I swam to the trawler. I followed the instructions given by Mrs Canard. She witnessed the vessel sink. The sea is choppy, with a powerful tide. This suited the descent.
I dived a distance into the depths. Checked the direction on the luminous wrist compass and continued swimming until touching something solid.
The deck of the trawler.
I proceeded with caution towards an open hatchway.
I wore the only compressed air-cylinders owned by the local police. There were two hundred atmospheres depleted.
I pushed forward from the corner of the opened hatch.
My hands puffed and numbed by the icy water.
A few more cautious strokes. I found something I didn't expect to find.
I stared at the great black shape floating. The nuclear sub, Zaporizhzhia.
The same length as a World War II long-range sea-going submersible. But their resemblance ceased.
Her diameter was at least twice that of any conventional sub.
Without the boat-shaped lines of her predecessors, the Zaporizhzhia was cylindrical in design.
Instead of the usual V-shaped bows, her fore end was semi-spherical. There was no deck. The rounded sheer of sides and bows rose to the top of the hull. Then fell as far away again. This left a very narrow fore-and-aft working space. Dangerous in its slippery complexity. When docked in the harbour, the railing is permanent.
A hundred feet from the bows, the slender yet massive conning-tower reared over twenty feet above the deck. For the world, the Megalodon.
Half-way up the sides of the conning-tower, swept-back auxiliary diving planes, thrust out at right angles. I tried to see what lay far aft, but the visibility of the sea defeated me.
There were three divers aboard the trawler.
Not dead.
Working with furious intensity.
Or intense as possible in the pressurised slow-motion world of the undersea.
My hands touched cables, lifelines, and an unmistakable wire hawser. I stopped feeling my way along when I saw a dim glow of light beneath me. I swam distance to one side until my feet touched something solid. The deck of the trawler. I moved with caution towards the source of the light.
They were two of them.
Standing in their weighted boots at the end of an open hatchway, they were wearing not my self-contained apparatus.
Regular helmet and corselet diving gear, with airlines and lifelines.
The lifelines with communication wire imbedded inside them.
Self-contained diving equipment is no use here. It was too deep for oxygen and compressed-air stores too limited. With those suits, they stay an hour and a half, at least. Although, they'd have to spend thirty to forty minutes on decompression stops on the way to the surface.
I wanted to leave quicker. I wanted to be gone that moment. My heart banging away against my chest wall, similar to a demented drummer from a rock band. It was the pressure of the water. I told myself. It couldn't be fear. I was far too brave for that.
I'd used a wire rope to guide me closer to the trawler. This ended in a metal ring. From this out, chains to the corners of a rectangular steel mesh basket.
The two divers loaded this basket with wire- and wood-handled steel boxes. They stamped the boxes with hazardous material signs and the DEFRA logo. They were hauling up from the hold at one every minute. The steel boxes were small, but heavy.
I don't know what they held, but the Russians don't send a submarine and spy ship to these waters for nothing.
I tried to calculate the rate of unloading. The steel baskets held sixteen boxes. Sixteen minutes to winch up to the submarine, unload and lower again. Say forty an hour. In a ninety-minute stretch, sixty.
After ninety minutes, they have to change divers. Forty minutes, including two decompression stops of, say, twelve and twenty-four minutes, to change over and get other divers to the trawler. An hour, at least. How many crates remain? What was in them?
The wire hawser jerked, and the full basket rose, the divers guiding away from the vessel with a trailing guide rope.
I moved forward from the corner of the opened hatch. Remote from where they stood. I wriggled over. With excessive caution, I supposed. Their lamp cast only a small pool of light. They didn't see me from where I stood.
I felt my hands – puffed and numbed by the icy water – touched a lifeline and airline and withdrew them. Below and to my right, another faint pool of light. A few cautious strokes, and I discovered the source of light.
The light moved. Attached to the helmet of a diver. Angled downwards at an angle of forty-five degrees. He stood inside the hold.
They'd gained access to the hold with underwater torches. Cut a rectangular section into the wall.
I went up to this opening. Pushed my head round the side. Beyond the now stooping sailor, another light suspended from the deck-head. They stacked the packages in racks. A five-second job to estimate numbers. Of three hundred and sixty boxes, there were one hundred and twenty left.
Something brushed my arm, pulled past my arm. I glanced and saw it was a rope. A nylon line. The diver pulled in to attach to the handle of the box. I moved my arm out of the way.
His back was towards me, struggling to fasten the rope. He secured it with two half hitches, straightened and pulled a knife from his waist sheath. I wondered why he needed the knife.
I found out why. It was for me. Stooped over as he had been, he must have caught sight of me. Or the sudden change in pressure on the rope. Or his sixth sense.
He didn't whirl round, for in a heavy diving suit at that depth, the tempo of movement slows.
He still moved too fast for me. It wasn't my body that slowed as much as my mind. He was round and facing me, not four feet away. I was still where I'd been when he'd first moved. Still displaying the lightning reactions and co-ordination of a bag of cement.
The six-inch-bladed knife held in his lowered hand with thumb and forefinger towards me. This is the way killers behave when they plan to kill someone. I saw his face. He didn't need the knife. He didn't need any weapon. I was out of oxygen.
I watched him with paralysed intent.
His lips parted in a smile of joy. My mask made it impossible for me to be recognised. But he knew.
Knees bent, until he stood at an angle of forty-five degrees. He launched himself forward. His right arm swung behind his back.
My time of thrall ended. I thrust off backwards from the strongroom's outer wall with my left foot. His air hose twisted towards me. The man came through the jagged hole. I gripped it. Yanked to pull him off balance.
A jerk in my right hand. I fell backward onto the floor of the hold.
The Russian vanished. Within the heart of a mushrooming cloud of dense bubbles.
An air-tube can stand up to savage treatment. Not the cutting power of a knife. He'd slashed the hose in two. With immense pressure in that severed airline, he started drowning. The suit filled. Never to rise again.
I advanced with the nylon rope. Coiled around the thrashing legs. I took great care to avoid his flailing arms.
I hoped his compatriots might assume he'd become entangled. Tried to cut free.
I did not think it was a callous action, leaving him thrashing, dying. I hid under the deck-head of the hold.
His two comrades were on their way. Lowered on their lifelines. When their helmets sunk below the level, I came up through the hatchway.
I'd been underwater for just ten minutes. The wrist depth-gauge showed twelve feet. I stopped for a three-minute decompression period.
The Russian diver was no longer alive.