Yamashita's Gold

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Yamashita's Gold Page 11

by Phillip Gwynne


  ‘Shut up,’ she said, with a nervous glance behind her. ‘Follow me!’

  I was in no position to argue, so I did as she said. Initially we retraced my steps down the path, but when we reached the ruined community hall she diverged to the right.

  The path wound through what looked like a series of old garden beds until we reached a wooden building.

  Circular, with a domed roof, it looked like something a nomad would live in.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘What’s this place?’

  ‘It’s the yurt,’ said Zoe.

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?

  ‘Yurt – it sounds like low-fat yoghurt or something.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Zoe. ‘It sounds like yurt.’

  For the first time I realised something: Zoe actually had no sense of humour. Zero. Zilch. She and Salacia could form a comedy duo, except there would be no comedy. The audience could sit there, not laughing.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘let’s go inside.’

  I followed her as she pushed open the creaky door and we entered the yurt.

  It was pretty scungy – broken floorboards and rat poo everywhere – but I could see how once it might’ve been a cool place.

  ‘This used to be the meditation centre,’ she said. ‘Back when everybody was a hippie.’

  ‘Everybody?’ I said, trying to imagine Mrs Bander in beads and a tie-dyed T-shirt spreading a bit of peace, love and understanding.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘Anyway, how’s the scuba-diving course going?’

  What, was I suddenly on Big Brother? Were there people all over Australia betting as to when I would get voted out of the house … sorry, the yurt?

  ‘How in the hell do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘Reverie’s a small island,’ said Zoe, but then her tone suddenly changed, became less combative. ‘So why are you doing a course here, anyway?’

  ‘My dad arranged it,’ I said.

  It was my turn to do some digging.

  ‘Who would’ve thought that your dad and Cameron Jamison were once in business together?’

  ‘Not my dad,’ said Zoe.

  ‘He wasn’t your dad?’ I said, feeling like a bit of an idiot – all the research I’d done on the Zolt, and I hadn’t known this.

  Zoe shook her head.

  ‘But your name’s Zolton-Bander,’ I said.

  ‘So what?’ she said. ‘I could call myself Beyoncé if I wanted to.’

  ‘Otto’s your half-brother, then?’

  ‘Yes, logically that would follow.’

  ‘But who’s your father?’ I said.

  ‘None of your business,’ said Zoe, but again that change of tone. ‘No offence.’

  There was a question that had been bugging me for a while, but I’d been too polite – if that’s the right word – to ask it. Now that I knew that Zoe wasn’t actually Dane Zolton’s daughter, I had no such qualms, however.

  ‘So what actually happened to Otto’s dad?’ I said.

  ‘He died,’ said Zoe.

  ‘But how?’ I persevered. ‘I couldn’t find much info on it.’

  ‘You’re like a dog with a bone, you are,’ she said. ‘He disappeared, okay? While he was out diving.’

  ‘Disappeared?’ I repeated. ‘So there was never any body found?’

  Zoe nodded.

  ‘No bones,’ she said.

  ‘Bones?’

  ‘Bones. Body. You know what I mean?’ she said, and again that tone-change. ‘So what was Italy like?’

  How in the hell did she know that I’d been to Italy?

  ‘It was pretty cool,’ I said. ‘Very Italian.’

  Zoe opened and closed her mouth a few times, as if she was going to say something, but thought better of it.

  Finally she said, with a wave of her hand, ‘I suppose you’ve heard that E Lee Marx fellow is out there, somewhere, searching for treasure.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard that,’ I said.

  What game was Zoe playing here?

  ‘He must have a pretty good idea where it is, then?’ she said.

  Suddenly that something that had been flitting about at the edge of my consciousness came into focus.

  It was that movie again, Catch the Zolt.

  Our hero Dominic Silvagni is in the Zolt’s lair, and in his hands is a map, or a chart, because it’s of the ocean not the land.

