The Dead & The Drowning

by Cameron Bell

  Irene was a renowned beauty from Athens who became Empress Consort of the Byzantine Empire when she married Emperor Leo IV in 775 AD. After the death of Leo in 780 she assumed Regency on behalf of her son Constantine VI until 790, and then as the first Empress when Constantine died under mysterious circumstances. From 797 to 802 when she was deposed, she had coins minted in her likeness.

  “Solidus of Irene, meaning a gold coin of Empress Irene in loros with cross potent in obverse, and in loros with globus cruciger in reverse. They were minted at Syracuse in Sicily between 797 and 802AD. The Roman Emperor Constantine started the Solidus and the Byzantines continued with them. For years I have chased Gorm Thorsen's Gold: where it is, how to find it and what it is? This is pretty much the best we could have hoped for.”

  “The Byzantines were the Eastern Roman Empire right? with a capital in Constantinople. How would it end up in Iceland?” I ask.

  “My ancestors roamed far and wide raiding, trading and fighting as mercenaries. They sailed the Mediterranean and did one of those things to get it. And remember the coins had value outside of the empire in the rest of Europe ... so they could have come from elsewhere too!”

  “What are they worth Jon?” says Toni keenly.

  Jon kicks his head back and with a hearty laugh answers,

  “Hah, the only question worth asking if you are not a scholar. Each coin in good condition is worth a starting price at auction of six hundred thousand Krona and have sold for over a million Krona. There will of course be a reward from the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland, and it will be a tenth of the value of the find. We will have fame and money in our pockets.”

  I try to do the conversion to pounds, but my tired and abused brain isn't up to it. I see Toni frowned in thought and surmise she is grappling with a similar calculation to dollars.

  “Jeez that's about nine thousand dollars per coin,” she announces with delight.

  “Bloody hell!” I blurt and the thought of over a million dollars grips that tired, confused brain.

  “Yes, so about three hundred dollars a coin each from the reward,” says Jon with satisfaction.

  We lighten the pot significantly so that I am able by hooking my hands inside to deadlift the pot out of the hole. We tip out the rest of the coins, and thrilled count the hoard like bandits - bandits with a foreboding of ill-gotten gains.

  I pile the coins into stacks of ten and as I do so my disquiet grows. Toni had misread Jon. Jon wants glory not riches, he wants vindication and the accolades of academics. There would be a reward, but this is incidental and not the driver of his actions. Toni sees a staggering heap of dollar signs and a way out of the daily grind. Yet, she had not contradicted Jon and made an argument for keeping the gold.

  I count the ten-piece stacks and there are sixty-two of them and four coins spare. I work the math on a calculator app, and I make it five million six hundred and sixteen thousand dollars at near the top value. I take a nought off and divide by three, and the cut rounded down is a clean, legitimate one hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars. No further violence, subterfuge or shady deals, no rip offs, police stings or looking over your shoulder. It is less, but could it be more?

  Jon borrows my phone again and takes some shots of the pot next to the little pillars of gold. Then going down on one knee inserts himself in the picture as a fisherman would his catch.

  “Will, a video please for proof and posterity.”

  I oblige and a more composed Jon provides us and a nation with a speech.

  Chapter 22

  We divide the weight of the coins by the strength to carry them. Jon knots the cuffs of his coat and packs coins into the sleeves. He then puts more onto the back of the coat and rolls it up into a bundle. Toni and I load all our pockets and refill the pot. We each hook a hand inside the pot and drag it the seventy yards to the shoulder of the mountain. I am as tired as an old pit pony, and I mark short distances and hirple my way to each, slogging past them one at a time. I can tell the others are flagging too, each of us silent with our own cross to bear.

