She let the clippers fall and tore back through the tunnel, scraping her hands painfully as she went because she couldn’t see, had to do it all by feel.
She almost went past the ladder. It brushed her left leg as she went by, and she realized what she’d been about to do, to swim endlessly down this tunnel, directly into the explosions. She reversed, felt around, couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it, there!
Get these damn flippers off, get them off. She kicked them away, her shaking hands clutching at the ladder rungs, and she started to climb.
Her head had just broken the surface, seeing the floor another eight feet above her, the ladder extending upward to that platform there, when all at once the water around her vibrated, and then lifted, and she was underwater again, clinging to the ladder, the water reaching for her with a million fingers, trying to pluck her off the ladder, drag her away. The water surged upward around her, powerful, lifting her, then drained back, bearing strongly downward, still trying to carry her with it, she still clutching hard to the rungs, stupid with fright.
The first bomb has gone off. I really am going to die here.
The water receded, foaming, her head was in air again, and a hand was there, reaching down for her. She looked up, gaping through the goggles, and it was George, holding onto the ladder just above her, reaching down for her.
She put one shaking hand in his, and he pulled upward, and they both rose out of the water to collapse onto the floor, the water boiling eight feet below. She lay there gasping, on her side, the air tank still cumbersome on her back, the goggles still on, looking blearily out and down at the water heaving in the darkness below.
Distant thunder boomed. The water heaved upward as though to recapture them. They clung to each other and watched it rise, and then it fell back, quiet again.
Solemnly, “I don’t ever want to dive again,” Kim said.
George laughed, and kissed her, and they didn’t care about the third and last explosion.
15
Curtis paced the narrow portside deck of Granjya, staring northward, watching the glittery lights of the island city far away, willing it to happen. Thirty-two minutes. Thirty-three.
Could they possibly have stopped it, defeated the soliton? He knew the charges were located where they should be. How could they have stopped him? They’d have to send divers into the tunnels, the water in the tunnels would be filthy, they wouldn’t have the time or the people to do all that. And there’s no other way to stop the soliton.
Thirty-four minutes.
It’s George, somehow. George Manville has done this to me. He should be dead, the man should be dead, and in any case he’s nothing but an unimaginative engineer, how can he stop me?
Curtis had always known this was a possibility, but he’d had to go forward anyway. His position was untenable and getting worse. He had to get out from under or go under, ruined, disgraced. So he’d had to make this gamble, and now he’d lost.
Thirty-seven minutes.
It wasn’t going to blow. George Manville, of all people, had beaten him. (He never even thought of Kim.)
But was this any worse than to fail the other way? To be sued, hounded, taken through bankruptcy courts, reviled by everyone who used to shake his hand and drink his liquor. If things had worked out...
If things had worked out, he would have had all the money he needed to solve his problems, and he would not have had one breath of scandal to touch upon him. He would have had his revenge on the city that had tried to destroy him, and he would have continued to be Richard Curtis, owner of Curtis Construction and RC Structural, respected, accepted everywhere in the world.
Well, he had failed, and now that failure was behind him, and it was time to start again. He still had a very few trusted people — the Farrellys at Kennison, for instance — he could rely on. Richard Curtis would have to disappear forever, and gradually he would have to build up a new identity. He had lost a battle, that’s all, not the war.
To disappear meant totally, and that meant he had to start now. Defeat had made him tougher, more decisive. He knew what had to be done, and he wouldn’t shrink from doing it.
There was a pistol in his cabin, an Iver Johnson Trailsman .32. He went there and got it, and walked forward to where the Hsus stood together, he at the wheel, she seated in the bolted-down chair beside him, chatting. Curtis shot her first, in the head, and then her husband, quickly, before he could think about it. Then he rolled the bodies over the side.
This was the first thing. No one must know how he left Hong Kong, where he went. Before, he’d been in a position where he could trust the Hsus to keep silent, because they would want more of his work in the future. But now, they would know he was a fugitive, and they would not want to be linked to him, and they would go to the police at the very first opportunity. So they wouldn’t get an opportunity.
He could operate this ship alone. The thing to do now was choose a new destination, because the authorities would surely know by now he’d come to Hong Kong from Taiwan, so he could not go back to Taiwan.
There are other places in this world, some not even as far away as Taiwan. There was Macao, for instance. Farther off, but possibly even more useful, there was Vietnam. Or the Philippines.
He could decide all that later. The main thing now was to deal with the submarine, get farther away from the Chinese coast, and at last get some sleep, an hour or two of sleep before daylight.
It would be very good if he could keep the submarine, but he didn’t dare. If he were stopped, he was Mark Hennessy, with a partly burned passport, due to an accident on board. (All of Mark’s travel goods were still aboard, and he would arrange a small fire in the main cabin to back up his story.) But he could not be Mark Hennessy, an innocent traveler, if he were leashed to a submarine carrying a full load of gold ingots, so unfortunately the submarine would have to go.
But not the gold, or at least not all of it. He would bring, say, a dozen ingots aboard Granjya, hide them, and have that as the base for his next fortune. So, once the Hsus were out of the way, he throttled back the Granjya engines to their slowest forward speed, just making enough headway into the chop so the ship wouldn’t begin dangerously to roll. Delicately, with the radio controls, he brought the submarine to the surface and then forward, to hover beside Granjya, maintaining the same speed, while he got a rope around the rudder, just forward of the propeller.
There was nothing else on the sleek machine to tie onto, but he had both vessels moving at the same speed, in the same direction, so everything would be fine so long as they were tethered together in at least one spot. And this transfer wouldn’t take long.
The top of the submarine, when it rode on the surface, was below the side deck of Granjya. Curtis had to lie on his stomach on the deck and reach down to the central hatch cover of the submarine, a round metal wafer three feet across, with crescent indentations for handholds. Tugging on two of these indentations, he was resisted at first, and then the cover turned easily. So easily that all at once it was free, and sliding off the metal hull to fall away into the water. Not a problem; the whole submarine would be scuttled soon.
The interior was not full. The top two feet of stowage space was empty, so Curtis couldn’t reach the nearest ingots from the deck of Granjya. He had to slide under the rail out over the submarine and lower himself through the hatch.