Final Dive by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788631952
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2018-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

He’d told Emile yes, the Ukrainians had been hospitable enough. Even an answer as simple as that had taken a bit of paraphrasing, with his limited command of French. In fact the question had come as a surprise – as either small-talk, hardly typical of Huard, or suggesting that word might have got out as to how the Ukrainians certainly had tried to show Monteix a ‘good time’.

That almost surely was the answer. Source of the leak – obviously – Oleg bloody Bairan!

Huard had the scrubber running again; he’d set a timer to ring every forty-five minutes, scrubbing for ten minutes each time and then bringing the sphere’s atmospheric pressure back up to par with a fresh release of oxygen, in between whiles also checking the reading on the CO2 indicator – the Ringrose. And every half-hour answering a routine telephone call from the surface, telling the Norwegians sure, no problem, depth – twelve thousand, a minute ago, twelve thousand one-fifty now.

One hour to go, therefore. Mark wondering what might have been in Huard’s mind when he’d asked that question about Odessa. Having previously asked why he, Mark Jaeger, had gone there in the first place – in other words why they’d sent him, when he’d known damn-all about the business. Maybe Huard and Bairan had discussed it, puzzled over it. It was a fair question too, although with the linguistic difficulties it would have been impossible to answer in any detail. He’d been surprised when the proposal had been made – by Monteix, as it happened, and then to his even greater surprise supported by bloody Kinsman – in Kinsman’s sumptuous private office, and incidentally at a meeting to which Mark hadn’t even been invited.

The background to it – untranslatable even if one had wanted to satisfy the Frenchman’s curiosity – was that Monteix and the man Kinsman had sent with him came back from Hamburg with a deal more or less sewn up, but subject to confirmation after the projected Ukrainian visit. Monteix had been in favour of taking a chance on it, chartering the Eventyrer there and then, but Kinsman’s man – name of Vernon Price – had vetoed this.

Monteix clearly hadn’t liked Price at all. He’d already told Mark he couldn’t stand him, and it had been very obvious at this meeting – with Kinsman presiding, those two back from Hamburg the day before, and Mark gate-crashing. Monteix warning them, ‘Could lose it, see. Still could. Be up the creek then, all right, you won’t find another Eventyrer goin’ beggin’ this time o’ year. The guy from Oslo told me straight—’

‘Bulldozing you.’ Price had a pinkish, flabby face on which at this moment was an expression of contempt. Telling Kinsman, ‘All he wanted was a signature on the charter-party and he’d have run home happy.’

‘And why shouldn’t he?’ Monteix blinking at him… ‘I’d ’ve been happy, too!’

‘Not if it turns out the Ukrainian submersible’s unsuitable, you wouldn’t. Nor would I or Mr Kinsman. Your Norwegian

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