7

CHARLOTTE LAID THE pages to one side and looked across at Isabel Vassoir, who nodded faintly, as if to confirm what she had not yet said. ‘This is why Sam’s been kidnapped, isn’t it? For the gold only your father knew how to locate.’

‘I greatly fear it is, Charlotte.’

‘Which means this man … Delgado … must be responsible.’

‘It would appear so, yes.’

‘He wants the map.’

‘Yes. As my father said, it is the final proof that what he wrote was true.’

‘You have it?’

‘If only it were so simple,’ Madame Vassoir murmured, shaking her head.

‘Surely you won’t hold it back when it can secure my niece’s freedom?’

‘It is not mine to hold back.’

‘What do you mean?’

She unfolded some sheets of paper which she had been clasping in her hand as Charlotte read. ‘This is the letter from Beatrix which accompanied my father’s statement,’ she said. ‘It will explain my difficulty better than I can myself.’ Charlotte took the letter from her and recognized Beatrix’s handwriting at once. ‘It’s undated, as you can see,’ continued Madame Vassoir. ‘But, according to the envelope, it was posted in Gloucester on the twenty-third of June.’

Jackdaw Cottage,

Watchbell Street,

Rye,

East Sussex,

England

My dearest Isabel,

I have arranged for this letter to be sent to you in the event of my death, which I believe may well be imminent.

You have been good enough to respect my wish that our friendship should not become known to my family and I would ask you on your honour not to contact them even when I am dead. A situation has arisen which compels me to do something I should perhaps have done a long time ago, namely to surrender to you a document entrusted by your father to my brother in Spain in 1938. When you have read it, you may appreciate why I have withheld it from you all these years. If not, I beg your forgiveness. I have done what I thought was best.

My brother sent the document to me with the last letter he wrote prior to his death in Tarragona in March 1938. The Civil War was still in progress when I received it and I had no way of knowing whether your father was alive or dead. That is why I first wrote to your mother in Barcelona. Given the turbulent condition of Spain at the time, I deemed it prudent to say nothing to her of the document or what it contained. By offering to help her in any way I could, I hoped to honour whatever promises my brother may have made to your father, promises which his untimely death prevented him from carrying out himself.

By the time your mother’s letter reached me from the refugee camp in France nearly a year later, I had made Frank Griffith’s acquaintance and learned how your father had given himself up to save Frank during the retreat from Teruel. The bravery of his conduct seems still greater when one knows what he had to fear from Colonel Delgado. You are entitled to feel very proud of him.

I did not tell Frank about the document, then or later. Nor did I tell your mother. Why? Because, it seemed to me, they both needed to put their experiences in Spain behind them. If they had discovered what your father’s fate almost certainly was, they would have wanted to avenge him, to track down Delgado, to expose the scandal of the stolen gold. They would not have succeeded, of course. Franco’s iron rule would have seen to that. But they might well have wasted their lives in the attempt. And I was not prepared to be responsible for them doing so.

I have learned, in the course of a long life, that good done stealthily is more durable than charity performed conspicuously. I am regarded by most of those who think they know me – including my family – as a hard-bitten and somewhat reclusive individual. The reality is quite otherwise. I have a small circle of close friends – of whom you are one – whose lives I believe I can justifiably claim to have enriched over the years. One of the things I have helped all of them to do is to throw off the shackles of the past, to enjoy the present by contemplating only the future. In the process, I have collected their discarded histories and served, as it were, as their dispassionate caretaker. But even caretakers must step aside in the end. Now it is time for my collection to be dismantled and for some of its contents to be returned to their rightful owners.

Perhaps I should have told your mother the truth. Not in 1939, of course. I mean later, when she would have been able to view it in a calm and considered light. But equivocation is a vice to which I am no more immune than the next person. The longer I delayed, the harder, I knew, it would be to explain why I had delayed at all. And she seemed so happy, so proud of the career you and Henri were making for yourselves. There was Frank to think of as well. Even now, I am not sure how he will react to such revelations. Is Colonel Delgado dead? I do not know. But I greatly fear Frank might deem it his duty to find out.

Delay, moreover, is a pernicious habit. It tightens its hold as one grows older. No doubt I would have continued to succumb to it, but for certain unforeseen consequences of my own past which are now making themselves felt and which mean this document can no longer be safely left in my possession. The time has come to pass it into your hands.

I have satisfied my curiosity by checking the details of your father’s account as best I can. They are entirely consistent with such records as survive. The usual estimate of the quantity of gold shipped to Russia in October 1936 is 1.6 billion pesetas, mostly in coin – Louis d’or, sovereigns, dollars and gold pesetas. Bilotra’s exaggeration of the total is perhaps not surprising, but the correct figure remains a staggering one. The total number of boxes involved was approximately 8,000, although there were discrepancies between the Spanish and Russian counts. Stalin never gave any of it back, of course, so such discrepancies, if Franco ever studied them, must have seemed attributable to Russian duplicity. You and I know there may be another reason.

This is where I must utter a word of warning and explain a precaution I feel obliged to take. The stolen gold has never been missed. It is therefore akin to used banknotes in that it represents untraceable wealth. And wealth, in this case, on a colossal scale. So far as I am able to compute, 150 boxes represent between seven and eight tons of gold. At today’s prices, this quantity of gold coin would be worth something like forty million pounds. Can we believe such a cache still lies hidden in the mountains north-west of Cartagena? It seems we must. But do we need to? I am not so sure.

Your father said Bilotra’s map was the final proof of his words. He was right. It is the only key that can open a door I have held shut for nearly fifty years. I hesitate to let it go. It is right you should read your father’s story in his own words. But I am reluctant to accompany it with what may be a danger as well as a curse. Is Delgado still alive? Or Cardozo? If either of them is, they might kill to lay their hands on this old and crinkled sheet of paper. It is a risk I cannot afford to take. It is a burden I will not let you bear. I cannot keep it, but I cannot give it up. Therefore I will destroy the map. Have your father’s fine and splendid words to cherish for ever, Isabel. Leave me to seal his secret. I remain your ever loving friend,

Beatrix.

‘She destroyed the map?’ asked Charlotte incredulously, as she handed back the letter.

Isabel Vassoir’s gaze met hers. ‘So we must assume. Beatrix said she intended to, did she not? And she always meant what she said.’

‘But … without it …’

‘You cannot give the kidnappers everything they want. Exactly.’

‘They’ll never believe it. They’ll think we’re trying to trick them.’

‘They may do, yes.’ Madame Vassoir looked down at Beatrix’s letter. ‘I am sorry, Charlotte. When I first read this, and recovered from the shock, I was glad Beatrix had destroyed the map. It removed temptation from my path – the temptation to expose an old scandal, I mean, not to chase after buried treasure. It meant I did not have to decide what to do. It told me as much as I wanted to know – and no more. It was both fitting and final.’ She sighed. ‘But now …’

‘The map was the key to Sam’s freedom as well as your father’s past,’ murmured Charlotte. ‘And Beatrix threw it away.’