The Eden Legacy

III

Knox sat by Boris a little while. It was partly out of respect for the dead, partly from exhaustion, but mostly to buy himself time to think through what to do next. He could see two paths open to him. The first was to take Boris’s body back to shore, turn himself in, throw himself on the mercy of the Malagasy criminal justice system. But he’d heard terrible things about the courts and jails here, and he didn’t much fancy betting his future on them. Besides, while he’d done certain things in his life that warranted judgement and penance, this wasn’t one of them. He’d acted in self-defence.

Option two, then.

He stood up, looked around. There was a trawler on the western horizon and a pirogue far to his south. But that was all. The Yvette was low on fuel, but there was a decent southerly. He took off his wetsuit, unfurled the mainsail, sailed out to deeper water. He retrieved the boathouse keys from Boris, bled the air from his buoyancycontrol device and scuba tank, packed a weight-belt with as much lead as it would take and strapped it around his waist. Then he grabbed him around his chest, hoisted him up and dumped him over the side, consigning him to the deeps.

He watched the bubble trail until it had died away, and then a little while longer. If this was revenge, it certainly tasted sour. He wanted no more of it. He sailed on a little way, then weighted down Boris’s bag and dumped it too. When he picked up the laptop case, it made him wonder what the Nergadzes would do about this. Nothing, he suspected. But that was Sandro’s decision to make, not Knox’s. He held the case out over the water and let it drop. Then he took his seat at the stern, brought the Yvette around, and headed back to shore.