Not the End of the World (41 page)

‘I heard that,’ agreed Coop. ‘’Course, he might ask for the Stella Maris back if he ever finds out what we’ve been calling it.’

‘He could be planning to take it back anyway,’ Taylor said. ‘’Cause if his prophecy comes true he’s gonna need it to get around town.’

Everyone laughed, but when the laughter stopped, they all found themselves involuntarily looking at Mitch. There was a moment’s silence.

‘I’ll fix us some coffee,’ he said, getting up from the table. He chucked Cody lightly on the shoulder with his huge knuckles as he moved around behind her, a gesture of reassurance or apology, or something.

‘Shit, we out of UHT?’ Mitch asked, kneeling down in front of the fridge.

Coop put his hands up.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said. ‘My fault. We’re not out, I just left the carton through in the Brain.’

‘Well go git it, boy,’ commanded Mitch, with an exaggerated pointing gesture.

‘Yes Cap’n, right away Cap’n.’

Mitch poured the coffee into four mugs and carried them over to the table. Taylor up‐
ended the rest of his brandy into his mug with a shameless grin.

‘You’re an utter goddamn Philistine,’ Cody told him.

‘“Remnant of Kaftor,”’ he quoted, holding up his mug as if to toast himself, then taking an obviously savoured gulp.

‘Hey, now knock it off,’ Cody warned. ‘We wanted to hear all that shit again, we’d have brought Maria ’stead of you.’

A tributary offshoot of Maria’s archaeological preoccupations meant they had all been very frequently corrected on the maligned Philistines’ cultural superiority to the Israelites. Taylor and Coop were always pulling her chain about it.

‘Hey guys, I think you should come see this,’ Coop called, his voice partly muffled by the wood around the tight stairwell.

‘Forget it, Coop,’ Taylor replied. ‘Right now I have just enough energy to crawl to bed, and maybe enough to digest all this shit once I get there. Any extra expenditure would seriously jeopardise all that.’

‘Just bring the milk, Coop,’ added Mitch.

‘I really fuckin’ think you should take a look at this,’ Coop persisted, his voice now devoid of any mischief or humour.

Mitch sighed and put down his mug, then got up and headed for the Brain. Cody looked at Taylor, who shrugged with a ‘search me’ widening of his eyes, before getting up too.

‘Jesus, I hope he hasn’t found something real gross floating in the milk again,’ Cody muttered, walking down the stairs. ‘I’m like one mouthful off barfing as it is. That second helping of – oh shit …’

‘Smartass theory, anyone?’ Coop asked, his face bathed in the blue light of the sonar screen.

The Gazes Also was represented by a transparent scale overlay on the centre of the image, the SM showing up as a blurred lozenge right alongside. North of them both was a bullet‐
shaped object, moving nearer to the centre by the second.

‘I’d put it at twelve, fifteen feet,’ said Coop.

‘Shark?’ Taylor offered.

‘Could just be the image, but it looks too wide to be a fish. Moving pretty slow, too. But whatever it is, it’s definitely comin’ our way.’

‘How deep?’ Mitch asked.

Coop adjusted the calibrations on an adjoining computer screen. ‘Less than ten feet,’ he said. ‘It’s just below the surface.’

‘Whale?’ Cody suggested.

‘It’s possible,’ Coop agreed. ‘Why don’t someone get up top, check out if you can see anything? And if this thing doesn’t go deeper or change course, we better get ready for impact.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Cody.

‘Me too,’ Mitch grunted, bending down to the bulkhead and lifting a flashlight. Cody cut off the CD player as they made their way back through the galley and out on to the aft deck.

Mitch swept a beam of light across the surface of the water. ‘See anything?’ he asked. Cody shook her head. ‘Me neither.’

‘Wait,’ Cody said. ‘Back there.’

‘What?’ Mitch trained the beam where Cody had pointed, maybe twenty yards away from the boat.

‘Bubbles, I think. Gone now. Shit.’

‘You see anything?’ Coop enquired.

‘Nothing, Coop,’ Mitch shouted back. ‘Some bubbles, is all.’

Mitch swept the flashlight across the glinting blackness again, the pair of them straining at the rail, trying to penetrate the opaque shield with their feeble vision.

‘Jesus, guys, tell me you see something,’ Coop yelled, a heightened concern in his voice.

‘What’s wrong, Coop? We near to impact?’

‘Please, God, tell me you see something.’

