Fools' Gold

By Bob Scott

Urgently summoned from snowy France to tropical Thailand by Sam, his marine archaeologist daughter, Michael Scourie is thrust into a life-threatening situation as an unknown enemy seeks to destroy them and pillage the 16th Century wreck she has found.
Nine years later in the Hautes Corbieres, the nightmare returns when the true mastermind is revealed and grandson Will kidnapped, forcing Michael & Sam to recover an ancient treasure trove.
With the prospect of almost certain death upon completion of their task, they enter a battle of wits against a formidable evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781794700321

Book preview

Part I - Ko Khoki 2010

1. A Call for Help

I was delicately balanced on a window-sill with a loaded paintbrush in my hand when the phone rang. 'Damn!' I thought twice about it then balanced the brush on the rim of the tin and clambered back down to get there just before the answering service cut in. Allo, Michael Scourie ici.

Hi Dad.

Sam? And to what do I owe the honour of a Sunday afternoon call from Thailand?

I’ve been trying to find you for two days. What’s wrong with your mobile?

Helen bought me a new iPhone and I’m still waiting for my old number to be ported.

I didn’t think you’d be in les Moulins until Easter.

Ah well, the weather at home’s been awful and Helen’s in America for three weeks so I thought I might as well be here doing something useful.

I'd treated myself to a Eurostar ticket to Montpellier on Friday then collected the car from our apartment and came up to the house on Saturday.

Anyway, what’s wrong? She’d normally only call me for Xmas, my birthday and maybe Fathers’ Day if I was lucky.

Paul really needs your help with a seminar next weekend. A consultant’s let him down. Plus, something else has come up and I may have a problem with Will. Can you spare a few days?

A few days, are you joking? Ten thousand kilometres for a few days?

I need your help, Dad. Don’t argue - it’s important!

The last four words didn’t need emphasising; we’d agreed years before if and when they should ever be used. Mentioning her husband Paul and son Will might be true but only part of the story. Something serious was going on. She obviously didn’t want to say too much over the phone.

OK but let’s make it a fortnight. I’m not flying all that way and messing up my body clock for just a few days in the sun.

Fair enough.

She said that she'd book me a flight out of Heathrow for the next evening. I'd have to pick up the ticket up at the EVA-Air desk.

Tomorrow! As quick as that? It’s already four o’clock here.

I know. Don’t worry, Paul’s paying so I’ll make it Elite class.

Next day and Elite class! Something really was urgent, she wouldn’t be getting much change out of £1200. To make it in time, I’d have to get a lunchtime flight to Stansted then a bus round to Heathrow.

OK. I’ll see if I can get a ticket but it’ll cost you for a next day Ryanair flight. Anything else?

Make sure you’ve got adequate worldwide health insurance.

Hospitals were horrendously expensive in Thailand. A friend of Paul had recently discharged himself because of the cost then died at home from internal bleeding.

Right, I said. I’ll call you back in an hour if all's OK.

I hung up and wiped the paint off my hands and phone. I’d been finishing a window frame. After making a cup of tea I began work on the Web.

Health-wise I should be alright, my inoculations were up to date. I’d just finished a course of injections for typhoid and hepatitis A & B. Malaria wasn't likely unless you were going way-up on the mainland so the insurance was easy, a yearly international policy for £82.

There'd be no need to arrange for currency as there were lots of ATMs that accepted UK cards, thus I had everything set up within an hour.

I had to be in Carcassonne by midday but could leave the car there without breaking the bank. I’d have nearly five hours to get from Stansted to Heathrow so shouldn’t be too pushed. I just hoped there wouldn’t be more than the normal M25 Monday afternoon traffic.

Helen was somewhere between New York and Chicago so I left her a voice message then started shutting up the house. Fortunately I hadn’t been doing anything major so had everything cleared by seven o’clock.

Next, I packed. No hold luggage, just one small piece of hand luggage containing my toiletries, laptop and a change of clothes for the day after arrival. My jacket and slacks would pass muster for any meetings. I’d managed thirty years of business trips with not much more than that. Anything else, I’d buy out there and dump before leaving.

Just before nine while having a bite of supper I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw it had started to snow. A quick check on the web forecast said bad! Heavy snow would be coming in from the north-east overnight and next forty-eight hours. I had to leave fast or be stuck. Two years previously we’d been snowed-in with no power, landline or mobiles for three days, and that was in May, let alone early March.

