Colin was taken aback. ‘Gold bullion! All those boxes?’
‘Weekly shipment from the Ashanti Goldfield Corporation,’ the man confirmed. ‘It’s being transferred to the treasury in Accra.’
‘They do this every week?’ He tried to keep his voice calm.
‘Every Wednesday, yes. It’s a convenient flight for them I suppose.’ His two-day-old Financial Times rustled as he went back to his reading, leaving Colin to gape at the green-painted boxes.
Of course! He recalled Gareth telling him that the army transported the gold by road from Obuasi and then onward by air to Accra. But he had assumed a military aircraft. Yet here it was, sitting on the deck of a scheduled passenger flight. And they did it every week too! He blew his cheeks out in a silent whistle. It must be worth millions, he told himself.
The plane’s captain was counting the boxes, the army officer paying careful attention to every metal seal. At last the pilot nodded his satisfaction and signed a receipt for the gold.
With a smart salute the army officer turned and Colin found himself looking into the obsidian, cruel eyes of Major Judas Akaba. For a moment their eyes met, Akaba’s narrowing at first, then widening slightly as recognition came, but he permitted no smile to breach the thin line of his lips before the pilot ushered him out of the plane. Two soldiers remained aboard, settling into seats facing the gold, old-fashioned Lee-Enfield rifles held carefully erect between their knees. The aircraft’s steps were drawn in and the door thudded tight. In another minute they were thundering down the runway, en route for Accra.
Colin’s appreciation of the scenery was forgotten as he stared at the twenty-two boxes – twenty-two bars of gold! He peered down the length of the cabin looking for more soldiers. None. Casually he turned his head and looked behind. No sign of uniforms there either. Almost against his will, he felt familiar feelings creep over him. What an earner this could be! Then he shook his head, as if to chase the thoughts from his mind. If he wanted to keep Lesley he couldn’t afford to take any more chances. Besides, he consoled himself, the gold was as safe here as in the Bank of England. Nevertheless, his eyes remained fixed on the bullion and he was still daydreaming about it when the stewardess asked him to fasten his seat belt for landing in Accra.
On the ground he watched an identical convoy remove the gold from the plane and, sirens blaring, disappear along the airport exit road. Despite his earlier good intentions, Colin stared thoughtfully down the road the convoy had taken and, almost against his will, found himself thinking that maybe … just maybe … a way could be found to get at the gold.
13
Fascinated by his discovery, and telling himself that he was only playing mental games, Colin invented reasons to visit Accra. Telling George that the immigration office was closed allowed him to make the trip the following week. An action replay. Twenty boxes this time.
He had finally worked out a price for the twenty-two boxes of gold he had seen on his previous trip. At the current world price of over £350 an ounce it came to a staggering three million pounds. Each individual gold bar was worth over £140,000. Even one of them would set him up for life, and life was beginning to look rosy to him, especially as far as his relationship with Lesley was concerned. The only fly in the ointment was his awareness that he had no security to offer her, and because of this he was reluctant to discuss marriage knowing that he would be relying on villainy to pay his way. He had seen too many weeping women to risk putting Lesley through the pain of loneliness and prison visits. But if he could get his hands on the gold it would set them up for life and villainy would be firmly in the past.
The gold drew him like a magnet. Three weeks later, he took an excited Lesley on a shopping trip to Accra and saw it all again – no change. It haunted him. He sat for hours thinking about it, trying to come up with an idea. Finally he was forced to recognise that he would have to lay to rest the spectre of the gold – either work out a feasible plan to steal it, or satisfy himself once and for all that it was an impossible dream.
It was during a visit with Lesley to the museum in the ancient Cape Coast Castle that an idea exploded in his mind. They were on the battlements of the old fort when a shadow swept over the sand and drew his attention upwards. Just out over the water the afternoon Accra-to-Takoradi flight was droning lazily westwards, following the coastline, the fat underbelly of the DC-3 bulky and black against the blue-white glare of a cloudless sky. In his mind’s eye he saw black dots detach themselves from the cruising plane and the swelling bloom of silk as parachutes deployed. He felt a tingle run through his entire body as every nerve came suddenly alive.
