Fool's Gold (6 page)

“What are you doing?”

“Listening for oncoming trains.”

“You can hear a train?” I asked anxiously.

“I can't hear anything … which means we can cross the trestle.”

“What?”

“We have to cross the trestle to get to the other side of the creek.”

“But why do we have to cross? The camp is on
this
side of the creek.”

“That's why we have to cross. Even if somebody does see us they won't think anything about it if we're not actually on the grounds of the camp.”

Jack started down the tracks toward the trestle and again I trailed after him. As he started to move across the bridge I stopped and studied it. It was long and looked to be pretty high in the middle.

“You coming?” Jack yelled.

I didn't like heights and I didn't think this was such a smart idea, but what choice did I have? Slowly I
started across the trestle. Within a dozen steps the ground underneath the track bed dropped away. Now it was just the rails, held together by the wooden ties and nothing but open air in between. Carefully I took a step to the next tie. They were wide, but not as wide as the gaps between them—gaps that were certainly big enough to let me fall through. I took another step, and then another. With each step the ground was falling farther and farther away. Just how far down would the creek be when I was in the middle?

“Hurry up!” Jack hissed at me.

I looked up. He was already standing on the far side.

“Do you want somebody to see you?” he demanded.

“I'm hurrying as fast as I can,” I said. I dropped my eyes back to my feet. I stepped onto the next tie, first with one foot and then the other. I did the same thing again, and then again, and then again. Between the ties I could see the creek flowing below. It was a strange effect, the water rushing by underneath from right to left while I was moving forward. It made it feel like the bridge itself was moving … like my stomach was moving.

“George!” Jack hissed. “I think I hear a train.”

My head jerked up. Anxiously I looked beyond Jack and along the tracks. I didn't see anything. I looked back over my shoulder. Nothing. I didn't see
anything … I didn't hear anything … at least I didn't think so.

“Hurry up!”

I looked down at the next tie. I stepped onto it. Rather than bring my other foot forward onto that tie I stepped straight to the next. Maybe I didn't have time to take baby steps. I kept on taking the ties one at a time, one after the other. There couldn't be that many more now. I could see that the ground was starting to rise to meet the rails again. As the ground got closer I got more confident and started to move faster and faster. I stopped when I reached Jack's side and waited for the pounding in my chest to settle down.

“Took you long enough.”

“But I'm here,” I said, looking down the tracks. “So where's the train?”

Jack smirked. “I didn't really hear one, but I thought you needed a little encouragement.”

He had put me through all that for nothing? “You know, Jack, sometimes you're a real—” I stopped myself mid-sentence. I heard something. Jack turned around.

Then we both saw it. Up the tracks, steaming toward us, was a train! It was a fair way down the tracks but it was moving incredibly quickly for something that big. I was mesmerized by it.

Jack grabbed my arm and yanked me off the tracks! We plunged, feet first, down the embankment,
skidding, sending an avalanche of cinders and stones down before us. I hit the bottom and tumbled forward, landing face first in a heap. I turned to look up at the engine and there was a blast of air and my face was pummelled with a shower of grit and cinders. The ground underneath me was shaking. I watched, my eyes partially shielded by a hand, as car after car thundered by. It was a long, long train. Finally the caboose swished past, and the shaking and the sound got softer and softer until both were gone completely.

“You planning on lying there all day?” Jack asked.

Embarrassed, I got to my feet and brushed myself off.

“Lucky thing I lied to you to get you moving,” Jack said. “If I hadn't, you'd be a stain on the tracks right about now.”

A little shiver went up my spine. He was probably right. If I hadn't started to move faster I would have still been on the trestle when I saw the train, and if I'd frozen or fallen or—

“You can always count on me,” Jack said. “At least, count on me to give you a hard time. Come on, let's get moving.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

JACK PICKED UP THE RECEIVER
of the telephone. We were at a pay phone at the side of a little gas station on the highway. It was the first phone we'd been able to find. Jack held the phone so I could listen in to the conversation. He dialled zero and the phone started to ring.

“Operator,” a nasally voice sang out.

“Yeah … hi … we have to make a call … a collect call.”

“What is the number?” she asked.

Jack held the phone against his shoulder and unfolded the paper. He read out the numbers.

“And who should I say is calling?” the operator asked.

“Jack … Jack Braun.”

“Hold please, Mr. Braun.” The line suddenly went silent.

“Let me do all the talking,” Jack said.

I nodded my head.

“They have accepted the charges,” the operator said. “I'm connecting the call.”
There was a click. “Hello?” Jack said.

“Hello,” came a voice—the familiar voice of that man. “Is that you, Jack?”

“It's me.”

“I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. It's been less than twenty-four hours, and I gave you three days.”

“You want the gold and we want our mother. There was no point in waiting any longer than we had to,” Jack said.

We did want her back as soon as possible. We also knew that the more we probed the camp the greater the chance we would get caught. We'd travelled the length of the creek, right down to the lake, and it was unguarded. The creek was still the best choice, and there was no point in looking any farther.

“So, I'm assuming that you've found a way in.”

“We know how to do it.”

“Excellent. Where shall I have my men meet you?”he asked.

“We're not meeting them anywhere until we know our mother is safe,” Jack said.

“She's safe.”

“We want to talk to her.”

“You'll be able to talk to her as soon as you get here with the gold.”

“We're not meeting your men and we're not bringing you any gold until we know that she's okay,” Jack insisted.

“You're not in any position to be dictating terms to me,” the man said, his voice now ominously angry.

“That depends on how much you want the gold,” Jack pointed out.

