by Albert Able
Chapter 24 - Marcus
Stan relished his new roll as our investment mentor and soon guided us into a position where we were working with a progressive adventure capital investor, which together with a substantial line of credit from a merchant bank, allowed us to go out and look for suitable locations to create our dedicated budget hotel group.
Connie was fully occupied with City Express, whilst I spent much of my time on the road with estate agents looking at the sites. I was however still a director of the International Hotel Group and committed to the monthly business trips to either Rome or Paris.
The income from that job was just about all we had to keep us going at that time and it was when I was in Paris on one of my hotel visits that I met Jacque Kyoto.
A colleague on the board of International Hotels Jerry O’Donnolly introduced us and explained how Jacque’s Japanese father had met and married his Flemish Belgian mother in Sumatra whilst serving with the occupying Imperial Japanese army during the World War Two. After the war they lived in Tokyo where their son Jacque and his sister, were raised and educated so as well as his Japanese, Jacque spoke perfect English and Dutch.
“This guy is amazing,” Jerry encouraged me “he made a fortune trading gemstones and precious metals; mostly dodgy I’d say, anyway, he now reckons he’s onto a mountain of gold hidden in the Philippines! Wants to get it to Europe.” Jerry rubbed his fingers together. “He’s looking for someone who speaks French and can drive over here; could be worth a few bob to you.”
“I’m not about to use up my time acting as chauffer to a dubious Jap Smuggler!” I reacted indignantly.
“Oh well, I’ll leave it to you” Jerry shrugged “but you should meet him just the same, he’s a fascinating bloke. I promise you won’t be bored; he’s staying at the Nikko Hotel and invited us to dinner tonight. There is nothing to loose I promise you.”
The Nikko Hotel caters primarily for Japanese visitors to Paris. It had at that time one of the best Japanese Restaurants in town and so was staffed predominantly by Japanese speaking staff.
Jacque Kyoto was around fifty years of age but looked younger. Quite short and corpulent his appearance was Oriental displaying little if any evidence of his European blood, at least until he spoke, when his English other than an occasional American inflection, was perfect; the result I learned later, of four years at University in England and one in the USA.
Jacque was accompanied by two other Oriental men, one a much older man and introduced to me as something like Kawasaki but I never mastered the name and since the expressionless man never spoke it mattered little. The other and much younger of the three had slightly more conversation but that was frequently limited to some guttural grunts, accentuated with scowling gestures. Taller and fitter than Jacque I can’t remember his name but he was clearly the ‘Body-guard’.
Jacque Kyoto enthusiastically extolled the delight and mysteries of Japanese cuisine to his fascinated guests; consequently after much knife flourishing and the rattling of chopsticks, we all enjoyed a sumptuous meal. Eventually we moved to a quieter and private booth where we relaxed with some unpronounceable fiery rice liquor and Jacque casually started to unfold the story of the ‘Golden Treasure’ he claimed to have discovered in the Philippines.
Jacque Kyoto’s father had been a professional soldier in the Emperor’s Imperial army during the Second World War and was posted for a while to the Philippine Islands where he served under the legendry General Yamashita.
Part of his father’s duty as ‘Communications Officer’ had been to record the inventory and storage locations of the vast amount military equipment accumulated by the Japanese occupying army.
It seems that on one particular day, during an Allied air raid, a convoy of four heavily laden lorries arrived outside the depot where he was stationed; on seeing the explosions creeping ever closer, the drivers abandoned their vehicles and ran to the shelter of the sandbagged trenches nearby.
The air was filled with deadly ear shattering explosions, accompanied by screaming men as red hot flying shrapnel, tore into the flesh of those to late to dive into the relative safety of the trench; the acrid stench of burnt cordite filled everyone’s nostrils.
In spite of the hail of death, General Yamashita was standing upright in his captured American Jeep, screaming orders above the din of the raid and frantically waving his pistol at the terrified men, urging them to get back and to the vehicles and move them to a safety.
Even more frightened of their General than the bombing, all but one of the drivers slowly emerged and slipped back into their trucks. The fourth driver had received fatal shrapnel wounds and was sprawled on the path leading to the sandbagged trench. Seeing what had happened Jacque’s father, without any hesitation, ran across and jumped up behind the wheel of the driverless lorry.
The General, still standing in his Jeep and flourishing his pistol, led the convoy about half a mile down a forest track until they were outside a wide cave entrance, a common feature in the area.
“Inside” the General commanded waving his pistol towards the cave.
The drivers blindly obeyed; eventually the four lorries were jammed into the cave. “All drivers must stay in your cabs until the raid is over, you will be safer in there, is that understood?”
The drivers acknowledged with a wave, grateful for the extra security the cave offered they happily stayed in their cabs.
“Not you Lieutenant Kyoto, I want you over here.” The general moved outside the cave and holstered his pistol.
The Lieutenant followed without question. “Yes General?” he reported.
“I understand you are a professional Soldier?”
“I am General.” The proud Lieutenant Kyoto saluted.
“Good, then I know that I can relay on you what ever the circumstances?”
“Absolutely Sir” he replied smartly.
