The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘What has this to do with Francesca’s marriage?’

  ‘The old man was against it. He knew the Estrenoli breed. But Madame was insistent on it. You see, young Estrenoli wanted her. There was no love in him, only lust—Madame is a very beautiful woman—and so he wanted her, but he could not get her. She knew what he was.’

  This was confusing. ‘Then why the hell did she marry him?’

  ‘That was where Estrenoli was clever. He has an uncle in the Government and he said that perhaps they would reconsider the case of her father. But, of course, there was a price.’

  ‘I see,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘So she married him. I would as soon she married an animal.’

  ‘And he found he could not keep his promise?’

  ‘Could not?’ said Piero disgustedly. ‘He had no intention of keeping it. The Estrenolis have not kept a promise in the last five hundred years.’ He sighed. ‘You see, she is a good daughter of the Church and when she married him, Estrenoli knew that he had her for ever. And he was proud of her; oh yes, very proud. She was the most beautiful woman in Roma, and he bought her clothes and dressed her as a child will dress a doll. She was the most expensively dressed mannequin in Italy.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then he got tired of her. He is an unnatural man and he went back to his little boys and his drugs and all the other vices of Roma. Signor Halloran, Roman society is the most corrupt in the world.’

  I had heard something of that; there had been a recent case of a drowned girl which threatened to rip apart the whole shoddy mess. But it was said that the Italian Government was intent on hushing it up.

  Piero said, ‘At that time she helped her father and her old comrades. There were many cases of hardship and she did what she could. But Estrenoli found out and said he would not have his money squandered on a lot of filthy partisans, so he did not give her any more money—not one single lire. He tried to corrupt her, to bring her down to his level, but he could not—she is incorruptible. So then he threw her out on to the street—he had what he wanted, as much as he could get, and he was finished with her.’

  ‘So she came back to Liguria.’

  ‘Yes. We help her when we can because of what she is and because of her father. We also try to help him, but that is difficult because he refuses to accept what he calls charity.’

  ‘And she is still married to Estrenoli?’

  ‘There is no divorce in Italy and she follows the Church. But before God I say the Church is wrong when this can happen.’

  I said, ‘And so you are helping her in this venture.’

  ‘I think it is wrong and I think she is mistaken,’ he said. ‘I think many lives will be lost because of this. But I am helping her.’

  ‘This is what is puzzling me,’ I said. ‘Her father is an old man; this gold cannot help him much.’

  ‘But it is not only for her father,’ said Piero. ‘She says that the money is for all the men who fought with her father and were cheated by the Communists. She says it will be used to send them to hospitals when that is necessary and to educate their children. It will be a good thing if there is no killing.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ I said reflectively. ‘I do not want killing, either, Piero.’

  ‘I know, Signor Halloran; you have already shown that. But there are others—Torloni and this Metcalfe. And there is your friend Coertze.’

  ‘You don’t trust him, do you? What about Walker?’

  Pah—a nonentity.’

  ‘And me? Do you trust me?’

  He stood and put a foot on his cigarette deliberately. ‘I would trust you in another place, Signor Halloran, such as in a boat or on a mountain. But gold is not good for the character.’

  He had said in different words what I had thought earlier. I was going to reply when Coertze shouted irately, ‘What the hell are you doing out there? Come and get this stuff away.’

  So we went on with the work.

  III

  We broke through at three in the morning. Coertze gave a joyous shout as his pick point disappeared unresistingly into emptiness. Within ten minutes he had broken a hole big enough to crawl through and he went into it like a terrier after a rabbit. I pushed the Tilley lamp through the hole and followed it.

  I found Coertze scrambling over fallen rocks which littered the floor of the tunnel. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  He took no notice but plunged on into the darkness. There was a clang and he started to swear. ‘Bring that bloody light,’ he shouted.

  I moved forward and the circle of light moved with me. Coertze had run full tilt into the front of a truck. He had gashed his cheek and running blood was making runnels in the dust which coated his face, giving him a maniacal look which was accentuated by the glare of his eyes.