‘Talk to us, Coop, what you got down there?’

A few moments later Taylor appeared behind them on deck with another flashlight, furiously plunging its beam towards the water as if the light would cut the surface with a splash.

‘Three more shapes just pulled away from it,’ he said, urgency in his voice.

‘So it’s a school of dolphins, maybe?’ Cody asked, hopefully.

Taylor shook his head. ‘It didn’t break up. It’s still there, still moving. Three shapes plus it.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Mitch breathed. ‘Talk to us up here, Coop,’ he shouted. ‘Tell us what you see.’

‘It’s slowing down,’ Coop replied, ‘but the other things ain’t. Two of them are headed straight for the boat, and the other one’s broken off and veering to one side. Looks like it’s makin’ for the SM. Impact in about three fuckin’ seconds.’

Reflexively, all three of them ran to the side, Mitch and Taylor aiming their flashlights at the SM where it bobbed gently a few yards from the Gazes Also.

‘Two seconds.’

‘There!’ Taylor barked, pointing at a fizz of bubbles on the water between their boat and the sub.

‘One second.’

‘Jesus, I still don’t see jack shit,’ Mitch hissed in furious frustration.

‘Where are they, Coop? Time’s up,’ called Cody.

‘I don’t know. I don’t goddamn know. I think they’re under the boat. The other one’s almost to the SM, and the big one’s approaching the stern, still about six feet down.’

‘This is givin’ me a fuckin’ heart attack,’ Mitch spat. ‘What the fuck’s goin’ on?’

‘Jesus, look,’ Taylor said.

A black shape began to emerge from the water behind the SM, on the far side from the boat. It was a cylindrical metallic object, with a rounded end like a torpedo. It rose into the air, at which point Mitch’s flashbeam picked out the rubber‐
clad arm that was lifting it on to the top of the sub.

‘Goddamn propulsion tube. That’s a fucking diver,’ Mitch growled. ‘Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doin’?’ he shouted.

There was a dull clanging noise from behind. The three of them turned in time to see two more divers clamber over the rail on the other side of the deck.

‘What the …’

Cody didn’t finish her sentence, silenced by the sight of the assault weapons, cocked and levelled, held steady in the dripping hands of the two faceless figures before her.

Then one of them spoke. ‘This is your basic nobody‐
move‐
nobody‐
get‐
hurt deal, okay?’ he stated. ‘Just do as we say and this’ll all go smooth as silk.’

His companion lowered his weapon and slung it around to his side by the strap, then unfastened first his own then the other diver’s air tanks. He walked to the aft rail and flashed a torch into the water three times, while the diver who had spoken remained statuesque, gun trained on the three crew, finger around the trigger‐
guard. The water below the stern of the Gazes Also began to erupt in a cauldron of foam and bubbles, from which a fourth diver emerged, gripping the handlebars of an open submersible vehicle, the bullet‐
shaped object that had shown up on the ’scope. He cast a rope up to the diver at the aft rail, who tied the vessel securely to the Gazes. Then he retrieved something from the rear of the submersible and climbed aboard, throwing the object to his companion as he did so. Whatever it was, it appeared to be wrapped in plastic sheeting. The diver let it drop to the deck and nudged it to one side with his foot.

‘Where’s the other guy?’ he said to the diver guarding the three of them.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Go find him then.’

‘Yes sir.’

He removed his air tanks as the third diver raised his weapon and resumed guard duties.

Mitch took a deep breath then spoke. ‘You gentlemen gonna tell us what it is you want?’ he challenged.

The boss, as he appeared to be, took a step closer. ‘Are you the captain of this vessel?’ he asked.

‘Yes I am.’

‘Then in that case, Captain, the first thing we want is you.’

Coop, Taylor and Cody had their hands tied behind their backs down in the galley, while the bossman took Mitch down to the Brain, where he wanted something with the ship’s log. Cody looked at their captors, the two men in wetsuits, faces obscured, automatic rifles constantly trained. She wanted to wonder where they had come from – they hadn’t seen another boat in days – or even what they wanted, but the only thought her mind could process was the desperate hope that they kept their masks on.

Once the prisoners were secured, one of the divers headed back out to the aft deck. ‘Everybody stay cool,’ he instructed.

Mitch re‐
emerged from the stairwell, the bossman at his back. Mitch’s hands were bound tightly with the same kind of stiff plastic seal as was already gouging welts in his colleagues’ wrists.

