Yamashita's Gold Read online

  Lovely work, Google Translate. Don’t give up your day job.

  But it had to be from The Debt, didn’t it, some sort of coded message?

  I remembered Gus had told me that sometimes half the battle was working out what the instalment actually was.

  Surely this was it.

  But how to get it translated?

  I considered my options.

  It didn’t take long because, really, I only had one: it started with ‘Chakra’ and ended with ‘barty’. I had to find Dr Chakrabarty.

  I wondered if I was the first schoolkid ever in the history of schools and kids who was desperate to see a teacher during the holidays.

  Especially given that the teacher in question wasn’t even my teacher.

  But how to find Dr Chakrabarty?

  I started at the obvious place: Google.

  There was a Dr Paramita Chakrabarty who was an expert on neurodegenerative diseases. There was a Dr Amit Chakrabarty who was a urologist and the winner of seven patients’ choice awards. And there was Dr KV Chakrabarty who I found on YouTube addressing a keen audience at a conference on Systemic Risk, whatever that was.

  But I couldn’t find my Dr Chakrabarty anywhere.

  What was my Dr Chakrabarty’s first name anyway?

  I couldn’t remember having seen it anywhere.

  Maybe he didn’t have one, like Pink, Prince and Warnie.

  I tried the online White Pages. No Chakrabartys in the whole of Queensland, let alone the Gold Coast.

  I tried my school’s website. Dr Chakrabarty was mentioned as teacher of Classics, but there were no contact details for him, no phone number, no email address.

  Again I looked at the text message.

  Atque ita semineces partim ferventibus artus mollit aquis, partim subiecto torruit igni

  It seemed to mock me, taunt me, like the most annoying kid at your primary school: nah, nah you can’t understand me, nah nah you can’t understand me.

  Now I was determined to find out what it meant. Although I could’ve posted it on some nerdy Latin forum on the net but something told me that Dr Chakrabarty was the one I had to ask.

  Okay, so what else did I know about the shaggy-eyebrowed teacher of Classics?

  I thought of the two occasions I’d been to his office, how spartan it had been.

  No obvious clues there.

  I remembered the conversations I’d heard him have on the phone.

  But when I thought about it, there had only been one conversation, and that had been with a telephone company, with Virgin.

  I did some more remembering, some more trawling, but that was the only thing I dredged up.

  That was the only thing I had to work with.

  Dr Chakrabarty was with Virgin.

  Why not start with the obvious, I asked myself.

  I rang Virgin.

  Well, Virgin’s answering service.

  After negotiating layer after layer of options, then waiting for half an hour, I finally got to speak to a real live person.

  ‘Hi there,’ said the real live person. ‘How can I help you?’

  I’d already decided that I was going to go with the truth. Well, a version of the truth.

  ‘I really need to get the number of one of your subscribers,’ I said.

  A big intake of breath from the other end.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ said the real live person.

  ‘It’s not?’ I said.

  ‘Company policy, my friend. Cannot, cannot, cannot give out any numeros.’

  Even by Virgin’s jaunty standards, this person was really out there.

  Which was sort of encouraging – surely there was a way around somebody as loose as this – and sort of discouraging – maybe they kept all their looseness on the outside and on the inside they played totally by the rules.

  ‘It’s my Classics teacher at school,’ I said. ‘I need him to translate this text I got that’s in Latin.’

  Silence at the other end, and I thought, That’s it, he thinks I’m mad, or I’m talking crap, and he’s going to give me another ‘cannot cannot cannot give out any numeros’ line.

  ‘Latin?’ he said, and I knew now that perhaps I was in with a chance if I played it right.

  ‘You see, I got this other text in Latin a few months ago,’ I said.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘It said, Discipule, caro mortua es.’

  A low whistle from the other end, followed by, ‘And this dude translated it for you?’

  ‘He’s about the best there is,’ I said.

  ‘And what does it mean?’ he said.

