Читать книгу The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter - Desmond Bagley, Desmond Bagley - Страница 29

She came that afternoon, accompanied by a man even bigger than Coertze, whom she introduced as Piero Morese. He nodded civilly enough to me, ignored Walker and regarded Coertze watchfully.

I had had trouble with Coertze – he had taken a lot of convincing and had reiterated in a bass growl, ‘I will not be cheated, I will not be cheated.’

I said wearily, ‘O.K. The gold is up in those hills somewhere; you know where it is. Why don’t you go and get it? I’m sure you can fight Torloni and Metcalfe and the Contessa and her cut-throats single-handed; I’m sure you can bring back the gold and take it to Tangier before April 19. Why don’t you just go ahead and stop bothering me?’

He had calmed down but was not altogether happy and he rumbled like a volcano which does not know whether to erupt again or not. Now he sat in the cabin looking at the Contessa with contempt and the big Italian with mistrust.

Morese had no English so the meeting came to order in Italian, which I could understand if it was not spoken too quickly. The Contessa said, ‘It is all right to speak in front of Piero, he knows everything that I know.’

‘I know you: you were with Umberto,’ said Coertze in mashed Italian.

Morese gave a quick nod but said nothing. The Contessa said, ‘Here is where we talk seriously.’ She looked at me. ‘Have you talked this over?’

‘We have.’

‘Do they accept the terms?’

‘They do.’

‘Very well, where is the gold?’

There was a growl from Coertze which I covered with a quick burst of laughter. ‘Contessa, you’ll be the death of me,’ I said. ‘I’ll die laughing. You don’t suppose we’ll tell you that, do you?’

She smiled acidly. ‘No – but I thought I would try it. All right, how do we go about this?’

I said, ‘First of all, there’s a time limit. We’ll want the gold delivered to Rapallo by the 1st of March at the latest. We also want a place where we can work undisturbed with this boat; either a private boat-shed or a boatyard. That must be arranged for now.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why the 1st of March?’

‘That is of no consequence to you, but that is the way it must be.’

Morese said, ‘That does not leave much time. The first of the month is in two weeks.’

‘True,’ I said. ‘But that is the way it must be. The next thing is that only the five of us here will go to the gold. There must be no one else. We will unseal the place where it is hidden, pack what we want into strong boxes and move it out. Then we will seal the hidden place again. After that, and only after that, will we need the help of anyone else, and even then, only for lifting and transport to the coast. There is no need to have too many people knowing what we are doing.’

‘That is well thought of,’ said Morese.

I said, ‘Everything will be brought to the boat-shed – everything, including the jewels. We five will live together for one month while my friends and I do what we have to do. If you want the jewels valued you must bring your valuer to the jewels – not vice versa. The final share-out will be decided when the stones have been valued, but will not take place until the boat is in the water.’

‘You talk as though you do not trust us,’ said Morese.

‘I don’t,’ I said bluntly. I jerked my thumb at the Contessa. ‘Your friend here is blackmailing us into all this, so I don’t see where the trust comes in.’

His face darkened. ‘That is unworthy of you.’

I shrugged. ‘Say, rather, it is unworthy of her. She started all this and those are the facts.’

The Contessa put her hand on Morese’s shoulder and he subsided. Coertze barked a short laugh. ‘Magtig, but you have taken her measure.’ He nodded. ‘You’ll have to watch her, she a slim meisie.’

I turned to him. ‘Now it’s up to you. What will you need to get the gold?’

Coertze leaned forward. ‘When I was here last year nothing had changed or been disturbed. The place is in the hills where no one goes. There is a rough road so we can take a lorry right up to the place. The nearest village is four miles away.’

‘Can we work at night?’ I asked.

Coertze thought about that. ‘The fall of rocks looks worse than it is,’ he said. ‘I know how to blast and I made sure of that. Two men with picks and shovels will be able to get through in four hours – longer at night, perhaps – I would say six hours at night.’

‘So we will be there at least one whole night and probably longer.’

‘Ja,’ he said. ‘If we work at night only, it will take two nights.’

The Contessa said, ‘Italians do not walk the hills at night. It will be safe to have lights if they cannot be seen from the village.’

Coertze said, ‘No lights can be seen from the village.’

‘All the same, we must have a cover,’ I said. ‘If we have to hang around in the vicinity for at least one day then we must have a sound reason. Has anyone got any ideas?’

There was a silence and suddenly Walker spoke for the first time. ‘What about a car and a caravan? The English are noted for that kind of thing – camping and so on. The Italians don’t even have a word for it, they use the English word. If we camp out for a couple of nights we’ll be only another English crowd as far as the peasants are concerned.’

