by Joe Lane
Hamer caught my attention. He was scratching around like a rampant rat in his search for the gold. It was embarrassing to watch. The poor sod actually believed my story of hidden gold. I only wished I did because my overall assessment of how the church was constructed didn’t inspire me with confidence. But why should McCracken refer to this particular church in his journals; a clear indication in his writings of concealment. I could hardly imagine there would be hidden passages in the church walls; they just weren’t thick enough. The floor beneath my feet revealed no hollowness. But I kept going back to the masonry and engineering skills of McCracken. What he’d created in the cavern below Dun an Oir was outstandingly real and something of such a great magnitude could have quite easily been created here in the church. Where does one start looking?
Hamer was beginning to annoy me with all his banging and clattering and stomping of his feet. I called over to him, “For a man of your brutish calibre and limited intelligence throwing things around in a tantrum won’t solve a thing. And on the subject of vandalism, there are other alternatives to gaining entry instead of kicking the door in. I thought you could pick locks effortlessly?”
Hamer ignored my remarks. His expression indicated that he could smell the gold better than I could. He upturned anything that would move, fingered objects, and circled the Alter twice.
“Where the fuck is it, Speed?” Hamer’s voice bellowed.
I shook my head. I thought Hamer had brains. It seems I was wrong. I said, “It isn’t likely to be sitting on a pew waiting for an impatient bastard like you Hamer.”
Hamer flew at me; his teeth clenched and rammed his gun under my chin.
“You’re getting right up my fucking nose with your smart remarks.”
I expressed surprise purposely. “Only up you nose? I want to fuck up your head!”
Morgan broke in, “I hope you haven’t brought us here hoping to change our ways because I hate religion.”
“I’m working on its location,” I said, trying to remember the exact writings in McCracken’s journals as I talked. “The clues point to this church and I can’t think with Hamer rampaging around disturbing my concentration.”
Morgan gestured with a wave of his hand. “Get on with it, Speed.”
I recited the words of McCracken inside my head: beyond the line of light; when the sun rises and illuminates the Virgin Mary; through her eyes she will foretell my domain of madness.
I disregarded the words ‘domain of madness’, as being his hiding place. I concentrated on the line: when the sun illuminates the Virgin Mary; through her eyes…the sun was the key factor here…through the eyes of the Virgin Mary, I repeated over and over...through the eyes of the Virgin Mary…
I scanned every corner, niche, alcove of the entire church hoping to spot that one vital piece of inspiration that would lead me to what McCracken referred to in his journal. I saw a plaster cast statue of the Virgin Mary near the Altar, crossed over to where she stood. Without touching the figurine I studied the brightly painted figure for a few moments, intrigued by the two foot high beautifully crafted sculpture. She looked radiant and proud holding the baby Jesus. I began circling the statue, not really knowing what I was looking for.
‘Through her eyes she will foretell’, I mumbled to myself. What the frigging hell did McCracken mean?
And then it dawned on me that the statue I was looking over probably never existed in 1944 and could even have been placed there only a week ago. I guess I was clutching at straws but it probably bordered more of desperation, and I’d have taken anything to satisfy Morgan’s itchy trigger finger. I still had to convince him I was onto something, if only to waste time.
I pretended to examine the statue from different angles. I pressed and poked different parts of the sculpture, lifting the statue to look underneath, and all the time I was thinking about McCracken’s words and glancing around the church hoping for the emergence of a magical button to press.
Despairingly I glanced at Morgan. He was more than suspicious of my antics and I probably came across to him as being a pathetic crackpot on a nowhere chase. He’d have been right.
“You’d better not be stalling, Speed,” Morgan said in a bored tone. “I’d hate to disfigure the beautiful Shayna’s face with a bullet.”
Morgan wasn’t bluffing. He’d already proven his callous approach when he shot Deveron, and the way he held Shayna around her neck with the gun pressed to her cheek only confirmed he meant business.
