Chapter 3

The covert purpose of the ship was to harvest gold. I knew, the captain knew and Wishbone knew. We ran an odd-looking platform off the bow with a huge, slow drum feeding out a complex line most mornings just before we came into port. We filled thirty gaylords with loads from the freezer boom. It was amazing how much came aboard. The passengers had no idea why we cruised the coasts of Spain and France while filling our holds. They had a beautiful cruise and couldn't complain.

Gold? Silver? Platinum? Jewels? Christ, we had it all. You couldn't realize how huge the oceans are until you attempted to bring up what had been lost. I became desensitized when the volume reached over a ton of recovered wealth. I backed off on the greed and let things stabilize. I eventually had the captain ship our cargo to my home port warehouse by courier service. I gave him a big gold thumb ring bearing a ruby the size of a robin's egg. He never knew that it came from a British Edwardian treasure chest.

I knew that the crew were curious about our operation. I also knew that they'd get into the hold we were using somehow. I gave each man permission to carry away as much as they could hold in one hand. I made them all sign an agreement not to disclose where their newfound wealth came from or when it was obtained. I told them that it was their retirement fund and should be treated appropriately. Instead of grubbing around in the muck and slime with the rest of the crew, I gave the captain a ten kilo gold bar. I remember hearing a new mantra from him. "ten kilos at 2.2 pounds per kilo, fifteen ounces to the pound. Spot price was twelve hundred an ounce yesterday. Hmm." What the hell. He didn't complain, now did he? I had that haul shipped to my warehouse as a reserve in case any funny stuff happened with my investment accounts.

Our new engine man, Sam, knew his stuff. He'd attended the same classes that I'd taken, but in north Germany, on the coast.

We cruised the South Asian seas, between India and Australia. The captain knew ports of call that I'd never heard of. He had one hell of a job, though. Between dickering for cargo and fighting for his share of cargo space from our 'mining' runs he grumbled a lot. However, that pacifier on his thumb kept the complaints down.

Things were running so clean that I was getting bored again. I had the captain moor at the Singapore docks so that our latest haul of eighteen loads could be shipped to the bank. I took the electronics off our mining boom, packed up and reserved a private plane for the trip back to South Africa. Wishbone wanted to stay on board for a while, as did Big Ed. When he said that my heart clenched and my stomach felt like it was full of acid. I was alone again. I was fifty five.

I moved back into the villa where I spent some time digging through the treasure that we'd harvested and not yet sold.

It became my daily regimen. I'd have a cup of tea and a pastry down near the docks, then drive to the warehouse. I'd unlock the main doors and throw them open, then turn on the big fans. Dressed in rubber boots and canvas pants I'd load double-hand fulls of combined muck and whatever else was retrieved into a wide sieve. That would be taken just outside the door and I'd play water over the contents while shaking the sieve. Eventually all the crud would run down the driveway. The I'd pick out all but the metal and carefully pour it into the 'clean' pile. The muck stank so badly that I'd have to strip and shower with strong deodorant soap before dressing in clean clothes to leave.

I found some remarkably useless things, such as engraved solid gold plates and chalices. I found what had to be an altar service for a Catholic church. I found one thing that I had no idea what to do with. It was a Torah, inside a cloth case, inside a wooden box, inside a metal box. How did I know that it was a Torah? Because I could recognize the written Hebrew characters written on the outer and inner boxes, even if I couldn't understand it. I knew enough not to open it because I'm Goyim, not of the faith. There was a small but devout Jewish congregation in the city. I paid the Rabbi a visit. When asked where I found it I looked up that batch in my notes. It came from several miles off shore directly out from the port of Palma in the Mediterranean Sea.

"But that's under water!" "Yup." I left him with a look of wonder on his face. It was so hard to keep a straight face.

I got a nice thank you and forgot all about it.

