Gold

About the Book

‘Gold’ is a story of the sea and sailing a small boat. It tells of how Greed, Greed alone enmeshes a young couple and pushes them to do things completely foreign to their nature- up to and including major theft and murder.

David, a young English solicitor, wants a bigger boat and a newer boat (like all sailors). He leaves his young American wife Mickey in London, while he flies to Rome where their boat Caliban is moored on the Tiber river near the major airport, Fiumicino. He intends to do a full weeks work on it preparing the bedraggled old yacht for their annual cruise in the Mediterranean. Mickey will join him when the boat is ready and off they will go to Sardinia and Corsica.

The Tiber is a strange landscape, almost sinister, an unlikely mooring for yachts; though 1000 of them are tied up there in a five mile stretch leading to the sea. There are various inelegant marinas lining its banks but its main asset is convenience, near the great city of Rome, near the airport. Owners find all kinds of things floating by, mostly the wispy shapes of condoms, and garbage of course.  But it is not unknown for large plastic bags containing severed body parts to snag on the bulrushes. Then the police take an interest. If by chance a yacht owner were to fall into these murky depths a visit to he nearest hospital would certainly be in order. Sometimes the water smells. Most of the time it doesn’t. David likes it, likes the laid back marina restaurants which serve spaghetti alla vongole, pizzas. He has worn the same ragged cutoff jeans for almost a week.

So he is perfectly happy doing the necessaries to his beloved Caliban, beginning work at dawn, drinking a bottle of wine at supper, and sacking out. Far above his tiny boat looms a large power cruiser, ‘Our Good Thing’ (translation….Cosa Nostra). Its owners , one Sicilian, one American, take an unusual interest in David and his small craft and after a lot of hemming and hawing they make him an offer he can’t refuse. Knowing that they are constantly watched by the police, they ask him to transport to a tiny island off Sardinia, a large quantity of gold bars to be picked up there and re-exported abroad to various off shore accounts. David is sorely tempted as the risks seem minimal. Thinking of the new sailboat he would most definitely be able to afford, he actually agrees to the cockeyed illegal proposition.

Mickey arrives a few days later and of course David does not admit any of this to her, knowing she would disapprove. They set out for Sardinia and the trip is normal in everyway, though Micky becomes aware that they are being followed, mentioning this to David, who ignores her. She also makes a course change without telling her husband, which throws their pursuers into panic Thus, In the middle of their second night, Mickey, on watch, hears the sound of someone swimming , crying out, and picks up a man in the water, a very dangerous man who will change their lives forever.

About the Author

Pat Richmond has lived in Europe most of her life. She has worked as an artist and web designer. Italy, where she lived for a long time in the sixties and seventies is the background for ‘Gold’ and it is based on twenty years sailing the Mediterranean with her husband aboard their 38 foot ketch, Prospero