by Jay Garnet
‘Twenty-four. That’s all.’
‘OK. It’s simple. You all, we all, agree there weren’t twenty-four but thirty-four bars left down there. Just add in my ten to the bars the divers didn’t fetch up. Delete the last ten numbers from your manifest. ’Oo’s to know? No one’s announced the actual numbers of bars recovered to the media yet. The journalists are blocked by D notices. That means they can only publish anything at all with the government’s agreement. Right?’
He raised his eyebrows to an MoD man, who nodded.
‘OK. Then all you need to do is tell the truth to everyone else. The whole bloody lot already know exactly ’ow much was brought up. Everyone saw the sub. Whatever you tell them about me, you can also tell them that they owe their lives to me. You can also point out that no one’s going to lose out much. What’s ten bars out of four ’undred and forty-one? Two per cent? Not much. I’d say you’d all got a bargain.’
The Russians were already in a huddle.
‘Outright deception. Forger,’ said Finlay.
‘The whole thing’s a deception – but only of the public,’ said Mike. ‘Nothing new in that. No one on board is deceived. You’ve got official orders to organize a cover-up. This is ’ow you do it. Seems to me that if you’ve got to be dishonest, this is the most honest way of doing it. Anyway, if any of you can think of a better way, go ahead.’
It took ten minutes of discussion for all those involved to realize that there was no better way. The alternative to losing the gold was to lose Mike, and he had long ago ensured that there were too many in the know for that to be possible. There followed another hour of radio time to confirm the arrangements with London and Moscow.
It was already after ten p.m. Kohlmeyer was exhausted, and would need sleep before the docking in Murmansk the following day, but he insisted on making the long public explanation necessary to keep the peace on board ship.
16
The Stephaniturm approached the Kola Inlet early on the morning of the eighth. Mike took a call from Kohlmeyer, asking him to remain in his cabin. He was joined five minutes later by one of the Russians, who told him London and Moscow had agreed that he was to be given ‘special treatment’.
Not that he would have seen much if he had been on deck. The hills of Polyarnyo and Vaenga were the same. But the bases themselves were invisible – under instructions from Murmansk, the Stephaniturm kept well to the centre of the approaches.
Through his porthole Mike could see that Murmansk itself had changed a good deal. The railhead was larger. The cranes were like those of any dockyard in the world. He glimpsed a delegation of stolid, formally clad officials waiting on the quayside. He read afterwards of the wary smiles, the formal congratulations in stilted English, the long discussions in Kohlmeyer’s cabin, but he played no part in these events.
First, there was the gold to be unshipped. Then the Russians and British together supervised the formal counting of the gold bars, all four hundred and forty-one. Ten of these were counted off and set separately on the hoist that would lift the gold on to the deck. Of the remaining four hundred and thirty-one ingots, the Russians counted out their share – two-thirds of fifty-five per cent: a hundred and fifty-eight bars. The division was not exact and had to be balanced by a currency transaction later. All the bars, Mike’s included, were then lifted to the deck by the Stephaniturm’s hoist and from the deck transferred to a cargo hoist. Ashore, a Soviet insurance official signed the receipt.
During all this time Mike remained in his cabin with his Russian companion, missing, as well as the reception on the quayside, the champagne and vodka celebrations that surrounded the crew and diving personnel in Murmansk’s best hotel.
He was escorted ashore only late in the afternoon. No one saw him leave. It was already twilight. A chill wind, foreshadowing winter, sliced its way around the cranes and wagons lining the docks. He shivered in his overcoat. Ashore, he was escorted for five minutes up the quayside – past the spot where he had once seen a gaunt skeleton of a man with a hole through his head – to a huge and desolate warehouse. At the entrance was parked a grey army truck. His companion slid back one of the fifteen-foot-high corrugated-iron doors. Just inside stood a single pallet and on it lay his ten bars of gold.
Two soldiers stood guard. The Russian official produced from his breast pocket a piece of paper.
‘Count and sign,’ he said.
Mike looked closely at the ten bars. One, he was pleased to note, was the bar he had always considered his own private property, the one that had begun his whole involvement with the gold: KP 1926. He nodded, reached for the paper, signed and pocketed the carbon. That would be important – it was his proof of ownership.
‘When do we go?’
‘Now. No one want you here,’ said the official.
The Russian waved an arm, and the two soldiers rolled the pallet with its golden burden across the concrete floor to the warehouse entrance. They clattered across a railway line to the truck. One climbed up and threw back the canvas cover. The other began to pass up the gold bars.
‘You have passport?’ said Ivan.
Mike felt in his inside pocket and nodded.
‘For Switzerland you need no visa, yes?’
‘No.’
That was a relief. Switzerland it was. Popular he might not be, but at least they were going to fulfil their side of the bargain.
One soldier remained in the back of the truck. Mike was waved into the passenger seat. His guardian climbed up beside him. The other soldier hauled himself into the driver’s seat and swung the truck around to steer an erratic, bumpy course down the quayside, avoiding potholes and crates of cargo. Of the rest of the Stephaniturm’s crew there was no sign.