I tell you, there have been some butt-ugly gold coins put out at various times. I had some coins that weren't round, were struck on one side (not even centered! ) and the face on the guy reminded me of a dog trying to shit a peach pit. Brutal, I tell you. Brutal. There were sixty one of those. I had many more French, English and Spanish coins as well. I held an antique coin auction. After advertising it in American, British, Spanish, French and German newspapers for two months I hired a large hall and hired on a security company. Three auction companies spelled each other at the microphone. They sold like the world was coming to an end. Each coin came with a letter noting which site it came from, at what depth and on what date it was recovered. After the coin auction I held a surprise auction of all the table wear, table service and candlesticks. I held back the Catholic altar set to donate to the church, even though I'd never get a penny back from the greedy bastards. I thought about melting them down for the value of the metal but some Catholic busy-body would doubtless blow the whistle. I held it back along with three solid gold crosses for when I needed a favor.

With all the money I got from the auction (after the government kissed me proper) I opened another account with the Bank of Singapore. This account nobody had access to but me. I bought a half ton of krugerrands to act as an unassailable trading base. They made up most of the ballast of the Dear Prudence instead of a tube of lead pellets. I got the DP ready for sea once more. I bought another heavy-barreled .50 caliber M2 machine gun for the bow mount and a dozen cases of mixed load ammunition.

I took a route from Cape Town, up the eastern coast and across to Mukalla City, Yemen where I refueled. Then it was across the Arabian sea to Goa, India. Again I refueled and headed around the point. I made for Perth where I had the fuel tanks cleaned and refilled as I didn't trust the fuel quality from my last two stops. I'd heard about a town on the south-west coast called Esperance, with magnificent beaches and few tourists. I explored the investment opportunities in terms of creating a living space for myself that would gain in value.

East of town there was a strip of land varying from two thousand to a couple hundred feet between the road and the beach. It faced the ocean with marvelous white sand beaches. I invested forty million in the land. I improved it by having two breakwaters built from the earth removed when digging out a four hundred foot by one hundred foot wide mooring pen. A small river flowed through it to help keep the sedimentation down. I had four piers installed. A bit further inland lay a clearing that I had built up with rock and gravel. I had a fairly small home built out of compressed earth blocks and a cement tile roof. Having read about the insect life in Australia I had each CEB brick dipped in 'bug cyanide' before being placed. Because of ownership issues I had to buy it through my investment company, but hell--I owned both the company and the property involved. Nobody was going to steal it out from under me.

I talked the architect into designing a "small" hacienda with a wide front porch facing the sea, supported by a colonnade. The house enclosed a small patio with a pool that all the bedrooms accessed. It was designed for inside/outside living with thick walls and a heavy poured floor to act as thermal sinks. To deter the hostile native insect and ground crawler life a broad tiled patio surrounded the entire home. The rooms were fairly small except for the kitchen and living room, or great room. Together they took up one entire wall of the complex. Four bedrooms shared two bathrooms. A master bedroom with an attached bath, utilities and storage laid claim to the rest. I had the whole place, inside and out, painted the color of adobe; sort of a brown-red. One side of the roof was extended to form a drive-through car port.

I had a small housekeeper's place built with two bedrooms, a large bath, a reasonable kitchen and a comfortable living room, just down a paved path from the house. I had the housekeeper's place built of the same materials that the hacienda was formed. The driveway split in one direction to end beside the housekeeper's accommodations while the other, main driveway passed close to the side of the house, under the carport and continued down slope to the wharf. My slip for the Dear Prudence lay but a quarter mile from the house, but it was a bit of uphill to get to the house from the water. I had electricity run to both houses and the wharf. Since the temperatures dropped into the forties during the local winter I had LP gas tanks installed at both dwellings for heat, hot water and cooking. Not to miss out on a bit of 'atmosphere' and being one to enjoy sitting before a fire, I had a couple of Franklin stoves installed, both in the kitchen and the master bedroom. I thought about it and had one installed in the housekeeper's place as well. I had a chiminea centering a conversation group on the patio near the hot tub. The small in-ground pool had a small chiller built into it so that if the local temperature became uncomfortably warm I could cool off and --dare I say it? Chill out.

