Grave Descend Read online

  He went to another section, across the room. It was the same. Samuel Johnson and Mr. Boswell; Essays of Johnson; Boswell’s Life; Samuel Johnson—a Critical Appraisal—

  “I do read,” Levett said. “I am, in fact, an authority.”

  “On Samuel Johnson?”

  “None other. I fancy that I am one of the six or seven people in the world who know more about him than anyone alive.”

  “This is a hobby?”

  “An avocation.”

  “Charming. But I came on business.”

  “I’m sure you did. And my business is money, as you know.”

  “Your business,” McGregor said, “is the Trevo diamonds.”

  For a moment, Levett was silent, and then he smiled. “Good for you,” he said. “A remarkable bit of inference.” He looked closely at McGregor: “Or did you have help?”

  “A little.”

  “Still, remarkable. And how did you escape from that Kingston jail?”

  “I’m afraid the Jamaican police,” McGregor said, “are overrated.”

  “Quite so, quite so. On occasion, I have found myself arriving at the same conclusion. In another context, of course.” Levett was silent for a moment. “Why, exactly, did you come to see me?”

  “I was framed.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I want to know why.”

  “You think I framed you?”

  McGregor shrugged “You own the Grave Descend.”

  Levett chuckled. “So I do.”

  “I want to know why you set me up.”

  “That is difficult to answer,” Levett said. “It is a lengthy and, I am afraid, ultimately a tiresome story. Shall we go outside?”

  Before McGregor could answer, Levett was moving toward a set of doors to the side of the house, throwing them wide. McGregor heard splashing and laughter, and saw the pool.

  Levett stood by the door. “After you,” he said.

  They made a charming little group. In one corner was Wayne, sitting on a deck chair; on his lap, giggling as she sipped a drink, was Monica Grant. In another corner was Elaine, stroking her ocelots.

  And finally, there was Sylvie, who looked disgusted and angry.

  “I believe you know everyone,” Levett said, waving his arm around the pool. “Mr. Wayne really is my brother, Charles Levett. Miss Grant is Barbara Levett, my sister-in-law. Elaine you know—and of course, the charming Sylvie, who dropped by the house earlier today, and was persuaded to stay.”

  Sylvie said nothing.

  “She actually had no choice,” Levett said cheerfully. “You see, we needed you. And by keeping her here, we were assured of your eventual arrival.”

  McGregor looked closely at Sylvie, and saw the faint red welt on her right cheek.

  “We kept her outside, so that anyone watching with binoculars could see her at the pool. Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And no doubt your trusty friend, the black one—Yeoman, is it?—he will be waiting to come to your aid?”

  McGregor said nothing.

  “As it turns out,” Levett said, “we’ve sent four very strong fellows to take care of him. They won’t hurt him badly, but probably he’ll spend some time in the hospital.”

  McGregor did not move. His first thought was that Levett was lying.

  “They will no doubt find him at the Cockatoo, and deal with him there,” Levett said. “I believe that is where he, ah, hangs out. You must understand it is purely a precautionary measure, intended to permit you to work without interruption.”

  “Work?”

  “Of course.” Levett laughed. “Why do you think you were brought here, if not to work?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “The mob,” Levett said, “paid me a visit this morning. They were quite nasty, and went over the house with a thoroughness that was simply appalling. Do you know what they did? They arrived with a fluoroscope gadget—an X-ray. They X-rayed everything. Every room, every object, every mattress and chair and lamp. They were exceedingly thorough. And when they were finished, they were satisfied that I did not have the stones. That is what I maintained all along. You see, I have rather circumspect relations with the mob. Generally I do private work, but on occasion, I work for them. The business in Freeport, in the Bahamas, is one example. So we have superficially cordial relations. How is your drink?”

  “Fine,” McGregor said. He sipped the warm, stinging liquid to prove it.

  “If you want another, speak up. Anyway, we are cordial but not precisely friendly. They know I do outside work. So when it was discovered that my boat, which I had loaned to a friend, was being used to transport the Trevo diamonds …”

  He shrugged.

  “You weren’t personally involved in the transport?”

  “Dear boy,” Levett said, “of course I was. I was hired to convert them, to turn them from black money to white money. Spendable money. I had only one problem.”

  “The mob was after it.”

  “Yes indeed. Hot on the trail. So I had to arrange for the money to disappear.”

  “The safe?”

  “Yes, that was part of it. A diversion: we let them steal it. It was empty, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Once the mob found the safe empty, they would redouble their efforts to find the statue, the sculpture that was loaded on board in Naples.”

  “Which contained the diamonds.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you planted it in my room—”

  “Without the diamonds. They were previously removed. But it was enough to put you in a very difficult position with the police.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And ultimately, it will put you in an even more difficult position with the mob.”

  So that was it. The mob would work him over, and they would—

  “But I’ll tell them,” McGregor said. “I’ll tell them the whole thing.”

  “I doubt it very much,” Levett said. “Now come along and look at the gear we have for you. You must test it, and so forth. And then you will want to rest—before your dive,” Levett said, and chuckled.

