That soft, soothing voice. The voice he used to use when he was violating her. The soundtrack of abuse.
‘Is it, Rachel? Then, please, go ahead. If it’ll make you feel better, my darling. Help make up for whatever sins you believe I might have committed. It doesn’t matter to me. Doesn’t matter a jot. Like I told you, I’ve not long left anyway. The family, that’s what matters. And with you I know the family’s in good hands. The best hands. The very best. So go right ahead, Rachel. Ease your aching heart. Exorcize your demons. And for myself, I’ll die happy in the knowledge that in you I am bequeathing a fine future to the glorious name of Barren. God, you make me proud.’
He beamed at her.
A pause as she steeled herself. Accepted that there was no other way out. Then, unexpectedly, she beamed back at him.
A shadow of doubt in his eyes. ‘Rachel. What . . . ?’
‘Goodbye, Daddy dearest.’
For a moment he looked confused. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened in horror as she withdrew the gun from his forehead, bent her arm and jammed the muzzle into the roof of her mouth.
‘Oh my God, Rachel, don’t you dare—’
A deafening blast and the old man’s grizzled face was spattered in a vapour of bone and blood.
Her body toppled away from him and thudded to the deck.
B
EN
-R
OI AND
K
HALIFA
They were halfway along the ship, enveloped in fog, when the shot rang out behind them. There was a howl of ‘Rachel!’ followed by an agonized, guttural bellow, like the roar of some mortally wounded animal.
Ben-Roi and Khalifa stopped and looked at each other, uncertain what had happened. Another bellow, and then, echoing around the dock as though broadcast through a loudspeaker, a raging cry of ‘Find them! Find the murdering animals!’
They started running.
They reached the ship’s bow and fumbled their way on to the forward gangplank. Barely had they started down it when there were shouts below and a clatter of footsteps. The woman had got it wrong. There
were
guards down there. Lots of them, by the sound of it. And they were coming up.
They retreated, pulling back into the triangle of deck formed by the ship’s prow and the furthermost of the raised cargo hatches. Visibility in the fog was little more than a couple of metres, but they didn’t need to see to know they were trapped. Shouts and footsteps to their left, ascending. Similar sounds ahead of them, approaching along the sides of the ship.
‘Find them! Butcher them!’
They looked wildly at each other. Then, instinctively, without saying anything, they split. Ben-Roi moved left, covering the top of the gangway and the narrow channel of deck between the ship’s side-rail and the open cargo holds. Khalifa took the port-side channel.
They peered into the murk, Hecklers levelled, heads cocked, listening. Twenty seconds passed. Tense, harrowing seconds, the sounds of their hunters’ approach drawing closer all the time, the net inexorably tightening. Then figures loomed at the top of the gangway. Two of them. Ben-Roi fired, point-blank, dropping them. Khalifa also saw movement and unleashed a volley of shots. Return fire raged all around, the air vibrating to the ping and clank of bullets hitting metal, crackles of white light slashing through the fog shroud. The detectives pressed themselves behind the protective steel wall of the raised cargo hatch, swinging out to fire before ducking back again. With Barren’s men only able to approach along the sides of the ship and up the gangway, the two of them were able to hold their position despite being heavily outnumbered. Only so long as their ammunition lasted, however. And that was fast diminishing.
‘Cover me!’ cried Ben-Roi.
Loosing a final burst into the whiteness along his side of the ship, Khalifa shifted to Ben-Roi’s side and resumed firing. Dropping to his knees, the Israeli rolled across the deck to the top of the gangway, grasped one of the bodies that was lying there and hauled it back behind the cargo hatch. He repeated the process with the second body, bullets clanging all around like metal hail. Khalifa rolled across to cover the right-side channel again; Ben-Roi patted the bodies down. Jackpot. Each was clasping an MP5 and had a belt holster with a Sig Sauer handgun, plus spare Heckler magazines tucked into the pockets of their flak jackets. Thirty-bullet, by the look of it. Quite the miniature arsenal. He slid one of the Hecklers over to Khalifa along with a couple of clips, grabbed spare clips for himself, unleashed another volley of bullets.
For the moment at least they could hold out while they tried to figure out how to get off the ship.
The firefight continued for another few minutes, the detectives cornered, Barren’s men unable to get close to them. Then shouts and the sound of withdrawing feet. An eerie silence descended.
