‘Shine the torch here,’ she said, peering into the shadows. Ford angled the beam down and was dazzled by the yellow light that reflected up from the box and filled the bunker. It was gold: flat discs the size of large coins, piled to half the depth of the box. Ford looked at Kavanagh’s face, lit up from beneath with a golden glow. She was grinning, her lips drawn back, her teeth bared, her eyes wide and shining as bright as the discs. She picked out one of them and tossed it, watching it spin in the air. She caught it and put it in her pocket, then flipped out the box’s handles and hefted it for weight. ‘Twenty kilos,’ she said breathlessly. ‘One hundred and sixty kilos were stolen from Gwardar, so I’m hoping there’s seven more of these.’
The ammo boxes were stacked three high, in four rows. Kavanagh stripped the lid off the top box in the second rank and found bullets. The box below it had gold, as did the one on the bottom. She leaned over with her hands on her knees, panting hard. ‘It’s all here,’ she said, as if to herself.
Ford turned to the shelves. ‘So what’s all this?’ he said, lifting the lid off the closest cardboard box and shining the torch inside to see a layer of black plastic sealed with tape. He pulled at the tape and opened the plastic, then let out a long, slow whistle. Kavanagh stuck her nose over the rim of the box and exhaled slowly when she saw the stacks of dollar bills. Ford lifted a packet of notes. It was wrapped in a band that marked the packet as ten thousand dollars. He pulled out more packets and counted them. Five packs wide by four along and five deep made a million dollars in the box. He stood back and counted the boxes on the shelves. Kavanagh had moved along to the next rack of shelves. These boxes had labels pasted to the nearest face with serial numbers printed on them. As she began tearing open the first box, Ford noticed an aluminium flight case standing upright on the bottom shelf, sandwiched between the archive boxes. He slid it out, laid it on the edge of the gun crate, and opened the lid. The light that bounced back once he’d shone his torch inside was harsh and white, reflecting off the diamond jewellery that filled the case. The lining had been specially designed for its contents, each piece secured in a moulded felt compartment. There were two large necklaces, three bracelets and a row of fat rings. The largest stone, an inch in diameter, was the centrepiece of the larger necklace. Ford wondered if Diane had ever seen this jewellery. He doubted she would wear it if she had. He remembered McCann’s first wife, a woman of vulgar taste and ostentatious showmanship, and could picture her flaunting these baubles.
Down one side of the case was a row of Swiss watches, both men’s and women’s, all studded with gems. Ford looked at the cheap plastic digital watch on his own wrist and took it off. He chose the least gaudy watch, a slim Omega with a plain face and a leather strap, wrapped it round his wrist, and put his own watch in its place.
In a square compartment in the corner of the case was a small black felt bag. Ford lifted it by its drawstring and knew immediately what was inside. He tipped the bag and the loose diamonds spilled into his free hand, enough to cover his palm. They were all cut and polished, and they were all very large.
He had only ever bought one diamond in his life, for Diane. They had married in a hurry, a spontaneous act while they were travelling in Europe. They had no money, no rings, and could only afford a local priest in a small church in Italy. On their fifth wedding anniversary he decided to buy Diane the engagement ring he had not been able to give her before. A month’s salary was the rule, so he put the money aside over six months while Diane was finishing her geology doctorate. His savings bought her a single stone, a third of a carat. There was no stone in his hand smaller than one carat, and many were much larger. He saw half a dozen stones that were easily four carats. Some of the stones were coloured: pinks and yellows, he’d heard the colour called champagne, all produced by the Argyle mine further north. There was a single red stone, no more than two carats, but standing out because of the depth of its colour. He shone the torch on it and moved his hand to make it sparkle. He’d seen rubies before, but the cut of this stone was too fine for that. It was a diamond.
He looked across at Kavanagh. She had opened several of the labelled boxes and was busy examining the contents. He swept the diamonds back into the pouch and slipped it into the patch pocket on the leg of his pants, then closed the case. ‘What did you find?’ he asked her, slipping the case back onto the shelf.
