Fetch the Treasure Hunter

by Phillip Gwynne

  I got it: it was Antonio I’d managed to ring from the cell in San Luca.

  ‘I went to San Luca, where my father’s family comes from. And there were these crazy Mafia types there.’

  Antonio scoffed at that. ‘That’s what you people think Italy is: pizza and Mafia.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t even like Italy.’

  ‘I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t resent the way it’s stereotyped.’

  For the first time it occurred to me that beneath that bratty exterior there was actually somebody who was pretty smart.

  ‘But what was all that stuff about your father killing somebody?’ he said.

  ‘Like I said, they were crazy Mafia.’

  I could see that Antonio didn’t buy this, not for a second. But I could also see that suddenly the kangaroo had become interesting.

  So why not use this?

  ‘Have you ever been to Maremma?’ I said.

  ‘Maremma?’ he said, giving it the proper pronunciation.

  I nodded.

  ‘As far as I know, nobody has ever been to Maremma.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s just not that sort of place. You go to Puglia. Or you go to Ravello. Not a dump like Maremma.’

  ‘So let’s go!’ I said.

  ‘What in the hell for?’

  ‘See a man about a dog,’ I said, borrowing one of Gus’s phrases.

  Antonio laughed at that – the first time I’d heard him laugh – and he had one of those great machine-gun laughs, the ha-ha-has spitting like bullets from his mouth.

  ‘Yeah, why not? Let’s go to a dump like Maremma and see a man and his dog.’

  ‘So any idea how we could get there?’

  Antonio smiled. ‘Not really, I don’t think there are any buses that go there. But we could go see another man about another dog.’

  Suddenly I realised that I was totally jumping the gun here.

  I couldn’t just rock up to Maremma, I had to make sure I was welcome first.

  ‘I have to do some stuff,’ I said. ‘But I can meet you in a few hours if you like?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Antonio. ‘Text me when you’re ready and we can meet at the McDonald’s next to the station.’

  The man and his dog worked as far as Antonio Sini went, but I was pretty sure it had now outlived its usefulness. I couldn’t see myself knocking on E Lee Marx’s front door and telling the world’s foremost treasure seeker that I’d come to see about a man and his dog.

  But I did have a lead: Hound de Villiers knew E Lee Marx. According to him, they went ‘way back’, to ‘army days’, and they still talked ‘every now and then’.

  If he was telling the truth, then could he give me some sort of introduction to the great man himself?

  Immediately, I could see a problem here.

  Hound owed me nothing. In fact, he had every right to be really, really angry with me, given that I’d snatched the Cerberus from under his very nose.

  Though, I have to admit, when I’d rung him before to see if he’d kidnapped my brother and was now snap-snap-snapping his fingers, he hadn’t seemed angry at all. Drunk, but not angry.

  A favour, then?

  Hound wasn’t really into favours.

  Actually, that wasn’t strictly true – but the favours he was into were the sort that were repaid with even more favours.

  So what did I have for him?

  All the way back to the Olympic Village on the shuttle bus, my mind was in turmoil. What carrot could I dangle in front of Hound de Villiers?

  I went up to my room and my imaginary roomie was stretched out on his bed.

  ‘How’d you go?’ I said. ‘You fight today?’

  Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, said Cassius Clay.

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am, he said.

  ‘Nobody’s arguing with that,’ I said. Or with you. Imaginary or not, I’m sure he could beat me to a pulp.

  It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up, he said.

  I was thinking it was just about time to lose my roomie, that maybe he was a tiny bit too self-involved, when he turned to me and said, The man with no imagination has no wings.

  Cassius Clay was so right; I needed some imagination, I needed some wings.

  It’s easy to say that, but how do you actually do it: get imagination, grow wings?

  I took off my clothes except for my undies, and lay on the bed. I concentrated on my breathing. I closed my eyes. I maybe even fell asleep for a second or two.