  The weather is changing for the worse. Clouds blacken and glower down and a mean wind harasses from the shore. We pick up the pace trying to outrun the gathering storm and the pot bumps over the ground behind us. We make our way across the rim over to the ridge the other side. I search for the Mitsubishi and it has gone, but do not assume the obvious. We descend the sheep track and I keep my eyes peeled and my wits about me. Taking my eyes off the ground in front of me I pay the price when a stone moves underfoot. I trip off the track and go over onto my left side, wheeling off the shoulder, legs in the air coming up sitting and sliding down the steep bank. Gaining momentum, I begin to tumble but before losing to it, turn over onto my front and claw the grass. Spreading wide, hugging and clutching the mountain I brake to a stop. I look up and Jon having set the bundle down steps off the track, while Toni still on the track tackles and steadies the rolling pot. With the pot braced against her shoulder Toni calls out,

  “Will are you alright?”

  “Just another one of my nine lives gone that's all,” seeing that twenty feet further is the edge to a sharp drop.

  I get to my feet with the same care a last card is placed in a house of cards. Using hands as well as feet I clamber back to the sheep track, pick up the spade and we continue down without further mishap.

  At the bottom Jon needs to rest and Toni suggests going ahead for the car. It would be easier to not have to lug the gold any further, but splitting the party up weakened us as a unit. They seemed like they'd thrown in the towel, though five million dollars could assuage a ton of hurt. Because if you'd be prepared to do harm for the potential of it, what would you do for the promise? In the end it is the weather that decides. Day becomes dusk and fat raindrops pelt us like skirmishing fire for the barrage to come. I throw Toni the Ranger keys and Jon and I take shelter in the base of the bolt rock. The rain comes off the Fjord and with our backs to the rock we are spared the brunt of the downpour. In two minutes, the Ranger growls through the pass and assaulted by the rain we load her up.

  Chapter 23

  Jon has to take a leak before driving, and Toni chooses to sit in the back with me. She nestles into my shoulder and squeezes my hand. She whispers soothingly,

  “I'm sorry I was hard on you.”

  “I deserved it.”

  “No ... well perhaps a bit. I just didn't like seeing you get hurt, taking unnecessary risks. I’m fond of you Will Cutter.”

  Even an apology from this woman is seductive and I am sure she could add sex to anything.

  “It was reckless I know that, but I needed it.”

  “Needed what?” she asks.

  I expel a lung full of air and feel the slow beating of my heart as I pause some seconds before breathing again.

  “To fight and suffer, to suffer and fight, to go into the fire and come out ... or not,” and as I speak the words I don't know whether to smile or cry, and it ends up being something in between.

  “Wow, and I thought I had problems; it sounds like you don't care whether you live or die.”

  “Ambivalent, if I go I go.”

  “Well I want you to stick around,” and I feel her hot breath in my ear.

  She disentangles her hand from mine and slides it over my thigh to my groin. She rubs and cups my cock while her tongue dances wickedly in my ear. Arousal jolts me out of fatigue, I tingle, and the tempo of my heart quickens, and I am left chasing breath.

  “Later, I'm going to give you all you can handle.”

  “I believe it.”

  I'd heard threats made softer.

  Jon returns to the car and climbs into the driver's seat and says jest fully,

  “What have you two love birds been up to?”

  I laugh with faint embarrassment and see the ghost of my youth smooching in the front room with Beth, her parents in the next room with only frosted glass doors in between.

  Jon slaps the wheel and exhorts,

/>   “We're out of the storm guys and are homeward bound!”

  And putting the Ranger into gear we trundle off through the rain the way we came.

  ◆◆◆

  For several minutes it hammers down, and the wipers can barely cope with the deluge. Jon though knows the route and the vehicle, and despite the atrocious conditions the Ranger advances along the crude, obscured road to Pingeyri. Here hunger and thirst join exhaustion. Emptiness gnaws and I feel as dry as a strip of jerky.

  “Jon I could eat a horse and have a powerful thirst; can we stop quickly at the gas station so I can get something?”

  “Sure, I'd say we could stop at the Simbahollin Cafe for coffee and waffles, but the windows are small, and you can't see the cars outside.”