‘More cash,’ she said. ‘All sorts of currencies. United States Treasury Bonds, several million, and these.’ She held up a broad piece of paper, heavily bonded, blue scrolling ink around its border. ‘Bearer shares on a company in the British Virgin Islands.’
‘One of McCann’s companies?’
‘I don’t recognise the name. Alannah might. Shares like these belong to whoever holds them, no paper trail. There are other shares in other businesses, probably all just paper companies to hide McCann’s assets offshore. This is how he’s been doing it. Untraceable.’
‘How much do you reckon is here?’
‘Hard to guess,’ she said. ‘Several times more in paper than there is in gold, and I doubt this is his only stash. He was never one to put all his eggs in one basket.’ She folded the share certificate and put it in her pocket.
‘You want to load the gold in the car?’ asked Ford.
‘No time,’ she said, walking towards the door. ‘We need to call it in and destroy the plane before Roth can clear this place and fly out of the country.’
Ford followed her. ‘You think he’s close?’
‘An alarm at the homestead, another here, he’ll be moving fast. I reckon he was spooked by Diane, worried she knew where this stuff was, would trade the information.’
She bounded up the steps two at a time. Ford followed, his hand in his pocket resting on the stones. The hot air hit him in the face like a slap, the bright light searing into his eyes. He squinted to where Kavanagh was standing on the concrete slab, holding her phone in the air, spinning slowly, looking at the screen.
‘Fucking hell,’ she said. ‘No signal.’
NINETEEN
‘Give me your phone,’ said Kavanagh, her face knotted as excitement turned quickly to frustration.
Ford pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen, shading it with his hand, squinting in the sunshine to make out the signal strength. ‘I’ve got no coverage either. We could go back to the homestead and get that satellite phone.’
‘Maybe. We haven’t much time. We need to find the plane first, then think about calling this in.’ She climbed into the LandCruiser and stared at him through the open window, waiting. Ford put the torch and the tyre lever in the back and picked up a canteen of water. He took a long drink, the water warmer than his mouth, filling him but not quenching his thirst. He picked up a second canteen and went around to the driver’s door. The vinyl of the seat was hot, burning through the seat of his pants. The sun was past its zenith and the heat at a maximum. He turned on the ignition and checked the temperature read-out on the dash. Forty-two degrees. He passed one of the canteens to Kavanagh and picked up the GPS. The aeroplane cursor showed him their location and the second diamond marker was to their west.
He drove back the way they had come, looking for the runway. They came out of the tall grass on to the broad expanse of the runway and Ford turned west towards the blue hills on the horizon. There was no grass on this part of the runway, as if it had been cleared, recently sprayed with weedkiller to keep it bare, a straight strip of compacted red gravel. Ford checked the GPS. ‘It’s down here, at the end of the runway on the right.’
He guided the Toyota down a winding track off to the right where the cleared strip of gravel ended. Wide enough for a plane, it was covered in dry yellow grass that had been cut recently. After a hundred metres of snaking between small mallee trees, Ford stopped the car. ‘We’re close now,’ he said. Kavanagh leaned forward and stared through the windscreen. The bush seemed empty, the same dry grass and trees. The ground rose to their right in a low ridge, no higher
than the tops of the surrounding trees, and she pointed to it. ‘We might get a better view from up there,’ she said and was out of the car before Ford could see where she was indicating. By the time he had got out she was halfway up the slope, stepping between rocks and hopping over fallen branches. When he caught up with her he was breathless and bathed in sweat, the hot, dry air catching in his throat. She was red in the face, her forehead dripping under the hat, her shirt soaked under her arms, broad wet patches across her back. She put her hands on her hips, peering down the far side of the ridge, and Ford could see now that it was man-made, an embankment that curved around in an open horseshoe, the flanks overgrown with scrub. They looked down together at the flat area of grass it enclosed, at the large camouflage net erected there, propped up on poles and secured with guy ropes. The net was mottled with reds and browns to match the landscape, threaded around the edge with branches and leaves, but through it Ford could make out the shape of the aeroplane.
