At that moment Mo appeared.
“Hi Pedro, what are you doing here?” he greeted the little man.
“Mo! Dickie said you were here and like you my friend I come to chase bad guys and make money. Eh?” Pedro rubbed his fingers together, the smile even wider.
Alex surveyed his troops.
“I don’t know what Dick has told you but I’ll brief you all with the truth shortly” he said and led the way up to the accommodation. Let’s hope they’re still smiling when they know what the odds are, he thought to himself.
10
Franco Ebola sat in a comfortable chair facing the lawyer. The meeting was not going to the lawyer’s liking. In the first instance he definitely did not want this known underworld character to be seen in his office; neither did he like the crude threatening tone of the conversation. Ebola was insisting on “up front” payment for his services. The fact that the leader of the terrorist cell had also paid him did not disturb Ebola’s conscience one little bit. Though he had wondered vaguely just where these religious fanatics, who were supposed to be opposed to all material things, actually found so much cash but he didn’t ponder too long — lining his own pockets was his sole ambition.
The lawyer was especially nervous because, unusually, his controller was not answering the calls leaving him no choice but to go through the standard procedure, which in short meant leaving a message and waiting. Ebola, however, refused to leave the office empty handed; the situation had become impossible. From experience the lawyer knew how generously the Syndicate rewarded success but he had also witnessed how they fatally punished failure. He decided to be prudent and act on his own, after all the controller had carefully instructed him and he had passed the information to both parties as instructed. Just why the Syndicate wanted the information regarding the gold divers imparted to both the Japanese and Ebola’s fanatics he chose not to question. He knew there had to be a profitable reason. Most importantly there could be no hint of failure on his part. So having finally convinced himself that he was doing the right thing, he called his bank manager.
“I’m going to need two hundred and fifty thousand American dollars in cash this afternoon. Yes cash, this afternoon,” he repeated. “Is that a problem for you?” he sighed impatiently. “Good then I’ll collect it personally, three-thirty.” He replaced the phone.
“You better not let me down over this one Franco. My client will not be very nice to you if you do. Is that clear?”
Franco Ebola stood up, an indolent expression on his beaky features.
“I won’t be very nice to you either if you don’t turn up with the money.” He turned and slouched out of the office.
The lawyer collected the cash from the bank at three-thirty; he was even more anxious. Unusually, his controller had still not called back. Nevertheless he made his way to the harbour where the three powerboats were moored. Franco Ebola was sitting in the stern of the nearest boat.
“Ah there you are — good timing. I was just about to call my master in the south!” He was bluffing of course. The last thing he wanted that master to know was that he was dealing from both sides of the pack.
“Stay there — I’m coming up.”
He jumped up to the quay and took the lawyer by the elbow.
“Not in front of the men — we don’t want those religious fools to get the wrong idea do we?”
They walked a few metres and out of sight of the boats.
“So you have the cash?” He pointed to the bag.
The lawyer passed over the zipped holdall.
“There count it!”
Ebola took the bag and weighed it in his hand.
“Feels right, do I need to count it?” he challenged.
“It’s up to you. Anyway there is a slight variation in your orders. Whatever the Mullah may have told you; you are not to act independently. There is a Japanese diving operation out there as well; you are to act under their command. Is that clear?”
Taken off guard by this change of plan, Ebola snapped testily, “Who gave you that order?”
“The same man who authorised that cash. Is that enough for you?”
“Whatever,” he acknowledged casually, but his instinct made him edgy; Franco Ebola was an opportunist felon; Manila was the patch where with the aid of a few heavyweight musclemen, he’d made a good living selling protection to anyone who could be bullied into paying for it.
Hired by the lawyer on behalf of the Syndicate to guard the arms shipment, he’d narrowly saved his own neck by the fact that one of his men had managed to get himself killed trying to protect the cargo.
The Mullah, however, expected him to personally lead the assault to punish the infidels. His reward was to be a small share of the gold. Naturally Ebola reasoned that life would be so much sweeter with all of it in his own pocket, which would also allow him to vanish to some distant part of the world where even the Syndicate would never find him.
Now he was faced with this new complication: the mysterious Japanese, from whom he must take his orders. He was not comfortable with the situation but at least he was holding a quarter of a million dollars in his hand — a powerful incentive to see what happens next, he convinced himself.
“How do I contact them?” he asked casually.
“They will be in touch with you.” The lawyer turned to walk away.
Ebola weighed the holdall again.
“In that case,” he smiled, giving a mock bow to the departing figure, “I await their command.”
As the gold ingots were extracted from the wreck they were loaded into a metal basket and hauled to the surface to be lowered into the cargo hold of La Vielle. The ingots varied in size, weighing from about two and a half to four kilos. The cases stacked under the ammunition lockers yielded almost one and a half tons of gold. Now they were trying to open the next bulkhead door, leading, they calculated, to the torpedo room. This heavy steel door however proved to be much more difficult than the first. The oxyacetylene cutter was making little progress so they resorted to their hydraulically operated diamond tipped grinder. This proved to be much more effective, in spite of the body shaking vibration it caused. Aware of the risk, they nevertheless turned their backs to the ammunition stacked on the shelves.
“If it goes up at least we won’t know!” Hal philosophised.
It took over an hour to cut through the massive clamps and hinges.
“At last you bastard! Now pass me that fucking jack,” Rod the Australian diver shouted triumphantly into his microphone. The hydraulic lever was positioned, Number Two diver pumped vigorously; nothing seemed to be happening. He pumped with renewed effort and then suddenly the door flew into the torpedo room in a dense cloud of silt and debris.
“Wowee!” Rod shouted. “Get that suction pump in here — let’s see what we’ve got.”
It took a full ten minutes before the water was clear enough to distinguish the contents. The first thing to appear were two more of the monster torpedoes, sitting forlornly on their loading racks coated in brownish silt, looking more like ancient fallen trees. The racks underneath, where other torpedoes should have been held, were stacked with crates, exactly the same as those found in the ammunition store.
“Fuck me,” Rod hissed. “There’s twice as much of the stuff in here!”
“Steady now boys.” It was Big J following their progress from the video monitor. “You’ve also got a live torpedo for company, so let’s just check it out before we get too excited, eh?”
The torpedo was still sitting in its rack with the crates of gold stacked underneath it. Several had scattered their contents around what had once been the floor. Rod reached out and touched the torpedo gently.