I figured that Esperance wouldn't become a glitzy-ditzy tourist trap until the airport grew significantly or the slips were expanded. It was over four hundred and fifty miles from Perth which was an eight our road trip. Until then my property value wouldn't sky-rocket and my property tax wouldn't do the same either. That left me with a nice window during which I could live comfortably, given I didn't get bored out of my skull and do something stupid again.

Once I had everything built out to my satisfaction I hired a decorator to make it comfortable. The lady took one look at the arches and the stone-work and started sketching. I was envious of her talent but didn't let it deter me from asking for changes. She designed in small LED-based lights to hilight curved openings, long ceiling runs and hanging woven wool rugs that were mostly white to provide bright spots of diffused light.

Before long the place was ready for habitation and I could move off the ship. I bought a couple big woven hampers in town, filled them with the Catholic toys that I'd recovered from the floor of the Mediterranean sea and tootled off to town in my little blue Toyota pickup. I'd looked up the address of the local Catholic rectory beforehand so it wasn't any great shakes to pull up in front. I knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.

Now, if you were a Catholic priest in a vacation town and a ratty looking guy in sandals, a scruffy beard and a pony tail pulled up in front of your "Official Parish Residence" in a pickup truck that had seen better days, what would you do? I had to give this guy props, he didn't call the cops. I shook his hand then said I had some things the church might want that I found while netting fish in the Med. Well, that got his curiosity bump itching. When I threw open the tops of the hampers he damned near screamed. He was quite happy to help me get the hampers into his front door. He didn't even frown at my request for a cook and housekeeper. However, he did want to check my papers and see the place that they'd be taking care of.

I drove him out to my place, a trip of all of ten minutes or so. I showed him around the place and ran the movie taken while his batch came up. I brought up Google Maps to point out the position on the map. "That's where the altar furniture came from. The rest came from other sites around the Med." I then showed him the little place I'd had built for the housekeeper's residence. "When I hire someone I'll give them a decorating budget and let them go nuts, within the bounds of propriety." He nodded. "And what would you pay for such a position?"

"No less than forty-five thousand a year plus medical, room and board. I'll pay them as contractors. I don't care if they're a married couple, single, two guys or two girls. I must insist that a bitter, judgmental or angry attitude will be met by an invitation to work elsewhere. I've cohabited before and I'm not willing to take that sort of thing from anyone."

"That's generous for semi-skilled labor and the terms are acceptable."

"They'd be working off an expense account with debit cards. If they make an honest effort they'll earn a ten percent hiring bonus. Now, if they're a couple of good-looking ladies with a bit of education I'll donate another forty thousand to your house fund."

He raised an eyebrow and stared at me a bit. "Is this an honest offer of employment or something else?"

I replied, "I've gotta look at 'em day in and day out. If they're good looking and have a good attitude then I'll tend more to have a good attitude. And let it be said up front, I'll not be pushed into a marriage. I'll up anchor, leave and sell the place by proxy and never return before that happens."

He nodded, then sat in thought. "What about an immigrant, or a widow?"

I shrugged. "I've worked well with crew from all over, and as long as she isn't poisoned by baggage from her marriage, a widow wouldn't bother me."

He nodded. "Good. I've got a few people to ask. I'll need your phone number to set up interviews and the like." I wrote down my contact information for him and gave him a lift back to town.

I loaded up with firewood and some meat before heading back home. It was time to start stocking the kitchen.

The next day I hired a guy with a cube truck. It was probably the strangest contract he'd ever taken. We were going grocery shopping and he was going to do all the lifting, including the delivery. We started at a butcher shop where I asked that an order be prepped for pickup later that day. Then we hit a super IGA. It wasn't like an American IGA. It stood for Independent Groceries of Australia. They had more than I expected. We picked up everything from dishes and glassware to towels and cleanser. I made sure to pick up plenty of bread-making supplies to give my kitchen a real work-out, plus fruit filling, vanilla and powdered sugar for the frosting. I had to keep my hand in making pastry. To wrap up the day we picked up the meat order from the butcher, then stopped at a KFC for a bucket of chicken. Once we got everything put away it was time to gorge on Colonel Sanders' finest.

