We donned the goggles and I switched on the machine. It was a spectacular display. The graphite mat flashed instantly to a white heat and the piece of steel glowed red, then yellow and finally white. It seemed to slump like a bit of melting wax and in less than fifteen seconds it had melted into a little pool. All this to the accompaniment of a violent shower of sparks as the metal reacted with the air.
I switched off the machine and removed my goggles. ‘We won’t have all these fireworks when we melt gold; it doesn’t oxidize as easily as iron.’
Coertze was staring at the machine. ‘How does it do that?’
‘Something like a carbon arc,’ I said. ‘You can get temperatures up to five thousand degrees centigrade. It’s only intended to be a laboratory instrument, but I reckon we can melt two pounds of gold at a time. With three of these gadgets and a hell of a lot of spare mats we should be able to work pretty fast.’
He said doubtfully, ‘If we can only pour a couple of pounds at a time, the keel is going to be so full of cracks and flaws that I’m not sure it won’t break under its own weight.’
‘I’ve thought of that one, too,’ I said calmly. ‘Have you ever watched anyone pour reinforced concrete?’
He frowned and then caught on, snapping his fingers.
‘We make the mould and put a mesh of wires inside,’ I said. ‘That’ll hold it together.’
I showed him a model I had made, using fuse wire and candle wax, which he examined carefully. ‘You’ve done a hell of a lot of thinking about this,’ he said at last.
‘Somebody has to,’ I said. ‘Or that gold will stay where it is for another fourteen years.’
He didn’t like that because it made him appear stupid; but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He started to say something and bit it short, his face flushing red. Then he took a deep breath and said, ‘All right, you’ve convinced me. I’m in.’
Then I took a deep breath—of relief.
III
That night we had a conference.
I said, ‘This is the drill. Sanford—my yacht—will be ready for trials next week. As soon as the trials are over you two are going to learn how to sail under my instruction. In under four months from now we sail for Tangier.’
‘Christ!’ said Walker. ‘I don’t know that I like the sound of that.’
‘There’s nothing to it,’ I said. ‘Hundreds of people are buzzing about the Atlantic these days. Hell, people have gone round the world in boats a quarter the size.’
I looked at Coertze. ‘This is going to take a bit of financing. Got any money?’
‘About a thousand,’ he admitted.
‘That gets tossed into the kitty,’ I said. ‘Along with my twenty-five thousand.’
‘Magtig,’ he said. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of money.’
‘We’ll need every penny of it,’ I said. ‘We might have to buy a small boatyard in Italy if that’s the only way we can cast the keel in secrecy. Besides, I’m lending it to the firm of Walker, Coertze and Halloran at one hundred per cent interest. I want fifty thousand back before the three-way split begins. You can do the same with your thousand.’
‘That sounds fair enough,’ agreed Coertze.
I said, ‘Walker hasn’t any money and once you’ve thrown your thousand in the kitty, neither have you. So I’m putting you both on my payroll. You’ve got to have your smokes and three squares a day while all this is going on.’
This bit of information perked Walker up considerably. Coertze merely nodded in confirmation. I looked hard at Walker. ‘And you stay off the booze or we drop you over the side. Don’t forget that.’
He nodded sullenly.
Coertze said, ‘Why are we going to Tangier first?’
‘We’ve got to make arrangements to remelt the gold into standard bars,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine any banker calmly taking a golden keel into stock. Anyway, that’s for the future; right now I have to turn you into passable seamen—we’ve got to get to the Mediterranean first.’
I took Sanford on trials and Walker and Coertze came along for the ride and to see what they were letting themselves in for. She turned out to be everything I’ve ever wanted in a boat. She was fast for a deep-sea cruiser and not too tender. With a little sail adjustment she had just the right amount of helm and I could see she was going to be all right without any drastic changes.
As we went into a long reach she picked up speed and went along happily with the water burbling along the lee rail and splashing on deck. Walker, his face a little green, said, ‘I thought you said a keel would hold this thing upright.’ He was hanging tightly on to the side of the cockpit.
