Depth Charge by Jason Heaton (carter reed .txt) 📗

Ian Walsh stayed on in Sri Lanka, marrying a local woman and accepting Upali Karuna’s old directorship at the Ministry of Culture, History and Archaeology. He had partially recovered from the bends and was able to walk with a cane, but he would likely never dive again. He still enjoyed being on boats and the tropical climate agreed with him.

In Galle, Raj, the fisherman, went back to his nightly work, plying the offshore reefs for mackerel, snapper, and the occasional shark. One day, while cleaning nets in his shed by the Galle harbor, he knocked over a bucket of dirty water. Something shiny spilled out and he picked it up. It was some sort of shackle from a sailing boat and engraved on its side was a symbol, three lines creating an arrow. He turned it over in his hands and studied it. Deciding it could be of no use to him, he stepped out of the shed and, with the perfect form of the street cricket bowler he once was, heaved it across the road, where it skipped once on the surface of the harbor and sank like a stone.

Mad Dogs and Michiganders

Lac la Belle, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. January.

Dizzying, the stars and the cold. Tusker clipped out of his skis halfway across the frozen lake and crunched awkwardly in a drunken radius away from them in his stiff boots, gazing upwards. He wanted to burn this experience into his memory—the empty loneliness of a billion winter stars, the deep snow, the sharp biting air. He thought of Upali and how he hated the cold of a Michigan winter. He laughed out loud. Sri Lanka seemed a distant memory now—Rausing, Roland, the Depth Charge, all of it.

It was Tusker’s last night in the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow he would return home, each mile of the drive back spooling in the real world like one of the lunker bass that slept in the lake below his feet. The new semester started in a week, and with it, another crop of students, more campus politics, papers to write, the long slog into spring.

He snapped into the bindings again. The left one had frozen up with compacted snow and he had to remove a glove to clear it. His fingers burned and he shoved them back into his glove. He forced his boot into the binding, snapping off a splinter of yellow plastic in the process. He couldn’t be bothered now. As long as he could ski back to the cabin, he could deal with a new binding back home next week.

The cabin was cheerful from a distance. He’d stoked the fire before setting out, and from the smell of the smoke on the wind, he knew it would still be warm inside. He hurriedly took off the skis and leaned them up on the cabin’s small porch, not bothering to wipe the icy buildup from them. As he stepped into the cabin, the warmth enveloped him. He stripped off his anorak, cap, and gloves, and tossed them in a heap on the bench inside the door.

“I was about to send out the search party.” Samanthi de Silva smiled at him from across the single room. She was sitting on the floor near the fire, her knees pulled up to her chin. She wore one of Tusker’s thick sweaters and her hair was pulled back, a few wisps trailing down around her face. The firelight made her skin glow.

“I need to teach you how to ski!” Tusker replied and pulled off his boots.

“Um, no thanks. I’m quite fine here by the fire.” Sam held out a silver flask. “Take a pull, it’ll warm you up.”

Tusker took it from her and tipped it back into his mouth. The scotch was warm and smoky. He took another drink, then screwed down the cap.

“It’s gotten colder outside,” he said, sliding down next to Sam on the rug. She’d kept the fire fed with logs and it danced in the grate.

“I can tell!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you dare come to me for warmth with your cold hands. Nobody made you go outside!” She mockingly pulled away from him. “You know the saying, ‘Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun?’ Well, I think there must be one about crazy Americans and the midnight snow.”

Tusker laughed and slid his cold hand under her sweater against her warm, bare stomach. She shrieked but didn’t resist. He leaned in and kissed her hard, sliding his hand further up. Her mouth was warm and tasted of whisky.

“Get out of those wet clothes,” she whispered, pulling at his wool undershirt. “You’ll catch a chill.” He peeled off the damp shirt, then his ski pants and sat there, exposed, in front of the fire, which snapped and fizzed. He was buzzed from the scotch and dazed with desire.

“Your turn,” he said to Sam. This time, she said nothing but only met his gaze. She slowly got to her knees and pulled the sweater over her head. She wore nothing underneath. When she leaned close to him, he could hear her breathing. Her eyes were like black pools, and Tusker could see the fire reflected in them. He pulled her down. She gasped.

“See, winter’s not so bad, is it?” he said quietly. As if for emphasis, the wind outside moaned in the pines. A log fell in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks.

She grinned. “As long as you have someone to keep you warm.”

Epilogue

By the summer of 1942, the American atomic bomb program, known as the “Manhattan Project,” had gained momentum, despite getting a later start than the British Tube Alloys program. The sheer might and resources of the United States quickly outstripped the efforts of its ally across the Atlantic. By early 1943, with secrecy considered paramount, information sharing had dried up almost entirely between the US and the United Kingdom.

Sensing that his country’s nuclear ambitions were slipping away, British prime minister Winston