The Diamond Dakota Mystery by Juliet Wills

Author:Juliet Wills [Wills, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: mystery
ISBN: 9781741147452
Goodreads: 2705823
Publisher: Allen Unwin
Published: 2006-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

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THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

of the invading enemy was the role of the Netherlands East Indies Exchange Institute (NEI). When Java looked certain to fall, the Exchange Institute negotiated the storage of valuables and money with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The

Australian government had set up a safe repository for gold and other valuables in late January 1942 at the jail in Broken Hill, a remote mining town 1160 kilometres west of Sydney in the outback of New South Wales. Short-term prisoners had been given early release, and long-term inmates were sent to Bathurst, another rural town, so that construction on the special steel-lined concrete vault with a grille and double combination-locked doors could be built in a space between blocks of cells. In February 1942 a heavily guarded train filled with gold ingots made the transfer from Sydney to the Broken Hill jail. From the air the enemy would never know that the jail held such valuable items. Gold and coins from the Javasche Bank were transported to the hidden repository with the help of the Exchange Institute.

Word of the rescue of the survivors of Smirnoff ’s DC-3 filtered across mainly Dutch networks. The wounded from the Carnot Bay crash had been transported to Perth’s Hollywood Hospital, still suffering from dehydration, burns, shrapnel or bullets embedded in their bodies, but for a time it seemed as if the world had forgotten them. No authorities visited or bothered

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to find out their story. It seemed to Captain Smirnoff that their harrowing ordeal was of no interest to anyone.

Smirnoff had been told to stay in hospital but the indignant Russian did not take well to such orders. He was desperate to get to Sydney to see Margot. He asked to see the Dutch Consul and demanded a flight east. On 15 March, after much begging and pleading, Smirnoff was heading for Melbourne.

Word travelled fast. Soon after he landed in Melbourne, the captain was approached by a well-dressed gentleman who

announced himself as a director of the Commonwealth Bank

of Australia.

‘Is there something you want to hand over to me?’ he asked with some urgency.

‘To hand over to you?’ Smirnoff replied, puzzled.

‘The packet which you were given in Bandung.’ The agitated banker’s face reddened as he spoke. ‘Where is the packet?’

Slowly it dawned on Smirnoff. Was he to be reprimanded

over the packet after all they had gone through? ‘I don’t know,’

he replied tersely.

‘You don’t know, as in it’s been handed over to someone

else, or—?’

‘I lost it,’ Smirnoff interrupted.

The banker was clearly annoyed. ‘But you were entrusted

to take good care of it.’

Smirnoff thought of all the things he had had to ‘take good care of ’ in that fateful week, and somehow the package didn’t seem too high on the list. Smirnoff did not want to share the

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