I got a call to meet a couple potential housekeepers at a place with a dubious name of the "doo drop inn". I strapped on my pistol, a big sharp knife and a bullet-proof vest before leaving the house.

I sat down on a bar stool that desperately needed the care of an industrial steam cleaner. I slammed a handful of dollar coins on the bar. "Gimme something in a sealed bottle. I've seen your rag. Forget the glass."

I got the evil eye as he slid a Budweiser my way. "Figures. Dog piss. It suits the 'ambiance'". I ripped off the cap over the edge of the bar, wiped the mouth on the elbow of my shirt and took a drink. "Yep, dog piss." The bartender stalked off to poison the air elsewhere.

"Buy a girl a drink?" My head spun around. Ye gods and little fishes. It was Akma. I hugged her until her ribs creaked. "Akma! What the hell are you doing in this dive?"

She sat back to catch her breath, then slowly related her tale. Jamie, Irene, Linda, Pam and herself had tried to catch up with me, but it had taken years. The way I'd moved around made it difficult. They finally tracked me down in Australia. "Cap, we want back in. You brought us together and we like it that way. We've all had some tough times but hell, cap. Semper Fi."

My lower lip was trembling as I smiled. "Semper Fi, dammit." The rest of the girls came out of a back room and gathered around for hugs. They were a lot skinnier than they had been. It looked like times had been tough. Jamie and Irene were still together. You couldn't get a playing card between them. Linda was there leaning on a chair with half a smile. Pam looked pained as hell and had a pair of crutches.

The bartender came out with a buddy of his, both with axe-handles in their hands. "Where's my bucks? You gonna pay up or... ?" I glanced at Pam, who looked worried. I reached into a pocket for a krugerrand and whipped it at him, to bounce off his cheek. "There. That's fourteen hundred bucks. You want more and you'd better have a lot better than a fuckin' axe handle, bro." I pulled my 10 mm and aimed at his pubic arch. We walked out of there while watching our sixes. We got everyone in the pickup. "Anyone have something to pick up?" They had lockers at a local mall where their sea bags were stored. We picked up the goods and headed for a mom 'n pop restaurant for a nice, slow feed.

By the time they slowed down they were falling asleep. I got everyone back into the pickup, paid the bill and headed home. Jamie and Irene still bunked together, so that gave me a bunk for everyone without putting anyone in bed with me. Once everyone was bedded down I headed back into town for a quart of cream, two pounds of fresh ground coffee and a percolator. I'd have a revolt on my hands if there was no coffee in the morning.

I spent some times with my squeeze box thinking about times gone past before I headed in for the night. I was fifty seven and my life had just turned around again.

I awoke to the sounds of Pam getting up early. She'd recently been hit hard and hadn't recovered. The first thing I had to do was to get everyone insured and evaluated. I assumed that Pam would need some surgical time and recovery before she was back to normal. I found out that her hip and left leg were damaged. Akma had turned into a fireball and taken up the slack when Pam got hurt. Everybody was going to get the best treatment that I could find.

After coffee and breakfast I broke the news to them.

"I've got good news and bad news."

"Groan..."

"Okay, lighten up. the bad news is you're all on the edge and need some medical care. The good news is I'm richer than hell and we're going to get you all straightened out. I don't want to push anything down your throats, but I want you in optimal health. We'll get you healthy, get you fed up to your fighting weights and get you supplied, then we'll figure out what to do from there."

I didn't lease a small bus, I bought one. I got everyone aboard and drove us to the local hospital. There I put down eight million on deposit. I let it be known that if any of my crew experienced distress at the hands of the hospital staff then the hospital might have difficulty finding insurance, certification or funding during its next business cycle. I knew that I could damned well do it, too.

I bought a cell phone for each member of the crew and put my number on speed-dial-number-one on each unit. If anything went wrong I wanted to hear about it as soon as it happened.

