It took half an hour to get the canisters out of the conning tower and up into the dinghy. McQuade had to go down alone to do it because there was only one spare airtank – and anyway there was no way Tucker was going to go near the water ever, ever again.
McQuade sprawled in the bottom of the dinghy, trembly, manic, exhausted, shuddery with the horror of what had happened down there. There was no compassion, only reckless frustration that he hadn’t brought the swine out alive. The dinghy bumped against the Bonanza. Elsie and Nathan were at the rail, wide-eyed. ‘Yabbadabbadoo!’ Nathan shouted when he saw the canisters. Evidently Julie Goldstein had recovered, for he appeared excitedly on the bridgewing in a silk dressing gown. Potgieter threw the painter up to Nathan. ‘Where’s Muller?’ Elsie called.
‘We’ll need a net to lift this lot!’
Elsie disappeared. He swung the derrick outboard and the hook came rattling down with a cargo-net dangling. Potgieter and Tucker loaded the canisters into it. ‘Take it away!’ The winch rattled again and the canisters lifted off the dinghy. They rose up to the rail, and Nathan grabbed the net eagerly and guided them down onto the deck, beaming. Julie Wonderful was also beaming, big-eyed. McQuade clambered up the ladder onto the deck.
‘Where’s Muller?’ Elsie demanded again.
‘Well, he had a little trouble.’ He walked to the fo’c’sle cabin, unlocked the door and jerked his head at Matt.
Matt emerged. ‘And Muller?’ he demanded.
‘Dead,’ McQuade said. ‘Sorry about that.’ He didn’t let the other Mossad men out, nor Inspector Dupreez. He relocked the cabin and started towards the bridge.
Matt stared after him. ‘Dead …?’ he whispered, aghast. Then he shouted: ‘Fucking amateurs!’ He strode after him.
McQuade called down to Tucker, ‘Get the dinghy aboard, then it’s up anchor.’
Matt grabbed his arm. ‘I told you you’d give him a heart-attack!’
McQuade stopped.
‘He didn’t die of a heart-attack. He died of asphyxiation. And I didn’t do it to him – he did it to himself, by trying to kill me, and Tucker. And I nearly killed myself trying to save the bastard!’ He pulled his arm free and started walking again.
Matt shouted furiously, ‘He should have died on the gallows!’
McQuade stopped again. ‘I’m sorry you’re not going to be a hero, Matt. And I’m sorry for the whole Jewish people. But if it’s any consolation he died a much slower and more horrible death than he would have on the gallows.’ He added: ‘Even worse than the gas-chambers.’
He turned and walked on. Feeling numb, feeling elated, feeling nauseous. Shaky. Potgieter and Nathan were lugging the first of the canisters up to the bridge, followed by beaming Julie. ‘Yabbadabbadoo!’ Nathan shouted. Elsie was helping Tucker winch the dinghy on board.
McQuade climbed up onto the bridge. And, oh, it was a lovely wheelhouse, shiny and varnished and clean, it was a lovely day, and he was alive, alive … And oh God he felt sick in his guts about Sarah. That bitch! Where was she, to witness his triumph? Today was supposed to be his day, the day he had worked so hard for, but the bitch had turned out to be a fraud, working for his undoing. Well, she had failed! Mossad had failed – he’d beaten the whole lot of them. And, goddammit, he had failed – failed to deliver Heinrich Muller up to justice, and, oh God, he felt sick in his guts about that too! Suddenly it wasn’t such a triumphant day any more. He hated the mendacious bitch for breaking his heart, he hated himself for killing Heinrich Muller and he hardly cared what was in those canisters any more. He went to the cabinet and snatched out the brandy bottle and sloshed some into a tumbler. Tucker hollered: ‘Dinghy aboard!’
