The Eden Legacy

III

Thierry and Alphonse shared a cigarette while Lucia asked them pointed questions about getting to Tulear in time for her flight. It depended on the wind, they told her; but it certainly wouldn’t help her cause if she stopped off at Eden on the way. She turned apologetically to Knox, told him that she’d need to press on. The three of them called it a night shortly afterwards, but Knox wasn’t yet tired. He sat on the sand and stared out over the sea, listening to its rhythms. Once, he caught a glimpse of something pale, though he couldn’t be sure whether it was mist, a sail or just imagination. But it made him think again of the man in the black shirt, the possibility that the Nergadzes had finally discovered his new identity.

While lying in hospital, recovering from burns and the grief of losing Gaille, one of the ways he’d kept himself going had been with daydreams of revenge upon the Nergadzes. Knowing that time had a habit of diminishing grief and thus the need for vendetta, he’d made a vow not to let that happen. Since taking his job at MGS Salvage, he’d worked to honour that vow, learning everything he could about Ilya and Sandro and their summers on the Black Sea, devising the plan for a survey along that stretch of coast, clearing it with Frank and Miles and raising the funds himself, tapping up MGS’s contact list and others with an interest in the Black Sea’s secrets-which had been easier than he’d expected, for the place exerted a powerful pull on the imaginations of underwater archaeologists. Once you reached around two hundred metres beneath the surface, the water was so bereft of oxygen that almost nothing could survive in it, not even worms or bacteria, meaning that-almost uniquely in the world-there was every chance of finding ancient wrecks in perfect condition.

The closer the expedition had drawn, however, the more he’d recognised the essential contradiction of his private mission. He’d loved Gaille for her gentleness and compassion; she would have wanted him to mourn her and then move on, not waste his life on vengeance. But when anger was all you had left of someone you loved, it was hard to let it go.

A gibbous moon had risen low behind him, its light bright enough to stretch shadows on the pale sand. He frowned at it, as though it was trying to tell him something. He gave a little laugh when he realised what. With the moon up, he surely had enough light to walk by. He opened the flap of the tent, woke Thierry to tell him his intent. He paid him and his brother off and said goodbye to Lucia, then he hoisted his dive-bag to his shoulders, picked up his overnight case, and set off south along the beach.