Ruth raised her shoulders. “None of them were here in 1945. They don’t think anyone in Gedser was, although they’re obviously wrong. We can follow up on that later, maybe at the church or at the police. They say that nobody would trawl off the light because of the sharp rocks there. The only person known to have dived in those waters in the last three or four months did it in January to bring up the body of his brother whose boat had gone down in a storm. He brought up the body, but no box.”
“So where do we go from here? Church or police? Or, better yet, why not go back to Copenhagen?”
“We go visit the man,” Ruth said evenly. ‘We’re here and he’s here, and maybe he saw something when he was diving. At least he was on the bottom of the sea near our boat. Or my boat, if you prefer. He lives back down the road we just came on, near the lighthouse. His name is Knud Christensen, and the name is on the mailbox …” She looked at Wilten, who had been listening. “Back down the road a bit, please, Wilten. I’ll tell you where to turn in.”
Knud Christensen often wondered why he had wasted a good portion of the money he had gotten from his distant cousin, Professor Nordberg, on anything as silly as a new anchor. He had never taken the boat out since the night he had brought the box up. The boat had lain in the water until the wood had started to swell and the caulking had begun to dry and shred and after it had slowly filled with water and sunk to the oarlocks to rest on the bottom. He had not even taken the trouble to bail it and haul it higher on land to dry. He hated the sea for what it had taken from him and knew he would never go out on it again.
Nor had the cross he had purchased with the remainder of the money been of long endurance. Some young fellows, driving a borrowed automobile through the cemetery one night while drunk, had torn the cross from the small base he had made for it and twisted it beyond repair. He had nailed together another cross from wood and replaced it above Gustave’s grave, but neither the cheap metal cross nor the wooden one satisfied him. He had even considered using the anchor as a memorial, setting it in cement at the head of the grave, but although other graves in the small cemetery demonstrated similar memoria for those whose lives had been taken by the sea, the thought was repugnant to Knud. It would have reminded him too strongly of the body as he had seen it dangling in the shrouds. It would also have reminded him of his foolishness in buying the anchor in the first place.
What Knud Christensen would have liked to do was to buy a real stone, a large one of rough granite with a large granite cross on top, and with a polished panel on the face of it that would allow space for the names of both brothers to be engraved upon it. Or, better yet, a monument large enough to go across the heads of all the Christensen graves lined up together in the cemetery, with the names of his father and mother there as well as Gustave’s, and Niels’s, and a space for his own name when the time came. There would be no need for further space. There would be no further Christensens—not of their family.
He thought about the monument constantly, taking time from chores that needed doing. In his imagination he would run his calloused hands over the coarse grain of the huge gravestone and feel with his worn fingertips the cool smoothness of the highly polished panel, and pick out, like a blind man, the sharp indentations where the names had been carved. But it was an idle dream, and he knew it. Stones cost money. The block of granite as wide and thick as he wanted, finished and engraved as he wanted, would probably cost more than he could ever hope to obtain in a lifetime of hard work. Still, the longer he dreamed of the stone, the more exact the details as he pictured them, the more the project became fixed in his mind, until he had reached the point where he knew he would not settle for less, even though less would have still meant the most massive monument in the cemetery. To sell the farm? Knud Christensen was honest enough to know that in the condition it was in, the farm would bring little, certainly not enough for the memorial he wanted. And what would he do then? Where would he go? He could never leave Gedser and the cemetery.
He looked up, frowning, at the sound of an automobile being driven into the entrance to the farm, braking in the gravel of the driveway. Visitors? He never had visitors. Someone wishing directions? Let them get them elsewhere. He came to his feet heavily and walked through the living room to the front door, opening it, and watched a woman and a man come down from a car and approach while another remained in the driver’s seat. His first reaction was to close the door in their faces. He had nothing to do with strangers. Let them go away and leave him in peace. But there was something about the friendly smile on the woman’s face that reminded him that once he had been a part of the world, had not always been the recluse he had become in the six months since he had lost his brothers. He suddenly realized the condition of the kitchen with the dirty pans and dishes piled high in the sink, and he hurried back to close the door to that room, and then looked about as if to see if he should straighten out the living room, but the living room appeared to be all right. He never used the living room to sit and think; it faced the sea.
