The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They don’t last long. I’m not getting more than four melts out of each, then they burn out. We might run out of mats before the job’s finished.’

  ‘I’ll check on it,’ I said, and went to figure with pencil and paper. After checking my calculations and recounting the stock of mats I went back to Coertze. ‘Can you squeeze five melts out of a mat?’

  He grunted. ‘We’ll have to be careful about it, which means we’ll be slower. Can we afford the time?’

  ‘If we burn out the mats before the job’s done then the time won’t matter—it’ll be wasted anyway. We’ll have to afford the time. How many melts a day can you do at five melts to a mat?’

  He thought about that. ‘It’ll cut us down to twelve melts an hour, no more than that.’

  I went away to do some more figuring. Taking the gold at 9000 pounds, that meant 4,500 melts of which Coertze had already done 500. Twelve melts an hour meant 340 working hours—at twelve hours a day, twenty-eight days.

  Too long—start again.

  Three hundred and forty hours working at sixteen hours a day—twenty-one days. But could he work sixteen hours a day? I cursed my lacerated back which kept me from helping, but if anything happened and it got worse then I was sure the plan would be torpedoed. Somebody had to take Sanford out and I had an increasing distrust of Walker, who had grown silent and secretive.

  I went back to Coertze, walking stiffly because my back was hurting like hell. ‘You’ll have to work long hours,’ I said. ‘Time’s running out.’

  ‘I’d work twenty-four hours a day if I could,’ he said. ‘But I can’t, so I’ll work till I drop.’

  I thought maybe I’d better go at it a different way, so I stood back and watched how Coertze and Piero were going about the job. Soon I had ideas about speeding it up.

  The next morning I took charge. I told Coertze to do nothing but pour gold; he must not have anything to do with loading the furnaces or cleaning mats—all he had to do was pour gold. Piero I assigned to melting the gold and to passing the furnace with the molten gold to Coertze. The furnaces were light enough to be moved about so I arranged a table so that they could move bodily along it.

  Walker had sawn plenty of gold, so I pulled him from his bench. He had to take a furnace from Coertze, replace the mat with a new one and put a chunk of gold on it ready for melting. Myself I set to the task of cleaning the used mats ready for re-use—this I could do sitting down.

  All in all, it was a simple problem in time and motion study and assembly line technique. By the end of the day we were doing sixteen melts an hour without too many burnt-out mats.

  So the days went by. We started by working sixteen hours a day but we could not keep it up and gradually our daily output dropped in spite of the increase in the hourly output. Mistakes were made in increasing numbers and the percentage of burnt-out mats went up sharply.

  Working in those sudden bursts of heat from the furnaces was hellish; we all lost weight and our thirst was unquenchable.

  When the output dropped below 150 melts a day with another 2000 to go I began to get really worried. I wanted a clear three weeks to sail to Tangier and it looked as though I was not going to get them.

  Obviously something had to be done.

  That evening, when we were eating supper after finishing work for the day, and before we turned exhaustedly into our berths, I said, ‘Look, we’re too tired. We’re going to have a day off, tomorrow. We do nothing at all—we just laze about.’

  I was taking a chance, gambling that the increased output by refreshed men would more than offset the loss of a day. But Coertze said bluntly. ‘No, we work. We haven’t the time to waste.’

  Coertze was a good man if a bit bull-headed. I said, ‘I’ve been right up to now, haven’t I?’

  He grudgingly assented to that.

  ‘The output will go up if we have a rest,’ I said. ‘I promise you.’

  He grumbled a little, but didn’t press it—he was too tired to fight. The others agreed lacklustrely, and we turned in that night knowing that the next day would be a day of rest.

  III

  At breakfast, next morning, I asked Francesca, ‘What’s the enemy doing?’

  Still watching.’

  ‘Any reinforcements?’

  She shook her head, ‘No, there’s just the eight of them. They take it in turns.’

  I said, ‘We might as well give them some exercise. We’ll split up and run them about town, or even outside it. They’ve been having it too easy lately.’

