The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  I helped her make a hole, reflecting that this was a product of her guerilla training. I would have tried to fill the buckets in drips and drabs. When the hole was big enough we sat on the bank waiting for the sediment to settle, and I said, ‘Was Coertze ever wounded?’

  ‘No, he was very lucky. He was never wounded beyond a scratch, although there were many times he could have been.’

  I offered her a cigarette and lit it. ‘So he did a lot of fighting?’

  ‘All the men fought,’ she said, and drew on the cigarette reflectively. ‘But Coertze seemed to like fighting. He killed a lot of Germans—and Italians.’

  ‘What Italians?’ I said quickly. I was thinking of Walker’s story.

  ‘The Fascists,’ she said. ‘Those who stuck by Mussolini during the time of the Salo Republic. There was a civil war going on in these mountains. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot about Italy that I don’t know.’

  We sat quietly for a while, then I said, ‘So Coertze was a killer?’

  ‘He was a good soldier—the kind of man we needed. He was a leader.’

  I switched. ‘How was Alberto killed?’

  ‘He fell off a cliff when the Germans were chasing Umberto’s section. I heard that Coertze nearly rescued him, but didn’t get there in time.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘I heard it was something like that. How did Harrison and Parker die?’

  She wrinkled her brow. ‘Harrison and Parker? Oh yes, they were in what we called the Foreign Legion. They were killed in action. Not at the same time, at different times.’

  ‘And Donato Rinaldi; how was he killed?’

  ‘That was a funny thing. He was found dead near the camp with his head crushed. He was lying under a cliff and it was thought he had been climbing and had fallen off.’

  ‘Why should he climb? Was he a mountaineer or something like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but he was a young man and young men do foolish things like that.’

  I smiled, thinking to myself; not only the very young are foolish; and tossed a pebble into the stream. ‘It sounds very like the song about the “Ten Little Niggers”. “And then there were Two.” Why did Walker leave?’

  She looked up sharply. ‘Are you saying that these men should not have died? That someone from the camp killed them?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not saying anything—but it was very convenient for someone. You see, six men hid this gold and four of them came to a sudden end shortly afterwards.’ I tossed another pebble into the water. ‘Who profits? There are only two—Walker and Coertze. Why did Walker leave?’

  ‘I don’t know. He left suddenly. I remember he told my father that he was going to try to join the Allied armies. They were quite close at that time.’

  ‘Was Coertze in the camp when Walker left?’

  She thought for a long time, then said, ‘I don’t know; I can’t remember.’

  ‘Walker says he left because he was frightened of Coertze. He still is, for that matter. Our Kobus is a very frightening man, sometimes.’

  Francesca said slowly, ‘There was Alberto on the cliff. Coertze could have…’

  ‘…pushed him off? Yes, he could. And Walker said that Parker was shot in the back of the head. By all accounts, including yours, Coertze is a natural-born killer. It all adds up.’

  She said, ‘I always knew that Coertze was a violent man, but…’

  ‘But? Why don’t you like him, Francesca?’

  She threw the stub of her cigarette into the water and watched it float downstream. ‘It was just one of those things that happen between a man and a woman. He was…too pressing.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Three years ago. Just after I was married.’

  I hesitated. I wanted to ask her about that marriage, but she suddenly stood up and said, ‘We must get the water.’

  As we were going back to the caravan I said, ‘It looks as though I’ll have to be ready to jump Coertze—he could be dangerous. You’d better tell Piero the story so that he can be prepared if anything happens.’

  She stopped. ‘I thought Coertze was your friend. I thought you were on his side.’

  ‘I’m on nobody’s side,’ I said shortly. ‘And I don’t condone murder.’

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  For the rest of the afternoon until it became dark Francesca was busy cooking in the caravan. As the light faded the rest of us began to make our preparations. We put the picks and shovels in the boot of the car, together with some torches. Piero had provided a Tilley pressure lamp together with half a gallon of paraffin—that would be a lot better than torches once we got into the tunnel. He also hauled a wheelbarrow out of the caravan, and said, ‘I thought we could use this for taking the rock away; we must not leave loose rock at the entrance of the tunnel.’