The diver returned from the aft deck, sticking his head around the door.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The bossman and the other diver jabbed at Mitch and Coop with the noses of their guns, indicating all of them to follow the figure at the door. They climbed the steps to the deck, where the front man had halted. He stayed by the doorway and gestured to them to continue walking.

‘All right, stop there,’ he said. ‘Now spread out, slowly, facing us. And don’t anybody try anything stupid. You’ve all been models of co‐
operation so far, let’s not spoil it.’

They stood in a line: Cody, Taylor, Mitch, Coop.

Then Cody looked down and noticed what they were standing on: Plastic sheeting, covering the deck from port to starboard.

Oh Christ.

That was when you were supposed to look to God, to seek salvation, consolation or just explanation, searching for a comforting glimpse of His reason, whatever it might tell you. But instead, that was the moment Cody saw the real secrets of the universe.

The helpless desolation of solitude.

The conspired illusion of order.

The dance we called morality.

No meaning, only incident; and sometimes record, for those few who might read it. Like the changes in the rocks, but far briefer, far smaller.

Incident.

Explosion. A first explosion, and from it the elements. Cases, solids, liquids. The shaping of the bodies. The cooling of the continents. The forming of the waters. The accident of life.

The change and process we groped clumsily to grasp, fashioning our own crude picture of its shadow like the wretches in Plato’s cave. The picture we called Chemistry.

Energy, endlessly metamorphosising, the act of each manifestation in itself precipitating the next transformation.

Explosion. A last explosion. Chemical energy becoming light, sound, kinesis. Propelling metal, hurtling, spinning.

Through skin.

Through flesh.

Through bone.

Through brain.

‘That is my information, Suzie, yes. There have been news helicopters circling overhead for about an hour as dawn approaches, but none of them got any footage of Madeleine Witherson and her police escort’s arrival. It is possible that she may have already been in the hotel before the announcement was made. The likelihood is that she is in the south wing of the building, most of which was left undamaged by yesterday’s bomb blast. The beachside terrace is, as you may have seen from our skycam footage, strewn with wreckage – a lot of the debris from the hotel lobby has been dragged out there – but police and hotel staff have cleared a space near the edge of the swimming pool, and a camera crew has been allowed to start setting up in that area. That crew is from a different network but I’ve been assured that their pictures will be simulcast on all stations.

‘As you probably heard, the police have appealed to the public to stay away from the Pacific Vista, but that plea seems to have fallen on deaf ears. The hotel beach itself is cordoned off, but a small crowd started gathering either side of the barriers yesterday after the bomber transmitted his new appointed venue, and they’ve been there since, kind of reserving their ringside seats. There are reports that they even had a beach barbecue, and certainly there were fires burning down by the ocean throughout the night. But since this morning’s announcement, as you can imagine, Joe Public has been rolling up in droves. I’m told the centre of Santa Monica is grid locked with cars bringing people to the beachfront area, and there’s even been a few motor launches dropping anchor out there.’

‘Bob, if I can interrupt for a second, we’ve had some callers back here asking about the legal implications of what – it now appears – is about to take place this morning. They’ve been pointing out that suicide is, technically, illegal, and yet the authorities are allowing and even assisting Madeleine Witherson, who has stated her intention to take her own life.’

‘Well, Suzie, the same thought did strike me, and I talked to one police officer who said simply, “Who’s gonna hold up a badge and say ‘Stop’ when there’s eighty‐
eight other lives on the line? Not me.”’

‘It’s a very good point, Bob, thanks. However, it seems pro‐
Life groups aren’t so convinced by that rationale. Mary Jo Brennan from the Sacred Heart Trust has been on the phone to say that it is for God only to take life, and …’

‘Christ, can’t we turn that shit off?’ asked a tired voice, but everybody knew they couldn’t. Maybe change the channel for a different running‐
bullshit accompaniment, but not cut off the images coming from that hotel.

Jo yawned and shifted position on the floor, her back against a seat, her ass almost numb from reclining there so many endless hours. The boat had been told the news before anyone else, as they were the ones most in need of reassurance. Veltman had received a call and then relayed it to everyone on board, with the instruction that they weren’t to go calling their families yet as the cops wanted strict control over when this information went public. It seemed a lot to ask, with people painfully aware of what their loved ones were going through back home, but then they were all learning a new perspective on the concept of sacrifice.