‘What are they doing?’ hissed Khalifa. Ben-Roi had no idea. ‘Not letting us go, that’s for sure.’
They stayed flattened against the metal of the cargo hatch, ears straining, hearts thudding, both desperately trying to come up with a plan. The bottom of the gangplank would be covered; likewise the narrow strips of deck running beside the cargo holds.
‘You think we could jump?’ asked Ben-Roi.
‘Are you crazy? It’s a forty-metre drop. Dock on one side, rocks on the other and a tug at the front. We’d be lucky if we just broke our backs.’
Ben-Roi didn’t bother arguing the point.
‘We’re in trouble,’ was his only assessment.
The silence continued for almost ten minutes, presumably as their pursuers also worked through their options. Then, suddenly, echoing across the dock, that raging voice again. Barren’s voice.
‘I don’t care! I want them killed now! Now, do you hear! Do it! Take it out! Now! Take it out! That’s an order!’
The two of them exchanged a look, uncertain what he meant. The answer came almost immediately. There was a deep, ominous throbbing sound, and beneath their feet the steel of the deck started to vibrate as the ship’s engines roused themselves into life. Almost simultaneously hydraulics purred and the cargo hatch that had been protecting them started to lower, as did the other hatches along the length of the deck, folding down over the holds like a row of collapsing dominoes. The two of them pulled back, crouching in the scant cover offered by the satellite navigation mast right at the prow of the ship. Between them and the bridge tower, where Barren’s men were gathered, there were now two football-pitch lengths of empty space, with nothing to shield them but the fog.
‘They’re taking us out to sea,’ said Ben-Roi. ‘The moment the air clears we’ll be sitting ducks. They’ll just pick us off from the bridge. It’ll be a fucking turkey shoot. We have to risk it! We have to get down the steps!’
He started to edge towards the starboard rail. Even as he moved there were shouts and the roar of an engine down on the dock below, and then a deafening crash and squeal of shearing metal. Something – it was impossible to see what exactly – had torn the gangplank off the side of the ship, cutting off their only line of escape.
‘We’re screwed,’ said Ben-Roi, downgrading his previous assessment of their situation.
The volume of the engines built, as did the trembling of the deck beneath their feet. Such was the thickness of the fog that it was only when the dim, ghostly radiance of the dock lights started to fade that they realized they were already moving, sliding backwards away from their mooring and out into the open sea. The gunfire started up again, a steady stream of bullets raging down the length of the open deck. Random rather than accurate, it nonetheless kept the two of them pinned tight in their narrow sanctuary behind the satellite mast. Pinned until the air cleared and Barren’s men could pick them off at their ease.
‘How far out do you think the fog goes?’ asked Ben-Roi.
‘How should I know!’
Khalifa fired off a couple of volleys from the Heckler. They could sense the ship starting to undulate, subtle heaves that told them they were moving further from shore into larger waves. Judging by the sound of the engines, they were picking up speed all the time. Still reversing – Barren’s men weren’t going to waste time turning the vessel. They had a few minutes maybe. Probably less.
‘We have to jump,’ said Ben-Roi.
Khalifa didn’t reply, just raked the control tower with his Heckler.
‘We have to jump,’ repeated the Israeli. ‘It’s our only chance.’
‘It’s too far! We’ll be killed!’
‘We’ll be killed if we stay here! We have to do it.’
‘No way! We’ll fight it out.’
‘We can’t fight it out, you idiot! There are too many of them. They’ve got too much firepower. We have to jump before we come out of the fog. Come on!’
He grabbed Khalifa’s jacket, but the Egyptian swept his hand away.
‘You jump if you want. I’ll take my chances here.’
‘Khalifa!’
‘I’m not jumping!’
‘We have to!’
‘No!’
‘We’re not even a mile offshore yet. We’ll be—’
‘No! No!’
‘We can just swim—’
‘Dammit, I can’t swim! Do you hear me? I can’t bloody swim. I’m scared of the water.’
He threw a furious, humiliated look at Ben-Roi, then turned away and emptied out the Heckler clip.
‘You go, I’ll stay,’ he muttered, breaking out the used magazine and clicking in a new one. ‘Don’t worry about me. Go on, off you go.’