I broke away from his stare and continued my search, but while I looked, I was also checking for an alternative escape route, quickly devising a contingency plan for when everything went sour. The main entrance seemed the only logical means of escape but Morgan had left two armed guards blocking the way, as if he was reading my mind. In all probability it would be suicidal to try and barge my way through the guards, mainly because I would be shot down before I got within ten feet of them. I considered the windows for escape but they were even too high for a high-jumper to create the momentum required to break through the glass windows successfully.
I concentrated on the task in hand even though McCracken’s madness had me stressed. Again I put his words through the grinder…the Virgin Mary illuminated by the sun. Why was it so prominent in his writings? It was frigging hard to think when you’re put under pressure, and it didn’t help having the probing stares from Morgan and Hamer burning a hole in the back of my head.
I thought long and hard. A virgin-I mumbled to myself-someone who’s never experienced sexual penetration. A virgin would be childless. Mary would be childless in image; is that what McCracken was referring to.
‘Through the eyes of the Virgin Mary, She will foretell’.
And then the answer slapped me in the face. I looked towards the stained glass window to the side of me. In the centre pane, in magnificent colour, clearly depicted an image of who I visualized to be the Virgin Mary. What had brought it to my attention was the image was suddenly highlighted by a burst of sunshine illumin ating the glass and spreading a colourful enchantment around the church walls. It wasn’t the whole image that made me take notice but the pieces of green glass that formed her eyes, like two large emeralds, and from them, the prismatic image of colour striking down two faint lines of green light that came together when hitting a particular point on the church floor in front of the Alter.
I shifted across quickly to where the rays of green hit the floor and went down on one knee and slid my fingers over the stone flags in the area where the light concentrated. My forefinger located an indentation; it was a hole clogged with dirt. I poked the hole in an attempt to clear out the dirt and then I blew out the remaining dust. I saw what looked like the top of a rusty steel stud. It seemed natural to press which I did but nothing happened.
I turned to anybody who was listening. “I need some sort of probing tool; something thin and strong.”
Puzzled faces surrounded me.
“Now would be a good time; a screwdriver or something.”
There was hesitancy from everybody. Morgan and Hamer were around me now, using shayna as a shield in case I was bluffing and was about to try something drastic. They realized I wasn’t and Hamer collared the guard who was carrying a tool utility belt around his waist, obviously the same set of tools that had broken into the church.
Hamer handed me a long bladed screwdriver. I placed the tip down the hole and pushed. Still nothing happened. I twisted the screwdriver thinking there might be a slot to turn the stud. Still nothing moved. I’d only one other option; the brutal way.
“Pass me a hammer,” I cried out. One was put in my hand followed by a crescendo of automatic weapons having their firing pins engaged in readiness for my hammer attack. I looked at the pathetic fools, shook my head in disbelief and turned to the job in hand. I hit the top of the screwdriver with the hammer.
The first blow did nothing.
I struck again; thought I heard a noise; a scraping sound and then up popped a sectio
n of stone floor, approximately three feet square, and at a slight angle leaving a gap wide enough to get my fingers under. I slid the screwdriver between the gaps, as a precautionary measure, just in case it snapped shut again, and heaved the stone up so it stood on its end. The section of floor had been supported by an iron frame and was on a spring hinge. I stared down into a black hole.
Bodies slowly converged around me apprehensively, as if they were expecting some ghoulish fiend to suddenly spring out and scare the shit out of them. I took the initiative and popped my head down into the dark hole. I expected the smell of dampness but was surprised to smell what I thought was the smell of a bitumen.
“Someone pass me a torch?” I asked, excitedly when I shouldn’t have been.
A torch was quickly put into the palm of my hand, and my eyes followed the beam of light as it hit a dusty cobwebbed wooden stairway.
Morgan said, “Do the honours Speed and get down there.”
“How considerate you are,” I said with hesitancy. “I mean anything could be lurking in the darkness waiting for an unsuspecting victim like me.”
“Stop whimpering, Speed, you’re expendable!”
