At least Thathi’s not here, she thought. I can survive whatever they’ve got in store. She glanced around, making mental notes to plot a later escape. The shoreline twinkled to the west, miles away. A swim would be a long shot. It would have to be the rubber boat.

“And you must be the lovely Ms. de Silva.” Rausing had walked up behind Roland, calmly. “I’ve half a mind to drop you where we found you, but with a little less…” He paused and a half smile crossed his face. “Buoyancy.”

“But,” he continued, “keeping you around a bit longer may prove useful.”

A man wearing a headset microphone crossed the open deck of the boat and whispered in Rausing’s ear. He cocked his head and thought for a moment, then turned his attention back to Sam.

“Well, well, speak of the Devil,” he said, and motioned to the two large men from the Zodiac to bring her and follow. “Go clean yourself up,” he said coldly to Roland as they walked past. “And make sure she doesn’t have any more weapons on her.”

They ascended a metal staircase and stepped inside the compartment one level above the dive deck. It was some sort of control room, monitoring the divers below. The air conditioning was blowing frigid, and Sam shivered in her soaking wetsuit. On the video monitors, she could see the inside of a diving bell in high definition. Tusker! She could see him staring up at the camera. If he was in the bell, something was wrong, Sam thought.

“Tusker, look, I can take care of myself up here,” she said to the image of Tusker on the video screen. “You just finish what you started.”

Then, the threat, the exchange over the radio, and another crack on the skull. Sam crumpled to the room’s steel floor.

“Throw Ms. de Silva in the chamber,” Rausing said calmly. His pale eyes looked straight into Sam’s soul. “Mr. Tusk will be joining you there shortly.”

A Grisly Errand

350 feet beneath the Indian Ocean.

Tusker dropped like a stone to the sea floor and landed with a thud, a slow-motion puff of silt billowing up to engulf him. He was starting to shiver from the cold. He’d been in the water for close to an hour now, without the advantage of an umbilical hot water line. He gathered himself and waited for the cloud to settle before walking over towards the Vampire, which loomed like a dark mountain in front of him. The maw in the hull was directly above him, but Tusker knew that the limpet mine he’d hidden earlier was somewhere in the darkness just to his left. Rausing would be watching his every move from the helmet mounted camera. Somehow he had to get it without being seen. But how?

“Get moving.” Rausing’s voice came through clearly in his helmet. Tusker suddenly had an idea.