Another mile ahead he caught up with the van. Beyond it he saw shimmering water, fishing boats in their slips.
Where were they going? He couldn’t follow the van too much longer without being an obvious tail. After one more block Shah turned off onto a side street and parked. He observed the van from inside his vehicle until he was sure it was parking in the wharf lot. Then he exited and started to toward the wharf on foot.
He approached from a block over, walking at a normal pace. Small clapboard houses lined the street. At the waterfront there was a mild cluster of activity — fishermen unloading the day’s catch, a row of shops and pubs, some industrial activity — loading and unloading of large containers. The tang of salt air filled his nostrils while the call of gulls assailed his ears. Shah turned to his left and saw that one of the two pubs had an outdoor seating area with a few old salts out there smoking pipes and playing cards at a small table. He ambled up to the place and swung open the wooden gate that led to the patio. He took a seat at a small table by himself, behind the men playing cards so that they shielded him somewhat from the van’s view.
He observed two Hofstad men exit the van. One walked out along one of the wooden docks while the other proceeded to a storefront along the wharf, maybe six down from the pub where Shah sat. Everyone else remained inside the van.
Shah watched as the man on the dock reached a power boat he judged to be about twenty-five feet in length, with twin 250 horsepower outboard motors. The man ducked into the boat’s cabin for a few seconds, then emerged and started the engines. Meanwhile, the other terrorist had entered a scuba diving shop.
A waitress emerged and asked Shah if she could get him anything. He ordered a pint of La Trappe beer without taking his eyes off the van. The server left and then the door to the van slid open. He watched as Naomi, Jasmijn and Dante piled out, surrounded closely by the other three Hofstad men. Shah noticed that they no longer wore the security guard outfits, but had donned commercial fishing gear — rubber aprons with hip boots and knitted caps.
Shah chugged half his beer in one gulp and left a bill to cover it on the table. No sooner had he set down his glass than the Hofstad agent emerged from the dive shop wheeling a cart full of scuba gear, headed for the boat at the dock.
Shah eyed the vessel again. The operative there was untying lines, preparing for departure. The boat was much too small for him to have any hopes of boarding undetected. He wished he knew the purpose of this trip. What were they scuba diving for? He looked around the wharf. He could wait here until they returned.
But what if only the Hofstad members came back?
Then he saw an old man of the sea type step off a fishing boat that was smaller than the one Hofstad was using. Shah a glanced over to the dock, where Jasmijn, Dante and Naomi were now walking the plank, it appeared to Shah, out along the dock out to the boat, with Hofstad men in front of and behind them. He got up and left the pub through the front gate.
He forced himself to walk at a normal pace to the old man with the boat, his wallet in hand.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The ride out to the oil rig didn’t take long, but it was unnerving having guns pointed at you in a bouncing boat. The boat driver slowed the craft as they neared the rig, and the leader addressed Jasmijn on the boat’s aft deck.
“Set up your equipment while we are en route to the dive site.” The Dutch terrorist indicated a rack of scuba tanks and a bag of gear, then looked to Jasmijn to see if she would object.
“He’s going with me.” She looked at Dante, who nodded.
The terrorist shook his head. “You will go alone.”
Jasmijn raised her voice. It seemed to come from a place of genuine anger, not merely an act. “I have never before dove alone. I would not be able to collect the required specimens without a dive partner because I’d be too distracted out of concern for my safety.”
“If safety is your concern, you are arguing with the wrong man.” The terror monger dropped his hand down to his holstered pistol.
Jasmijn gave a laugh that she hoped would sound defiant but it just came out sounding anxious. “I suppose you have a point there. Being shot and dumped overboard isn’t very safe, either, I get it. But the fact remains that if you want me to collect the specimens I require to complete my work on the antidote, then I need to dive with someone who has scientific scuba experience, and that’s Dante.”
She thrust an elbow in his direction. Although Dante was a certified diver and in peak physical condition, his experience was not in the line of duty as a former Secret Service agent, but rather recreational only, in tropical places where the drinks on the beach come in coconuts with little umbrellas on them, where the water is warm and the dives are shallow, the only objective to look at the pretty fish swimming over the rainbow coral reefs. He had absolutely no idea what was meant by scientific diving, and he had never done a dive as demanding as an oil rig in the bone-chilling cold of the North Sea.
He nodded confidently and said, “Let’s do this.”
The Hofstad group leader summoned over another of his three henchmen and conferred with him in soft tones for a few moments. Dante saw the man who had come over turn to glance at him once while the other man was talking.
Then the leader said to Jasmijn, “Very well. You and he will dive. We will be following your air bubbles to see where you come up.”
She nodded. “Good. We don’t want a long swim back to the boat in this freezing water. Speaking of which,” she went on, pointing at an exposure suit on deck, “these are dry suits, correct? A wetsuit isn’t going to cut it down there at a hundred feet.”
The leader looked to one of his other men, a young Dutchman in his mid-twenties, for an answer. That man nodded.
“Yes. Put them on. Get going.”
“And you have the transport tank for the specimens like I asked?”
The same man who had assisted with the drysuit question lifted a hinged lid on a compartment and pointed to the bubbling water within. “Oxygenated livewell.”
Jasmijn nodded. They were normally used for fishing to keep bait alive. “That’s good for the trip back to the dock, but then we’ll still need something to keep them alive on the drive back to the lab. At least a cooler full of seawater, preferably with an aerator.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The man backed away. For a moment it was almost as if there was a regular working atmosphere aboard the boat, but that was quickly shattered.
“Enough delays! Collect the specimens!” The Hofstad leader aimed his pistol at Jasmijn. He stood there and leered at her while she stripped her pants off, leaving her jacket on to cover up while she stepped into the drysuit.
Dante put his suit on as well and then they were attaching buoyancy compensators and regulators to tanks, hefting them on, adding weight belts. After adjusting the straps on the gear and doing a check of each other’s equipment, Jasmijn clipped a mesh collecting bag to her belt and announced they were ready.
They stepped over to the rear of the boat onto a platform where they put on their fins. Two of the Hofstad men stood immediately behind them on the boat deck, monitoring their movements. The leader stood back at the wheel, watching from a distance.
Jasmijn pointed to the nearby oil rig. “So we’ll swim to that pillar there and drop down. The anemones we need should be attached to the structure about fifty feet down.”