“And that depends on whether or not you ever want to see your mother alive again,” he threatened.

“Until we talk to her, we don't even know that she still
is
alive.”

The man started to chuckle. His laughter was even more frightening. “Hang on,” he said.

Jack slipped his hand over the mouthpiece. “I think he's gone to get her.”

Seconds turned to a full minute, and I was starting to feel more and more anxious.

“Hello, Jack?”

“Mom!” we both yelled out.

“George, are you there too?”

“We're both here. Are you okay?” Jack asked.

“I'm fine.”

“They haven't hurt you, have they?” Jack asked.

“No. They've been treating me well … as well as you can treat a prisoner. Are you boys all right?”

“We're fine. We'll be there by tomorrow.”

“Boys, you can't risk—”

“Satisfied?” the man said, his voice replacing our mother's. “She's fine, and she'll stay fine as long as you continue to cooperate. Now, where and when do my men meet you?”

“They should come along Highway 2 until they hit Corbett's Creek. It's just outside of Whitby before you come to Oshawa. There's a spot for them to pull off the road just east of the creek. They need to be there by seven o'clock. Can they do that?”

“That's no problem.”

“And they need to bring a rubber raft big enough to hold four people.”

“That might be a little more difficult to come by,” he said.

“Difficult or impossible?” Jack asked.

“We'll arrange it. My men will be there at seven. Anything else?” he asked.

“Nothing. Except I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“These two guys you're sending, how do we know that they can be trusted?”

“You have nothing to worry about, they'll cooperate with you fully.”

“No,” Jack said. “I mean, how do you know
you
can trust them? How do you know they won't just get the gold and then take off, leaving all of us high and dry?”

The man laughed. “No worries.”

“Yeah, I know you're saying that, but I don't want to go to all the risk of getting the gold out and then have these guys take off. How do I know they're trustworthy?”

“You know for the same reason we can trust you to do what we agreed,” he said.

For a second I wondered if that meant that he had
their
mothers hostage, but I knew that was stupid.

“You're to be trusted because a member of your family is dependent on you being trustworthy,” he explained. “These two men are family.”

“They're your cousins or something?” Jack asked.

The three of them looked nothing alike, so I couldn't imagine them being related.

“Not cousins,” he said. “More like brothers. We're a family business. Everybody in the organization has taken an oath, and we would never turn our backs on our brothers. I would trust these two with my life, so you should trust them too.” He paused and then chuckled slightly. “Actually, you
are
trusting them with your lives, and your mother's.”

He was right, and that thought made me feel shivery all over.

“Besides, nobody would ever double-cross me,” he said. “If they even tried I would hunt them down like dogs and kill them, slowly and painfully.”

I knew that threat was aimed at us.

“And one more thing,” Jack said. “Have them dress like they're going fishing and bring along fishing rods and a tackle box and bait.”

“Very smart. That way if somebody sees you they'll think you're just a couple of kids with their
fathers out on a little fishing trip. My compliments. You boys have really thought this through. I had my doubts at first,” he said, “but I think if anybody can pull it off, you two can.”

“We'll hold up our end of the bargain. You just keep yours.”

“My word is as good as gold … as good as the gold you're going to be bringing to me. Now, is there anything else?”

“Nothing. We'll be there.” Jack hung up the phone.

I tilted my head to the side so I could see Jack's watch. It was a few minutes before seven. We were hidden behind some bushes, close enough to see the road but far enough not to be seen by anybody driving by. It was still early enough in the evening for the road to be well travelled. We'd seen lots of cars and a number of big trucks—some of them probably coming from the DIL munitions plant in Ajax, just down the road. That was where our mother used to work. It always made us nervous that she was working in the middle of a factory filled with explosives.

We were happier when she started working at Camp 30—not that being just a couple of fences away from five hundred German prisoners-of-war was that much better. Now, I just wished she were working at the factory instead of being where she was tonight.

“They should be here by now,” I whispered.

“It's just a minute past seven. They'll be coming. They want the gold. It only seems like they're late because we've been waiting so long.”

Jack had made us come to the meeting stop over an hour before the agreed time. He said he wanted to be in a place where he could watch things in case they were going to try to pull a fast one on us, maybe bring along extra people or something like that. I hated waiting but I knew that it was the smart thing to do. From where we were we could see everything that was coming or going along the road for half a mile in each direction. The only way somebody could come up on us was from behind, and that wouldn't work. First off, since we were in position, staying quiet, nobody would even know where we were to sneak up on us. And second, anybody coming through the woods would make enough noise for us to hear them approaching. We were safe.

“I've been thinking about how we have to act around these guys,” Jack said quietly.

“I'll try to be calm.”

“No, I was thinking you should act scared.”

“Believe me, I won't have to
act
scared.”

Jack smiled.

“I can do it. I just don't understand. Why do you want me to act that way?”

“You know how when a duck is sitting on the water it looks really calm but its legs are moving really fast?”

“Um, yeah, I guess, but what has that got to do with us?”

“We have to be the opposite of that duck. We have to be calm underneath, thinking things through, but on the surface we have to appear to be nervous, unsure, to throw them off. We want them to see us as just a couple of stupid kids who don't know anything, who they don't have to worry about.”

“And while we're acting scared on the surface, we're thinking, and they won't realize we're thinking.”

“They'll underestimate us,” Jack said. “It's just like Bill once told us: when they train spies they tell them to put on a big smile, or even act like they're simple or stupid, so that nobody suspects them.”

“That all makes sense. I just wish they'd get here.”

“We didn't give them much time,” Jack added.