the cuff away to allow the air to escape, and as it did so he sank slowly beneath the water.
The sea was pleasantly chilly around his head and he swam slowly to keep himself just below the surface while he felt for the line tied to his side and pulled the compass board attached to it into his hands. The nuclear device hung heavily from his waist several feet below but out of the way. He checked the compass that he had already preset, levelled off and started to fin gently along. He did not have to look at anything other than the compass and depth gauge to get to his target. The estimated time it would take him to cover the distance was somewhere around two and a half hours. His oxygen bottle should provide enough gas for three. The depth gauge was needed to keep him close to the surface and important for two reasons: first, the deeper he went the more oxygen he would use because of the increased pressure; and second, pure oxygen could become poisonous beyond a depth of ten metres. The one factor he had not been able to calculate was the tide. The charts were not accurate enough for that and he was going to have to rely partly on luck to get him to his target before he ran out of oxygen.
Zhilev had not swum with a compass board in almost two decades and he had forgotten how boring it was, like a pilot flying a plane at night with no visibility and nothing to look at but his instrument panel. The tiny fluorescent sea anemone glowed around the board, across his hands and along his body, streaming off him as if he were a spacecraft on reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. This was the time for silent thought while his feet beat a constant rhythm propelling him along slowly, and Zhilev went over his plan for the next phase of the operation. He had no doubt that he would come ashore, one way or another, in Israel.
After thirty minutes, Zhilev stopped his forward passage and headed slowly up. He controlled his ascent carefully allowing only his head to break the surface, hoping to see Elat directly ahead, but it was slightly to his right. That indicated a current pushing him to the left, but, thankfully, it was small. He had carried out dives such as this for thousands of hours in his lifetime and was confident he had maintained a true course. All he needed to do was make a slight adjustment to counter the current. The town seemed as far away as it had been when he started but he was aware this could be more illusion than fact. He studied the lights for a moment and decided some aspects had changed and he was indeed getting closer. He pushed himself below the surface using the board as a fin and checked the oxygen gauge. It was still three quarters full. Had it been much less, he would have turned the bottle off and risked swimming on the surface for a while, breathing air, but he felt that would not be necessary. There was enough O2 in the cylinder, he was sure of it.
Now that he was actually crossing the Gulf of Aqaba, he wondered if he would have got away with swimming in from the Mediterranean, directly on to the Israeli coastline, but he was confident he had made the more difficult but wiser choice. Fifteen years ago he had been part of a team that had supplied the Palestinians with arms from one boat to another in the Mediterranean, and he remembered the briefing regarding the Israeli coastal defences and how good they were rumoured to be in places. The Gulf of Aqaba was much more difficult for them to secure because of the diving and water sports which took place in Elat harbour, as well as the many pleasure boats that sailed this Gulf. The defences here were weak against this kind of approach and the risks for Zhilev greatly reduced.
An hour later he stopped to check his position, gently breaking the surface once again, and this time he was pleasantly surprised to see that he was not only bang on target but quite close to the port. He could make out dozens of boats alongside the jetty and the windows of several towering hotels just beyond. He estimated the distance to be around six hundred yards