  I was pleased about that; it was something I had forgotten.

  Coertze examined the picks with a professional air, but found no fault. To me, a pick is a pick and a spade is a bloody shovel, but I suppose that even pick-and-shovelling has its more erudite technicalities. As I was helping Piero put the wheelbarrow into the boot my foot turned on a stone and I was thrown heavily against Coertze.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  Don’t be sorry, be more careful,’ he grunted.

  We got the wheelbarrow settled—although the top of the boot wouldn’t close—and I said to Coertze in a low voice, ‘I’d like to talk to you…over there.’

  We wandered a short distance from the rest of the party where we were hidden in the gathering darkness. ‘What is it?’ asked Coertze.

  I tapped the hard bulge under the breast of his jacket, and said, ‘I think that’s a gun.’

  ‘It is a gun,’ he said.

  Who are you thinking of shooting?’

  ‘Anyone who gets between me and the gold.’

  ‘Now listen carefully,’ I said in a hard voice. ‘You’re not going to shoot anyone, because you’re going to give that gun to me. If you don’t, you can get the gold yourself. I didn’t come to Italy to kill anybody; I’m not a murderer.’

  Coertze said, ‘Klein man, if you want this gun you’ll have to take it from me.’

  ‘O.K. You can force us all up to the mine at pistol point. But it’s dark and you’ll get a rock thrown at your head as soon as you turn your back—and I’d just as soon be the one who throws it. And if you get the gold out—at pistol point—what are you going to do besides sit on it? You can’t get it to the coast without Francesca’s men and you can’t get it out of Italy without me.’

  I had him cornered in the same old stalemate that had been griping him since we left South Africa. He was foxed and he knew it.

  He said, ‘How do we know the Contessa’s partisans aren’t hiding in these damned hills waiting to jump us as soon as the tunnel is opened?’

  ‘Because they don’t know where we are,’ I said. ‘The only instruction that the truck drivers had was to go to Varsi. Anyway, they wouldn’t try to jump us; we have the Contessa as hostage.’

  He hesitated, and I said, ‘Now, give me the gun.’

  Slowly he put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out the gun. It was too dark to see his eyes but I knew they were filled with hate. He held the gun pointed at me and I am sure he was tempted to shoot—but he relaxed and put it into my outstretched hand.

  ‘There’ll be a big reckoning between us when this is all over,’ he said.

  I remained silent and looked at the gun. It was a Luger, just like my own pistol which I had left in South Africa. I held it on him, and said, ‘Now stand very still; I’m going to search you.’

  He cursed me, but stood quietly while I tapped his pockets. Sure enough, in his jacket pocket I found a spare magazine. I took the clip from the Luger and snapped the action to see if he had a round up the spout. He had.

  He said, ‘Morese is sure to have a gun.’

  ‘We’ll see about that
right now,’ I said. ‘I’ll tackle him and you stand behind him ready to sock him.’

  We walked back to the caravan and I called for Francesca and Piero and when they came Coertze unobtrusively stationed himself behind the big Italian. I said to Francesca, ‘Has Piero got a gun?’

  She looked startled. ‘I don’t know.’ She turned to him. ‘Are you carrying a gun, Piero?’

  He hesitated, then nodded. I brought up the Luger and held it on him. ‘All right, bring it out—slowly.’

  He looked at the Luger and his brows drew down angrily, but he obeyed orders and slowly pulled a gun from a shoulder holster. I said, ‘This is one time you take orders from me, Piero. Give it to Francesca.’

  He passed the pistol to Francesca and I put the Luger away and took it from her. It was an army Beretta, probably a relic of his partisan days. I took the clip out, worked the action and put it in another pocket. Coertze passed two spare clips to me which he had taken from Piero’s pockets.

  I said to Walker, ‘Are you carrying a gun?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Come and be searched.’ I was taking no chances.