  ◆◆◆

  We enter Pingeyri and take a left soon after to the harbour.

  “If you are ever here again that's Simbahollin Cafe,” and he points out of the front passenger window.

  I look through a misty, rain spattered window at a quaint, corrugated pea green house with a grey roof. Outside are wooden chairs and benches and a green coach with tourists alighting from it – and it creates cause to think that three days ago I was one of those innocent souls, well at least innocent of this.

  Behind in juxtaposition is the utilitarian gas station with the red framed windows. It is a plain rectangular design composed of short white panels at the bottom, large windows in the middle and white facia along the flat roof line. Jon parks on the forecourt in front of the windows and I exit into the weakening rain, feeling like I am brittle and could break. The others too move with the speed of sloths, all of us nearly spent.

  Jon locks the car and checks all the handles and we make our way to the entrance. Trade is slow and we have no bother slipping into a window booth. Jon sits one side and Toni and I the other. We order hot dogs and coffee and in the wait our beady eyes guard the car. Jon calls the waitress back over and speaks to her in Icelandic; then out of politeness discloses what he said,

  “Checking what they're cooking the hot dogs in; I've got a severe nut allergy and it has nearly killed me a couple of times.”

  “Yeah I remember Dad telling me about it after reading one of your letters. Told me that you had been rushed to hospital because your airway had almost closed,” adds Toni.

  “I've got EpiPens now, keep them in my medicine cabinet and I usually carry one with me.” He laughs, “Not today though I was made to leave the house in a bit of a hurry.”

  Jon excuses himself, and before he has gone through the toilet doors, Toni flitting her pale blues between the car and me says softly,

  “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Handing the gold over,” she says inviting conspiracy.

  “Well there is a reward, it is a substantial amount of money and it is clean money,” I reply.

  “I've been mulling it over and I don't think we're going to get top price. This agency or whoever will put a conservative value on the gold. They already own it in law, it's government money, they will pay bottom dollar for sure. We'll be lucky to walk away with fifty thou apiece,” she remarks sourly.

  “Still a lot of money, Toni.”

  “You think so; is that the sum of your ambition Will Cutter, fifty thousand dollars?” and the kinked lips sneer in disappointment.

  It was the verbal equivalent of a liver punch and it robbed me of a reply. I take a moment,

  “But ... wouldn't it be enough to clear your debts?”

  “I want more for us than that Will. I don’t just want to get my head above the water I want to get out of the water altogether.”

  “But what about Jon Toni? he's dead set on being a national hero. You got him completely wrong. He yearns for validation, to put right those people who wrote him off as a crank all these years. He is not going to take the gold and run.”

  She shakes her head, her mouth open in annoyance at me for not being tuned to her wavelength.

  “He's an old man, he doesn't need money, he's after a swan song before the lights go out. It's our gold too and we have our lives ahead of us. You could quit the police, I could leave North Tonawanda, Marcus and Adam, and we could start a new life somewhere together.”

  Her hand grips my thigh and her ice blue eyes are searching, penetrating, demanding. I have a flush of unease and the arrow of my moral compass wavers much like it did outside the Leifur Eiriksson. The arrow moves and I am deviating off course. I allow myself to drift and I imagine a bespoke wooden house on a hill, or a beautiful beach house somewhere on Cape Cod. Then I envisage what I would have to do, what I would become, and I want no part of it.

  “No Toni, we stick with the plan and we get what we get. I'm not going to steal or cheat the old man out of his share, or his day in the sun. I've been straight my whole life and I'm not breaking bad now.”

  “A fan?”

  “From the outset, no jumping on the hype train here.”

  “And I bet you rooted for Walter throughout didn't you?”

  “Yeah ... I did, but it's just a TV show.”

  “You like the bad guys, you just haven't got the balls to be one.”

  I could feel myself coming to the boil.

