The sun beat down as the skipper weighed his options. Whoever this SS hotshot was, he was long dead, just like his boss back in the rubble of Berlin. As for what he’d been doing in this hellhole, the evidence suggested he had been an adviser to the Japs and, sure as shit, he didn’t deserve a funeral. The skipper nodded to himself. Yep, he’d hand the medals over to the adjutant in Wewak, along with his report. Let the navy figure out what, if anything, should be done. Meanwhile, his boys needed clear air and the cold ale awaiting them back at base.

‘Let him go, Smithy. Let the river have him.’

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Cowaramup Bombie, Margaret River, Western Australia, present day

Whipped by howling gales across the lonely wastes of the intercontinental fetch, the massive winter swell bore down on the rugged coast still hidden in the darkness. A crimson band in the eastern sky heralded dawn, soon to crest the hills overlooking Gracetown where street lights twinkled insignificantly. Come daybreak, a handful of international big wave surfers and film crews would ride out from its protected bay on jet skis to greet these monstrous waves as they struck a submerged platform of limestone the size of an aircraft carrier. But for now, there was just one figure in the gloom.

Powering through the water on his custom big wave, stand-up paddleboard, Rob Nash maintained the robotic cadence that had propelled him from his home in Margaret River, twenty kilometres to the south. Long of limb and 1.93 metres tall, Nash was a formidable physical specimen, with years of surfing, swimming and sailing hard-wired into his DNA. A renowned waterman in the Western Australian aquatic fraternity, his cave-diving exploits had propelled him into wider public consciousness, yet the last two years had hardened him in such a way that even those who knew him best had to look twice. A diet of obsessive, big wave surfing and open sea paddling had excised every gram of fat from his frame. His once open, boyishly handsome face was now a gaunt mask. Tendons stood out on his muscled arms like steel cords, and the clinical resolve which had underpinned his success in the life-or-death stakes of cave diving had devolved into the psychological equivalent of a white-knuckle joyride. Deep down, Rob Nash was looking for the release of death, but the sea had stubbornly refused to give it to him.

He scanned the Cow break with intense green eyes, hungry for the narcotic release of extreme danger. Three hundred metres ahead, a huge set was building. Suddenly, the leading waves broke through into an oblique shaft of sunlight. On their towering crests, the spindrift blown back in streaming arcs by the offshore wind looked like a high-altitude blizzard, wreaking havoc on a distant mountain range.