For a moment McQuade smelt the deathly black stink of that submarine again and he gagged, then he took a gulp of brandy and it burned down into his gut, scouring the taste of death out of his mouth. He shuddered, then shouted, ‘Weigh anchor!’ He shoved the throttle to Dead Slow and hit the windlass button. The rattle of the chain rose up as the Bonanza churned forward, helping the windlass. There was a slight lurch as the anchor broke out of the sand. Then Potgieter shouted from the bows:
‘Anchor aweighed!’ There was a clank.
McQuade shoved the throttle to Slow Ahead. He lifted the glass and took the rest of the brandy in one swallow. ‘All hands on the bridge! We’re splicing the main brace!’
Then he dropped his head and stifled a sob. Because Sarah wasn’t there. Because Heinrich Muller wasn’t there.
The Bonanza ploughed steadily, her engines thudding doem … doem … doem … Matt Mathews sat alone in the bows, staring furiously at the sea. The entire crew were on the bridge, glasses in hand, brandy, whisky and beer on the chart table, smoke and excitement in the air. Even Tucker and the ever-placid Potgieter were looking excited. The steel canisters stood in a row, gleaming; Potgieter and Tucker were cleaning the grease off the last two. The sealing had been carefully cleared away from the big screw-top lids. It was going to take a strap-lever, strong language and some time to unscrew them. That was okay with McQuade. Everything was okay with McQuade right now, and nothing was okay, because the love of his life was a fraudulent bitch, and he felt no impatience to get those canisters open, he almost did not care any more what was inside, he didn’t care about anything in the whole wide world except that they had done it, done it, and they were alive and the world was beautiful and it was dust and ashes because he had failed – he had killed the most important bastard in the world and the most beautiful girl in the world was a bitch. Then Elsie was calling for silence, his round blue-beard face jolly and his big brown eyes moist. He held up his glass.
‘Gentlemen, before we open up the goodies I have a toast to propose.’ He beamed around at them all. ‘And it is to our intrepid skipper and managing director, without whose high-class detective work and fearlessness all this would not have come to pass, like.’ He beamed at McQuade with moist eyes. ‘Jim darling – here’s to you!’
‘Yeah!’ Tucker said enthusiastically, probably for the first time in his life.
‘Here’s to Jim!’ Nathan shouted.
‘Got, yes, man, hey!’ Potgieter mumbled happily.
McQuade grinned at them and his eyes burned because he loved every one of them. All he could think of to say was, ‘Okay, let’s open these cans …’
Potgieter got down onto his belly like a wrestler and gripped the first canister. Tucker wound the strap-lever around the lid. He adjusted the tension. Everybody crowded round.
McQuade took his glass and walked out onto the bridgewing. He leant on the rail and took a deep suck of brandy. And he wanted to bellow OH SHIT! Elsie came waddling out after him. He leant on the rail beside him.
‘Cheer up. It may still come right with her.’
‘I don’t want it to come right! She’s a liar. A cheat!’
Elsie said, ‘She was only doing her duty.’
‘And her duty was to be a whore!’
Elsie shook his fat head at the horizon. ‘Not really. She was doing it for her country, like.’
McQuade breathed deep. ‘For her country she pulls every sexy trick in the book? For her country she cries I love you and tells you she wants to marry you?’
Elsie was looking at him with spaniel eyes. ‘Maybe she meant it, Jimmy.’
McQuade seethed. ‘Like hell she meant it! She’s a professional agent with big tits and long legs and a luscious arse who was given the assignment of screwing me! And you say maybe I can make it right with her?’ He pointed furiously into the wheelhouse. ‘Of course I can make it right with her, Elsie! There’s millions of dollars in there! All a fucking millionaire has to do is tell a whore he’s a millionaire and he’ll have her doing backward somersaults from the chandelier.’ He snorted furiously, but he wanted to sob.
Just then Tucker shouted: ‘She’s moved!’
Elsie looked into the wheelhouse. Potgieter was spread-eagled, clutching the canister, Tucker was crouched over the lid, strap-lever in hand, flushed effort on his face. Julie Wonderful and Nathan were agog. The lid had shifted a fraction of an inch under his heaving. ‘Go for it!’ Julie urged. Elsie put his hairy hand on McQuade’s shoulder.