  When I woke there was one thought, one question, in my head: why did The Debt want me to entice E Lee Marx, the world’s greatest treasure hunter, to come to Australia?

  For the same reason King Eurystheus got Hercules to slay the nine-headed Hydra, to capture the Erymanthian Boar, to clean the Augean Stables? As a test of my ability, my courage, my strength, my determination?

  Was I their little Hercules?

  As I considered this, I could feel my wings growing, my imagination soaring.

  What if the answer was ‘no’?

  What if the instalments, the labours, weren’t Herculean? What if they were all part of a bigger whole?

  But what bigger whole?

  One answer kept presenting itself, golden and gleaming in my head: Yamashita’s Treasure.

  If this was true then something else was apparent. The Debt wasn’t some semi-mythical semi-mystical organisation. They were like pretty much everybody else in the world; they were just plain old money-grubbers.

  And this thought was so incredibly liberating, I kept revisiting it – they were just plain old money-grubbers, they were just plain old money-grubbers, they were just plain old money-grubbers.

  But if this was the case then how in the hell did the pieces fit together?

  I started from the first instalment.

  That wasn’t so difficult. They wanted to catch the Zolt because they wanted to know what he knew about Yamashita’s Gold.

  And even though they didn’t get the chance to question him, they must’ve somehow found out where the treasure was.

  The second instalment hadn’t been about turning off the lights, but about proving that the Diablo Bay Power Station was vulnerable, and thereby getting it decommissioned. And because of this the previously no-go waters around Diablo Bay had been opened up for recreational use. For fishing. And diving.

  Which meant that The Debt must be pretty certain that the treasure was somewhere on that seabed.

  Which reinforced my theory that they’d found a map or something.

  I was getting excited here, my wings had grown swan-like in their size and splendour, powering my imagination into the stratosphere.

  But then I came to the third instalment, Bring back Cerberus.

  Swan wings became gnat wings. I plummeted earthward.

  What in the hell did getting a phone have to do with the search for underwater treasure?

  I looked over at my roomie’s bed. Cassius Clay had gone, maybe to win the gold medal he later threw into the Ohio River. I wasn’t going to be getting any inspiration from him.

  So maybe this task was Herculean, while the others weren’t.

  No, that didn’t make sense: pieces in a puzzle, part of a greater whole.

  Think, Dom!

  Wings. Imagination.

  Thanks Cassius, but not needed anymore. iPhone!

  Excited, I grabbed my phone, went to mail, scrolled through the email messages until I came to the one I wanted, the one from Miranda.

  I clicked on the link.

  Please don’t be expired, please don’t be expired, I begged.

  It wasn’t.

  ‘Cerberus – Too Smart for its Own Good?’ the article was titled.

  Miranda had been right – it was very, very technical, with terms like ‘preconfigured SIMD’ and ‘Thumb Execution Environment’ and ‘Advanced Architectu
ral Plasticity’, but I persevered.

  And in the last very last paragraph I struck gold, maybe even Yamashita’s Gold.

  ‘A concern of the authorities was that the Advanced Architectural Plasticity made the device eminently adaptable,’ I read. ‘There was even suggestion that it could be configured into a very sophisticated handheld sensing device, useful in both the terrestrial and marine environment.’

  I didn’t read any further; I didn’t need to – a very sophisticated handheld sensing device, useful in both the terrestrial and marine environment. Herculean, my Erymanthian Boar! Because, the third piece of the puzzle had just slotted neatly into place.

  And it was like that bit in Star Wars when Darth Vader says to Luke ‘I am your father’, because suddenly the past and the present and the future all came zooming in on each other, colliding with each other. What resulted was this perfect atom of understanding, of comprehension.

  If you’re going to get somebody to head up your search for treasure – why not the best in the world? Why not E Lee Marx?

  I wanted to lie on the bed, and revel in the perfection of it all – it made sense, it made sense, it made absolute sense.

  But I didn’t have the time.

