Skeleton Key

was an armed guard.
    Garcia turned off the engine and moved to the back of the boat. For such an old man, he seemed very agile. He picked up an anchor and threw it over the side, then hoisted a flag—this one more identifiable than the others. It showed a diagonal white stripe on a red background. Alex recognized the international scuba-diving sign.
    Troy came over to him. “We‟ll go down here and swim in to the coast,” she said.
    Alex looked up at the figure in the tower. There was a glint of sunlight reflecting off something.
    A pair of binoculars? “I think we‟re being watched,” he said.
    Troy nodded. “Yes. But it doesn‟t matter. Dive boats aren‟t allowed to come here but they sometimes do. They‟re used to it. The shore is strictly off-limits but there‟s a wreck somewhere
    … people swim to that. We‟ll be fine, provided we don‟t draw attention to ourselves. Just don‟t do anything stupid, Alex.”
    Even now she couldn‟t resist lecturing him. Alex wondered what he would have to do to impress these people. He said nothing.
    Turner had taken off his shirt, showing a hairless, muscular chest. Alex watched as he stripped down to his trunks, then pulled on a wetsuit which he had taken from a small cabin below.
    Quickly the two CIA agents got ready, attaching air cylinders to their buoyancy jackets—
    BCDs—then adding weight belts, masks and snorkels. Garcia was smoking, sitting to one side and watching all this with quiet amusement, as if it really had nothing to do with him.
    At last they were ready. Turner had brought a waterproof bag with him and he unzipped it. Alex noticed the Game Boy sealed in a plastic bag inside. There were also maps, torches, knives and a harpoon gun.
    “Leave it all, Turner,” Troy said.
    “The Game Boy…?”
    “We‟ll come back for it.” Troy turned to Alex. “Right, Alex,” she said. “Listen up! We‟re going to make an exploratory dive to begin with. We‟ll be gone about twenty minutes. No longer. We need to find the cave entrance and check there are no security devices in operation.” She glanced at her watch. It was only half past six. “The sun won‟t set for another hour,” she continued. “We don‟t want to spend that long sitting in the cave, so we‟ll come back to the boat for the rest of our equipment, change tanks and make a second journey back. You don‟t have to worry about anything. As far as the people in the villa are concerned, we‟re just tourists doing a sunset dive.”
    “I‟m a qualified diver,” Alex said.
    “The hell with that!” Turner cut in.
    Troy agreed. “You talked your way onto the boat,” she said. “Fine. Personally, I wish you‟d stayed in the hotel. But maybe you were right about that, it might have raised suspicions.”
    “You‟re not coming with us,” Turner said. He looked at Alex coldly. “We don‟t want any more people killed. You stay here with Garcia and leave the rest to us.”
    The two agents made their all-important buddy checks, each one looking over the other‟s equipment. No pipes twisted. Air in the tanks. Weights and releases. Finally, they went over to the side of the boat and sat with their backs facing the sea. They both put on their fins. Turner gave Troy the all-clear sign: second finger and thumb forming an O, with the other fingers raised. They lowered their masks and rolled over backwards, disappearing immediately into the depths of the sea.
    That was the last time Alex saw them alive.
    He sat with Garcia on the gently rocking boat. The sun was almost touching the horizon and a few clouds, deep red, had intruded into the sky. The air was warm and pleasant. Garcia sucked on his cigarette and the tip glowed.
    “You American?” he asked suddenly, speaking in English.
    “No. I‟m English.”
    “Why you here?” Garcia smiled as if amused to find himself alone at sea with an English boy.
    “I don‟t know.” Alex shrugged. “How about you?”
    “Money.” The one word answer was enough.
    Garcia came over and sat down next to Alex, examining him with two dark eyes that were suddenly very serious. “They don‟t like you,” he said.
    “I don‟t think so,” Alex agreed.
    “You know why?”
    Alex said nothing.
    “They are grown-ups. They think they are good at what they do. And then they find a child who is better. And not only that. He is an English child. Not an Americano!” Garcia chuckled and Alex wondered how much he had been told. “It makes them feel