downstairs. In the galley I found the ingredients for a cooked breakfast, so I cooked them and brewed two cups of coffee. I took the results upstairs and we ate, drank and swallowed as we watched the Gulf come to life. The thin line of mangroves to the east was a rich, glistening green. I had once been told they were the southernmost mangroves in the world; clinging grimly to the mud, they certainly looked marginal to me. A pelican flew in low for an inelegant touchdown, and terns and seagulls keened along the edge of the water. There was almost no wind. Tasso turned the shipâs wheel and we chiselled a wide arc in the now-blue, passive sea until we were heading almost due south. We were a couple of kilometres out and I could see two sea-kayakers straining their shoulders in our direction, perhaps in some sort of race out from the shore. Soon they were far behind us. The city sat in the shadow of the hills. The bow of our boat was cutting clean through the sparkling sea, but the city looked dirty and stagnant.
We cruised for a couple of hours, running southward along the fat phallic stub of the Fleurieu Peninsula, Kangaroo Island in the distance ahead and the patterned green vineyards of McLaren Vale to the east. The vineyards gave way to the bald hills of Willunga, where the tree-plantings of enthusiasts looked like hair plugs on the scalp of the land. We anchored about half a kilometre off shore, well out from the Rapid Bay jetty. Tasso checked that the anchor held in the sand and looked at me. He was wearing a hideous pair of wraparound sunglasses.
âWhatâs going on?â I said.
âSoon.â
I followed him into the galley, where we loaded an esky with ice, beer and bait and carried it to the back deck. Tasso handed me a fishing rod and a beer and grabbed one of each for himself. We put our beers in stubby-holders to keep them cold.
âItâs early in the morning, I know, but who cares?â
âYouâre rich. You can do what you like.â
âYou bet I can.â
We twisted the tops off the beer, baited our hooks, cast our lines and sat back. Judging by the rigs and bait, we were after whiting, a tasty, modest-sized fish that was rare in the Gulf these days. Tasso sipped his beer. âNow we can talk,â he said.
He stowed his rod in a holder and fetched the map case from the cockpit. He pulled a sheet of paper from it and handed it to me. It was grubby, and it had fold marks on it from time spent in someoneâs shirt pocket. It bore the letterhead of a Perth-based metallurgical assay company and was dated about eighteen months earlier. Under the heading âResults of requested assayâ was a small table. It had two lines. The first read âAu: 16.4 g/tâ and the second âAg: 3.22 g/tâ. There was a sentence at the bottom to the effect that these values were correct but the company that produced them wouldnât be held responsible if it turned out theyâd ballsed up. I looked on the reverse, but it was blank. Tasso was watching me.
âThis is all?â
He leaned towards me. âThereâs more. What do you think so far?â
âItâs a pretty high assay for gold, about as high as they get these days, but on its own it doesnât mean much.â
I handed the paper back to him. There was a lull; the boat sat still on the quiet sea. A seagull flew over us, mewing. Tasso withdrew another sheet of paper from his folder and handed it to me. It was on the same letterhead but dated about six months after the first. It too was grubby and it too contained the results of an assay: 16.7 grams per tonne of gold and 2.11 grams per tonne of silver.
âThey belonged to Mick Hiskey, those two bits of paper,â said Tasso. âA few months ago, when I was still living in Perth, he called me out of the blue and said he wanted to meet up. I was coming to Adelaide a bit and next time I was in town we arranged to have a drink. I