‘It’s a revetment,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘There must be more of them around the airfield. Hides the planes from enemy reconnaissance. Protects them from bomb blast.’
Kavanagh was away before he had finished, scrambling down the slope, rocks sliding under the heels of her boots and a plume of dust following her. Ford stumbled after her, down the slope and under the dappled shade of the netting. Kavanagh was standing beside the plane, her arms raised above her head, both hands gripping one of the propeller blades as she arched her back, opened up her lungs and breathed hard. The plane was a small four-seater twin engine, painted plain white. ‘Is this the plane from the Gwardar robbery?’ she asked, the triumph in her voice evident even through her short breaths.
Ford nodded, waiting for his own breath to catch up with him, blinking the sweat out of his eyes and wiping a sleeve across his face. ‘Piper Aztec,’ he said. ‘Same type, but they’d painted out the registration before they did the robbery.’
He waved a hand at the letters and numbers painted on the rear of the fuselage, and watched Kavanagh read the sequence to herself, her lips moving as she committed it to memory. She walked around the wing and climbed up onto it, ducking her head to avoid the netting. She tried to open the cabin door but it was locked. She put her face to the window, shielding her eyes with both her hands as she peered into the cockpit. Then she jumped down next to Ford, landed in a crouch and crawled under the wing. Ford stooped to see what she was doing.
She had found the valve in the wing, halfway between the engine and the fuselage, and when she turned the T-shaped handle a steady trickle of aviation fuel came out.The smell was strong, the liquid quickly turning to vapour, and Ford watched the twisted refractions of light rising from the grass under the plane. Kavanagh crawled out from under the wing, coughing. She pulled herself up and leaned over the wing, her lungs convulsing, and when she had caught her breath she stood upright and looked at Ford through streaming eyes.
‘Give me your lighter,’ she said, and the tone of her voice was so severe that he didn’t hesitate. He tossed his Zippo to her as she walked towards the yellow buffel grass that grew high around the perimeter of the revetment. She pulled a handful of it up out of the dirt, then twisted it into a long taper and walked back to the plane. She leaned under the wing and pushed the tip of the grass into the dripping fuel, then flipped open the lighter and put the flame to the soaked grass. She gave Ford a small conspiratorial smile, then walked slowly around the plane, dragging the torch along the ground behind her, setting light to the tinder-dry grass and leaving a smouldering wake as she went.
‘There would have been easier ways to disable it,’ said Ford.
‘I don’t want any risk of them getting the gold out of here before we can get help,’ said Kavanagh, watching the fire spread through the grass towards the plane.
When the torch burned down to her hand she dropped it and walked off in the direction of the car, calling over her shoulder to Ford. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’ she shouted above the crackle and hiss of the catching grass, and she started up the embankment.
She turned to admire her work when she reached the top, and to check that Ford was following. He was panting up the slope behind her, his face already showing signs of sunburn.
They both ran down the far side and were breathless when they reached the car. ‘Back to town,’ said Kavanagh. ‘Fast as you can.’ Ford glanced at the GPS to get his bearings and then found his way back to the runway. It headed east and would lead them back to the Marble Bar road.
Once on the broad strip of gravel he pushed the Toyota forward, enjoying the straight, even surface, a sense of relief washing over him that he had got through the danger, that he would soon be seeing Grace again. He looked in the mirror, at the cloud of red dust kicked up by the LandCruiser, and beyond that the column of white smoke rising from the grass fire. He looked for a sign of flame but the embankment hid the source of the smoke.
On their right was the pair of black hills, the bunker lying somewhere in their lee. Ford watched for the track that led from them. Then, as they passed the end of it, he saw a black Range Rover travelling towards them at speed, rocking in the wheel ruts, fishtailing in the soft sand. ‘Shit!’ he said, under his breath, and he gripped the steering wheel and put his foot to the floor.
Kavanagh looked across just in time to catch a glimpse of the black shadow moving fast through the grass, then she swivelled in her seat to watch it shoot out onto the runway and then twist sideways, skidding across the gravel until it found traction and lined up to follow them. The roar of its engine came in through their open windows, louder and more urgent than the steady chug of the Toyota’s diesel.
