The Spy I Loved (15 page)

Liam was
five metres away and closing. Three metres.

Two.

One.

Hard rubber fins were right in his face. If Liam wasn’t
careful, it would knock his mask off and then he’d be in trouble.
This guy wasn’t dead yet, and Liam pulled up, losing a welcome bit
of ground as he did. He could take him, but it had its risks.
Better to follow and let him bleed out. Off in the distance, there
came the sound of a thin soda can being crushed underfoot—probably
his very expensive sled hitting the rocky shoreline. The bottom
tended to be a lot softer. That would make more of a
whump.
Hopefully the
taxpayers were getting their money’s worth. One kill, a hundred a
fifty thousand. Might as well go for the deuce.

Cut the price in half…
amortization.

It was
all in a day’s work.

Liam,
pulling strongly on his breathing apparatus, settled in for a
cruise of whatever duration.

The guy
was tiring, and his head went left and right. In sheer panic, he
had gone straight out, into the deepest part of the bay. The water
was getting darker and darker. If he wanted land he was going to
have to turn. He risked a look behind and didn’t see Liam anywhere.
Liam was very cool in the head at that moment. He had to be. There
were little trickles of blood still coming out in short, sharp
spurts, blurring off into nothing as it diluted, mixing with the
lake water.

You, sir,
are going to die. The only question was the exact
moment.

The water
was so deep any shadows from having the sun up there were
gone.

The man looked left, right, left again,
almost
sure that his pursuer
wouldn’t have just stopped, and that was when Liam Kimball
pounced.

If the
boat entering the end of their little arm of the lake was more of
the enemy, a backup or a recovery team perhaps, there was not a
moment to waste.

Chapter Ten

When in
doubt, go for the jugular.

What goes
around comes around.

He
shuddered in a kind of professional empathy.

The sound
of the new threat was much closer. They were just chugging in on
idle. He hovered in a fog of blood, then went to work.

Wrestling
the convulsing body of the second diver to the bottom, he weighted
it with a length of decades-waterlogged cedar. It took but seconds.
Liam dropped low, hopefully well camouflaged by the changing light
and cloud patterns on the dappled bottom. It was damnably shallow,
and he checked the gauge.

Seven and
a half metres, maybe eight.

The sun
went in again. He prayed that it would stay in.

Here the
bottom was half sand, half weeds, much of it criss-crossed by a
seemingly endless array of short, small but dense logs.

He stuck
to the bottom like glue, kicking like mad to get back there. He’d
been so intent on diver number two that he had no idea of the
actual distance traveled. There was a dark ridge as the bottom
sloped up, then it was sand, pale and greenish yellow. Trailing
lengths of long leafy weeds reached out, seeking to entangle. They
were surprisingly tough in spite of being constantly waterlogged,
with little air bladders strung along their tendrils. It was
terribly bright to his left, where the sun was out
again.

If diver
number one was floating, and he’d been headed upwards when last
seen, even the most self-absorbed angler would be bound to spot
him. Imagine snagging something like that. A dark vertical slash,
black neoprene, caught his attention. He kicked as hard as he
could, counting off seconds. He grabbed the dead diver, pulling him
down into some blessedly thick weeds. The fellow had drifted on
wind and waves in the few minutes he’d been gone. They were in
three or four metres of water. It was unfortunately crystal clear,
with the marsh across the head of the bay a sign that it was fed by
its own small river. Otherwise the shore tended to be all rock, but
the map (which he was getting to know pretty well) showed a dotted
blue line up there. It was an escape route of sorts. He’d belly
crawl if he had to. It was a valuable skill.

The
creeks and streams he’d noted were clean, cold and with a fairly
good-tasting water in them.

At least I won’t have to go thirsty,

Liam sat
on the man, sticking him to the bottom. Any rocks around were
buried in silt or under weeds and dead leaves from the season
before. The logs were heavily grown-over. To disturb them would be
to create a smokescreen of silt. There was a nice
thought.

A
smokescreen. It was a bit late for that.

He
straddled the dead man, watching in a kind of disbelief as the
bottom of a boat approached. The visibility was easily fifty
metres, more even. It was like he could almost see the lures
trailing out behind on the outriggers, but it couldn’t be. This bay
was too shallow, it was all in the imagination. The motor stopped,
an anchor was cast out, and the boat rocked with someone moving
around on board. It couldn’t be twenty metres away. Liam was
confronted with the reality of someone standing on the prow. They
were shielding their eyes from the sun, which picked this exact
moment to come out from the clouds. Somebody up there with a good
hunting rifle could pick him off if they could see him. His breath
was very loud in his ears. The body under him was warm, still
leaking blood, and attracting a small school of curious fish. Waves
and small currents were enough to make the body come alive with
movements that were spooky when you were riding him around the
waist.

There was
this feeling that he would come back to life, perhaps being merely
stunned or in shock.

Whoever
it was up there, they were staring fixedly in his direction.
Ripples on the surface went glass-like one second and maddeningly
opaque the next as the angles changed and the surface heaved. It
was surreal when something moved in his peripheral vision, causing
his heart to flutter and then he saw any number of fish.

It gave
him a whole new perspective on the yellow perch; their life, their
environment. The knife was in the scabbard where it wouldn’t flash
in the sun.

With his
hand on the hilt, wishing he’d paid more attention and had the
sense to recover one of the spear-guns, he waited.

