Sea of Gold

by Nick Elliott

Christ! What was that worth? ‘How’s it stowed?’

  ‘In pallets inside a twenty-foot container.’ He was becoming exasperated again. ‘Who is conducting this interview, McKinnon?’

  ‘I’m here to help you, Boris, remember? You need to trust me.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t talk to me about trust. I would not be listening to you if it wasn’t that I know there is in-fighting within the Revival. They fight amongst themselves. Their leadership is weak. Take it from me.’

  ‘You mean Kershope?’

  ‘Take it from me,’ he repeated, but would say no more on the matter.

  We argued, on and on. And as we did the plan began to take shape. Finally, he said, ‘Very well, McKinnon, let’s play your game and see where it leads. Go to Mindanao. Put your scheme to this warlord. Go, but your friend stays with me until you deliver.’

  I stared at him. ‘You want Dougal as a hostage? Forget it. No deal.’

  He leaned forward. ‘Listen, you fool. Don’t imagine I’m going to let you walk out of here without some kind of insurance that you’ll do as you say. I believe you, McKinnon, despite your lack of hard evidence that they are deceiving me. You couldn’t make all this up. But I don’t trust you. I need a guarantee.’

  Dougal spoke. ‘He’s not wrong, Angus.’

  ‘What if I fail?’ I said.

  ‘Then your Dougal here will pay with his life, my friend. So don’t fail.’ He relaxed again, draining his whisky. ‘I think I have made myself clear. Now go.’

  I didn’t like it one bit, but I knew he wouldn’t risk harming Dougal until I’d had chance to get him out of the corner he was in with the Revival. Boris knew he couldn’t trust them anymore than he could trust me.

  Dougal reached into his pocket and tossed his car keys to me. ‘Just look after my car will you? I’ll be okay.’ Then he added, ‘You’re forgetting the housekeeper. What if she tells Kershope I was here? She told Boris.’

  I had forgotten, but Boris hadn’t. ‘Don’t worry. Already we give her good money to keep her mouth shut. We will make sure she doesn’t talk.’

  ‘Okay, Boris,’ I said standing up. ‘But let me make something clear to you. Breathe a word of any of this to any of your Revival pals and the whole plan will fail. We’ll both lose. And by the way, whether I succeed or fail, if anything happens to Dougal here I will find you, both of you. And you won’t get so lucky next time,’ I added, looking at Ivan. He sneered, waving his gun at me just to let me know who was in control.

  ‘Brave words my friend,’ said Boris, ‘but words are cheap. Now go on your way before I change my mind.’

  CHAPTER 26

  So was my enemy’s enemy my friend? Boris might be an ally for now perhaps, but as I drove back to Leith a sense of foreboding overcame me. My head throbbed. I had left Dougal in mortal danger. And my own situation was precarious.

  In unravelling this tangled conspiracy I was heading down a dark and dangerous road, dragging others with me along the way. By the time I got back to the flat I was all in. I opened a bottle of Scotch and slumped into a chair with the idea it might help me think my way through the mire. Instead, I fell asleep.

  A knock on the door woke me. It was Betty Buchanan. She took one look at me, her hands went to her face and she stepped back. ‘What in the name of the Lord has happened to you?’ It was 8.15 in the morning. I’d slept for five hours.

  She took charge, ordering me to take a shower. I did and after five minutes of hot water I turned the tap to cold. It had the desired effect of shocking me into full consciousness. Betty returned with a bag and started applying ointments, sutures and plasters to my face. She gave me painkillers. ‘You’d best eat now. Come down in ten minutes.’

  After a fried breakfast and two cups of her Lavazza I felt half-human, and some of the previous night’s anxieties had lifted.

  ‘I’ll not ask what happened.’

  ‘Thanks, Betty.’

  ‘Phyllis phoned, from the office.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Mr Douglas says you can stay in this flat for as long as you like, she said to tell you.’

  ‘Just that?’

  ‘Aye, just that.’

  I went back upstairs with Jill the Jack Russell at my heels and called Alastair Marshall on his Greek island redoubt. Eventually he answered.