Parachutes! Of course! He recalled a case in the United States some years earlier. D. B. Cooper, the name sprang into his head, an American airborne veteran, had hijacked a jetliner, demanded a ransom be put on board, jumped, and hadn’t been seen or heard of since. An almost uncontrollable excitement gripped Colin and he drew puzzled looks and mild protests from Lesley as he began hustling her through their visit. Suddenly he was anxious to get back to Takoradi.
*
He sat on the edge of his bed with a Ghana Airways map spread across the coverlet, staring at it in thoughtful silence, not really knowing what it was he was looking for. The airline’s routes: Accra to Takoradi to Kumasi then back to Accra again made a neat, almost equilateral triangle. He thickened the line between Kumasi and Accra and continued to stare, tapping the pencil thoughtfully against his teeth. After a few minutes he folded the airways map and went out to his car, returning a few minutes later with a large-scale Michelin road map and began to study it, paying particular attention to the coastal area between Takoradi and Accra. For almost an hour he peered and poked at the map as if trying to rearrange the landscape. Finally he lay back, his mind clear on one thing. The Ashanti Gold could be ‘got at’ and ‘got at’ with every chance of success. All it needed was an idea; a twist, and he just knew the gold could be his.
Suddenly he sat up, eyes narrowed in concentration, trying to recall something George had mentioned one night on the verandah. Something about a boxing match. He remembered George had been reading from an air-mail edition of the Daily Express at the time and rose from the bed to pad into the living room, searching under the coffee table and through the magazine rack for the newspaper. When he found it he turned to the sports page, too impatient even to sit down.
The report was on the inside of the back page:
COOPER FIGHT DATE FIXED
K.O. specialist, Big Lloyd Cooper, East London’s world heavyweight contender, has signed to meet Ghanaian heavyweight Azumah Alloteh, in an eliminator fight that could earn him the right to a fight with undisputed World Champion, Mighty Mike Honeywell.
The venue for the fight is the People’s Stadium, Accra, West Africa. The date: May 11th
Tingling with a strong sense of déjà-vu, Colin turned to a calendar, knowing even before he looked that May 11th would be a Wednesday.
14
Colin’s old Peugeot bumped along the neglected red earth road, every spring protesting as the wheels took another severe jolt. He was about six miles north of Cape Coast, edging his way through the low rolling hills that protected the coast, heading deeper inland towards the worked-out diamond fields of Uturri. He swerved to avoid another axle-breaking pothole and grinned happily, knowing that the road must be practically unused. The total absence of either tyre marks or footprints endorsed this opinion and with mounting confidence he saw the trees start to thin until eventually he ran out on to a flat plains area where the colour of the earth changed from usual red laterite dust to the same dark, rough textured soil he had seen at Tarkwa. He stopped to check his map, fingers tracing his route from the main highway. He was about twelve miles inland from Cape Coast.
Further north, stretching out from either side of the disused road, the ground lay flat and bare of all but the meanest scrub-bush, the sterile earth offering little sustenance to encourage life. He turned to the map again. The road he wa
s using was marked all right, but the red line ended in the centre of a shaded area at the village of Uturri, just four miles ahead.
Uturri was a ghost town of tattered, long-abandoned shacks, its single stone building once substantial but now a roofless shell. A walk round the eerily empty village showed no signs of recent habitation and a haunting animal cry sent him scurrying back to the safety of his car. But he was pleased. Already the first definite steps of his plan were forming.
15
‘You’ve been keeping yourself gey busy this weather,’ George remarked at dinner one evening. ‘Seems as if you’re always on the go at one thing or another.’
‘Aye,’ Colin agreed conversationally. ‘I’ve been finding out a bit more about the country … doing a bit of sightseeing.’
