The Third Antichrist Read Online Free PDF

pool was, or whether the Suzuki might have paraglided through the water, ending up in a completely different location from its entry. But those were the risks of the game.
    He estimated that he had five or six dives in him at most, and then he would have to pass the baton to Rudra and the girls. But he was by far the best swimmer amongst them, and he was privately certain that if he couldn’t pull this off, none of the others would be able to either. He was the senior remaining de Bale – Madame, his mother, naturally excepted. He was twenty-five years old, and in his prime. If he couldn’t manage this, nobody would.
    Once under the water Abi realized that he would have an additional problem. Thick weed grew in streamers from the bottom of the cenote, prejudicing visibility. At first Abi tried steering himself down via the streamers, but they simply broke off in his hands like sticks of celery. In the end he corkscrewed his way down, brushing up against the streamers, but avoiding the thicker fronds in case they entangled him. At twenty feet down he still couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. At thirty feet, and having decompressed three times by pinching his nose and blowing internally, he decided to call it a day and head back for the surface, leaching oxygen and carbon dioxide as he rose through the water.
    ‘What’s it look like down there?’
    ‘Hard to tell with this amount of daylight.’ Abi was gulping in great lungfuls of air. ‘The weed is so thick you can scarcely see through it. But in an hour’s time it will be five times worse. Five times more murky.’
    ‘Did you get to the bottom?’
    ‘Nowhere near it. And I must have descended thirty feet.’
    ‘It’s a no-hoper then?’
    ‘No. I’m going to try again. But I’ve got to weight myself with something.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Shoes. Grab everybody’s trainers and either tie or Velcro them together. Our friends here won’t be needing them anymore, and it’ll serve to lighten them up and give them more buoyancy. I’ll make a sort of scuba weight-belt for myself. That should get me down another ten feet or so.’
    ‘You’re crazy, Abi.’
    ‘You got any better ideas, Rudi? You, Nawal? Dakini? Anybody got any better ideas? Or do you just want to float in here until you croak?’
    ‘Someone might find us.’
    ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Who? Sir Henry Morton Stanley? No one came when the tweak factory blew up. No fire engines. No helicopters. No cops. And why do you think that was? Because these people floating around us are fucking crooks. They’re cowboys. They’re the bozos who really run things around here. The cops leave them to their own devices in return for hefty backhanders, free cocaine, unlimited call girls, and a front-end slice of the action for the higher-ups. It’s the age-old story. Have money, will travel.’
    ‘Then at least tell us what you are hoping to find in the Suzuki.’
    Abi grimaced. ‘That’s the fifty-thousand-dollar question.’

 
    10
     

    Abi could feel himself being swept towards the bottom of the cenote by the weight of the waterlogged trainers. He lashed out with his free hand and finned himself down even faster. In his other hand he held a penknife with which he intended to free himself from the trainers if he couldn’t make it back up to the surface against their drag. He was calmer now. The first descent had given him a modicum of confidence in his abilities, and he reckoned that he had a good fifteen or twenty extra feet left in him.
    This time he forced himself to decompress every five feet. Just a light decompression – enough to clear his ears and regulate the pressure inside his head. Enough to stem the panic.
    At forty feet down he saw the bottom. At forty-five he saw the glint of metal, about twenty feet to his right. He struck off in that direction, the shoes sweeping against him like the skirts of a jellyfish.
    When he reached the car he hooked his fingers under the lip of the