  Walker was bare of guns, so I said, ‘Now search the car and see if anything is tucked away there.’

  I turned to Francesca. ‘Are you carrying anything lethal?’

  She folded her arms. ‘Are you going to search me, too?’

  ‘No. I’ll take your word, if you’ll give it.’

  She dropped her aggressive pose. ‘I haven’t a gun,’ she said in a low voice.

  I said, ‘Now listen, everybody. I’ve taken a gun from Coertze and a gun from Morese. I hold in my hands the ammunition for those guns.’ With a quick double jerk I threw the clips away into the darkness and they clattered on a rock. ‘If there’s going to be any fighting between us it will be with bare fists. Nobody gets killed, do you hear?’

  I took the empty pistols from my pockets and gave them back to Coertze and Piero. ‘You can use these as hammers to nail the crates up.’

  They took them with bad grace and I said, ‘We’ve wasted enough time with this nonsense. Is that car ready?’

  ‘Nothing in here,’ said Walker.

  As the others were getting into the car, Francesca said to me, ‘I’m glad you did that. I didn’t know Piero had a gun.’

  ‘I didn’t know Coertze had one, either; although I should have guessed—knowing his record.’

  ‘How did you take it from him?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Psychology,’ I said. ‘He would rather have the gold than kill me. Once he gets the gold it might be a different matter.’

  ‘You will have to be very careful,’ she said.

  ‘It’s nice to know you care,’ I said. ‘Let’s get in the car.’

  II

  Coertze drove slowly without lights along the overgrown road until we had turned a corner and were out of sight of the ‘main’ highway. I could hear the long grass swishing on the underside of the car. Once the first corner was turned he switched on the lights and picked up speed.

  No one spoke. Coertze and Morese were mad at me and so was Francesca because of what I’d said. Walker was boiling with ill-suppressed excitement, but he caught the mood of the others and remained quiet. I said nothing because I had nothing to say.

  It didn’t take long to get to the mine and soon the headlights swept over the ruins of buildings—the shabby remnants of an industrial enterprise. There is nothing more ruinous-looking than derelict factory buildings and neglected machinery. Not that there was much left. The surrounding peasantry must have overrun the place like a swarm of locusts very soon after the mine was abandoned and carried off everything of value. What was left was worth about ten lire and would have cost a hundred thousand lire to take away.

  Coertze stopped the car and we all got out. Piero said, ‘What kind of mine was this?’

  ‘A lead mine,’ said Coertze. ‘It was abandoned a long time ago—about 1908, I was told.’

  ‘That was about the time they found the big deposits in Sardinia,’ said Piero. ‘It was easier to ship ore to the smeltery in Spezia than to rail it from here.’

  ‘Where’s your tunnel?’ I asked.

  Coertze pointed. ‘Over there. There were four others besides the one I blocked.’

  ‘We might as well get the car into position,’ I said, so Coertze got into the driving seat and edged the car forward. The beams of light swept round and illuminated the caved-in mouth of the tunnel. It looked as though it would need a regiment of pioneers to dig that lot away and it would probably take them a month.

  Coertze leaned out of the side window. ‘I did a good job there,’ he said with satisfaction.

  I said, ‘You’re sure we can get through there in one night?’

  ‘Easy,’ he said.

  I supposed he knew what he was about—he had been a miner. I went to help Piero and Walker get the tools from the boot and Coertze went to the rockfall and began to examine it. From this time on he took charge and I let him—I knew nothing about the job and he did. His commands were firm-voiced and we all jumped to it with a will.

  He said, ‘We don’t have to dig the whole lot away. I set the charges so that the fall on this side would be fairly thin—not more than ten feet.’

  I said, ‘Ten feet sounds like a hell of a lot.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, contemptuous of my ignorance. ‘It isn’t as though it was solid rock—this stuff is pretty loose.’ He turned and pointed. ‘Behind that building you’ll find some baulks of timber I sorted out three years ago. You and Morese go and get them. Walker and I will start to dig this stuff out.’

