Chapter 4

When David finally fell into his bunk it was past four o’clock. He had not been sleepy. He was jubilant but at the same time he was wondering why the Hell he wasn’t worried. The whole thing now seemed like a bolt of good fortune out of the blue. A hundred and twenty four thousand pounds would well and truly launch them, would keep them travelling at least three years in some comfort and that’s the time the circumnavigation would take. Travel brochures swam before his eyes, idyllic white beaches, towering volcanoes, Moorea, Bali—he heard the tinkle of temple bells. Naked girls waved to him from the shore.

And once he’d really got what he wanted, no reason not to let Mickey have her deepest wishes too. If she wanted a child so much, why not? Lots of people raised small children on sailboats. They could hole up somewhere where she could have it in a good hospital, like Australia or Florida. David imagined a son standing beside him coiling mooring ropes, on shore catching warps, shimmying up the mast.

The whole world loomed in front of him and beckoned. And he could buy a lot of things for Caliban, like a good wind generator was not cheap, and he had seen a refrigerator freezer which worked all day if you ran the engine just one hour. He saw himself standing on deck looking at the Red Sea and swilling a cold beer. Or he could pick up better navigational equipment, like that GPS system he had seen on ‘Our Good Thing’. Christ! you always knew where you were. The thing worked on the U.S. Navy’s positioning 18 satellites which whizzed around the globe, chose the visible four and within seconds out came a fix and a lat-long reading. They even had a hand-held one. No more keeping your balance on decks falling away from you on a wave and trying to find the sun or a star. (Mickey would be disappointed having taken all that trouble to learn about the now antiquated sextant). Oh well, when he explained about their new found freedom she would immediately recognize the possibilities.

Or would she? Wouldn’t it be like Mickey to immediately want to know who was transporting gold out of Italy—and why? And what was its ultimate destination? She would look at him with arms folded and and ask him whether he was any different, any different at all from drug pushers who stood on street corners outside schools. So the best thing to do would be not to tell her right away, preferably—not tell her at all. It did not occur to David to ask himself whether it was also Mickey’s dream to live aboard a boat for three years. (It had been surprising and distressing to both of them when when it turned out that she got horrendously sea-sick in any conditions other than dead calm). But of course, there were all sorts of new drugs for patches you put behind your ear which worked like a charm according to the literature.

For the second night in a row, sleep escaped him and he stared at the plastic cabin liner above his head which was stained and shabby and beginning to come down around the edges. There had been so much functional restoration on Caliban that he still hadn’t finished all the little cosmetic details. The sailboat was almost twenty three years old, old for a fibreglass yacht. So maybe he should be considering a new boat entirely. His take would be enough for a down payment and more, on any boat he should so desire. There was also his job, credit line absolutely secure.

Nestled in the back of his mind, David knew exactly what Lazzari was up to, and he also had a very good idea of how the gold bars came into his possession. Perhaps they were heading for the banks of Switzerland. On the other hand they could be on course to the New World, to Columbia or Peru. They had to be either the beginning or the end of a long chain of events which ultimately should not—would not concern him. No point in letting his mind wander in that direction. He was a conveyor, nothing more. Crime was for criminals and he wasn’t a criminal for God’s sake. Far better to think about Freedom, unobjectionable and applauded’ by all, and freedom to roam the world at leisure was preferable to all material things.

So it came to pass that he, David Hutchings, was thus able to liberate his conscience once and for all from all concepts of greed and venality. He had chosen the universally accepted idea of Freedom, Freedom alone. He could thus ignore the fact that he was about to commit the first totally felonious act of his life. When he finally fell asleep, his only worry was Mickey.

Lazzari arrived after lunch the next day, driving up in a big shiny Fiat, almost a limo, his face barely reaching over the steering wheel. He climbed aboard Caliban and David had to help him with the large step across from the dock and then over the lifelines. Mickey was arriving at the airport that afternoon at five o’clock.

"So take my car, kid. I don’t mind at all. You go to the airport and get your wife in the Fiat."

"Are you sure you don’t mind. I’m perfectly willing to take a taxi."

