The squeaking of the trolley wheel resumed and Fat-Boy’s volume faded a little as he said, “We need to weigh it, you understand Lebo, make sure you haven’t got yourselves a bunch of lead bars or some other shit that they’ve painted gold and shiny to fool you.”
A grunt from Lebogang.
The sounds of Chandler’s effort as he lifted the trolley into the back of the truck came next. Then Fat-Boy called out.
“Choose one of those boxes at random, Collie, I don’t want you taking the first one you see.”
“Ask the driver to unlock number twenty-three,” called Chandler, and there was a silence as they sent an underling to relay that message.
“Told the drivers to stay in the vehicle,” we heard Lebogang say distantly, “like you said Billy. Told them to stay up front. We don’t want them seeing what we’ve got back here. I was surprised to see the driver’s a woman.”
“Is she?” said Fat-Boy. “In uniform?”
“Yes. They are both in uniform.”
There was another silence. Robyn and I pulled up to the yacht club entrance and Robyn explained to security that we were back for the second load, and helped him find the record of our initial entry, which saved him the trouble of having to fill in the details again.
“That’s it,” called Chandler, and we heard him press the release button on one of the side compartments. It would be the one they’d left empty when they loaded the truck with the boxes we’d filled with plaster and chunks of lead the night before.
Robyn turned away from Nkwenya wharf, but nobody seemed to notice. And we rolled slowly towards the low-slung structures that housed the lock-up storerooms used by yacht owners for the detritus that yachts inevitably gather.
“Let’s get up there and take a look,” said Fat-Boy.
“I’d be surprised if they both fit,” I said.
“It’ll be a squeeze,” agreed Robyn, and she gave a tight smile.
“Only way to open these boxes,” said Fat-Boy. “Isn’t that right, Collie?”
“With a knife, Mister Mabele, that’s correct. They are tamper-proof, see? Have to throw it away after you open it. Which is why you should leave the boxes sealed. Usually the transport people provide an extra box or two so we can repack this one.”
“Look at that,” interrupted Fat-Boy in an awestruck voice. “There it is. Beautiful. There is no other word for it.”
A silence ensued. Robyn found our lock-up and reversed the truck up to the door while I unlocked it.
“Let’s see how much this baby weighs,” said Chandler. Another long silence with an occasional beep as he calibrated the digital scale.
Robyn unlocked the rear door of our truck and released the side compartments. I brought the motorised loader up into position, and the two of us started unloading the remaining twenty-nine boxes. It would be some time before we could take the gold back out to sea, and Chandler had reasoned this was the safest place to store it. No additional security records involving an FCD van, no exposure to searches when leaving the docks, and convenient for loading onto a boat when the time came.
“That doesn’t look quite right,” said Chandler.
“What d’you mean, Collie? It’s not gold?”
“Well, it’s marked as ninety-nine point eight purity, and the weight should be … no, sorry, my mistake. Let’s recalibrate.” Further beeps ensued. The tension was palpable.
Robyn and I unloaded and stacked four boxes before Chandler spoke again.
“There we go … perfect,” he exclaimed, and Fat-Boy gave a whoop.
“It’s the real shit?” asked Fat-Boy. “That what you saying, Collie?”
“Ninety-nine point eight percent pure gold,” said Chandler.
“Looks like you got yourself some good shit here, Lebo,” said Fat-Boy. “Check the others, Collie.”
“The other boxes, Mister Mabele?”
“Of course not the other boxes, you idiot. My brother needs the other boxes sealed and locked up tight in this truck. Cannot have a pile of shiny golden bars sitting around while you wait for the money to come through, can you, Lebo? A pile like that could stretch the concept of trust in your men further than you’d want to.”
“It’s not my men I mistrust,” said Lebogang. “You seen those metal things they carry? Your war hero knows what they do even if you don’t, Billy. If you wanna take the boxes without paying for them, you’ll have to send an army, not a couple of drivers.”
