His fingers closed around one of the floats, but before he could withdraw it, he found himself unable to draw breath; the air refused to enter his lungs. Concentrating on his chest, he tried again to inhale. He could feel the resistance, like trying to suck the air out of a bottle and a breath was grudgingly granted. Intuitively, he realized his air supply had been cut off; the compressor was no longer pumping air down to him.
Kismet immediately tried to reassure himself; the mechanism had simply stalled. He envisioned his companions on the boat frantically trying to restart the motor, and was confident that they would succeed and that at any moment precious air would resume flowing into his helmet. But thirty seconds passed, then a minute, and his ability to restrain the growing panic was diminishing with every heartbeat. Every inhalation was an effort. Each strained breath was using up his precious reserve of good air, and each exhalation further poisoned his environment with useless carbon dioxide. He closed his eyes, willing himself calm, and drew another shallow, labored breath. His hands once more sought out the floats in the net bag. He debated sending up all three, but thought better of it. Anatoly and Irene certainly must have recognized that restarting the compressor was an emergency. There was no need to compound his peril by signaling for a hasty extraction from the depths. But why were they taking so long?
Before he could release a float however, he felt a tugging across his back. A tremor vibrated along the length of cable connecting him to the boat and he slowly began to ascend out of the pit. The flow of fresh air, however, did not resume.
Instantly, the panic returned. Had the compressor failed, breaking down beyond Anatoly's ability to repair? If so, was there sufficient air remaining in his helmet to make the ascent? Even without the requisite decompression stops, the upward journey would take several minutes.
He arched his back, tilting his enclosed head to get a look at the surface. Very little illumination could penetrate the thickness of the water, but he was able to pick out the oblong shape of the trawler. He squinted at the keel, trying to estimate the depth to which he had plunged and how long it would take for his friends to draw him up. As he stared at the boat, steeling himself against the inevitable moment when he would feel the painful cramps of the bends, he became aware of a smaller boat, orbiting the trawler like a satellite.
No, he realized. The second shape is the trawler.
There was another vessel right next to Anatoly's boat; a craft much larger than the tiny fishing vessel. With equal parts intuition and dread, Kismet realized that it was not another fishing boat but a ship. It could only be the Boyevoy. The Russian captain and his armed sailors were undoubtedly already aboard the trawler and probably knew that Kismet was in the water. They had likely cut off his air supply, intending to bring his lifeless body up as evidence against Irene and Anatoly. Kismet imagined the delight they would take in watching his agonizing struggle to readjust to topside pressurization, provided he did not suffocate during the ascent.
Neither fate was one he could accept. The secret of the Golden Fleece was so tantalizingly close he could not die without knowing the truth.
A few seconds later, feeling the faint delirium of hypoxia, Kismet rose to the level of the shelf where the golden ship rested on its side ablaze in supernatural glory. As he swung toward it, he knew what he had to do.
He twisted around until he could reach the clip that secured his harness to the cable and popped the hook free. As soon as he let go the cable shot away, continuing the ascent without him, while he plummeted to the sea floor.
His sudden reappearance startled the mass of briny creatures surrounding the wreck. They immediately shifted, circling close to drive him off once again. He did not balk; too little time remaining to be slowed down now.
Heedless of the silt cloud he was stirring up, he raced toward the sunken vessel. His helmet suddenly resounded with a loud noise; the sound of an unseen fish striking at him. At almost the same moment he felt a blow to his abdomen, but neither collision was sufficient to slow his charge. Yet, despite expending all his energy, he could barely move through the fluid environment faster than a jog. He began swinging his arms to ward off the aggressive marine life but his movements were hampered by the thickness of the water.
Larger fish descended on him; bulky sturgeon, moving fast enough to knock him off balance and spiny dogfish, nearly as large as Kismet himself, flashing their menacing teeth.
He ignored them all.
The nest of electric rays reawakened as he approached the sunken shrine and the doorway behind the colonnade. Their shocks stung, but he blindly pushed them aside, refusing to be driven from the precipice a second time.
Seizing the threshold of the portal, he pushed the gilt door open and threw himself inside. Gasping for a breath that would not come, he fell against the door, shutting out the sea and the defenders of the golden ship.
THIRTEEN
The door refused to close. Kismet struggled with it for a moment before realizing that his air hose was the obstruction. He stared at the rubber tube, wondering what to do, vaguely aware of how stupid the predicament made him feel. The lack of fresh oxygen was clouding his ability to think.
He finally gave up trying to secure the door. The attack by the sentry fish had ceased as soon as he had gained the safety of the structure, making his efforts to shut them out unnecessary. He turned away and surveyed the enclosure. Though the ornate exterior had suggested a ritual significance, the interior appeared to be nothing more than a cargo hold. Rope webs held chests in place in two long rows, one on either side of a center aisle, the entire length of the enclosure.
Although the ship now rested on its side, creating a top and bottom aspect to the cargo arrangement, the ropes remained secure. The cargo had barely shifted in spite of the wreck. It took Kismet a moment to realize that, as with the exterior, the interior of the hold as well as the rope nets and the cargo casks were covered in a layer of brilliant gold, preserving everything intact despite centuries of exposure to salt water. He had no difficulty discerning any of the details in his surroundings because the covering of gold in the cargo bay of the wreck was brilliantly aglow.
There were more than three feet of clearance between the cargo above and below, plenty of room for a man to walk through, even carrying a heavy load in his arms, when the ship was in an upright position. But with the ship keeled over ninety degrees, Kismet was forced to crawl on his hands and knees along the crates resting on the starboard wall of the enclosure.
With so many casks to choose from, he simply selected one at random. He slashed his kukri at the gilt ropes, slicing through metal and ancient fibers with relative ease, releasing the first crate on the port wall. It tumbled down, sinking through the water like an anchor, and landed on its side. When he tried to maneuver the oblong case, he found it impossibly heavy. Though he was unable to lift it, he managed instead to push it over. He pierced the gold overlay with the edge of his blade. It separated easily from the wood, allowing him to peel it away like the soft lead on a bottle of wine. Beneath was unfinished white wood.
There appeared to be no hinges or latches securing the lid, leaving him to wonder the was box upside down. Rather than attempt to turn it over, he chose instead to cut through the wood with the knife. Working along the edge, he found the seam where the rough-hewn boards were joined and began prying them apart. Immediately upon breaking the internal sanctity of the cask, a flood of air bubbles rose up, tickling at the faceplate of the helmet before gathering above him in a small air pocket. Golden rays also shone from the gap he had created, stimulating him to work faster. Once the board was loose, he laid his knife aside, wedging his fingers under the wood and wrenching at it until it broke free. Through the hole he could see gold.