"Wouldn’t hear of it. I like sitting in the back of my ship and watching the telly. Have a bet on the races today. Be my guest."

They went down into the cabin and David took Lazzari to the bow anchor hatch where the majority of gold bricks were stored.

"Great! with all that chain lying on top of ‘em, you don’t see nothin.’"

"So where exactly do you want me to take all this?" David’s voice was a little faint. He felt a slight chill as he looked down into his anchor locker and saw underneath the black of the painted ingots. Maybe they weren’t gold but something else. No, they were gold alright. He had taken a knife that morning and scraped one of them and had seen a dull yellow underneath. Gold was heavy and these things were like lead bricks. For some reason, his earlier feeling of optomism had completely vanished.

"My captain says there’s a little cove off the north-eastern part of a deserted island called Tavolara, outside of Olbia, (that’s one of the ports of eastern Sardinia. You can’t miss the place cause it looks like a table."

David, patiently, didactically, then felt it necessary to point out to Lazzari, that islands and other cartological phenomena, do tend to appear on the relevant charts of the area, and thus he would be quite capable of finding Tavolara using the aforementioned paper map, without any help from Our Good Thing’s captain.

Lazzari became instantly furious. "Don’t be smartassed with me, kid. Maybe I’m not the good sailor you are but listen to orders and then you can have your say. This cove is called Cala del Faro and my man says nobody but fishermen ever goes in there unless there’s a storm and they need shelter. So you go right there directly, without deviating one iota, not one iota at all, get me. When you arrive there, if everything goes alright up til then you’ll get more instructions. What’s important to us is that nobody follys US out of this place."

"Like whom?"

"Like the police, the Navy or Customs that’s fucking whom—so the second thing I want you to do is keep a good watch for government boats and give us some early warning. Anybody around and we’re not leaving."

"Okay—one, I give you early warning of government interference and two—I am going to make a transfer from my boat to your boat at this place. That all?"

"Yeah, just do what you’re told and everything will be cosy and easy."

"Since we both have radios, we ought," said David thoughtfully, "have a way of communicating from ship to ship without anybody else catching on. My boat we’ll call ‘Wanderer’ and you’ll be ‘Stay at Home’. Keep your radio glued to Channel 39, one of the bands people don’t use so much and we can talk if we have to. If I say that I have decided not to paint my bottom this summer it means we’ve spotted something or somebody who could be—unwelcome. And if you want me to go somewhere else instead of Tavolara, you’ll be able to give me a number. Take this big detail chart and have it photocopied, and we’ll list some alternative ports and anchorages."

"I guess we’ll make do with your code. I can see you’ve got some talent for this kind of caper, Dave, so play your cards right and we just might use you again."

(‘Not bloody likely,’) David breathed to himself. He couldn’t wait until the whole thing was over and he and Mickey were on their way—where?—Suez and points East, the whole world lay before them!

David returned to Caliban and numbered ports and anchorages across some of the northern side of Sardinia, musing that there was probably more shelter there, nooks and crannies, than almost any other part of the Med. Lazzari then sent one of the sailors over to the Port to photocopy the chart with his drawing, the area they were heading for. When he returned, David went topside and took it back, carefully stowing it where Mickey would never chance on it. Well, no big deal if she did, nothing was actually spelled out.

 ‘If only, if only—Mickey, there’s the problem,’ and he couldn’t help thinking that she would undoubtedly become very very suspicious when she found out they were aiming at Tavolara, so he would try to keep her busy with her mind on other things, like making lots of sun sights with her little toy, the plastic sextant. Still, a great weight had suddenly moved onto his chest and no matter what he did it wouldn’t go away.

At some point he would have to tell her something, or maybe he could get her to go ashore while they made the transfer. She liked birds. He would look up some birds in her fancy new birdbook and say that he had read somewhere that they nested on Tavolara. Yes. he would send her out in the dinghy with the binoculars. He would invent some intensely noisy and complicated job which he had to do on the engine (which she hated!) and she would be glad to leave the boat and roam around on shore.

