by Philip Roy
“Yes?” he said, in a quiet, dry voice.
“Do you deal in old coins?”
“Yes.”
“Um . . . do you buy and sell rare antique coins?”
“Of course. What kinds of coins are you taking about?”
“Um . . . French coins.”
“Gold coins?”
“Yes.”
His eyes narrowed and he smiled a little.
“We buy and sell them all the time. You’d be surprised how many people want to buy old gold coins. We give the very best price for French gold coins.”
He reached for a dog-eared catalogue and flipped through the pages.
“What kind of French coins are you talking about, this one?”
He put his finger on the page. I leaned over and glanced at it.
“No, not that one.”
He eyed me closely again then looked down at the catalogue.
“Oh. This one then?”
“No, not that one.”
“This one, perhaps?” I looked carefully.
“No, it’s none of the coins on that page.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Have you got the coin with you?”
I didn’t answer. I looked down and saw Hollie staring up at me nervously. He didn’t like the atmosphere of the shop.
“It’s not one of those,” I repeated.
He took a deep sigh and turned the page.
“Is it one of these coins?” he said, as if he were bored.
The way he pretended to be bored immediately reminded me of something, but I was too excited to pay attention to it. Suddenly I saw my coin at the bottom of the page. It was the very last one.
“There!” I said. “That one!”
He grinned, and his eyes twinkled for just a split second. Then he regained his bored expression.
“Those coins are exceptionally rare. I don’t think your coin is that one. Can I see it?”
“Um, no, I don’t have it with me.”
“Oh. Too bad. Look closely. Are you sure it’s the same coin?”
He turned the book around. I read the inscription.
“It’s French,” he said. “Do you know what it means?”
“I am the State,” I said.
His eyes opened round and wide.
“Well, it’s too bad you don’t have the coin with you. If I could see it I could tell you what it’s worth. Perhaps you could go and get it and bring it back?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Could you give me even a rough idea what it might be worth?”
“Oh,” he said, with a frown, “it’s worth at least a thousand dollars or so, if it’s really ‘Le Roi Soleil.’ Just a minute.”
He disappeared into another room and I thought I heard him using the telephone. Maybe he was calling somebody else to ask. When he returned, he had a friendlier expression on his face.
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, but if you come back later I’m sure we can do business.”
The door opened and two men came into the shop. I don’t know how but I instantly knew something was wrong. The two men didn’t look around or approach the counter; they just stood there. The shopkeeper didn’t pay them any attention.
“Maybe you see something here you like?” he said.
I didn’t. It was time to go. Hollie seemed to think so too.
“Maybe I’ll come back later,” I said.
I had no intention of ever returning. I pulled open the door and Hollie and I went out. We only took a few steps when the door opened again and the two men came out. They saw us and looked the other way. I picked Hollie up and crossed the street. They crossed the street too. My heart started to pound. They were following us!
I thought of going into another shop, but nothing really looked safe. For some reason I headed downhill towards the harbour, even though the sub wasn’t anywhere close. I always felt safer close to water. They followed us down the hill. I put Hollie down. When we went around a corner I started to run a little, just to put more distance between us. When the men turned the corner, they picked up their pace too. I looked around, hoping to see a police car, but the further we went in that direction the more deserted it was. To the left I saw the tugboat dock; to the right, the container terminal, where the big ships docked. In between were a few abandoned buildings, parking lots and old piers. The quickest way to reach the water was across a parking lot and alongside an empty building. Crossing another street, I picked up Hollie and started to run as fast as I could. Looking back, I saw the men running too. But they weren’t coming fast — probably because they knew there was nowhere for us to go.
When we reached the edge of the pier I put Hollie down.
“Run! Hollie! Quick! Run!”
I pointed the way for him to go but he just looked up at me, confused.
“Go! Hollie! Go!”
But Hollie didn’t leave. The men were closing in on us.
“Listen, kid,” I heard one of them say, “just give us the coin, okay? Come on now, don’t be stupid.”
I took my jacket off and threw it to the side as far as I could, hoping Hollie would go over to it.
“There! Hollie! Go there!”
I pointed hard and looked stern. The men were almost on us.
“Go!”
Then I turned and dove into the harbour. The cold was a shock; I knew I couldn’t stay long. Swimming underwater for thirty seconds, I surfaced and turned to see if they had followed me. They hadn’t. They were standing on the edge of the pier, and they were holding Hollie!
“Let him go!” I yelled. “Let him go!”
I was so angry.
“Give us the coin!” they yelled.
“I don’t have it!”
“Give us the coin,” said the man with Hollie, “or else . . .”
He raised his fist over Hollie’s head in a threatening way. Now I was truly scared.
“Okay! Okay! Don’t hurt him! I’ll give it to you! Don’t hurt him!”
I swam over to a ladder on the pier. The two men leaned over the edge together, one of them still holding onto Hollie. I climbed halfway up.
“Put my dog down and then I’ll give you the coin,” I said.
“Give us the coin first, then I’ll put the dog down.”