  Hound didn’t owe me any favours but I now had the solid-gold carrot that was Yamashita’s Gold to dangle in front of his double-bent nose. And given how much effort he’d already put into searching for that particular treasure, I’m pretty sure he was going look favourably on me and my endeavours.

  As for the fallout of that – I would just have to deal with it down the line.

  I rang Hound.

  He answered straightaway. ‘Buongiorno, Young–blood.’

  ‘How do you know I’m in in Italy?’

  ‘It’s my business to know.’

  ‘You still in Vegas?’

  ‘Nah, they kicked me out.’

  I knew there was an appropriate response to this, something really, really blokey, but I didn’t know what it was, so instead I just said, ‘Vegas, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, Vegas,’ said Hound. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’

  ‘You know E Lee Marx?’ I said.

  ‘We go way back,’ he said.

  ‘Back to army days?’

  ‘You got it, Youngblood.’

  ‘I’d really like to meet him,’ I said.

  ‘You and a million other people.’

  It was time to dangle the carrot.

  ‘It’s about Yamashita’s Gold,’ I said.

  Silence from the other end and I could picture Hound with that characteristic look he had when he was thinking hard.

  Eventually he said, ‘I’ll make some calls.’

  There was no doubt that Hound had many faults: he was violent, he was ruthless, he was basically amoral, but once he decided to do something, he certainly didn’t muck around.

  Five minutes later he rang me.

  ‘It’s sorted,’ he said, and he proceeded to give me the details.

  After he’d finished, he said ‘Yamashita’s Gold, eh?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Yamashita’s Gold.’

  ‘We’ll talk,’ said Hound, and I had no doubt that we would.

  I texted Antonio, and half an hour later we met at the Maccas.

  From there we went to see the other man about the other dog. He was a Tunisian by the name of Slim, and we found him in a café that was full of other Tunisians drinking mint tea and playing backgammon.

  They all seemed to know Antonio, and I wondered what sort of trouble he’d been getting into.

  Antonio and Slim talked in Italian for ages until finally Antonio turned to me and said, ‘He’ll take us.’

  ‘How much?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Antonio.

  ‘But who is –’

  Antonio wouldn’t let me finish the sentence.

  ‘I said don’t worry about that.’

  Slim’s car was parked around the corner.

  ‘Wow!’ I said when I saw it and I really meant it, because it looked like something straight out of Pimp My Ride.

  ‘Seventy-five Chevie. Monster hemi. All alloy,’ said Slim proudly.

  ‘So how long did it take you to get it all together?’ I said.

  He looked at me blankly.

  Slim’s English, it seemed, was pretty much confined to car specs.

  He got behind the wheel. Antonio got into the front passenger seat and I sat in the back.

  Slim started the engine and the stereo kicked in, the car filling with bass-heavy rap.

  As we negotiated a number of backstreets, Antonio and Slim started talking, yelling over the rap.

  I wondered why they didn’t just turn the music down.

  But I also noticed something else: they weren’t speaking Italian anymore.

  ‘You speak French?’ I asked Antonio.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘We were in Paris before here. And his Italian is terrible.’

  ‘So what does your father do now, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘He works for the IOC,’ he said. ‘Though don’t ask me what it is he does.’

  The International Olympic Committee! No wonder he’d wanted to get his son involved in the World Youth Games.

  We passed the Colosseum.

  ‘Kid tried to rip off my phone in there,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, good place to keep away from during the day,’ said Antonio. ‘All those tiresome tourists. We only ever go there at night.’

  ‘At night? I thought it was closed.’

  ‘It is,’ said Antonio mysteriously. ‘But there are ways around that problem, if you know what I mean.’

  It was hard going, talking above the music, so I kept quiet after that.

  We’d soon left Rome behind and were heading down a very impressive freeway.

  Despite the loud music, I found my eyelids getting heavier and heavier.

  Yesterday I’d skated down a mountain. This morning I’d run a PB. Now my aching body was demanding some shut-eye.

