Nadia sat naked on the armchair in her cramped room in the roof space of Old Smithy’s Inn. Stars peeked through the skylight. Idle banter from patrons standing outside the pub, having a quick smoke, competed with the less distinct hubbub that permeated all the way from the bar up to the third floor. Conversation, music, occasional shouts, babies’ cries. Her fingers itched to nurse a cigarette, but so far she’d stuck to her decision three months ago to give up. One reason she didn’t go downstairs.
Jake was the other. She could occasionally pick out his strong tenor voice. He’d been on her mind. She closed her eyes for a moment, imagined him naked next to her. Earlier she’d glanced at his body while he changed out of his wetsuit. A swimmer’s physique, her second favourite after gymnast. And his hands. Her fingers drummed on her thigh. She hadn’t come in a while, and the episode with Mike, difficult though it had been, had re-awakened her hormones. Jake’s voice drifted upstairs again, a laugh this time. She sat up straighter, and crossed her legs yoga-style.
To business. She weighed the pros and cons. Pro: he fit the bill of a sufficiently advanced diver to help her get close to the Rose. Con: he wasn’t alone. He was clearly with friends down below. Pro: he was here, now, and willing to take her to see the prop in two days, and she was under time pressure. Con: he was smart and in control underwater. That could be tricky when she swam away from the wreck to find the device. Pro: he liked her – at least she thought he did, despite his cool behaviour, which she put down to his professional demeanour. Con: she liked him.
That was the problem.
Her phone beeped. Kadinsky. Of course. She stood up and clicked on the short link embedded in the SMS. Her breath shallowed. A silent video showed a face, up close, a manicured finger vertical across brightly rouged lips, laughing, heavily mascaraed eyes, tousled dark hair. Katya mouthed two words in Russian: Still alive. As proof she drew back and held up an iPad playing BBC World’s latest news broadcast. Nadia had seen it earlier that evening – she made a point of watching it every night on account of Kadinsky’s little routine – right after she’d visited Kennedy’s to plant the bomb. The London heist had been masked as a helicopter stunt for a movie, and only occupied sixth place on the network headlines. No mention yet of three bodies found in Penzance.
Nadia watched her elder sister. Katya’s pupils were dilated, so she was high. Katya mouthed two more words – love you – then her face grew more serious, more alert, as if suddenly remembering this wasn’t a game. Take care, she mouthed, adding Miss you. She touched a finger to the tiny scar on her temple left by Nadia’s bullet five years earlier, then, just as she began to say something else, the image moved abruptly. Nadia bit her lip. She saw a man’s legs ending in expensive shoes. The video changed. Someone walking in the woods in daytime. They stopped before a crudely dug rectangular hole in the ground. An empty grave waiting, a rolled up black plastic bag lying on the damp soil.
Sonofabitch!
Nadia’s breathing turned scratchy, her palms suddenly clammy. She took a slow, deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds then opened them. She knew the routine. What she wanted to do was tie up Kadinsky, castrate him with a serrated knife, feed him his balls, and see if he bled or choked to death first. Instead she typed a reply: Thank you. Working on it. Weather favourable. Monday looks good. She hit ‘send’, checked it had gone, then threw the phone onto her bed. Sitting on the edge of the soft mattress, she touched a finger to her left temple, felt the smooth skin, and glanced at the clock: 9:30pm. Half an hour before the fireworks. She got dressed in a loose t-shirt and jeans, snapped the skylight closed and headed downstairs.
She paused out of sight on the broad landing above the bar, the noise rising like heat. Everyone downstairs was having Saturday night fun, talking shit and getting drunk, or trying to get into each other’s pants. Meanwhile, her only sister was effectively a slave, one of many in Kadinsky’s lair. Whatever Katya had meant to him five years ago, her favour with him had clearly diminished – she was a disposable asset.
The landing reminded her of a thermocline, found when diving in deep water, a thin band separating one layer of warmer water from another one just below, around six degrees cooler. Except this thermocline was upside-down. She inhabited one world – brutal, ice cold and unforgiving – while those downstairs and elsewhere on this sun-drenched holiday isle lived in ignorant bliss. Yet she had to step into that layer and act like one of them, gain their trust, and then betray them. Not invite them into her layer, but at some point they – Jake in particular – would glimpse her through the hazy thermocline, and see her for what she was. A liar, a user, and sooner or later… a killer. Her mother would add, ‘Like your father.’