I didn’t trust him. If I gave him the coin he’d probably hold onto Hollie to get more. And then, Hollie did something amazing. He squirmed out of the man’s arms, ran about fifteen feet away and peered down at me, whining.
“You can do it, Hollie!” I said.
Before the man could grab him again, Hollie leapt from the pier. It was only a ten foot drop but that was a lot for a small dog. I jumped off the ladder and swam over to him.
“Way to go, Hollie! Way to go!”
I looked up at the two men and saw that they had turned around and were talking to someone. They pointed to me. A policeman appeared.
“Are you all right?” he said.
I nodded. The policeman bent down over the top of the ladder and gestured for me to come up.
“You’d better come out of the water son; it’s too cold to be swimming,” he said.
I swam over with Hollie and held onto him as I climbed the ladder. At the top, the policeman helped us up.
“These two men said that your dog fell in. Is that true? Hey! Where did they go?”
He jumped to his feet and looked around the dock.
“What’s going on here? Why would those men leave?”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell him who I was and why the men were chasing me.
“Ummm. I don’t know. I guess they saw me jump in after my dog. But I don’t think they could swim.”
The policeman eyed me closely.
“Well. You had better get out of those wet clothes. I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”
“Ummm, actually I was supposed to meet my family at a pizzeria.”
“Which pizzeria?”
“Piero’s.”
He wasn’t asking, he was telling. I followed him to his police car. He opened the back door and Hollie and I climbed in. Then he shut it. I didn’t like that because the door automatically locked and we couldn’t get out until he let us out. He climbed into the front and got on his radio and told the base he was giving me a lift to meet my parents. Then he said something about the two men and used a couple of code numbers. I reached into my pocket to check if the coin was still there. Happily, it was.
John, Jenny, Becky and Ricky stared out the window of the pizzeria as we pulled up in the police car. The policeman got out first and opened the door for us. John came out to greet us.
“Is this your son?” said the policeman.
“Yes,” said John, not missing a beat. “What happened?”
From the window I could see Jenny’s worried face.
“Well, it seems his dog fell off the dock and he went in after him. That’s what he says. Can you think of any reason why a couple of men might be chasing him?”
“Chasing him? Heavens, no!”
John looked at me and smiled. “Was anybody chasing you, Alfred?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, trying to sound innocent.
The policeman looked at me. “Listen now, you stay away from the dock with your little doggie there, okay? You shouldn’t go so close to the water by yourself anyway, you understand?”
“Yes, officer. I understand.”
“Thanks for bringing him to us,” said John.
“You have yourselves a good day now,” said the policeman. “Enjoy your pizza.”
“Thank you, officer,” we said.
In the pizzeria I had to explain everything, much to Jenny’s horror. I saw her exchange worried looks with John. She started to hint that maybe I was too young to be all alone; that it was too dangerous. Fortunately, I could see from John’s expression that he understood me, that I had made my life’s choice, come what may.
“I know you will be a whole lot more careful now, Alfred,” he said, trying to reassure her.
“You bet I will.” I meant it.
After a week, I was anxious to return to the sub. The sea was beckoning. As interesting as the city was, it was no match for the adventure of a sailor’s life. Besides, winter was on its way — sooner to Newfoundland than anywhere else — and I didn’t want to get caught in the ice, not to mention how anxious I was to see Ziegfried again and show him the crew and the treasure. Jenny tearfully asked me to stay; even suggesting I live with them permanently and return to school. I thought that was a terrible idea, but John saved me by telling her I was already a man, no longer a boy. What I was learning, he said, no school could teach.
We fitted the fridge-freezer and microwave into the sub and stocked them with pies, frozen pizzas and cookies. We took turns filming ourselves in the house and in the sub. Then, in the middle of night, with a snowstorm in the forecast, I gathered Hollie and Seaweed and we went to sea.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sable Island stretched out in front of us, flat and white and nearly invisible in the blowing snow. I opened the hatch to test the wind, then sailed to the sheltered side, where the waves were smaller. I motored as close as possible — just a couple of hundred feet or so — and dropped anchor. Donning my new sea-parka, with pockets large enough for the video camera on one side and Hollie on the other, I inflated the dinghy, sealed the hatch and paddled towards shore. Seaweed stayed on the bow.
Gently we bumped the beach and I jumped out, pulling the dinghy up behind us. It was snowing so hard I doubted we’d see anything at all, but I had to try. I wanted to film the island’s famous ponies for Ziegfried, for Christmas.
Tying the dinghy to a log, we went up the beach. After fifteen minutes we had seen nothing but my tracks in the snow, and the storm showed no sign of weakening.
“What should we do, Hollie? Go further, or go back?”
I looked down at his eager little face, blinking through heavy snowflakes. He looked happy enough.
“Okay, we’ll go a little further.”
Fifteen minutes later we still hadn’t seen anything but my footsteps, so I stopped and turned around. I had taken only a few steps when I heard something, or, rather, felt it through the ground. The ponies! I pulled out the video camera and got ready. The ponies came closer and closer, until I was afraid they would run right over us.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey!”
But they didn’t stop. I bent down and braced myself. They came so close, with a loud punching of their hooves in the snow, but we never saw them.