“Just weigh the other three bars we’ve got here, Collie,” said Fat-Boy. His facetiously confident tone had dropped a notch.
There were a few more beeps and Chandler muttered “Good … that’s good … that one too.” Then he said, “Looks like we got a full house here, Mister Mabele. You’ve got some pure London Good Delivery gold bars here.”
Fat-Boy whooped again and there was the sound of something soft being hit, which I guessed was Lebogang’s round shoulder receiving an embrace from Fat-Boy.
“Pack those bars up, Collie,” said Fat-Boy. “My brother Lebo and I need to go have a talk, where the children can’t hear us, don’t we Lebo?”
“I want to do it,” said Lebo in a breathless voice.
“You can’t be bothering yourself with that shit, Lebo. The packing and carrying is for the workers, we’ve got bigger things to deal with.”
“I want to. I want to touch it again, feel the weight of it.”
There was a silence and some shuffling sounds. Robyn and I paused in our labours.
“Something is wrong,” said Robyn. “You think he’s noticed it’s not the same truck?”
“Maybe he just wants to hold it. Fat-Boy’s like that, enjoys looking at it and holding it in his hands.”
“It’s a good feeling,” said Fat-Boy, as if he’d heard what I’d said. “You’re right, brother Lebo, feels good.”
“It’s what destroyed our country, Billy, this heavy, shiny metal. It destroyed our land, you know that?”
“I thought it was the white people that did that,” said Fat-Boy, and Lebogang laughed, although his laughter, like the tone of their banter, sounded strained.
“Not suspicious,” said Robyn hopefully, “just greedy.”
The conclusion of the packing of the gold was heralded by satisfied sighs and grunts from Lebogang and Fat-Boy, and then Fat-Boy instructed Chandler to return the box to its compartment.
“No need,” said Lebogang, and he called something out in Xhosa.
“You need to wait for the money transfer to come through,” protested Fat-Boy. “Don’t send the truck off now. Is that man taking photographs? No photos, Lebo, what are you playing at?”
“There’s been a change of plan,” said Lebogang. “We’re taking the gold out to sea now. Someone’s waiting for it. Let’s me and you go have that talk.” It was a simple suggestion, but a menacing one.
“Photos?” I said. Robyn shrugged.
I unmuted my microphone. “All good?” I asked, but there was only the sound of the trolley wheel, which didn’t squeak so much as Chandler rolled it back and lifted it into the trunk of the car. He said nothing, not even a whisper.
A moment later we heard the FCD truck start up, and the beeping as it reversed out of the warehouse. Robyn and I hastened the offloading of our boxes, pushing the loader to its limit, my anxiety increasing with each passing minute. Then we locked the storeroom with a flimsy padlock that wouldn’t withstand a blow from a carpenter’s hammer, so as not to attract attention, and climbed back into our armoured truck. Robyn started the engine in silence, and we rolled to the end of the alley between the lock-ups. We had placed spare clothing in lockers at the yacht club, and the plan was to change now and disappear. But we needed the go-ahead from Chandler. And there had still been no word or sound from him. It would have been comforting to know whether he still had Fat-Boy in sight, or whether they’d disappeared into some room where Lebogang was pulling out Fat-Boy’s fingernails. But I guessed Chandler would not risk being seen speaking.
“Why has he sent the truck off without waiting for payment?” asked Robyn. The two of us looked at each other for a moment. Then Robyn turned the wheel in the other direction and gunned the engine so that we bounced down the narrow track back towards the yacht club entrance.
Finally, Chandler spoke.
“We have a problem,” he said, his voice sounding calm.
Then the sound of Lebogang’s deep voice came softly through the ear-buds. It was soft because he was standing a long way from Chandler, but the fury in his voice was not muted. A moment later came the sound of a fist hitting bone and a grunt of pain. Then several more blows.
It sounded like Chandler was not fighting back. I knew that he was not armed and could win any punching match against Lebogang. But you don’t demonstrate your fighting skills before a team of poorly trained soldiers holding automatic weapons if you want to survive. There were the sounds of more punches, then a booming crack on the microphone as Chandler hit the floor and his ear-bud was shaken loose.
