He was skimming low over a ridge when he dropped his flashlight. It bounced off a clump of coral and dropped into a crevice. He signaled Cahil to stop and went after it.
Sea grass billowed over the opening, partially obscuring the beam. He reached for it, fell short, and reached again. Suddenly the rocks crumbled and he fell headfirst into the hole. The edge of his mask struck a rock. Water gushed into his eyes. He fell into the blackness.
The line went taut. He jerked to a stop. He swung free for a moment, then cleared his mask, groped around, and pulled himself to the ledge. He felt two rapid tugs on the line: Cahil questioning. Tanner tugged back the okay signal. The flashlight lay a few feet away. He retrieved it and looked about.
This was no crevice, he realized, not even a cave in the strict sense. The sea grass had formed a canopy over what appeared to be a ravine. Rising above him, the rock lip disappeared in a forest of sea grass.
He gave the line three short jerks, and a few seconds later, Cahil dropped through the canopy and hovered beside him. What? he mouthed.
Tanner pointed. Ahead, the ravine sloped into the darkness.
Cahil nodded, and they started forward.
The darkness absorbed all but a sliver of light from their flashlights. Fish swirled around them and up along the ravine’s walls.
A pillar of rock loomed in their path. Tanner played his beam over it, saw nothing unusual, and kept going. He stopped suddenly, backpedaled, and finned closer to the rock. Something was there, a dull glint in the stone. Using his knife, he chiseled at the rock until he’d cleared away a patch.
Heart pounding, he waved Cahil over and gestured for him to hover beside the rock. What for? Bear mouthed.
Scale. Just do it.
Tanner backpedaled and looked again. There was no mistake.
This was no rock. It was a propeller.
They had traveled fifty feet when Briggs noticed the walls widening. His depth gauge read seventy-six feet, thirty feet below the seabed proper. He checked his watch: thirteen minutes of air left. If they went much deeper, they would have to make a decompression stop.
Ahead, Cahil was shining his flashlight along the curve of the hull where it met the sand. However it had come to be here, the vessel’s hull was tightly wedged in the ravine, with only a couple feet of clearance between it and the rock walls.
Cahil finned up along the hull and disappeared. Tanner followed. He found Cahil standing on a steel platform. He gestured with his flashlight: Look!
Tanner saw the three vertical, polelike structures behind him, but the shapes didn’t register. He shrugged. What?
Cahil tapped two fingers on his face mask: Look closely!
Bear traced his light along the curve of the railing, then up the three poles. Now Briggs was seeing it. He backed up, looked again. Suddenly everything snapped into focus: the vessel’s narrow beam, the cigar-shaped hull, the tapered screw blade…
Cahil was standing on the bridge of a submarine.
26
British Airways flight 9701 was four minutes from touch-down at Montreal’s Mirabel International Airport.
We’re ready, Latham told himself. They’d done everything they could. Still, the practical pessimist in his head was prattling away. Something would go wrong. No matter how exhaustive its design, some piece of the plan, whether significant, trivial, or something in between, would go awry. All they could do was to be ready.
“Agent Latham, we’re patched into the RCMP command van at the airport. We’ll hear exactly what they’re hearing from the field units.”
“About damned time,” Art Stucky muttered, crushing out his cigarette.
“Put it on speaker,” said Latham.
“All units, this is Command, the flight is on final approach,” a voice from the RCMP command van said. “Radio check by section.”
“Gate team in place.”
“Concourse team in place.”
“Mobile teams in place.”
“Roger. Gate, you’ll start us off; notify us as soon as the subject disembarks.”
“Six teams?” Stucky asked Latham.
Latham nodded. “Three in the airport and three mobile. Almost forty Mounties in all, plus Mirabel Security. They’ll have a dozen cameras on him.”
“If this guy can give the slip to the Brits, he sure won’t have any trouble—”
“All units, this is Gate, the subject is on the ground.”
“Here we go,” said Latham.
As Vorsalov stepped off the jet way, he was invisibly surrounded by a fluid cordon of RCMP watchers who shadowed him through Immigration and down to the baggage claim area. As the concourse team — which consisted of almost a dozen officers, none of which Vorsalov would see twice in his passage through the airport — took over, the radio reports became increasingly brief.
“Concourse Three, this is Two. Subject descending escalator east two.”
“Got him.”
Latham and the others studied a map of Mirabel Airport. “There he is,” Latham said. “There are three more levels below this one: the taxi stand, garage, and car rental desks.”
They didn’t know whether Vorsalov had any baggage to claim; in the commotion at Heathrow, MI-5 had missed that detail. He had several transportation options available, all of them problematic; whichever he chose, the RCMP would have to scramble to catch up before he escaped the airport grounds.
“Command, this is Concourse Two. Subject is off the escalator. Stand by.” There were thirty seconds of silence. “Command, he’s got baggage… single piece, a brown suitcase… East escalator now, descending. Concourse Four, he’s yours.”
“Roger, got him.”
Two minutes passed.
“Come on,” Stucky muttered. “Where is he?”
“Wait,” said Latham.
“Command, Four. Subject is descending again. Five, he’s coming your way.”
Going for a taxi, Latham thought.
Sixty seconds of silence. Heart thudding, Latham stared at the speaker.
“Five, this is Command. Report.”
“Stand by… I think we’ve lost him…”
“Goddamn it!” Stucky roared.
“Shut up, Art,”
“I knew it! Shit, I knew—”
“Command this is Five, he’s done a U-turn… Going back up the escalator. Four, have you got him?”
“We see him.” Long pause. “Command, subject is at Avis counter.”
“Understood. Mobile Units converge. Subject is on rental car level.”
Latham turned to Randal. “Paul, have the Mounties fax us his rental receipt. I want to see that credit card.”
Vorsalov drove his rented Lumina directly to the Ramada Inn Parc Olympique. To the surprise of the Mounties, he made no U-turns or quick backs. In fact, his driving was so sedate the mobile units had to adjust their pace to avoid overtaking one another. Vorsalov pulled under the hotel’s awning, tipped the valet, and walked into the lobby.
“All units, Command. Subject is inside. All units take secondary positions.”
Randal walked into the conference room and handed the fax to Latham.
“What is it?” said Stucky.
“He’s still traveling under the Karnovsky alias.”
“So?”
“If he was going to switch, Mirabel was the perfect place; he could’ve hit the ground clean.”