‘As long as the wee job’s not interfering with you and your, er, romance,’ George smiled. He was pleased that Colin was getting on so well with Lesley.
‘No, no,’ Colin laughed at his uncle’s reticence. ‘I enjoy going on board the ships and meeting the men. It makes a change for me. Besides, Lesley’s quite busy herself doing voluntary teaching at the High School.’
‘As long as you don’t mind.’
‘Once or twice a week down the harbour suits me, George. It’s not really work, is it?’
A while back, George had asked him to carry out a simple task in the dockyards. Several firms had recently complained that their deliveries of cocoa butter had suffered some damage in transit. The fault had been traced to loading officers jam-packing the cartons ceiling-high in the ship’s hold, even though the cocoa company had paid for the empty space above to prevent this damage from occurring. Colin’s task was simply to make sure that the boxes were stacked no more than seven high, and although the job only involved checking up, it gave him satisfaction to feel that he was in some small way repaying his uncle’s generous hospitality.
‘I’m getting on well enough,’ Colin assured him. ‘There’s plenty to do to keep me busy.’
It was no understatement. As well as romancing Lesley, the past two weeks had seen him covering the coast road several times, timing the runs from the abandoned village to both Accra and Takoradi. Paradoxically, he saw the theft of the gold as a way out of villainy. The money the gold would fetch would be more than enough to establish him and secure a future for Lesley and himself. He was prepared to take the gamble, to risk everything in one fell swoop. The fact that he was planning to commit a serious crime with consequences too horrendous to contemplate if it went wrong did not enter his mind. He saw only the prize – the new life ahead of him when the job was over.
He had made three trips on the bullion flight by now and the job had become more attractive with each journey. He had plotted the plane’s course and knew every landmark along the flight path to Accra, the increasing familiarity giving him a real feel for the job. But he knew that he couldn’t do the job alone and realised he would have to go back to London. A face-to-face confrontation with his old ‘firm’ would be the only way he could present his idea properly and persuade them to have a go. However, returning to London posed problems. There was no reasonable excuse he could offer either Lesley or his uncle for a prolonged absence and simply to disappear for a week or two was out of the question. Or was it? An idea occurred to him.
Since he had begun checking the loading of the cocoa butter he had received many invitations to take a cruise along the coast. Most of the ships that called at Takoradi continued along the coast in short hops, discharging here and there and picking up cargo for the return trip to Europe. It was fairly common for a ship to discharge some of its cargo at Takoradi then take on a load and carry on along the coast to Tema – Ghana’s main port, Lagos in Nigeria, and on again to the river ports of Sapele, Warri, Burutu and Port Harcourt before returning to Takoradi to pick up a deck cargo of logs to top off its tonnage before returning to the United Kingdom.
Colin had studied each ship’s itinerary as it passed through Takoradi. Most of them were not due back for three or four weeks, but the Nasia River, one of the Ghanaian National Black Star Line’s vessels, had only three calls to make before she returned this time: Lagos, Port Harcourt, back to Lagos again, then back to Takoradi. Today was March 21st, and the ship was due to take on a deck cargo of logs on April 2nd – just twelve days ahead. It suited him perfectly and he had prepared his plan around this ship.
*
The arrangement the cocoa mill had with the shipping companies was that any empty space above the seven-high cartons would be paid for and kept clear, to prevent excess weight damaging the lower cases. On board the Black Star Line ship, Nasia River, Colin could see that the cartons had been stowed the correct seven high, but the gap above could easily accommodate three more layers.
‘Go ahead, stack it up,’ he smiled at the loading officer, knowing he was on a tonnage bonus.
The officer looked at him shrewdly, assuming he was looking for something more tangible than a polite ‘Thank you’ for the extra tonnage he could accommodate. ‘Would you like a drink, Mister Grant?’ He indicated the ship’s living quarters, hoping it wouldn’t cost him too much, and wasn’t surprised when his first tentative offer of £100 was refused. He was calculating how much higher he could go when Colin took the initiative.