Then Lebogang was calling out instructions in Xhosa, and there came the sounds of men exerting themselves. Were they carrying Chandler? Or tying him up?
Then Lebogang’s voice, close to the microphone and full of malice. “Your fat friend has changed sides. You understand? Me and him are keeping the gold for ourselves. Find your other friends and start running. Run far away. You hear me?”
The sound of a slap.
“You hear me? If we see any of you again, my men will shoot first and ask questions later. You hear me?”
An indistinct mumble from Chandler. Then the sounds of feet running, what might have been Fat-Boy’s distant voice calling out. Doors slamming, and engines starting.
“Still there, Angel?” Chandler’s voice was a little muffled.
“On our way,” I said, and our truck lurched forwards as the booms at the entrance to the yacht club opened and Robyn flattened the accelerator.
Twenty-Seven
Chandler had been tied up. He was lying in a crumpled heap in the centre of the deserted warehouse. For a moment I thought he was unconscious, but he writhed and twisted as we ran up to him, trying to pick at the knots binding his feet with hands tied behind his back. I cut the ropes and the cloth that had been used to gag his mouth.
“He left men outside?” he asked, spitting more blood over his linen suit. “Tell me he posted men around the warehouse.”
“Not one,” I said. “Gates were open, we walked right in.”
“The place is deserted,” confirmed Robyn.
I helped him to his feet, but he pushed me away.
“It was just a few punches, Angel. I’m not a goddamn cripple.” He stretched as if to realign the vertebrae. “What do you think that man’s playing at?”
I shrugged. In the few minutes it had taken us to reach the Dark Bizness warehouse, I’d asked myself that question many times, but not come up with an answer.
“He saw us coming, didn’t he?” I said.
“But why take the gold back? And what’s he doing with our big boy? Did you hear him? Why that business about ‘changing sides’?”
“Fat-Boy would never betray us,” said Robyn. “That was sheer nonsense. He said it so we wouldn’t go after him to get Fat-Boy back.”
Chandler nodded, his eyes flickering from one to the other of us, as if he might find some answers if he looked hard enough.
“Robyn takes the truck,” he said, “Angel and I take the BM. We’ll rendezvous at the gold. If Fat-Boy’s given anything away, we’ll find them there.”
“He won’t have,” said Robyn.
“In which case we’ll go from there and get our boy back.”
Robyn nodded, turned sharply and strode back to the truck.
“From the beginning, you think?” Chandler asked me as we reached the BMW. “That first evening when Fat-Boy gatecrashed the brother’s wake? You think he saw us coming then?”
“Probably. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
“Robyn!”
Robyn was already climbing into the truck. She paused and turned back to us. Fat-Boy had been absolutely right about the way she looked in that uniform.
“We’re going to get our boy back, you hear me?”
“I hear you, Colonel,” said Robyn.
“Questions later. We’ve got to act fast if we’re to get him back.”
“Yessir,” said Robyn, and she swung herself up into the driver’s seat.
“What do you think, corporal?” asked Chandler, as we followed the FCD truck through the wet streets back to the lock-up. “How do the three of us fight our way through dozens of trigger-happy, wannabe soldiers, find our boy on that floating gin palace, then get him out again?”
“There’s only one way,” I said, after giving it some thought. “It has to be the Greek way.”
“Greek? You mean we make ourselves a Trojan Horse? That Dark Maiden yacht is our city of Troy?”
I nodded.
“And the Trojan Horse is what?”
“That will be one of us.”
“But once we get inside, how do we get back out?”
“We use the contents of that armoured truck. We know what’s really inside it. When he discovers we’ve taken the gold, that will be our bargaining chip.”
“Are you suggesting we give back the gold?”
“Yes. The gold in exchange for Fat-Boy.”