‘Come on. Let’s look. It’ll seem different in the morning when you’re a millionaire.’
McQuade heard Sarah say, I don’t give a shit about the treasure. ‘You go’n look and tell me what it’s worth.’
‘Nothing like what it’s worth being alive.’
Elsie turned and waddled into the wheelhouse. McQuade gave a big sigh and sucked on his brandy. Then Tucker shouted, ‘She’s open!’
He unwound the lid and there was a sucking noise as air squeezed past the threads into the sealed container. McQuade tilted back his glass and drained it. Then he whispered, ‘Go to Hell, Sarah Buchholz’ and hurled the glass with all his might out into the Atlantic.
Then Nathan shouted, ‘Whoopee!’
The lid was off, and Tucker was pulling out an oil-cloth sack, stitched at the top. Tucker squeezed it with awe and whispered, ‘Money!’ McQuade grabbed it and squeezed. It was obviously packed with tight wads of notes. ‘Open it!’
Tucker snatched up a knife and slit open the top. They all crowded round. Yes, it was packed with coloured banknotes, in tight bundles. Tucker up-ended the sack, and out they came. They tumbled onto the wheelhouse deck in a heap.
They stared. ‘Oh no!’ Julie said.
McQuade snatched up a wad. They all did.
‘Oh no!’ Julie cried again.
McQuade stared. The notes were crisp, in mint condition, and they were all the same. They all bore the mark £20, with the image of Jan van Riebeck, the founder of the Cape colony and the legend read, The Reserve Bank of the Union of South Africa promises to pay bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds. It was dated 1944.
McQuade stared numbly at the topmost note. He had not seen one of these for over twenty years. When South Africa was still part of the British Commonwealth. Before South Africa changed its currency from pounds to rands. ‘Oh no!’ Julie cried again. ‘These are no longer legal tender!’
Tucker and Nathan were looking aghast. Potgieter was scowling numbly at a wad in his hand. Tucker whispered, ‘Out of date …?’
‘About twenty-five years out of date!’ Julie cried. He sat in a heap and held his head.
‘But …’ Tucker appealed, ‘can’t we somehow take them to a bank …?’
‘No,’ McQuade said, ‘they’re not valid any more, Hugo! They’re not worth the paper they’re printed on! And’ – suddenly it seemed funny – ‘and they’re doubtless counterfeit …’
‘Counterfeit?’ Tucker echoed.
And suddenly it all seemed terribly funny. ‘Operation Birkenbaum! Run by the Gestapo to counterfeit money to ruin the Allied war effort!’
‘But …’ Tucker protested weakly. He was flipping through a wad. ‘But the serial numbers are all different—’
‘So, the Gestapo did things well!’
‘Oh Christ …’ Julie wailed. He had both hands clasped to his fat face, peering wetly through his fingers at the pile. Nathan was looking like an aghast Groucho Marx.
McQuade was grinning tearfully. Oh God, this was funny. After all they’d been through. ‘Open the rest – they’ll all be full of old counterfeit South African currency. Because Heinrich Muller was coming to South Africa to resurrect the Third Reich by bank-rolling the Afrikaners against the English!’ He dropped his head and laughed.
‘What’s funny?!’ Julie wept. Nathan was staring like a tearful Groucho Marx. Tucker lunged at the next canister with his strap-lever.
‘Hold it, Pottie!’ he whimpered.
McQuade sloshed more brandy into his glass, and hung his head, then he turned and walked out onto the bridge. Elsie waddled out after him. ‘Oh Jimmy,’ he appealed, ‘so what? You’re all alive and well and healthy.’
McQuade hung his head and sob-laughed, ‘The bitch made herself a whore in vain …’
‘She was only doing her duty, James,’ Elsie said. ‘Aren’t we all whores in some way or another?’
