“I shouldn’t think so. The holes were pretty small, and the guy who made up the charges knew what he was doing. The residue would be hard to see.”
“He could smell it though.”
“Not over the stench of the sea. Robyn said they bought the story. Even agreed to let us cast the new counterweights right here to save time. I’m surprised they didn’t phone back and ask why we’d arrived with this lousy piece of machinery though.”
“I had three hours,” complained Fat-Boy, and his eyes narrowed as he spotted an opportunity to fight back. “You and sex bomb not doing the dirty anymore?”
“None of your business.”
“The colonel said to me I wasn’t to mention it, so I knew right away.”
“We could wedge a brick onto the accelerator and I could roll you along the quay. We’d have time for that cigarette.”
“I knew you’d be trouble. I said that to colonel the first time he told me about you, and the little job you had going. I said to him: that war hero of yours, colonel, he is going to bring us nothing but trouble. I said that to him, and I was right. We were happier when it was just the three of us.”
“But you weren’t earning sixty thousand dollars a week.”
“The price of gold can go down as well as up,” said Fat-Boy.
We rolled forward in silence a few metres.
“Have we done enough frames?” I asked. “It looks like there were more counterweights than the number of frames we rigged.”
“I thought you two were like destined to be together or some shit. You and sex bomb Robs. What happened to all that? Sex bomb see the light?”
The crane operator tired of kicking at the concrete and walked over to the frames we had laid out and tried kicking them instead.
“You’re all wrong for her anyways,” said Fat-Boy. “You damaged war heroes are full of shit. All your post-traumatic stress. You can’t give her what she needs, and she knows it.”
The crane operator found that kicking the wooden frames wasn’t any more entertaining, and he called out to us as we entered the last fifty metres.
“Why you guys do this here?”
“New approach,” Fat-Boy called back. We had already established that the crane operator responded better to communication from Fat-Boy than me. The crane operator was also a large black man. He had huge nostrils and a shaved head, but unlike Fat-Boy, he had enough muscles to make you think the crane was an unnecessary accessory.
“You could have just brought the new ones in on a truck,” said the operator.
Fat-Boy shook his head to show how little the operator understood about crane maintenance, although at thirty-five metres the subtlety of the head shake was probably lost on the operator.
“Better this way,” called Fat-Boy. “We cast the concrete right here and load it up without waiting the full seven days.”
The operator turned back to the frame nearest him and gave it another kick.
“Boat coming in tonight,” he called and kicked the frame again.
“Why don’t you suggest he stop doing that?” I said to Fat-Boy.
“Stop with the kicking,” called Fat-Boy.
“You said it was quick setting,” complained the operator.
“Quicker than the other type,” called Fat-Boy.
“But it’s full of bubbles. You guys know what you doing?”
“We know what we’re doing,” said Fat-Boy confidently as we entered the last twenty metres.
“It’s like bubbly jelly. Won’t be dry by tonight,” said the operator.
“Not by tonight,” said Fat-Boy. “Tomorrow morning. That’s what the boss lady said. They’re parking the boat a bit further up tonight, so you’ve got the other cranes to offload. It’s all arranged. That’s what the boss lady said. And what she says is what goes. Ask my buddy here, he knows all about doing what the boss lady wants – she’s a bit of a sex bomb.” Fat-Boy gave me a final glare through his droopy eye and climbed out of the forklift.
“Big ship coming in tonight?” I asked as the operator lit up another of my cigarettes. Fat-Boy and I bounced a cigarette between us to encourage the sense of camaraderie. The operator shrugged and blew smoke through his nostrils.
“Gonna be a long night,” he said.
“For all of us,” I agreed.
The pilot ship went out just as the sun melted into the horizon and it left a curved golden feather behind, which faded gradually as if it was sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The clouds crowded down upon us and squeezed the last of the day’s warmth off the quay, which made Fat-Boy shiver. He pulled his overalls tighter. I gave the concrete mix in each of the twelve frames another casual poke to make sure it wasn’t setting too fast because we needed to set our gold bars into it when they arrived. Fat-Boy came over to tell me he could feel the tingling in his fingers, which meant that our gold was approaching.
