I swam and managed enough power to aid my progress through the sea, but not so extreme to run up the stored oxygen. Every few seconds, I let a limited air escape from my mouth, just adequate to ease the pressure in my lungs.
I glanced up, but the waters above me were as black as ink. Three-hundred-feet above me for any trace of light. And then, time before the air supply depleted, before my lungs had hurt, the water was lighter than pitch black, and my head struck an object hard and unyielding.
I grabbed it, held on, sucked in the lungful's of that icy salt, wonderful air. Waiting for the decompression pains to start those agonising twinges.
But none developed.
Ninety feet.
I should experience discomfort.
It had been somewhere nearer sixty.
I surfaced at the dinghy's rudder. Confirmation came with the milky phosphorescent water. Churned up two whirling screws a few feet away. I'd come up right under their boat. Fortunate. I might have slit my head in half if I emerged under one of their propellers.
If the fellow at the wheel swung astern, the vortex of one or other of the screws chop me into shark bait.
Off to port, illuminated by a few powerful lights from the craft's deck, the section where we'd crashed. Wreckage floated on the surface, showing the point of impact.
We were forty yards off the reefs, stationary in the water, the engines turning just enough to keep the boat's position against the effect of wind and tide. Now and then, a searchlight patrolled the dark waters. I spotted nothing of the men on deck. I didn't need to know what they were doing.
Watching and waiting. With their guns.
Nor did I see the craft itself, but I concluded that, even though I didn't recognise it, I'd recognise it if I happened across it. I drew out a knife from a sheath I kept hidden behind my neck and cut a deep vee notch on the trailing edge of the rear end.
For the first time, sounds. Four voices and I identified them as Russian.
One last instruction shouted in a guttural voice, and without hesitation I thrust myself backwards. I had dived deep. The waters above my head boiled into turbulent, phosphorescent life. I stayed deep, maybe ten feet, heading for the reef. I can't say how long I swam.
Less than a minute. My lungs weren't what they used to be. Not even what they had been fifteen minutes ago. Forced to the surface, my dark oilskin came over my head.
I needn't worry. The shimmering outline of the disappearing wake was no more.
Searchlights extinguished, and the lead Russian decided his crew had completed the job.
The boat stayed in complete darkness, with neither interior nor navigation lights showing.
I turned and swam towards the reef. When I reached a rock, I clung to it until a measure of strength returned to my aching muscles and to my weakened body. Never imagined how fifteen minutes could take out of me. I wanted to stay for an hour. But time was not on my side. I slipped into dark water then and started for the shore.
I hauled myself out of the water. Catching my breath before heading to the boat-shed. I flashed my modest torch around its interior and realised this wasn't the place.
There was nobody there but a weather-beaten, gunwale-splintered launch, with amidships, an unboxed petrol motor, with the look of a solid block of rust.
I got to the building. On its northern face, the part remote from the sea, a glow shone through a slight window. A light at half-past-one in the morning. I crawled up to this and hitched a wary eye over the window-sill. A neat, well-cared for modest place. Lime-washed walls, mat-covered stone floor, and the embers of a driftwood blaze smouldering in an ingle-nook in the corner.
The elderly fellow sat in a cane-bottomed armchair. Still unshaven. Still in his month-old shirt. The household is tidy. A woman's influence. But where was the wife?
With his head bent, he peered into the dull red heart of the fire. He has nothing else in his life. I moved to the door. Turned the handle and stepped
He sensed me and twisted to face me. The way a husband turns overwhelmed by depression. He glanced at me. Looked at his twelve-bore hanging on a couple of nails on the wall.
"What do you want?" He spoke.
"I was here."
"Well, then fuck off and leave me alone."
"You won't manage that shotgun. You'd left the safety-catch in the 'on' position."
"Miss little, don't you," he drawled. "There were no cartridges in the shotgun."
"But you had someone standing behind you."
"What do you mean?" he said. "Who are you? What do you need?"
"I'm a friend."
"I don't have any."
"Well, you do today."
"What happened? You look wet?"
"Your friends on the trawler shot us out of the sky. Killed the pilot."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
He appeared even older than he had beforehand. Old, broken and finished.
"They told you to discourage visitors, didn't they?"
No answer.
"This dwelling is far too tidy for you to have done it. The hand of a partner. But where is she?"
He rose a fraction from his cane chair. The tired bloodshot eyes had a gleam to them. He sank, and his eyes went blank.
"You've learned something you shouldn't have, and they took your spouse as a hostage. They told you not to mention to anyone, or you will never see your wife alive. They warned you to stay here. If a chance acquaintance or stranger calls and wonders where you were, they might raise the alarm. To make sure you didn't go to the mainland for help, they immobilised your motor. Saltwater impregnated sacks. Anybody believe damage from neglect instead of sabotage.
"Yes, they did that."
He stared into the blazes, his speech the sunken whisper of a partner who was thinking aloud and aware that he spoke.
"They kidnapped her and ruined my sailboat. And I had my entire savings in the bedroom, and they had that too. I wish I had a million pounds to give them. They should have spared Mary."
He had no defence.
"What have you been eating?"
"Every other week they bring me tinned food. Not enough. Russian shit. I have tea and catch fish, and then off the rocks."
He gazed into the lights, his forehead wrinkling as if he perceived I brought an extra dimension into his world.
"Who are you? You're not one of them, or a policeman. I've met them. You are a different kettle of fish."
The fresh stirrings of hope showed in his face. In his eyes. He glared at me. A full minute. Under his faded eyes, I felt uneasy.
"I realise who you are. I recognise what you must be. You are a Government guy. You are a British Secret Service agent."