I laughed. I was happier than I had been for a long time. ‘Don’t worry about that. That’s not much angle of heel. She won’t capsize.’
Coertze didn’t say anything—he was busy being sick.
The next three months were rough and tough. People forget that the Cape was the Cape of Storms before some early public relations officer changed the name to the Cape of Good Hope. When the Berg Wind blows it can be as uncomfortable at sea as anywhere in the world.
I drove Walker and Coertze unmercifully. In three months I had to turn them into capable seamen, because Sanford was a bit too big to sail single-handed. I hoped that the two of them would equal one able-bodied seaman. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds because in those three months they put in as much sea time as the average week-end yachtsman gets in three years, and they had the dubious advantage of having a pitiless instructor.
Shore time was spent in learning the theory of sail and the elements of marline-spike seamanship—how to knot and splice, mend a sail and make baggywrinkle. They grumbled a little at the theory, but I silenced that by asking them what they’d do if I was washed overboard in the middle of the Atlantic.
Then we went out to practise what I had taught—at first in the bay and then in the open sea, cruising coastwise around the peninsula at first, and then for longer distances well out of sight of land.
I had thought that Coertze would prove to be as tough at sea as apparently he was on land. But he was no sailor and never would be. He had a queasy stomach and couldn’t stand the motion, so he turned out to be pretty useless at boat handling. But he was hero enough to be our cook on the longer voyages, a thankless job for a sea-sick man.
I would hear him swearing below when the weather was rough and a pot of hot coffee was tossed in his lap. He once told me that he now knew what poker dice felt like when they were shaken in the cup. He wouldn’t have stood it for any lesser reason, but the lust for gold was strong in him.
Walker was the real surprise. Coertze and I had weaned him from his liquor over many protests, and he was now eating more and the air and exercise agreed with him. He put on weight, his thin cheeks filled out and his chest broadened. Nothing could replace the hair he had lost, but he seemed a lot more like the handsome young man I had known ten years earlier.
More surprisingly, he turned out to be a natural sailor. He liked Sanford and she seemed to like him. He was a good helmsman and could lay her closer to the wind than I could when we were beating to windward. At first I was hesitant to give him a free hand with Sanford, but as he proved himself I lost my reluctance.
At last we were ready and there was nothing more to wait for. We provisioned Sanford and set sail for the north on November 12, to spend Christmas at sea. Ahead of us was a waste of water with the beckoning lure of four tons of gold at the other side.
I suppose one could have called it a pleasure cruise!
BOOK TWO
The Gold
THREE: TANGIER
Two months later we sailed into Tangier harbour, the ‘Q’ flag hoisted, and waited for the doctor to give us pratique and for the Customs to give us the once-over. To port of Sanford was the modern city with its sleek, contemporary buildings sharply outlined against the sky. To starboard was the old city—the Arab city—squat and low-roofed and hugging a hill, the skyline only broken by the up-
flung spear of a minaret.
To port—Europe; to starboard—Africa.
This was nothing new to Walker and Coertze. They had sown a few wild oats in their army days, roistering in Cairo and Alexandria. On the voyage from Cape Town they had talked much about their army days—and all in Italian, too. We made it a rule to speak as much Italian as possible, and while the others were on a refresher course, I didn’t lag far behind even though I had to start from scratch.
We had settled on a good cover story to veil our activities in the Mediterranean. I was a South African boat builder on a cruise combining business with pleasure. I was thinking of expanding into the lucrative Mediterranean market and might buy a boatyard if the price and conditions were right. This story had the advantage of not departing too far from the truth and would serve if we really had to buy a yard to cast the golden keel.
Coertze was a mining man with medical trouble. His doctor had advised him to take a leisurely holiday and so he was crewing Sanford for me. His cover story would account for any interest he might take in derelict lead mines.
