‘I’d like to hire a speedboat for the day,’ I said to the bored-looking man with the salt-and-pepper beard behind the counter.
He gave me an up-and-down look before he said, ‘You can’t.’
‘Why not?’ I said.
‘Because you are of an insufficient age,’ he said.
‘And what is a sufficient age?’
‘Eighteen.’
I was really kicking myself – I mean, who goes to Europe without some phoney ID?
‘So I have sufficient age to hire what?’ I said.
‘A pedal boat,’ he said.
Pedal boat? The choice of getaway vehicle for criminals the world over. But I guessed, given the insufficiency of my age, I didn’t have much choice. According to Google Maps, there was no other way to get to Schwarzwasserstel, my improbably named destination.
‘I’ll take it,’ I said.
So after I’d given him my details and a ridiculous amount of euros, I was the proud renter of pedal boat number fourteen.
‘You must bring it back on time,’ was the last thing he said to me.
I bought some supplies, also ridiculously overpriced – water and chocolate – and boarded my vessel.
I took out the map of the lake I’d printed off Google Maps. According to it, if I headed two hundred and seventy-eight degrees west from my present position, then I would hit Schwarzwasserstel. I took out my iPhone, opened the compass utility, and placed it on the seat in front of me so that I could see it.
As I started pedalling, it soon became apparent to me why the pedal boat has not figured hugely in the history of waterborne locomotion. Why Matthew Flinders did not use one when he became the first man to circumnavigate Australia.
Basically, they’re useless. Even for somebody like me, who probably has much better than average leg power, they’re useless.
The ratio of effort to result was pitiful. I pedalled and I pedalled and I pedalled and the water churned and it churned and it churned, but I hardly seemed to move at all. It was depressing. It was tiring. I ate some chocolate. I drank some water. And I churned even more water.
But after two hours I could make out Schwarzwasserstel on the far shore. It looked pretty cool, just like a castle out of a Disney film. Behind it the mountain rose up sharply, a wall of smooth bare stone. So Google Maps was right: there was no land access. Closer and closer I pedalled, and I could see that Schwarzwasserstel, Disneyesque from a distance, was actually pretty dilapidated. The turrets were crusted in birdlime. The lake’s waters lapped walls that were shaggy with algae.
A terrible thought occurred to me: there was nobody living here anymore, Schwarzwasserstel was abandoned. The closer I came the more likely this seemed, because the castle was pretty much falling down. But as I pedalled into the little stone pier a dog barked.
I tied up the pedal boat and stepped out and onto the flagstones. Weeds sprouted up through the cracks, like the hairs out of Dr Chakrabarty’s nose.
Surely nobody lives here, I told myself.
But again the dog barked.
Time to put this part of my plan into action. I set my shoulders. Rearranged my face. I was now a fanatical numismatist, so fanatical that I would come all the way from Australia to Switzerland, pedal a boat across a lake, just to, perhaps, get a glimpse of a Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle.
I set off in the direction of the dog’s bark.
The doors were enormous: wood slabs, iron fittings, like something made to withstand the biggest of battering rams. I knocked, but the resulting noise sounded pathetic; I doubted whether it had gone any further than where I was standing. So I put my shoulder against the door and I pushed and it gave way – the doors weren’t locked!
They slowly creaked open and I was able to step inside Schwarzwasserstel. I couldn’t remember actually having been in a castle before. But I had seen lots of movies, lots of TV shows about castles, and because of that I guessed I had a pretty clear idea as to what they should look like.
And let me tell you, it definitely wasn’t this. This was Miranda’s room after a seven-girl sleepover. This was the change rooms after the football team had been in there. People, this was trashed!
There were piles of crap everywhere. Bundles of newspaper tied up with string. Black garbage bags, lumpy with stuff. And the smell was appalling. Like one of Bevan Milne’s paint peelers.
Again my thought was: Surely there’s nobody living in this dump. But almost as if it’d read my thoughts and wanted to tell me how wrong I was, the dog barked again.
And the bark was definitely from upstairs.
So I took the staircase, one of those winding types that princesses like to sweep down in fairy stories. And then I was in a corridor. The dog was barking pretty much continuously now – obviously it could sense that I was here.
I followed the corridor; on either side portraits of severe-looking people in high collars gave me disapproving stares.
I came to another of those medieval doors. The dog must be on the other side, I figured, because I could hear paws scrabbling against the wood.
I knocked.
No reply.
‘Hello, is there anybody there?’ I yelled.
Again, no reply, so I pushed at the door.
Again, it wasn’t locked.
The dog’s head appeared: it was one of those breeds with the squashed-up faces. Mrs Grinham from down the road has one. What were they called again?
Of course – pugs!
To say that the pug was excited is probably understatement of the year; this pug was almost wetting himself.
So when I pushed the door open further and the pug was able to squeeze through, it came at me. It licked my ankles. It licked my feet.
This was the most grateful dog I’d ever met, like gratefulness had decided to take canine form.
A voice came from behind the door: ‘Who is our visitor, Montgomery?’
On the posh scale from one to a hundred, with a hundred being the Queen, this voice was up around the ninety-eight mark, maybe even ninety-nine.
