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‘He’d be the first to agree with you,’ I said. ‘But it means something different in Afrikaans.’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Does anyone else know what you know – about Alberto’s letter and all that?’
She started to shake her head but stopped suddenly, deciding to be honest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One man, but he can be trusted – he is a true friend.’
‘O.K.,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to be sure that no one else will try to pull the same stunt that you’ve just pulled. The whole damn’ Mediterranean seems to be getting into the act. I wouldn’t tell your friends anything you don’t have to – at least, not until it’s all over. If they are criminals, as you say, they might get their own ideas.’
‘I haven’t told them anything so far, and I’m not going to tell them now.’
‘Good. But you can tell them to watch for Torloni’s men. They’ll be keeping an eye on Sanford when they get round to finding where she is.’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Halloran; I’ll certainly tell them to keep a watch on your boat,’ she said sweetly.
I laughed. ‘I know you will. When you’ve got things organized drop in and see us anytime – but make it quick, there’s a time limit on all this.’
I got up from the table and left her. I thought she might as well pay for the breakfast since we were partners – or, as she had put it, ‘in association’.
IV
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.’
V
We didn’t see the Contessa or Morese after that. They stayed out of sight, but next morning I found a note in the cockpit telling me to go to the Three Fishes and say that I wanted a watchman for Sanford.
I went, of course, and Giuseppi was more friendly than when I had last seen him. He served me personally and, as he put down the plate, I said, ‘You ought to know what goes on on the waterfront. Can you recommend a watchman for my boat? He must be honest.’
‘Ah, yes, signor,’ he said. ‘I have the very man – old Luigi there. It’s a pity; he was wounded during the war and since then he has been able to undertake only light work. At present he is unemployed.’
‘Send him over when I have finished breakfast,’ I said.
Thus it was that we got an honest watchman and old Luigi became the go-between between the Contessa and Sanford. Every morning he would bring a letter in which the Contessa detailed her progress.
Torloni was being watched, but nothing seemed to be happening; his men were still in Rapallo watching Sanford and being watched themselves; the trucks had been arranged for and the drivers were ready; the timber was prepared and the tools had been bought; she had been offered a German caravan but she had heard of an English caravan for sale in Milan and thought it would be better – would I give her some money to buy it as she had none.
It all seemed to be working out satisfactorily.
The three of us from Sanford spent our time sightseeing, much to the disgust of Torloni’s spies. I spent a lot of time in the Yacht Club and it was soon noised about that I intended to settle in the Mediterranean and was looking for a suitable boatyard to buy.
On our fifth day in Rapallo the morning letter instructed me to go to the boatyard of Silvio Palmerini and to ask for a quotation for the slipping and painting of Sanford. ‘The price will be right,’ wrote the Contessa. ‘Silvio is one of my – our – friends.’
Palmerini’s yard was some way out of Rapallo. Palmerini was a gnarled man of about sixty who ruled his yard and his three sons with soft words and a will of iron. I said, ‘You understand, Signor Palmerini, that I am a boat-builder, too. I would like to do the job myself in your yard.’
He nodded. It was only natural that a man must look after his own boat if he could; besides, it would be cheaper.
‘And I would want it under cover,’ I said. ‘I fastened the keel in an experimental way and I may want to take it off to see if it is satisfactory.’
He nodded again. Experimental ways were risky and a man should stick to the old traditional ways of doing things. It would be foolish, indeed, if milord’s keel dropped off in the middle of the Mediterranean.
I agreed that I should look a fool, and said, ‘My friends and I are capable of doing the work and we shall not need extra labour. All that is required is a place where we can work undisturbed.’
He nodded a third time. He had a large shed we could use and which could be locked. No one would disturb us, not even himself – certainly no one outside his family – he would see to that. And was milord the rich Englishman who wanted to buy a boatyard? If so, then perhaps the milord would consider the boatyard Palmerini, the paragon of the Western Mediterranean.
That brought me up with a jerk. Another piece of polite blackmail was under way and I could see that I would have to buy the yard, probably at an exorbitant price – the price of silence.
I said diplomatically, ‘Yes, I am thinking of buying a yard, but the wise man explores every avenue.’ Dammit, I was falling into his way of speech. ‘I have been to Spain and France; now I am in Italy and after Italy I am going to Greece. I must look at everything.’
He nodded vigorously, his crab-apple head bobbing up and down. Yes, the milord was indeed wise to look at everything, but in spite of that he was sure that the milord would unfailingly return to the boatyard Palmerini because it was certainly the best in the whole Mediterranean.
Pah, what did the Greeks know of fine building? All they knew were their clumsy caiques. The price would be reasonable for milord since it appeared that they had mutual friends, and such a price could be spread over a period provided the proper guarantees could be given.
From this I understood the old rascal to say that he would wait until the whole job was completed and I had fluid capital, if I could prove that I would keep my word.
I went back to Sanford feeling satisfied that this part of the programme was going well. Even if I had to buy Palmerini’s yard, it would not be a bad thing and any lengthening of the price could be written off as expedition expenses.
