dutchman.

‘It’s not my first time doing this kind of thing, sad to say. Trakas has got someone you love, yes? Well, he’s got someone I love too. If you go, I go. You’ll have to tie me up to stop me.’

De Klerk’s displeased expression suggested that he was considering it, but instead he nodded. ‘Very well. But remember that I advised against it.’ There was a faintly menacing edge to the words. He turned to his men. ‘Beel, wait with the boat behind the wreck until I radio that we have found Miss Mikkelsson and the other hostages, then move in to the dock. The rest of you, once we are safely ashore, swim in and stay in hiding until I signal. If we are discovered,’ he went on, with a look at Nina daring her to challenge his orders, ‘move in immediately and use any force necessary to rescue Miss Mikkelsson. Her safe return is the highest priority.’

‘And everyone else’s safe return,’ Nina reminded him pointedly. She went into the cabin to collect a wetsuit and scuba cylinder. Her deep suit certification had lapsed, but she hadn’t forgotten how to dive. ‘Let’s get them back.’

The man in the hazmat suit ran the nozzle of the hose around the bottom of the now-empty Crucible, then shouted down to the pump operator. The noisy machine wheezed into silence.

The mercury it had extracted had been drained into a line of metal drums, a man in a mask closing the lid on the last. Leaving Axelos and the other guard watching Eddie and the rest of the prisoners, Trakas strode to the pump as its operator again removed the glass jar.

It was considerably fuller than before.

The man grunted with the effort of lifting it. Under his boss’s watchful gaze and the unblinking stare of multiple cameras, he brought it to a weighing scale nearby and carefully lowered it on to the plate. Trakas waited eagerly for the digital readout to settle, then laughed in pure glee at the final result. ‘Seventeen kilograms!’ he cried, hurrying back to his guests. ‘Over seventeen kilograms of gold!’

‘That’s… that’s worth quite a lot,’ said Lonmore.

‘It is!’ The Greek produced a phone and brought up an app to enter a figure, getting an answer that widened his smile still further. ‘At today’s price, that much gold is worth over seven hundred thousand dollars! And,’ he went on, becoming more thoughtful, ‘it means that most of the mercury-196 in the Crucible was converted to gold.’

As much as Anastasia was unwilling to help him, she still nodded. ‘Liquid mercury contains 0.15 per cent mercury-196. A thousand litres of mercury would weigh over thirteen metric tonnes, so the numbers add up.’

‘I see you also paid attention to your father’s theory. Yes, it is an efficient reaction.’

‘Except now you’re stuck with a load of leftover mercury,’ said Eddie. ‘And you’ll need a load more every time you use the Crucible. It can’t be cheap.’

Trakas shrugged. ‘It is much cheaper than gold. And I have many factories, many businesses that have legitimate uses for it. I can buy it by the tanker if I want! But hopefully, I will not need to.’ He spoke to the cameraman, who switched off his device. ‘I now have everything I need. I have the Crucible, I have the gold it made, and I have proof that I can create as much of it as I wish.’ He smiled again, this time in triumph. ‘The bankers will have to give me and my country everything I ask for, or I will ruin them!’

After the boat had taken up a position of concealment behind the wreck, Nina and De Klerx rolled overboard to begin their swim to shore. It did not take long, the boatyard’s lights making their destination clear even from underwater. They entered the flooded dock together. The ladder was in one corner; she angled towards it—

A silhouette obscured the lights above: a guard moving unhurriedly along the dockside, a slung sub-machine gun clear at his side even through the distortion of the waves.

Nina froze, hanging beneath the water’s surface. She had cut in front of the Dutchman, who bumped against her. To her relief he also held still the moment he realised the danger, but both of them were close enough to be spotted if any movement drew the patrolling guard’s attention.

Movement like bubbles from beneath the surface.

Nina held her breath. The scuba regulator would only release spent air into the water when she exhaled, but how long could she hold out?

The figure ambled along the dock… and stopped.

The redhead felt a surge of fear. Had they been seen already? She couldn’t tell which way the man was looking, his head obscured by the glare of a light. Seconds passed. The waves slapping against the dock’s concrete confines washed her gently back and forth, but she also felt herself slowly rising; there hadn’t been time to prepare her diving weights for exact neutral buoyancy. The tank on her back was blue, not black — it would be visible even before it breached the surface.

One of the guard’s arms moved towards his gun…

And withdrew. A moment later, a spot of orange appeared — the flame of a cigarette lighter.

Nina almost let out a breath of relief before catching herself. The man above lit up, taking in a long drag, then turned and walked away.

She let out a surge of stale bubbles, then she and the Dutchman continued towards the ladder.

It did not take long to reach it. She looked up. The only movement above came from rippling water. She rose cautiously to the surface, sound returning as she lifted her head. All she could hear was the endless wet flap of waves against concrete.

De Klerx breached beside her and took hold of the ladder with one hand, reaching down to unfasten his flippers with the other. He wedged them behind a rung at water level, then carefully started to ascend, leaning back to give himself a wider view of whatever was above. ‘It is clear. Move.’

Nina took off her flippers and followed. The crane at the foot of the quay between the two docks came into sight, its elevated control cabin illuminated, but empty. De Klerx reached the top and moved aside. She shook off as much water as she could from her badly fitting wetsuit before climbing from the ladder; a big puddle and a trail of drips would be a dead giveaway that someone had just come out of the sea. The brick hut was not far to their left. Another check for movement, then she dropped low and scurried towards it.

There was a ragged hole in the brickwork. De Klerx paused to check for broken glass or rusty metal on the floor beyond, then squeezed through. ‘Leave your diving gear in here,’ he said, removing his cylinder and harness as Nina entered.