Walker, who proved to be something of an actor, was a moderately wealthy playboy. He had money but disliked work and was willing to go a long way to avoid it. He had come on this Mediterranean trip because he was bored with South Africa and wanted a change. It was to be his job to set things up in Tangier; to acquire a secluded house where we could complete the last stages of the operation.
All in all, I was quite satisfied, even though I had got a bit tired of Coertze on the way north. He didn’t like the way I seemed to be taking charge of things and I had to ram home very forcibly the fact that a ship can only have one skipper. He had seen the point when we ran into heavy weather off the Azores, and it galled him that the despised Walker was the better seaman.
Now we were in Tangier, he had recovered his form and was a bit more inclined to throw his weight around. I could see that I’d have to step on him again before long.
Walker looked about the yacht basin. ‘Not many sailing boats here,’ he commented.
That was true. There were a few ungainly-looking fishing boats and a smart ketch, probably bound for the Caribbean. But there were at least twenty big power craft, fast-looking boats, low on the water. I knew what they were.
This was the smuggling fleet. Cigarettes to Spain, cigarette lighters to France, antibiotics to where they could make a profit (although that trade had fallen off), narcotics to everywhere. I wondered if there was much arms smuggling to Algeria.
At last the officials came and went, leaving gouges in my planking from their hob-nailed boots. I escorted them to their launch, and as soon as they had left, Walker touched my arm.
‘We’ve got another visitor,’ he said.
I turned and saw a boat being sculled across the harbour. Walker said, ‘He was looking at us through glasses from that boat across there.’ He pointed to one of the motor craft. ‘Then he started to come here.’
I watched the approaching dinghy. A European was rowing and I couldn’t see his face, but as he dexterously backed water and swung round to the side of Sanford he looked up and I saw that it was Metcalfe.
Metcalfe is one of that international band of scallywags of whom there are about a hundred in the world. They are soldiers of fortune and they flock to the trouble spots, ignoring the danger and going for the money. I was not really surprised to see Metcalfe in Tangier; it had been a pirates’ stronghold from time immemorial and would be one of Metcalfe’s natural hang-outs.
I had known him briefly in South Africa but I didn’t know what he was at the time. All that I knew was that he was a damned good sailor who won a lot of dinghy races at Cape Town and who came close to winning the South African dinghy championship. He bought one of my Falcons and had spent a lot of time at the yard tuning it.
I had liked him and had crewed for him a couple of times. We had had many a drink together in the yacht club bar and he had spent a week-end at Kirstenbosche with Jean and myself. It was in the way of being a firmly ripening friendship between us when he had left South Africa a hop, skip and a jump ahead of the police, who wanted to nail him on a charge of I.D.B. Since then I had not seen him, but I had heard passing mentions and had occasionally seen his name in the papers, usually quoted as being in trouble in some exotic hot-spot.
Now he was climbing on to the deck of Sanford.
‘I thought it was you,’ he said. ‘So I got the glasses to make sure. What are you doing here?’
‘Just idly cruising,’ I said. ‘Combining business with pleasure. I thought I might see what the prospects in the Med. are like.’
He grinned. ‘Brother, they’re good. But that’s not in your line, is it?’
I shook my head, and said, ‘Last I heard of you, you were in Cuba.’
‘I was in Havana for a bit,’ he said. ‘But that was no place for me. It was an honest revolution, or at least it was until the Commies moved in. I couldn’t compete with them, so I quit.’
‘What are you doing now?’
He smiled and looked at Walker. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
I said, ‘This is Walker and this is Coertze.’ There was handshaking all round and Metcalfe said, ‘It’s good to hear a South African accent again. You’d have a good country there if the police weren’t so efficient.’
He turned to me. ‘Where’s Jean?’
‘She’s dead,’ I said. ‘She was killed in a motor smash.’
‘How did it happen?’
So I told him of Chapman’s Peak and the drunken driver and the three-hundred-foot fall to the sea. As I spoke his face hardened, and when I had finished, he said, ‘So the bastard only got five years, and if he’s a good boy he’ll be out in three and a half.’