  I looked at Coertze. ‘But don’t touch them—we’re not ready to force a showdown yet, and the later it comes the better for us. We can’t afford for any one of us to be put out of action now; if that happens we’re sunk. It’ll take all our time to cast the keel and meet the deadline as it is.’

  To Walker I said, ‘And you keep off the booze. You might be tempted, but don’t do it. Remember what I said in Tangier?’

  He nodded sullenly and looked down at his plate. He had been too quiet lately to suit me and I wondered what he was thinking.

  I said to Francesca, ‘I thought you were getting a jeweller to appraise the gems.’

  ‘I will see him today,’ she said. ‘He will probably come tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, when he comes, it must be in disguise or something. Once Torloni’s men know that there are jewels involved there may be no holding them.’

  Piero said, ‘Palmerini will bring him hidden in a lorry.’

  ‘Good enough.’ I got up from the table and stretched. ‘Now to confuse the issue and the enemy. We’ll all leave in different directions. Piero, you and Francesca had better leave later; we don’t want any connection to be made between us. Will this place be safe with us all gone?’

  Francesca said, ‘There’ll be ten of our men in the yard all day.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Tell them not to be too conspicuous.’

  I felt fine as I walked into town. My back was healing and my face no longer looked like a battlefield. I was exhilarated at the prospect of a day off work and Coertze must have been feeling even better, I thought. He had not left Palmerini’s yard since he had brought Sanford in, while I had had several visits to town.

  I spent the morning idling, doing a little tourist shopping in the Piazza Cavour where I found a shop selling English books. Then I had a lengthy stay at a boulevard café where I leisurely read a novel over innumerable cups of coffee, something I had not had time for for many months.

  Towards midday I went up to the Yacht Club for a drink. The bar seemed noisier than usual and I traced the disturbance to an argumentative and semi-drunken group at the far end of the room. Most members were pointedly ignoring this demonstration but there were raised eyebrows at the more raucous shouts. I ordered a Scotch from the steward and said, ‘Why the celebration?’

  He sneered towards the end of the bar. ‘No celebration, signor; just idle drunkenness.’

  I wondered why the secretary didn’t order the men from the club and said so. The steward lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘What can one do, signor? There are some men who can break all rules—and here is one such man.’

  I didn’t press it; it was no affair of mine and it wasn’t my business to tell the Italians how to run the club in which I was their guest. But I did take my drink into the adjoining lounge where I settled down to finish the novel.

  It was an interesting book, but I never did get it finished, and I’ve often wondered how the hero got out of the predicament in which the author placed him. I had not read half a dozen pages when a steward came up and said, ‘There is a lady to see you, signor.’

  I went into the foyer and saw Francesca. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ I demanded.

  ‘Torloni is in Rapallo,’ she said.

  I was going to speak when the club secretary came round the corner and saw us. I said, ‘You’d better come inside; it’s too damn’ conspicuous here.’

  The
secretary hurried over, saying, ‘Ah, Madame, we have not had the honour of a visit from you for a long time.’

  I was a member of the club—if only honourary—so I said, ‘Perhaps I could bring Madame into the club as my guest?’

  He looked unaccountably startled and said nervously, ‘Yes, yes, of course. No, there is no need for Madame to sign the book.’

  As I escorted Francesca into the lounge I wondered what was agitating the secretary, but I had other things on my mind so I let it slide. I seated Francesca and said, ‘You’d better have a drink.’

  ‘Campari,’ she said, and then quickly, ‘Torloni brought a lot of men with him.’

  ‘Relax,’ I said, and ordered a Campari from the lounge steward. When he had left the table I said, ‘What about Metcalfe?’

  ‘The Fairmile left Genoa; we don’t know where it is.’

  ‘And Torloni? Where is he?’

  ‘He booked into a hotel on the Piazza Cavour an hour ago.’

  That was when I had been sitting in the pavement café. I might even have seen him. I said, ‘You say he brought some men with him?’

  ‘There are eight men with him.’

  That was bad; it looked as though an attack was building up. Eight plus eight made sixteen, plus Torloni himself and possibly Metcalfe, Krupke, the Moroccan and what other crew the Fairmile might have. More than twenty men!

