Because The Process had failed, I had to die. I couldn’t swim any further, I had nothing left.
I would just let the sea take me. I lay on my back, letting the waves buffet me this way and that, and took in the immensity of the sky.
I guessed there were worse ways to go. This was a peaceful way to die.
Death by ocean. Death by sea.
The waves buffeting me this way and that.
I’m not sure what I noticed first: that the water was a different colour, or the change in smell.
Or the birds in the sky.
Okay, The Process needed remodelling. A slight tweaking. Not ten sets, eleven sets.
The chafing under my arms from where the BCD had been rubbing was unbearable; I decided that it had to go.
As far as surviving the night in the water, it was a crazy thing to do. As far as swimming another three hundred strokes, it was the only thing to do.
I slipped out of the BCD, let it float away.
The relief was instantaneous, and intense; I powered through the first fifty strokes. But then my body reminded me just how sore it was, just how tired it was.
I concentrated on form. Dude, you’ve got to roll. Dude, elbows up higher. Dude, you got to push that water behind you.
Only five strokes to go.
Four. Three. Two.
I stopped treading water, and there was land.
Land so close I could almost reach out and touch it. The Process hadn’t failed me at all; I’d almost failed it.
I swam on until my feet touched sand. I dragged myself up onto the empty beach. There was something I hadn’t allowed myself to think about: there was land and there was land. I remembered that this coastline wasn’t populated.
But it couldn’t be as bad as the ocean.
At least on land I could lie down and rest.
At least on land I could find water, maybe even food.
And I was a runner, I was a land creature.
I staggered up the beach, my legs like two pieces of kelp. Beyond the beach I could see thick bush. But no sign of life.
Okay, this isn’t fair.
It’s just not fair.
And that’s when I saw the smoke, twirling upwards over the trees.
I made for it, covering a couple of hundred metres across the sand before I saw a narrow path that led through the scrub.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fire, there’s people.
I staggered along the path. After about a hundred metres it opened out and I was at a clearing.
A fire crackled.
People were standing around it.
I knew them, but didn’t know them.
They were clapping.
Through my fatigue, my pain, it took me a while to realise that they were clapping me!
One of them, a girl in glasses, said, ‘Nice work, Dom!’
Another one, tall, his voice incongruously high, said, ‘Great swim, buddy!’ He turned to an older man with a battered face, saying, ‘Told you he had the right stuff.’
Then it all became too much: I dropped onto the ground and lost consciousness.
Tuesday
Shiver Me Timbers
When I came to, there was a second, and that’s all it was, where I felt rested, my mind as clear as the water had been when we’d dived on the Meryl earlier.
I was in a tent, on top of a sleeping bag. Somebody had stripped the wetsuit off and I was wearing only boardies. My backpack, the one I’d taken on the Hispaniola, was by my side.
The light filtering through the material fell on my body, bathing me in the most exquisite warmth.
I’d come through an aquatic hell and I was alive.
I was alive!
Alive!
But now all those thoughts that had been queuing patiently in the SMS centre of my head began flooding in, fighting amongst themselves, clamouring for my attention.
How could they have possibly been waiting for me?
Had I really seen the Zolt?
Who was the older man?
As I got to my feet, my body started to remind me how I had treated it. My arms and shoulders were the worst. I tentatively swung my arms, trying to work some of the stiffness out. But as I did, I could feel just how raw my armpits were, like hamburger mince – the sort with all the gristle in it that Mom never buys. And other pain was coming into focus: the back of my neck was sunburnt, and my throat was sore from all the saltwater that had trickled down it.
Another thought: Gus didn’t know where I was!
I hurried out of the tent.
What time was it?
‘Dominic, you woke up.’
I’d been right: it was Zoe.
‘I have to let Gus know I’m okay,’ I said.
‘Dom, it’s okay,’ she said, her voice surprisingly calm and reassuring for somebody so young and so, well, Zolton-Banderesque. ‘He knows already.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ I insisted. ‘I have to talk to him.’
Zoe had her phone out, and was already hitting redial. She handed it to me.
‘Gus?’
‘They told me you’re okay,’ he said, a note of uncharacteristic panic in his voice. ‘You’re okay. Aren’t you?’
No, I’m not okay. I’ve had my air supply cut. I’ve been dragged to the bottom of the ocean. I just swam about twenty kilometres.
Of course I’m not okay.
I took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’m fine, Gus.’
‘Do what you have to do,’ he said, back to his usual panic-free self. And then reception dropped out.
But I’d heard enough. Gus and his liver-eating eagle – to hell and back with that! What I had to do was get out of here. That’s what I had to do.
I followed Zoe to another tent, this one more like a marquee, open on two sides.
Inside was a table, charts spread over it. And on another table was some pretty impressive-looking electronic gear. Sitting in front of it was the Zolt.
I wasn’t sure where the surge of happiness I felt came from – he’d really only ever meant trouble for me. But I guess there was no use denying that I was glad to see him, glad that he was alive, even if I’d never bought into the Zolt-is-dead theory.
He stood up, a huge smile on his face.
