Evans could feel himself blushing. Trubetskoi’s two associates continued to snigger. Well, he thought, I need the money and beggars can’t be choosers. He’d just have to swallow his pride and banish the discomfort he was feeling and get on with it. “Very well. I’ll go through the pictures. As to the furniture, I can also give you a view, but it will be less reliable than as regards the paintings.”
Trubetskoi tapped one of his shiny black shoes with his cane and smiled. “Please, go ahead.” Jake walked to the back of the lock-up and removed the tarpaulin covering the crates. Evans followed him, pulling out a notebook from his trouser pocket. From the first crate he removed a delicate nineteenth-century watercolour and started to write.
Chapter 11
Cartagena, Spain 1937
Rain drifted in from the west in intermittent squalls. The wind ruffled the papers of the manifest and occasionally dislodged one from the Colonel’s clipboard, requiring one or other of his guards to hurry and retrieve it. He sat under a dripping awning on the quayside watching the sodden sailors working away at their task. Grishin cleaned his spectacles for what seemed like the hundredth time. It was gone midnight and he was desperate for his bed, but he had to see the job through. He thought with irritation of Orlov, his superior, who had dumped this job on him. Orlov would get all the credit for it, of course. No doubt he was enjoying the comforts of his beautiful Spanish mistress’ bed at this moment. Grishin stroked his greying moustache then waved at one of the naval officers supervising the loading. “How much longer do you think?”
“Another four hours I should think, sen?r. We are on the last ship now. Another twenty lorry loads or thereabouts?”
“Thank you, Captain. Carry on.” Grishin took out a hipflask from inside his greatcoat and took a swig. This Spanish brandy wasn’t so bad when you got used to it. “Hey, Sasha. Want a drop?”
Grishin’s second-in-command emerged from the gloom to his left. “No, thank you, Colonel. My stomach is playing me up tonight.”
“Must be that paella you had for dinner. I warned you to keep to the ham.”
“Yes, Colonel. You were no doubt right, as always.” Sasha settled back into his canvas chair and pulled his hat down over his forehead.
At 5.30am, the captain reported that loading was complete. Three hours later, as the first glimmer of light illuminated the cloudbanks to the east, a black government vehicle pulled up to Grishin’s station. Two men got out of the back and walked over to the Russian group.
“I thought you were aiming to be here at six, Sen?r Mendez Aspe? Sasha and my boys have been sitting in this god-awful place since yesterday lunchtime. I would have thought you might have the decency to keep to your appointments!”
Mendez Aspe, a tall, skeletal man from the Spanish Treasury turned to his companion, a similar physical specimen but even taller than he, and shrugged. “My apologies, Colonel. The road was not in the best condition because of the weather. It’s a good job we had got the gold down here already. If we had been transporting it by road from Madrid this week I think it would never have got here.”
Grishin grunted, drank again from the brandy flask and rose to his feet. “Very well, gentlemen. Let’s get to business. My assistant, Sasha here, whom you both know, has had a couple of our accountants making a physical audit of the material now loaded onto our vessels. At the same time, your treasury officials have been doing the same. I have here the manifest of your people responsible for the material in the caves where it was stored. This shows a total of 7,800 boxes in the consignment. Sasha, go and get your men and Sen?r Mendez Aspe’s people and let’s see if everything tallies. Then I can go and have a long soak in a bath, a good breakfast and twelve hours’ sleep! Off you go.”
Sasha headed off in the direction of the nearest lorries while Grishin accepted the invitation of the Spanish officials to join them in the drier and warmer comfort of the Hispano-Suiza limousine they had travelled in. Feeling a little more benign, Grishin offered his flask around.
Mendez Aspe and his colleague shook their heads and declined. “So, Colonel. You will not be travelling with the consignment yourself?”