Lars dared not use the scope while it was there. Its antireflective lens was no guarantee, and the sun was coming at more of an angle every twenty minutes or so.
Then the launch started its engine and made its way in loops back towards the yacht.
Lars turned the scope onto the deck of the yacht. The target and Rivera were standing at the top of the steps now. Two more launches had been lowered, or withdrawn from some internal dock at the stern. The deck seemed to be teeming with men in dark glasses, phones wired to their ears. There was activity all around Rivera and Slava the Russian, who stood there, apparently oblivious to the commotion around him, a man accustomed to being waited on by dozens of acolytes. Slava lit a cigar from a proffered humidor. Rivera declined his offer of another.
The three launches were gathered now at the foot of the steps. Slava ushered Rivera down the steps first, and then followed himself. They stepped into the first launch, which waited with idling engines for the guards to fill the other two. When all were aboard, the three launches set off.
Lars assumed they’d be going to the town—for a late lunch perhaps; a restaurant reserved outright by Slava, as was his custom. But then he saw they were coming right towards him, straight at the island, directly into the sights of the rifle. Slava the target was dead ahead. Lars’s heart thumped against his chest. They were coming to the monastery.
He broke into a sweat. He could stay where he was, wait and see. Or he could pack up and join the others down below for the return trip across the isthmus. If the Russians came, there was a risk that they would insist on opening up the bell tower, no matter that it was closed for repairs. They would donate some huge sum of money to the monastery, just for the pleasure of going to the forbidden. That was how these Russians were. Show them a forbidden entrance, and that was the only place they wanted to go.
He could disappear in the tourist bus. Or he could shoot now.
Gently, he pushed the rifle through the gap in the stone balustrade and picked up the first launch through the scope. It was rising and falling as the engines cut deeply into the water. It was a straight shot, with the movement up and down only. He didn’t think long. He didn’t have time. He zeroed again for the reducing distance and fired.
Through the rifle scope, he saw the first launch suddenly fall from its rearing advance down onto its bow, pushing the water ahead of it as it lost way. The other two launches shot ahead, then saw what had happened and swerved in towards each other in tight circles, returning fast to the first launch. Lars saw Slava the Russian, Slava the target. He seemed to have been punched in the chest, hit squarely by the .50-calibre shell and knocked over the seat and into the stern.
Lars levelled the rifle again. He had the zero this time. Same distance. One boat was stopped in front of Slava’s launch, idling its engine. Lars fired his second shot. It entered the engine of the boat, shattering it.
The skipper of the third boat now jammed its throttle into forward gear. Its engine raced, and its prop churned the water. Lars’s third shot hit the upper pins that clamped the outboard engine to the top of the transom. Held only by the pins at its lower edge, the wildly racing engine snapped back from its fixture; the propeller rammed upwards, screaming through the water and up into the wooden hull. Gouging easily through the hull, it shot up into the crowded boat.
There was chaos, blood flying, screams. The boat flew out of control.
He had two more shots left in the magazine. He fired one towards the engine of the target’s launch, but it was still face on, the engine sheltered by the rest of the boat from where Lars was crouched. He decided to aim the last shot at the engine a second time, and prayed a second time.
The last of the scene he witnessed in the bay was a wild, scrambled pandemonium of bodies and arms. There were two men still intact enough to be making desperate phone calls. Lars didn’t know any more than that, as he swiftly unscrewed the silencer, then the barrel, thrust the rest of the equipment into the pack, and headed back down the steps. The shadows had crept over the stone steps beneath his feet, changing their colour from honey to grey.
At the foot of the stairs, he gently pushed the bolt back and unlocked the door. The two Americans saw him exit. The woman with her pinched face stared at him; the man looked embarrassed, afraid even, as if he knew they had no business looking. Lars pinned the No Entry tape back over the door. There was a different group entering now, from another run of the bus across the isthmus. At least they hadn’t seen him on the bus, as the American couple had. They stared at him, but he lowered his eyes and walked past them.
He crossed himself briefly in front of the Virgin’s picture, avoiding Her eyes too, and walked out of the monastery’s entrance into the blinding sunshine. He heard a distant sound: engines starting. Passing the small chapel of Saint Sava, under the cypress, where the chickens had a new sprinkling of food to pick at, he headed to the south shore.
On the pile of rocks that made up the southern breakwater of the island, he unslung his backpack, reached inside, and removed the small air bottle, then the micro aqualung and a pair of fins. The engine sound was growing. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that a helicopter had left the deck of the Aurora and was heading for the launches, which wallowed uselessly in the perfect sea.
Lars carefully descended through the tumbled rocks to the water, dragging the backpack with him. He picked out two of the smaller rocks under the water, broken off from the huge ones, and put them into the pack, then towed it and himself into the sea. He glanced back. He couldn’t see the launches down here, but he saw the helicopter sweeping towards the island. Stumbling down the rocks, he slid under the water.
He swam heavily and clumsily with the pack in one hand down to the lowest of the piled rocks. He drew a waterproof packet out of the pack—his passport and money—and then shoved the pack under a rock until it was wedged fast. He rolled several other smaller rocks over it until it was invisible.
Then he set out beneath the sea.
Only now did he try to slow his panicked breathing, to conserve the precious air. He had only five litres, not enough for his liking. He wouldn’t make the three and a half miles to the promontory, that was certain, not with all the exertion. He’d have to come in to land earlier.
Chapter 9
ANNA SAT ACROSS A blue-painted wooden table in the Restaurant des Alpilles and took a sip from the glass of Sancerre Willy had ordered.
“Cheers,” Willy said, and they drank together. “Happy birthday, my dear.” He looked at her. It had been only three weeks since they’d last met, but he was always looking to make a compliment. “You’re looking so French, Anna,” he said, and smiled. “After just a year in the village. Like one of those women in the magazines. Chic, and as beautiful as ever. Happy birthday!” He raised his glass, and they drank.
“Thank you, Willy. You should see me normally,” she replied. “Dungarees and grass in my hair.”
“You look good whatever you wear,” he insisted. “You look well too.” He put his hand over hers on the table and squeezed it.
Willy was a good man. “A dependable Hungarian”—that was how Finn had described him before she and Willy had met, with a heavy emphasis on “dependable.” And he was smart too. “You know what they say about the Hungarians, Anna,” Finn had once said to her. “They come into the revolving door behind you and come out ahead of you.”
She noticed that still, two years after Finn’s death, she continued inwardly to refer to Finn’s opinions.