We left Pam checked into the hospital while she got a set of MRI scans done on her hips and lower back. She'd taken a hit by a pickup truck a couple of months before and didn't have the money to get checked out at the time. I paid to have a top-flight athletic reconstructive surgeon flown in from Perth. After looking at the preliminary X-rays he said that there was radical room for improvement. Basically, her hip had broken in several places and healed wrong, putting stress on her lower back. Jamie, Irene, Linda and Akma came back to the house with me after extracting a promise to visit Pam every day. I had no problem with that. I had comprehensive medical exams scheduled for the four of them over the next few days.

I got everyone fed, bathed and into bed early.

After breakfast I took everyone out shopping for shoes, underwear, clothes, coats and personal gear. I made sure that all of them had swim suits, sandals and robes. I made sure we had enough recliners for everyone and bought several quarts of suntan lotion. Then we headed back to the hospital to sit with Pam and wait for the results.

The doctor said a simple re-break and pin job should do nicely as the original blow didn't leave little pieces that cemented themselves to problem areas. He wanted to get the job done as soon as they could get her cleaned out and pumped full of pre-operative antibiotics. Pam asked, "Can you fix this while you're at it? I can't squeeze my fist without it hurting bad."

He frowned. "Damn. We would have missed that if you hadn't spoken up." They got her wrist X-rayed quickly and he examined the print. "No problem! Two bones in the wrist itself broke and healed wrong. That pushed the tendons out of their normal channels, causing your pain under stress. That's a twenty-minute fix." He looked her in the eye and continued; "With the hip cast and the wrist/forearm cast you're going to be pretty well immobilized. Do you have anyone to depend on, maybe three times a day?"

She grinned and motioned at us with her chin. "My crew. No problem there." He nodded, gave some orders, scribbled on her chart and headed out to see where else he could make trouble.

I said "It looks like you're gonna be glued to the toilet for a while." I grinned. "When they give you a big brown capsule start watching the clock. After twenty minutes, don't try to fart or you're gonna get a liquid surprise."

We all laughed, wished her luck and kissed her goodbye. We'd be back the next day after she woke up from surgery and came out of ICU.

Jamie and Irene elected to go in for their checkups the next afternoon, then Linda and Akma the next. Everyone showed up as anorexic, but I had a solution for that. Adult gummy-bear vitamins and plenty of good, solid German food.

With that many people to cook for I came into my own. I had a big charcoal cooking rig constructed large enough to barbecue half a pig. (There's three ways that I know of to do an above-ground pig roast. Clean it out and do the low-and-slow for two days as an entire closed carcass, Butterfly it and clamp the spread-open carcass between two big square heavy screens that turn on a spit, or cook one half at a time, either on a spit or between two screens. The third way is a lot easier to handle for one cook.) The same rig works for a small steer or a deer.

I had my general contractor get that CEB brick mill working again. I had him pour some footings beside the house for a 30x40 foot garage, large enough for the vehicles to fit and with enough spare space so that I could put together a shop. Also, I'd have a place to keep that damned huge grill, a half ton of charcoal and a half ton of firewood. There was no way to get that big goddamned barbecue onto the patio so we cooked out on the driveway. It was next to the kitchen door anyway so food transport made a lot of sense, out the door, cook, in the door, to the table on the patio.

It only took a week and a half to get the garage built with motivated (read, well-paid) labor, and a welder had my barbecue ready in three days. Of course, I had to invite him to the first feed as part of the deal.

We didn't just have him slam some steel tank halves and steel expanded mesh together. I had him model it after a Texas smoker barbecue with a firebox on one end and the chimney at the other, to draw the sweet wood smoke over the meat. With the proper use of dampers and a thermostat a good deal of control could be exercised. We could light a fire under the meat as well, turning it into a grill, but I'd want to have a layer of firebrick glued down and covered with sand first for the fire to be laid on. I had a few more made and presented them to the local VFW, police department, fire department and Catholic church as moneymakers. I'd get one to that Rabbi in Cape Town too. He didn't have to barbecue pork ... goat was kosher if butchered properly and barbecued chicken was always a winner.