The woman was peering into the gloom of the living room from her place at the open door. The man, a stocky, strong-looking man, with a pleasant face, stood at her shoulder protectively. Christensen cleared his throat; it was almost as though he wondered after his long self-imposed exile from people, if he still had the power of speech. But his voice came out low and hard, even slightly suspicious.
“You want something, ma’am?”
Ruth gave him her friendliest smile, a smile that Gregor would have wagered would make any man her slave, but Christensen merely waited impassively for an answer. Ruth looked past the bulky body to the room. “We should like to talk to you a bit. May we come in?”
“Talk about what? If you’re collecting for some charity, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“It’s nothing like that. It’s something important. And I think we’d all be more comfortable sitting down,” Ruth said, and moved forward in such a way that Christensen automatically took a step backward. The action appeared to be an invitation to enter although all three knew it was not. Ruth sat down on a sofa; Gregor sat beside her. Christensen walked to the windows and raised the drawn shades, letting sunlight pour in through the curtains. Dust rose in the air from the unattended furniture, dancing in the shafts of light. And why should I apologize for the dust or the dirt? Christensen thought angrily. I didn’t ask these people to come here! He sat down in a chair across from the two, his cold blue eyes moving from Ruth’s face to Gregor’s and then back again, resentful of the unwanted intrusion.
“All right,” he said abruptly. “Who are you and what do you want?”
Ruth nodded, again taking the role of spokesman, knowing it was certainly all right with Gregor who hadn’t even wanted to come. “My name is Ruth McVeigh and this is Dr. Kovpak. We want to talk to you about something that happened last January. You dove in the vicinity of the Gedser lighthouse, to recover the body of your brother who had gone down in a storm—”
Knud Christensen frowned. These two certainly didn’t want to talk about Gustave or his recovery of Gustave’s body. Why should they? Then what did they want to talk about? Obviously they wanted to talk about that case he had brought up at a later date. But how could they have known about that? He hadn’t said anything. Had the professor? Or had somebody in the village become suspicious because of the money he had spent? But he had been careful not to spend the money in Gedser, knowing villages and villagers for what they were. Instead, he had taken the train to Naestved and gotten the anchor in a chandler’s there, and the cross at a religious shop a block away. Still, thinking about it now, after the fact, he could see how stupid he had been. Who could have failed to notice the newness of the anchor now tied to the dinghy which had since sunk, and who could have failed to wonder where the old one had gotten to? And who could have failed to notice the twisted cross torn from Gustave’s grave by those drunken vandals? The entire village had gone down to inspect the outrage, and many must have wondered at Knu
d Christensen’s sudden affluence in buying that cross of gold. It had been gilt over welded steel, but who would have considered that?
Still, what was all the fuss about? So somebody knew or thought they knew that he had gone down again and brought up a box from an old sunken wreck near Gustave and Niels’s fishing schooner. So what? All this to-do over a few pieces of junk costume jewelry and a shoe box full of beads and buttons?
A sudden frightening thought came. It changed his thinking completely. Who sent investigators to look into his finding some poor pieces of pot metal mixed with brass? Who even sent investigators to look into his spending a few kroner on an anchor and a welded steel cross? There must have been something in that old sunken wreck besides the one box he had brought up, something of far greater value, something to interest the authorities, like drugs, or gold bars! And they thought he had it! He knew it would be impossible to convince these two that he had only gone back the one time, and never again, not even in warm spring weather, to further investigate that sunken wreck. He knew he could never convince them that even if he had known there was something of great value there, that he would never go back, not even for the price of a granite tombstone for his family; that he could not go back. They would never believe him. The only thing to do, then, was to deny everything. Deny and continue denying. He wet his lips.
