Gold (25 page)

Marcus shrugged. “Even if what you said were true, you may as well blame the metal itself for the evil it causes. I’ve got as much moral responsibility as a gold bar.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Who said it was easy?” Marcus hissed with sudden vehemence. “I’ve spent my life stripping away all the hypocrisy that moralists wrap around us. I’ve sacrificed more than most people ever think of having to get free of that.” He settled back into the seat. “The world is the way it is, and I’m just part of it.”

“Did you kill Kraml?”

Marcus gently tapped off the ash of his cigar. “I liked Kraml.” He looked Drew in the eye. “I miss him a lot. He had a lot of talent. But he apparently got careless on a dangerous road. Or are you going to blame me for the weather too?”

The limousine drew gently to a halt. The door on Drew’s side was opened.

“You know less than you think, Dumesnil, and you can’t prove even that.”

“We’re not in a courtroom,” Drew said, standing outside the car.

A slight glaze came over Marcus’s eyes. “You would do well to keep that in mind.” The chauffeur shut the door. Drew watched the limousine disappear down the garage entrance. He turned and walked away briskly, following the signs to the train station, where he took a taxi for Kloten.

As the white Mercedes cab sped along the highway to the airport, Drew opened Kraml’s envelope. There were three pages of the trader’s minute, neat handwriting, in a laborious English. As Drew started to read, a chill rippled through him.

Drew—

I’ve tried calling but you are not there. I’m writing this down so you will be sure to know what I have found out.

I succeeded in picking a way through the program—you remember the computer work I did for Highland Bank—and getting through the security barriers. It was not too easy, but it was not too hard either. I don’t think they expected a trader to know much about software.

First I saw the futures position. Marcus is nearly $2 billion short—he seems certain that the price of gold will fall.

It took me longer to locate the physical trading position. When I found it, I thought I had made a mistake, it was simply not to be believed. I have reproduced the figures from memory.

Midas is South Africa, I am sure. The coded information on the bullion corresponds exactly to the South African bars. The figures show that they are channeling enough gold into the market each month to represent more than their full production. The figures anticipate delivery for the coming months.

Croesus must refer to the Soviet Union. Again, the bullion specifications prove it. Also, the amounts are so big—bigger than what the Soviets usually sell—that it must be a major producer.

If Marcus has both of these producers, with code names, they must be in collusion. You see how important this is. You were right to question the South African sabotage. It is very significant that the Soviet Union and South Africa are working together. They can control the gold market
.

Drew grew cold as the meaning of Kraml’s message became clear. Not only had the South Africans perpetrated a massive hoax on the markets, they had enlisted the Russians as allies! His heart sank at the end of the letter.

I’m not sure whether they will be able to see that I have been in the program. I had no time to be careful. I confess I am frightened. It is very serious and they are dangerous.

The third page contained three columns of figures. Kraml had reproduced the tables he had seen so briefly on the computer screen. His trader’s head for figures had enabled him to retain the details of Marcus’s entire gold position. One column was headed Midas, the second Croesus, and the third PMTC, for Marcus himself. Entries for each week corresponded to thousands of ounces credited in each column. Each figure was followed by a baffling string of letters and numbers that Drew realized were the telling bullion descriptions.

Kraml had delivered him his documentary proof! Drew felt a sting in his eyes and a tightness in his chest. He had sent Kraml to his death. He had known it was dangerous but had still asked his friend to do it.

Drew saw Marcus’s mocking smile in front of him. Marcus and du Plessis: for Drew, they were the incarnation of evil, falsehood, and death. His rage strengthened his resolve.

~

Drew noticed the man as soon as he came onto the platform. Not that the middle-aged commuter, with a navy blue overcoat and an umbrella slung over his arm, was particularly noticeable. It had been a bright, sunny morning as Drew walked up to the Knightsbridge tube station, but it was quite normal for Londoners to carry umbrellas even on sunny days. The weather could change quickly.

Still, Drew noticed this man. The journalist had been nervous since reading Kraml’s letter the previous day, as though it were a voice from the grave summoning him to the other side. He had been looking over his shoulder, sitting in corners in public places, and, indeed, crossing streets carefully.

London and all the everyday bustle he was accustomed to had calmed him somewhat. He was taking the tube to the office as he normally did, but he regretted his thoughtlessness already. He should have just hailed a cab for once, to avoid the unnecessary exposure.

Drew felt hunted. Kraml’s discovery and subsequent death had removed any margin of doubt about the stakes involved in his own investigation of the mine sabotage. He had been awake most of the night, and only a long phone call to Carol had provided him any solace.

Drew had his leather overnight bag slung over his shoulder. He was leaving that afternoon for Atlanta to discuss the gold hoax with Corrello and Madison at Sun Belt Communications. He and Carol had decided he should talk to Halden as well.

The man with the umbrella paced nonchalantly along the platform. It was after the rush hour, and the trains seemed to take a long time to arrive.

Drew moved along the platform to keep a distance between himself and the middle-aged man. Perhaps he was succumbing to paranoia, he thought, but he sensed menace in the man’s approach, in his carrying an umbrella.

The man kept coming in Drew’s direction, which only steeled his resolve to keep away from him. The rush of wind and screeching wheels told him the train was nearing the station.

Drew was so preoccupied watching the middle-aged man that he did not notice the younger man wearing a trenchcoat and hat who hovered behind him, scarcely a yard away.