  14

  SYLVIE CAME OVER WHILE HE was checking the tanks and regulator in a corner of the yard. She wore a bikini and looked very sleek and attractive, very French, but her face was serious.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You are limping.”

  It was then that he remembered his leg. The bite: underwater, it would begin to bleed again. And the sharks …

  “It’s okay. How’d you end up here?”

  “I was looking for you,” she said, almost reproachfully. “I was walking around the fence outside when a man grabbed me and pulled me in. Then they made me wear this”—she touched the bikini—“and sit at the pool. All afternoon. I wasn’t allowed to leave. And the other one kept looking at me.”

  “The other one?”

  “Wayne, or whatever his name is.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” In a moment of female pleasure, she said, “His wife noticed, and didn’t like it.”

  McGregor continued to check the equipment in silence for a time. Then he set the tanks down.

  “Can you,” he said, “seduce Wayne?”

  Sylvie wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s important.”

  She continued to wrinkle her nose.

  “It’s really important,” he said.

  “Will it get us out of here?”

  “It’ll help.”

  “Then I will see,” she said, “what I can do.”

  At that moment, Levett came back. To McGregor he said, “Your equipment all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Then come along. You’d better rest until dark.”

  “I’m diving at night?”

  “Indeed you are.”

  “Where?”

  “Near the Grave Descend,” Levett said.

  “Wh
at for?”

  “The diamonds. Now come along.”

  As he left, he looked back at Sylvie.

  She winked.

  At seven, just as the sun was setting, they set out from the beach. McGregor, flanked by two husky guards, followed Levett down the stairway cut into the rock; on the beach, a boat was pulled up, outboard motor idling.

  He climbed aboard with the others; the boatman pushed off, and started out to sea.

  They had gone half a mile, and the sky was rapidly darkening when McGregor said, “How do you expect me to find the diamonds?”

  Levett chuckled. “They were removed from the yacht,” he said, “before it was sunk. The sculpture was taken off, and the jewels hidden the only place the mob would never think to look.” He pointed to the ocean. “Down there.”

  “But how am I going to find them?”

  “You’ll use this.” Levett produced a small radio receiver, which beeped intermittently. “There is a radio finder attached to the diamonds. This device will lead you right to it. It’s waterproofed, of course. So clever, the Japanese. Surprising they lost the war, eh?”

  He handed the receiver to McGregor. All the time, the beeps were growing stronger.

  “It’s really quite simple,” Levett said. “The diamonds are hidden in a coral formation in forty feet of water.”

  “Who put them there?”

  “A friend,” Levett said.

  “Now deceased?” McGregor said.

  Levett chuckled. “Don’t be paranoid.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  The beeps became stronger still, and suddenly doubled in rate.

  “Ah,” Levett said. “We’re above it now.”

  McGregor looked over the side, but in the early darkness he could see nothing beneath the surface. He checked his watch: seven thirty.

  As he shrugged into his tank, he said, “You have a gun?”

  “Gun?”

  “Speargun. It’s feeding time for the hammerheads.”

  “Is it now,” Levett said, smiling. “Well, you won’t be down long.”

  “I won’t be back, either, without a gun.”

  There was a moment of silence. The boat rocked in the gentle evening swell. The only sound was the beeping of the receiver.

  Finally Levett nodded to the boatman, who produced a small gas gun with short spears. McGregor took it, hefted it in his hand, and checked the shaft. It had a .357 Magnum warhead with explosive tines.

  “That satisfactory?” Levett said.

  “It’ll have to do,” McGregor said. He held out his hand. “I want two more shafts with heads.”

  “We haven’t got extras.”

  McGregor shrugged. “Then I don’t dive.”

  There was another silence, then Levett nodded. The boatman gave McGregor two extra shafts, with spare heads. McGregor unscrewed the caps and checked the shells, then screwed them onto the shafts, and clipped them to his weight belt.

  “Satisfied?” Levett said.

  “More or less,” McGregor said. He pulled on his mask and fins, sat on the gunwale of the boat, and adjusted the regulator between his teeth. Levett clipped the radio receiver around his neck and handed him a flashlight. McGregor flicked it on, then off, sucked cold air through the mouthpiece and rolled back.

  He hit the water, which was surprisingly warm, warmer than the evening air. He turned on his light and saw a cloud of silver bubbles which cleared, rising to the surface.

  He waited a moment, then upended, kicking down, following the narrow beam of the flashlight, which was yellow near the source but faded to green and then blue as it went deeper. In the light of the lamp, the thousands of undersea microcreatures shone like dust beneath the water, scattering the light.

  As he went down, the water turned colder; he checked his gauge; it was twenty-five feet. His beam had still not reached the bottom. He went down, with the receiver around his neck beeping louder and louder.

  The ocean around him was noisy. It was something you noticed on a night dive—the sea was alive with night creatures, eating and clicking with a strange, almost mechanical sound, like a giant bank of electronic relays far off.

  He exhaled, the bubbles swirling around his face from the single-hose regulator, and kicked down. Now, faintly, he saw the bottom. There was a reef directly below. In the light of his flashlight he saw a huge head of brain coral, intricate and convoluted, with a small school of striped sergeant majors swimming over the surface.