“I dove to bring up my brother’s body,” he said through stiff lips, his face now rigid, his hands now released from the chair arms as being too revealing with their white clenched knuckles, and now clasped firmly in his lap. He stared down at them. “That’s all I dove for and all I brought up. Not another thing.” His eyes came up for a moment. “Jens Krag was with me. It was his boat. He would have seen if I’d brought up anything more, wouldn’t he? Of course he would. Go ask him. He’ll tell you. Jens Krag doesn’t lie. If he isn’t at the dock he’ll be there later. Go ask him—”
Knud Christensen was speaking as if by compulsion now, sweat beginning to stand out on his brow. Ruth and Gregor were staring, incredulous and silent.
“And I can explain the new anchor, too,” Christensen said, speaking now as if to himself. He looked up, taking the other two into his confidence. “The cross was just welded steel with some gold paint on it, but I didn’t have much money after I bought the anchor. He didn’t give me very much, but then I don’t suppose it was worth very much.” He looked down again. “I don’t know why I bought the anchor. I never used it, and I never will. The dinghy, either. If you don’t believe me, look down at the dock. It’s sunk right alongside.” His eyes briefly turned to the windows facing the sea, and then down again quickly, in pain. “I could have gone back for the old one, but even if the dinghy wouldn’t have drifted without an anchor, I wouldn’t go back. I wouldn’t!” He said it fiercely and then returned to his thoughts. “I dove for Gustave’s body—he was hanging in the shrouds, as if he had been waiting for me to come for him and was glad to see me …” He looked up, desperately trying to be convincing. If he failed, he knew they would not believe him and might even take him away, away from his family. “But I never dove again. I never brought up any box.” He stared at the two white-faced people facing him, confused, hurt by the unfair inquisition. “I—I’ll swear to it if I have to—”
He suddenly stumbled to his feet and walked unsteadily to the kitchen door, throwing it open and staggering inside. The two in the living room could hear the sound of a cupboard door being opened, then the rattle of a bottle and a glass being taken down. Ruth began to get to her feet, but Gregor waved her down almost savagely. He got up silently and walked into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Christensen had a bottle of aquavit in one hand, the half-full glass was at his lips and he was drinking eagerly. Gregor waited until the glass had been emptied and then took the bottle and glass gently from the other man. He set them down on the cluttered counter and led the man back to the living room. Christensen came docilely. Gregor seated the man in his chair again and sat down opposite him on the sofa. Ruth was still trying to fully comprehend the possibilities inherent in the jumbled statement. She leaned forward.
“Do you mean—?” she began, but Gregor’s look brought her to a stumbling silence. Gregor turned back to the huge man across from him, staring at Christensen with sympathy.
“Listen to me,” he said softly. “We are not here to cause you any trouble. Please believe me. We are here as your friends.” Christensen was staring at him dully, with faint curiosity as if wondering who this man was and how he came here. Gregor went on, his voice still soft. “This is what happened. You dove for your brother’s body and brought it up. While you were diving, you saw another sunken ship, or what was left of it, a ship that had been sunk many years ago. You saw a box there, that had been there since the boat sank. You brought that up as well.”
“I went back later and dove again. That’s when I brought the box up.” The liquor was making itself felt. Between the aquavit and the man’s friendly face, Knud was feeling better, less threatened. Besides, the man already seemed to know everything, so what was the secret?
“You went back later and dove again, and on that dive you brought the box up,” Gregor said, hardly believing what he was saying, or what he was hearing. Still, the wrecked ship could have been any wrecked ship, and the box could have contained anything: explosives, gunpowder …“It was a case made of welded steel inside of a wooden box, the whole thing held with steel straps, and it had lettering on it that said—”
“There was no lettering. When I brought Gustave up the wood was almost all gone; it was all gone when I went back for it. That’s how I lost the anchor,” Christensen said earnestly. “I had to loop the line through the straps to pull the box to the surface, and I had to cut the anchor loose to get the line free. There wasn’t time to work the knots loose, not under water, and not when the water was that cold.”