Within twelve days after her surgery Pam was deemed fit to come home. I went all out and leased an adjustable hospital bed that would raise, lower or fold up to make her more comfortable, as in a recliner. We took turns babying her; helping her eat, defecate, bathe and giving her massages. She didn't sleep alone, either. When she felt better we had her up in a wheel chair and out on the patio where she could get some sun. I took her down to the boat one day and showed off the DP. She asked me what the hell the big spool on the crane was for. I laid a solid gold archer's forearm guard in her lap. "For retrieving things like this from the bottom."

She looked at me a bit, and asked "Was this a one-off?"

I replied, "Oh, hell no. I've brought up over a hundred and thirty lots, and there's quite a bit more down there where this came from."

She paused to trace the Roman engravings on the guard. "We've tied ourselves to a comet, haven't we?"

"Yup. It could be a wild, perhaps incendiary ride, or we might keep our faces out of the news. You'll hear about the things I'm into. I still own the villa in Cape Town, and more property near there as well. I've taken South African citizenship to keep the American tax dogs off me. They'd bleed me to death with no look to the future if they could. The South Africans are more sane. I've put a lot into buying up railroads and getting them working together. With transport comes trade. With trade comes wealth."

"That sounds like a lot of work. You never did like to work hard. What's going on here?"

"All right, you've got me. I've got a management team at the Bank of Singapore that's ram-rodding this for me. I fund it, they have fun doing a little empire building and the bank rakes off a few percent to keep the board of directors happy. Everybody wins, really." We settled in for a little cuddling and a nap before we headed back to the villa.

I thought that the local priest was a good guy. What a crock of shit. I was seriously thinking about burning his goddamned house down around his ears. Why? I'll tell you why.

I received a visit from the court of His Holiness) in the Vatican. They were polite at first, then the inquisition started. They wanted to know who, what, when, why and how about the relics I'd turned over to the local priest. They were quite hostile about it all. When they began to crowd me and insisted that I accompany them to the Vatican for further questioning I let my deeds do my talking.

Never let it be said that I don't do my own dirty work. I used shock sticks to stun them then took the zip-tied bodies out to sea. A couple wraps of chain guaranteed that the bodies wouldn't surface before the scavengers consumed the evidence...

I made sure to bleach the aft deck afterwards.

They must have contacted their handlers at least once before I closed the books on them. It was quiet for a while, which made me relax. It should have made me suspicious. The local archbishop took out a page in the local newspaper stating that I was an outcast, declared anathema and to be shunned.

Well, shit.

I asked the local butcher for a gallon of lamb's blood. He asked me what I wanted it for and I told him. He smiled and said that he'd get his friends at a kill shop to help out. It would be ready by the next Sunday morning, early.

During the priest's early Sunday service I booted my way into the church, making the door 'BOOM' against its detents. I walked to the altar, cradling a huge gallon-sized gold chalice covered in Greek writing and sigils celebrating Zeus. It was full of lamb's blood. Over my shoulder I had a huge ram's horn on a sling, known to some as a Shofar.

I poured the blood out over their altar. I then collected a hand-full of the clots at the bottom of the chalice. I flung them at the priest, desecrating his regalia. I blew a mighty blast on the Shofar, making the ears ring of those closest to the altar.

"In the name of Zeus I take this place for my own. I deny the sanctity of the dead god in this place. I deny the rites of the dead god to have power over the firmament. I deny the brotherhood of the dead god the certainty of their belief. I repudiate the dead god here and everywhere. May your houses fall. May your children sicken and die. May your elders grow mad and give poisonous council. May your wealth leave naught but a bitter taste in your mouths while you family goes hungry. May your words come back to haunt you. You have been judged as you have judged others. May Zeus have mercy on you as the reaping shall soon begin."

I stalked out the door, still cradling the chalice, to utter silence behind me. As I slammed the doors shut behind me Akma blew a charge that severed power to the building.

I did the same thing in St. Mary's Cathedral, Perth Australia the next Sunday. However, I took it a step further. During the week I dressed as a city laborer and used a water-jet drill to carve holes in the king blocks supporting the structure. Saturday night I packed the holes with C-4 and clay. A little cell phone was stuck to the outside of each block and a little foam dome was glued over the top of each one.