I called to book a room in Carcassonne and told them I’d be there by about eleven-thirty. I then made a flask of coffee, cleared the fridge, grabbed my bag, ski jacket, gloves, woolly hat, and a blanket just in case, and was out the door.

Four cm of snow had already settled on the terrace by the time I locked the front shutters and went carefully down the slippery front steps to the basement. There, I collected a shovel and chainsaw. This may sound over the top but I’d once had to reverse three kilometres down a snowy mountain road because of a tree toppled by snow.

Piling everything into the car, I started it and left the headlights on so I could see to lock up, then went quickly back to shut off the water and leave the system draining. Finally, I turned off the power and padlocked the big old double doors. Total time fifteen minutes which was pretty good. It usually took me an hour minimum to clear that house and leave.

It was a white-out and five cm deep by the time I set off with the gearbox in 'Snow' mode. Not a blizzard as there was no wind, just a silent and incredibly heavy dump of huge flakes. In normal circumstances it would have been very pretty in the light from our hamlet’s sole street lamp, over by the picnic tables opposite the house.

I kept the radio off, needing to hear contact with the road; hence it was very quiet with just a gently revving engine and the wipers labouring flick-flack, flick-flack across the screen as they struggled to keep pace.

Just as well that there was nobody else mad enough to be out compacting things as I didn't have time to fit my snow chains. Although, our six-year-old Renault automatic was a front-wheel-drive which helped.

The first two kilometres were downhill along a narrow, twisty D-road cut into the wall of the gorge. This, I had to negotiate gingerly, to avoid sliding into the cliff-face on my left or over the edge on the right. Barriers were only provided on precipices up there and a few scrubby trees would never save me from plunging thirty metres into the river. I wouldn’t be found for months, if ever.

It took me ten minutes to reach the main road, a misnomer as it was just a seven-metre-wide, steep, winding single carriageway. I then had to drive twenty-five kilometres due-west over largely uninhabited mountains. The first five were all upwards to the Col du Paradis at over six hundred metres. Going uphill gave me more control but the snow deepened as I got higher; those fifteen minutes seemed a lot longer.

Near the top, several small trees had already been toppled but fortunately not right across the road. This was where I once had to give-up. Cresting the col in ten cm of fresh soft snow, I breathed a sigh of relief and stopped to calm down with a cup of coffee. Had it not been for Sam I would have turned back at that point and gone to sit in front of a roaring fire with a beer but her call for help was completely uncharacteristic. She definitely felt in danger.

After a few minutes, I pulled my jacket hood up and got out to clear packed snow from around the wiper arms. There was still no traffic which was just as well because going downhill for the next fifteen kilometres meant that I had less control and a greater chance of coming to grief. In my favour, the weather was coming from behind and it began to ease off in the lee of the mountain.

On a clear day that stretch would have been very scenic, looking south to the High Pyrenees and Andorra but this was serious stuff with a couple of really scary moments when I slid sideways on precipitous hairpins.

As I crawled through the villages of Arques and Serres there wasn’t a sign of life other than an occasional lit window. After that, the run down into Couiza became easier. When I turned north onto the main D118 there was only a couple of cm on the ground and the gritters were out so at least somebody was being paid overtime for the crap weather. From then on there was enough light traffic to keep things clear which made things better through Limoux. Towards Carcassonne it degenerated into sleety rain.

Arriving just after eleven-thirty, I took full advantage of an empty hotel bar to treat myself to a much deserved cognac. The barman, who doubled as night porter then showed me up to a comfortable warm room.

Next morning, I made the most of my continental breakfast to stock up on fluid and rolls as there wouldn’t be much time for meals during the day. At ten-thirty I headed off to the airport, dumped the car in long-term parking and went to wait patiently in Departures. My anticipated early Spring break in France had lasted just three days.

There was the usual Ryanair self congratulatory fanfare as we arrived on time in Stansted. Nevertheless, I was grateful enough for their reliability. Traffic was indeed light on the M25 and the National Express bus made good time. I was in Heathrow and collecting my ticket by five o’clock, a great relief after the previous twenty-four hours.

Having been through Terminal 3 before, I knew what to expect. A fifty-year-old facility, built when planes only had a hundred passengers, not three hundred. I normally avoid Heathrow. However, a bonus was that the EVA-Air check-in staff gave me a boarding pass for the Bangkok to Ko Khoki leg which saved later hassle.

The plane was a 777 and my expensive seat really comfortable. This was just as well because the overnight flight was going to take eleven hours.