Murmansk still seemed a dump. Grey. Little traffic. A steam locomotive shrieked mournfully beyond the warehouses. Back from the dock lay a line of barracks. Four soldiers marched out of a glowing doorway. The town’s buildings were drab, concrete blocks. Perhaps a few were survivors of German bombs.
Ten minutes later the truck bumped towards a bleak airfield, guarded by barbed wire and, at the entrance, a couple of concrete offices. It slowed briefly to allow the barrier to open, then accelerated through and swung around the perimeter of the airfield, a further half a mile to a collection of hangars and dimly lit office blocks. On the runway beyond the buildings an Aeroflot Ilyushin stood in the gathering gloom. The truck pulled up beside the steps. A large black limousine was parked a hundred yards away. Mike could not see if there was anyone in it. There was no one in sight.
‘Is this for me?’
‘All for you, Mr Cox.’
‘Good grief. It must seat a hundred.’
‘One hundred and thirty.’
‘Where’s the gold going?’
‘Please?’
‘What’ll you do with the gold?’
‘Gold is cargo. In cargo space.’
‘No. Put it in with me.’
The Russian paused, then said: ‘Is OK.’
The two soldiers unloaded the ten bars on to the tarmac, and then, as instructed, began to carry it two bars at a time up the steps. Mike picked up KP 1926 himself and walked up the steps, the bar on one arm, his case held in the other hand. In the empty plane he seated himself behind a wing. The gold was stacked on seats beside him, three bars to a seat.
Finally the Russian asked for his passport.
Mike handed it over. The man pulled a stamp and ink pad from his pocket, and carefully gave him a visa and exit stamp.
‘Good journey,’ he said.
‘Ta, Ivan.’
The Russian left. The two soldiers pulled back the steps. The door swung closed. A voice came through the loudspeaker system: ‘Seat-belt, please.’
The engines began to whine. The plane swung round until it was pointing due north, away from the buildings. The brakes came off and the plane accelerated down the runway. It climbed over Murmansk itself, the dark shadows of the concrete apartment blocks now punctuated by
lights, and banked over the harbour.
Mike looked down. He could just make out the Stephaniturm lying at her berth, carefully isolated from the other cargo vessels. The harbour drifted out of sight beneath the wing. Ahead the water spread northwards past Vaenga and Polyarnyo to the icy wastes of the Arctic.
The plane banked in a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, revealed a final glimpse of Murmansk under the port wing and headed south.
OTHER AVAILABLE TITLES IN THIS SERIES
Marine A SBS: Terrorism on the North Sea
Marine B SBS: The Aegean Campaign
Marine C SBS: The Florida Run
Marine D SBS: Windswept
Marine E SBS: The Hong Kong Gambit
Marine F SBS: Royal Target
Marine G SBS: China Seas
Marine H SBS: The Burma Offensive
Marine I SBS: Escape From Azerbaijan
Marine J SBS: The East African Mission
Marine L SBS: Raiders From The Sea
OTHER TITLES IN SERIES FROM 22 BOOKS
SOLDIER A SAS: Behind Iraqi Lines
SOLDIER B SAS: Heroes of the South Atlantic
SOLDIER C SAS: Secret War in Arabia
SOLDIER D SAS: The Colombian Cocaine War
SOLDIER E SAS: Sniper Fire in Belfast
SOLDIER F SAS: Guerrillas in the Jungle
SOLDIER G SAS: The Desert Raiders
SOLDIER H SAS: The Headhunters of Borneo
SOLDIER I SAS: Eighteen Years in the Elite Force
SOLDIER J SAS: Counter-insurgency in Aden
SOLDIER K SAS: Mission to Argentina
SOLDIER L SAS: The Embassy Siege
SOLDIER M SAS: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan
SOLDIER N SAS: The Gambian Bluff
SOLDIER O SAS: The Bosnian Inferno
SOLDIER P SAS: Night Fighters in France
SOLDIER Q SAS: Kidnap the Emperor!
SOLDIER R SAS: Death on Gibraltar
SOLDIER S SAS: The Samarkand Hijack
SOLDIER T SAS: War on the Streets
SOLDIER U SAS: Bandit Country
SOLDIER V SAS: Into Vietnam
SOLDIER W SAS: Guatemala – Journey into Evil
SOLDIER X SAS: Operation Takeaway
SOLDIER Y SAS: Days of the Dead
SOLDIER Z SAS: For King and Country
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 1: Valin’s Raiders
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 2: The Korean Contract
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 3: The Vatican Assignment
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 4: Operation Nicaragua
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 5: Action in the Arctic
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 6: The Khmer Hit
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 7: Blue on Blue
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 8: Target the Death-dealer
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE 9: The Berlin Alternative
MERCENARY 10: The Blue-eyed Boy
MERCENARY 11: Oliver’s Army
MERCENARY 12: The Corsican Crisis
MERCENARY 13: Gunners’ Moon
This electronic edition published in 2015 by Osprey Publishing Ltd
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by 22 Books, Invicta House, Sir Thomas Longley Road, Rochester, Kent
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