Ark Angel

all his life.
    The boat slowed down and the anchor was lowered. The captain raised a flag—red with a white stripe—
    signalling that there were divers in the area. Kolo helped Alex put on his equipment. Then it was time for the briefing.
    “The Mary Belle is right underneath us,” Kolo told him. “We’ll enter the water over this side and then if everything’s all right, we’ll go straight down. The sea’s a little choppy today and visibility’s not so good, but you’ll soon see the wreck. We’ll start at the stern. You can see the rudder and propeller. Then we’ll swim up the deck and into the second hold. There’s plenty of fish down there. Glassfish, hatchetfish, groupers—maybe you’ll be lucky and see a shark. I’ll signal when it’s time to come back up. Any questions?”
    Alex shook his head.
    “Then let’s do it.”
    Alex drew his mask over his face, checked his respirator one last time, then sat on the edge of the boat with his hands crossed over his chest. Kolo gave him a thumbs up and he tipped over backwards, splashing down into the sea. It was a moment which he always enjoyed, feeling his shoulders pushing through the warm water, rolling in a cocoon of silver bubbles with the fractured light high above. Then his BCD, partly inflated, dragged him back to the surface. He was bobbing in the water, face to face with Kolo. The captain was watching them over the pulpit rail.
    “All right?” Kolo shouted.
    Alex gave him the universal diver’s sign: finger and thumb forming an O, the other three fingers pointing up. Everything OK.
    Kolo responded with a clenched fist, thumb pointing down. Descend.
    Alex released the air in his BCD and let his weight belt drag him down. The water rose over his chin, past his nose and eyes. Gently he began a controlled descent, listening to the sound of his own breathing amplified in his ears. It was only now that he remembered he had been operated on just three weeks ago.
    What would Dr Hayward think about him scuba-diving? Well, at least it wasn’t something that had been forbidden.
    A triggerfish—green with brilliant yellow stripes and a yellow tail—swam past, taking no notice of him.
    The water was a deep tropical blue that became darker and murkier the further he descended. He looked at his depth gauge. Eleven metres, twelve metres, thirteen… He was comfortable, in full control. Kolo was a few metres above him, legs crossed. Great bubbles, each one containing a pearl of used air, rose in clusters to the surface.
    And suddenly the Mary Belle was there, appearing in front of him as if projected onto a screen. It was always the same underwater. Objects, even ones as big as a sunken cargo ship, seemed to loom out of nowhere. Alex squeezed a little air into his BCD to slow his descent. He checked that he had neutral buoyancy, then he kicked forward and swam to examine this silent witness from the Second World War.
    The Mary Belle lay in the sand, slanting to one side. It was in two halves, separated by a jagged, broken area that could have been made by a German torpedo. It was about a hundred and thirty metres long, twenty metres wide, the whole ship covered in algae and brightly coloured coral that would one day turn it into an extraordinary artificial reef. As he swam over the deck, heading for the stern, Alex looked down on the dark green surfaces, the twisting ladders and rails, the anchor winches and blast roof. He passed two railway freight cars lying side by side. Part of a locomotive lay shattered, a few metres away on the sand. At the far end he saw what had to be an anti-aircraft gun, now pointing helplessly at the seabed.
    Once, the deck would have been full of life, with young marines running back and forth, the tannoy system barking orders, the wind and the sea spray blowing in their faces. But the Mary Belle had been hit. It had lain here for over half a century. There was nothing in the world more silent. It was the very definition of death.
    Alex noticed Kolo signalling to him and he swam under the stern. He had disturbed a shoal of snappers which darted away, zigzagging rapidly out of sight. The propeller was directly above him. When the ship had broken in two, the stern had turned on its side, otherwise it would have been buried in the sand. Kolo signalled again. Are you all right? Alex glanced at his air supply. He had used 500 psi. He signalled back.
    Fine.
    Slowly they swam round the side of the wreck. Alex had his arms crossed