Danton aimed to be nondescript. He had fuzz on his chin that could be a beard or just a couple of days’ growth. He sometimes wore glasses, sometimes not, and didn’t need them. His clothes were baggy, always in shades of beige and grey, hiding his lifelong body-building obsession. His hair was somewhere between brown and blond, medium length and a little unkempt. People didn’t notice him. He never looked people in the eye, because his eyes were a startling emerald green – you would remember them. He’d meant to bring contacts to dull their colour, but he’d had to leave Frankfurt in a hurry.
He’d always been a fan of martial arts movies, having practised enough in his earlier years, from ju-jitsu to kendo, ending up with Systema, as it was so effective and devastating in ordinary street situations and close quarters. Danton knew all the pressure points on the body, and always hit them hard. Besides, all the top Russian assassins – and they were the best in the world – were trained in Systema, the CIA preferring the equally tough Krav Maga style developed by the Israeli Special Forces.
But his idol, as with all true martial artists in his view, was Bruce Lee. Danton knew every one of his films backwards, and recalled a scene from Fist of Fury, where Bruce had needed to get information, and in order to do so, in the space of a few seconds he’d transformed his upright, fighter-like posture into that of a decrepit, insignificant old man. As Danton waited in the throng to disembark the Scillonian ferry at Hugh Town, he mimicked his legend. He stooped a little, stared at the ground, trudged along like the others around him, occasionally muttering to himself as if caught up in his private little world, which made people want to ignore him even more.
Danton loved crowds: the anonymity, the security. For him, ninety-nine per cent of people were sheep. They had the herd instinct, even if they kidded themselves they were individuals – or worse, managers, bosses, supervisors, whatever – like they had some authority over others, like they were leaders. Bullshit. Push them just a little out of their comfort zones and they’d stare around bewildered to see what everyone else was doing, scared of their own shadows. Hollow men.
No, there were only two types of men who mattered, both rare: those who rose to the top, whose egos needed adulation and absolute power, like the old Japanese shoguns. If you disobeyed them you’d lose your head in an instant, and your family would lose theirs, too. Kadinsky would have been a shogun. The second type were more like Danton: ronin, renegade samurai, warriors who still had a code, but no master. He was more than happy being a ronin.
He lingered a while on the metal gangplank, taking in the lay of the land, then stepped onto the concrete quay. The other tourists drifted off in various directions, some meeting friends or family, others greeted by tour guides, a few independent travellers making their way towards the tourist office to seek out accommodation, brandishing maps, Lonely Planet Guides, smartphones and tablets. He threaded his way through people taking selfies with the Scillonian or the harbour in the background. Danton headed down the esplanade away from them all. It was early, so the tourists already lodging there hadn’t emerged yet, most probably still stuffing their gobs with fried eggs and toast in the cheesy hotels strung around the bay. As he walked, he smelt a familiar odour of smoke, ash and melted plastic. There had been a fire last night. He didn’t do coincidences. Someone had been busy. He didn’t yet know who, but Adamson and Nadia were top of his list.
After buying a broad-rim straw hat from a beachside stall opened early, he found an Italian café with a traditional espresso machine and a dopey waiter. Danton ordered. Macchiato.
No, not a caramel macchiato for Christ’s sake, a regular one. Inside the cafe. I don’t care if the view is better outside, I know it costs more. Jesus Christ!
He took his seat, calmed himself down. No point taking it out on the waiter. He took stock as the boy went behind the bar to fix the coffee. Danton had barely gotten out of Frankfurt alive. First Lazarus had visited him. After that he’d spent the night with Linda, which he was pretty sure was her real name. She reminded him of Gloria, and he’d stayed longer than usual and left her a hefty tip, then returned to his street to find it swarming with cops. He’d spun around and headed to his back-up safe room ten blocks away, picked up his getaway gear and taken a taxi to Bad Homburg, a train to Cologne, a plane to Heathrow, a coach to Penzance, and then here.