‘How am I a whore?’
Elsie said earnestly, ‘You used your body, your strength, your guts to try to make a fast buck—’
‘Open!’ Potgieter called anxiously.
‘Oh no! …’ Tucker wailed.
One after the other the lids came off. One after another the wads came tumbling out. The wheelhouse deck was piled in bundles of crisp, useless money. Julie Wonderful had stopped weeping. Now he just sat, his chin cupped in both hands, his face suffused, staring out to sea. The tears were running down Nathan’s face. ‘My twenty grand …’ he kept repeating. Tucker had stopped whimpering: he was openly sobbing as he slugged and wrenched his way through those canister lids with the resolution of a madman with an axe. Only Pottie Potgieter seemed scowlingly untearful, resolutely clutching each canister as Tucker applied the strap-lever. The only surprise was in the fifth canister: out came tumbling bundles of white English five-pound notes, also dated 1944, printed on one side only. McQuade held up a wad. ‘Good stuff in 1945 – Muller got a set of false teeth from Doctor Wessels with a couple of these.’
Tucker took a trembly breath and approached the last canister furiously as if he could intimidate it into yielding gold.
Out on the bridgewing McQuade quaffed back the brandy, and felt a retch but he stifled it with a shudder. He hung his head over the rail, and with all his sick heart he just wanted to vomit it all up, all the brandy and the stinking blackness of that submarine and the terror of fighting Heinrich Muller for a gulp of air and the heartbreak of Sarah Buchholz and the heartbreak of those piles of useless banknotes, then suddenly he heard Julie shout:
‘Oh yes …!’
He whirled around, back into the wheelhouse. ‘Yes what?’
The sixth canister stood open. Everybody was gathered, open-mouthed, staring. There was Julie Wonderful, his big face alight with delight, and in his hands he held up a crescent-shaped piece of canvas.
McQuade stared. Canvas? A picture? ‘What?!’ he demanded again. And Julie turned to him with shining eyes.
‘Toulouse-Lautrec … “The Woman in White” …!’
McQuade stared at the canvas. Everybody was staring at it, open-mouthed. Nathan couldn’t believe his tear-filled eyes.
‘Paintings?’ McQuade whispered.
There was a silence. Then Julie snickered, ‘Paintings?!’ then he threw back his head and guffawed.
‘Paintings, the man says? Do you realize what we’ve got here? Do you realize what this is?’ He swept his shining eyes over them, then shook his fat trembly finger at the canvas in delight and cried: ‘Here we have Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Woman in White”! Never seen since it disappeared from the private collection of the Duke of Somebody! Perfectly removed from its frame by an absolute expert – of which Germany had many – and expertly preserved in this hitherto hermetically sealed container …!’
They all stared at the painting. Awed. Then McQuade whispered, ‘Toulouse-Lautrec? Jesus Christ …’ Nathan leapt in the air and bellowed: ‘Yabbadabbadoo!’ Tucker demanded, ‘Who’s Toulouse-Lautrec?’ Potgieter was open-mouthed. Elsie sat down in an astonished heap. ‘My Gawd …’ he whispered.
McQuade tore his eyes off the painting and peered into the canister. ‘Anything else?’
Julie reverently pulled out the next canvas. He stared at it, then gave a cry of girlish delight. ‘Gentlemen … who do we have here?’ He turned to them with moist-eyed excitement. ‘I’ll bet my last shekel that this is a Monet. Look at that style.’ He peered in the bottom right hand corner. ‘Yes – Monet! One of the leading Impressionists!’ He appealed to them joyfully: ‘Gentlemen, do you know what we’ve stumbled on? Part of Adolf Hitler’s personal art treasure, part of the stuff he looted from the art galleries of Europe for the massive museum he was going to build in Linz!’ He blinked at them with shining eyes. ‘Do you realize what this is worth? …’
Tucker was beaming. Potgieter was grappling with all this. Elsie was open-mouthed. McQuade peered into the canister. ‘Anything else? Like diamonds …?’
