With the hose blocked and only a few minutes of air in his helmet, Kismet approached the door and pulled it open. There was no sign of the rest of his air line and he could only surmise that Severin had pulled it up after finding nothing attached to the cable. When the cut hose reached the surface, everyone would assume that he had suffered some tragedy below. The Russians had surely guessed that he had dived on the site, but had Severin been able to extract from Irene or Anatoly the reason for his descent?
Beyond the opening, the sentry fish had resumed their defense perimeter. Kismet wondered if they would attack him if he was moving away from the wreck; it was a sure bet that they would do their best to prevent him from regaining the safety of the hold. He decided not to take that risk, venturing out only with his head and shoulders. The fish did not move. He looked up and could see the activity on the surface as the motor launch shuttled back to the massive destroyer. A chain of ripples spread out from the point where the Russians dropped the marker buoy, and he could just make out the steel float bobbing on the surface, held in place by an anchor which plummeted through the water to bury itself on the sea floor less than a hundred yards from the wreck of the golden ship. A cloud of sediment rose up around the impact but did not obscure Kismet's view of the cable connecting the buoy to the anchor.
It was enough to give him hope. If only there was a way for him to climb up that cable….
He realized right away how impossible that would be. But time was running out. The two vessels on the surface would not remain in the vicinity much longer. Once they left, he would be stranded.
He considered releasing one of the signal floats, but quickly discarded the idea. Irene and Anatoly would never believe that he could still be alive, while Severin might interpret the signal as a reason to linger in the area.
The deployment of the marker buoy suggested that the Russian captain planned to return to the site. He would probably put into port at Sevastopol, take on a salvage crew and divers of his own, then return to discover what fate had befallen Kismet at the bottom of the sea. It would likely be days before the Boyevoy returned. Even with an inexhaustible source of oxygen, he could not hope to stay alive that long, and in the unlikely event that he did, he would most certainly face a much worse fate at Severin's hands.
Kismet ducked back into the hold and refreshed his air supply. There was a solution to this — there had to be — but loitering in the interior of the golden ship wasn't going to get him back to the surface. The Fleece remained in its box, giving him a plentiful supply of air, but offering no other insight. He realized with a defeated grimace that he would have to leave the Fleece behind. It was much too heavy for him to carry across the ocean floor.
Even as he considered this, a plan began to take shape; all of the pieces of the puzzle came together in an astonishing moment of clarity. He took several more deep breaths, trying to super-oxygenate his blood, then kinked his hose again tightly in his left hand.
This time he did not linger in the hatchway, but hastened though the portal as if escaping a burning building. The ring of fish immediately shifted toward him but he was not attacked. Moving with the greatest possible speed he bounded along the floor of the shelf toward the anchor that secured the buoy. As he had feared, there was no way he could ever ascend the heavily greased metal cable, but that was no longer his intention.
He was standing almost directly under the Boyevoy. It loomed above him like a great black cloud. He gazed up at it, but could not see what he was looking for. A churning of the water off her stern signaled that the destroyer's screws were now turning; she was about to get underway. Kismet abandoned his first plan, leaving the buoy anchor behind, and charged out across the sea floor yet again.
He tried to place himself directly beneath the shadow of Anatoly's fishing trawler. It was a much smaller area to locate, made more difficult by the vertical distance and the distorting effects of the water. A moment later however, he spied his goal.
It was the movement that caught his eye. Thirty yards away, well to the left of where he had positioned himself, the small anchor from Anatoly's boat was being reeled up. Rather than rising vertically, the anchor and the boat were performing a sort of tug-of-war. The slack in the anchor line had allowed the boat to drift a ways, but now both the boat and the anchor were swinging toward each other.
As soon as the bow of the trawler came directly over the weight at the other end of the line, the anchor would rapidly disappear toward the surface.
Kismet hastened toward it, watching as the anchor was dragged along the bottom, plowing a furrow of silt. Suddenly the cross-shaped hook of iron swung like a pendulum and began to rise. It seemed to jump towards the surface, moving in sudden bursts. Kismet, three steps away, found himself staring at the crosspiece, which was now at eye-level. He took two more steps toward it, but it jumped again, almost out of the reach of his fingertips. He bent his legs, then leaped straight up. His hand caught the upright, just above the flukes. It was enough. When the anchor rose again, he rose with it.
Kismet held on with all his might, unable to lift himself any higher or to improve his tentative hold on the anchor. He did not try; doing so might result in his sinking back to the bottom and there would be no second chance at this.
Kerns' warning about decompression sickness was ringing like a siren in his head, but there was simply no other option. The possibility of suffering from the bends was preferable to the certainty of a slow death beneath the Black Sea.
The ascent seemed to take forever. As the surface became more distinct, he imagined that he was getting heavier; that his grip would eventually fail. He stared at the crimped hose in his left hand and thought about releasing it, in order to use that hand also to secure himself to the anchor. He resisted the impulse.
Soon, he felt the pressure increasing inside the helmet. The relief valve began hissing, equalizing the pressure inside by venting out some of the air. This surprised him at first, but he quickly realized it was a normal function of the helmet's regulator. As he rose from the depths, the gas molecules would naturally expand, increasing the volume of air. Kerns had warned him not to hold his breath at any time, especially when coming up; the air in his lungs would also expand, causing the delicate tissues to rupture if he did not maintain steady respiration. Kismet reminded himself to keep breathing, wondering as he did if there was sufficient oxygen remaining in the helmet to keep him conscious until he reached the surface.
The Boyevoy lurched into motion, plowing up a frothy wake as it angled away from the trawler. The destroyer suddenly cut sharply to port, crossing the trawler's bow in an unmistakable display of force. The threat was apparently understood, for the reeling in of the anchor line seemed to take on a frenetic urgency. Kismet could feel the change in temperature as he rose up into the warmer layer of water near the surface.
The last few feet took an eternity. He kept expecting to break through at any moment, but some trick of the water — an optical illusion caused by light refraction — made the surface appear within reach while still he rose. He endured the agonizing passage of that remaining distance, confident that he had escaped death at the bottom of the sea, and that he would, in a second or two, be hoisted up onto the deck of the trawler.
The journey finally came to an end when the anchor broke the surface in a splash of white spray. As the flukes emerged from the sea, sliding through the gap in the gunwale, his extended arm came out of the water as far as his elbow. The crown of his helmet broke the surface ever so slightly…and then Kismet stopped moving.