  The beeping was very loud now, and rapid.

  He reached the bottom.

  The reef was low, cropping up six feet above a sandy bottom. It was sparse and unattractive, but alive with fish. He swam low, just above the sand, his fins churning up the bottom behind him. Using the beeper, he sought the source of the signals, moving along the edge of the reef. It grew louder and then, almost imperceptibly, softer.

  He had missed it. He turned and went back. The sound was louder again.

  And then, quite suddenly, the sound changed character, becoming a steady hum, unbroken.

  He stopped.

  Directly beneath him was a branch-coral formation like a giant hand reaching upward for the surface. To the left was a hole in the coral, perhaps a foot in diameter.

  McGregor hung in the water and waited. He did not like sticking his hands into coral pockets. At the very least, you were likely to meet up with a crab; at worst, a moray eel. He had learned long ago that in the hierarchy of things for men to fear in tropical waters, morays were the worst. Barracuda came a far second, and sharks third. The morays grew as long as ten feet, and they were vicious.

  He moved back from the hole and shone his light in. Nothing happened; he did not see the telltale pink angry glint of a moray’s eyes, nor the whiteness of yawning razor teeth.

  Instead, he saw the peculiar milky whiteness of plastic: it was a small bag, attached to a lead weight.

  He waited.

  He was conscious of hanging suspended in a kind of sphere of light, reflected by dust from the beam. Within that sphere, perhaps six feet across, he could see passably well; beyond, there was nothing but blackness. Anything could be out there. It was one of the terrors of night diving, that blackness, but he had long since grown used to it.

  He waited.

  Nothing happened inside the hole, and finally he reached in, grasped the plastic bag, and pulled it out. It was surprisingly heavy; he had not expected a million and a half dollars in diamonds to weigh much, but it was several pounds—difficult to estimate exactly in the water.

  He was holding it up to the light, trying to see the gems through the heavy plastic, when he felt a change in the water around him.

  It was nothing he could put his finger on: a sudden change of the current, a change in the sound of fish eating, a new coolness. Whatever it was, it was swift and subtle.

  He swung the light around in a circle, seeing only blue water, and then something else.

  The tip of a fin.

  He came back.

  A shark.

  It was gliding away, a big one, six feet or more, writhing in that slow, menacing coordinated way that a big shark moved.

  The shark passed beyond the range of the light; he waited. After a moment it came back, and on the second run he could see it clearly. The body was normal, the sleek shark outline with the dorsal fin, tapering back to a graceful and powerful tail, but it was the head that stopped him. The head was grotesquely flattened, until it looked like a mallet or a hatchet, and the eyes were spread widely, to the tips of the mallet.

  Hammerhead.

  He looked quickly down at his bandaged ankle. If it were bleeding, in daylight it would appear green, green blood seeping around the white bandage. But in the torch, it would be red.

  He looked closely. No gross blood. But it might be bleeding very slightly—

  The hammerhead cruised back. One eye, at the end of the hideous stalk, rotated to look at him. McGregor shone the light at the eye, up close, blindingly.
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  The shark veered away, moving outward with a single powerful stroke of its tail.

  He felt suddenly cold. He was in a kind of diver’s nightmare—a night dive, and a hammerhead. The combination held a fright that was almost elemental; he struggled against panic, against the desire to bolt for the surface, to kick upward, spitting bubbles, exuding fear.

  It would be just those circumstances that would most excite the shark, would make it strike. So he waited, breathing gently, forcing himself to relax while he swung the light around, and waited for the shark to return within range of his light.

  He felt the gun at his waist, and the extra spears. He could use them, of course, but he didn’t want to. He needed them for later.

  Instead, he unscrewed the powerheads, removing the points from the spears. He took out the .357 Magnum cartridges and dropped them into his pocket; he threw the points away. He now had three naked blunt spears. They couldn’t penetrate anything; if fired close up to a person, they would cause a bruise, but not break the skin.

  He began a slow ascent. The shark came back in a wide, lazy circle; McGregor waited and it slipped away into darkness.

  He continued up, the gun in one hand, the plastic sack in the other. At thirty feet, the shark returned and moved close. McGregor waited and fired the first spear. He aimed for the blunt snout.

  The spear shot out in a burst of gas; the spear struck and bounced away, but the shark spun off quickly, into the dark.

  At fifteen feet, he reappeared. McGregor fired another spear, catching the shark on the side; at impact, it slithered away.

  McGregor dropped the third spear and kicked for the surface. A moment later he felt strong hands on his shoulders, pulling him into the boat. He was eased out of his tanks and allowed to lie on the deck, gasping for breath, while the motor started up, carrying him back to Silverstone.

  PART III White Money

  It is better to live rich than to die rich.

  SAMUEL JOHNSON

  15

  “NICELY DONE,” LEVETT SAID, taking the plastic sack of diamonds. “Very nicely done. And now the spears, please.”

  McGregor shook his head. “You’ll have to take them back from the hammerhead.”