  ‘It’s not that nice,’ I said.

  ‘Man, I’m up for it. You’ve got to tell me, what does it mean?’

  I dropped my voice an octave and said, ‘Schoolboy, you are dead meat.’

  He gave a shivery ‘Jesus’ and added, ‘That’s unconscionable.’

  I wasn’t sure what unconscionable meant, but I agreed with him. ‘Completely.’

  ‘So how you bearing up?’ he said, and the concern in his voice sounded genuine to me.

  ‘I was going okay,’ I said. ‘But then I got this latest message.’

  Another ‘Jesus’, maybe a bit less shivery than the previous one, then he said, ‘What does it say?’

  I read it out to him, even though I’m sure my pronunciation was terrible.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said yet again. ‘That sounds even worse than the other one.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, injecting what I hoped was the right amount of fright into my voice.

  Actually, I didn’t even have to do that much injecting, because I was starting to realise just how spooky all this was.

  ‘So who do you think is sending you this stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘But I’m hoping Dr Chakrabarty will be able to help me. He knows all about this kind of thing – you know, secret societies and so on.’

  More silence at the other end.

  ‘If anybody asks you, you never talked to me, okay?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘So how do you spell his name?’

  I spelled out his name and he gave me Dr Chakrabarty’s number.

  ‘This conversation never happened, right?’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And you be careful, okay, kid? There’s some weird stuff going down here.’

  ‘Unconscionable,’ I said.

  ‘You got it.’

  After I’d hung up I sent a text to the number he had given me: dr chakrabarty i received another text in latin, dom.

  It took ten minutes to get a reply. How did you get this number?

  Sprung!

  I got online, onto a website with a lengthy list of Latin sayings. It didn’t take me long to find the right one.

  I entered extremis malis extrema remedia into the iPhone, making sure I got the spelling right.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  This time the reply came in less than a minute. Ne puero gladium.

  I guess it was my fault, I’d started it.

  I put that into Google Translate and got ‘not boy sword’, so I put it into Google and hit search and found out that it actually meant: Do not give a boy a sword.

  It was time to revert to my native tongue.

  dr chakrabarty, i’m afraid that’s the extent of my latin, I typed, thumbs dancing. i received another text message can I send it to you so you can translate it?

  I received the reply, It’s better we meet.

  Which was exactly what I’d hoped.

  when and where?

  The Seaway at six, came the reply.

  Did he mean the place where all the fishermen went? Or was there another Seaway?

  I was just about to send a text which seaway? when I thought better of it – it had to be that Seaway.

  It was a pretty unlikely place to meet a Classics teacher, but there again, Dr Chakrabarty was a pretty unlikely Classics teacher.r />
  Thursday

  Seaway

  The bus I caught to Seaway was crowded and I wondered why so many people seemed to be headed in that direction. But when I got there I could see why: there was some sort of rally.

  People were holding signs that said Save Straddie, Save Wavebreak, Save the Spit, No Cruise Ship Terminal!

  There were at least a couple of hundred protestors, and not the usual rent-a-crowd either: these people seemed to come from all walks of life.

  Old people, young people, and all of them pretty angry about the plans.

  ‘Two. Four. Six. Eight. Stick your terminal up your date!’ somebody chanted through a loudspeaker.

  Was Dr Chakrabarty amongst them?

  Holding up a sign in Latin, perhaps Ne puero gladium.

  I couldn’t see him, however.

  I was just about to move away from the crowd, to search for him further down the Seaway, when somebody behind clamped their hand on my shoulder.

  It was a very big hand, and it obviously belonged to a very big person.

  ‘Youngblood!’ said the owner of the hand.

  I should’ve guessed: Hound de Villiers, PI.

  But what was he doing here? He certainly wasn’t the first person who sprang to mind when I thought of political activism. Then I remembered – he lived on the Spit, and probably didn’t want a whole lot of cruise-ship passengers staring into his backyard while he sunbaked in his mankini.