We returned to the beach, but the dinghy was gone! Neither could we see the submarine.
Don’t worry, I thought, we must simply have walked crookedly back to the beach. I turned and walked along the water for ten minutes, but found nothing. So, I turned and walked twenty minutes in the opposite direction. Nothing. Now I was worried. The sub had been sitting for an hour and a half. Even with only a small current it might have drifted. But where was the dinghy?
For a whole hour I raced back and forth along the beach, getting more and more upset. Suddenly, I stopped.
“Solve the problem! Don’t just whine about it.”
The word, “whine,” made me think of Hollie, and that gave me an idea. I opened the pocket and put him down in the snow.
“Go find the dinghy, Hollie! Go find it!”
He looked up with his intelligent little face, so eager to please, and took off. I ran after him. The snow was so deep he had to jump in and out of it like a rabbit, but he went straight in one direction until he reached a mound of sand, covered in snow. I sighed and shrugged my shoulders.
“No, Hollie, that’s just a mound of sand.”
Hollie let out a sharp and insistent bark.
“It’s just sand,” I said.
But he wouldn’t give up.
“Look!” I said, and gave the mound a kick.
My kick dislodged a pile of snow and revealed the bright orange skin of the dinghy.
“Oh! Hollie! You found it! What a smart dog you are!”
I pulled the dinghy down to the water, paddled out and found the sub not far from where we had left it. Sitting on the hatch and looking very unimpressed with the weather, was the other member of the crew. The three of us climbed inside and sealed the hatch. I hung up the parka and put on a pot of tea. The famous ponies would just have to wait for another season. We would be back.
While the tea was steeping, I deflated the dinghy and put a pizza in the microwave. Hollie and Seaweed jumped up and down with anticipation. You never ate alone in this submarine.
We pulled anchor and went out to where we could dive to a hundred feet and catch some sleep. I must have been very tired, because I slept a long time, and was only wakened by a tugging at my feet. The crew was restless. It was one of those sleeps where you wake up not knowing where you are. It took me a while to get my bearings, even to remember where we had submerged for the day. Coming to the surface I discovered it was already day again! Had I slept twenty-four hours? Even stranger was that Sable Island was nowhere in sight. Was it possible we had drifted in a current? Well, no matter, I thought, there was no damage done.
I was about to start the engine and head northeast, towards Cape Breton and Newfoundland, when the radar beeped. There was a vessel ten miles west of us. A moment later there were two beeps, and then three. That was a little unusual, I thought, three ships travelling together. I had my finger on the engine switch when the three beeps became four, and then five. The ships were not moving very fast, but were coming towards us and seemed to be weaving around each other, as if they were changing places. What on earth were they doing? I climbed the portal to look. The storm was over and the sky was clear. From where we were, the ships appeared to be freighters of different sizes. They closed the distance between us to five miles and I wondered if I ought to run or dive and hide. Then I noticed that a space began
to grow between one of the ships and the other four. Submerging to periscope level, I felt like a WWI sub waiting for its prey. Little did I suspect the danger in which we were lying.
At three miles I could see that the ship closest to us was an old freighter. It appeared to have cut its engines and was drifting. I couldn’t see anyone on board. The other ships were a mile on the far side of it and had stopped also. Then I felt a concussive vibration. What on earth was that? Surfacing, I climbed out and scanned the old freighter with binoculars. There was no sign of activity, but I could tell it was a really old ship and not what you would call seaworthy. And then it occurred to me — was it deserted? A few seconds later I saw something fall out of the air and strike the deck of the ship. There was a flash of fire, and then . . . a powerful explosion that roared through my ears and shook the sub. Still, I didn’t understand. What was happening?
Nobody appeared on deck to put out the fire. A second thing dropped out of the sky. But this time I saw it clearly. It was a missile! The ship was being fired upon!
My first thoughts were that people would be jumping overboard and that maybe I should try to save them. But no one appeared. The fire was growing on the ship. Suddenly another missile appeared. It passed narrowly by the bow, landed in the water and exploded. The explosion knocked the sub’s lights out for a second and made a loud bang. Hollie started to whine. I wanted to get out of there, but hesitated in case there were people fleeing the ship. I scanned the ship again but saw no one, not a single sign of life. I turned the binoculars towards the other ships and . . . suddenly I understood.
It was the navy! They were target practising! They were going to blow up the abandoned freighter and sink it. And we were in their target area!
There were a few more explosions, and then, the strangest sound, which I assumed to be the old freighter sinking. I felt a mix of fear and sadness: sadness for the old ship going to a watery grave, fear that the navy would see us and chase us.
They did! One of the ships left the group and came immediately towards us. And she was fast! There was no way to outrun her. As the sonar showed the navy ship closing in, I knew I had to make a decision: either surface and risk losing the sub, or try to hide. But we couldn’t hide anywhere near the surface; their radar could easily spot us. Underwater their sonar would certainly pick up the whir of the propeller under battery power, even the shape of the sub if they were close enough. And then, if they wanted to drop depth charges — exploding devices that would damage the sub — they could force us to surface, or, worse, sink us.