She remembered, at sixteen, defending her deceased father during one of her screaming episodes with her mother. He’d been an agent in the special forces, Spetsnaz. Nadia had insisted that he’d worked for the government, for the good of Russia. He’d been a patriot. Her mother had turned her back, but the next day had taken Nadia on a seven-hour bus ride to another town, Lobuensk. Without explaining anything, she dragged Nadia to a local cemetery, and found a cluster of graves. All kids, the eldest Nadia’s age. Nadia had stayed silent until she got home the next day. Straightaway she went to her room and started scouring the internet. It didn’t take long. A hostage situation gone badly wrong, Russian crack agents sent in to free a dozen schoolkids and their teacher. One American version said the orders from the Kremlin had been to kill everyone, including the hostages, as a lesson to terrorists everywhere that such blackmail wouldn’t work in Russia. There was a single video clip of three masked gunmen storming the building. Nadia focused on one of them. He moved like her father when he went hunting.
Nadia’s mother appeared at the bedroom doorway, her eyes red-ringed and puffy. Her hands tugged at a damp handkerchief, as if trying to tear it apart.
‘Children, Nadia, they were children. I couldn’t sleep with him after that. So he found others. I didn’t really care about his sluts. It was the killing. I watched it change him. I begged him to give it up, but he wouldn’t. He said it was his job, that he was trapped. But I could see it in his face. He was addicted to it, to killing.’ She turned and walked away, then paused at the top of the stairs. ‘Ask your sister, Nadia. Ask Katya.’
Nadia never did.
She brought herself back to the present. She checked the time, got up and walked down to the next layer, slipping through the thermocline into the normal world, which she was about to disrupt.
Four tables stood under the low, oak-beamed ceiling in the room, a lounge that joined the main bar area through an archway. Floral wallpaper, whose original colour was lost to time, was plastered everywhere, with sepia photos of the Scillies in former years. Hard-backed books hung from the ceiling on short wires. Nice touch.
Opposite the stairs a fire door had been wedged open with a brick to let in some air. She spied Jake, his back to her, sitting at one of the sturdy tables next to the arch, with four other people. Across from Jake was a wiry young man with a mocking face and short black hair that looked like it could break combs. On Jake’s right was a blond muscular male, who took a good look every time a girl – pretty or not – passed through the arch. On Jake’s left was a brunette who occasionally stole a glance behind Jake’s head at the blond guy when he wasn’t looking her way. At the other end of the table was an attractive blonde with a porcelain face and hawkish green eyes. She was staring straight at Nadia. She wasn’t smiling.
Nadia quickened her step and walked towards the arch. She caught the blonde’s voice through the banter as she approached Jake’s seat.
The blonde turned to Jake, nodding in Nadia’s direction. ‘I think this girl knows you.’
Nadia stopped as Jake turned around and stood up, raking his wooden chair across the tiled floor. His face flushed momentarily.
‘You came,’ he said in a low voice, as if they were alone.
His eyes struck home. She tried not to react, though probably the blonde saw it, because straight afterwards she stared into her pint as if it was a good book.
Everyone else on the table stopped talking, all eyes on Nadia. ‘I’m staying here, actually. I just came down –’
‘To join us!’ It was the blond male, who shoved his hand in her direction, right across Jake, who seemed used to it. They all did.
‘I’m Claus,’ he said as he squeezed her palm, as if that said it all. Maybe it did. She decided that was too unkind, she’d reserve judgement. Not his fault, a heart-breaker for sure, a product of genes, hormones and social proclivities. Not her type.
As if recalling they weren’t alone, Claus continued, pointing around the table, and she memorised the names and faces as she’d learned to at Kadinsky’s training camp: Fi, the one interested in Claus, Elise, the blonde who had some kind of relationship – maybe a past one – with Jake – and Gary, the wiry one.
‘Nadia,’ she said.
‘Russian?’ Claus asked, then threw his head back and laughed.
She nodded. She was used to it. A lot of British men seemed to believe that all Russian women were great at sex, or easy, or both. Some kind of weird positive racism.