  I remembered something else: the last time I’d talked to Hound it had been to ask him for a favour. I’d dangled the solid-gold carrot that was Yamashita’s Treasure in front of his double-bent nose.

  ‘So how’s life been treating you?’ he said.

  ‘Can’t complain,’ I replied – I can do mundane conversation as well as the next chump. ‘How about you, Hound?’

  ‘Work’s picking up,’ he said.

  We’d exchanged four banalities and still no hint of General Yamashita or his gold.

  ‘If you wanted some work over the holiday, Youngblood, I could use somebody like you,’ he said.

  Was he serious?

  Yes, he appeared to be.

  ‘I’ll see how I go,’ I said. ‘I’ve got your number.’

  ‘Why don’t you drop into the office?’ he said. ‘We could go out for Japanese.’

  He was obviously alluding to Yamashita’s Gold, but why was he talking in code like that? Then it came to me: when a large part of your job is covert surveillance, then you’re probably going to think that there’s always somebody watching, listening.

  ‘Yes, I really like Japanese food,’ I said. ‘The wasabi sure does the trick.’

  Hound gave me a funny look – the wasabi does what?

  I left him and his funny look and moved further up Seaway.

  I had a vague recollection of walking up here with Dad. Maybe we’d even gone fishing one day. But it must’ve been a long time ago, when I was a little kid.

  I wondered why we hadn’t come back, because it was a pretty cool place, especially for dads and sons.

  There were boats out at sea, crisscrossing the water. I watched as a couple of scuba divers entered the water from the rocks, disappearing with a flurry of bubbles.

  Again I thought of that scuba course – I had to keep hassling the olds.

  And there were fishermen everywhere.

  Some looked like they’d just wandered down with a rod. Ready to chance their luck.

  Others looked like they were waging piscatorial war. They had rods of varying lengths and thicknesses, hi-tech reels that gleamed in the sun, multiple tackle boxes, and a variety of cunning baits.

  And very comfortable chairs.

  But none of them was Dr Chakrabarty.

  I was starting to think that he’d stood me up – if that’s the right term – and I was going to be left here like a shag on a rock – if that’s the right expression.

  I was just about to text him when there was a commotion from behind me.

  I looked around. A short, slight man with a floppy sunhat was holding a rod, and the rod was bent double, and the reel was screaming.

  He’d hooked a monster.

  He was getting all sorts of advice from the crowd that had quickly assembled.

  ‘Hold your rod up higher.’

  ‘Hold your rod lower.’

  ‘Increase the drag.’

  ‘Decrease the drag.’

  Eventually the short man in the floppy sunhat rattled off something in a foreign language. Very foreign, like Latin or Ancient Greek.

  Chakra plus Barty equals Chakrabarty! Dr Chakrabarty!

  I’d walked right past him. Immediately I was reminded of the last time I’d seen him – in Italy, on the train to Calabria. And with that memory came a revelation: Dr Chakrabarty was The Debt! But that was just too much to get my head around. Way too much. So I right-clicked on that memory and hit delete.

  The very foreign language worked, the experts offering no further advice. Besides, it was pretty obvious that Dr Chakrabarty knew exactly what he was doing.

  He acknowledged me with a nod when I joined the crowd.

  The fish ran twice again, but Dr Chakrabarty played it expertly, eliciting murmurs of approval from the assorted onlookers.

  ‘Lovely touch,’ somebody remarked.

  Eventually Dr Chakrabarty said, ‘I believe we have colour.’

  I looked into the water: he was right, we had colour, a twist of silver down deep.

  ‘Dom, if you could assist me?’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘What do you need me to do?’

  ‘In the top of my tackle box there’s some pliers – could you get them for me?’

  I did as he asked.

  The fish was closer to the surface now – it looked like a kingfish to me, and it was enormous, at least twenty kilos.