He wasn’t
making bubbles and he could turn on the heat if necessary. He’d
cool off quick now that he’d stopped swimming. His gear was state
of the art, not that a grenade couldn’t take him out in a
heartbeat.

He was on
a totally different system. Cold as it was, he’d stay down there
all day. He’d been hungry before and could relieve himself inside
the suit if he had to. It was better to retreat into the bulrushes
while he still had a minute. The water was deep enough, and the
fellow was sure as shooting going to fire up that little
battery-powered electric trolling motor and come in for a better
look.

They had
the smell of someone wary of ambush.

***

“
Jenkins. Siss-Boom, Bah.”

Liam
spoke softly into his device, watching the woman on the boat
through dense reeds. The lady had heard him, no doubt of that, but
no shots, no grenades had come.

“
Rock the Casbah.”

A smile
of relief crossed his features. Liam nodded. Only so many people
knew that.

“
There are one or two packages.”

“
Ah, yes, I see that.” The lady cleared her throat, still
staring directly at Liam in the marsh. Liam doubted if she could
actually make him out. “Ian has been held up…ambushed. He says he
has them surrounded.”

“
How many are there?”

“
Ah—a half a dozen, anyways. You know him, he always
exaggerates.”

“
Shit. Look. My sled’s gone, I don’t know where it is. These
guys must have a boat somewhere.”

“
Okay. Orders?”

“
Keep an eye on the mouth of that bay. Try to find that sled.
They must have a boat ashore along here somewhere. Maybe around the
corner, maybe on the far side. I’m going to need a bit of time
here.” Liam’s sled might be fifty metres away, it might be fifteen
hundred.

He didn’t
think it was much further than that. After clambering up through
the swamp and the boulders, he wasn’t quite sure you could get
there from here. He was really going to be hurting
tomorrow.

“
Roger that.”

“
What about Ian?”

There was
an audible chuckle over the encrypted link.

“
I wouldn’t want to be them guys right about now. He says the
car’s a mess.”

Liam laughed softly, wondering exactly how many leeches he
would eventually be pulling off. At least one, he judged, as he
watched the thing clamber up his dry-suit leg a few inches above
the muck. The trouble was that every itch and tickle magically
transformed itself into another leech, most likely imaginary. There
was
something
inside the suit with him though.

“
And why is that?” He couldn’t help himself.

He had to
ask.

“
For one thing. He’s just gotten the damned thing paid
off.”

Ian’s
insurance was going to skyrocket.

“
Damn.”

“
What?”

“
The best way out of here is back the way I came.”

He was
looking at a sheer rock face, sloping at a good seventy degrees,
and there was dense brush showing above that.

“
That’s okay. You’ll need a bath anyways.”

“
Yeah, laugh all you want. I’m glad someone’s having a good
time.”

***

It was
the dream again.

“
How long do you think this can go on, Mister Kimball?” And
then that hoarse chuckle, and from somewhere off to the left,
sitting on a chair that squeaked with every little movement, that
hysterical giggle from the one Liam always thought of as
Flaky.
“Surely this must
bore you. If I may be so bold?”

There was
this shock when the glowing coals of a cigar hit your
back.

“
I have to admit it bores me, yes, even I, Mister Kimball.
So
debasing,
so
demoralizing to the
individual,
don’t you agree, Liam?”

You knew it was coming, but they had you strapped face down
on the table. Three or four people in the room at all times. There
was no hope of escape. One look at that burning, yellow ochre
landscape just outside the
room,
was enough to tell you that much.

“
Honestly, Mister Kimball, I think of my people, and of course
myself, and it seems that we will be scarred for life by our own
actions here today. Surely you would be the first to spare us this
evil, my good friend and colleague?”

There was
the sickening stench, the noise as your flesh sizzled. What was
particularly disturbing was the fact that they were leaving the ash
on the end as they smoked, allowing it to grow longer and longer.
They were all puffing away. There was something about that
exquisitely fine crushing sensation as the ash crumbled against
your open flesh, the heat of the ember fast approaching a hole that
they had already used innumerable times.

“
Tsk, tsk, tsk, Mister Kimball…”

The
enemy, a Middle Eastern terror group actively seeking the
Apocalypse, according to all of their literature (which was
extensive), apparently smoked the finest Cuban cigars. Ultimately,
this led to their undoing. It was very hard to get them there from
Cuba. Their taste in cigars had been their undoing.

Working their way up and down his spine, the pain was
never-ending. Your body jolted against the restraints with every
application. The cold douche of the water when they boarded him
(every other day) hit the scars, or suppurating wounds rather, like
hot acid. When another session, another day was done, his only
relief was the short trip outside to the box. They would put him
inside and he would wait, shivering in the darkness, praying for
sleep or unconsciousness. When they took him at night, especially
going
home,
it
was a minute and a half of blessed heaven, to look at the stars and
feel the cool night breeze on your sweat.

Every
muscle, every bone, every cell and every fibre of his being
ached.

His
stubbornness was what had saved him. Unofficially, his captors,
members of a Middle-Eastern terror group, were working for the
Chinese in return for certain small favours—hi-tech anti-aircraft
weapons for example. The Chinese would deny it, of
course.

It had
been a conscious decision not to break. To break would bring
relief, an end to the torment. They would kill him sooner rather
than later. This would happen only after they were satisfied that
they had wrung every little thing that they possibly could out of
him. His only hope, if there was any hope at all, was to stay alive
as long as possible and that meant to suffer.