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘You can load up the wheelbarrow with the stuff we dig out. Then take it away and scatter it so that it looks natural. Morese is right—we don’t want to leave a pile of rocks here.’

  Piero and I took torches and found the timber where Coertze had indicated. I thought of Coertze coming here every three or four years, frustrated by a problem he couldn’t solve. He must have planned this excavating problem many times and spent hours sorting out this timber in readiness for a job which might never have happened. No wonder he was so touchy.

  It took us about an hour to transfer all the timber and by that time Coertze and Walker had penetrated three feet into the rockfall. That was good going, and I said as much. Coertze said, ‘It won’t be easy as this all the way. We’ll have to stop and shore the roof; that’ll take time.’

  The hole he was digging was not very big; about five feet high and two feet wide—just enough for one man to go through. Coertze began to select his timbers for the shoring and Piero and I helped Francesca to distribute the spoil.

  Coertze was right. The shoring of the roof took a long time but it had to be done. It would be bad if the whole thing collapsed and we had to begin all over again; besides, someone might get hurt. A moon rose, making the distribution of the spoil easier, so the car lights were switched off and Coertze was working by the light of the Tilley lamp.

  He would not let anyone work at the face except himself, so Walker, Piero and I took it in turns helping him, standing behind him and passing out the loose rocks to the entrance of the passage. After another three hours we had six feet of firmly shored passage drilled through the rockfall and at this stage we broke off for something to eat.

  Piero had spoken to me about taking away his gun. He said, ‘I was angry when you did it. I do not like to have guns pointed at me.’

  ‘It was empty,’ I said.

  ‘That I found out, and it was that which made me angrier.’ He chuckled suddenly. ‘But I think it was well done, now I have thought about it. It is best if there is no shooting.’

  We were some distance from the rockfall. I said, ‘Did Francesca tell you about Coertze?’

  ‘Yes. She told me what you said. It is something I have not thought of at all. I was surprised when Donato Rinaldi was found dead that time during the war, but I did not think
anyone would have killed him. We were all friends.’

  Gold is a solvent which dissolves friendships, I thought, but I could not put that into my limited Italian. Instead, I said, ‘From what you know of that time, do you think that Coertze could have killed these four men?’

  Piero said, ‘He could not have killed Harrison because I myself saw Harrison killed. He was shot by a German and I killed the man who shot him. But the others—Parker, Corso and Rinaldi—yes, I think Coertze could have killed them. He was a man who thought nothing of killing.’

  ‘He could have killed them, but did he?’ I asked.

  Piero shrugged. ‘Who can tell? It was a long time ago and there are no witnesses.’

  That was that, and there seemed no point in pressing it, so we returned to our work.

  Coertze hurried over his meal so that he could get back to the rock face. His eyes gleamed brightly in the light of the lamp; the lust for gold was strong upon him, for he was within four feet of the treasure for which he had been waiting fifteen years. Walker was as bad; he scrambled to his feet as soon as Coertze made a move and they both hurried to the rockfall.

  Piero and Francesca were more placid. They had not seen the gold and mere descriptive words have not that immediacy. Francesca leisurely finished her midnight snack and then collected the dishes and took them to the car.

  I said to Piero, ‘That is a very strange woman.’

  ‘Any child who was brought up in a guerilla camp would be different,’ he said. ‘She has had a difficult life.’

  I said carefully, ‘I understand she has had an unfortunate marriage.’

  He spat. ‘Estrenoli is a degenerate.’

  ‘Then why did she marry him?’

  ‘The ways of the aristos are not our ways,’ he said. ‘It was an arranged marriage—or so everyone thinks. But that was not really the way of it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He accepted a cigarette. ‘Do you know what the Communists did to her father?’

  ‘She told me something about it.’

  ‘It was shameful. He was a man, a true man, and they were not fit to lick his boots. And now he is but a shell, an old broken man.’ He struck a match and the flame lit up his face. ‘Injustice can crush the life from a man even if his body still walks the streets,’ he said.