Jake elbowed past Claus and begged a chair from the table opposite, swinging it around between him and Fi, who had already moved hers aside.
‘Please,’ Jake said, as if ready to accept her saying no. That disarmed her. She sat down.
After a few minutes’ Spanish Inquisition – (Fi) Where was she from? (Gary) How long was she staying? (Fi) Who was she diving with? (Claus) What was her room number? (Gary) What did she think of Putin? (Claus) Okay, at least which floor was she on? – things settled down, and a pint of brown ale appeared before her. The only two people who didn’t ask anything were Jake and Elise. Nadia sensed that Elise was the leader of this group in some way, and after hearing the acronym D.O. once or twice, asked what it was.
‘Diving Officer,’ Gary said. ‘Leader of this branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, BSAC. No American-style PADI divers here,’ he added. Nadia had been PADI-trained out in Sharm, but said nothing.
Claus stood up, waved his hand theatrically, then pointed as he spoke. ‘So, here are the introductions that matter. You’ve already met Jake – used to be our Advanced Training Officer. Now he travels the world as a freelance diving instructor and occasionally graces us with his presence.’ Claus pointed one by one around the table. ‘Elise, Diving Officer, Fi, Training Officer, and Gary, Equipment Officer and Skipper. Best dive team on the planet.’ He laughed again, the way people do when they know they are supposed to be having the best time of their lives, only they’re not, not really. Something missing in his life, masked by laughter, drink and sex. Claus reminded her of quite a few Russian boys she’d known.
Fi nodded towards him. ‘And Claus is our chief entertainment officer.’
‘Actually,’ Jake added, ‘he’s pretty good underwater, just an arse on land.’
Nadia smiled while the others laughed normally. They were harmless, especially Claus, and in other circumstances she could get to like this group. Elise must have seen Nadia relax, a moment of vulnerability, because of what came next.
‘What’s the fascination with the Tsuba?’
Elise’s question choked off the laughter. Jake stared at Elise. At first Nadia thought he must have told her, but he was clearly curious too as to how she knew. Ben then, or maybe Pete. She reminded herself this was a close community. This group had obviously dived here before, knew the locals, and were known by them. She could never let her guard down here.
The lie came easily. Her defining family value had never been love; rather, survival.
‘I had a relative, by a great uncle’s marriage, on that ship. A friend of mine in Moscow is a genealogist, knew I was coming here to dive, said I should come and take a look.’
Elise leaned forward, smiling. ‘What was this relative’s name?’
Nadia took a sip. ‘Buschenko, Boris Buschenko.’ She’d looked it up earlier, he’d perished when it had sunk after being torpedoed in WWII. Actually he was Ukrainian, but it was the best she had found. Uspekh wasn’t that far from the Ukrainian border.
Elise didn’t back down. ‘Deepest recent dive?’
Nadia remained relaxed. ‘Forty-eight, this morning.’
Claus laughed a bit nervously. ‘Hey, Elise, give the girl a break, she’s not diving with us, remember?’
Elise sat back, maintaining eye contact. ‘Maybe not, but we’re taking our boat to dive the Tsuba on Monday as well.’
The group all turned to Elise.
‘We are?’ Gary asked.
Claus shouted ‘Yay!’ and he, Gary and Fi clinked glasses across the table, spilling beer.
Jake looked troubled, but Elise continued to stare at Nadia. Nadia broke the connection. Elise had won this round. But Nadia had to save face. She needed this group as her alibi.
‘The more the merrier,’ Nadia said, and raised her glass until everyone, including a reluctant Elise, clinked glasses with her. Jake seemed upset. Something was eating him. She’d seen a flash of it before, when she’d been kitting up and had no knife. Nadia knew that haunted look, her father had had it for months before he was taken. Without warning Jake stood, flourishing his phone.
‘I’ll be back.’ He walked outside.
Elise rose from her chair first. Nadia thought about getting up, but Fi placed a hand on her wrist.
‘Did you ever dive in Russia?’ she asked. ‘What’s it like? Claus has been ice-diving in Svalbard.’
The moment to follow Jake had passed, so Nadia talked about diving in almost freezing water, venturing under ice-floes, once without ropes. She left out the part about finding a corpse once under the river… and leaving it there without reporting it.