“Or it might just mean that the blood is flowing into them again after sitting on them for so long,” I suggested.
“They were cold,” he said, “and it was your idea to sit on them.”
“I might have underestimated the weight that was applied, and the length of time the blood would be cut off.”
Fat-Boy looked at his hands and flapped them like they were rubber gloves.
“Nope,” he said. “It’s my little soldiers floating on in here. I can feel it. And don’t think I didn’t notice what you said about my weight. I’ve come across enough of you people in my life. I’ve got a radar that detects your words before you say them.”
“All my words?” I asked, and dipped the stick into the next frame, “or just the words about your size?”
“There is nothing wrong with my size,” said Fat-Boy.
“I didn’t say there was. I said I underestimated it.”
Fat-Boy grunted and turned back out to sea.
“How long’s it going to take d’you think?” he asked.
“The pilot gets on board our boat and will have it at the dock in about an hour. Half an hour for tying it up and positioning the cranes, then it’s two crates every minute for each crane.”
“Two thousand crates,” said Fat-Boy, “six crates a minute. Five hours and thirty-three minutes to offload.”
“But the trucks won’t keep up. You heard what that operator said. They’re looking at seven hours for the full offload.”
“And we don’t know where ours will be,” said Fat-Boy as if this was a new objection that he was raising, although he had said it at least four times in the course of the afternoon.
“We don’t,” I confirmed.
“What time d’you think that big Afrikaner boy will turn up?” he asked.
“Whatever time he turns up, we stick to the plan,” I said. “It’s a good plan.”
“You think so?”
“I do. We get the gold out while they’re still offloading. Before the customs inspections, before they allow the public in. Even if Hendrik turns up early, they won’t let him in. By the time he gets through the fence it will be weapons and lions only in those boxes.”
“What if the Afrikaner bribes his way in early?”
“That’s why the colonel and Robyn are in the warehouse. They’ll divert them, and we’ll just have to move quicker.”
“Hmmph,” said Fat-Boy, and he glowered at the fading light.
“When it’s all over,” I said, “what are you going to do with your little yellow soldiers?”
“I’m gonna find myself a beach, a couple of curvy babes with big asses, a skinny bitch for contrast, and I’m gonna kick sand in your face,” he said.
“Just my face? Or will you be sharing the sand around?”
“I’m like an elephant. I remember everyone.”
“I thought you liked being called Fat-Boy,” I said. “I could call you Stanley if you’d prefer.”
“Only my friends call me Stanley,” said Fat-Boy.
It took only twenty minutes for the first twinkling lights to appear in the s
trip of murky horizon visible from our quay. Fat-Boy rubbed his hands together for warmth and told me they were still tingling. The lights slowly split apart to form a cluster of fireflies, and then they rose above the horizon as the size of the vast ship became apparent. The quay came to life as a line of heavy flatbed trucks rolled into place, their headlights casting golden arcs over the water as if they were trying to show the way. The cranes started trundling along their rails, ushered into position by helmeted men with radios held to the side of their heads.
“Told you guys,” called the deep bass voice of the crane operator. “You got it wrong, didn’t you? That jelly shit isn’t gonna dry.” He was dressed for work, wearing the obligatory helmet, and was accompanied by two other operators. They considered our array of frames with disdain.
“Full of bubbles,” the operator explained to his colleagues.
“Gotta get the bubbles out,” insisted the one in a yellow helmet.
“They gotta be heavy,” said the red helmet. “Bubbles won’t make it heavy.”
“They’ll be well heavy enough,” said Fat-Boy. “We’re bringing the metal weights in now. Got some heavy metal coming in to set into the concrete.” He indicated the forklift he was sitting in to show how this would be achieved.