All this time they were walking further away from the cave until the General stopped by a pile of loose rocks. “As soon as I am back at my Jeep I want you to detonate that charge.” He pointed to the plunger nestling behind the pile of stones.
An ice-cold shudder rattled through his body, as he suddenly realised what was happening. “Of course Sir.” The Lieutenant confirmed quietly as the General climbed back into his Jeep.
“Now.” The General commanded and Lieutenant Kyoto rammed down the plunger without hesitation.
The cave erupted in a mighty explosion sending hundreds of tons of rock from the cliff above to completely cover the entrance; the men inside inevitably condemned to death by slow suffocation.
Although showered in debris from the devastation, other than a loud ringing in his ears, the Lieutenant was surprised to find that he appeared to be completely unhurt; now as he stood with his back to the General, he suddenly suffered a different flush of fear, this time fully expecting to feel the thump of a bullet in his back but to his relief, above the ringing in his ears he heard the Generals commanding voice. “Come on Lieutenant, hurry we must get back to the depot.”
The raid was over as quickly as it had started and they drove in silence back to the depot, where men were already clearing away the damage and carrying the wounded and dead to the field hospital.
The General invited Lieutenant Kyoto into his office and closed the door. “I don’t suppose you wanted to do that any more than I did but this is a matter of the utmost importance to the survival of the Empire.” The General paced whilst the Lieutenant stood to attention. “The largest store of gold bullion in the whole of the Imperial Empire has been assembled here in the Philippines. I have been personally commanded by the Emperor himself to ensure that it is all is stored safely until we regain control of the sea between the Philippines and the Japanese mainland when we will be able to safely return it to Japan, where it will be used to fund the final victory over our enemies.” The General stopped pacing. “Do you therefore fully understand the implications of my decision to secure that convoy and the need to ensure tha
t the drivers could not be allowed disclose the location?” The General seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“You may depend on me Sir.” The Lieutenant’s voice quavered slightly, whilst his belly ached with fear; he was still not sure whether he was about to be shot or promoted.
In fact it was neither because moments later the next Allied raid started and both men went scurrying for shelter. The following day the Lieutenant was sent out on another special mission for the General; unfortunately the light aircraft he was flying in suffered some kind of engine failure and crashed in the sea close to one of the many small islands that make up the Philippines. The pilot was killed but by some miracle the Lieutenant was uninjured and able to swim ashore.
Within days General Macarthur had recaptured the Islands and with thousands of civilians massacred during the closing phase of the military campaign, General Yamashita was immediately put on trial for war crimes. It was not surprising that he was found guilty and summarily executed.
Unfortunately he and Lieutenant Kyoto were the only ones who knew the location of the hidden gold.
Lieutenant Kyoto’s war was over also but he was alive and he hadn’t forgotten where the gold was buried or at least he thought he hadn’t forgotten. The problem was that by the time the former Lieutenant managed to get back to the Philippines over twenty years had lapsed.
As Jacque Kyoto recalled the story of his father and the subsequent adventures to relocate the cave where the lorries had been buried, he seemed to drift into a dream as the pain of the memory returned.
There were of course several other sites where gold and other treasures had been secretly hidden at the time of the military occupation but only the General had known these other locations.
Lieutenant Kyoto however was not a greedy man and quite confident that he would find the one site that he knew about, set out to relocate the cave.
President Marcos was running the country by that time and had successfully found a significant amount of gold; not however the former Lieutenant was relieved to learn, from ‘his’ location.
President Marcos’s discovery however had made the ‘World Press’ and consequently the release of the ‘Mystery of Yamashita’s Gold’ story sent its alluring message around the world and the Philippines was soon teaming with fortune hunters.
Many local opportunists also jumped on the bandwagon, claiming to have knowledge of secret locations and charging substantial fees to guide unwary fortune seekers to the ultimate prize.
Few of these self-accredited guides actually knew anything significant but were quite happy to lead their ‘clients’ on expensive and ultimately barren ‘goose chases’.
Stories of priceless works of art and golden statues were common, encouraging treasure hunters to spend vast sums of money blasting and quarrying but precious little was ever found. Eventually, attention was also focused on the harbour where following a spate of rumours that ships loaded with gold had been sunk; dozens of small diving boats and their crews eagerly trawled the murky seabed.
Jacque Kyoto’s expression remained glum, as he explained his father’s anguish and misery, as the endless search for the old depot and the cave proved fruitless. New vegetation alone had completely changed the look of the landscape but for two weeks he combed the area where he was convinced the gold had been buried, yet he failed to recognise any thing positive.
Frustrated and running out of money he reluctantly confided in a South African man he had met in Manila.
Albert Shires was, he claimed, a mining engineer and had been sent to Manila to meet with a ‘treasure hunter’ but the treasurer hunter had already run out of funds and quit the hunt even before Albert arrived on the islands, leaving him in the lurch.
After a little while, apparently Albert Shire and the former Lieutenant agreed to team up. Albert happily agreeing to a ‘no find no fee deal’ in lieu of a ten percent cut of anything eventually sold. It was Albert Shire’s knowledge of navigation, which changed everything.