Julie cried, ‘Who needs diamonds when we’ve got all this! Do you realize what the contents of this canister are worth? Tens of millions!’
McQuade said faintly, ‘But they belong to other people. And to galleries. The owners can be traced …’
There was a short silence, as everybody grappled with this detail. Then Julie cried, ‘We’ll sell them to private collectors in the Middle East – absolutely no problem!’
‘But the owners can be traced,’ McQuade whispered. He waved a bemused hand. ‘All the art treasures the Nazis stole are registered, surely, and if the registered owners are dead it belongs to their heirs. Anyway no collector will buy a famous stolen painting because he can’t display it …’
‘You’re not listening!’ Julie cried. ‘We’ll sell these on the black market secretly! To Arab oil sheiks and South American millionaires who make their own laws! There are dealers for this kind of thing, and dozens of millionaires who would give their right testicle for a Monet or a Lautrec!’ He turned back to the canister joyfully. ‘Who else have we here …?’
Suddenly it all seemed even funnier to McQuade. ‘It’s you who’s not listening Julie, my boy, my life! I’m telling you that these things belong to other people! We can’t sell them, because that would be stealing!’
Astonished silence. Then Julie snorted, ‘It’s sunken treasure!’
McQuade wanted to laugh. ‘Pieces of eight and gold bars and precious stones are entirely different! The owners can’t be identified! But these …’ He pointed at the canister and shook his head in wonder. ‘These paintings belong to the galleries they came from! They belong to the world.’ He shook his head again and grinned at them. ‘We’ve got to give them back. Maybe we’ll get a reward of some kind but we’ve got to tell the world what we’ve found and give them back.’
Tucker and Potgieter were following the exchange open-mouthed. Nathan looked about to burst into tears again. Elsie had his eyes closed. Julie cried, ‘Bull-SHIT …’
McQuade slapped his head and turned away. ‘Oh God, this is funny!’ He pointed at the ocean floor. ‘After all we’ve been through, all the blood, sweat and tears – and we’ve got to give it back …!’
Julie cried, ‘You’re not giving my share back!’
McQuade turned to him, his eyes wet.
‘You don’t understand, Julius. You don’t have a share. This fishing company does not deal in stolen property. I own fifty-one per cent of this company and I’m telling you, Julie Wonderful, that this company is going to give these priceless paintings back! All you’re entitled to is a share in any reward we get, but I assure you it’s not going to add up to millions of dollars.’
They were all staring at him. Julie was bulging-eyed. Then he shook his fat face and shouted:
‘I’ll sue you …!’ He turned furiously and lumbered for the door. He shouted back: ‘Don’t think you can lay down the law to me!’ He turned and clattered fatly down the steps. ‘I’ll sue you …!’ he bellowed.
McQuade thought it was hilarious. ‘Sue me …?’ He hung his head and sob-laughed. ‘He’s going to sue me …? Tell the judge how he feels entitled to sell these things on the black market …? This is getting funnier …’
He turned and walked out onto the bridgewing, and, oh, he was suddenly ridiculously happy. The whole world was ridiculous and it was wonderful just to be alive, alive, breathing God’s beautiful air with the engines going gently doem doem doem, he was happy that it was all over, all over, he did not have to go down into that dreadful submarine again, it was gone, gone, out of his life and he did not care about not being rich after all, he was ridiculously rich in just being alive after that hellhole.
He turned back to the boys. They were all looking at him as if they had just been whipped. He stifled a laugh and smiled:
‘It’s all right gentlemen … We’ll make some money out of this, I promise you! Rewards. Insurance companies.’ He suppressed a laugh. ‘Fame … It won’t be a fortune, but at least it’ll pay off the hire purchase on Rene and get Rosie a new deep-freeze. Maybe even a down-payment for Pottie’s farm. And the Kid will be able to get his bottom ones done …’