  She said, ‘We had to work quickly. There was a lot of reorganizing to do—that is why I came here myself, there was no one else.’

  I said, ‘Just how many men have we got?’

  She furrowed her brow. ‘Twenty-five—possibly more later. I cannot tell yet.’

  That sounded better; the odds were still in our favour. But I wondered about Torloni’s massing of force. He would not need so many men to tackle three presumably unsuspecting victims, therefore he must have got wind of our partisan allies, so perhaps we wouldn’t have the advantage of surprise.

  The steward came with the Campari and as I paid him Francesca looked from the window over the yacht basin. When the steward had gone, she said, ‘What ship is that?’

  ‘Which one?’

  She indicated the motor yacht I had noticed on my earlier visit to the club. ‘Oh, that! It’s just some rich man’s floating brothel.’ Her voice was strained. ‘What is the name?’

  I hunted in my memory. ‘Er—Calabria, I think.’

  Her knuckles were clenched white as she gripped the arms of her chair. ‘It is Eduardo’s boat,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Who is Eduardo?’

  ‘My husband.’

  A light dawned on me. So that was why the secretary had been so startled. It is not very usual for a stranger to ask a lady to be his guest when the lady’s husband is within easy reach and possibly in the club at that very moment. I chuckled and said, ‘I’ll bet he’s the chap who is kicking up such a shindy in the bar.’

  She said, ‘I must go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I do not wish to meet him.’ She pushed her drink to one side and picked up her handbag.

  I said, ‘You might as well finish your drink. It’s the first drink I’ve ever bought you. No man is worth losing a drink over, anyway.’

  She relaxed and picked up the Campari. ‘Eduardo is not worth anything,’ she said tightly. ‘All right, I will be civilized and finish my drink; then I will go.’

  But we did meet him, after all. Only an Estrenoli—from what I had heard of the breed—would have paused dramatically in the doorway, veered over to our table and have addressed Francesca as he did.

  ‘Ah, my loving wife,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised to find you here in civilized surroundings. I thought you drank in the gutters.’

  He was a stocky man, with good looks dissipated by redveined eyes and a slack mouth. A wispy moustache disfigured his upper lip and his face was flushed with drink. He ignored me altogether.

  Francesca looked stonily ahead, her lips compressed, and did not turn to face him even when he dropped heavily into a chair by her side.

  I said, ‘You weren’t invited to sit with us, signor.’

  He swung round and gave a short laugh, looking at me with an arrogant stare. He turned back to Francesca. ‘I see that even the Italian scum is not good enough for you now; you must take foreign lovers.’

  I stretched out my foot and hooked it behind the rung of his chair, then pulled hard. The chair slid from under him and he tumbled on to the floor and sprawled full length. I got up and stood over him. ‘I said you weren’t invited to sit down.’

  He looked up at me, his face suffused with anger, and slowly scrambled to his feet. Then he glared at me. ‘I’ll have you out of the country within twenty-four hours,’ he screamed. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The chance was too good to miss. ‘Scum usually floats on top,’ I said equably, then I hardened my voice. ‘Estrenoli, go back to Rome. Liguria isn’t a healthy place for you.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he said uneasily. ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘There are fifty men within a mile of here who would fight each other for the privilege of cutting your throat,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you what; I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get out of Liguria. After that I wouldn’t give a busted lira for your chances.’

  I turned to Francesca. ‘Let’s get out of here; I don’t like the smell.’

  She picked up her handbag and accompanied me to the door, walking proudly and leaving Estrenoli standing there impotently. I could hear a stifled buzz of comment in the lounge and there were a few titters at his discomfiture. I suppose there were many who had wanted to do the same thing but he was too powerful a man to cross. I didn’t give a damn; I was boiling with rage.

  The tittering was too much for Esternoli and he caught up with us as we were crossing the foyer. I felt his hand on my shoulder and turned my head. ‘Take your hand off me,’ I said coldly.

  He was almost incoherent in his rage. ‘I don’t know who you are, but the British Ambassador will hear about this.’

  ‘The name’s Halloran, and take your goddamm hand off me.’