  An even bigger crowd had gathered, keen to see the fish landed.

  ‘I’ve got a gaff if you need it,’ one man said.

  ‘Thank you, old chap, but that won’t be necessary,’ said Dr Chakrabarty.

  I saw a couple of people exchange amused glances – Old chap?

  ‘Do you think you could handle this?’ Dr Chakrabarty said, indicating the rod. ‘All you need to do is keep the tip up.’

  I wasn’t sure I could handle it at all, but this was an ideal opportunity to go one up in the favour bank, Hound-style.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, taking the rod.

  I did exactly – or tried to do exactly – as Dr Chakrabarty had requested, but it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Even though the kingfish was tired it still moved around.

  Dr Chakrabarty, pliers in hand, stepped carefully over the slippery rocks to the water’s edge.

  Once he was in position he said, ‘Bring it over here a bit, Dom.’

  I tried my best, coaxing the fish towards the doctor.

  He reached out and grabbed the line and my job was over.

  I hadn’t given much consideration to what Dr Chakrabarty was going to do.

  If anything, I’d thought that he was going to use the pliers to prise the hook out of the fish’s mouth and then he was going to hoist his catch up over the rocks.

  I was right about the first part.

  Dr Chakrabarty delicately removed the hook from the fish’s mouth.

  And then he released the fish back to sea.

  The assembled crowd found their voice again.

  ‘You idiot!’ somebody called.

  But a couple of people applauded as well.

  When Dr Chakrabarty clambered back up the rocks he was wearing an enormous smile.

  ‘What a tremendous beast,’ he said. ‘Such a pleasure to dance with it.’

  Okay, that was pretty weird. In what sort of dance does one of the dancers have a sharpened piece of high-tensile metal through its lip? But I sort of got what he meant.

  Now that the excitement was over the spectators dispersed, and Dr Chakrabarty rebaited and cast out his line again.

 
; ‘I never pegged you for a fisherman,’ I said.

  ‘No, not many people do,’ he said.

  We sat there in silence for a while, Dr Chakrabarty on his fold-up chair and me perched on top of the tackle box.

  Eventually Dr Chakrabarty said, ‘So, Pheidippides, you received another text?’

  ‘You can probably lose the Pheidippides thing now, Dr Chakrabarty.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I’ve given up running and I’ve taken up swimming instead.’

  ‘Pheidippides no longer,’ said Dr Chakrabarty, winding in some line. ‘Then you are Leander, who swam across the Hellespont every night!’

  ‘He did?’ I said, thinking I liked the sound of Leander, even if the idea of swimming at night freaked me out a fair bit. ‘But what for?’

  ‘To be with the lovely Hero, of course.’

  I was tempted to ask what happened to Leander, but not for long: my limited knowledge of the Classics told me mostly people came to grisly ends. That they were pretty much the world’s first action film.

  Apparently Pheidippides, my previous incarnation, dropped dead after running forty kilometres from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens to announce a Greek victory.

  ‘The text?’ said Dr Chakrabarty.

  I handed him my phone.

  He took it and read it, his eyebrows dancing, and a look of great concern appeared on his face. If he had written the texts then it was a very impressive acting performance – worthy of an Oscar, and several lesser awards.

  ‘So you have no idea who is sending you these threats?’ he said.

  Yes, of course I have an idea: it’s The Debt, I thought. But there’s no way I’m going to tell you that.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Surely you must have some inkling,’ he said, the slightest hint of impatience in his voice.

  It’s The Debt!

  But then something occurred to me, something really obvious: perhaps it wasn’t The Debt.

  ClamTop. The treadmill. Sure, The Debt communicated in unorthodox ways, but they communicated clearly. Catch the Zolt! Turn off the lights!

  Obscure Latin text messages weren’t really their style, were they?

  But then again, maybe obscure Latin text messages were exactly my style, because they were testing me, making sure I was the right person to send in search of Yamashita’s Gold.