Our departure for Bangkok finally took off at ten-thirty. Settling in, I tried working on the course notes that Sam had e-mailed but it was just too noisy to concentrate. I’d had a long day and soon gave up in favour of watching a film before finally snuggling under a blanket and dozing off somewhere over eastern Europe.

We arrived in Bangkok at three-forty-five in the afternoon. After the snowy cold of Europe it seemed I’d walked into a furnace.

The amazing futuristic terminal building consisted of huge hexagonal glass panels set in a steel framework, like a giant poly tunnel with four interior levels.

Although attractive and air conditioned, the transfer from International to Domestic was more than a kilometre via a combination of travelators, escalators and good old fashioned walking. There were signposts everywhere. Even so, I still managed to take a wrong turning for a few hundred metres. It was a good thing I only had a light bag and two hours to make the connection.

I joined about forty other people in a small lounge, where we waited half-an-hour before being taken in a bus just forty metres out to our plane. I couldn’t believe it - a small turbo-prop!

The take-off was fine but my ticker skipped a beat as the engines faltered when the pilot throttled back and gave us a bit of a lurch as we circled round to head south. By then I felt hungry and thirsty so the fruit drinks and chicken-salad rolls dished out by the hostesses were very welcome.

Two rows in front of me on the other side of the aisle, I noticed two big shaven-headed Caucasian guys having a muted heads-together conversation. Both looked to be in their mid-thirties and eastern European, maybe Russian but they obviously lived locally since neither had a jacket or hand luggage and were just in shirtsleeves.

Each turned and checked around the cabin, giving me a long stare. I took them to be bouncers or enforcers and avoided eye contact. They looked hard as nails, not the sort of people to upset.

Our hop down to Ko Khoki took an hour-and-a-half. At that point, London seemed a very distant world, nine thousand, six hundred kilometres north-west and seven hours behind local time. Our destination was ninety kilometres west of the Thai mainland Isthmus of Kra. The island is only a thirty kilometre square. It's seven hundred kilometres south-west of Bangkok and about the same, north-west of Singapore.

It was dark at eight o’clock as we came in on a very low approach over a pretty view of beach restaurant fairy lights. I still felt comfortably warm as they ferried us on open noddy train carts to a tiny and obviously new native-style arrivals hall, complete with thatched roof and subdued lighting. The whole area was pleasantly embellished with trees and perfumed plants, all obviously designed to be in keeping with a tropical holiday paradise theme.

Without hold luggage I was straight through Arrivals then stood around outside for ten minutes before wandering off to look for Sam. She’d been waiting at the designated meeting point, which for some strange reason was in the next building. It was a relief to find her since I hadn’t been able to make contact as arranged while waiting in Bangkok.

She looked well, bronzed and fit, having regained her svelte figure after eighteen months of motherhood. We hugged. Hello Sam, or should it be Samiana now that you’ve finished your archaeology PhD?

Smiling, she said Sam will do but Dr. Camps if you want to be formal.

It was only a short drive as we were headed for the north-east side of the island. This was just as well because her little Suzuki jeep pickup bounced about alarmingly on leaf-spring suspension that was rock-hard. Between bumps I asked Well, what have you been up to lately?

Her answer was somewhat oblique, she obviously didn’t want to say too much. I’ve been busy catching up. We had to do a visa trip last weekend.

One of the lesser known drawbacks of living in Thailand is that you are only allowed thirty days without a visa. That's enough for most tourists but even with a visa you can only stay for a maximum of ninety days. After that, you have to leave and re-enter the country.

Sounds like a real pain.

Certainly is. All us expats have to fly abroad or take a boat trip to the mainland, then drive down to Malaysia or up to Burma, just to walk through the border and back again.

Of course the enterprising locals organise visa runs for all this nonsense but it's a long day with a hairy bus ride on the mainland.

She suddenly braked hard, jolting me into my seatbelt when a scrawny white dog closely pursued by another, shot across our headlamp beams. After that she kept quiet, concentrating on driving until we turned out of the side road from the airport onto a highway with sporadic street lights.

I’ve booked you into a hotel near our place. It’s half a kilometre south of the village and main beach.

Right. What about transport?

There's no buses so we’ll ferry you around.

The only public service was Tuc-Tucs, large pickups with bench seats in the back. They crawled along and caused huge jams. Car hire cost around £14 per day and scooters £3 but they were suicidal.

