When he looked up again, he realized that Saumerre had swum through the hole and was now over the reef heading out into the open ocean. It seemed a hopeless enterprise, but there was always the possibility that Saumerre’s boat had not been apprehended and would return to pick him up. Jack and Costas were too encumbered with gear to catch up. Jack made a snap decision. They were only about eight metres deep now, so he could easily surface. The dive had been shallow enough to mean that they had not exceeded their no-stop decompression time, so they shouldn’t have to worry about the bends. He took several deep breaths, then unlocked the quick release on his backpack and his helmet, pulling the unit off and pushing it away, then reaching down to where he kept an emergency mask in a pocket on his leg, quickly putting it on and clearing it. Costas look at him in alarm, but Jack did a quick okay sign and pointed towards the rapidly receding form of Saumerre. He powered after him, the palladion acting as a useful weight in the absence of his backpack.
He was out beyond the edge of the reef wall over the abyss, and reached Saumerre just as his chest began to tighten. His plan was to push Saumerre bodily down below the ten-metre safety threshold for the oxygen rebreather, then to leave him as he became unconscious. He was on Saumerre before the other man had realized what was happening, pushing down on his shoulders and powering down with his fins. Saumerre reacted instantly and with surprising strength, twisting round and grasping Jack’s arms. His grip was like a vice. Jack remembered what he was carrying. He let go of Saumerre, reached into the satchel and pulled out the palladion, the gold and dull metal swastika, feeling its weight, seeing for the first time the Atlantis symbol impressed in the edge. Saumerre saw it too, and froze.
Jack held it out to him.
For an instant, Saumerre’s hands remained gripped on Jack’s arm. Then he let go, and grabbed the palladion, his eyes lighting up. He knew it now served no more purpose, that there were no secret chambers to unlock, but it had been a prize he had sought all his life, from the time his grandfather must have told told him what he had seen in that awful bunker outside the concentration camp almost seventy years ago. He was enraptured by it. Jack watched him sink down, oblivious to its weight, staring at it. He must have reached fifteen metres, then twenty, and below him there was nothing but a sheer drop of a mile or more into blackness. Too late he realized his mistake. He let go of the palladion, and grasped his head in agony, tearing at the rebreather. Then he went limp. The palladion had caught in the webbing on his chest, and Jack watched it as Saumerre fell, his body face up and slowly spinning until all Jack could see was the golden shape of the swastika spinning round and round, shrouded in a swirl of tiny bubbles, until it disappeared into blackness.
Jack’s lungs were screaming for air. A regulator was thrust into his face. He grabbed it and put it in his mouth, sucking hard, looking at Costas. The sun was shining brilliantly on the surface, and they could see the dark shape of the inflatable from the U-boat bobbing above them. Slowly they began to ascend together. Just before breaking surface, Jack looked down again, half expecting to see that shape somewhere below him, but there was nothing but darkness.
It was over.
Epilogue
‘Jack, correct me if I’m wrong, but are you and I sailing off into the sunset together?’
Jack peered at Costas, then at the boat they were in, and then at the miles of empty ocean surrounding them, barely visible in the blinding sunlight. They were wedged opposite each other with hardly any space to move, but the old German inflatable seemed as strong as the day it had been packed on board the U-boat more than sixty-five years before, its CO 2 bottle still pressurized enough to fill the pontoons. Jack had stripped down the upper half of his wetsuit to his T-shirt, but Costas was still wearing his tattered off-grey boilersuit bearing the scars and patches from their encounter with molten lava in another ocean a few days previously. Jack was holding the waterproof two-way radio that Costas had taken from a special pocket in his boilersuit that miraculously remained watertight. After surfacing and struggling into the boat, they had immediately sent out a VHF call to Paul, who was on his way back from Seaquest II in the Lynx and due to arrive in a matter of minutes.
Costas reached into the waist of his boilersuit and pulled out a compressed bag. He unzipped it and extracted something that looked like a wedge of unleavened bread, with something colourful oozing out of the sides. He sniffed it, grunted, and took a bite. He looked at Jack as he munched away, then swallowed. ‘Not bad,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Tuna and cucumber. Want one?’
‘You brought sandwiches. Sandwiches.’
Costas raised his arms. ‘So what?’
‘As if we were going on a picnic?’
Costas gestured with his sandwich at his boilersuit, speaking with his mouth full. ‘Empty pocket otherwise. May as well fill them.’
Jack grinned, shaking his head, then reached into his own leg pocket and took out a small plastic water bottle, uncapping it and draining it completely. He took out another one from the other side, then leaned back, squinting at the sun and closing his eyes, enjoying the heat. He felt something hit his hand, opened his eyes and saw a baseball cap, then saw that Costas was wearing one as well.
‘Sun hats. One for me too. You blow me away.’
‘Be prepared. That’s my motto.’ Costas reached into another pocket and pulled out his old aviator sunglasses, putting them on at a skewed angle and looking at Jack, who was trying not to smile. Costas raised his arms again. ‘What?’
‘Got anything else in there?’
‘You want to know?’ Costas took a huge bite of his sandwich, and then began patting his boilersuit. The radio came to life, and Jack spoke into it for a few minutes. He put his hand over the receiver and spoke to Costas. ‘I’m just talking to Macalister on Seaquest II. There’s been an interesting development. Reuters is reporting a cruise missile strike in the heart of the Taklamakan Desert. Ben has been in touch with our MI6 contact, and they reckon the target was Shang Yong’s headquarters. MI6 have been expecting a crackdown on his operations by China, but not so soon. The evidence is pointing to an offshore US strike, and that can only have come about through intelligence on a high-category terrorist threat. Ben reckons they must have been closely monitoring Saumerre, and that Shang Yong has paid the price for agreeing to work for him.’
‘Rebecca will be happy,’ Costas said, munching. ‘That really closes the lid on the bad guys.’
Jack nodded. He felt the box in his suit pocket containing the phial he had persuaded Saumerre to give him. Once that was deposited in a secure containment facility and destroyed, the lid would truly be closed. He put the radio back to his ear and spoke for a few more minutes. Then he put it down and laughed out loud, the first time he had done that in months. He grinned at Costas. ‘You remember a promise you made to a new friend a few days ago?’
‘Huh?’
‘You’re going to need a tuxedo.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Lanowski’s getting married.’
Costas dropped his sandwich. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Nope.’ Jack offered him the radio. ‘Speak to Macalister if you want. It’s the biggest news since we found Atlantis.’