The operators looked unimpressed, but they moved on to their cranes. The Marie Antoinette was now only a hundred metres from the edge of the quay and closing fast. The activity on the ground was building to a state of frenetic panic. Fat-Boy and I watched as the ship floated smoothly towards us, the hundreds of lights making it look like a floating city block. Crew members were moving along the decks and preparing their ropes, standing beside the cotton reel shaped winches.
“It’s not going to stop,” said Fat-Boy, and indeed the alarming way in which the ship was looming above us made it look as if the pilot had misjudged. But the propellers started churning up the water, and the approach slowed. A man threw a thin rope onto the quay where it was caught casually by a dockworker, who pulled it quickly and hauled up the attached heavy loop of rope as thick as the crane operator’s arm which was being rolled out from a mechanical winch on deck. Two more dockworkers joined the man in lifting the loop over a bollard on the quay’s edge, and the winch operator slowed the release of the rope. It tightened, and the crew moved on to repeat the process further down.
“Looks like our ship has sailed into harbour,” said Fat-Boy. “Our little soldiers have arrived.”
“We’d better get back to the warehouse,” I said. “At the speed this thing travels we’ll need the head start.”
Our crate was placed in the seventh position in row H. It was unloaded about halfway through the full load, and by then the warehouse had been converted from an echoing slab of concrete into a miniature city of stacked boxes with neat alleyways and officious men in helmets and clipboards showing the flat-bed trucks where to offload, while complaining into their radios that the boxes didn’t fit into the spaces they were meant to. Fat-Boy and I had been trundling up and down the alleys in our forklift as if we were engaged in some important work, and keeping out of sight of the operations staff. We hadn’t even spotted Chandler or Robyn who were masquerading as customs inspectors, which bothered me. Fat-Boy confirmed the stencilled manifest numbers, although the custom crate with the stickers declaring its live animal content was easy enough to identify. We waited until the next couple of positions were filled to provide us with some cover. As soon as the truck that had positioned a crate in the ninth position had turned, beeped, and left us in a cloud of exhaust fumes, we set to work.
Row H was a neat line of flat-bed trailers, uncoupled from their engine cabs but pointing towards the immense sliding doors as if they were lined up for the start of a race. The doors were closed now, but Fat-Boy and I approached from the far side because we didn’t want to be exposed to whoever might be on the other side of the doors when they opened.
Fat-Boy used the crowbar to rip open the structural beams, and we pulled the panel clear to reveal the narrow boxes hidden there. Fat-Boy’s lazy eye jumped slightly, and I was tempted to shout out loud with relief, but this was when we had to move fast. We would have only a few minutes to extract the two cases with the gold. We undid the latches that looked as if they held the sides of the crate onto the beams, but which actually ensured that our gold hadn’t slipped free en route. I could hear the gruff snuffling breath of a lion as it sniffed at us, and I pulled back instinctively. Fat-Boy’s eyes widened, but then he stuck his tongue between his teeth and chewed on it as he manoeuvred the forklift around to get the prongs under the first of our cases. It looked tiny compared to the scale of the other crates and containers that were filling the warehouse, and I worried again that it would be too obvious. It was very clearly a custom-built box.
Fat-Boy had the first baby box out in the open corridor and was getting the prongs of the forklift under the second when a voice called out over the echoing cacophony of the warehouse.
“No, you don’t,” called the voice. “Oh no, you don’t.”
I kept my head down but moved my eyes to look up at the man striding down the alley towards us, just in case he was someone who might recognise me. He wasn’t. Four and a half feet, excessively muscled, pockmarked skin and chewing gum so that his jaw muscles bulged rhythmically. He had a clipboard in his hand, which he was waving at me as if trying to flag down a moving vehicle. There was no danger of him recognising me, but a chill passed down my spine as I saw a cluster of men in the distance. They were dressed in khaki uniforms like overgrown boy scouts. An assortment of weapons were slung over their shoulders as if they were about to go on a hunting trip. In the centre of the group I made out the blond hair of Hendrik van Rensburg, radiating a sense of entitlement mingled with anger. The White Africans were a hundred metres away, and they might struggle to see past my helmet and overalls, but the combination of a pale-faced dockworker with a larger than average black man unloading unusually shaped boxes would cause problems. Where were Chandler and Robyn? Why hadn’t they blocked them?
