‘Zachary Smith, 35, Negro, Member of the Sleeping Car Porters Brotherhood, address gob West 126th Street, New York City.’ (M looked up : ‘Harlem,’ he said.) ‘Subject was identified by Arthur Fein of Fein Jewels Inc., 870 Lenox Avenue, as having offered for sale on November 21st last four gold coins of the sixteenth and seventeenth century (details attached). Fein offered a hundred dollars which was accepted. Interrogated later, Smith said they had been sold to him in Seventh Heaven Bar-B-Q (a well-known Harlem bar) for twenty dollars each by a negro he had never seen before or since. Vendor had said they were worth fifty dollars each at Tiffany’s, but that he, the vendor, wanted ready cash and Tiffany’s was too far anyway. Smith bought one for twenty dollars and on finding that a neighbouring pawnbroker would offer him twenty-five dollars for it, returned to the bar and purchased the remaining three for sixty dollars. The next morning he took them to Fein’s. Subject has no criminal record.’
M returned the paper to the brown folder.
‘That’s typical,’ he said. ‘Several times they’ve caught up with the next link, the middle man who bought them a bit cheaper and they find that he bought a handful, in one case a hundred of them, from some man who presumably got them cheaper still. All these larger transactions have taken place in Harlem or Florida. Always the next man in the link was an unknown negro, in all cases a white-collar man, prosperous, educated, who said he guessed they were treasure-trove, Blackbeard’s treasure.
‘This Blackbeard story would stand up to most investigations,’ continued M, ‘because there is reason to believe that part of his hoard was dug up around Christmas Day, 1928, at a place called Plum Point. It’s a narrow neck of land in Beaufort County, North Carolina, where a stream called Bath Creek flows into the Pamlico River. Don’t think I’m an expert,’ he smiled, ‘you can read all about this in the dossier. So, in theory, it would be quite reasonable for those lucky treasure-hunters to have hidden the loot until everyone had forgotten the story and then thrown it fast on the market. Or else they could have sold it en bloc at the time, or later, and the purchaser has just decided to cash in. Anyway it’s a good enough cover except on two counts.’
M paused and relit his pipe.
‘Firstly, Blackbeard operated from about 1690 to 1710 and it’s improbable that none of his coin should have been minted later than 1650. Also, as I said before, it’s very unlikely that his treasure would contain Edward IV Rose Nobles, since there’s no record of an English treasure-ship being captured on its way to Jamaica. The Brethren of the Coast wouldn’t take them on. Too heavily escorted. There were much easier pickings if you were sailing in those days “on the plundering account” as they called it.
‘Secondly,’ and M looked at the ceiling and then back at Bond, ‘I know where the treasure is. At least I’m pretty sure I do. And it’s not in America. It’s in Jamaica, and it is Bloody Morgan’s, and I guess it’s one of the most valuable treasure-troves in history.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Bond. ‘How… where do we come into it?”
M held up his hand. ‘You’ll find all the details in here,’ he let his hand come down on the brown folder. ‘Briefly, Station C has been interested in a Diesel yacht, the Secatur, which has been running from a small island on the North Coast of Jamaica through the Florida Keys into the Gulf of Mexico, to a place called St. Petersburg. Sort of pleasure resort, near Tampa. West Coast of Florida. With the help of the FBI we’ve traced the ownership of this boat and of the island to a man called Mr. Big, a negro gangster. Lives in Harlem. Ever heard of him?’
‘No,’ said Bond.
‘And curiously enough,’ M’s voice was softer and quieter, ‘a twenty-dollar bill which one of these casual negroes had paid for a gold coin and whose number he had noted for ‘t’t- Peaka Peow, the Numbers game, was paid out by one of Mr. Big’s lieutenants. And it was paid,’ M pointed the stem of his pipe at Bond, ‘for information received, to an FBI double-agent who is a member of the Communist Party.’