  ‘We need to talk, Alastair.’ I owed him this return call and I felt it was time for us to start sharing what we each knew.

  ‘I think that would be useful, Angus. I suggest you get yourself over here pronto.’

  I’d been getting myself pronto to and from every corner of the bloody planet for the past three months. If I returned to Greece now I’d get bogged down in all the issues that awaited me there. I would need to see the Kyriakous, who I’d been updating by email alongside the occasional phone call to Michael, but we had not sat down and discussed fully the implications of what the Geo Venturer expedition had revealed.

  And what could I say to Zoe? That the business was on the point of collapse and she should talk to Roy Lawson about a job? It was no time to be looking for another job in Athens right now. The economy was still in ruins. Youth unemployment was running at over sixty per cent.

  Then there was Eleni, who had been leaving email and text messages for me to call her. She knew I didn’t call when I was away on a case but she deserved an explanation. It just wasn’t the right time.

  ‘Look, Alastair, there’s a lot going on right now. I’ll not be back in Greece for a while. We can discuss this over the phone, now.’

  ‘Very well, dear boy. Perhaps I can help before you drown in the murky waters of this whole unsavoury business. I know something of the matter.’

  ‘Well, would you mind telling me just what you do know?’ The IMTF’s information networks spread far and wide.

  ‘I know you stand to gain from these investigations you’re pursuing, and neither I nor the IMTF would wish to prevent you from bringing it all to a satisfactory conclusion and making yourself a penny or two in the process, but this has gone beyond a jolly little caper. And of course it’s our business to know what’s going on. We received a full report of the Trinity House meeting you attended and we now know what the Geo Venturer has found at the wreck site of the Astro Maria. But there are things we don’t know, Angus, and it can only be in your best interests to keep us briefed.’

  ‘And this I promise to do,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll come to see you as soon as I’ve sorted out a couple of things here and there, which shouldn’t take more than a week or two at most.’

  ‘As you wish, dear boy. We’re only too well aware, as are you, that the national law enforcement agencies are unable to handle this kind of case, at least at this stage. So go about your business. But you must know, we stand ready to assist, insofar as we are able.’

  That was reassuring. I didn’t mind being used as their stalking horse, provided I stood to gain something from it myself. Something worried me though. He was a wily old bird and I’d never been sure of his precise role in the IMTF – or what he’d done before that. Was it possible that Alastair Marshall was tied up in all this? The speech had mentioned the involvement of the FCO and the intelligence community. Could he be a part of the Revival himself? Unlikely, I told myself, but everything seemed unlikely about this business including, if I was honest with myself, the embryonic plan I was forming to overcome the Revival, and my next complication, the man who stood between Coreminex and their claim to Buwan Bundok, Razul Malatan.

  ‘Okay, Alastair. I appreciate that. I’ll be in touch.’

  ***

  I heard voices downstairs, then footsteps and a discreet knock on the door. She stood there, serene and beautiful as ever.

  ‘This is a surprise,’ I said.

  ‘Your Mrs B said you were in. I phoned her earlier.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me, Claire?’

  She laughed. ‘Perhaps I wanted to surprise you. And I just did.’

  She looked more closely at my fac
e. ‘For God’s sake, Angus, what happened? You look awful.’ She touched my temple.

  ‘Thanks. I fell over.’

  ‘So you don’t want to tell me,’ she said coolly. ‘It’s okay, I didn’t come here for that.’

  I took her coat and her white fur hat. Her perfume lingered. I wanted to grab her there and then.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘I’ll make coffee.’

  She didn’t sit down. Instead she wandered around the little flat inspecting everything, the way women do. She’d never been here before and I guessed she was curious. I didn’t mind her browsing through my stuff. She even put Pink Floyd’s Division Bell on.

  ‘You’re a bit young for this aren’t you?’ I called, but she was standing right behind me in the kitchen.’

  ‘Angus?’

  I turned to face her. ‘Yes?’

  She came up close. ‘Take me to bed.’

  I pulled her to me. The coffee could wait.