  It’s covered in pencil marks; some of these marks are numbers, but others are weird hieroglyphics.

  ‘This is like a diary or something,’ says the bad guy Tristan Jazy (played by bad guy Tristan Jazy) from nearby.

  Dom looks up to see that Tristan is reading from a small notebook.

  Dom folds the map back up and puts it on the top of a pile. As he does, he notices that it has a name written on it in faint pen: Dane G Zolton.

  Soon after that – gunshots! – and the boys make their Indiana Jones-like escape from the cave, the cave that is subsequently ransacked by … The Debt?

  I looked over at Zoe; her mouth was moving, she was obviously talking, but none of her words had made it to my neocortex.

  ‘Sorry, did you say something?’ I said.

  ‘Look, Dom, I don’t think you’re such a bad person,’ said Zoe.

  Shucks, thanks Zoe.

  ‘But there are quite a few people on the island who hate your guts.’

  ‘Like who?’ I said. Nobody likes to be hated, especially when it’s your guts that are involved. ‘Give me names.’

  ‘My uncle, the one whose car you bulldozed.’

  ‘You bulldozed it, not me.’

  ‘Whatever, he pretty much wants to kill you. Come to think of it, my mum’s not keen on you either.’

  ‘No offence, but I’m not exactly president of her fan club, myself,’ I said.

  ‘And let’s not forget the Mattners,’ she said.

  It was a small island – for sure she would know about yesterday’s jetski tango.

  ‘I suggest you lie real low,’ she said. ‘Do your scuba classes, go back home and do what you rich people do when you’re home.’

  Makeover or what? New hair, new glasses, and new ’tude; now she was handing out advice to people several years older than her.

  ‘And if I don’t?’ I said.

  Zoe shook her head, took out her phone, put it on speaker and dialled a number.

  ‘Hi, Roo,’ she said.

  ‘What do you want?’ he barked.

  ‘You know that kid in the speedboat?’

  ‘Dominic freaking Silvagni,’ said the Mattner, and the sound of my name coming from his mouth sent a wobble through me. ‘You know where he is?’

  Zoe hung up then.

  She’d made her point, and she’d made it really well.

  ‘Actually, it doesn’t really matter anyway,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You are?’ she said, and for pretty much the first time in our conversation I had the sense that at last I knew something that she didn’t. ‘But I thought you were going to be here for a week?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Leave. Us.’ I said.

  Something told me that now was also the time to depart Zolton-Bander Land, while I still had all my teeth, and the upper hand as far as who-knows-what goes.

  I took out my iPhone. ‘Is that the time?’ I said, ‘I really need to get home.’

  Outside, Zoe pointed to a path and said, ‘That’ll lead you back to the main road.’

  I was just about to take it when I had a thought.

  ‘So how’s your brother?’ I said, my eyes searching her face.

  ‘My brother’s dead,’ she said, throwing me a pathetically mournful look. ‘Don’t you watch the news?’

  ‘No, he’s not!’ I said. ‘You told me that yourself, that day in the hospital.’

  ‘Well, he’s dead to me!’ she said, as she took off down the path.

  No, Otto Zolton-Bander wasn’t dead. In fact, I had this feel
ing that he was on this very island. And not so far away, either. I thought of the CCTV on the light pole. Hell’s bells and buckets of blood – maybe he’d even been watching me!

  By the time I got back to the main road, it was getting dark.

  Suddenly I realised how vulnerable I was, standing here by myself.

  If a Mattner came along, or any of the islanders who, supposedly, hated my guts …

  I was taking out my phone to ring my dad, to ask him if he could pick me up, when a Ferrari came out of nowhere, Ferrari-ing past me in flash of red.

  I looked around for a suitable hiding place, but the Ferrari had done exactly what I’d hoped it wouldn’t: it had braked, it had reversed, and it was now next to me.

  The passenger’s window whizzed down, revealing the only occupant of the car, the driver. My dad’s age. Designer shades. Rolex on wrist.

