Fetch the Treasure Hunter

by Phillip Gwynne

  I did as he asked.

  ‘Open it for me, please.’

  Again, I did as he asked.

  He pushed up his sleeves and his practised hands explored inside my bag.

  Why had he chosen me? Why me?

  But there was a simple answer to that – why not me? I was as choosable as anybody else.

  A what’s-this? look appeared on the Customs officer’s face and one hand reappeared. In it was a golden coin. The Double Eagle the Zolt had dropped in my swimming pool from a plane! It made no sense whatsoever – how in the hell had that got in there? The last time I’d seen it, I’d just been relieved of it by two thugs wielding baseball bats.

  There was a pretty obvious answer to this question, to so many questions lately – The Debt.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked in his perfect English.

  ‘It’s a 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle,’ I said. ‘But actually it’s a fakeroony.’

  ‘A fakeroony?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, a fake. There’s the eye for a start – there’s no way it should be black like that.’ I said, echoing Eva Carides, Numismatist.

  The Customs officer held the coin up at his eye level, turning it around.

  ‘A real one is actually worth a lot of money,’ I said.

  ‘Please, one minute,’ he said.

  He took the coin and walked over to a desk where another Customs officer was sitting.

  This one was sporting more bling, so I guessed she was his superior.

  They talked for a while, the more bling-laden senior officer throwing a couple of looks in my direction, before the Customs officer returned.

  ‘I’m afraid you need a permit to bring a replica coin such as this into Italy. You can’t take it with you,’ he said.

  ‘That’s fine with me,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure I was fine with it at all. The Debt had put it there for a reason; randomness wasn’t really their thing.

  ‘We keep it for you until you leave the country and then we give it back,’ said the officer, smiling at me.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, reluctantly. I just knew that giving up the coin was going to come back to bite me big time on the butt.

  Mr Ryan and I had to go into an office then and sign all these papers.

  As we did, the Customs officer had a running conversation with another officer who was already there. They were obviously talking about the coin, because amongst all the Italian I could occasionally hear the English words ‘Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle’.

  The other Customs official started typing on a computer. After a few clicks of the mouse he read from the screen in heavily accented English, ‘It is believed that the only example of this coin present in Europe is owned by Ikbal Ikbal, one-time friend of Farouk, King of Egypt.’

  So they obviously had Google in Italy!

  He continued, ‘The reclusive billionaire is believed to live in Switzerland.’

  But then our Customs officer said something to him in Italian and he stopped reading.

  Eventually we were able to leave, and as we joined the others getting on the bus that was taking us to the Olympic Village, I figured I owed Mr Ryan some sort of explanation. ‘The coin was my good-luck charm’.

  He nodded.

  ‘You won’t need it,’ he said.

  Don’t you bet on it, Mr Ryan. Don’t you bet on it.

  FRIDAY

  ROMA

  It was early evening, and there were cars everywhere and scooters everywhere and people crowding the streets, and everything looked so old, so ancient, especially compared to the Gold Coast. Inside the bus, people were crowding at the windows, desperate to get an eyeful.

  It was all ‘Wow!’ and ‘Ohmigod!’ and ‘Did you see that?’

  Not everybody, though. There were a few too-cool-for-Roma types who were flicking through magazines or were focused on their smartphones.

  I was feeling pretty excited too – I was the first Silvagni to visit Italy since my ancestor had left all those years ago.

  Somehow I ended up sitting next to Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘Si fueris Romæ, Romano vivito more; Si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely no idea,’ I said.

  ‘Basically, when in Rome –’

  ‘Do as the Romans do,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Which was pretty much all the learned doctor had to offer, because for the rest of the trip his face was glued to the window. We pulled up at the village, which supposedly was where the athletes stayed during the 1960 Rome Olympics. Waiting for us was a large group of people, including lots of kids around our age. Apparently each of us athletes was to be assigned a buddy whose duty it would be to look after us during our stay in Rome.

  But first Mrs Jenkins gave a rundown of the itinerary. Tomorrow, Saturday, was a free day. Then we had two days before the meet started, during which time mornings were for training and afternoons were free. Under no circumstances was anybody permitted to miss a training. Doing so meant automatic disqualification from the team. If you were eliminated in the heats, or your event was finished, then you were expected to attend other events and cheer on your fellow Aussies.

  As she went on, the thought occurred to me, and I felt really dumb because it hadn’t occurred to me before: paying this instalment would totally get in the way of my running. Because that’s what instalments did – they got in the way of my running.

  And I sometimes thought that this was the ‘pound of flesh’ I was required to pay, that even if I did repay all my instalments it would be at the expense of what I loved most in my life: running.

  So why even bother trying? I asked myself. Why not just drop out now? Invent some injury or another?

  But I knew I wouldn’t do that, because that’s not what athletes do.

  Besides, I’d managed to make it this far, hadn’t I, instalments or not?

  I also knew that the free afternoons gave me the perfect opportunity to go somewhere I’d been wanting to go for a while now. Probably since I’d done that school project on my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Dominic Silvagni and learned he’d been born in San Luca.

