Gold Page 14

  A crash would wipe out Japan’s mortgage on the United States, the billions of dollars of government debt and other dollar assets Japan had acquired with the surplus it earned on its exports to the United States—earned by postponing the prosperity of their own people, by taking advantage of America’s open borders and high standard of living.

  “In fact, we’d be in a fairly strong position to dictate the terms of a new monetary system, wouldn’t we?” Halden pursued his flight of fancy.

  Carol smiled uneasily, acknowledging her superior’s joke.

  “Makes you wonder why we try so hard to avoid a crash, doesn’t it?”

  Halden lapsed into a long silence during the generous meal served in first class. He only picked at his food. He thought of José Martinez. More than anything else, the Mexican’s suicide made Halden think that some radical, cleansing solution was needed.

  He saw the outlines of how the United States could take the initiative to wipe out all the distortions of the past few years, how they could regain control of the situation. He could work out the details; Peter Wagner would help him.

  But he needed to know what was happening in the gold market. He could not leave anything to chance.

  “Your conclusion, if I read correctly, was that the gold market will remain unstable in the near future?” Halden asked.

  “Until there’s some clarity about the supply, yes.”

  Halden studied her for a moment. “Did you see much of this journalist, Dumesnil?”

  “We met a couple of times,” Carol said. She smiled. “He’s actually quite nice.”

  “Do you think he can get to the bottom of this gold business?”

  “If anybody can, he will.”

  “Keep in touch with him. Let me know what he’s doing.”

  Carol looked at him noncommittally. “He’s very keen on journalistic independence.”

  “Yes,” agreed Halden. “But he’s smart. He appreciates our position.”

  Carol did not respond.

  ~

  Blacky shuffled out of the room with more purpose then usual. Hannes Kraml assumed he was going to confer with Marcus. For once Frey, the chief dealer, was also absent. The market was like a graveyard. It was Monday afternoon, the Rio communiqué had made a slight ripple, but most operators had simply squared positions and were waiting to see what would happen.

  Kraml saw his opportunity. He started working his keyboard. His previous furtive attempts to enter the master dealing program had been quickly blocked. Marcus had a sophisticated software that restricted access to only a few of the dealers.

  Kraml drew on his systems experience. He had worked together with computer specialists to design two major programs. He had learned a few secrets from the specialists, secret passageways that might not have been sealed up in Marcus’s program.

  Kraml worked intensely, quickly. He found an opening and worked back until he had the key to entering the program. Apparently Marcus had not anticipated this type of security breach and had taken few precautions against it.

  Kraml’s console was situated so that he could keep an eye on the door into the dealing room.

  The trader found his way to the gold master program, the internal record of Marcus’s position. He saw accumulated futures contracts confirming that Marcus was massively shorting gold. Perhaps it was just a hedge, Kraml thought, a cheap way of protecting a long position in the spot market, although he would have thought that a decline in the gold price was unlikely in view of the South African situation.

  Kraml had to work a little harder to get to the bullion position, but he finally had the picture on his screen. What he saw stunned him. They were just digits shimmering on the cathode-ray tube, but for Kraml the impact was as breathtaking as for Ali Baba stumbling upon the treasure hoard of the forty thieves.

  Kraml felt flushed; his breathing was irregular; he wiped his palms on his pants. He systematically studied the position, grasping its dimensions. He knew exactly what he was seeing and what it meant.

  No wonder Marcus could control the gold market. The answer to the mystery was here. Kraml became frightened. His knowledge was dangerous.

  He flashed quickly over the keyboard to get out of the file. Only then did a quiet shuffle draw his attention to the door. Blacky was poised at the threshold.

  A sudden fear gripped Kraml. How long had Blacky been there? The trader had been so mesmerized by the screen that he would not have seen the American if he stood there quietly.

  Kraml tried to control his breathing. Blacky paid no attention to him but shuffled around to his chair and sat down heavily.

  Relief crept over the Austrian. Surely Blacky had not noticed anything.