  ‘Here it is,’ he cackled. ‘Magtig, what did I tell you? I told you I had gold here. Well, here it is, as much gold as comes out of the Reef in a month.’ He looked at me in sudden wonder. ‘Christus, but I’m happy,’ he said. ‘I never thought I’d make it.’

  I could hear the others coming through the hole and I waited for them to come up. ‘Kobus Coertze is going to give us a guided tour of his treasure cave,’ I said.

  Walker said, chattering, ‘The gold is in the first truck, this one. Most of it, that is. There’s some more, though, in the second one, but most of it is in this one. The jewels are in the second one; lots and lots of necklaces and rings, diamonds and emeralds and pearls and cigarette lighters and cases, all in gold, and there’s lots of money, too, lire and dollars and pounds and stuff like that, and there’s lots of papers but those are in the trucks right at the back with the bodies…’ His voice trailed off. ‘With the bodies,’ he repeated vacantly.

  There was a bit of a silence then as we realized that this was a mausoleum as well as a treasure cave. Coertze recovered his usual gravity and took the lamp from me. He held it up and looked at the first truck. ‘I should have put it up on blocks,’ he observed wryly.

  The tyres were rotten and sagging, as flat as I’ve ever seen tyres. ‘You know,’ said Coertze, ‘when we put this lot in here, my intention was to drive these trucks out some time. I never thought it would be fifteen years.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘We’d have a job starting these engines now.’

  Walker said impatiently, ‘Well, let’s get on with it.’ He had apparently recovered from the scare he had given himself.

  I said, ‘We’d better do this methodically, truck by truck. Let’s have a look in the first one.’

  Coertze led the way, holding up the Tilley lamp. There was just enough room to squeeze between the truck and the side of the tunnel. I noticed the shattered windscreen where a burst of machine-gun fire had killed the driver and his mate. Everything was covered with a heavy layer of dust, most of which must have been deposited when Coertze originally blew in the front of the tunnel.

  Coertze was hammering at the bolts of the tailboard with a piece of rock. ‘The damn’ things have seized solid,’ he said. ‘I’ll need a hammer.’

  ‘Piero,’ I called. ‘Bring a hammer.’

  ‘I’ve got one,’ said Francesca quietly, so close behind me that I jumped. I took it and passed it on to Coertze. With a few blows the bolt came free and he attacked the other and caught the tailboard as it dropped. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘here we go for the gold,’ and vaulted into the truck.

  I handed him the lamp and then climbed up and turned to give Francesca a hand. Walker crowded past me, eager to see the gold, while Piero climbed in more sedately. We squatted on our haunches in a circle, sitting on the bullion boxes.

  ‘Where’s the one we opened?’ asked Coertze. ‘It must be at the back somewhere.’

  Francesca gave a yelp. ‘I’ve got a nail in my foot.’

  ‘That’s the box,’ said Coertze with satisfaction.

  Francesca moved and Coertze held up the lamp. The box on which Francesca had been sitting had been torn open and
the cover roughly replaced. I stretched my hand and lifted the lid slowly. In the light of the lamp there was the yellow gleam of metal, the dull radiance of gold which rusts not nor doth moth corrupt—rather like treasure laid up in heaven. This gold, however, had been laid up in hell.

  Coertze sighed. ‘There it is.’

  I said to Francesca, ‘Did you hurt your foot?’

  She was staring at the gold, ‘No, it’s all right,’ she said absently.

  Piero lifted an ingot from the box. He misjudged the weight and tried to use one hand; then he got both hands to it and rested the ignot on his thighs. ‘It is gold!’ he said in wonder.

  The ingot was passed round the circle and we all handled it and stroked it. I felt a sudden resurgence of the passion I had felt in Aristide’s strong-room when I held the heavy gold Hercules in my fingers.

  Walker had a kind of terror in his voice. ‘How do we know that all these boxes have gold in them? We never looked.’

