If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead

by Andrew Nicoll

  I looked at Max, and he nodded as if to say, “I think he’s right.”

  “Then let’s hurry,” I said.

  We formed up again, Max in front this time with the two giant money boxes streaming out behind him, like the tip of an arrow, and me and the Professor trailing behind, but it wasn’t working. I could keep up pretty well, even with my busted ribs. When my share of the crate got too heavy or the rope handle started to burn my hand I could swap it over, but the Professor was laboring. He struggled along, holding his rope with both hands like a man trying to lift himself up in a bucket and with about as much success. He was breathing hot and hard and walking just that little bit slower than Max and me, dragging us both back as Max struggled to drag him forward, the way mothers do with their dawdling kids.

  “Why don’t I take your rifle?” I said.

  “I can manage. I can manage.”

  “You can’t manage. Let me help or none of us is going to get out of here. The longer that you waste discussing it, the worse it’s going to get.”

  Max stopped walking and, grudgingly, the Professor put down his end of the crate. I helped him unshoulder his rifle.

  “Do you want me to take that?” Max said. “You don’t look too good.”

  “I’m fine. You’ve got enough to carry.”

  I swung the Professor’s rifle across my chest, asked him if he was ready to go and we were just about to set off again when, from someplace out of the darkness behind us, we heard that unmistakable constipated, bellowing roar, that soft slippered galloping drumbeat, and the very next moment the camel came running up.

  He was nearly crazy with happiness at finding Max again and he showed his delight in the usual hot, streaming fashion, but we stepped carefully round that and, while Max held him by the head and made reassuring noises of affectionate welcome, the Professor and I roped the cash boxes together and threw them over the camel’s back.

  “He’s been looking for us,” said Max. “Bloody good camel this one.”

  “The best. A prince amongst camels. But can we save the congratulations for later? Let’s get a move on.”

  From a slow stagger, we were making our way at a respectable trot. The cash boxes bounced and swung at every stride, the Professor and I clung on, pretending to hold them in place but letting ourselves be carried along as we went, and the camel ran like a carriage horse, determined that he would never again be parted from the man he loved.

  We reached the bottom of the hill and the shore. We turned left, three streets to the left, and the camel strode along, eating up the distance to the harbor, grunting as he went, and then, up ahead, we could see the masts of Varga’s yacht, standing out like black branches against the pewter sky, sinking on the falling tide, and we ran on and we ran on and we reached the harbor. It was there, just across the street, moonlight glinting on the dimpled water and all our friends could see us and they saw the camel and they laughed and cheered and then the shooting started.

  Believe me, the noise of being shot at is every bit as distressing as the noise of shooting somebody else. The fear is just as strong, the bangs are just as loud, but when you are being shot at there’s all the added fun of red-hot ricochets pinging around the place, the flat thud of bullets driving themselves into the mud at your feet, the ripping, spitting sound when they hit the water. You know this stuff, friend. You’ve lived through the raids. An air raid is not much different from being shot at, but being shot at is a little more personal. In an air raid a young boy far away presses a switch and bombs fall on you, and he doesn’t really care if they land on you or on somebody else. When somebody is shooting at you, you know he has taken the trouble to put a bullet in his gun and look hard at you through that tiny nick in his gunsight and wonder what it would be like to see your head burst like a melon.

  Luckily none of Varga’s sailors were much good at it or it was too dark to see us or they had no real wish to see heads bursting. The first volley missed us completely. It was enough to spook the camel and send him waltzing sideways down the quayside away from the noise, but it didn’t do us any harm. I turned and saw the flash of the second volley, angry yellow orchids suddenly blooming in the gap between the houses.

  Max said, “Run, mate. Run!” And I would’ve done. I was ready to run, but the Professor stumbled and fell and went down on the other side of the camel and his feet tangled with my feet and we fell together in a heap.

  I waved Max on. “Go, get the camel on board. I’ll bring Alberto,” but when I went to pick him up he swore bitterly at me through gritted teeth.

  “I’m hit.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  “No. For the love of God, my watch chain is the only thing holding my guts in.”

  I went to pick him up. I could have picked him up. I was strong, but when I touched him he squealed like the martinmas pig when they haul him up to have his throat cut. He writhed away from me, but his hands were clawing at my chest. There was a hellish smell.