“You brought the metal case to the surface,” Gregor went on quietly, almost hypnotically, not wanting to break the spell. “You opened it and inside you found a treasure in gold—”
Christensen had been listening with a frown on his face, concentrating on what the man was saying. At this statement his frown deepened. So that was what they thought he had found! He shook his head violently, hoping the man would believe him, but doubting it. He knew he would hardly believe it himself.
“No!” he said hotly. “There was no gold treasure!” He looked about the room and then turned back to Gregor with a touch of grim humor. “Does all this look as if I had found a treasure?”
It did not, and Gregor had to admit it. Still, it had been quite a coincidence, a steel-case box found very close to the site where a small boat had gone down on May 22 or early on May 23, 1945. The box probably contained something quite different and obviously worthless. He leaned forward a bit, studying the blue eyes of Christensen, quite sure he was going to be told the truth. “What did you find?”
“Junk!” Christensen said bitterly. “A lot of beads and buttons and some real crude amateurish-looking lumps made into, well, like necklaces. And some masks hammered out of the stuff that looked like what children make, and a lopsided cup, I think, or maybe there were two of them.” He shrugged. “He said they were made of some cheap alloy. Pot metal and brass, I think, but I’m not sure.” He looked at Gregor sadly. “There was no treasure. If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s still down there at the bottom of the sea. And it will stay there for all of me.” He shook his head. “What I found was junk. He said so.”
Ruth and Gregor exchanged stunned, unbelieving glances. Ruth opened her mouth to say something, but Gregor waved her down in no uncertain manner. He studied the man across from him. “He?” he asked softly.
“A cousin of mine. Not a close one, actually a distant cousin of my mother’s, but still. I asked him to look at it. He’s a professor at the university in Copenhagen.” Christensen smiled in remembrance. “He’s a nice fellow. He gave me a thousand kroner for the stuff.”
With nic
e people like this around, Gregor thought sardonically, who needs un-nice people? “What’s the name of this cousin of yours? This professor? This nice fellow?”
Christensen shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. I promised I wouldn’t. You see,” he said, explaining, “he gave me a thousand kroner just for junk. He doesn’t want anyone to know about it, of course, because he’d look foolish, and nobody likes to look foolish.”
Gregor made up his mind. He took a deep breath. “Mr. Christensen, what you found was not junk. What you found was the Schliemann treasure, a collection of archaeological artifacts made of almost pure gold that was discovered by a man named Schliemann at Troy, in Turkey, over a hundred years ago. The treasure has been missing for the past thirty-five years. You found it.”
Christensen had been listening, his head cocked, his forehead wrinkled, trying to understand what was being said to him. Now he shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. I told you, it was only—”
“I know what you told me,” Gregor said steadily. “That was the Schliemann treasure.”
“That was a treasure?”
“That was a treasure.”
“But it certainly didn’t look like—”
“It was still the Schliemann treasure. Believe me.”
Christensen wet his lips, still finding it difficult to comprehend. “It wasn’t junk?”
“It was the farthest thing from junk.”
“It was worth more than a thousand kroner?”
Gregor smiled, a cold smile. “It was and is worth millions of kroner. In fact, it has a value far beyond that of money. Every museum in the world would be happy to get their hands on it.”
Christensen pressed his head into his hands, trying to understand what the man was saying. He wished now he hadn’t had that full glass of aquavit; on the other hand there was nothing he would have liked more at the moment than another glass, but he knew he would not take it. Maybe later he might even break open that bottle of lovely scotch whiskey. Millions of kroner? Millions of kroner made little sense to him. He could not picture them, although he knew they were a fortune. But how could the pieces he had found be worth a fortune? It made no sense. However—he looked up.
The Gold of Troy Page 33