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I sit here in the little summer house overlooking the blue Mediterranean, gazing towards far-off places: the Himalayas, the Yucatan Peninsula and all the others I will never see.
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It was four weeks before we made another landing, and then only for fuel and provisions. No questions were asked at our last port, no searches made. There are such places.
Our next anchorage – the final one. I’ll not disclose it here, for a number of the golden eagles passed hands. The hoses were brought ashore late in the evening, and the coins packed way in a vault. We received a receipt, one we could trust. They earned their fee. Discretion.
We scuttled the Belle, smashing jagged holes into those big water-tight flotation tanks, ripping out as much of the foam as we could. She settled slowly and sank gracefully to the bottom. She’s resting now, in a thousand metres; resting as Steve is.
It took five years to trickle the coins on to the market. There was speculation as to where they had come from; why the sudden increase, why just those dates. But nothing came back to us. They earned their fee, the bankers. Discretion.
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We’re wealthy now. But our lives are not rich.
The twins are the exact image of their mother. Sonia still radiates beauty. She’s sitting here with me. That’s all we do now: sit and let the pleasure come to us, the paintings, the antiques. The struggle has passed, the challenge no more. Sonia still jumps at the slightest strange sound. She has been that way since the line on the spear-gun snapped. We have never spoken of it.
The twins are three: Simon and Paula. He’s more adventurous than she is. I hope he has the strength to break free of the wealth and power. I pray that he grabs life with both hands and lives it to the full; that he searches for Lasseter’s Reef, and finds those lost cities in the Yucatan.
Paula has brought a small turtle she caught in a rock-pool on the beach. Its weeping eyes stare up at me. The vision clouds; the eyes swell, swell to two oval face masks, the masks of two men hidden forever in a rotting tomb of steel.
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