66 Metres: A chilling thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!. J.F. Kirwan
she did wake, and found herself back in the dacha on a sofa, buried in blankets and fur coats. She shook violently. People were shouting in the room next door. Katya, Slick, and Pox, then that low growl that cut off everyone.
Katya came in. She wiped away tear streaks on her bruised face, and closed the door behind her. She braved a smile and walked toward Nadia. ‘They won’t touch you again,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘Nobody will.’ She sat down next to her.
Kadinsky entered, a gold-rimmed coffee cup in his hand, a sad-looking golden retriever trailing him. ‘Here’s the deal, girl.’ He spoke to the bay window rather than her, and took a swig before continuing. ‘I could use a female operative who doesn’t wet herself under pressure. Maybe that could be you. You’ll work for me for five years. Your training will take three, including eighteen months in Britain. I want your English impeccable – not like a newsreader, like a local.’ He stared at her, his gaze hard. He stooped to pat the dog ineffectually, as if he didn’t really know how, then stood tall, downing the last of the coffee. He spoke to the window again. ‘Katya stays here. Do ten ops for me, then I’ll let you both go.’ He nodded to himself as if concluding the contract. ‘Ten ops, five years. Then, svoboda… freedom.’
He left, not waiting for an answer. The dog followed, its head bowed.
Kadinsky’s words echoed in her mind. Five years. Half the life she would have lost in prison. If she’d have lasted. Thinking of her cell helped. Katya had gotten Nadia out of her own personal hell. But would Kadinsky really let them both go afterward?
Katya hugged her, and she succumbed to the embrace, because the only person she cared for in this brutal world was Katya. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ Katya said. ‘You can trust him. Pyotr Aleksandrovich is a hard man, but he keeps his bargains.’
She knew what Katya was trying to do, using Kadinsky’s first name and patronymic, making him seem like family. But something inside her hardened, as if the tears that should have come earlier turned to glass. She promised herself she would go and retrieve her father’s Beretta the very next day, strip it, clean it, begin practising again.
Ten ops. Five years. Then, one way or the other, she and her sister were through with Kadinsky.
‘It will be all right, Katya,’ she said. ‘Whatever it takes, I promise one day I’ll make it right.’
Five Years Later
Nadia held up a hand to blot out the glare from the London Eye’s neon lights, and scanned the night sky for the helicopter. No sign. Checking her watch, she spoke into the VHF.
‘Where’s the package?’
The reply from Janssen took longer than it should have. ‘Stand by.’
She needed five minutes to get into position. The longer they waited, the more chance of her being seen. She was the only one of the team out in the open, albeit underneath the darkened arches of Lambeth Bridge. She switched channels. ‘Sammy –’
‘I know, Nad, Janssen’s being a real dick. He must have it on radar by now. Maybe you should get in the water, the bridge is pretty clear. Don’t forget the chopper’s blades.’
How could she forget? ‘When are you going to make the call, Sammy?’
‘Thirty seconds. Can’t leave it any longer.’
She spat into her dive mask, added a little water and used her forefinger to clean the glass, to prevent it fogging up later.
‘Make the call, Sammy, I’m going in.’
She zipped the radio in its waterproof case, donned the hood of her all-black wetsuit, and shrugged on the black, waistcoat-like stab jacket that would control her buoyancy and support her air tank at the back. Regulator in her mouth, she breathed quietly to avoid the usual Darth Vader sound effects. Fins in one hand, radio in the other, she took one careful step at a time down the muddy bank into the Thames. The tide was full, so there was close to eight metres of water in the centre – deep enough. To her right, half a kilometre away, the walls of the Houses of Parliament gleamed gold, Big Ben standing proud at almost ten pm.
She could just make out tourists loitering on Westminster Bridge, awaiting the big clock’s chimes, unaware of the spectacle they were about to witness. She’d better be in position by then, because when it happened, a few hundred smartphones would swing in her direction. She glanced the other way towards MI6, farther along the river on the opposite bank, the helicopter’s destination.
A lone siren wailed in the distance. One meant nothing. Then two more split the murmuring night sky. Within thirty seconds two police speedboats, prows high in the air as they banked their way through Lambeth Bridge’s central arches, raced downriver towards the Mirage, a party boat moored on the other side of Tower Bridge. Sammy had just used an old but valid IRA code – Shamrock – to make a credible bomb threat.
Chill water lapped over her shoulders. The radio floated next to her while she pulled on her fins. She had to bend forward to do so, and her head slid underwater. The sirens were immediately muffled, the water a murky green lit by mustard streetlamps on the bridge above. She snapped the fin-straps tight around her Achilles tendons, then lifted her head.
‘– into position. Three minutes. Don’t be late.’ Janssen, finally.
She snatched the radio out of the water, and hit Transmit. ‘Moving out.’
‘Any problems, use the spear-gun.’
‘Sure,’ she said.
Janssen’s voice grew an edge. ‘Not good enough, Nadia. I want to hear you repeat it.’
She breathed out long and slow before answering. ‘If the pilots aren’t out, I use the spear-gun.’
‘Be prepared to do it. Because any bullshit whatsoever, Nadia –’
‘I know. Look, I have to move.’
‘See that you do. And if you don’t get the package, don’t bother surfacing. That way Kadinsky might at least make it quick for your sister.’
She clicked Janssen off. Her chest heaved. Kadinsky’s latest protégé never missed an opportunity to remind her, to twist the knife. But it was almost over. This was the tenth op. Not a moment too soon, as she suspected Katya had recently turned to drugs, probably krokodil – Russian magic – in order to cope. Nadia squeezed her thumbs hard inside her fists for seven seconds, the way her dad had taught her. He’d never explained how it worked. Maybe he never knew, but her breathing came back under control.
Tethering the radio to her jacket, and without making a splash, she flipped onto her back so she could survey the night sky and Lambeth Bridge above her. As she finned away from the shore, she took one last look at the spear-gun propped up against the bridge wall, its razor-sharp arrowhead glinting silver.
Cold water flooded around her ears inside her neoprene dive-hood, then quickly warmed due to her body heat. Powerful fin-strokes propelled her under the bridge, only her face breaching the surface, arms folded across her belly. She reached midway along the bridge, used the inflate button to hiss some air into her stab jacket, then floated vertically, head out of the water, listening, waiting. It was up to Sammy now.
At last she heard the fast wapa-wapa beat of the rotors, as the two-seater helicopter swooped along the Thames, well under civil radar because of its military cargo. She didn’t know much about the package – the Rose – something to do with nuclear subs, a way to break their communication codes. She didn’t need to know. This was her and Katya’s ticket to freedom. A job, nothing more. What she did understand, having overheard one of Janssen’s phone conversations, was that it was a huge deal. It would make Kadinsky a major player, move him up in the Russian Mafia world. She wasn’t sure that was such a good idea, but that would be his problem.