Montgomery yapped some more.
‘Well, show him in then,’ said Posh Voice.
I followed Montgomery through the open door and into the room.
There was a lot to take in.
Unlike the rest of the castle, the room itself looked modern, with carpet on the floor and panelling on the wall. Music was playing: lots of mournful cello, mournful violin, like the instruments were having a competition to out-mournful each other. And then there was Posh Voice himself: as soon as I saw him he ceased being Posh Voice and became Jabba the Hutt.
It was hard to work out what was chest and what was stomach and what was legs: it just seemed like one mass of amorphous body.
Above that was a head, which was pretty much the same head I’d seen on the net, with the heavy eyelids and curled-up moustache.
So he’d got fat but his head hadn’t.
Now I noticed something in his hands. And that something was an old-fashioned pistol and it was pointed in my direction.
‘Montgomery seems to have taken a liking to you,’ he said.
I was hoping this was a good thing, that the famously reclusive billionaire Ikbal Ikbal, one time friend of Farouk, King of Egypt, took notice of his canine companion.
‘He’s a really nice dog,’ I said.
‘Now that accent, we had a chap at Eton who talked like that. Rilly noice dawg,’ said Ikbal2, mimicking my accent.
Did I really sound like that?
‘If my memory serves me correctly, the chap’s name was Robert. Australian?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m from the Gold Coast.’
‘Well, jolly good for you,’ he said, his laugh a sort of seismic rumble.
‘I didn’t come to rob you or anything, Mr Ikbal Ikbal,’ I said, nervous eyes on the pistol.
‘Young man, as you can probably see, there isn’t much to rob anymore,’ he said with a wave of his hand.
My heart sun
k: he no longer had the Double Eagle that, according to the internet, he’d acquired from King Farouk!
Why hadn’t I factored in that possibility?
‘So what brings you to me?’ he said, and it was a pretty fair question.
Fanatical numismatist? Really, was that going to work? Probably not, but so what, he didn’t have the coin anyway. So I went with fanatical numismatist. Told him how I’d always been interested in coins, especially the Double Eagles. How I’d read that he’d purchased one from King Farouk. And as I talked, I realised that ‘fanatical numismatist’ wasn’t altogether a performance: I really, really, really wanted to see what a genuine Double Eagle looked like.
Finally I said, ‘So I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I came all the way here I could see one.’
‘By what means did you get here again?’ he asked in that posh voice.
‘In a pedal boat,’ I said.
‘You pedalled all the way across the lake?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I would’ve pedalled across the Pacific to see a Double Eagle.’
Ikbal2 was slowly stroking Montgomery, who was now sitting on his lap.
‘Do you know something, living here hasn’t been cheap. Yes, the Swiss offered me refuge, but they’re a nation of bankers; they’ve made me pay for it.’
Ikbal2 paused there and when he continued talking again, there was no mistaking the sadness in his voice.
‘Of all the things I’ve owned, the Fabergé eggs, the diamonds, the Double Eagle has always been my favourite …’
There was a flush of colour around his neck and my heart climbed back to its usual place in my chest – he still had it!
‘It’s the most beautiful coin,’ I said. ‘The most beautiful coin that was ever struck.’
‘My last wish is that I be buried back in Egypt. Then, at least, I can spend eternity in my homeland, the land they banished me from. The current administration is, shall we say, sympathetic to my wishes.’
I figured that now was not the time to talk: I said nothing.
‘Of course, their sympathy waxes and wanes, depending on how much money I can promise them.’
‘You will sell the coin?’ I said.
‘Yes, I will sell the coin. In fact, I’m expecting somebody later on this week. They, unlike you, will probably arrive by helicopter.’
The gun, I noticed, was no longer pointing at me.
‘So you would like to see the Double Eagle?’
‘Yes, I would,’ I said.
‘Well, young man, come here before I change my mind.’
I wasted no time and hurried over to where he was sitting. Now that I was closer I could smell Ikbal2: a mixture of the fragrant and the pungent.
He reached inside his shirt and came out with a bunch of keys on a chain, which he slipped over his head.
He leant to one side, until he could reach a set of drawers.
‘It’s probably better if you don’t see this,’ he said.
I looked the other way, but what Ikbal2 didn’t consider was that right in front of me was an enormous gilt-edged mirror which enabled me to see everything he was doing.
He slid down a small panel, behind which was a hidden drawer. Using one of the keys, he unlocked the drawer and took out a red box.
He closed the drawer, slid the panel back.
‘Here we are,’ he said, which I took as permission to turn around again.
A flick of his thumb, a click; the box sprung open and there it was, nestled on blue velvet, the Double Eagle. Not a fake, not a phoney, the real thing.
‘Isn’t it glorious?’ he said.
Glorious was the right word.
‘Can I hold it?’ I asked.
A look of consternation passed across his face and I noticed his other hand tightening its grip on the pistol.
‘Just for a second,’ I said.
Ikbal2 plucked the coin from its nest with his long, manicured fingernails, placing it on his plump hand.
I held out my right hand.
He placed the coin on the palm.