  The next half hour passed painfully for Kraml. Blacky occasionally responded to the phone, but the market remained quiet.

  Finally, Kraml was out in the street at the phone booth. He rang Drew’s private number and cursed when the answering machine came on. He left a message for Drew and took his winding road home, deeply preoccupied by his discovery.

  ~

  Marcus sat in darkness, sipping his bourbon. Only the faintest sound of traffic reached him from the streets below.

  Marcus liked to sit in his apartment in the evening with the lights out. The penthouse was on the top floor of his office building. The living room where he sat took up nearly half the floor, giving out onto a terrace that faced the mountains in the north.

  The room was not empty like his office. In fact, it was filled with antiques and art treasures. The objects were not priceless—Marcus knew the market price for each piece in the room—but very, very valuable.

  He appreciated them just as much with the lights off. It was not their aesthetic value he cherished. They were investments, like everything else; he kept them here to impress visitors, usually foreigners, because the Swiss, like him, had little energy left over for beauty.

  Marcus relished the absence of interruptions. A telephone sat on the table next to him, but very few people knew the number. Marcus used it for private calls, like the one he had just made to Berne.

  He would miss Kraml. It was not a personal sentiment, rather the grief of an accountant for a lost profit center. Kraml was a valuable asset, a natural resource. Talented, experienced, the Austrian could easily have taken Frey’s place as chief trader in a couple of years. Frey lacked the intelligence, the quickness to be really great.

  Kraml had that spark. It was his undoing; he was too quick, too resourceful. When Blacky reported what he had seen Kraml doing, Marcus drew the inevitable conclusion. The number in Berne had been given to him for just this type of problem.

  It was a waste, really, Marcus reflected. The news about the gold would get out soon anyway. That’s why he was shorting gold futures. But it was important that the leak not come from him. His clients would not like that, especially if they found out about his profits in the futures market.

  He pondered his clients. He wondered if Abrassimov was also banking on the collapse of the gold price. The old Russian had taken a few licks in his time, but experience had made him very clever. The South African, du Plessis, was no match for him.

  Such unlikely allies. Not that it bothered Marcus. He would work for Satan and the Archangel Michael if there was a profit in it.

  What bothered Marcus was the Russian. He understood du Plessis; the man was transparent. But Abrassimov was not the same. Du Plessis could hardly see beyond next week; Abrassimov took a long view. Marcus would watch the Russian closely.

  The phone rang. Marcus picked it up without saying anything. He listened silently to the voice on the other end, which gave only a time and place.

  Marcus hung up the phone and drained his glass in a final toast to a lost profit center.

  ELEVEN

  Tony Edwards was not being very cooperative. The managing editor of the Johannesburg Sun refused to meet Drew’s gaze.

  “As I said, we’ve not heard from him for quite a while,” Edwards mumbled in that c
uriously inarticulate way many accomplished editors have.

  Drew had been escorted perfunctorily into the tiny cubbyhole to confront an obviously embarrassed Edwards, who immediately stubbed out his cigarette and reached for his jacket.

  “No, don’t bother,” Drew had said. “I’ll take mine off too.” The office was half the size of Drew’s in London and twice as full of furniture. There was no window, and the late spring temperatures made it stifling.

  The Sun was Van der Merwe’s main string. Although an Afrikaner, he had originally preferred the English-language daily for its objectivity. But that was before the Rand Daily Mail was folded, for “economic” reasons, and all newspapers, regardless of political leaning, lost their independence and followed the government line more or less overtly.

  “Van der Merwe was working less and less for us anyway,” Edwards resumed. “The political situation, as you know, has become—well, quite delicate.”

  “But you must know how to reach him,” Drew insisted.

  “He told us nothing about going away. You’ve tried his flat; he hasn’t been to his office here in nearly two weeks.”

  Edwards reached for his cigarettes but checked himself. His sandy hair and eyebrows made his face so bland that it would be difficult to recall his appearance the minute he was out of sight.