Who the fuck had given him away? Not Lazarus for sure; he was the one who had told him she was in the Scillies, and not Land’s End. No, his money was on the suit, Adamson. If the rogue CIA fucker had sold him out, he’d end up in the chair, squealing like a stuck pig, begging for his death. Pliers and blowtorch. Never failed.
He pulled his Nikon from his rucksack, switched it on and aimed it out from his dark alcove to the bright sea beyond, zooming in. A naval patrol boat, a few fishing vessels loitering here and there, and the blue and white Scillonian already cruising out of the bay on its way back to Penzance.
The young waiter, looking hungover, arrived and plonked the macchiato down on the table – no glass of water like in civilised countries – eager to leave as more customers arrived and installed themselves on metal chairs and tables outside, tourists who looked like they would tip. Danton raised a hand, made the boy wait; he was hungry, hadn’t eaten anything on the ferry. What he wanted was protein, ideally bacon, and he’d separate the rind himself. But he shouldn’t solicit attention, he had to be just another tourist. Full English, he said, extra bacon. The boy nodded absently, scribbled a note on a pad, probably dreaming about last night, the girl he missed while getting pissed.
Danton went back to surveying through his camera, then took a look at the message just popped up from his phone. Lazarus. There was an image of a girl, not unattractive, not stunning. Nadia. Good. Now he could find his target.
There was a ruckus outside, a couple of young kids, both with toy machine guns.
‘You’re dead!’ one of them yelled, the taller one, eyes full of fire.
‘I shot you first!’ the younger one pleaded.
The older one raised his gun as if to smash the other boy’s face with it. ‘I said you’re dead.’
The younger boy looked as if he might cry, then lowered his gun and lay on the floor. The older boy grinned and put his foot on the chest of the other boy, raising his own gun in the air, and yelled something Danton didn’t understand, maybe a reference to a video game or a movie. He saw the look in that boy’s eye, the feeling not only of triumph, but power through domination. Being able to make another person obey you, submit to your authority through fear. The kid probably didn’t understand it fully, nor the fact that he should relish it before life – society – would chisel it out of him or put him in prison, unless the kid became either a soldier or a boxer or a killer, like Danton.
The waiter shooed the kids away. The younger boy sprang up and both ran off, as if pals again, but Danton knew harm had been done, the younger kid had been made to eat shit. His spirit would remember it. If he was smart he’d have learned a lesson today, that rules don’t mean anything where raw power was involved. And if he was dumb, well, he’d just end up another sad loser like most people, and vent his frustration on anyone who was vulnerable later in life.
But Danton knew exactly how the bigger kid felt, because for him, that feeling of power over someone had become an addiction. He remembered the second time he’d killed, after some punk had cheated him in a high-stakes poker game. Danton had lost a year’s wages, knew the fucker had cheated, but the entire game was rigged, and there were too many heavies around. He waited outside the backstreet gambling joint for two hours, hiding behind the rubbish bins, then followed the guy from a distance until he neared the deserted docks at 3am.
Surprising the guy and beating the crap out of him had been easy, but he’d only gotten a fifth of his money back – obviously the others had shared the winnings. Anger brewed in Danton like a firestorm. He tied the schmuck’s hands behind his back, using the guy’s own belt, and shoved a handkerchief in his bloodied mouth to stop him begging for mercy. That was when he spied a run of rusted chain nearby. At first, he did it just to scare the crap out of the guy, which worked, as Danton wrapped the heavy chain around the guy’s legs in a crude knot, and rolled him closer to the water’s edge. The pure terror in the guy’s eyes drove Danton on. It was like a kid’s game: see how much he could frighten the dolt. To top it all, Danton heaved the guy up, doing a deadlift with him, chain and all, and staggered over to the drop.
The guy and chain weighed a lot, easily two hundred and fifty. Danton thought about the weightlifting championships, how a shot at an Olympic title had been torn away from him a year earlier, and in that moment all the pent-up rage from being screwed over in life too many times surged through him, and he felt so good, holding this man’s life, writhing and squirming and whimpering in his bare hands, felt the absolute pure God-like power of life over death. He tossed the guy into the cold water below.