  Confident hair. Cameron Jamison.

  The testicular torturer.

  ‘Dominic,’ he said. ‘What you doing stuck out here like a shag on a rock?’

  It was a good question.

  I didn’t have a good answer.

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a ride home.’

  ‘My dad’s going to pick me up,’ I lied.

  ‘Well, give him a call and save him the trip,’ said Cameron Jamison. ‘Trust me, this is no place to be on your Pat Malone.’

  This all sounded very reasonable; I didn’t feel as if I could say no. Besides, he was right: this was no place to be on my Pat Malone.

  So I sent a text to my dad: home soon, and I got into the Ferrari.

  As I did I made a quick inventory of its contents.

  No Warnie masks, no instruments of testicular torture, but the same book on the floor as last time I got a ride. Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamishita’s Gold.

  Cameron Jamison was soon hammering the Ferrari through the bends.

  I picked the book up, turned it around in my hands.

  My phone beeped a return text from Dad: great.

  ‘Dad says thanks,’ I said.

  ‘No problem,’ said Cameron Jamison.

  Feeling much more confident now – surely he wouldn’t try anything? – I said, ‘Last time you gave me a ride, you said this book was rubbish.’

  ‘That’s because it is rubbish,’ he said, and like last time, the way he spat out ‘rubbish’ was if the book itself was a pile of festering putridness.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because the authors have got it totally wrong,’ he said, his voice getting more and more emotional. ‘The Yanks never got their hands on Yamashita’s Gold, and they certainly didn’t use it to finance some anti-communist organisation called the Black Eagle Trust.’

  Wow!

  There was an obvious question to be asked, but I felt a bit wary about asking it.

  As the Ferrari came out of the bends, and hit the straight, Cameron Jamison put his foot down.

  The speedometer needle was now touching two hundred kilometres per hour.

  I’m not sure if this was how Cameron Jamison always drove, or if my question about the book had riled him, or if he was just trying to scare the bejesus out of me.

  If it was the last, then he’d succeeded, so I thought what the hell, there isn’t much difference between being really scared and really, really scared.

  ‘So why, exactly, is the book rubbish?’ I ventured.

  By this time we were approaching the Jazy’s house and the needle had started dropping.

  ‘Because the gold is out there,’ said Cameron Jamison, waving his hand in the general direction of the ocean. ‘It’s out there!’

  Did he mean out there, as in out there in the ocean somewhere? Or out there, as in near Reverie Island?

  But could The Debt really have got it so wrong?

  Had they been sold a pup by the Zolt? A dodgy map, perhaps?

  Could Yamashita’s Gold be nowhere near Diablo Bay, where the world’s foremost treasure hunter was now searching?

  The Ferrari pulled up outside the Jazy’s house.

  ‘Thanks for the ride,’ I said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Cameron Jamison, who seemed to have reverted to his confident-hair self.

  As I went to get out of the car, he said, ‘One more thing, Dom.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Jamison?’ I said.

  ‘I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘I want you to open the glove box for me.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, wondering what I would find in there.

  I opened it – there was a large manila envelope.

  ‘There are some photos inside, which I’d like you to take a look at.’

  I took the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. I slid out the black-and-white photos; there were three of them. It took me a while to work out what it was I was looking for but when I did, I immediately looked away.

  They were photos of bodies.

  They were immolated, mutilated, dismembered. And they were young.

  I let them drop out of my hands.

  ‘If you’re not off my island by tomorrow,’ said Cameron Jamison, his voice guttural, ‘this is what’s going to happen to you and your big sister, Miranda, and your little brother, Toby.’

  For the briefest of seconds I thought this was some sort of sick practical joke, but when I looked at his face, his dark, dark eyes, I knew that it wasn’t.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, my hand on the doorhandle.

  I got out of there, away from those photos.

  The Ferrari took off.

  And hands on my knees, I opened my mouth, and let the vomit come pouring out of me.