  ***

  ‘God, I hope Mrs B didn’t hear us!’ She lay curled up against me.

  ‘She probably did. I hear her rattling around downstairs all the time. It might have given her a thrill.’

  She prodded me. ‘I’ve never found the sound of someone else making love in the next room a thrill to be honest, especially in the middle of the day.’

  ‘Quite so,’ I said, pulling her closer.

  ‘Angus, I came to tell you about Andrew Kershope.’ She sat up, pulling the duvet over her breasts. I looked up at her. Her face was still flushed and her hair tousled but she was serious now. I sat up too to give her my attention. She had no idea that I’d just come from Kershope’s place in North Berwick.

  ‘I think he’s involved in your Revival. I think that speech was made by him. He might even have created the whole cabal.’

  ‘Let me get the coffee,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  ‘But I don’t see him as an evil genius,’ she said when I returned. ‘A delusional idealist possibly, carried away with a grandiose dream, that’s how I’d characterise him.’

  ‘You’re getting way ahead of me. Did you meet with him?’

  ‘He chaired the board meeting yesterday. I was there. Yes, I met him. We chatted. You’re not the only one to get hunches you know. He was rambling on about how Scotland had lost its way. How the East India Company had been led by Scots; that there was a future for this nation. He’s a nationalist you know. So I ran some quick checks on him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You know, the same kind of stuff we do on prospective members: directorships, due diligence, press reports, social media, that kind of thing. And his personal background – family, education. He went to Eton but then seemed to drift. I read that, rather unkindly perhaps, his father told him he wasn’t brave enough for the Army or clever enough for the City. Yet as a child he was pampered by his mother and his doting aunts, and a series of nannies. It’s all there if you look for it. As part of the landed gentry there’s loads of stuff on him in the press. I can’t see him as wicked though, just deluded.’

  ‘But this is where it gets interesting,’ she continued, ‘to me anyway. He eschewed the family shipowning business. I think there must have been a falling-out or maybe he just wasn’t smart enough. He still has estates though and the title of course, though his brother is the principal heir. Anyway, perhaps because of the family’s connections with Lloyd’s – of London I mean, the insurance market – he found himself in related fields: ship classification and P&I, in non-exec roles of course.’

  She paused and looked at me to see that I was taking it in.

  ‘But it was the reference to the East India Company that set the bells ringing, after what you’d told me about the speech.’

  ‘It fits with what I’ve found too. Dougal got the recording of the speech from a house outside North Berwick. It’s owned by Kershope.’

  ‘There you are then,’ she said primly.

  ‘Yes, but if he’s a delusional idealist, albeit one who pursues his ideals beyond the law, then who’s the evil genius, the puppet master? Who ordered those killings?’

  ‘I don’t know. But let me finish. Andrew Kershope is the youngest of two siblings by a long way. His brother is twelve years older than him. I’m theorising now but, as I said, from what I’ve heard of his family, Andrew had an extremely sheltered upbringing.’

  ‘So what’s your theory?’

  ‘That he’s slightly unhinged – to put it mildly. But because of his wealth, his family, his charm and his plausibility, he gets away with it. At some point in his youth he decided he would prove everybody wrong and that’s when the delusions set in. Of course, everybody was not wrong but he deluded himself and dreamt up a life of gentlemanly crime under the auspices of this absurd Revival thing. Only somewhere along the line, very recently in fact, it morphed from what he believed was a victimless fraud enterprise into something much more sinister. Which brings us back to your question: if Andrew Kershope has become the puppet, then who’s pulling the strings?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I was at Kershope’s place in North Berwick with Dougal last night. Your old pal was there, Boris Kaliyagin and his pet ape. That’s where I got these,’ I said touching my face.

  ‘I’ve cut a kind of deal with him, with Kaliyagin, but they’re holding Dougal hostage as insurance.’

  I went on to explain what had happened. I think up to this point she’d been treating the whole affair in her usual rational, detached way, applying her lawyer’s mind to the known facts and formulating her theory from them. Now the reality seemed to dawn on her.

