and see a shark. I’ll signal when it’s time to come back up. Any questions?”
Alex shook his head.
“Then let’s do it.”
Alex drew his mask over his face, checked his respirator one last time, then sat on the edge of the boat with his hands crossed over his chest. Kolo gave him a thumbs up and he tipped over backwards, splashing down into the sea. It was a moment which he always enjoyed, feeling his shoulders pushing through the warm water, rolling in a cocoon of silver bubbles with the fractured light high above. Then his BCD, partly inflated, dragged him back to the surface. He was bobbing in the water, face to face with Kolo. The captain was watching them over the pulpit rail.
“All right?” Kolo shouted.
Alex gave him the universal diver’s sign: finger and thumb forming an O, the other three fingers pointing up. Everything OK.
Kolo responded with a clenched fist, thumb pointing down. Descend.
Alex released the air in his BCD and let his weight belt drag him down. The water rose over his chin, past his nose and eyes. Gently he began a controlled descent, listening to the sound of his own breathing amplified in his ears. It was only now that he remembered he had been operated on just three weeks ago.
What would Dr Hayward think about him scuba-diving? Well, at least it wasn’t something that had been forbidden.
A triggerfish—green with brilliant yellow stripes and a yellow tail—swam past, taking no notice of him.
The water was a deep tropical blue that became darker and murkier the further he descended. He looked at his depth gauge. Eleven metres, twelve metres, thirteen… He was comfortable, in full control. Kolo was a few metres above him, legs crossed. Great bubbles, each one containing a pearl of used air, rose in clusters to the surface.
And suddenly the Mary Belle was there, appearing in front of him as if projected onto a screen. It was always the same underwater. Objects, even ones as big as a sunken cargo ship, seemed to loom out of nowhere. Alex squeezed a little air into his BCD to slow his descent. He checked that he had neutral buoyancy, then he kicked forward and swam to examine this silent witness from the Second World War.
The Mary Belle lay in the sand, slanting to one side. It was in two halves, separated by a jagged, broken area that could have been made by a German torpedo. It was about a hundred and thirty metres long, twenty metres wide, the whole ship covered in algae and brightly coloured coral that would one day turn it into an extraordinary artificial reef. As he swam over the deck, heading for the stern, Alex looked down on the dark green surfaces, the twisting ladders and rails, the anchor winches and blast roof. He passed two railway freight cars lying side by side. Part of a locomotive lay shattered, a few metres away on the sand. At the far end he saw what had to be an anti- aircraft gun, now pointing helplessly at the seabed.
Once, the deck would have been full of life, with young marines running back and forth, the tannoy system barking orders, the wind and the sea spray blowing in their faces. But the Mary Belle had been hit. It had lain here for over half a century. There was nothing in the world more silent. It was the very definition of death.
Alex noticed Kolo signalling to him and he swam under the stern. He had disturbed a shoal of snappers which darted away, zigzagging rapidly out of sight. The propeller was directly above him. When the ship had broken in two, the stern had turned on its side, otherwise it would have been buried in the sand. Kolo signalled again. Are you all right? Alex glanced at his air supply. He had used 500 psi. He signalled back.
Fine.
Slowly they swam round the side of the wreck. Alex had his arms crossed over his chest, his hands clasping opposite arms. This was how he always dived. It helped retain body warmth and stopped him being tempted to touch anything. They rose up over the bridge and followed a ladder—each rung encrusted with new life—back to the upper deck. Kolo pointed at an opening beside one of the freight cars Alex had noticed. A hatchway, with a ladder leading down. It was the entrance to the second hold.
It seemed that Kolo wanted him to go in ahead of him. Alex took out his torch, then kicked down and cautiously swam through the opening, head and shoulders first. Wreck diving is entirely safe provided you know what you’re doing, and Alex knew that the only real danger was getting his air pipes caught or slashing them on a sharp edge. The solution was to do everything very slowly, checking for any obstructions. But the hatch was easily wide enough for him. He followed the ladder down, turned on the torch and looked around him.
He was in a large, cavernous space which ran the full width of the ship and about twenty-five metres of its length. A ghostly green light streamed in through a series of small portholes and Alex flicked off the torch, realizing he wouldn’t need it. The light illuminated an array of objects instantly recognizable even after sixty years beneath the sea. There was a Jeep, parked against a wall, a stockpile of Winchester rifles, a row of boots, a pair of motorcycles. It occurred to Alex that if he had come upon these on land, they would have been rusting and ugly, nothing more than junk. But their long stay underwater had given them a strange beauty. It was as if nature was trying to claim them and magically transform them into something they had never been.
Sound is also different underwater.
Alex heard the clang of metal hitting metal but for a moment he was unsure where it had come from, or indeed what it was. He glanced left and right but nothing was moving. Then he looked back the way he’d come. There was no sign of Kolo. Why hadn’t the other man swum into the hold? Then Alex realized. The hatch that he had come through had been closed. It had swung shut—that was the sound he had heard.
He twisted round and swam back up the ladder. He wasn’t wearing gloves and he was afraid of cutting himself, but when he reached the hatch he put his hand against it and pushed. It didn’t budge.
It was so securely fastened it could have been cemented into place.
What the hell was going on? Alex felt the first stirrings of unease which could all too easily become panic.
But he knew the most important rule of scuba-diving was to remain calm, and he forced himself to breathe slowly, to take everything one step at a time. The support holding back the hatch must have broken. But it didn’t matter. Kolo knew he was here. There was a dive ship directly overhead. He’d just have to find another way out.
Alex backed away from the hatch and swam the length of the hold. He came to a steel wall on the other side of the truck, and although it was pitted with holes, some big enough to get an arm through, there was no way the rest of his body would be able to follow. But there was a door—and it was ajar. Once it would have allowed the crew access from one hold to another. Now it was the exit that Alex needed. He swam over to it