‘Gun it!’ she shouted above the engine noise, tugging the pistol from her belt, twisting in her seat to see where the other car was. Ford kept his eyes forward. He could see the end of the runway a thousand metres ahead, marked by a rusted steel mast that had once held a windsock. The speedo read a hundred and forty, the Toyota’s engine sounding laboured, but the big V8 in the Range Rover was starting to purr. ‘We’ll never outrun him!’ he shouted, the black shape filling his mirrors.
The Range Rover swerved out to the left and pulled alongside them, the driver hidden behind tinted windows. As the driver’s door pulled level with Kavanagh, she lifted the pistol and fired once. The window grazed and shattered, the tiny laminated shards falling outwards to reveal Henk Roth behind the wheel. Ford took his eyes off the runway to look at him, at the familiar jut of his jaw, the squared-off head with its military crew cut, the cords of his neck taut with concentration, calm eyes squinting at him through the dust. Kavanagh lifted the pistol again but Roth’s eyes showed no alarm as he dabbed on his brakes to drop back a car’s length, out of her field of fire. She turned in her seat and leaned out the window, her gun arm stretched out into the boiling dust, but as she sighted along the barrel she saw the AK resting on the sill of Roth’s door and pulled her head in quickly. She ducked low in her seat. ‘Down!’ she screamed, and Ford slid as low as he could in his seat, keeping the Toyota in a straight line towards the end of the runway.
Roth’s first burst rattled across the back of the LandCruiser and took out a rear tyre. Ford fought the steering wheel, feeling the heavy Toyota pull to the left and start to fishtail. The second burst ran down the left side of the car, Kavanagh flinching away from her door as the bullets punched through it and ripped into her seat. A third burst hit a front tyre and the car dropped sharply to the left as the rims of both wheels on that side shredded the tyres and bit into the gravel. They swerved around, Ford trying to correct the slide but once they were drifting sideways there was nothing he could do. He took his foot off the pedal and let the car find its own path, the bare wheels carving up the dirt and throwing dust into the air as the car scraped to a halt.
When the dust cleared they saw the Range Rover parked across their bow thirty metres ahead, Roth pointing the carbine out of his window at them, the stock tucked into his shoulder, his eyes starin
g at them from above the barrel. He was rigid and motionless, only his eyes moving, until he lifted a hand off the barrel to twist his wrist in the air, indicating for Ford to turn off his engine.
Roth stayed still until all engine noise had died away and the silence of the bush surrounded them. ‘Step down from your car,’ he said, his voice clear and assured. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’
Ford looked at Kavanagh. Her face was flushed, sweat streaming into her eyes, which were wide with fear and anger. She still held the pistol, resting it flat on the seat beside her, her chest still rising and falling as she tried to regain her composure. She angled the pistol forwards and started to raise it slowly, but Ford reached out and gripped her by the wrist, forcing her hand back down onto the seat.
They sat like that, hands locked together, their muscles straining, Kavanagh staring at him and biting her lip in frustration. Ford’s eyes pleaded with her, until her shoulders slumped in resignation and she relaxed her arm, released the gun, and he swept it off the seat and let it thump into the footwell.
They opened their doors at the same time and stepped down, their hands hanging limp at their sides, palms turned towards Roth. The barrel of the AK followed Kavanagh, but Roth’s eyes swept from one of them to the other. Roth lifted his hand again, this time to wave them both further away from the LandCruiser. They both took hesitant steps sideways but, when Roth started firing, they flung themselves face down into the dirt. The scream of tearing metal told Ford that Roth was shooting at the car, and he forced his head off the ground to look, coughing and spitting dust. Roth was out of his car now, fitting a fresh clip into his gun. He levelled the barrel and emptied the clip into the Toyota, peppering the radiator, smashing the windscreen, shredding the remaining tyres and leaving an arc of holes across the bonnet.
Marble Bar Page 19