My left hand crept into my pocket, where my Golden Eagle was.
How to swap them?
What I needed was some sort of distraction.
‘It’s incredible!’ I said. ‘It’s amazing!’
Behind Ikbal2, Montgomery had jumped up onto a chair, and his front paws were scrabbling on the top of a table.
He wasn’t in any danger, but I sensed that this was my opportunity.
‘Montgomery, watch out!’ I yelled.
Ikbal2 twisted around – not a straightforward process.
‘Montgomery, get down from there!’ he said.
By the time he turned back to face me, his genuine coin was in my pocket and my phoney coin was on my palm.
I couldn’t quite believe how simple it had been. And when I handed the coin back to him, I was sure I was going to be found out, that he would immediately spot my coin as a fake.
But he took it and placed it carefully back in its box.
‘Well, I hope it was worth all that pedalling,’ he said.
‘Without a doubt,’ I said, feeling the weight of his coin in my pocket. ‘That was incredible.’
I thanked Ikbal2, patted Montgomery, and I got the hell out of there.
I didn’t run, I didn’t rush, but I got the hell out of there.
Once back in the pedal boat, I pedalled hard. If ever pedal-boat racing becomes an Olympic sport – and what a sad day that will be – then I am sure to medal. The sun had disappeared behind the snowcapped mountain range; the water had turned glassy, and I pedalled. I actually hadn’t thought how much the coin was worth, but now that I did it made me a bit giddy. A Double Eagle had been auctioned in 2002 for US$7.59 million.
I could see the town now, the dinky little pier where I had hired the boat.
I pedalled and I pedalled and I pedalled.
One last revolution and I glided in to the shore.
There, waiting for me, was the police. Shiny badges, stern faces – the usual constabulary thing. I’d been crazy to think I was going to get away with it.
I stepped out of the boat and onto the wharf.
Make a run for it?
No, probably not.
Dive into the water and swim for it?
Also, probably not.
Now I noticed that as well as the two cops there was another person: the man from the hire shop, he of the ‘insufficient age’ line.
What was he doing here?
He said something to the policeman in French.
The policeman looked at me and said, ‘You have a contract to hire the boat for four hours?’
At first I wasn’t quite sure what was going on: would somebody really get the police because somebody had kept out a pedal boat longer than they should?
Okay, I was a bit late bringing it back.
Two hours late.
But I figured that probably happened all the time, that they just did a run around the lake every morning and picked up all the abandoned pedal boats.
I mean, it wasn’t as if anybody would actually steal a pedal boat, was it?
‘I can pay the extra money,’ I said.
The cop looked at the pedal-boat man and said something in French.
The pedal-boat man said something back.
I’m pretty sure, despite my insufficient age, he wanted me to go to jail.
Eventually the boat man said, ‘You owe me sixty euro.’
Sixty euro was outrageous, but I happily paid.
And, coin bouncing in my pocket, I hurried to the railway station.
Safely in my seat, I moved the coin into my shoe for smuggling again and sent Trace a text message.
Her reply came just before the train pulled into Geneva: that’s gr8!
I sent her another text: when can I come?
Her reply didn’t take long: we’re in rome tonight for stones concert
It took me a while to make sense of this: stones concert?
<
br /> But then I remembered the signs I’d seen all around Rome: The Rolling Stones Rock the Colosseum.
I remembered the photo I’d seen in E Lee Marx’s office. E Lee Marx was coming to Rome to go to the Rolling Stones concert.
I started typing a reply text, so maybe, but then stopped.
Sometimes it’s easier just to do it the old-fashioned way.
I rang Trace. She answered straightaway.
‘Well, I’ve got him out of the compound,’ she said.
‘That’s great,’ I said.
‘And Keith wants to see him after the gig.’
Keith? Who was Keith? And then I got it: Keith Richards!
‘That’s awesome!’ I said, and I really meant it.
Okay, the Rolling Stones were about a thousand years old, and they hadn’t put out a good album since before I was born, but they were still the Rolling Stones, they were still my dad’s all-time favourite band.
‘So I can meet you before the gig?’ I said.
‘No, we won’t have time.’
I figured that after the gig wouldn’t be possible, not if he was going backstage.
‘Can I come to Maremma tomorrow, then?’ I said.
‘Oh, Dom, didn’t I tell you? Lee is flying out tomorrow, back to the States. He’s looking to set up some sort of charity there, in Trent’s memory.’
Trent must be the nephew who died, but still, what in the hell?
No, she hadn’t told me, and I was starting to wonder about Trace, nice as she was: she seemed to enjoy making me jump through as many hoops as possible.
But when I thought about it just a little bit more, it seemed only fair and reasonable that she did.
Some kid rocks up, reckons he knows where Yamashita’s Gold is, why wouldn’t you give him a hard time?
‘So what about at the gig itself?’ I said. ‘Maybe I could meet you there?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Meet us there.’
It was only after I’d put down the phone that I realised I’d left out a few important details, like how in the hell I was going to get into the concert and how in the hell I was going to find them when I did.
TUESDAY
THE ROLLING STONES ROCK THE COLOSSEUM
Fetch the Treasure Hunter Page 16