Never even knew his name.
Danton didn’t sleep that night, dizzy with elation, and ended up in a brothel in the red light district, taking one hooker after another till dawn, fucking like a lion. In a way, looking back now, he’d been like the smaller boy, but he’d managed to gain the upper hand and kill the older one. Would that younger boy have gone so far? Course not. Unless he’d been shafted by life again and again. Danton hadn’t had a great life, but after that first kill, word had got around once the bloated body was found and the local mafia put two and two together. Nobody messed with Danton any more. In fact they gave him work. Respect. That was what mattered.
Danton downed the macchiato. Breakfast arrived. Lots of bacon, and a glass of water, the waiter looking apologetic. Okay, Danton decided, he’d leave a tip after all. A small one.
***
Nadia stirred, eyes closed, then remembered last night. A smile played on her lips. She reached for Jake, but found the bed empty. Her eyes snapped awake, and her hand automatically reached under her pillow, searching for the Beretta. It was gone. Then she recalled hiding it under the bed. It was still there. But where was Jake? The door was locked from the inside. She heard nothing but checked the tiny bathroom just in case, then glanced upwards.
In jeans and t-shirt she poked her head through the skylight, and spied him, staring out to sea. He looked like the male version of those figureheads at the front of tall ships. One she wouldn’t mind sailing in for a while. Another lifetime. But as she watched, he mouthed a few words lost on the breeze, closed his eyes as if in prayer, and hung his head. She felt she was intruding on a very private moment, so she ducked back down, waited a minute, then came up again, opening the skylight wide with a loud creak.
‘Careful, it’s not very safe,’ Jake said.
She pulled herself up through the square hole. ‘Then why are you up here?’ The slates were slippery. She kicked off her shoes, let them drop back into the room, tested her grip, then crawled over to where he sat, half-naked, propped up next to the brick chimney. He held out his hand and for form’s sake she took it, and sat next to him.
‘Nice view?’ she inquired. But she could already see that it was. ‘Come here often?’
He nodded, but heavily. ‘Used to. It’s the best place to judge the weather and the sea state before a dive.’ He pointed. ‘There are breakers far out. You can’t see them from down on the shore.’
He had a point, but clearly there was more going on. ‘What’s on your mind, Jake?’
He seemed to consider whether or not to tell her some dark secret. But then the cloud that had passed over his face earlier lifted. He bent forward and kissed her. ‘Let’s go back inside.’
She went through the window first, then he followed. As soon as he was standing next to her in the room, he kissed her urgently, pulled her clothes off a little roughly, which strangely she didn’t mind. She whispered ‘Do we have time?’
He grinned. ‘I’ll be quick.’
She made a face. ‘Oh grea –’ But his mouth welded to hers as he pushed her back against the wall. His hands clasped her buttocks, lifting her off the floor. She wrapped her legs around him. Dammit, he felt good.
For once, she was quick, too.
Breakfast was awkward, no other word for it. It was always hard after the first night with someone to pretend nothing had happened. What helped was that Fi had evidently gotten her way with Claus, who was broadcasting it to everyone. Fi didn’t seem to mind. Elise kept shooting glances at Jake and Nadia, but he acted normal, and as for Nadia, well, Elise didn’t know what normal was in her case. And they were all time-pressured, the boat left in an hour.
Nadia went back up to her room and decided it would be best to walk to Pete and Ben’s boat alone, Jake could meet her there. Throwing a few items into a lightweight bag, she descended the three flights of stairs and walked out the back door, and bumped right into Kennedy.
He barred her way. ‘Hello, it’s…?’
‘Nadia,’ she offered.
‘Right,’ he said, still blocking the passage, looking more to the side than at her, as if he was trying to remember something. ‘We met the other day, didn’t we?’
Nadia tried to act nonchalant, saying she’d visited all the dive shops including his. Kennedy’s brow furrowed, like he had a question, or a supposition. She needed to get away.