“Don’t turn around,” I called out to Fat-Boy, and his eyes rolled towards me and showed their whites.
“There a problem?” I said to the clipboard waver, keeping him between me and the White Africans.
“Yes, there’s a problem,” said the man with the clipboard. “You cannot be dropping your shit all over the path like this. Who said you could start doing this?”
“It’s urgent,” I said.
“Everything is urgent. Load it up and clear it out. No blocking of the path like this.”
“Too heavy for one load,” I said.
“Bullshit. That’s a three thousand pound cabbie you got, those little boxes of yours won’t get near it. Load them up and get out of here.”
The man bit down on his gum and bulged his jaw muscles at me. “What you got in them? Lead piping?”
I shrugged. Fat-Boy had the second box clear and our forklift was making a loud beeping noise as it reversed away from the crate. Two workers appeared from a side aisle, one of them brandishing rolls of thick canvas straps.
“This one, boss?” he asked clipboard man, who held up his clipboard to check the manifest number, then nodded and pointed. Then his forehead crinkled into a frown and he looked from the crate to our boxes and back again. A sluggish thought process was connecting us to the crate he’d been bribed to fast-track.
“What you guys doing?” he asked.
“This is not part of their consignment,” I said. “The truck is moving out early. Those men gave us a little something to get it ready to go.” I indicated the White Africans with a nod of my head and gave a conspiratorial smile. His jaw muscles bulged as he considered my story. The man with the straps threw one over the crate and started fastening the end. The other man caught the strap on the far side and looped it through a metal hook on the edge of the flat-bed. The crate was small for the base and they would have to make sure it didn’t slide about when it drove off.
“Hey buddy,” clipboard man called out to Fat-Boy, but Fat-Boy continued as if he hadn’t heard him and manoeuvred the forklift into position to lower the second box.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, and tapped the side of my head to suggest Fat-Boy’s limited mental capacity. “We’ll get out of your way. Those guys don’t want you slowing them down.”
“You do that,” said the man with a nod. “And fast. They’re in a mighty big rush.” He gave a gloating smile to reveal just how mighty was their rush.
As if on cue, a black rectangle of night sprang up beyond the crate of lions, and stretched wider as the doors opened.
Fat-Boy was sitting in the forklift like a sulking boy with his back to the adults. He had stacked the two boxes on top of each other and was staring at them, his lazy eye wider than usual from the mounting anxiety. I climbed in beside him.
“Pick them both up,” I said.
“It’s double the max load,” said Fat-Boy.
“It’s either that or we leave half of it behind for the Afrikaner.”
Fat-Boy inserted the prongs beneath the lower box and lifted them a few inches off the ground. The motor whined, made slapping noises and cut out. The boxes of gold sagged a little, but they stayed off the ground. Fat-Boy started the motor again and applied full acceleration. We crept down the aisle with our overloaded truck towards the outer perimeter where signs indicated that the area should be kept clear at all times as an emergency exit. We crawled forwards on the way to our own emergency exit.
I glanced back as we reached the end of the corridor. The White Africans had reached their truck and were swarming about it. I noticed one of them holding up a strip of wood and remonstrating with the clipboard man.
“We didn’t replace the panel,” I said as a tower of crates slowly drew a curtain across the drama as we turned onto the perimeter track.
Fat-Boy mumbled something under his breath. His eyes were staring and wide. Panic was overpowering his reason. I could feel the adrenalin pump through me as well, and it took all my willpower not to jump out of the forklift and run for cover. The two of us sat in that yellow machine like village fools with targets painted on our backs as we rolled slowly along the perimeter towards the exit doors. The warehouse was full of noise which echoed from the hard metal walls, but I thought I could hear voices raised in angry surprise behind us, and pressed my right foot onto the floor of the forklift as if I could speed up our progress.
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