The Double Eagle (19 page)
Authors: James Twining
8
TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
2:04
P.M.
A
s they hit central Paris, they were soon immersed in the mid-afternoon traffic. Scooters and rollerbladers weaved randomly in and out of the cars and buses, which in turn fought their way through the steady waves of tourists washing over the road, seemingly oblivious to the traffic lights. Tom navigated them down to the quais where a stiff breeze chased them along the river bank.
Jennifer was struggling to concentrate on the road as the city scrolled past, her eyes shining at her first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, its skeletal frame soaring over distant rooftops. Tom took on the role of the dutiful tour guide by pointing out the sights as they streamed past—the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, Nôtre Dame—until they reached the Marais and Tom directed her to the symmetrical elegance of the Place des Vosges.
“What a beautiful square,” she breathed.
“It should be. It’s the oldest in Paris. It used to be called La Place Royale because Henry the Fourth built it so that he could live on one side and his wife on the other. But he never moved in. Some say it was a property scam, that he never had any intention of living here and just used his name to sell it at a huge profit.”
Jennifer gave a short laugh.
“I guess every age has its Van Simsons.”
Tom pointed at a space that had just opened up on the left-hand side of the square outside a café.
“Let’s park here. It’s only a few minutes’ walk.”
“Fine.”
“And I guess I’d better get changed.”
Jennifer parked and Tom quickly slipped on the shirt, suit, and shoes that had been left for him in the car. He was not surprised that they had got his sizes exactly right. He left the tie off.
“Don’t forget, you’re here as an observer,” Jennifer warned over her shoulder as she waited for him to finish dressing. “So just observe. I’ll do the talking.”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Tom shot back.
They walked down the Rue des Francs Bourgeois, the cars parked bumper to bumper, occasionally even mounting the curb to squeeze themselves in, before turning left down the Rue du Temple. Jennifer walked with long fluid strides, the material of her skirt stretching around her knees with every step and then loosening again.
The doors to Van Simson’s house soon loomed above them, a cliff of polished oak and brass. Unsurprisingly, they were bolted firmly shut and it took several minutes of leaning on the bell before the approaching sound of crunching gravel indicated that someone was in.
“Agent Browne?” A large man had opened the gate that was set into the left-hand door, his skin bleached, his hair white and thin. His eyes, unprotected by any natural pigmentation, glowed red and sore as he glanced at Tom questioningly. One of his hands was bent awkwardly behind his back as if tucked into his waistband, and Tom knew instantly that his fingers were almost certainly wrapped around a gun.
“Yes”—Jennifer stepped forward—“and an…associate of mine, Mr. Kirk. We’re here to see Mr. Van Simson. I believe we’re expected.”
“You, yes. Him, no,” The man looked accusingly in Tom’s direction. “Him, no.” Suddenly, he put his index finger against his right ear and nodded quickly. A clear plastic wire snaked from his ear, round the back of his head and into his collar.
“Mr. Van Simson will see you both,” he grunted, his Dutch accent clear. Taking a quick look up and down the street behind them, he opened the gate wide enough for them both to slip through into the courtyard before crashing it shut behind them.
“Please raise your arms,” said the man. He frisked Tom and then ran his hands over Jennifer, to her obvious discomfort. Seemingly satisfied, he nodded in the direction of the house.
They walked silently across the gravel, Tom noticing that two other men were watching them from an upstairs room, the barrel of what looked like a high-powered rifle poking its nose out of the window. Van Simson’s yellow Bentley was parked casually across the middle of the courtyard, the heavy skid marks in the gravel indicating that it had been thrown there at some speed.
“The two side wings are offices for Van Simson’s property business,” Jennifer whispered. “He lives on his own in the main building and has his office on the top floor.” Tom nodded. “Apparently, it’s an entirely separate construction within the original building built to Israeli military specifications to withstand a direct missile strike.”
Tom raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He had met people like Van Simson before and had long since ceased to be either surprised or impressed by the countless bizarre ways such people seemed to find to spend their money.
The front door buzzed open automatically as they approached and they stepped into the building’s cold, echoing emptiness. The vaulted ceiling soared perhaps thirty feet above their heads, while the walls and the wide square staircase that swept regally up into the darkness of the upper floors were sheathed in a somber collection of paintings and portraits. One in particular caught Tom’s eye. In it, a mother pleaded for her son to be spared, as around her Roman soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered women and children. The street ran with blood.
