Smith was fighting for his life. He was hanging horizontally in the lee of a rocky ledge, both his hands jammed into a crevice, clenched into climber's fists to hold himself there. The weight of his body, the heavy belt and the force of the current dragged on every muscle in his shoulders and arms. He couldn't even turn his right arm to see how much time remained and, more importantly, he could not check his tank level. He knew that the wild roller-coaster ride had seriously depleted his oxygen. All breathing technique had gone out the window as he was slammed, tossed and rolled through the water and bounced off rocks and the bottom. He had given away strips of wetsuit and skin. One fin was gone. He had almost lost his mask twice. He had bashed his nose, and there was blood in his mask and his mouth. Somehow, though, he had survived this far.

Smith knew he was close to where he needed to be but the slope of the great granite reef was behind him, when it in fact it should have been to his front. He could see it when he turned his head. If he let go his grip, he would surf feet first into the side of the reef and be hurled over it by the current, to be sent spinning off towards the open sea.

'Christ!' he moaned. He couldn't feel his hands any more, and his shoulders felt as if they were about to detach themselves from his body. He tried to shut out the pain, but it was a struggle to even think of anything else.

'What about the gold?' said the traitorous voice inside his brain suddenly. 'Just think of all the gold,Tyler. All the lovely gold.'

'I'm not doing this for the fucking gold,' he wanted to shout it out at the top of his lungs and silence the piping, nagging voice. That was the truth. He was doing this stupid, crazy stunt for Amanda, because he knew that Baron was mad enough to kill her, kill them all if anger - or whim - took him.

There was a movement in front of him. The big, black eye was not more than a couple of centimetres from Smith's face mask. He came close to losing his regulator for the hundredth time as he jerked his head back. Then he almost laughed, the pain in his arms and hands forgotten for the moment. The large blue cod hung in front of Smith's head, regarding him solemnly, its thick lips seemingly pursed in thought. The fish moved slightly to one side, then back again to its former position. It was both comical and strangely reassuring - natural fish behaviour in a most unnatural situation.

Then Smith heard it, the rumble of diesels and the threshing of screws. El Dorado was here. The diver looked up as the black hull glided over him, the keel only three or four metres above the rocks behind which he was sheltering. The twin screws were turning slowly, very slowly as the ship moved with the current. The noise of the engines changed to a deeper growl, and the screws bit the water and turned it to foam. El Dorado was reversing; the buoy must have surfaced. The skipper was manoeuvring for the pick-up. It was time to move.

In the matter of a minute, the current had dropped from a gale to a gentle breeze, and Smith suddenly found himself hanging, pressed vertically against the black rock that had been his shelter. The friendly cod was now above him. Gratefully, the diver unclenched his fists and pulled his weary arms free of the gash in the rock and kicked away towards the reef with his single fin. Now, with no current to hamper him, and with a half a tonne of lead hanging off him, he sank gracefully towards the bottom. Huge strands of giant bladder kelp, no longer forced flat by the rip, suddenly sprang towards the surface. There was little kelp on the reef itself- the rip saw to that- but in other areas, it was like a giant forest that grew up to two metres a day and could make diving a nightmare.

Smith grabbed the stem of one of the plants to arrest his descent. 'I'm not bloody well walking,' he said to himself and hit the release on the second of his weight belts. It fell away and he kicked again, gliding effortlessly towards the hull of the ship hovering over the reef at the edge of his vision.

Smith knew that he had perhaps five minutes before Baron's men hit the water. He kicked again and swam up the granite rock face. A gold bar glinted up at him from a small ledge as he moved. The diver grinned around his mouthpiece. 'Later!' he promised himself. That was one of the things about diving in the channel. The water action kept the gold nicely polished, easy to find.

Smith kept away from the stern of the ship. He had no rebreather kit and, with the sea calming, a bubble trail would be clear to any observer. He was confident that in their haste to go after the riches that lay beneath them the crew of El Dorado wouldn't have noticed if a whale had sounded right alongside them. Despite this, he wasn't taking any chances. The ship was swinging slowly as the gentle outward current drew it around the mooring. Smith moved towards the tethered bow and the buoy. As to what he was to do when he got aboard, he hadn't a clue. He'd have to make up that part of the plan as he went along.

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