We all thought about that and it seemed a good idea. The Contessa said, ‘I can arrange for the car and the caravan and a tent.’

I started to tick off all the things we would need. ‘We want lights.’

‘We use the headlights of the car,’ said Coertze.

‘That’s for outside,’ I said. ‘We’ll need lights for inside. We’ll need torches – say a dozen – and lots of torch cells.’ I nodded to Morese. ‘You get those. We need picks and shovels, say four of each. We’ll need lorries. How many to do the job in one haul?’

‘Two three-tonners,’ said Coertze with certainty. ‘The Germans had four, but they were carrying a lot of stuff we won’t want.’

‘We’ll have to have those standing by with the drivers,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll need a lot of timber to make crates. The gold will need re-boxing.’

‘Why do that when it’s already in boxes?’ objected Coertze. ‘It’s just a lot of extra work.’

‘Think back,’ I said patiently. ‘Think back to the first time you saw those boxes in the German truck. You recognized them as bullion boxes. We don’t want any snooper doing the same on the way back.’

Walker said, ‘You don’t have to take the gold out, and it wouldn’t need much timber. Just nail thin pieces of wood on the outside of the bullion boxes to change their shape and make them look different.’

Walker was a real idea machine when he wasn’t on the drink. He said, ‘There must be plenty of timber down there we can use.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We use new wood. I don’t want anything that looks or even smells as though it’s come from a hole in the ground. Besides, there might be a mark on the wood we could miss which would give the game away.’

‘You don’t take any chances, do you?’ observed the Contessa.

‘I’m not a gambler,’ I said shortly. ‘The timber can go up in the trucks,’ I looked at Morese.

‘I will get it,’ he said.

‘Don’t forget hammers and nails,’ I said. I was trying to think of everything. If we slipped up on this job it would be because of some insignificant item which nobody had thought important.

There was a low, repeated whistle from the dockside. Morese looked at the Contessa and she nodded almost imperceptibly. He got up and went on deck.

I said to Coertze, ‘Is there anything else we ought to know – anything you’ve forgotten or left out?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

Morese came back and said to the Contessa, ‘He wants to talk to you.’

She rose and left the cabin and Morese followed her on deck. Through the open port I could hear a low-voiced conversation.

‘I don’t trust them,’ said Coertze violently. ‘I don’t trust that bitch and I don’t trust Morese. He’s a bad bastard; he was a bad bastard in the war. He didn’t take any prisoners – according to him they were all shot while escaping.’

‘So were yours,’ I said, ‘when you took the gold.’

He bridled. ‘That was different; they were escaping.’

‘Very conveniently,’ I said acidly. It galled me that this man, whom I had good reason to suspect of murdering at least four others, should be so mealy-mouthed.

He brooded a little, then said, ‘What’s to stop them taking it all from us when we’ve got it out? What’s to stop them shooting us and leaving us in the tunnel when they seal it up again?’

‘Nothing that you’d understand,’ I said. ‘Just the feeling of a girl for her father and her family.’ I didn’t elaborate on that; I wasn’t certain myself that it was a valid argument.

The Contessa and Morese came back. She said, ‘Two of Torloni’s men are in Rapallo. They were asking the Port Captain about you not ten minutes ago.’

I said, ‘Don’t tell me that the Port Captain is one of your friends.’

‘No, but the Chief Customs Officer is. He recognized them immediately. One of them he had put in jail three years ago for smuggling heroin; the other he has been trying to catch for a long time. Both of them work for Torloni, he says.’

‘Well, we couldn’t hope to hide from them indefinitely,’ I said. ‘But they mustn’t connect you with us – not yet, anyway – so you’ll have to wait until it’s dark before you leave.’

She said, ‘I am having them watched.’

‘That’s fine, but it’s not enough,’ I said. ‘I want to do to Metcalfe what he’s been doing to us. I want Torloni watched in Genoa; I want the docks watched all along this coast for Metcalfe’s boat. I want to know when he comes to Italy.’ I gave her a detailed description of Metcalfe, of Krupke and the Fairmile. ‘Can you do all that?’

‘Of course. You will know all about this Metcalfe as soon as he sets foot in Italy.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then what about a drink?’ I looked at Coertze. ‘It seems you didn’t scare Metcalfe off, after all.’ He looked back at me with an expressionless face, and I laughed. ‘Don’t look so glum. Get out the bottle and cheer up.’