  And who was I to deny it?

  I woke to the sound of silence, to a pimpmobile that was rap-free, to Antonio gently shaking me.

  ‘We’re here,’ he said.

  I looked out of the window. We were next to the sea, on a sort of promenade.

  But there were no people around, and it had a windblown, sinister look about it.

  ‘What now?’ he said. ‘I don’t see too many men with dogs around.’

  A man about a dog had got me this far, it was probably time to elaborate a bit.

  So I told Antonio and Slim – though I’m not sure how much Slim understood – that I’d found a golden coin while I was diving off the coast in Australia.

  How I believed that coin belonged to a treasure.

  And now I wanted to show it to E Lee Marx, the world’s pre-eminent marine archaeologist, to see what he thought.

  When I’d finished, Antonio emitted a low whistle and said, ‘That is probably the most preposterous thing I’ve heard in my life.’

  Just I was about to react to this he added, ‘But nobody would make something like that up, so I guess it has to be true.’

  ‘It’s true, alright,’ I said.

  ‘So what now?’ he said. ‘How do we contact this treasure hunter dude?’

  I took out my iPhone and showed Antonio the map that Hound had sent to me.

  Antonio in turn showed it to Slim.

  ‘When we get there, I send a text and he’ll pick me up,’ I said.

  Slim studied the map for a while before he started up the pimpmobile, and the rap. We were off again.

  MONDAY

  E LEE MARX

  We turned off the main road onto a poorly maintained dirt track. As we progressed, the track got even worse, more rutted, with bigger potholes.

  And there was no sign of human life, just a sort of thin, ugly scrub.

  I’d never thought of Italy being like this; I thought it was all Leaning Towers of Pisa and Colosseums, vine
yards and olive groves.

  But I guessed it had to have scrub as well.

  ‘Merde,’ said Slim.

  I knew absolutely no French, but I had a fair idea what this meant.

  And I couldn’t argue with him, either – this was really, really merde.

  Finally, there was no more track.

  We all got out of the pimpmobile, and I could hear the sound of the water.

  ‘Beach must be down there,’ I said, pointing to a walking track.

  Antonio and Slim talked – Slim agreed to wait for us here – and Antonio and I started walking.

  It didn’t take long for us to reach the beach, though ‘beach’, with its suggestion of waves collapsing on white sand, probably wasn’t the right word for this place.

  It was sort of muddy, and mangrovey, and didn’t smell very good.

  ‘My god!’ said Antonio, pinching his nostrils.

  It didn’t take me long to see the source of the stench – a dead dolphin, its belly swollen, a cloud of flies hovering above, was lying nearby.

  I sent a text – we are here – to the number Hound had given me, but already I was thinking that something was wrong.

  Why in the hell would you meet in such a desolate, stinky place?

  Was this a set-up? An ambush?

  ‘There,’ said Antonio, pointing out to sea.

  I followed the line of his finger.

  A Zodiac was making its way towards us, a figure standing in the stern, steering. As the boat pulled into the beach I could see that the figure belonged to a kid, a girl who was maybe eleven or twelve.

  ‘Okay, jump in,’ yelled the kid in an accent that was all over the place: American, Italian, but other stuff as well.

  ‘Mr Marx?’ I said.

  Nobody had said anything about a kid in a boat.

  ‘That’s my dad,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to him.’

  I hesitated, looking back at Antonio.

  ‘I’ll wait here for you,’ he said. ‘Me and dead Flipper.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and I waded into the water and scrambled into the boat.

  ‘Not there!’ said the kid in her mongrel accent. ‘Sit in the bow!’

  I wasn’t that used to primary-school kids ordering me about, but I got into the bow. The girl reversed the boat, swung it around and we were off. The sea was much rougher than it had looked from the shore and the boat was bucking around quite a lot, spray flying in the air. The girl was still standing up, though. Her knees bent, absorbing the buffeting.