‘I don’t want any payment over the cargo space,’ he said. ‘What I fancy is a trip to Lagos. Is there any chance you could give me a lift?’
‘You just want to go to Lagos?’
‘That’s right. Drop me off at Lagos and pick me up again on your way back, that’s all.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure to have you on board.’ The pleased officer smiled and held out his hand.
*
‘You want to take a ship down to Nigeria?’ Lesley raised her eyebrows at him. ‘When did you decide this?’
‘I’ve wanted to take a trip along the coast for a while, Lesley,’ he told her, surprised at how difficult he found it to spin the lie. ‘But usually the ships take over a month to get back here and that’s too long for me. However, the Nasia River is due back in Takoradi in less than two weeks. The offer only cropped up today and I don’t want to miss it.’
‘Well there’s certainly nothing to stop you,’ Lesley agreed. ‘But I haven’t seen very much of you these last two or three weeks, have I? You always seem to be disappearing in that old car of yours; God knows what you are up to.’
Up to? He felt a spasm of nerves at her words, but he ran his hand through her luxuriant blonde hair and drew her head onto his shoulder. ‘I’m just trying to see as much of the country and the people as I can before I go home.’ He lifted her chin with his finger so he could look into her face and added in a low voice, ‘Before we go home. And now I’ve got the chance of a quick visit to Nigeria I’d like to take it.’ He bent his head and kissed her full lips, feeling her body mould into him as her arms slipped around his neck.
‘Oh, Colin, I do love you so much,’ she murmured.
‘You don’t mind then if I go?’ He took full advantage of the moment.
‘Of course not, darling. I only wish I could go with you.’ She kissed him again, oblivious to the guilty feelings she had stirred in him.
George offered no objections either. ‘Enjoy yourself, Colin,’ he enthused. ‘If you want to gallivant about the coast for a couple of weeks, just you go ahead and do so. But be careful,’ he warned. ‘Some of these West African ports can be very dangerous.’
*
At midday, eighteen hours after leaving Takoradi, the Nasia River dropped anchor in Lagos Lagoon, outside the entrance of the main harbour.
‘How long will we be here?’ Colin asked a deck officer, as the anchor chain clattered through its scuttle.
‘We have to wait for berth twelve. It should be free by early evening.’
‘What!’ Colin exclaimed. ‘I’ve got a plane to catch. I can’t wait that long.’
‘Then you’ve got a problem.’ The deck officer shrugged. ‘We can’t dock until
the berth is free.’
‘But I’ve got to get ashore,’ Colin grabbed his arm. ‘My flight leaves at 2.25. There must be a way for me to get ashore.’
‘If you have said earlier you could have gone off with the pilot.’
‘How did he get ashore?’ Colin demanded.
‘Pilot’s launch. But they won’t come back for a passenger. Mind you …’ he hesitated. ‘There are the native canoes if you’re really desperate.’
‘Canoes?’ Colin mimed paddling. ‘That kind of canoe?’
‘Yes. They operate an illegal ship-to-shore taxi service – fifty pence will get you there. But we advise against them. They are, to put it mildly, unsafe, especially for a European. You make an attractive target even in the clothes you stand up in.’
Colin looked at his watch: almost 12.30. ‘Where do I get one of these canoes?’ he demanded.
*
He almost changed his mind when he saw the flimsy craft that had been summoned for him. Showing just an inch or two of freeboard, it looked as though he was taking his life in his hands when he stepped gingerly into the barely floating craft. Balancing as well as he could on its narrow wooden seat, he signalled the boatman to shove off, holding on to the sides of the canoe as it drifted away from the shelter of the ship and turned towards the shore.
He sensed the antagonism immediately. The oarsman in front of him was too stiff, too quiet; his belligerent stabs at the swirling, muddy water telegraphing his mood. Halfway to the shore Colin heard the low, insinuating voice of the steersman addressing him from behind.
Ashanti Gold Page 9