  He didn’t. Instead his hand tightened and he pulled me round to face him.

  That was too much.

  I sank three stiff fingers into his soft belly and he gasped and doubled up. Then I hit him with my fist as hard as I could. All the pent-up frustrations which had accumulated over the past weeks went into that blow; I was hitting Metcalfe and Torloni and all the thugs who were gathering like vultures. I must have broken Estrenoli’s jaw and I certainly scraped my knuckles. He went down like a sack of meal and lay in a crumpled heap, blood welling from his mouth.

  In the moment of hitting him I felt a fierce pain in my back. ‘Christ, my back!’ I groaned, and turned to Francesca. But she was not there.

  Instead, I was face to face with Metcalfe.

  ‘What a punch!’ he said admiringly. ‘That bloke’s got a busted jaw for sure; I heard it go. Ever consider fighting light-heavyweight, Hal?’

  I was too astounded to say anything, then I remembered Francesca and looked about wildly. She moved into sight from behind Metcalfe.

  He said, ‘Wasn’t this character saying something about the British Ambassador?’ He looked about the foyer. Luckily it was deserted and no one had seen the fracas. Metcalfe looked at the nearest door, which was the entrance to the men’s room. He grinned. ‘Shall we lug the guts into the neighbouring room?’

  I saw his point and together we dragged Estrenoli into the lavatory and stuffed him into a cubicle. Metcalfe straightened and said, ‘If this bird is on speaking terms with the British Ambassador he must be a pretty big noise. Who is he?’

  I told him and Metcalfe whistled. ‘When you hit ‘em, you hit ‘em big! Even I have heard of Estrenoli. What did you slug him for?’

  ‘Personal reasons,’ I said.

  Connected with the lady?’

  ‘His wife.’

  Metcalfe groaned. ‘Brother you do get complicated. You�
�re in a jam, for sure—you’ll be tossed out of Italy on your ear within twelve hours.’ He scratched behind his ear. ‘But maybe not; maybe I can fix it. Wait here and don’t let anyone use this john. I’ll tell your girlfriend to stick around—and I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’

  I leaned against the wall and tried to think coherently about Metcalfe, but I couldn’t. My back was hurting like hell and there was a dull throbbing in the hand with which I had hit Estrenoli. It looked as though I had made a mess of everything. I had repeatedly warned Coertze not to get into brawls and now I was guilty of that same thing—and mixed up with Metcalfe to boot.

  Metcalfe was as good as his word and was back within two minutes. With him was a squat, blue-jowled Italian dressed in a sharp suit. Metcalfe said, ‘This is a friend of of mine, Guido Torloni. Guido, this is Peter Halloran.’

  Torloni looked at me in quick surprise. Metcalfe said, ‘Hal’s in a jam. He’s a broken a governmental jaw.’ He took Torloni on one side and they spoke in low tones. I watched Torloni and thought that the mess was getting worse.

  Metcalfe came back. ‘Don’t worry, Guido can fix it, he can fix anything.’

  ‘Even Estrenoli?’ I said incredulously.

  Metcalfe smiled. ‘Even Estrenoli. Guido is Mr Fixit himself in this part of Italy. Come, let’s leave him to it.’

  We went into the foyer and I did not see Francesca. Metcalfe said, ‘Mrs Estrenoli is waiting in my car.’

  We went out to the car and Francesca said, ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is fine,’ I said.

  Metcalfe chuckled. ‘Excepting your husband, Madame. He will be very sorry for himself when he wakes up.’

  Francesca’s hand was on the edge of the door. I put my hand over hers and pressed it warningly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Francesca, this is Mr Metcalfe, an old friend of mine from South Africa.’

  I felt her fingers tense. I said quickly, ‘Mr Metcalfe’s friend, Mr Torloni, is looking after your husband. I’m sure he’ll be all right.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ agreed Metcalfe cheerfully. ‘Your husband will be fine. He won’t make trouble for anyone.’ He suddenly frowned. ‘How’s your back, Hal? You’d better have it seen to right away. If you like I’ll drive you to a doctor.’