The Abigail Affair (41 page)

“The cargo of uranium has probably shifted, and we’re taking in water through the boat bay,” shouted Julia.

They hurried across to Spiegl.

Julia had righted the table and placed three lifejackets on it, the slim sort that inflate automatically.

“Leave me,” Spiegl said. He was conscious and his eyes were filled with hate. Bizarrely, his spectacles were still firmly in place on his nose.

“I wouldn’t offer you that dignity,” Julia said.

“No, you’re coming with us, you evil bastard,” Toby said for good measure. “The authorities need you to help them with their enquiries. And although they don’t normally torture any more, they will make an exception in your case.”

“Time, Toby?”

“Three minutes.”

“Let’s get this on him.” With feverish haste, they sat Spiegl up. Julia grabbed a lifejacket, passed it over his head, wound the straps around his waist and snapped the buckles together. Then she reached a long strap, passed it between his legs, and clipped it. Trussed as he was, with his hands behind his back, the man could only snarl and spit, which he did, profusely.

“Should keep him afloat, even without his arms through the sleeves. Come on. Time for his dip.”

Toby held Spiegl under his armpits and Julia seized his ankles. They half-carried, half-dragged the man to the rail.

He yelled in agony and cursed in Russian as his broken fingers dragged on the deck.

“Over or under?”

“Over—we don’t want him to get caught up. One two three,
heave
.”

Toby lifted, and between them, they pushed Spiegl up and over the railing until he lay draped over the handrail, face down, balanced on his stomach.

“You do the honours,” Toby said.

“With the very greatest of pleasure,” Julia said. She took his bound ankles, raised them up, and shoved.

Spiegl slithered off the rail and fell headfirst towards the rushing water below. A cry escaped his lips, but was immediately lost in the howling slipstream.

“Two minutes,” Toby said. “And look, another problem.”

The list of the vessel was so great that the water from the swimming pool had started to overflow and run down the deck towards them.

This made it difficult and slow work to clamber up the sloping deck back to the table. They did it on all fours, slipping and sliding every few seconds. At one point, Toby slithered and slid for several agonising seconds and thought he was going all the way back to the rail.

They were wasting precious time. Time they didn’t have.

They made it back to the patio table. The two remaining lifejackets had slipped off on to the deck. Toby and Julia each retrieved one and donned it.

The
Amelia
roared onward, listing more perceptibly all the time now, and travelling in a distinct curve to port.

A warning klaxon started up from the direction of the bridge above them.

“Autopilot alarm,” Julia said. “It can’t hold the course. Let’s hope we’re deep enough. Tighten those straps more. And put that long one under your crotch, pull up and clip there. No, not there, look. Like mine. Quickly. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Let’s go.” Toby fumbled and engaged the clips.

They slithered and slipped back down the wet, glistening deck to the rail. The water now poured out of the swimming pool with a roaring noise like a waterfall. Julia shouted, “You’ve got a strobe light and a personal EPIRB emergency locator. Both will activate automatically. When you’re in the water, look for me first. We head for each other, then swim back towards the island until we see Spiegl’s strobe. We grab him and all three stay together. If you don’t see my strobe, don’t hang around—swim back towards the island. I’ll do the same if I don’t see you. We might well not all make it.”

“Roger all that. One minute and counting.”

“Together?”

“Always.”

“Am I bleeding?”

“Just a little, from that lip.”

“Keep the sharks away from me, won’t you, Toby?”

“With my bare hands.”

They climbed up on to the top rail. It was hard to balance in the slipstream. No time to think. No time to hesitate.

Just go.

Toby put his hands together, took a full breath, pushed off with his toes, and dived into the rushing darkness.

He was aware of Julia doing the same beside him.

The hull of the
Amelia
flashed by his face, grey in the moonlight. He brought his legs together and straightened up and then the dark water was coming up at him and he was in the sea.

It was noisy underwater. The throb of the engines and cavitations of the propellers filled his ears. Then he heard a sharp report.

The automatic inflator on his lifejacket had fired.

At the same time, a vivid blue strobe light started up from the device clipped to the front of the jacket.

The folds of the jacket burst from their restraining poppers, and the fabric tightened around his chest like a blood pressure measuring device. The new buoyancy arrested his descent immediately, and he began to shoot upwards. A second later and his head cleared the water.

He spun around on the spot.

A large, metallic mass was heading straight for him at high speed. It was the remains of the boat bay door, half off its hinges and dragging in the water.

No way to dive now with the lifejacket inflated, or even get his head under water. Toby could only kick away from the hull as hard as he could.

He thrashed his feet and did a clumsy crawl, hampered by the inflated fabric.

It was going to be close.

The damaged door ploughed towards him like a monstrous wounded fish. He kicked and crawled, turning first one way, then the other, in an exaggerated rolling motion, to get his hands dug into the water.

The door careered past behind him. No contact. He kept swimming. He hoped Julia had been as lucky as he had.

What about Spiegl? He had gone over trussed like a parcel. If he had survived the drop, surely the door would have struck him. Maybe he was still tangled up in it.

No loss, as far as Toby was concerned.

The immediate danger was past. He stopped paddling and hung in the water.

Get your breath back.

Look for Julia.

Check the time.

In the flashing light of the strobe, Toby saw that thirty seconds were left.

It didn’t seem nearly enough. The
Amelia
was racing away from him, but even at its top speed, it would only cover half a mile or so in that time. And it was labouring now, digging into the waves, hampered by the open boat bay door and taking in water through that same opening.

He flapped his hands to rotate himself and spun around.