Okay, I hadn’t seen him for six or so months but – wow! – had he grown up? He wasn’t any taller – I didn’t think that was possible – but he definitely looked more buff, and he was older in the face. There was something else about him, too. He had this sort of presence that I hadn’t noticed before.
‘Mate, you were awesome,’ he said.
Awesome? What did he mean?
‘I’d like you to meet somebody,’ he said.
I hadn’t noticed, but the older man, the one with the battered, scarred face, was sitting in another chair, a chart spread across his knees.
He looked up at me and he seemed vaguely familiar.
‘This is my father,’ said Otto. ‘Dane Zolton.’
Now I knew why he looked familiar: a much younger, less wrecked, version of him was with Cameron Jamison in that photo in the dive shop.
‘Everybody calls me Bones,’ he said. His voice, like his face, seemed damaged somehow.
‘I heard you were dead,’ I said and, remembering what he’d just said, I added, ‘Bones.’
‘So do a lot of people,’ he said. ‘And let me give you the tip, being dead has its advantages. The dead don’t pay taxes for a start. But, as you can see, I’m pretty much alive. You did good today, son. The kids said you had what it takes, but to tell the truth, I didn’t believe them. Well, I do now.’
Now, I totally got it: they’d just put me through some sort of insane qualification test.
‘I could’ve died!’ I said. ‘You could’ve killed me!’
‘Don’t worry, we had your back,’ said Zoe.
‘No, you didn’t. I was out there, in the middle of the ocean, all by myself.’
Zoe took the laptop from her half-br
other, and held it up so that I could see the screen. On it was a map, with a red dot glowing in the middle of it.
‘Wave your left hand around,’ she said.
I did, and the red dot wobbled slightly. Now I understood: the dive computer that Maxine had given me contained some sort of tracking device.
They’d tracked my progress as I swam towards shore, and were there to meet me when I eventually stumbled onto the beach. After I’d dropped with exhaustion, they’d carted me here.
How far that was, I wouldn’t have a clue.
Which is also why she’d gone to so much trouble to make sure it was secure. But that meant she was in on it, too! Maxine!
So they were right: they did have my back. In a way.
‘But I still could’ve drowned,’ I said.
‘A fellow like you?’ said Bones Zolton, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘I don’t think so.’
It was more of Mr McFarlane’s ‘he flatters to deceive,’ but it was pretty effective. Besides, I didn’t have time to be angry, because something else was rapidly becoming evident to me.
Why had they just put me through what they’d just put me through?
Because they were on the hunt for Yamashita’s Gold, and they needed to see if I had what it took to join them.
And that realisation was so huge, so exciting, it made everything else that had occurred today seem a little puny.
I didn’t need The Debt – in fact, they could go and get a Brazilian – because I was going on the mother of all treasure hunts anyway.
‘Maybe an explanation is in order,’ said Bones Zolton, the man who had been dead for the last ten years.
‘Not such a bad idea,’ said Otto Zolton-Bander, his son, who had only been dead for about the last six months.
‘Let’s eat first,’ said Zoe, who, as far as I knew, hadn’t been dead at all.
Though the light was now fading, I was able to have a good look around Camp Yamashita, as they called it. I had to give it to the Zoltons, they sure knew how to do good hideaway. First Gunbolt Bay, and now here.
‘Found this place when I was an abalone diver,’ said Bones.
I still wasn’t quite used to hearing words come out of a dead man’s mouth.
As we sat down on fold-up chairs to eat, he continued his explanation. ‘There’s no land access; in fact, the country behind is pretty much impenetrable. And because it’s at the end of a narrow L-shaped bay, it’s not visible from the water either. There’s a spring, so there’s your water supply. And the waters around here are teeming with sealife, so there’s always plenty to eat.’
They still must have had to get supplies from town, I figured, storing that particular factoid away in my head, perhaps for future use.
The food we were eating – a sort of seafood stew – was delicious.
‘Is this where you’ve been all this time?’ I said.
‘Good god, no!’ he said, and I could tell he was pretty outraged by that idea. ‘Some of the time, but not all of it.’
‘But why did you disappear?’ I asked.
As I said this, there was the sound of an outboard approaching.
The Zodiac that pulled up onto the beach I recognised immediately – it was the one that had dropped me into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On it was Maxine, Brett and a man with big arms who had to be one of the balaclavas.
Maxine and Brett greeted me as if it was the most normal thing in the world for me to be sitting there. Eating fish stew.
‘Here he is, my star pupil,’ said Maxine.
‘What about the fangs on that moray eel we saw today?’ said Brett.
That would’ve been just before you turned my air supply off!
I glared at Balaclava – nice trick with the anchor – but he returned my glare with the friendliest of smiles.
The newcomers then helped themselves to the stew and joined us.
I’d fallen down quite a few rabbit holes into quite a few Wonderlands during the time of The Debt, but this was by far the most wondrous. The White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum – they were all as normal as actuaries compared to this lot.
I only had to remind myself of one thing for this to pale into insignificance, however: they were searching for Yamashita’s Gold.
‘Skip?’ Bones asked Maxine.
‘You know how hard it is to get him off the Hispaniola,’ she said. ‘He loves that tub.’
