Chapter Text
John leans back in his chair and lifts his bare heels onto the balcony railing. The air-conditioning in his modest flat has been broken for two days and, in accordance to finest Mediterranean tradition, the repairman will show up when he can be bothered, regardless of what time has been agreed upon. But John isn't troubled by this; if he minded the less neurotic way of life and the embrace of the scorching sun, he wouldn't have expatriated to Malta. There's also the world-class diving, of course, the cheap costs of living, and the hordes of female British tourists looking to let loose on a cheap package holiday.
It's very close to paradise, really.
In three hours, he's due for a job: the owner of a local dive centre, whose regular tech diving instructor is on sick leave, had called John last night to ask whether he could take two clients to the HMS Southwold wreck off Marsaskala. A type II Hunt-class Destroyer for the Royal Navy in World War II, it sunk after hitting a mine. The explosion killed five, split the hull and plunged the ship down to the sea bottom. With a sandy bottom, good visibility and rich fish life, it's a fantastic dive. The problem for most holiday divers is that the deepest parts lie at 70 metres — too deep to be dived with just air in the tanks and without special gear. That makes it too demanding a site to be dived without special training even if the diver doesn't intend penetrating into the preserved sections.
John had taken his gear to the dive centre last night, did the gas blending, talked to the clients who'd also popped in to drop off their gear to make sure they truly had the skills and experience required for the endeavour. He had left booking sea transport to this morning which had been a mistake; it had taken him forty minutes of calling around to find a charter boat for the dive; it's high season, so such services are in high demand. He's yearning for a cold beer, but drinking before a dive is not on.
Drinking after one, now that is a different matter... Marsaskala — a sleepy resort-less town on the southern coast of the main island — only has a few decent establishments and John will have to drive the clients back to their hotel in Sliema after the dive, anyway. He decides to round his usual haunts tonight right here in St Julians. The younger, more adventurous crowds usually flock at the Rumrunner around midnight, whereas the Chalice gathers a more refined early-night clientele. Not all of his decent shirts can be in the wash pile, can they…?
His phone chirps to life in the kitchen, and he drops his feet from the railing and hurries through the clattering mosquito curtain on the balcony door made of bamboo pieces to get to it.
Caller ID says 'Bridgette of the BBC', and John cracks a grin. Bridgette Stevens is his insider contact and a fan-fucking-tastic lay. Gorgeous tits and no strings attached—especially when John gets to slip a pair of them off her. With Bridgette, things are never awkward or complicated. Perhaps he might even call her a friend.
"Hello," he greets, "Someone's desperate for me again, are they?"
"Hey, John. Is the weather as terrible there as it is here in London?"
"If we're talking endless sunshine, temperatures in the thirties and just a ripple on the sea then yes, absolutely despicable. I don't understand why anyone comes here voluntarily," he chuckles.
"Then I couldn't possibly wrench you away from all that," she teases.
"What have you got?" John asks. "If it's another project on the effects of urban pollution on coral growth, you can bin that idea right now. I want to see something other than used condoms and rat skeletons. That Langkawi thing sucked."
"I know. They ended up shelving it, said it wasn't up to BBC standards."
John isn't surprised. The director had been an inexperienced idiot who had no idea how much time and effort setting up underwater cinematography entailed. His previous documentaries had been about skateboarding.
"So, what's this you've got for me, then?" John prompts.
"The Entierro Islands off the coast of Guatemala. A three-episode series on maritime archaeology aiming for prime time. The Guatemalan army is decommissioning their base on the islands and, since nobody expects such a craggy spot so far from the coast and the sea currents there are unpredictable, it's a graveyard of wrecks. There are some warships, but we're also expecting really old stuff according to the maps the army's been willing to declassify. There's something about the place that shipworms don't like; even some wooden structures are preserved. A university research group, backed by us, will be the first civilian group allowed to dive there, and that's what we're filming. You interested?"
"Depends on the role. Not prancing my arse in front of the cameras any more than I have to. And I won't work with a director who can't tell apart a garden sprinkler from a regulator."
"You'd be the expedition physician. Also, they need you as a dive technician, maybe even tec instructor and of course one of the divers. They have tec-trained divers in the group, and a local dive instructor has been commissioned, but they need someone good.There's no telling how challenging it'll get. I instantly thought of you."
"I'm touched."
"You'd be on a boat for five weeks."
"Long expedition. Is that why they want a medic onboard?"
"New company policy. If the BBC is the main backer and there's no access to a hospital within an hour's boat trip or a helicopter evacuation isn't possible within forty-five, a physician must be a part of the crew."
"I like that logic." John knows he'll mostly be dealing with wounds, sunburn, upset stomach and other small things, and an expedition doctor's double role will increase his pay. "How deep are the dives?"
"Most wrecks are likely to be between thirty and eighty metres. Could be some they haven't found yet that are deeper, but there's a huge underwater mountain—seamount, if you will, since it's too big to be called a pinnacle—on top of which most of the wrecks lie. The deepest bits of it are at around ninety metres."