“Thanks, you ungrateful bastard,” I said, and for my insolence, a guard shoved the nozzle of his machine pistol into the back of my head to encourage me down the stairway.
My first step was a tentative one, a feeler, half expecting the steps to be rotten and to collapse under my weight. I was wrong. Each step was solid, not even a suspect creak. I confidently went down into a deep cellar.
At the bottom, as I reached out to steady myself, I unwittingly disturbed a settling of thick dust which clouded the atmosphere, causing me to cough and splutter.
I received no sympathy whatsoever.
“Not dying on us, are you, Speed?” Hamer shouted down.
“Why don’t you get your frigging fat hairy arse down here to find out?”
The rest of the entourage followed. Heavy clunking as boots clamoured down, torch beams bouncing off the walls. Some scared idiot let out a screech when my torch beam illuminated the two skeletal frames sparsely covered with the remnants of large deteriorating overcoats commonly worn in the forties. Each skull had a hole in the middle of the forehead.
“Friends of yours, Speed?” Hamer asked derisively.
“German spies actually” I said. “Let me introduce Harrington and Lodge, collaborators with IRA sym pathizers and murdered by Jimmy McCracken so he could mastermind the greatest hijack in all seafaring history. To be fair, you could argue that McCracken was solely responsible for preventing the Germans from continuing the war when he looted the I-52. Not that he will be receiving thanks for his contribution.”
“Do I look as if I care a fucking toss for history lessons?” Hamer jabbed me in the back. “Get moving!”
“You should do,” I said as I moved on. “Or else you wouldn’t find yourself down this hole shuffling up to my backside.”
Again Hamer jabbed me forward.
I moved the torch beam around in various directions and since nobody had bothered to clean up for sixty years it wasn’t surprising we had to run the gauntlet of the inevitable dusty cobwebs and listen to the varied splutters from unsuspecting recipients as they walked into one.
Someone let out a loud whistle of surprise when they came across shelves upon shelves of assorted armaments. I estimated there was enough to supply a rampaging army and I had no doubts that this was the IRA rebuilding for the renewed conflicts with British troops that would occur after the war, as history proved. Now they were useless relics, defunct for use, scrap value and not worth me attempting to slip one of the smaller weapons into my pocket for protection.
“Welcome to McCracken’s treasure trove,” I said to anybody who was listening.
Hamer definitely didn’t hear me. He’d scampered off around the cellar like a man possessed, pulling off tarpaulins and creating more expanding dust clouds. I stood back until he exhausted himself.
At least Morgan heard me, as he flicked the defunct weapons with the nozzle of his handgun. “It’s a pile of shit that belongs in a museum, Speed. The gold seems to be missing or is it just in your imagination?”
“I found McCracken’s bank. It’s your treasure hunt, not mine.”
Morgan ordered a guard to keep a watchful eye on me and Shayna before moving on to direct the searchers. Inside three minutes of frantic disruption someone shouted.
“There’s a padlocked wooden door over here!”
There was a mad rush towards the beckoning voice, including me, though mine was an involuntary momentum as I got swept up with the euphoria. I was shoved along by the guards who were obviously scared of missing the occasion. It included me. I’d come this far and I felt I at least deserved to smell and see the success if not feel the prize.
I watched in anticipation as a hefty brute of a man began sledging the large rusty padlock that secured the door. Even though he had bulging muscles it took him a lot of effort but the padlock finally gave with a crack.
It took three men to physically prise open the seized foot thick oak door, it’s creaking and groaning iron hinges refusing to give up its secrets. When the door was sufficiently wide enough, Hamer barged his way to the front and shone a torch into the blackness.
“The rooms full of wooden boxes!” Hamer blurted, and then hurried a guard to go inside to retrieve one for inspection.
Moments later the guard re-emerged carrying an oblong box with Japanese symbols stamped on the top and sides. By the way he carried and placed the wooden box to the floor, it appeared heavy.