For a moment Ben-Roi stared at him. Then, snatching the Heckler from the Egyptian’s grasp, he threw it over the side.
‘What in God’s name—!’
The Israeli seized his jacket, tight, yanking his face close.
‘We’re jumping, Khalifa. You understand? I’m a good swimmer. You do as I say, we’ll be fine. If we stay here we’re dead. No question. At least in the sea we’ve got a fighting chance.’
Khalifa opened his mouth, ready to protest, then closed it again. A bullet ricocheted off the satellite mast a centimetre from his head. Several seconds passed, then:
‘You’ll hold me?’
‘Like I was making love to you.’
Khalifa shot him a none-too-enthusiastic look. A couple of beats, then, reaching into his jacket, he pulled out Samuel Pinsker’s notebook, which had been sitting there all the time, in the inside pocket.
‘Take this. Just in case I don’t . . . you know . . . It shows where—’
Ben-Roi took the notebook and shoved it back inside Khalifa’s jacket.
‘We’re going to live, Khalifa. Trust me. We’re both going home. Now when we hit the water, don’t fight, OK? Just relax and let me guide you. Shoes off.’
They kicked off their shoes. There was a sudden lull in the firing from the other end of the ship. Taking advantage of it, they stood and clambered over the bow rail. Beneath them was a void of fog, with somewhere inside it the roar and bubble of churning water.
Ben-Roi dropped his own Heckler and grasped the back of Khalifa’s jacket.
‘Count of three. Jump as far out as you can. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘One . . .’
‘
Allah-u-akhbar!
’
‘Two.’
The gunfire started up again.
‘Three!’
They leapt. As they left the deck, Ben-Roi felt a sharp, burning thud in the back of his left leg, between his groin and the underside of his buttock. For a confused instant he thought maybe he’d been stung by some large insect. He didn’t have time to work the thought through because already they were falling, plummeting downwards through the murk towards the sea beneath. As they dropped, Khalifa experienced his own fleeting fantasy: that he was actually still in the mine. That he had missed the jump and was hurtling down the shaft and everything that had happened since – the dock, the ship, the Nemesis woman, Barren – had all simply been a dream. A last chaotic surge of imagination before he slammed into the shaft bottom and his lights went out for ever.
As with Ben-Roi, the thought didn’t have time or space to take root. There was an interim of chaos, everything – the fog, the churning of water, the rumble of engines, the crackle of gunfire, the wind in their faces – seeming to blur into everything else so that it was impossible to unpick the individual strands.
And then, with a bone-jarring, stomach-lurching thwack, they hit the water and went under.
The force of the impact tore them apart, ripping Ben-Roi one way, Khalifa another. For a brief, bewildered moment the Egyptian allowed the sea to take him, his body spearing down to what felt like an immense depth, water enveloping him, wrapping his face and mouth and eyes, swirling his hair, sucking at his clothes, seeming to push and pull him all at the same time. Then, despite what Ben-Roi had said, instinct kicked in and he started to fight. He flailed his arms and legs, kicking and punching at the water, grabbing and clawing at it, frantically trying to get it away from him, to drag himself up towards the surface. Bubbles exploded from his mouth, his lungs started to heave, panic surged through him. He could hear himself screaming – a muffled boom that filled his ears and head – could feel the strength flooding out of him with every sweep of his limbs so that barely had he started to struggle when his movements began to slow. Still he battled, pawing at the void, twisting and turning so that he lost all sense of which way he needed to go to reach air, until eventually his strength was gone and a curious calm descended. Seawater leached into his throat and windpipe; his mind fuzzed; his eyes filled with surges of colour; he felt his hands and feet drifting away from him as if he was slowly dissolving and breaking apart.
‘This is what it was like for Ali,’ he found himself thinking. ‘What my son went through, I too am now experiencing. I am going to my little boy. We’re going to be together again.’
The thought brought him a strange feeling of satisfaction, and he was giving himself up to it, when he felt something grasp his collar. There was a jarring yank as if he was being torn from a comfortable sleep, and suddenly his head was out of the water and he was coughing and spluttering and choking for air.
‘Don’t fight me, Khalifa!’ Ben-Roi’s voice sounded strangely distant, like it was coming from a long way away. ‘Relax. Just relax. You’re OK. I’ve got you.’