“It’s wonderful,” I agreed. I was surprised at the steadiness, the indifference in my own voice. “With the exception of the British frigate De Braak, sunk in a storm off the Delaware coast in 1798, it’s probably the biggest underwater treasure in the western hemisphere. Ten million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold specie, emeralds and uncut diamonds.”
“Yes, sir.” Vyland had forgotten he was an urbane top executive and he was back at the hand-washing again. “Ten million, two hundred and——” His voice trailed off slowly, faltered to a stop. “How — how did you know that, Talbot?” he whispered.
“I knew it before you ever heard of it, Vyland,” I said quietly. Both of them had turned away from the window and were staring at me, Vyland with a mixture of puzzlement, suspicion and the beginnings of fear, Royale with his one good, cold, flat, marbled eye wider than I had ever seen it. “You’re not quite so smart as the general, I’m afraid, Vyland. Neither am I for that matter. He caught on to me this morning, Vyland. I’ve worked out why. Do you know why, Vyland? Do you want to know why?”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded hoarsely.
“He’s smart, is the general.” I went on as if I hadn’t heard the interruption. “He saw when we landed on the rig this morning that I only hid my face until I was certain that a certain person wasn’t among the reception committee and that then I didn’t bother any longer. Careless of me, I admit. But that tipped him off to the fact that I wasn’t a murderer — if I were I’d have hidden my face from everybody — and it also tipped him off to the fact that I had been out on the rig before and was frightened someone there would recognise me. He was right on both counts — I wasn’t a murderer, and I had been out on the rig before. In the very early hours of this morning.”
Vyland had nothing to say, the shattering effect of my words, the limitless avenues of dark possibilities they were opening up had him completely off balance, too confused even to begin to put his conflicting thoughts into words.
“And the general noticed something else,” I went on. “He noticed ‘that when you were telling me about this salvage job that I never once asked the first, the most obvious question in the world — what was the treasure to be salvaged, what kind of vessel or aircraft the treasure was in, if any. I never once asked one of those questions, did I, Vyland? Again careless of me, wasn’t it, Vyland? But you never noticed. But General Ruthven noticed, and he knew there could be only one answer — I already knew.”
There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds, then Vyland whispered: “Who are you, Talbot?”
“No friend of yours, Vyland.” I smiled at him, as near as my aching upper jaw would allow. “You’re going to die, Vyland, you’re going to die in agony and you’re going to use your last breath on earth cursing my name and the day you ever met me.”
Another silence, deeper even than the one that had gone before. I wished I could smoke, but it was impossible inside that cabin, and heaven only knew the air there was foul enough already, our breathing was already unnaturally quickened, and sweat was beginning to trickle down our faces.
“Let me tell you a little story,” I went on. “It’s not a fairy story but we’ll start it with ‘ Once upon a time’ for all that.
“Once upon a time there was a certain country with a very small navy — a couple of destroyers, a frigate, a gunboat. Not much of a navy, is it, Vyland? So the rulers decided to double it. They were doing pretty well in the petroleum and coffee export markets, and they thought they could afford it. Mind you, they could have spent the money in a hundred more profitable ways but this was a country much given to revolution and the strength of any current government largely depended on the strength of the armed forces under their control. Let’s double our navy, they said. Who said, Vyland?”
He tried to speak, but only a croak came out. He wet his lips and said: “Colombia.”
“However did you know, I wonder? That’s it, Colombia. They arranged to get a couple of second-hand destroyers from Britain, some frigates, mine-sweepers and gunboats from the United States. Considering that those second-hand ships were almost brand new, they got them dead cheap: 10,250,000 dollars. But then the snag: Colombia was in a state of threatened revolution, civil war and anarchy, the value of the peso was tumbling abroad and Britain and the United States, to whom a combined payment was to be made, refused to deliver against the peso. No international bank would look at Colombia. So it was agreed that the payment be made in kind. Some previous government had imported, for industrial purposes, two million dollars’ worth of uncut Brazilian diamonds which had never been used. To that was added about two and a half million dollars’ worth of Colombian gold, near enough two tons in 28-lb. ingots: the bulk of the payment, however, was in cut emeralds — I need hardly remind you, Vyland, that the Muzo mines in the Eastern Andes are the most famous and important source of emeralds in the world. Or perhaps you know?”
Vyland said nothing. He pulled out his display handkerchief and mopped his face. He looked sick.
“No matter. And then came the question of transport. It was supposed to have been flown out to Tampa, on its first leg, by an Avianca or Lansa freighter but all the domestic national airlines were temporarily grounded at the beginning of May, 1958, when the new elections were coming up. Some members of the permanent civil service were desperately anxious to get rid of this money in case it fell into the wrong hands, so they looked around for a foreign-owned freight airline operating only external flights. They picked on the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co. Lloyd’s agreed to transfer the insurance. The Trans-Carib freighter filed a false flight plan and took off from Barranquilla, heading for Tampa via the Yucatan Strait.
“There were only four people in that plane, Vyland. There was the pilot, a twin brother of the owner of the Trans-Carib Line. There was the co-pilot who also doubled as navigator, and a woman and a small child whom it was thought wiser not to leave behind in case things went wrong at the elections and it was found out the part played by the Trans-Carib in getting the money out of the country.
“They filed a false flight plan, Vyland, but that didn’t do them any good at all for one of those noble and high-minded civil servants who had been so anxious to pay the debt to Britain and America was as crooked as they come and a creature of yours, Vyland. He knew of the true flight plan, and radioed you. You were in Havana, and you’d everything laid on, hadn’t you, Vyland?”
“How do you know all this?” Vyland croaked.
“Because I am — I was — the owner of the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co.” I felt unutterably tired, I don’t know whether it was because of the pain or the foul air or just because of the overwhelming sense of the emptiness of living. “I was grounded at Belize, in British Honduras, at the time, but I managed to pick them up on the radio — after they had repaired it. They told me then that someone had tried to blow up the plane, but I know now that wasn’t quite true, all they had tried to do was to wreck the radio, to cut the DC off from the outer world. They almost succeeded — but not quite. You never knew, did you, Vyland, that someone was in radio contact with that plane just before it was shot out of the sky. But I was. Just for two minutes, Vyland.” I looked at him slowly, consideringly, emptily. “Two little minutes that mean you die to-night.”
Vyland stared at me with sick terror in his eyes. He knew what was coming all right, or thought he knew: he knew now who I was, he knew now what it was to meet a man who had lost everything, a man to whom pity and compassion were no longer even words. Slowly, as if at the expense of great effort and pain, he twisted his head to look at Royale, but, for the first time ever, there was no comfort, no security, no knowledge of safety to be found there, for the incredible was happening at last: Royale was afraid.
I half-turned and pointed at the shattered cabin of the DC.