Killian looked into the gathering mist and saw no one.
"Where is he?" Killian muttered.
His nerves were jangled.
He was tense.
Fog was still drifting across the meadow but visibility wasn"t that bad.
He counted out seconds and made it to 30 Mississippi.
"Where are you, d.i.c.khead?" Killian shouted.
Nothing.
"Come on, I"m waiting for you," Killian said.
Markov wasn"t interested in Killian.
The personal was the realm of the amateur.
The computer, the wife, were on the boat. Killian was nothing to him. Less than nothing.
He ran to the left, off the meadow, into the bog gra.s.s and then the reeds that led to the lough. He took off his leather jacket, zipped it and ripped the laces out of his sneakers. He tied off the jacket arms and folded it in on itself. He shoved the gun down the back of his jeans. It would get wet, but it was a Colt .45 ACP, a mother of a gun, blowing people"s heads off since 1911. It would work.
He waded into the reeds and pushing the jacket in front of him he launched himself into the lough using the jacket as a float and kicking with his feet.
The water was warm, calm, the distance to sh.o.r.e wasn"t a kilometre.
They had a start on him, but the lady couldn"t steer for s.h.i.t. The ferry was zigzagging across the gap and every time she corrected her mistake it cost her more time and distance.
Markov was eating up the metres in a straight line.
He felt a little sad. It was just going to cost him time, it was going to cost her her life.
"Where are you, eejit?" Killian said and couldn"t escape the feeling that he"d been made a monkey of yet again.
He walked back into the meadow.
b.u.t.terflies, mist, no f.u.c.king Ivan.
Aye, he"d been stroked.
Twice in one day.
He turned and stared at the lough water and there he was, sure enough, two hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e.
"Christ!" Killian said.
Ivan was like swimming like a b.l.o.o.d.y torpedo.
Like someone who"d been in the friggin" Olympics - or who"d had special forces training.
He was going to catch her. He was going to climb up on the ferry and shoot her and he had taken her only defence, her pistol.
"Rachel!" Killian screamed, his voice carrying all the way down Lough Erne.
She turned to look at him.
"The Russian, he"s in the water behind you!"
He pointed to where the a.s.sa.s.sin was swimming.
He was now more than a third of the way across the lough.
And she was still halfway to the sh.o.r.e.
Killian not only couldn"t swim but didn"t know the first thing about it.
He was d.a.m.ned if that was going to stop him. He ripped a tyre from the side of jetty, threw it into the water, jumped on top of it and started kicking with his feet. As long as the tyre was underneath him he was pretty sure he couldn"t drown.
The tyre was steady, the water still, but even so he was terrified.
On the ferry Rachel saw Killian launch himself into the lough.
It was too late.
The Russian was going to catch them.
After all this. "No," she sobbed.
Claire started to cry.
"Is he going to kill us?" Sue asked calmly.
"Help us! Somebody help us!" Rachel screamed at the car park, but there was no traffic on the water or on the road.
"Somebody help us! Help us! Please!" she screamed till her lungs were burning.
She urged the boat faster but it was at the limit of its capacity.
"Somebody help us! Please!"
"Mummy, what"s happening?" Sue was asking. "Mummy!"
The ferry was barely over halfway to the mainland and the Russian was fifty metres away. He"d be here in seconds.
She could see the a.s.sa.s.sin"s face.
He was in his thirties with blue eyes.
There was a coldness in those eyes.
He"d be clinical, emotionless, like a surgeon.
She turned to Claire. "Take the wheel and keep steering for the sh.o.r.e. Don"t stop."
She pulled off her sweater and grabbed one of the orange life rings from its hook and shoved it inside the sweater. She tied the arms underneath the life ring so that it was taut.
She went to the back of the little ferry and waved at the Russian.
"Hey you! You!" she yelled.
Markov looked up at her.
"You don"t want us. You want the money? Right?"
She picked the laptop from off the deck.
"This is what you want, isn"t it? It"s all here. This is what he"s paying you to get. Right? Look what I"m doing."
She put the life ring with the sweater stretched across it in the water. She placed the laptop on top and launched it off into the lough like one of the girls" homemade rafts. The eddy took it immediately, spinning it away into the current.
"There it goes!" she said to Markov.
Markov watched the life ring separate from the ferry almost as if it had a motor. Killian watched too. He wasn"t surprised at the speed. Upper Lough Erne rises in the high bog of central Ireland and flows north into Lower Lough Erne and finally to the Atlantic and when the tide was on the turn, the current could be very fast.
Markov swam in place for a beat, two, three...
It was absurd.
Farcical.
His orders had been to kill the woman and take the computer. He had not been instructed regarding the priorities of the mission. And like an idiot he had not asked.
He looked at the woman on the ferry.
He looked at the life ring.
Further clarifications would be not be forthcoming. In any case his phone by now was soaked. Undoubtedly ruined.
He had to make a split-second decision.
The ferry with the wife and kids was reachable.
The laptop, drifting north at a surprising velocity was also reachable.
But he could only make a play for one.
Which one?
What would Bernie do?
What would Marina want him to do?
The wife and kids would probably cause him nightmares down the road.
As the wife herself said, it was the computer that contained the incriminating evidence.
That"s where the money lay.
He abandoned his pursuit of the ferry and started swimming for the laptop.
It was moving fast, but now he that he too embraced the current instead of swimming across it he moved just as quickly.
In ten strokes he had cut the distance between it and himself in half.
Killian watched him give up the pursuit.
Ivan had out-thought him and she had out-thought Ivan.
She was a woman of rare quality was Rachel Coulter.
She had quit drugs. She had protected her weans. She was smart. She was fast.
She was worth saving.
He kicked out after Rachel and the kids, moving his legs up and down in the water. He kicked and he went forward. It wasn"t rocket science. He wasn"t sure how you were supposed to stay afloat without a tyre, but people obviously did it. Dogs did it. Even cats did it and they hated water more than Pavee.
Rachel saw him. She grabbed the wheel from Sue and steered the ferry back towards him.
"Go to sh.o.r.e!" he yelled at her for Markov wasn"t far enough away yet for his liking.
"No, I"m coming for you," she said.
He and the ferry converged and then b.u.mped into one another. For a horrifying second he thought that she"d inadvertently killed him, dislodging him from his tyre, sending him without a buoyancy aid into the terrifying briney, but it was only for a second. Three pairs of hands pulled him sputtering onto the deck.
He stood and smiled.
"Thank you," he said.
"You"re welcome," Rachel said.
Killian caught his breath, reached behind Sue"s ear and produced a gold two-pound coin.
"Where did that come from?" Sue asked.
"Your ear," he said.