  Monday

  Return to Reverie

  Gus is a very slow driver.

  And today, he was driving extra slowly.

  Take a slow driver and have him drive slowly and what’s the result? Waiting for Godot on wheels.

  ‘Geez, Gus,’ I said, ‘if you go any slower I reckon we’ll enter another time-space continuum.’

  The irony wasn’t lost on me: three days ago I’d been pretty happy to fly out of Reverie, to leave Cameron Jamison and his evil photos behind.

  But here I was, anxious as hell to get back there.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to drive,’ he said.

  Maybe I would, I thought. I wasn’t too bad on the jetski. The motorbike. The speedboat. The bulldozer. The car seemed like a pretty logical progression.

  But just as I was going to point this out, Gus applied slightly more pressure to the accelerator and the speedometer needle crept up ever so slightly.

  ‘Remind me when the diving’s on, again?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I conceded.

  ‘So what’s the big rush?’

  He had a point, but that’s only because he didn’t know that now the diving – as amazing as it sounded – was just an alibi, a reason for me to be in Reverie if anybody started asking. The police. Or any of the thousands of people who supposedly hated me and my guts.

  The sooner I got there the sooner I could start snooping around. And find out what I needed to find out.

  Because during the last few days I’d become more and more certain that there was something going on.

  The break-ins at the dive shops.

  Zoe’s weirder-than-usual behaviour.

  Cameron Jamison’s over-the-top warning.

  ‘So why don’t we talk about your running’ said Gus.

  I’d known he was going to bring this up, that it was probably the reason he let me volunteer him to drive me to Reverie in the first place. Get me in the front seat, snap me in my seatbelt, and earbash the hell out of me.

  ‘I’m retired,’ I said.

  ‘Dominic, you ran the goddamn fastest time for your age in the world in Rome!’

  ‘Quit while you’re on top,’ I said, though I must admit I did feel another pang of loss; running had been such a big part of my life, running had been almost my best friend.

  We had just
entered that sleepy little town we’d stopped in with Mr Jazy that day, the one he said ‘just had to go’, and I couldn’t help but noticing that there were For Sale signs everywhere.

  ‘Look, I’m not going to be around forever. It would be a shame never to see you race again.’

  The old I’m-not-going-to-be-around-forever card. An oldie but a definite goldie, guaranteed to make most underachieving teenagers feel like total crap.

  But a card that Gus didn’t usually play.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘What’s your bench press lately? Eighty?’

  ‘Seventy-five,’ said Gus. ‘Yet to crack the eighty.’

  ‘People who bench press seventy-five don’t pop their thongs. That just doesn’t happen.’

  Gus laughed his great rumbly laugh. And everything felt nice and normal again.

  But he wasn’t about to give up on the running thing.

  He tried another tack.

  ‘To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.’

  ‘Steve Prefontaine,’ I said.

  ‘A runner must run with dreams in his heart.’

  ‘Emil Zátopec.’

  I loved this game, even though I knew I was playing straight into Gus’s hands.

  ‘See, you can’t escape it. It’s in your blood. It’s in your DNA,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway, I’m swimming now,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, give me one killer swimming quote,’ said Gus.

  He had me, but I wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

  ‘No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, that great swimmer Sir Roger Bannister,’ said Gus, laughing. ‘The man who broke the four-minute aquatic mile.’

  I guess you’d have to be a running nerd to find any of this amusing, but we happily played the quote game all the way to where the ferry left the mainland for Reverie.

  I considered staying in the car for the crossing, remaining as inconspicuous as possible.

  Maybe a Zoe-style disguise wouldn’t be such a bad idea once we got to the island, I told myself.

  But Gus – well, one of his old man’s farts – forced us out onto the deck.

  The sea was choppy; out further, whitecaps were racing.

  ‘Well, hello there.’

  Immediately I recognised the tough-sounding voice, but I was hoping against hope that this greeting wasn’t directed at me.

 

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