The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter by Desmond Bagley Page B

to think of it—so had I!
    It must have been the first time that Coertze had been in a boatyard and he looked about him with keen interest and asked a lot of questions, nearly all of them sensible. At last, he said, ‘Well, what about it?’
    I took them down to the middle slip where Jimmy Murphy’s Estralita was waiting to be drawn up for an overhaul. ‘That’s a sailing yacht,’ I said. ‘A 15-tonner. What would you say her draft it—I mean, how deep is she in the water?’
    Coertze looked her over and then looked up at the tall mast. ‘She’ll need to be deep to counterbalance that lot,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how much. I don’t know anything about boats.’
    Considering he didn’t know anything about boats, it was a very sensible answer.
    ‘Her draft is six feet in normal trim,’ I said. ‘She’s drawing less now because a lot of gear has been taken out of her.’
    His eyes narrowed. ‘I’d have thought it would be more than that,’ he said. ‘What happens when the wind blows hard on the sails? Won’t she tip over?’
    This was going well and Coertze was on the ball. I said, ‘I have a boat like this just being built, another 15-tonner. Come and have a look at her.’
    I led the way up to the shed where Sanford was being built and Coertze followed, apparently content that I was leading up to a point. Walker tagged on behind.
    I had pressed to get Sanford completed and she was ready for launching as soon as the glass-fibre sheathing was applied and the interior finished.
    Coertze looked up at her. ‘They look bloody big out of the water,’ he commented.
    I smiled. That was the usual lay reaction. ‘Come aboard,’ I said.
    He was impressed by the spaciousness he found below and commented favourably on the way things were arranged. ‘Did you design all this?’ he asked.
    I nodded.
    ‘You could live in here, all right,’ he said, inspecting the galley.
    ‘You could—and you will,’ I said. ‘This is the boat in which we’re going to take four tons of gold out of Italy.’
    He looked surprised and then he frowned. ‘Where are you going to put it?’
    I said, ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you something about sailing boats you don’t know.’ Coertze sat uncomfortably on the edge of the starboard settee which had no mattress as yet, and waited for me to explain myself.
    ‘This boat displaces—weighs, that is—ten tons, and…’
    Walker broke in. ‘I thought you said she was a 15-tonner.’
    ‘That’s Thames measure—yacht measure. Her displacement is different.’
    Coertze looked at Walker. ‘Shut up and let the man speak.’ He turned to me. ‘If the boat weighs ten tons and you add another four tons, she’ll be pretty near sinking, won’t she? And where are you going to put it? It can’t be out in the open where the cops can see it.’
    I said patiently, ‘I said I’d tell you something about sailing boats that you didn’t know. Now, listen—about forty per cent of the weight of any sailing boat is ballast to keep her the right way up when the wind starts to press on those sails.’
    I tapped the cabin sole with my foot. ‘Hanging on the bottom of this boat is a bloody great piece of lead weighing precisely four tons.’
    Coertze looked at me incredulously, a dawning surmise in his eyes. I said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
    We went outside and I showed them the lead ballast keel. I said, ‘All this will be covered up next week because the boat will be sheathed to keep out the marine borers.’
    Coertze was squatting on his heels looking at the keel. ‘This is it,’ he said slowly. ‘This is it. The gold will be hidden under water—built in as part of the boat.’ He began to laugh, and after a while Walker joined in. I began to laugh, too, and the walls of the shed resounded.
    Coertze sobered suddenly. ‘What’s the melting point of lead?’ he asked abruptly.
    I knew what was coming. ‘Four-fifty degrees centigrade,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a little