She glanced through the window to check that Jake and Elise were still outside, and hadn’t gone anywhere. If they had, she’d have to go after them. She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes. Jake and Elise had been talking for twenty, long enough to clear the air or make it toxic – evidently they either were, or had been, an item. Nadia told herself to forget about Jake. If Claus had been ice-diving he must be a pretty good diver, too. She asked each of them their favourite dive. At one point Claus fixed her with a curious look.
‘Your English is almost perfect, better than mine, and I’m Danish; we grow up speaking it half the time. How come?
She leant back, smiling. ‘Spy school. You fail the grades, they shoot you.’
Everyone laughed. She joined in as best she could.
The explosion occurred right on time, rattling the window panes. Like the others, she got up and rushed outside. Elise and Jake stood with a few others gazing towards the tall flames Nadia knew were coming from Kennedy’s Dive Store. They were much bigger than she’d imagined.
The whole gang – and half the pub – hurried to Kennedy’s, only three blocks away, and watched the two fire engines arrive and then douse the inferno with water. Pungent, neoprene-fuelled black fumes, rendered grey in the fire-trucks’ headlamps, billowed high into the sky, blotting out the stars. The shop’s front windows had blown out in the initial blast. Beads of glass stretched like a carpet across the road, glimmering in the firelight. The shop was gutted. Racks of wetsuits hung like macabre headless corpses, melting and crackling as the fire raged.
Jake, Gary and Claus drew back some of the onlookers crowding the cordon, explaining what would happen if full air tanks exploded, while Elise and Fi coordinated with the Chief Fire Superintendent and the local police sergeant, who’d initially been reluctant, but then welcomed additional manpower to manage the inebriated crowd. Nadia had emptied the full tanks earlier.
Mark Kennedy, the thirty-something owner she’d met the day before, arrived late at the scene with a younger girl in tow, both of them bedraggled and half-dressed. Nadia studied his face in the flame-light and watched the emotions flicker from horror and disbelief, to dismay, all the way through to resignation and the knowledge that his insurance company would pay. Nadia didn’t allow herself to feel sorrow or regret. It had been necessary.
She watched the firemen. Those closest to the fire wore full facemask protection and respirators to protect them against the heat and the smoke. They were sensible: no one was inside so no rescue was needed, and they were wary of secondary explosions. At one point a firework display erupted as a box of hand-held flares ignited, shooting bright orange fizzing comets into the sky, sputtering as they began their descent. Raucous cheers erupted with each new salvo. Kennedy grimaced, but the girl comforted him.
Nadia stayed in the shadows. Although she’d been careful, there was always a chance someone would remember her accent and put the pieces together, or else find some piece of evidence at the crime scene that would implicate her. She knew how these things went – part of her education at Kadinsky’s camp. Unlike in Russia, here the police would be careful for the first forty-eight hours, not risking rushing ahead and making flimsy accusations that would collapse later during a prosecution, but after that time-slot they’d not hesitate to bring people in to ‘assist with their enquiries.’ So, she needed to be gone by then. Two dives tomorrow, the Tsuba on Monday morning, and then an improvised escape back to the mainland Monday evening.
Forty-eight hours.
Something snagged her attention. Someone who didn’t belong there was flagged by her subconscious radar. She searched the crowd. A stocky man wearing horn-rimmed glasses stood half-way around the diminishing flames from her. Dressed conservatively, as if he were a businessman on holiday. Alone. Out of place. He gazed into the fire. While others cowered, flinching from the heat, he was serene, as if warmed by the flames, comforted even. She made her assessment. He wasn’t afraid, and was used to fire, to accidents, and probably death. That alone didn’t mean anything, but her instincts told her to continue to watch. A crash of burning timber spat out a flurry of sparks in his direction, and he raised his left arm to shield his face, and… he had a holster under his left armpit. CIA-style.
Shit!
Fi arrived next to her, making her turn around. ‘It’s under control, Nadia, we’re going to head back to the pub.’
‘Sure,’ Nadia said. She glanced back – the man was gone.
They walked back in a group, conversation focusing on whether it was an accident or arson. Apparently there had been a few cases in Hugh Town over the past six months. Nadia joined in a little mechanically – she was tired, and wanted to climb into that too-soft bed and fall asleep under stars that begged no questions.