"Trimix, then, if they want anything close to a decent bottom time for the wrecks." A gas mixture consisting of oxygen, helium and nitrogen, Trimix is one of the most common blends used for technical — or tec— diving. The term refers to acquiring and using more advanced techniques and skills than those taught to hobbyist divers, blended gases and complex speciality equipment usually designed or at least customised by the diver to achieve greater depths and longer bottom times. Helium allows the lowering of the oxygen percentage in the gas mix, increasing the divers' safety along with their potential operating depth: oxygen becomes toxic to the central nervous system at depth. The twenty-one percent contained in regular air inhaled at great depth for long enough will lead to vertigo, seizures and very likely, death. Forty metres is usually considered the deepest one should consider going without blended gases.
"I don't know about that," Bridgette comments in a disinterested tone to John's choice of gas. She had only done a beginner open water diver course, so she isn't familiar with the principles of tec diving beyond what John has rambled to her over drinks. He had met her right before she'd enrolled on her holiday PADI diving course: she'd been sent to have a word with him before the first lessons because of her asthma. In the following days, they'd spotted each other a couple of times on the Marsalforn beach boulevard on Gozo where the dive centre was. A smaller Maltese island famed for its diving, central Gozo was where John had his first flat after moving to the country. After he had struck up a conversation with Bridgette one evening as they watched the sunset from the small walk-bridge on the boulevard, the evening had progressed and ended in a mutually very satisfactory manner.
"So, which twenty-something celebrity have you picked to be the host of this documentary? You need someone who looks good in a wetsuit. Attenborough hardly qualifies."
"David doesn't even do archaeology," Bridgette laughs. "I'm afraid there's going to be slim pickings for you on this expedition; just blokes unless they find a female captain; we haven't secured a boat yet."
Thankfully, John is very much a proponent of gender equality when it comes to the sex he's having. Not that Bridgette knows this; John knows better than to kiss and tell. "Who's in the camera team, then?"
"Lestrade's the director, and he's actually going to be having a go at hosting, though we'll try to use the expedition's head scientist for that as much as we can. And, there's a new guy behind the camera, Anderson."
"Hm." John hasn't heard of him, nor does he particularly care who's operating the zoom as long as they stay out of his finning path. Lestrade's an old friend from a few past projects; it'll be nice to work with him again. "Which university?" Probably some backwater place if they can't fund such an expedition themselves.
"Oxford. The professor's our head scientist, and we've got several PhD students joining the expedition, too."
John whistles. The Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology is one of the world's leading units in the field. The professor is probably some old geezer — the Attenborough of maritime archaeology. Shame. John would have enjoyed working with some young, hopefully attractive up-and-comer scientist. Maybe there's hope yet if those PhD students prove… interesting.
John hears the rustling of papers, after which Bridgette lists two maritime archaeology PhD students, one marine biologist, one local diving specialist, and the head scientist—a Professor Holmes.
"Never heard of him." It's strange that he hasn't since he watches every BBC documentary that has anything to do with the underwater world.
"We've been trying to land him for years, but he's not been keen at all. Still isn't; told us in no uncertain terms that if he could have raised the money some other way, he wouldn't be letting us on the boat."
"Sounds like a charmer."
John's current work mostly involves teaching the occasional technical diving course at one of the local British-owned diving schools when he isn't taking clients of various such establishments out for dives. Sometimes he also gets commissioned to join demanding salvage and rescue dives. When he's not diving, his job also entails telling fifty-something, morbidly obese British tourists with heart conditions that they should skip taking a beginners' scuba diving course and stick to eating ice cream in the shade. The dive schools send people to him when they tick a box in the 'yes' bracket of the questionnaires every hopeful diver is given to fill out before being kitted out. People could lie on those forms, of course, but if something bad happened, their insurance wouldn't cover the costs of the treatment or even the cost of hauling the corpse back home. Regular travel insurance doesn't tend to cover scuba diving any more than it does mountain climbing or bungee jumping; one needs to have additional insurance cover for such sports, and respectable dive establishments won't let anyone on their guided dives or courses without proof of it.
The health screening part is the only bit about commercial leisure diving courses John thinks works relatively well; the rest of what new divers should learn has been toned down to a frighteningly bare-bones version of safety skills. For this reason, many dive professionals not getting their paychecks from these organisations tend to joke that the abbreviation PADI, the name of the most widespread fun diving training organisation, really stands for Pay And Die Immediately. On occasion, John gets contacted by British insurance companies and DAN—a global non-profit that grants divers specialised insurance—to investigate accidents and cases of decompression sickness. Malta is perhaps the best place in the world to have a diving-related mishap: there are many hyperbaric treatment chambers, good helicopter coverage and lots of highly trained diving physicians working for the islands' hospitals.
Several dive centres have offered John a job with a monthly salary, but he likes being a freelancer. A free agent. If he wanted a 9–5 job five days a week, he would have stayed in the UK.
"The Entierros are being hailed as the Galapagos Islands of sea archaeology," Bridgette declares. "I think you'd be in for a treat." Bridgette entices.
"Sounds like it, yeah."
"Can I count you in? Or are you getting too cosy on Malta?" She teases.
"When do we leave?"