  I’d already checked the timetable on the internet and it was completely doable. Even though Gus’s words kept coming back to me: I’m begging you: please stop digging, Dom. Because if you don’t, there’s going to be hell to pay. But the temptation was too great. If I didn’t do it while I was in Italy, then when would I do it?

  ‘Time to find out who your buddies are,’ said Mrs Jenkins.

  She read out an athlete’s name from her list and an Italian official read out the athlete’s buddy from his list.

  We all applauded and the two people met and then went off to get to know each other.

  ‘Dominic Silvagni,’ Mrs Jenkins read, and there were a few titters, I guess because my name was so Italian.

  ‘Antonio Sini,’ read out the Italian official.

  There was no movement in the Italian group.

  ‘Antonio Sini,’ read the official again.

  Eventually a boy detached himself from the group and slouched over to meet me.

  He looked about my age. He had messy black hair, but I could just tell that each strand had been artfully arranged to fall over his eyes.

  He was wearing Armani jeans and an Armani shirt and something funky around each wrist.

  It was pretty obvious, from his body language, from the snarl on his face, that Antonio Sini wasn’t here because he wanted to be here.

  We shook hands, everybody cheered, and we walked over to the dining hall where the other buddies were sitting. But Antonio Sini pretty much ignored me, not taking his eyes from his phone, a Styxx. One part of me was completely fine with this: the last thing I needed was a third wheel, somebody following me around. But another part of me was outraged at how rude he was.

  So after some more of his Styxx-gazing I said, ‘I guess you don’t speak much English.’

  He looked up at me, snarled some more, and sai
d in a very English accent, ‘Look who’s talking?’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You Australians are hardly known for the correctness of your grammar,’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘And what are you supposed to be anyway? Some sort of punk. Or is it goth?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘So you’re not even Italian?’

  ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘Who would want to come from this place?’

  If he had set out to confuse me, he’d succeeded.

  ‘Okay, I admit: I don’t get it,’ I said.

  ‘I’m half Italian,’ he said in a oh-so-bored voice, returning to the Styxx. ‘My father’s English.’

  ‘So is he the one that made you do this?’

  ‘He thought it would keep me out of trouble,’ he said.

  ‘So you’re not even into running?’ I said.

  ‘Running is infantile,’ he said.

  ‘I’m totally okay if we have nothing to do with each other. In fact, that suits me fine,’ I said.

  He looked up from the Styxx.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really, old chap,’ I said, and I got up to go.

  ‘And you won’t complain about me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I really couldn’t care less about you.’

  He actually seemed a bit put out by this.

  ‘Maybe you better give me your number just in case,’ he said.

  ‘That’s probably not necessary.’

  ‘Just in case.’

  So I gave him my number. And he rang it just to make sure he’d got it right. And then Antonio Sini and I went our separate ways. Never, I hoped, to meet again.

  After dinner, we were assigned our rooms. I was actually very excited to be sharing. Maybe it was because at home I’d always had my own room.

  When I got to the room, there was nobody there yet.

  Except for the kick-butt plasma, I don’t think it had changed that much since 1960.

  As I lay on my bed I imagined the conversations my new roomie and I were going to have.

  Me: Imagine, Herb Elliot might have slept on this bed.

  My New Roomie: Who?

  Me: Herb Elliot, winner of the Rome Olympics 1500 metres. Maybe Abebe Bikala slept here, too.

  My New Roomie: Abebe who?

  Me: Abebe Bikala – the Ethiopian who won the marathon in bare feet!

  And the clincher:

  Me: Perhaps Cassius Clay himself slept in this very room.

  My New Roomie: Who?

  Me: Cassius Clay – he won gold in the light heavyweight division.

  A blank look on the face of My New Roomie.

  Me: You might know him better as … Muhammad Ali!

  It was going to be such great fun.

  Except an hour passed and my new roomie still hadn’t turned up.

  So I watched some TV, mostly The Simpsons dubbed into Italian – by the way, d’oh is the same in both languages.

  My guts were settled by then and I figured that I’d purged every last bug in the airplane toilet.

  It also occurred to me that my little performance, the symphony in D minor in four movements, was the reason my new roomie still hadn’t turned up after two hours and was probably never going to turn up.

  So what, I told myself. Now I had the place to myself. And with an instalment to come, that had to be a very good thing.

  I turned off the TV. Turned off the lights.

  ‘Good night, Roomie,’ I said to the other empty bed.

  Good night, Dom, said Herb Elliot, Adebe Bikala and Cassius Clay. Sweet dreams.

  SATURDAY

  DEATH IN THE HYPOGEUM

  The next morning, after breakfast, I put on the Australian tracksuit and Adidas runners that Mr Ryan had scrounged up for me.

  As I was walking down the corridor I ran into Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall. And when Rome falls, the world,’ he said in that hammy way he had.

  ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You’re going to the Colosseum?’

  ‘We’re going to the Colosseum,’ he said.

  I was about to say ‘I can’t come’, but the fact was that I wanted to go to the Colosseum, to see the place where men had fought to the death.