‘I’m sorry about what happened to your dive shop,’ she said. ‘We all came down last night when we heard the explosion. It was awful.’
His voice firmed. He looked her in the eye. ‘We?’
‘Yes, I’ve hooked up with Jake and Elise’s lot, you might know them.’
He looked away again, then seemed to make up his mind, and spat it out. ‘You see, the thing is, one of my staff was out walking early evening yesterday and saw someone fitting your description around the back of my shop.’
Nadia knew she couldn’t respond too quickly, her confusion had to appear real.
‘What? Someone like me? What do you mean?’ She took a step back. ‘Hang on, you’re not saying… But I was here, I crashed out after a deep dive with Jake.’
‘You were alone, then.’
He had her. Even if he wasn’t sure, it would be enough for the police to come asking, a strong lead that could overturn the usual forty-eight hour caution. She had to nip this one in the bud.
‘Well, not alone, actually.’ She grinned like a schoolgirl. ‘Er… Jake…’
‘Ah. Is he here? Actually, I came to see Jake, to thank him and the others for helping out last night. A miracle no one was hurt, still don’t know why none of the tanks exploded.’
‘Probably not hot enough,’ she said.
‘Actually, I believe they were emptied. Who would do that, other than a diver? Must have taken an hour to empty them without making a lot of noise.’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows what’s in an arsonist’s head?’
Kennedy nodded, but still barred her way. ‘Listen, the guy who saw you, I mean someone like you, maybe you should meet him, it might help clarify what the real culprit looked like. He’s down at the police station right now giving them a description.’
Nadia’s mind spun. ‘I’m diving this morning, with Jake.’ She allowed herself to look sheepish, not particularly difficult. ‘You see, the thing is, with Jake… It’s not exactly common knowledge.’
‘It is now,’ Elise said, making Nadia whirl around. How long had Elise been listening? Nadia felt a vague urge to apologise. But then again, there seemed to be nothing between Jake and Elise except tension.
‘Hello, Elise,’ Kennedy said. He seemed embarrassed by the situation, presumably because he’d known Jake and Elise when they’d been together. He moved to one side.
‘My condolences, Mark, really,’ Elise said. ‘Whoever burned down your place should be shot.’
‘I’d really better be going,’ Nadia said. ‘I’m really sorry about your shop.’
She left the two of them to catch up, and pondered different ways it could play out once Jake emerged: he could deny being with her, Kennedy might not ask the question, or might just ask a general one as to whether Jake was sleeping with Nadia.
She walked at a brisk pace, the sun gleaming off the morning tide. She dodged through the throng already heading to the beach. Several people almost collided with her. Why didn’t people look where they were going most of the time, just open their eyes and pay attention? A mother with three screaming toddlers in tow almost ran Nadia down with an oversized pushchair, and at one point a swarthy man in a broad-rim straw hat bumped into her as he exited a sweet shop, apologised in a German accent, and stumbled on his way. But she finally made it past the thick of the crowd and sped up as she spotted Pete and Ben’s dive shack, the two of them prepping the boat. Pete acted cool with her, business-friendly, and didn’t mention anything about her Tsuba dive plans with Jake. Ben gave her a knowing shrug. She went into the shack to sort out her gear.
Jake arrived twenty minutes later, looking tense, and joined her after greeting Pete. He helped her on with her gear, but all professional again, as if nothing had happened between them. Maybe he was just being discreet, especially since she was sure Pete and Ben knew Elise and Jake’s history. There seemed to be few secrets on these sunny isles. But she needed to check how things had played out after she’d left.
‘Did Kennedy ask about us?’
‘Why would he?’ His look was intense, scrutinising her.
‘Never mind. Let’s go diving.’
Kennedy or Elise must have said something, because Jake was being cool with her. She noticed he was throwing glances at her while she was checking her gear. Avoiding his gaze, she happened to glance at her rucksack. The lower outside pouch was open. It was hard to bend down with all the kit on her back, but she could see it was empty. There’d been nothing of value in it except her hotel keycard, and that didn’t have a number on it, just the name of the inn.