  “Give me the guns,” he said. The bullets were pinging into the quayside all around us. “Give me the guns,” he said. “Give me the guns.”

  “Sarah will never forgive me.”

  “Tell her I died. Soon it will be true.” He screamed again as he rolled on to his belly. “Go.” I think he may have been crying with the pain of it or maybe because of the parting, but as he lay there, writhing about in the dirt, he squeezed off a shot. They saw it, the flash of it, just as we had seen theirs, and by God it got their attention. They stopped shooting at us and went to look for something to hide behind.

  The Professor fired into the darkness again and I fired so they could see there were two of us.

  “Well done, son,” he whispered. “Look after her.” He fired again. “And say Kaddish for me.”

  I left him there and ran the length of the quayside. The yacht was moving. Only the very last of the stern was still under the quay and Sarah was there, hanging over the rail, pale as a phantom in that dress, her hair whipping about like a flag in the wind and screaming as I jumped.

  All I remember is Sarah screaming as the sails filled like great pale wings above us. Sarah screaming until the gunfire stopped.

  There is only one more thing to tell you. When dawn came we were halfway to Venice and Sarah had cried herself to sleep in my arms. I was sitting in the stern with a blanket round my shoulders against the chill of the mist, my feet resting on a wooden box with half a million leks in it as Max steered the ship.

  Arbuthnot came and sat down beside us. He had a fat cigar clenched in his back teeth and he handed one to me and another to Max and lit them from a screw of crumpled paper which he flapped about and threw over the side. “Genuine leks, you know.”

  “That was lavish,” I said. “I hope they came from your share.”

  “Oh, every one of them, Your Majesty. I opened a box earlier. And I may light several more cigars before we get to Italy. Here. Help yourself.” Arbuthnot reached into his coat pocket and produced a wad of notes. “Take a look.”

  I plucked one from the top of the heap. Arbuthnot held the rest of them up to the wind and watched them fly away without a thought. I began to see why. The paper I was holding in my hand had come from a school jotter. It was thick and pulpy and it had a faint pattern of blue lines across it with writing that looked as if it had been stamped out with a cut potato.

  “They are all like that. Homemade is the very kindest thing you could say about them. I should think the crates are worth more than the money they contain.”

  “It’s money if we all agree it is.”

  “But the Italians may take a different view.” He used the wet end of his cigar to point at an empty oval of white paper in the middle of the printing with a few words underneath. “The King of the Albanians—that’s what that says. I think they were waiting to draw your picture in later.”

  As I sat there holding it, the mist soaked the paper and the colors started to run. I crumpled it up and threw it over my shoulder.<
br />
  But I see that morning has come and somehow I am still not dead and that isn’t much of an ending for a story like this. I’m going to tear this up and start again. I’ll try to think of something better when I’ve had a bit of a sleep.

  The German Prince Wilhelm of Wied arrived to claim the throne of Albania in April 1914. He left again in September, uncrowned.

  Ismail Kemali escaped Albania and spent the First World War in Paris, where he died in 1919.

  Mrs. Margaretha MacLeod, known to the world as Mata Hari, faced a French firing squad in Vincennes in 1917, accused of spying for Germany.

  Captain Sandy Arbuthnot served with distinction in the Great War, where he was promoted to Colonel of the Tweeddale Yeomanry. With the death of his elder brother, he inherited the title of Lord Clanroyden and, following a career in the diplomatic service, he retired to the family estates outside Ettrick, in the Scottish Borders.

  Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli became Prime Minister of Albania in 1922, President of Albania in 1925 and declared himself King Zog in 1928. He was crowned in a lavish ceremony where he wore a costume of rose-pink silk of his own design. Like Kemali, King Zog insisted that he had never heard of Otto Witte. His first act as king was to establish the Order of Skanderbeg.

  After a lifetime of enjoyment, Otto Witte, acrobat, crowned King of Albania and self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Adventurer, died from cirrhosis of the liver in a Hamburg home for the elderly at the age of eighty-seven. He told a different version of this story.

  About the Author

  After a brief stint as a lumberjack, Andrew Nicoll has spent his working life as a journalist. He has had short stories published in New Writing Scotland and other magazines. His first novel, The Good Mayor, won the Saltire First Book Award and has been translated into twenty languages. He is married with three children.