When they arrived back at the inn, the barman announced there would be a lock-in, which meant his guests could carry on drinking. Nadia immediately declined and said she was going to hit the sack. Fi said the same and followed her up the stairs, while the others headed to the bar. Nadia knew Jake was looking in her direction, but probably so too was Elise, so she didn’t look back.
Although Nadia was tired, the fire and the CIA agent had roused her, and she couldn’t sleep. She spent the next hour online and found the layout of the Tsuba wreck, and matched her recollection from the dive to the online map. She visualised everything, including where the device should be, how many fin strokes it should take to reach it, the direction from the propeller to the device and the reciprocal route back, whether there should be any appreciable current that day and in which direction, a possible direct ascent to the surface, the likely air usage, and how much reserve air she’d have left.
All of this was the mechanics. What she hadn’t worked out yet was how to either persuade Jake to come with her to retrieve it, or else part company with him mid-dive without him seeing where she went. She noticed it had gone quiet downstairs, presumably everyone had gone to bed. She switched off the small laptop, finally ready for sleep.
A soft rap sounded on her door. At first she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. Probably Claus. But she remembered the CIA agent. Would he knock? Of course not. She glanced at her pillow concealing her Beretta, then remembered she was naked; it was hot and humid in her room.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, quietly.
‘Jake.’
She chewed her lip, thought about putting some clothes on, but didn’t. She cracked open the door, leaned around it so he couldn’t see her body.
‘It’s late,’ she said.
He gazed down at her face, his brow touching the door and the doorframe, the fingers of his left hand resting lightly against the wood. He didn’t push. His breath smelled slightly sweet, some kind of liqueur. His eyes weren’t bloodshot. She inhaled his scent.
‘I need to kiss you,’ he said.
Not the most original line. But efficient and, in his case, effective. It had been five years. Both her and Katya’s lives were on the line. And she needed Jake to help her retrieve the Rose. She glanced at his lips, imagined them kissing her nipples, and felt the skin around them tingle.
She held the door firm. ‘What about your girlfriend?’
It didn’t seem to faze him.
‘History,’ he replied.
‘Does she think so?’
‘Does now.’
Good answer. He said nothing more. Most men would have babbled or bull-shitted on, digging themselves in deeper, killing the moment. Jake just stood there, waiting for her answer, not pressuring her. But her heart had already sped up. She hadn’t felt like this since before… she flushed the thought away. Slick and Pox had owned her too long. But thinking about it made her realise something shocking. It was the anniversary, almost to the day – five years. She ground her teeth, banged her brow against the door.
‘Are you okay?’ Jake asked.
Five fucking years. No, five non-fucking years. She’d slept with one man in her entire life, and now there was a CIA agent possibly sent to kill her. Slick and Pox, Kadinsky, her mother, her father, even Katya. Her life was defined by other people. What about her? What about her needs?
She made up her mind, and took a deep breath. ‘Just a kiss,’ she said, and opened the door, standing behind it.
He entered and then turned around, next to her bed, not that there was anywhere else to stand. His mouth dropped open. She wanted to undress him there and then. But she folded her arms across her breasts, watched his eyes to see if they would glance downwards. Of course they did.
‘How did you know which room I was in?’
He shrugged. ‘Fi texted me.’
Nadia worked it out: Fi wanted Claus, but Claus had been after Nadia all night long.
‘You said you wanted just a kiss.’ She unfolded her arms. ‘You’re a liar aren’t you?’
He hesitated, then nodded. He put his hands on her waist, and kissed her while the fingers of one hand traced slowly up her body. The other hand slid around to her buttocks. She began undressing him while his hands caressed her where it mattered. Her body took over, and she pressed her groin against him, felt the hardness there. He kissed her again, and she wanted to drown in that mouth. He gripped her buttocks hard, the way… Unbidden, Slick and Pox flashed into her mind. No! Don’t you dare ruin this!
She stopped him, came up for air. ‘Listen Jake, I don’t want you on top of me. It’s a rule I have. Something happened once.’
He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, then brushed her lower lip with his thumb. He took her hands, kissed her palms one by one, then placed them on his bare chest.
‘Not a problem,’ he said.
His voice nudged her over the edge. ‘Good,’ she said, and pushed him back onto the bed.