“Please go straight upstairs.” Another man, also clad in a black suit, had appeared out of the shadows on the left and indicated what looked like a door ahead of them. They walked toward it until it suddenly split open down the middle, revealing an elevator. There were no buttons, just a keyhole on the left, but it started up without their pressing anything.
They looked at each other in silence, a small red light on the overhead camera flashing intermittently, almost invisible under the laboratory glare of the overhead lights. With a gentle shrug, the elevator stopped and the door opened onto a large rectangular room, windows along one wall. Van Simson was behind his desk, open-necked white shirt over blue jeans, bare feet encased in soft brown suede. He stood up as soon as they came in.
“Hello, I’m Darius Van Simson.” Jennifer took his hand and shook it firmly.
“Mr. Van Simson, it is very kind of you to see us at such short notice.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said Van Simson, smiling generously. “And you must be Tom Kirk?” He thrust his hand out again. “Charles’s son.”
“Yes,” said Tom, surprised.
“I thought I recognized your face. I was a great admirer of your father’s—a regular customer, in fact.” He indicated the four Chagalls that hung between the windows with his other hand. “He chose all these for me.”
“Really?” Tom flashed Jennifer a knowing glance. If his father, that bastion of puritanical thought and deed, had dealt with Van Simson, then he couldn’t be as bad as Jennifer had suggested in the car. “It’s a great set.”
“I’ve been very happy with them.” He smiled at Tom. “You have my condolences.” He sounded sincere and Tom was grateful.
“Thank you.”
“Let’s all sit down.” He led them past the large white architectural model in the center of the room to the two sofas on the other side and turned to Jennifer.
“Can I get you a drink? No? You, Mr. Kirk?”
“A vodka tonic please.” Tom relaxed back into the sofa.
“I think I’ll have the same,” said Van Simson as he busied himself over a small drinks cabinet. “And you must call me Darius.” He handed Tom a glass and sat down in the sofa opposite them. “Cheers.”
As he raised his glass, Van Simson’s left sleeve rode up slightly and Tom caught a glimpse of his watch’s black face and pink-gold case. He recognized it immediately. A limited edition Lange & Söhne Tourbillon de la Mérite, a masterpiece of German craftsmanship and at over $150,000 a shot, as expensive as it was rare.
“Beautiful watch,” said Tom, tilting his glass respectfully toward it.
“Thank you,” said Van Simson warmly. “Most people don’t notice but it’s always nice when someone does.”
He looked at it lovingly, centering it on his wrist before lifting his eyes back toward Jennifer.
“Ambassador Cross mentioned that you wanted to ask me some questions when he called up earlier today and demanded I see you.” A smile crossed his lips, as if the thought of someone demanding something of him was an amusing novelty. “So, now you’re here, how can I help?”
“It’s a…delicate matter,” Jennifer began under Tom’s watchful eye. He was curious to see how she handled this. “Approximately two weeks ago the French police recovered a coin here, in Paris.”
“Go on.”
“It was a 1933 Double Eagle.”
Van Simson gave a short laugh.
“Well, it must be a fake then. As far as I know there are only three 1933 Double Eagles. It’s certainly not mine and I doubt very much Miles Baxter has let one out from under his claws.”
“No, Mr. Baxter is as vigilant as ever.” Jennifer smiled. “But we don’t think it’s a fake. In fact, the forensic analysis showed an almost perfect match with the two Smithsonian coins.”
“Can I see it?” asked Van Simson, placing his glass down on the table in between them. It was a thick circle of glass resting on what looked like the shredded rubber remains of a racing wheel, evidence of Van Simson’s sponsorship of a Formula One racing team, Tom guessed.
“I’m afraid not. I don’t have it on me.” Tom smiled. She didn’t have to lie about that, at least.
“So where do you think this coin is from?” Van Simson folded his arms across his chest.
“At this stage, we’re not sure.”
“Then I’m sorry, but I fail to see how I can help,” said Van Simson, rubbing his hand across his goatee. “If you can’t show me the coin, how can I give you an opinion on it? That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Partly, yes. But it did also occur to us that the coin we have might be yours. That would at least explain where it was from and the match to the Smithsonian coins.” Van Simson laughed.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the security system I have here is watertight. There’s no way that you have my coin.” Tom sensed that Van Simson flashed him a quick look as he said this. Perhaps he knew more about him than he was letting on.