While boarding the boat, she played back the morning events, wondering when someone could have pinched it. The man in the straw hat. It had to be him. She couldn’t picture him, and that worried her. That was the sign of a pro. German accent, that much she remembered, maybe a beard – no, not a beard. She couldn’t remember his face at all, except… emerald green eyes.
‘Ready?’ Pete said.
She lowered her gear into place and secured the ensemble to the central rack with a bungee cord, then sat down.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
Ben took over once they were underway, and Pete came and stood in front of both of her and Jake.
‘No Tsuba tomorrow,’ he said, then held up a hand before she could speak. ‘Kennedy has eight divers with no dive boat.’
Jake said nothing, just stared out to sea, then turned to face her, again that look of scrutiny. What was going on with him? Unless… No, he didn’t fit the profile.
She wanted to say that Kennedy was insured, and probably so too were the divers, but she understood how things worked here. Although the dive operators in the Scillies were competitors, when something like this happened, they pulled together. It made sense, eight pissed-off divers writing bad reviews on the internet affected everyone in the area, not just one operator.
‘So,’ Pete said, ‘either you go with Elise, because I heard she’s diving there tomorrow, or you wait a few more days till things have calmed down.’ He went to join Ben at the console at the front of the boat.
A few more days wasn’t an option. Someone had seen her near Kennedy’s, and she’d now seen two men who were possible operatives, and who they worked for didn’t really matter. Kadinsky wouldn’t wait. She turned to Jake, speaking quietly against the noise of the engines and the surf, so only he could hear.
‘Ask Elise,’ she said. ‘We could dive from her boat.’
‘Right,’ he said, relaxing a little, becoming more like the man she’d been with last night. ‘Like that’s going to work.’
She laid her palm on his hand. ‘It will work, if you ask in the right way.’
He stared at her. ‘What are you saying?’
She uttered a word she’d sworn a long time ago never to use. ‘Please.’
‘You must really want to dive this wreck, Nadia. Why? What does it mean to you?’ There was an edge to his voice, almost accusatory.
‘Everything,’ Nadia said. ‘Life or death.’
He freed his hand, and wouldn’t look at her, instead gazing out to sea.
She patted his neoprene-encased thigh. ‘I’m sorry, I –’
‘I’ll talk to Elise later.’ He sounded angry.
A part of her had wanted to sleep with him one more time. But even if he hadn’t gone cold on her, she’d already known it was the very last thing she should do. Last night had been fun, an interlude, but she had to get back to work. Find a way to dive the Tsuba before Kadinsky’s patience ran out, or the other two operatives came after her. Jake would get over her; maybe he already had, maybe he preferred Elise. Whatever. Just another one night stand for him, a new notch on his bedpost. A little different for her, though, after five years of abstinence.
Too bad.
Her break-time was over. She needed to get back onto the other side of that thermocline where she belonged. Easily done. Because something was really bothering her. Where the hell was Sammy? He should be back at Kadinsky’s dacha by now. And then she thought of Katya, her life hanging in the balance. The rumour was, Kadinsky liked to beat people nearly to death before burying them. Would he do that to Katya? Five years ago, no. But today?
Nadia felt nauseous thinking about it, and leaned over the side. She let her hand catch some of the spray, and wiped it over her face. She stared out to sea. She wanted to be underwater. Life was better there.
‘Can’t we go any faster?’ she shouted forward to Pete, who turned around.
‘Sure, but it’ll get a little bumpy.’
‘Don’t care,’ she said.
Pete pushed the lever forward and the boat accelerated. Soon they were bouncing off the wave-crests, smacking down hard every four seconds, a steady rhythm, like a slow heartbeat, like the pulsing LEDs on the Rose.
She spoke softly into the wind, so no one else could hear. ‘I’m going to find you, whatever it takes.’