“It sounds risky to me,” said Chandler, but without conviction. He knew it was our only option. He looked at himself in the visor mirror, cleaning the blood off his face with a handkerchief. One blow had cut open his cheek badly enough to need stitches, and had been high enough that he would have a black eye in a few hours.
“You want to go in?” he asked. “Or shall I?”
“I’ll go in, Colonel.”
Chandler turned to me. I rarely called him Colonel when we were alone.
“OK, Corporal,” he said. “But play it safe. We’ll get only one shot at this.”
The morning’s rain had left everything soggy, with puddles of water in the access way between the rows of lock-ups. The clouds hadn’t given all they had to give, and they hung low overhead, pressing down like they were going to smother us.
We abandoned the vehicles in the yacht club parking, split up and approached from different directions, carefully on foot. There was hardly any sound, only the lazy chiming of yachts’ main sheets against their masts. The area around our lock-up was deserted. Fat-Boy had not betrayed the location of the gold. Chandler stopped outside the lock-up and waited for us to join him. He looked up at the heavy clouds, as if he was expecting something to fly out of them. The cut on his cheek had opened up again, and blood dripped onto his jacket.
“Run through it again,” he said to the sky, after I’d explained our makeshift plan to Robyn.
“I understand it,” said Robyn. “But I’m going in with Ben.”
“No, you are not,” said Chandler, and he gave up on the sky and turned his gaze to her.
“It will be more convincing that way, and those soldiers will be less likely to rough me up. They’ll keep their distance. It’s basic human instinct.”
“Don’t be so sure. They’re not a gentlemen’s club.”
“And I can shoot,” said Robyn. “You’ll need me if the big guy doesn’t like the bargain you want to make with him.”
Chandler drew a breath and let it out in a sigh.
“You shoot better than most, Robyn, I won’t deny you that. But you’ve never shot with the intent to kill. If things go bad, we’re going to have shoot to kill.”
“I understand. I can do that, Colonel,” said Robyn, and she held his gaze to show him how much she meant it.
Chandler gave a reluctant nod of agreement.
“Alright then. You go in together.”
“I won’t let you down,” said Robyn.
Chandler nodded again, but he didn’t look entirely convinced.
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br /> “Let me do something about that cut on your cheek,” said Robyn. “We can’t have you bleeding all over their nice yacht.”
She went off to fetch the first aid kit from the FCD truck.
“We’re a bunch of amateur clowns, aren’t we?” said Chandler, watching her go. “And the biggest clown of all is me.”
“Perhaps we are clowns,” I said. “But the difference between us and other clowns, Colonel, is that there is nothing funny about some of the things we can do.”
He turned to me.
“So let’s do those things, Corporal. And let’s do them soon.”
The Nkwenya wharf was strangely silent. The Dark Maiden looked as though she was preparing for departure, but there was no swarming activity. Instead, there was an ominous sense of expectation. A few sailors were busy on deck, engaged in checking machines and positioning levers, as if the Dark Maiden was an autonomous machine that was going to be sailing herself out to sea. At the far end of the wharf, out of sight of anyone on land, the FCD truck was being offloaded, each of the sealed boxes carried by two soldiers apiece. They were being loaded onto a smaller craft that looked like a fishing vessel well past its expiry date.
A heightened level of preparedness was expressed in the soldiers standing along the quay, holding their AK-47s ready, and staring ahead like they were awaiting inspection. They were wearing full combat uniform, including field helmets. That seemed unnecessary, but it was an encouraging sign for us – an over-dressed soldier is often an under-trained soldier. Several of them also wore dark glasses despite the gloomy weather, which worked in our favour – our plan required that Chandler disguise himself as one of them.
“It’s a mixed crowd,” said Chandler with some relief.
He’d been concerned that the Dark Bizness militia might be an entirely black team, and as Robyn pointed out, a uniform would not conceal the colour of his skin.
“Let’s take a closer look at that boat they’re loading the boxes onto,” said Chandler. “Now is as good a time as any to get their attention.”
Vengeful: A Conspiracy Crime Thriller (The Gabriel Series Book 3) Page 23