The Lieutenant had carefully noted the grid references at the time the gold was buried but as soon as Albert Shire studied them, he realised that Jacque had misinterpreted them.
“These old grid systems had to be interpolated a bit,” he scratched his head “you see these old Imperial military field maps were put together in Japan from old large scale ordinance surveys so the detail is often very poor and the parallel lines could be as much as two miles out, depending on where you took the bearing from.” Shire looked about. “So if you’ve already covered this line, I suggest we try the next one up which should be about one mile that way.” Albert pointed.
The next morning after only a very short search they found themselves standing in front of the overgrown bank of fallen rock still covering the entrance to the cave.
“We are going to need some heavy earth moving equipment to move that lot!” Albert Shire observed calmly.
In spite of the nightmare swathe of guilt he had suffered in regular nightmares over the years for having so ruthlessly murdered those three drivers, Jacque’ father trembled with excitement; hardly able to believe he was finally standing only a few feet from an unimaginable fortune.
Hiring a mechanical digger was going to be difficult enough without trying to do it secretly but they eventually made a bargain with an owner operator of an old but serviceable machine, the only problem being that the owner unsurprisingly, was insisting on cash up front for his services.
“We don’t have any cash so the only thing we can do is invite the guy to come in same as me, on a cut of the proceeds?” Albert suggested but the former Lieutenant was not at all happy as this meant sharing the secret with yet another new partner but Albert persisted “Well he’s going to know if the gold is there anyway isn’t he, so why not make him a partner, I reckon that’ll be more likely to keep him quiet, don’t you?”
Eventually the former Lieutenant reluctantly conceded and the ‘digger man’ was approached. It was no surprise when he readily accepted the ‘no find no fee deal’ and joined in the treasure hunt.
That evening Jacque’s father, the former Lieutenant, telephoned his wife in Tokyo warning her that he’d had no option but to trust Albert Shire and his new ‘digger’ partner. “So my darling, if anything does go wrong, it will probably be because I had to share our secret.” Later that same evening he placed all his notes and the confirmed location of the cave in an envelope and posted it to his wife.
******
As I listened to Jacque Kyoto carefully telling his fascinating story I have to plead guilty to falling into the ‘Gold Fever’ trap, so when I looked at my watch I was astonished to note that over an hour had passed, yet it had seemed like only a few minutes as Jacque’s fascinating tale flowed with hypnotically ease.
Eventually when the noisy digging machine had dragged away enough rock and rubble from the cave entrance, it was the Lieutenant who cautiously ventured inside. To his surprise the lorries were not as he had left them; two where twisted together and had obviously been used as a battering ram in the drivers desperate attempt to escape from their living hell; the other two were still parked at the far end of the cave.
With a gut-wrenching gasp the Lieutenant suddenly relived the nightmare, which had stayed with him over the years as he visualised three unfortunate drivers, panicking when the cave entrance had been blasted in, burying them alive and they frantically tried to move the avalanche of rock and rubble by ramming it with their lorries and when that failed they tore at the boulders with their bare hands, until a combination of exhaustion and carbon monoxide fumes finally and mercifully, sent them into a permanent sleep in the cabs of their vehicles, where they remained for the former Lieutenant and his new partners to find.
In an instant the nightmare stopped when a near hysterical shout from Albert standing in the back of the nearest lorry holding his hands to his head proclaimed the fact that they discovered several crates of roughly cast golden ingots, which quickly refocused their all their minds a
way from the macabre uniformed skeletons. Each of the lorries contained a similar number of crates, which they eventually calculated to be around eight tons.
Once they all calmed down and reality returned the first consideration was ‘how to move it all’ but the ‘digger man’ confidently cane to the rescue stating that he also had a lorry capable of carrying the heavy gold in one load and so the next problem was to spirit the gold away before the authorities or even more importantly any of the other ‘Treasure Hunters’ caught a scent of their find.
To sell gold officially, it would have to be properly assayed and re smelted into marketable grade ingots and then officially Hallmarked to confirm its quality; any attempt to do any of those tasks at the Philippine’s own smelting facility would immediately spell trouble for the intrepid men and so they had decided to let the ‘digger man’ have his share once he had delivered the whole hoard to the docks where they planned to repacked their own share into larger cases to disguise the weight and then declared it to customs as ‘mining equipment’ to be consigned to Marseilles, where it would be stored until final arrangements could be made for it to be properly refined.
“That was twenty years ago.” Jacque Kyoto changed his tone. “We never heard about the gold or from my father again. They all simply vanished into thin air; that is until I was contacted by Mr Kawasaki here.” Jacque indicated the ever-expressionless older man. Jacque Kyoto explained that Kawasaki was actually the man who all those years ago had funded the operation to ship the gold.
“No one knows why but once the gold arrived in Marseilles it was stored in one of those vast warehouses but was never forwarded and so remained unaccounted for, until by some strange quirk of fate the paperwork for the ‘Mining Equipment’ was discovered and the original shipper Mr Kawasaki, contacted.
In turn he had honourably contacted my family and now wanted his share for the financial support as originally promised. Jacque Kyoto looked at Kawasaki, bowed slightly and smiled.