Hamer took hold of a steel crowbar and smashed the box apart. Torch beams illuminated the contents, the colour of gold reflecting back off the collection of ingots and into our faces. I think we were all mesmerized by what we saw. The ingots matched the one I’d found in the cavern under Dun an Oir. It meant my job was done, but it wasn’t over. I now feared for my life. I feared for Shayna’s life too, and I wondered what Morgan had planned for us.
Without a shadow of doubt we were at the mercy of a cool customer in Morgan. Hamer was the opposite; a hothead, controlled by Morgan pulling on his restraints. The combination of the two obviously worked in the gunrunning business, notably under the cover of The Ministry. They were clever tactics by clever people. And afterwards, they simply sweep the enemy under the carpet like dust. I could see it in Morgan’s eyes that he was in the cleaning mood again and we were next on his list of chores. Morgan wasn’t going to let us go freely, not unless we were in a coffin and quite dead. We were witnesses to the crimes he had committed. He would never trust us to keep our mouths shut no matter how much hush money he offered.
Hamer stooped down and scooped a handful of gold and let the ingots drop back into the box. Speechless men listened to the metallic tinkling as the ingots piled. Wide eyes gloated on the wealth before them. Neither mine, nor Shayna’s gloated because we were on the same wavelength and understood that this was probably the moment when our lives were at terrible risk. The look we gave each other told the same story. We obviously had the same intentions to run the moment the opportunity arrived.
“Right, men,” Morgan bellowed. “Get the rest of the boxes. I want an inventory of the amount collected. Anyone found filling their pockets before the count will have their hands chopped off. The quicker you work the quicker we get back to the ship.” To me, he said: “Medical supplies, Speed, doesn’t seem to be available, perhaps your information was invalid?”
I expressed my surprise. “There’s nothing at all there with those boxes? Maybe the supplies are stored back there on the shelving. I’ll go and have a look.”
Morgan shook his head disbelievingly. “Why do I get these notions running around inside my head that you’re a liar?”
“I was right about the gold.”
“That’s true, Speed. Please correct me if I’m perhaps being a little over ambitious with my assumption, only I haven’t seen anything that even resembles a medica
l box on those shelves.”
I shrugged. “I can’t always be right!”
It was the narrowing of Morgan’s left eye that alerted me. It was that defining moment when I knew Shayna and I had no more than two minutes to live. The mere flick of his head to one of the guards indicated to me that Morgan had decided that this cellar was going to be our burial chamber. I never gave Morgan the chance to give the final order to his man. With lightening reactions I twisted, grabbed the guard and threw him into everybody else close enough to cause a human pile up. I grabbed Shayna by the arm and dragged her to the stairway and bolted up the steps, my shins catching two of the steps on the occasions I stumbled on the way up. Instantly a crescendo of bullets followed our stride in perfectly formed lines either side, splintering parts of the stairs, us as we clamoured to the top.
Over the gunfire I heard Morgan scream out to his men. “Stop shooting you idiots! There are unstable high explosives all around us. Do you want to blow us to smithereens? Get after them!”
I didn’t hang about. I pulled Shayna out of the hole and we ran for the exit. A guard emerged from outside, raising his machine pistol. I was onto him before he had the chance to cause me damage and I bundled him to the floor with a good shoulder charge. We were out into the open now, running for our lives. We ran as fast as we could, down the hill towards the quay, trying to keep our feet because the terrain was uneven and rough. We weren’t moving fast enough for my liking. We were an open target now and the bullets peppering our route had only missed us by good fortunate or the shooters were terrible marksmen.
I was breathing hard both with panic and exhaustion, and more disconcerting, Shayna was slowing me down. She might be a dynamist in the sexual energy department but she couldn’t run. My strength alone dragged her along before she dramatically fell down as if tackled by a fifteen stone rugby player which only served to knock me off balance when her knees hit the ground. She’d stubbed her toe on a rock that was protruding from the ground, I learned later. I jerked her back on to her feet. Checked who was doing the chasing, and again we were running with the intention of jumping into the motor launch we’d arrived on and getting out of there fast. That idea soon diminished.