I wired up the three-pin plug and switched out the puny fuse for a thirty amp one I’d found in a drawer. Then I connected my control switch and fed the next wires into that too before wrapping the stripped ends around the foot of the ladder and securing them with grey electrical tape. Another check of the monitors, no change there. It looked like a perfect day to be out on the water. I bet Mads and the students would have been having a great time by now if it wasn’t for this little interruption to their plans.
A careful, stealthy climb back up the ladder satisfied me that nobody would be able to see me from up there if I ducked down behind the other end of the control console. They couldn’t get a decent view of the screens I was using either. Back on the floor again, I carefully ran all my wires along the wall behind the long workstation and positioned my control switch in handy reach before going back to plug it in and flick the socket on. The multimeter showed no current to the ladder, as expected. I put the insulating gloves on as a precautionary measure and went to turn on my control switch.
Oh, yeah, this time, I got a reading of 230V running through the ladder. That should certainly shake up whoever climbed down here enough to give me a bit of an edge. I could always try to start their heart up again if it worked too well.
I turned off the control switch, stripped off the gloves to leave on the floor just by it and quietly placed all the unneeded leftovers and tools into a drawer. It was after half ten by then, and I was beginning to wonder what Conall thought he was playing at this morning when a little flashing light on my work screen informed me that he’d booted up his laptop. Finally! I snapped a couple of screenshots and typed a quick note onto the one I’d taken of the chart plotter. When I asked for it, my laptop gave me a view from his webcam in a new window.
Damn! He’d gone out again. Well, hopefully, he wouldn’t be long. I sent the images through and sat back to wait. He’d better not be, or I might have to choose a different time slot and a later set of coordinates for him.
Ugh! The sooner we could get this little mess cleaned up, the better.
Twenty-Three
The Kværnen was still a long way away when I first spotted her. I’d paused to tread water briefly for another quick compass check when I saw her come into view on the horizon. That was a good moment for me because, as I’d been swimming, I couldn’t help thinking about all the things that might have gone wrong on that yacht while I was on my way up here. For all I knew, she might have been on an entirely different course and miles away by now. What if Shay had been discovered?
There was little danger of anyone on board noticing me just yet, not from such a long distance. I’d wait until she was within a couple of hundred metres of me before diving. All the lightly rippled surface was giving off sparkles of reflected light, so I wasn’t worried about flashes of sunlight bouncing off my mask, giving me away.
Another ten minutes, and she was close enough to make me decide to dive. I didn’t need to sink far, a couple of metres was just fine, and the visibility at that level was fantastic. The water was very clear here. I inserted the mouthpiece of my mini air tank and opened up the regulator, adjusting it until I was getting the right airflow.
I must admit, I didn’t feel exactly comfortable out there. It did feel a little unnerving to be out in the open sea without the reassuring presence of a diving buddy at my side. I wasn’t particularly worried by the idea of running into a large marine predator; the odds of that were astronomically low. Still, the urge to check behind and below me quite frequently couldn’t be denied, irrational as it was.
Kværnen’s wake of white frothing water looked like a thick feathered plume from down here, and I could see she was angled to pass me at quite a distance as things currently stood. I altered my direction slightly and shifted into top gear. Sure enough, that thick trail of frothing white soon died away. The sudden quiet as the vibration of her engines cut off was strange too. I could suddenly hear my own breathing in a way I hadn’t noticed before. She wasn’t far from me now. I made a guess, based on the rate at which she appeared to be slowing, and angled for a spot about fifty metres beyond her current position.
I came up under her dive platform and pulled myself up. Unclipping the air tank and setting it down took mere seconds. I left the mask there too and crept up the companionway, keeping low to give myself a view of the stern deck. Clouds of oily, black, smoke were rising upwards from the air vents along the sides. Surely Shay hadn’t set the damned boat on fire? Knowing him, he’d probably found some engine oil, and something strong enough to contain it safely when he set it alight.
Nobody in sight down here, but I could hear voices up on the flybridge. The sound of running footsteps below, and then on the inside stairs sped me forward. Moving as fast as I could without making any noise, I crossed the deck and ducked into the cover of the starboard stairwell leading up to the flybridge.
“The emergency fire system’s kicked in and locked the damned door,” Jordan called up to Phelps from inside the main deck salon.