  ‘I know,’ said Coertze. ‘I tested the weight of every box fifteen years ago. I made sure all right. There’s about three tons of gold in this truck and another ton in the next one.’

  The gold had an insidious fascination and we were reluctant to leave it. For Walker and Coertze this was the culmination of the battle which was fought on that dusty road fifteen years previously. For me, it was the end of a tale that had been told many years before in the bars of Cape Town.

  I suddenly pulled myself together. It was not the end of the tale, and if we wanted the tale to have a happy ending there was still much to do.

  ‘O.K., let’s break it up,’ I said. ‘There’s still a lot more to see and a hell of a lot to do.’

  The golden spell broken, we went to the next truck and Coertze again hammered the tailboard free. The bullion boxes were hidden this time, lying on the floor of the truck with other boxes piled on top.

  ‘That’s the box with the crown in it,’ said Walker excitedly.

  We all climbed in, squashed at the back of the truck, and Coertze looked round. He suddenly glanced at Francesca and said, ‘Open that box and take your pick.’ He pointed to a stout case with a broken lock.

  She opened the box and gasped. There was a shimmer of coruscating light, the pure white of diamonds, the bright green of emeralds and the dull red of rubies. She stretched forth her hand and picked out the first thing she encountered. It was a diamond and emerald necklace.

  She ran it through her fingers. ‘How lovely!’

  There was a catch in Piero’s voice. ‘How much would that be worth?’ he asked huskily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Fifty thousand pounds, perhaps. That is, if the stones are real,’ I ended sardonically.

  Coertze said, ‘Get this stuff out, then we can see what we have. I didn’t have time when we put it in here.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘But you won’t have too much time now. It’ll be dawn pretty soon, and we don’t want to be seen around here.’

  We began to pull the boxes out. Coertze had thoughtfully left plenty of room between the trucks so that it was easy enough. There were four boxes of jewellery, one filled with nothing else but wedding rings, thousands of them. I had a vague recollection that the patriotic women of Italy had given their wedding rings to the cause—and here they were.

  There was the box containing the crown, a massive head-piece studded with jewels. There were eight large cases holding paper currency, neatly packeted and bound with rotting rubber bands. The lire had the original bank wrappers round each bundle. Then there were the remaining bullion boxes on the floor of the truck—another ton of gold.

  Francesca went out to the car and brought in some flasks of coffee, and then we sat about examining the loot. The box from which Francesca had taken the necklace was the only one containing jewellery of any great value—but that was enough. I don’t know anything about gems, but I conservatively estimated the value of that one box at well over a million pounds.

  One of the other boxes was filled with various objects of value, usually in gold, such as pocket watches of bygone design, cigarette cases and lighters, gold medals and medallions, cigar cutters and all the other usual pieces of masculine jewellery. A lot of the pieces were engraved, but with differing names, and I thought that this must be the masculine equivalent of the wedding rings—sacrifices to the cause.

  The third box contained the wedding rings and the last one was full of gold currency. There were a lot of British sovereigns and thousands of other coins which I identified as being similar to the coins shown to me by Aristide. There were American eagles and Austrian ducats and even some Tangier Hercules. That was a very heavy box.

  Francesca picked up the necklace again. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘It’s the loveliest thing I’ve seen,’ she breathed.

  I took it from her fingers. ‘Turn round,’ I said, and fastened it round her neck. ‘This is the only opportunity you’ll have of wearing it; it’s a pity to waste it.’

  Her shoulders straightened and the triple line of diamonds sparkled against her black sweater. Womanlike, she said, ‘Oh, I wish I had a mirror.’ Her fingers caressed the necklace.

  Walker laughed and staggered to his feet, clutching the crown in both hands. He placed it on Coertze’s head, driving the bullet head between the broad shoulders. ‘King Coertze,’ he cried hysterically. ‘All hail.’

  Coertze braced under the weight of the crown. ‘Nee, man,’ he said, ‘I’m a Republican.’ He looked straight at me and smiled sardonically. ‘There’s the king of the expedition.’