When it came to disposing of their gold ingots. He would put into one of the marinas at Cannes or Nice with Caliban, rent a car and drive to Switzerland. Border controls between France and Switzerland were almost non-existent. Unlike Italy where Italians were smart about their wayward citizens, the Swiss did not look askance at dollars, pounds, diamonds—or gold. In fact, they thrived on any negotiable asset! If they ever got that far, in the car he would tell Mickey some doctored version of their new found prosperity.

While shaving he nicked his face and had to put a piece of Kleenex on it, worse luck. Still, that was the very last shave of the summer, the end of a loathsome lawyerly chore along with pin striped suits and other tools of that sodding trade. He put on a clean pair of chinos. By four o’clock Lazzari’s car was in the parking lot. David climbed aboard ‘Our Good Thing’ (he still couldn’t remember where he had seen that name before) for one last meeting with his employer, no other word for it.

Lazzari,, who barely took his eyes off the television screen where sleek race horses were galloping down a track, without looking at him, switched off the set and handed him the keys to the big Fiat.

"So amico. You take your pretty wife and leave at dawn tomorrow for Tavolara. Don’t deviate. I would take it very amiss if you decided to go somewhere else, very amiss. We want to know exactly where you are at all times."

"Believe me, I just want to get this over with," said David. "I really do, then I’m on my way. But I would like to stop somewhere on the way back from the airport and do some victualing, especially since we have to leave early tomorrow. We need to stock up."

"What is victualing?" said Lazzari suspiciously.

"Fresh food, eggs, bread, that kind of thing."

"No problem," said Lazzari, lighting a cigar. "Just leave the car with keys in it. If you don’t want to tell your wife, say the marina manager lent it."

"Good idea!"

Mickey looked beautiful stepping through the customs and flew into his arms. She was wearing new khaki long shorts and a snug fitting turquoise singlet, small feet in interesting many thonged Greek sandals, no jewellery, no makeup, Just beautiful! He closed his eyes, kissed her and held her tight against him for a minute until she broke free.

"Hey, you’ve only been away from me a week. I’ve got tons of baggage, David, my books, my oil paints, a portable easel. I even bought us a new fangled filter which takes out that awful chlorine taste from marina water."

Docilely, she let him trundle her baggage cart out to the parking lot and wasn’t the least bit curious about the Fiat. She was happy, overjoyed to be starting her summer holiday and for a moment a little weight eased off his chest. On board she quickly stowed her baggage and was actually eager to leave the next day.

"It’s too hot anyway to see Rome right now. Promise me that when we get back you’ll spend the whole day with me. We’ll see the Vatican, the Colisseum, the Roman Forum, I have a big big list. And why are we going West to Sardinia, not that I mind?"

"Why not?" said David, smiling and lifting an eyebrow, and it was so uncharacteristic of him to be happy go lucky, that Mickey accepted it.

(Of course David did not mention that he had no intention of returning to Rome � ever. When they had made the delivery he would plot a course directly to Nice, hire the car, up to Geneva and convert bars to cash, return to Caliban where they would aim directly for Greece! At some point in the next few days he would mention all of its ancient glories and promise her a tour, a sight seeing extravaganza where she could see the major sites, and that should hold her! Greece? well a week was too long, maybe a few days would pacify her—then through the Suez Canal. Up and away!)

After a big dinner at the restaurant, they began to make love that night, fell onto his berth after stripping off all their clothes like a pair of kids. To his credit, David struggled hard to be tender, to be loving, to be considerate, but his heart wasn’t in it, and his body followed lamely behind—in fact he broke down, (something absolutely unheard of!) and afterwards Mickey gave him one of her funny looks, but said nothing else (she was a good sport).

It would not be exaggerating to say he was totally preoccupied, couldn’t concentrate on anything else but delivering the gold. Two days away, no more. But if it were only to be two days, they both could last two days and then he would make it up to her. By God he would then love her to pieces morning noon and night, all in good time.

The next morning they left port at dawn, motoring downstream, watching for the little ‘risacca’ the tiny break of waves across the sand bar at the exit of the Tiber river, avoiding it and finding the ten foot wide deep channel. No other boats were in sight—and then they were on their way to Sardinia, where he had made a straight pencilled line directly on the chart to the island of Tavolara.

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