  “Like Marcus, yeah? You listen to me I've risked my life to save your ungrateful ass. Not once, not twice, three fucking times. Don't you dare talk about balls to me; you know Toni your exposing a side of yourself that I don't care for, in fact I've detested in others. I think those cold, blue eyes only see dollars.”

  She takes it with little affect, her hide thick and inured to scathing words and ugly rows. Marcus could pierce it, but it appeared I carried too little weight with her to matter. She nods in that insolent way that marks a grievance, shifts over on the seat and looks away.

  I had raised my voice more than I would have liked and attracted a few curious looks. I am glad to see Jon amble back to the booth. Before sitting down, he says chirpily,

  “Still there then.”

  “Yeah for now,” I sarcastically joke.

  “Those thieves Will, do you think will come back?” and the chirpiness turns to concern.

  “No, I don't think so, they're too busted up.”

  The hot dogs and coffee arrive and are wanted for more than their refreshment. I eat and drink with gusto, savouring the wholesome tastes and aromas. I welcome the relative silence and hope that a line has been drawn under Gorm's bloody gold.

  ◆◆◆

  I am finishing my second coffee when Toni asks grudgingly,

  “Will I want to phone my father and see how he's doing. Can I use your phone?”

  I pull out the phone, swipe across the dots and hand it to her. She gives the briefest of smiles - one no doubt drawn from her passive aggressive armoury and she tramps outside. I watch her with phone to ear pace the forecourt in sentry lines.

  “You're sweet on her,” says Jon in his kind storyteller's voice.

  “More like stupid; when are you going to call it in?”

  Jon looks at the hands of his wrist watch,

  “Well it's close to three thirty and the department shuts at five. I'd like to get back, clean up and prepare my notes; get a good night's sleep and report the find when the office opens at nine tomorrow.”

  Toni with her face glistening wet comes back and places my phone on the table. She brushes a veiny hand through dripping hair, slicking it back to look like Carrie Anne Moss out of the Matrix, and I notice the coal black polish on her fingernails has chipped away.

  “How is Jim?” asks Jon.

  “Not so good,” Toni replies tersely.

  We pay up and walk out into the drizzle. Toni hangs back and I hear her say,

  “I'll be a minute I'm getting some gum.”

  I stand at the car and watch the mist roll and coil on the mountains across the fjord. Inside my head is a jumble of thoughts swirling like leaves caught up in an autumn gust. There is here, there is home and what is left of me. I needed to hold ont
o something. And that while I could still see it is doing the right thing. Right has become a little blurred, but wrong is still clear enough. I decide to send Gudjohnsen a text informing him that I had found Toni and that she is fit and well. I keep the text brief and skimp on the detail. The police wouldn't be satisfied until they sighted her, but it would give them something. I finish by saying that we would report to Isafjordur Police Station tomorrow.

  Jon gets in and I join him in the front. I plug my phone’s USB cable into the charging port, to put life into a device that has been indispensable. A couple of minutes later Toni while unwrapping a stick of gum saunters over and slides in the back. She leans to the gap between the seats and puts her arm through, waggles the packet of gum in her hand and says,

  “Any takers?”

  Jon and I take a piece of gum and we roll out of the forecourt and join the road to Isafjordur.

  Toni curls up on the back seat and goes out like a light. The heaters cook the cabin, and nicely full I too fall in and out of a nodding, disassociating sleep. I push my eyes open when hearing Jon exclaim,

  “Wakey, wakey we're back in Isafjordur.”

  I stretch and rub them to back to life, and we are cruising along the inlet road towards the hook and Jon's house.

  Jon slots the Ranger in the space in front of the house where it had been before. I get out, open the boot and retrieve the spade for what I desire to be the final time. I climb the steps to a building that has been a battleground. I inspect the windows and they are vacant. I hop over the drainage cover and go wide at the corners. The garden trees are still and damp in the dying light, and as night draws in the cold sharpens its knives. Toni is behind me with the axe held in concealment under the breast of an open coat.