“When was the last time you saw the coin?” Jennifer persisted.
“Four, maybe six months ago.”
“That long?”
Van Simson smiled.
“Some people love to endlessly gaze and touch and toy with whatever it is they collect. For me, I do not feel compelled to revisit my collection again and again. It’s enough to know that I own it. That I own it and no one else does.”
“Can I make a suggestion, then?” Jennifer asked.
“Of course.”
“If we can confirm your coin is safe, as you said, won’t that prove that the one we have is a fake?”
Van Simson got up and walked over to the window, his left arm folded behind his back, clearly considering Jennifer’s proposal. Outside, a distant church clock chimed the hours. There was silence as each strike resonated, then settled.
“I could wait for you outside,” Tom suggested to Jennifer, mindful of Van Simson’s earlier glance. If he did know who Tom was, then he would be the last person he would let down there.
“No need,” said Van Simson, turning round to face them, a broad smile on his face. “Let’s just go down and check on my coin and then we’ll both know what’s what. And I insist you come too, Mr. Kirk. I think we’ll all find it very interesting.”
3:01
P.M.
V
an Simson inserted a small key into the keyhole on the left-hand side of the elevator and a rectangular section of the stainless-steel wall retracted smoothly, revealing a keypad and a glass panel. He punched a short code into the keypad; the glass panel lit up and he placed his hand against it. For a few seconds a bright blue light leaked out from under his hand as a scanner rolled over his palm and read his handprint. A few moments later the doors closed and the elevator started down.
“You know, not many people have seen what I am about to show you,” Van Simson said, turning round to face them, a hint of excitement in his voice.
The elevator came to a smooth stop and the doors slid open to reveal a wide corridor, lit with recessed lights. The walls and floor were made of smoothed concrete sections and the clean smell of steel and fresh mortar was in the air.
“The vault’s new. I had it built especially to house my collection,” said Van Simson proudly. “We’re about twenty-five feet underground now. But don’t worry. The walls are made from reinforced concrete and have been lined with two-inch steel plate. We’re quite safe.”
Instinctively, Tom was assessing the setup. He couldn’t help himself. The corridor was about twenty feet long with the elevator at one end and the vault door at the other. There was no other way in or out that he could see. Halfway down, a huge steel gate had been embedded into the wall and beyond that he could make out small holes in the stonework, housings for laser trip beams. Video cameras tracked every single inch of the corridor.
As they approached the steel gate, Van Simson withdrew a card from his pocket and swiped it along a reader set into the wall. This opened a panel in the wall behind which was a speaker and a small screen. Van Simson leaned forward.
“This is Darius Van Simson. Initiate challenge procedure.”
A processed voice came back.
“Please confirm today’s password.”
“Ozymandias,” said Van Simson firmly and the small screen flickered with a series of long oscillating lines as it captured and analyzed his voice.
There was a brief silence and then the robotic voice spoke again.
“Password and voice match. Please step away from the gate.”
A light next to the speaker flashed green and with a loud clang as a restraining bolt slid home, the gate was raised up into the roof.
“It’s a very impressive setup, Darius,” said Tom. Van Simson glanced back at Tom and Jennifer, his voice animated.
“Thank you. I designed it myself.”
They walked through the gate and up to the vault door where Van Simson swiped his card along another wall-mounted reader. A similarly disguised panel slid back, this time revealing a small screen and numerical touch pad. The screen flashed:
Please enter pass code.
Van Simson leaned forward and deftly tapped out a long sequence of numbers. The screen went blank and then flashed back:
Entrance sequence authenticated. Please stand by.
A light over the door turned red and to a low mechanical whine, the vault bolts were smoothly retracted, a satisfying metallic clunk echoing through the corridor as each one came to rest within its housing. The red light began to flash and the massive door swung back on its thick hinges. With the door fully open, the light turned green.
“I’m sorry about the wet floor,” said Van Simson, stepping through the doorway. “When the vault is sealed the room is flooded with a couple of inches of water, which I then run a high-voltage current through. Just another little precaution.”