The moon reflected off the wavelets on the sea, causing a thousand little sparkles like fireflies. Julia’s strobe would be much brighter than that.

There was a surprising amount of swell. The
Amelia
almost disappeared from view as he descended into the troughs. When he rose on the crests, he could see the yacht, still much too close for comfort.

He looked around again. What a large amount of sea there was when you were in it. He divided it mentally into quadrants and searched from the horizon inward.

A minute went by. He scanned frantically. Had she been caught up in the broken door and drowned?

He felt suddenly and completely alone.

Then he saw a strobe. It was actually quite close, and he was surprised he hadn’t seen the light earlier. It was obvious once you saw it. Was it her—or Spiegl?

He resumed his clumsy crawl. No point in shouting yet. Then he remembered that he had seen a whistle in a little holster on the left breast of the lifejacket. He pulled it out on its cord and gave a blast.

A second later, and he heard an answering sound, thin on the wind. It had to be Julia. No way could Spiegl get his whistle out, even if he were still alive.

He crawled towards the strobe, which became clearer and more vivid by the stroke. Distances were deceptive when you were in a dark sea. Within half a minute, he could see her blonde head bob in and out of view as the swell heaved. He put on a bit of a sprint and arrived, panting, by her.

“Are you OK?” he gasped.

“Yes, are you OK? How long now?”

“Yes, and any second.”

“Where is the frigging
Surrey
?” Julia turned her head this way and that.

“Language! Never mind that—shouldn’t we face away from the
Amelia
in case the nuke goes off with her on the surface? I believe the flash of the detonation can blind you.”

“Yes, it can, a millisecond before it vaporises your ass. Toby, if the nuke goes off on the surface at this distance, it won’t make any difference which way you face. Hold my hand.”

“Does that mean you’re my girlfriend?”

“No, it’s just that we don’t want to get separated.”

“Look!” Toby pointed towards the horizon. A small, bright orange light appeared in the sky at about nine o’clock, from the southwest, like a match that had just been struck.

It was travelling fast. As they watched, another identical light appeared. It followed the first on the same trajectory.

The missiles appeared to see the
Amelia
and turn. First one, then the other jinked to the right. The flare from the two rocket engines gave Toby after-images. He blinked. He could see six or eight fireballs now. But he couldn’t turn away.

He looked at his watch.

Time was up.

In fact, it was ten seconds over time.

They would see the flash of the nuclear detonation. There would maybe just be time for it to register in their brains before the roaring tidal wave of flame and superheated gases enveloped and extinguished them, together with everything living or man-made within a two-mile radius of the centre.

The two orange missiles covered the final stretch of sea and the first hit the
Amelia
in the bridge.

They saw the flash of the explosion first. The sound followed, a second later. Then the second missile hit. The second blast boomed out.

The
Amelia
forged through the night away from them. The bridge disappeared in a fireball which illuminated the whole vessel in orange light. A large amount of dense black smoke began to issue from somewhere on the starboard side, but the
Amelia
was still afloat, and still motoring on. It began to turn more to port. The list was at least twenty degrees now.

“Here come two more!” Toby shouted. A new pair of orange pinpricks appeared over the horizon as he and Julia rose on the crests of the swell. He held Julia’s hand tightly. She squeezed back.

The
Amelia
was well alight now, with flames issuing from many different parts of the superstructure. The ship appeared to be slowing—not surprising, given the heavy list. Toby was impressed it had lasted this long.

Nearly a minute over time now. Of course, he had not set the stopwatch with complete precision. But he was beginning to hope that the nuclear device had malfunctioned, or been destroyed under the missile barrage from the
Surrey.

The third missile reached its target. It hit the bow, well above the waterline. It appeared to penetrate the hull. There was no orange fireball. Perhaps it had not detonated.

The fourth missile seemed to have a mind of its own. It streaked past the
Amelia
, turned abruptly around and headed back from the opposite direction, then dived towards the ocean and went straight into the open boat bay.

This time there was no doubt. The fireball erupted inside the bay. It produced an orange square of light at first, the fireball framed by the opening in the hull of the stricken vessel.

Then the hull appeared to peel away like skin, revealing more and more orange and red flame, and smoke.

The superstructure was a continuous mass of fire now. Smoke billowed high into the night sky, illuminated at sea level by the flames, and higher in the atmosphere by the full moon.

“Sink, damn you,” Julia said.

As if on her command, the bow of the
Amelia
began to rise from the water. Its forward motion ceased. The ship settled stern-first into the sea.

Another huge flash came from the bow, now pointing high in the air. The third missile had detonated. The sound arrived next.

The end came surprisingly quickly. The once-proud
Amelia
broke into two sections, which floated apart, each thoroughly ablaze and issuing dense black smoke. Then the flames diminished quickly as the two sections settled lower in the water and then slid underneath the surface.

Chapter 45

Toby could see flames underwater for several seconds, and fire spread out on the surface of the ocean as the mega yacht finally went down in what Toby prayed was deep enough water.

After a while, it was quiet, and the only sound was the lap of the wavelets on the swell and their own breathing. The strobe lights flashed on like pacemakers, going almost as fast as Toby’s heartbeat.

Neither of them spoke for a full minute. Then, with an attempt at a light-hearted tone, Toby ventured, “At least the nuke didn’t go off.”

Away towards the horizon, where the
Amelia
had disappeared beneath the ocean, a huge area of water glowed suddenly green.

Next, Toby felt a fluttering sensation as if a school of tiny fish had just raced past him, brushing him ever so gently.

In the milky moonlight, he watched as a perfectly spherical globe of water vapour hundreds of yards across arose from the surface of the water, like a rising planet composed entirely of mist.