  And I was also intrigued by Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘Are you going to the Colosseum?’ came a voice from behind us.

  I turned around – just as I’d thought, it was Seb.

  ‘Seems like it,’ I said.

  ‘Do you mind if I come too?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘I just think it would be so cool to stand exactly in the spot were Maximus stuck that blade in the neck of that total scumbag Commodus!’

  I cringed.

  Dr Chakrabarty was going to rip him apart, just like those lions ripped apart those gladiators in the film.

  ‘Quite,’ he said gently. ‘Actually, history tells us that Commodus was strangled by a wrestler by the name of Narcissus. But the sense of the film is right – he was a member of the ruling class who liked to get, as I believe you young people might say, “down and dirty”.’

  Seb smiled and said, ‘He sure did!’

  ‘Meet out the front at ten?’ said Dr Chakrabarty, and he added something in Latin, or Italian, or maybe even one of the dialects they spoke on the planet Jupiter, who knows?

  But Seb did, because he responded with an ‘I’ll be on time.’

  And straightaway I remembered the time I’d heard Seb speaking another language on the phone.

  Straightaway, a few of the other really suss things about Seb came back to me: him luring me to Preacher’s, him in the white van after the State titles.

  And what about him and Miranda, what the hell was going on there?

  We went our separate ways and then met up at ten, just as we’d arranged, to set off for the Colosseum.

  I assumed that Dr Chakrabarty, being an adult and all, would do the adult thing and take a taxi.

  Wrong! About as wrong as wrong can get.

  We caught three buses. And not only did we catch three buses, I somehow ended up paying for Dr Chakrabarty on two of them.

  On the third one I sat next to him.

  Looking out of the window he said in an excited voice, ‘The Aventine hill!’

  ‘Is that one of the seven hills of Rome?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he replied approvingly. ‘According to the Roman version of the Hercules legend, it’s where Cacus stole some of the Cattle of Geryon.’

  I must’ve been wearing the blankest of blank faces, because Mr Chakrabarty then added, ‘But surely you’re familiar with the twelve labours of Hercules?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Hera drove Hercules mad and in his madness he slayed his six sons. As a penance he served King Eurystheus, performing whatever labours the king requested.’

  I was already hooked, and it must’ve showed, because Dr Chakrabarty was now off on one of his trademark discourses.

  He told me how Hercules slayed the Nemean Lion and the nine-headed Hydra. How he captured the Golden Hind of Artemis. How he captured the Erymanthian Boar. How he cleaned the Augean Stables in a single day, slayed the Stymphalian Birds, captured the Cretan Bull, stole the Mares of Diomedes, retrieved the Girdle of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and obtained the Cattle of the monster Geryon – the ones Cacus stole.

  When Dr Chakrabarty finally stopped to blow his nose I went through the labours again in my head: slay the Nemean Lion … ‘But that’s only ten labours!’

  ‘Very good, you’ve been keeping count’ said Dr Chakrabarty, eyebrows dancing. ‘Eurystheus refused to recognise two of the labours. The cleansing of the stables because Hercules was going to accept payment. And the killing of the Hydra because Hercules’s nephew Iolaus had helped him.’

  That familiar chill danced from vertebrae to vertebrae. ‘Hercules wasn’t allowed to
accept any help?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Dr Chakrabarty.

  ‘So he had to perform two more labours?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘He had to steal the Apples of the Hesperides and he had to capture Cerberus.’

  If my backbone had been chilled before, it was snap-frozen now.

  ‘C-c-c-capture Cerberus?’ I managed to stammer.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said. ‘The most arduous of the twelve labours, one in which he had to travel into the Underground.’

  By that time we’d arrived.

  The Colosseum!

  Buses, trucks, cars, motorbikes whirling around it, horns beeping. Like it wasn’t just the centre of Rome, but the centre of the world.

  All around it were signs: The Rolling Stones Rock the Colosseum. Apparently they were going to play a gig there in a couple of nights.

  Dr Chakrabarty wasn’t happy about that.

  ‘Unconscionable,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Seb. ‘Who did that to it?’

  Okay, it didn’t look much like the Colosseum in Gladiator, but Seb probably needed to let go of that film.

  ‘The great earthquake of 1349 had something to do with it. And a lot of the stone was stripped to build other buildings in Rome,’ said Dr Chakrabarty. ‘Actually, I think we’re lucky we still have this much of it to admire.’

  We joined the queue to buy tickets, and what a queue it was.

  I mean, it probably wasn’t the longest queue ever – that was probably the queue to buy the new iPhone or something – but what it lacked in length it made up in diversity.

  There were Japanese, and Chinese and Swedish and Egyptians …

  Okay, you get the picture, there were people from all over the world.

  When we reached the ticket booth itself, there was further evidence of Dr Chakrabarty’s stingy nature. Seb and I didn’t have to pay full price because we were under eighteen, but Dr Chakrabarty was determined not to pay full whack either. He had a very long discussion with the ticket seller in Italian until finally they agreed on some sort of fair price.

  Dr Chakrabarty handed over the moolah and we were in.