  ‘God, that’s scary. You’re playing with fire you know. And you’re going to try the same stunt in Mindanao? It’s not worth it, Angus. It’s not worth the risk.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice do I? They’ve got Dougal.’

  We sat in silence. After a while she sighed and turned to me, her eyes suddenly full. ‘Just for now my darling, can we pretend there’s you and me and no one else in this wretched world?’

  I held her to me. It seemed like a good idea.

  CHAPTER 27

  ‘Understand Revival riven with dissent and K usurped. Mindanao support aborted. Call me.’ The text came through as soon as I’d switched my phone back on after I’d disembarked at Changi. I stepped aside from the flow of other passengers and stood for a moment looking out over the airport apron, weighing it up before I called her. It was seven-thirty in the morning back in UK but I figured Claire’s nanny would be getting the children ready for school.

  ‘Where the hell did you hear this, Claire? Who’s usurped Kershope?’

  ‘Don’t ask, my love. And I don’t know who’s taken over. Only that there’s been a palace coup and his Lordship has been toppled. And it seems whoever’s in control now doesn’t harbour the same dreams of hegemony that Kershope had. The new order is not interested in Mindanao. All they want is to get their hands on Kaliyagin’s gold shipment. That’s what I’ve learned.’

  ‘What’s happened to Kershope?’

  ‘I don’t know. He seems to have vanished. He’s off the radar for now at least, but I shouldn’t count him out.’

  ‘Claire, how do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘I have my spies,’ she said, making light of my question.

  ‘I have to go. Stay safe, Angus.’ And she was gone. How had she gained access to the cabal? And why could she not tell me? I found it troubling. Was her husband Edward somehow mixed up in the Revival? Or worse, was she? I tried to dismiss the thought as irrational paranoia. Why would she be keeping me informed, if that were the case?

  Whatever the truth, this latest revelation was a complete game-changer. The Revival’s determination to withdraw from the Buwan Bundok project, if true, would make my plan of convincing Malatan to seize the gold shipment while he could, a lot easier, in theory at least. Without their support, it would be his only way of funding the coup.

  On the other hand, if Kershope had been ousted, then who
was in control? Who was our target?

  As I waited for my flight on to Davao I cast my mind back to the speech and its warning of dissent in the Revival’s ranks; then of Kaliyagin’s comment about their in-fighting. I reflected on how shaky this criminal cabal and its alliances were proving to be. Trust was alien to these people, deception was the norm. But what of Kershope’s vision of a neo-imperial order? Had it been abandoned, seen for what it was: a delusional fantasy? And had the plotters within seen their chance to act and overturn the status quo? I couldn’t imagine that Kershope would be content to simply tend his rose garden, or whatever people like him did when they retired. Neither could I imagine that the new order would be content to let him do so.

  More worrying to me, had Claire once again placed herself in danger? I had warned her to steer clear of this whole business, but I should have known she wouldn’t. The same impulse that led her to carry her investigation into the Med Runner’s cargo theft beyond safe limits all those years ago, was driving her again. But then my mind went back to the uncomfortable question: where was she getting her information?

  ***

  As we drove past Kublai Millan’s durian sculpture outside Davao’s Francisco Bangoy International airport – a welcome sight no doubt if you liked durian fruit - I reached forward and opened the Land Cruiser’s glove box.

  ‘Still there,’ Carlos Torres laughed as I inspected the old .38 special. ‘And this one,’ he added pulling out another pistol from under the driver’s seat. ‘Semi-automatic 9mm Glock.’

  The US embassy in Manila was advising its citizens against travel to Mindanao because of ‘a series of credible security threats’.

  ‘Individuals associated with known extremist and insurgent groups are believed to have been conducting surveillance on a number of public locations as possible targets of interest,’ they were saying in an emergency message. ‘Extremists may elect to use conventional or non-conventional weapons, and target both official and private interests. Examples of such targets include high-profile sporting events, residential areas, business offices, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, public areas and other destinations, whether frequented by foreigners or locals.’ They could have added nosy marine insurance investigators.