‘And Dogger?’
‘They’ve got a card game they need to finish, apparently.’
Now I got it: they used the Zodiac to go back and forth from the boat. That way they didn’t have to return to port every night, where all those eyes would be watching them. And Dogger, I assumed, was the other Balaclava.
‘Anyway, I was just telling Dominic here how I found this place in the old days, when I was diving on abalone for a living. My god, that was a good business when it first started. We were getting, what, two hundred bucks a kilo from the Japs. Then we had that mercury scare and things got really tough – so tough I had to get that job working out the airport. But I was always itching to get back to the water.’
Sitting there, with the sound of the waves lapping up on the beach, the taste of seafood on my lips, it was like it wasn’t Bones but the sea itself that was telling this story.
‘Since I was a little tacker I always loved stories of treasure. Treasure Island, I must’ve read that book a hundred times.’
I looked over at Zoe and Otto – both looked pretty bored, and I had the feeling they’d heard this yarn quite a few times before.
‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!’ said Bones suddenly, and loudly, and for an instant I saw Long John Silver himself sitting there, a parrot on his shoulder.
‘So of course I knew about the legend of Yamashita’s Gold. Though I didn’t believe it could have got this far down the coast.’ Bones gouged at his teeth with a toothpick. After he’d spat something onto the sand, he continued. ‘I saw something on the news one night, about the Jonestown massacre, where all those people in that cult died. And I had this, what do you call it, this revelation? Just because I didn’t believe the treasure could be around here didn’t mean other people wouldn’t. I mean, it’s all about faith, isn’t it? People who have faith are the most determined people in the world. And the more you question that faith, the more determined they become.’
He gouged at his teeth a bit more. ‘So I started dropping hints. Down the pub I mentioned that maybe, just maybe, Yamashita’s Gold had made it this far south. And shiver me timbers, the next week somebody’s telling me the same story. So I know it’s got legs, this thing.’
Shiver me timbers? Maybe Bones really did think he was a parrot-less Long John Silver?
He paused, looked around, eyebrows slightly raised.
‘Beer, Bones?’ said Otto.
‘Man’s not a camel,’ said Bones.
Otto returned with a stubby and tossed it to his dad.
You could tell from the way he opened it, the way he gulped it, the satisfied smack of his lips he gave afterwards, that it probably wasn’t the first one he’d had in his life.
‘So I thought, why not set myself up as an expert? Open a business helping people look for Yamashita’s Gold.’
I didn’t like the way this story was developing – Yamashita’s Gold was a hoax, was that what he was saying? But if that was the case, what were we all doing here? Especially me, what was I doing here?
‘That went pretty well, too. It wasn’t making me rich, but it sure beat working for a living.’
Another gulp of his beer.
I was getting impatient.
‘But what happened?’ I blurted.
‘What happened?’ said Bones Zolton, finishing the stubby and tossing it onto the sand. ‘What happened, what destroyed my business?’
He paused here for dramatic effect, and it worked, because when he said, ‘I actually found Yamashita’s Gold,’ I was gobsmacked.
And as you can imagin
e, I was finding it pretty difficult to get my head around this. ‘You found the real treasure?’
‘I was out one day with these smart alecs from Sydney who thought they knew everything. Well, truth be known, they were pretty cluey, especially about ocean currents. Usually I took my clients off the north end of the island. Pretty safe there, water’s not too deep and the diving’s real pretty, so even if you don’t find no treasure, you’ve got some nice memories to take home. But these guys, they insist we dive in the trench. Look, I’ve been diving my whole life, but two hundred feet’s my limit. Anything deeper than that and I start to get a bit edgy. We spend a week at this place and I’ve stopped diving. Just kicking back in the boat while they take the dinghy out. Well, this one morning they come back and something’s happened, I can see it in their faces. They’re keeping mum, though. But when they decide to pull up the pick and head back I know they’ve found something –’
Again I couldn’t help butting in. ‘But why didn’t they tell you?’
Bones laughed. ‘You don’t know much about treasure hunting, because if you did you’d know that really it’s about one thing: greed. The contract I always had my customers sign said that we’d share the treasure fifty-fifty.’
I felt a bit stupid asking him the question. I’d read enough about treasure hunting, watched enough movies, to know how powerful greed was.
‘Well, they, like pretty much all people, got greedy. They figured that if they didn’t say anything, they could come back in their own time, with their own boat, and take the lot.’
Again, Otto got up to fetch his dad a stubby.
‘So what happened to them?’ I said.
‘They met an untimely end,’ said Bones. ‘Car accident on the way back to Sydney, car incinerated, everything went up in flames.’
There was something ominous in the way he said this and the thought flashed through my mind that Bones was involved in the accident somehow. But that didn’t make sense. Why would he do away with them when they were the only ones who knew where the treasure was?
‘Still, I know roughly where the treasure is, within a twenty-kilometre radius. And I figure, if I keep looking, eventually I’ll find it.’
That seemed like a reasonable proposition to me, too.
‘Every day I go out there, weather permitting, and I look. Spend hours and hours diving in all that water. It’s all I think of, night and day.’ As he said this, he looked over at his son.
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