He rubbed his finger against the side of his nose. ‘I liked Jean,’ he said. ‘What’s the bludger’s name? I’ve got friends in South Africa who can see to him when he comes out.’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘That won’t bring Jean back.’
He nodded, then slapped his hands together. ‘Now you’re all staying with me at my place; I’ve got room enough for an army.’
I said hesitantly, ‘What about the boat?’
He smiled. ‘I see you’ve heard stories about the Tangier dock thieves. Well, let me tell you they’re all true. But that doesn’t matter; I’ll put one of my men on board. Nobody steals from my men—or me.’
He rowed back across the harbour and presently returned with a scar-faced Moroccan, to whom he spoke in quick and guttural Arabic. Then he said, ‘That’s all fixed. I’ll have the word passed round the docks that you’re friends of mine. Your boat’s safe enough, as safe as though it lay in your own yard.’
I believed him. I could believe he had a lot of pull in a place like Tangier.
‘Let’s go ashore,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘So am I,’ said Coertze.
‘It’ll be a relief not to do any more cooking for a while, won’t it?’ I said.
‘Man,’ said Coertze, ‘I wouldn’t mind if I never saw a frypan again.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I was looking forward to you making me some koeksusters; I always liked South African grub.’ He roared with laughter and slapped Coertze on the back.
Metcalfe had a big apartment on the Avenida de España, and he gave me a room to myself while Coertze and Walker shared a room. He stayed and chatted while I unpacked my bag.
‘South Africa too quiet for you?’ he asked.
I went into my carefully prepared standard talk on the reasons I had left. I had no reason to trust Metcalfe more than anyone else—probably less—judging by the kind of man he was. I don’t know whether he believed me or not, but he agreed that there was scope in the Mediterranean for a good boatyard.
‘You may not get as many commissions to build,’ he said. ‘But there certainly is room for a good servicing and maintenance yard. I’d go east, towards Greece, if I were you. The yards in the islands cater mostly for the loc
al fishermen; there’s room for someone who understands yachts and yachtsmen.’
‘What have you got a boat for?’ I asked banteringly. ‘Hiring it out for charter cruises?’
He grinned. ‘Aw, you know me. I carry all sorts of cargoes; anything except narcotics.’ He pulled a face. ‘I’m a bad bastard, I know, but I draw the line at drugs. Anything else I’m game for.’
‘Including guns to Algeria,’ I hazarded.
He laughed. ‘The French in Algiers hate my guts—they tried to do me down a couple of months ago. I’d unloaded a cargo into some fishing boats and then I ran into Algiers to refuel. I was clean, see! they couldn’t touch me—my papers were in order and everything.’
‘I let the crew go ashore for a drink and I turned in and had a zizz. Then something woke me up—I heard a thump and then a queer noise that seemed to come from underneath the boat. So I got up and had a look around. When I got on deck I saw a boat pulling away and there seemed to be a man in the water, swimming alongside it.’
He grinned. ‘Well, I’m a careful and cautious man, so I got my snorkel and my swim-fins and went over the side to have a look-see. What do you think those French Security bastards had done to me?’
I shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘They’d put a limpet mine on my stern gear. They must have reckoned that if they couldn’t nail me down legally they’d do it illegally. If that thing went off it would blow the bottom out of my stern. Well, I got it off the boat and did a bit of heavy thinking. I knew they wouldn’t have timed it to blow up in harbour—it wouldn’t have looked nice—so I reckoned it was set to blow after I left.
‘I slung it round my neck by the cord and swam across the harbour to where the police patrol boat was lying and stuck it under their stern. Let them have the trouble of buying a new boat.
‘Next day we left early as planned and, as we moved out, I heard the police boat revving up. They followed us a long way while I was taking it nice and easy, cruising at about ten knots so they wouldn’t lose me. They hung on to my tail for about thirty miles, waiting for the bang and laughing to themselves fit to bust, I suppose. But they didn’t laugh when the bang came and blew the arse off their own boat.
The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter Page 6