The vault was a low, rectangular room perhaps fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. Large waist-high stainless-steel display cabinets were scattered through the room, the black rubberized floor meandering between them like a path through a maze. The floor was wet, as Van Simson had predicted, and a channel perhaps half a foot wide ran all around the room between the floor and the wall where the water clearly drained away.
“Welcome to the Van Simson collection,” he said grandly. “This is now the largest private collection of gold coins and ingots in the world. It’s taken me almost my entire life to assemble it.” He led them gleefully past the first few cabinets like a child showing off his favorite toys.
Each cabinet had a clear glass top and six or seven narrow drawers beneath them. Above each cabinet was a thick sheet of glass, suspended between the ceiling and the cabinet below with steel wire. Each was dimly lit by an individual spotlight. Apart from these small islands of light, the room was quite dark.
“Look at these,” Van Simson said, bending down over one of the glass tops. “Greek staters from around 54
B.C
.” He looked up, his eyes shining. “These were struck to finance Brutus and the republican army in their struggle against Octavian and Marc Anthony after the assassination of Julius Caesar. They were discovered on the very battlefield where the republicans were finally defeated.”
He sprang to another cabinet, sliding one of its drawers open.
“And look here.” He pointed down into the velvet-lined drawer. “Nazi ingots recovered from Lake Lunersee.” Tom and Jennifer leaned forward and saw the unmistakable stamp of an eagle surmounting a swastika, circled by oak leaves. “The gold came from Dachau,” Van Simson went on, lovingly picking up one of the deep yellow bars and cradling it in his hands. “From teeth and wedding rings.”
Tom chose to ignore Van Simson’s gruesome trophy. Instead he focused on the sheets suspended over the cabinets, which he could now see actually contained coins that had been sandwiched between two panes of glass so that both sides could be seen, while ensuring they remained chemically sealed from the atmosphere.
“Come,” said Van Simson, slamming the drawer shut and sounding suddenly impatient. “Over here.” He led them to the far end of the room where there was a small raised platform, with a desk and various pieces of computer equipment and television monitors. The display cabinet nearest the platform was lit with a slightly brighter light than the others and Tom guessed that this contained the highlights of the collection. As they approached, Tom recognized the now familiar detail of the Double Eagle.
“Here it is, then,” said Van Simson triumphantly. “As I promised. The only 1933 Double Eagle in private ownership, safe and sound. These sheets are bulletproof. I can assure you, my coin’s not going anywhere.”
“I would have to agree with you,” said Jennifer, studying the coin closely.
“So why are you really here, Agent Browne?” Van Simson’s voice was suddenly cold and distant. She returned his stare firmly.
“I think I’ve explained that.”
“I heard what you said, but I don’t think you’ve told me everything. What are you going to do about this fake Double Eagle?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I had a deal with the Treasury.” Van Simson had raised his voice and it was echoing off the low ceiling. “They promised that mine was to be the only coin on the market. That there were no other coins.”
“That deal still stands, as far as I know.” Jennifer’s voice was calm and assured.
“Except that you’ve found a coin that you and presumably your experts believe to be real, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. That was not what was agreed. A fake fundamentally undermines the value of my investment and creates a huge amount of uncertainty in the market. You must destroy the coin.”
“I can assure you,” said Jennifer soothingly, “that as soon as we find out exactly what we’re dealing with here we’ll let you know. And I’ll make sure your views are known.” Van Simson’s face lifted.
“That’s very kind.” He smiled. “I hope you don’t think me rude, but I feel quite passionately about this. A lot of money is at stake.”
“I understand.”
“Well, then, if you’ve seen enough, can I ask you to make your own way back to the elevator. It will take you upstairs and Rolfe will see you out.”
“Of course,” said Jennifer, shaking his hand. “And thank you again for your time.”
“Not at all. And I hope that we’ll meet again, Mr. Kirk.” Tom nodded as he in turn shook Van Simson’s hand.
They weaved their way through the display cases, the vault entrance a blindingly bright rectangle of light until, just as they were about to step out into the corridor, Van Simson called after them.
“You know, this is where I plan to be buried, one day.” His arms extended to take in the room in front of him. “Down here, sealed inside with my collection. Then I will have them all to myself forever.”
Through the suspended glass sheets Tom could see that Van Simson had stepped up onto the raised platform. Illuminated by a single spotlight directly over his head, his eyes had sunk into dark pools of shadow.