The crowd, considerably larger after the wait, moved expectantly to the edge of the platform as the train came into the station. The man with the umbrella headed in Drew’s direction, more purposefully now. The train stopped.

Suddenly, in the commotion of people boarding and leaving the train, the man in the trenchcoat and hat shoved past Drew, coming between him and the man with the umbrella. The newcomer reminded Drew of the man in Paris who had followed him. It could have been the same man, but Drew had too little time to notice.

The newcomer grappled with the middle-aged man on the platform as people pushed past them toward the exit. Neither made a sound until the man with the umbrella groaned and slumped to his knees. There were gasps as he fell against the passersby.

Drew was already at the exit, looking back over his shoulder. The man in the trenchcoat and hat had disappeared. A small group of people clustered around the prostrate figure of the middle-aged man.

Drew let himself be swept along by the crowd to the escalator, taking the steps two at a time on the left side of the moving staircase, which the disciplined British keep free for those in a hurry.

Drew certainly was in a hurry. He did not understand the sudden intervention of the man with the hat. He did not want to know why the man with the umbrella had slumped down, nor did he want to encounter the man with the hat to ask him.

Drew came up opposite Harrod’s and hailed a cab going in the wrong direction. He jumped in breathlessly and gave the driver the address in Fleet Street.

He wondered if he should call the police. But why? To tell them that a man with an umbrella seemed to be walking in his direction until a man with a hat bumped into him?

At the office, Drew watched the Press Association wire for any report of an incident in the underground. Three quarters of an hour later the item came over the ticker,
BIZARRE MURDER IN KNIGHTSBRIDGE TUBE STATION
. Drew still had trouble believing it. Middle-aged man, identified by the police as Bulgarian, dead on the platform from a fast-acting poison apparently administered by an umbrella found near him. The assailant was believed to be a man who had been struggling with the victim on the platform. The killer had escaped in the crowd.

A second take came from the archives on a previous series of umbrella murders. The tabloids would have a field day proclaiming a new wave of terror.

Drew was baffled. Perhaps the man with the umbrella had been targeting the man with the hat the whole time. Were the trenchcoat and hat some sort of uniform for secret agents? It seemed too pat. But was it a coincidence that a man identical to the one who followed him in Paris was on the same tube platform in London?

Was Kraml’s death an accident? There was no doubt in Drew’s mind that it was not. But he could not go to the police about the subway incident without telling them what was in Kraml’s letter. And he could not do that until he talked to SBC.

Drew had not told Corrello anything over the phone. When he called Monday afternoon, he just said he had some urgent new information regarding the sabotage that he could not take the responsibility for alone.

“You know Madison’s not real pleased with this whole South African business,” Corrello had warned Drew. “You’re skating on mighty thin ice, so you’d better be careful.”

“Being careful is the whole reason I have to talk to you,” Drew said.

“OK, come in tomorrow, and I’ll be sure Madison has some time for you.”

Drew knew what needed to be done, but this time he wanted as much backup as possible. If Madison operated according to journalistic ethics, he would approve the exposure of the hoax, since it meant correcting what they now knew was WCN’s mistake.

The journalist did not have many illusions, though, about the reception that awaited him. He would go through the motions nonetheless; he would do what he had to do correctly.

SIXTEEN

Madison glowered at them from behind his desk. Drew sat with Corrello, the two men looking like recalcitrant students sent to the principal for a lecture. It had never occurred to Madison to talk with employees in the comfortable sitting area in the opposite corner.

“What in the hell do you mean, the gold mine sabotage was a hoax?” he growled, suppressing his rage with evident effort. “How can it be a hoax? The government announced it, we reported it, every agency and newspaper in the world reported it. The market did a deep knee bend. The goddamn stock market was shut down. No hoax can make that happen!”

Corrello remained pale during this outburst. He had been meeting with Drew for the past hour and was only beginning to grasp the enormity of what Drew had discovered.

Drew, too, seemed intimidated by Madison’s anger.

“I’ve seen a mine in operation!” Drew raised his voice.

“They never said all the mines were hit,” Madison snapped.

“Look at these figures,” Drew said, passing a copy of Kraml’s letter across the desk.

Madison took the papers in his hands but threw them angrily down.

“It was a hoax, arranged by the South African government, perhaps in collusion with the Soviet Union.” Drew pressed on. “There has never been any independent verification of the sabotage; troops have sealed off all approaches to the mines.”

“I’m listening to some sort of fairy tale, South Africa and the Soviet Union,” Madison muttered.

“Our stringer was forced into filing a false story to lend added credibility to the government announcement when it came,” Drew said. He had not talked to anyone, not even Carol, about Van der Merwe’s death; he did not feel it would serve any useful purpose with Corrello and Madison.

“But the goddamn markets don’t fall for any old bullshit you put out!”

“They have to react, Tom,” Corrello interjected. “They can’t go around checking everything. They count on us to keep bullshit off the wires.” He had had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach ever since Drew had expounded his theory to the SBC executive. Corrello had seen how it could be done; he was afraid it had been done.

Madison picked up Kraml’s letter. “What are these figures?” he asked.

“Kraml went into the master trading program to learn Marcus’s position and found a physical gold position in millions of ounces—amounting to tons—worth billions of dollars.

“They were coded Midas and Croesus, but Kraml knows the gold market inside out. From the type of bullion—the quality of fineness, and so on—he knew where the gold came from. He even recognized the amounts as roughly corresponding to the monthly production figures for South Africa and the Soviet Union. And that was what really stunned him—because the figures were projected into the next six months!”