  To an outsider it would have been a mad sight. Four dishevelled and dirty men, one wearing a golden crown and with drying blood streaking his face, and a not-too-clean woman wearing a necklace worth a queen’s ransom. We ourselves were oblivious to the incongruity of the scene; it had been with us too long in our imaginations.

  I said, ‘Let’s think of the next step.’

  Coertze lifted his hands and took off the crown. The fun was over; the serious work was to begin again.

  ‘You’ll have to finish off the entrance,’ I said. ‘That last bit isn’t big enough to take the loot out.’

  Coertze said, ‘Ja, but that won’t take long.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it had better be done now; it’ll soon be dawn.’ I jerked my thumb at the third truck. ‘Anything of value back there?’

  ‘There’s nothing there but boxes of papers and dead Germans. But you can have a look if you want.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, and looked about the tunnel. ‘What I suggest is that Walker and I stay here today to get this stuff, sorted out and moved to the front where it’ll be easier to get out. It’ll save time when the trucks come; I don’t want them hanging about here for a long time.’

  I had thought out this move carefully. Coertze could be relied upon to keep a close watch on Piero and Francesca and would stand no nonsense from them when they went into Varsi.

  But Coertze was immediately suspicious; he didn’t want to leave me and Walker alone with the loot. I said, ‘Dammit, you’ll seal us in, and even if we did make a break the stuff we would carry in our pockets wouldn’t be worth worrying about compared with the rest of the treasure. All I want to do is save time.’

  After a glowering moment he accepted it, and he and Piero went to complete the entrance. I said to Walker, ‘Come on, let’s take a look farther back.’

  He hesitated, and then said, ‘No. I’m not going back there. I’m not.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Francesca quietly. ‘I’m not afraid of Germans, especially dead ones.’ She gave Walker a look of contempt.

  I picked up the Tilley lamp and Walker said hysterically, ‘Don’t take the light.’

  ‘Don’t be a damn’ fool,’ I said. ‘Take this to Coertze; it’ll suit him better than a torch. You can give him a hand, too.’

  As he left I switched on my torch and Francesca did the same. I hefted the hammer and said, ‘O.K. Let’s frighten al
l those ghosts.’

  The third truck was full of packing cases and weapons. There looked to be enough guns to start a war. I picked up a sub-machine-gun and cocked the action; it was stiff, but it worked and a round flew out of the breech. I thought that my gallant efforts at disarming Coertze and Piero were all wasted, or would have been if Coertze had remembered that all these guns were here. I wondered if the ammunition was still safe to use.

  Francesca pushed some rifles aside and pulled the lid off one of the cases. It was full of files—dusty files with the fasces of the Fascist Government embossed on the covers. She pulled a file out and started to read, riffling the pages from time to time.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s about the invasion of Albania,’ she said. ‘Minutes of the meetings of the Army Staff.’ She took another file and became absorbed in it. ‘This is the same kind of thing, but it’s the Ethiopian campaign.’

  I left her to the dusty records of forgotten wars and went back to the fourth truck. It was not pretty. The tunnel was very dry and apparently there had been no rats. The bodies were mummified, the faces blackened and the skin drawn tight into ghastly grins—the rictus of death. I counted the bodies—there were fifteen in the truck, piled in higgledy-piggledy like so many sides of beef—and two in the staff car, one of which was the body of an S.S. officer. There was a wooden case in the back of the truck but I did not investigate it—if it contained anything of value, the dead were welcome to keep it.

  I went back to the staff car because I had seen something that interested me. Lying in the back, half hidden by the motor-cycle, was a Schmeisser machine pistol. I picked it up and hefted it thoughtfully in my hand. I was thinking more of Coertze than of Metcalfe and my thoughts weren’t pleasant. Coertze was suspected of having killed at least three men in order to get this treasure to himself. There was still the share-out to take place and it was on the cards that he would play the same game at some stage or other. The stake involved was tremendous.