OK thanks. That was good. I had no intention of trying to kill myself on a scooter and really didn’t want the bother of hiring a car, even if they did seem to be mostly driving on the left.

Dropping me off outside the hotel cum restaurant that was set in a parade of shops, she laughed They do a nice English breakfast, so you won’t starve.

Thanks, I might need that. It currently feels like lunchtime to me.

She pointed out a lane in the trees opposite. Our place is just over there, first house, eighty metres down on the right. Come over after you've had breakfast.

I checked in and was shown up to a double room with en-suite and air conditioning that I made full use of, being totally un-acclimatised to the warmth and humidity. Sam had told me there wasn’t much seasonal difference, although November was rainy and April/May very hot.

After making a much needed cup of tea, I sent Helen a slightly sadistic email saying where I was and wishing her well with the snow shoes in Chicago. Before gratefully stretching out, I set both my watch and mobile alarms for eight o’clock, otherwise God-knows what time I’d surface,

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2. The Wreck

The breakfast menu had some odd choices. A few transient locals were engrossed in slurping at bowls of a thin green/grey liquid that had the appearance of boiled cabbage water - distinctly unappetising. I opted for cereals followed by a fried egg on toast.

After a second cup of tea while perusing the local English-language newspapers, I set off. I was still trying to get my head around the fact that it was just after nine on a Wednesday morning but felt like the middle of the night. Two days of my life had just vanished in a haze of travelling and time shift.

Sam’s place was a large dark-wooden structure set thirty metres back from the lane in the welcoming shade of a coconut grove. Positioned in a large plot, it was surrounded by a one-metre-high wall with a big metal gate.

The house itself was curiously built on stilts, the ground floor thus being a large open area with just a kitchen at the rear. Access to upstairs was via an external staircase that led up to a wide veranda.

Will was happily playing in the shade under the house with a young local girl. From photos we'd received, I recognised her as Par, his minder, who’d been hired to free up Sam’s time during weekdays. He hadn’t seen me since three months old, hence a bit wary of a complete stranger.

I left them playing when called upstairs by Sam. Her office was between their two en-suite bedrooms fronted by the veranda and, she wanted to show me something she was working on.

Apparently, a local beach trip had been promised so after ten minutes, Will was strapped into his buggy and wheeled off by Par. Sam and I trailed behind. Following the concrete lane, we strolled down a gentle slope through the coconut grove for two hundred metres to a small beach.

It was a beautiful picture, clear blue sky with a gentle cooling breeze creating short choppy waves that rolled up onto soft yellow sand. Deserted, apart from a hundred metres to the left, where two guys had just arrived on a scooter for some fishing from a short, rickety old wooden pier.

We sat under the shade of palm trees and I remarked: This is lovely, just like the brochures.

Sam nodded. Yes but don’t believe everything you see.

The area in front of the hotel lawn was kept scrupulously clean by a team of gardeners, they even cleared out the seaweed. However, eighty metres to our right, all sorts of rubbish, including used syringes had floated in. I asked Are drugs a big problem here?

Not really, they’re very hot on it nowadays.

Par and Will were several metres away, having a game of dodging the waves while paddling. He was wearing a shirt and baseball cap to keep the sun off. I said He’s growing fast, eighteen months now and becoming quite mobile; what’s the problem Sam?

She looked somewhat preoccupied. Can we leave that for later, I’d like to talk about something else first while we can’t be overheard.

I thought you seemed careful. What’s going on?

She was pretty sure their landline and possibly the house were being bugged, maybe the pickup as well but didn't have the kit to do a sweep.

I’ve asked Paul to pick something up while he’s in Bangkok; he’ll be back this evening.

Paul was marketing director for a large and expensive Spa Hotel complex, twenty kilometres south.

What does he think about it? I asked.

He doesn’t know.

She'd told him he should have something for his office to safeguard client confidentiality as they’d started advertising the hotel as an off-site conference venue. I gave her a quizzical look.

It’s better he doesn’t know too much at the moment.

OK. So now tell me, or am I just here on a jolly?

Certainly not.

She explained that the whole region had been badly hit by the Boxing Day tsunami. It was only just recovering when the financial crisis came. Consequently, the previous November, Paul had asked her to look into the possibility of wreck sites for diving, to try and encourage some business.

She'd made a trip to Bangkok and checked the charts and records for the last hundred years but there was very little except for a small tramp steamer of about 2500 tons that sank in 1933. The site wasn't well known as it