  “I believe somebody mentioned something about an inheritance,” Edwards said as he grew uncomfortable with the silence. “It may have been Tony himself—I called him Tony, it was our little joke; he called me Antoine.” Edwards smiled shyly. “Come to think of it, he mentioned something about an aunt passing away and some money.”

  “Some money?”

  “Oh, not a fortune, you know. But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps he’s just gone off for some holiday with his inheritance.”

  “It’s an odd time for a business journalist who’s just broken the story of the year to take a vacation.”

  “Well, that’s perhaps part of it.” Edwards leaned over and lowered his already quiet voice practically to a whisper. “That story was not very popular in Pretoria.”

  “So you blackballed Van der Merwe?”

  Edwards straightened up. “Of course not. We’re operating in a difficult social environment that is practically in a state of civil war, but we are, after all, a free press.”

  Drew realized that Edwards would not help him. Even if he did know something about Van der Merwe’s whereabouts, Drew had no leverage to pry it out of him.

  “Where did this aunt live?”

  “In the suburbs, I suppose.” Edwards seized his cigarettes, withdrew one, and lit it in a fluid motion more graceful than Drew would have expected.

  “Do you know her name?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Maybe I should just look in the phone book under Van der Merwe,” Drew said, deadpan.

  “Oh, you’d have a good deal of trouble with that. You see, Van der Merwe is the most common”—Edwards paused when he saw Drew’s expression—”name in South Africa. But of course you know that.”

  Drew nodded. “Have you had any verification of the gold mine sabotage?” he asked.

  Edwards took a long drag on the cigarette, which steadied his hand and gained him some time to formulate a response.

  “It’s all quite official, as I understand, although it’s really out of my bailiwick.” He looked at his watch, apparently surprised to see what time it was. “I’m afraid I’ll have to show you out. You understand, deadline and all. And there’s really not anything more I can tell you about Van der Merwe. I’m sure he’ll be turning up bronzed and relaxed one day soon.”

  Drew was surprised to see the sun when he came back to Fox Street, after the harsh fluorescent light in the timeless, windowless office. Much of the street was in deep shadow from the mining and bank buildings lining Johannesburg’s main business street.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Drew turned left and headed back to the Carlton. The Sun had been his only other lead, after calls and visits to Van der Merwe’s flat had revealed no sign of the stringer.

  He couldn’t even get into the front door. The neighbors who responded to his buzzing on the interphone claimed not to know anything about the missing journalist.

  Drew did not believe the inheritance story, and he certainly didn’t think Van der Merwe had picked now to take some time off.

  Tinny strains of Musak greeted him in the lobby of the Carlton. Drew brightened when he saw the message handed over to him by the concierge. It said RAMPART, followed by a phone number.

  Drew hurried to his room to dial the number. He let it ring a dozen times but there was no answer.

  “Damn.” Drew sighed wearily, stretching back on the bed. Cyril Rampart, a young Xhosa who was a director at the Heritage Foundation, had been invaluable to Drew on his previous trip to South Africa. The thirty-four-year-old graduate of the London School of Economics had introduced the visiting journalist to black leaders in Soweto and Bophuthatswana. Although Rampart was extremely discreet, Drew had gotten the impression that he was in contact with the ANC.

  Drew decided to order supper from room service rather than brave the hotel restaurant again, with its token blacks and ambivalent visitors. Before he could pick up the phone, it rang.

  “You called the number I gave you,” a familiar voice said. “Be in the hotel bar tomorrow at six.” Drew heard a click, and the dial tone returned.

  He didn’t understand Rampart’s sudden need for secrecy, but there were many things that baffled him in this second trip. It was an odd mixture of feigned normalcy and state of siege.

  Offices were full and the business crowd during lunch at the Rand Club had been as animated as on his previous visit. Yet no one lingered on the streets, and security in the office buildings was heavy and ostentatious.

  It was nearing 7 p.m. Drew wanted very badly to call Carol, but they had agreed he would not try to reach her at the Fed. It was only lunchtime in New York.

  Drew had woken her up earlier that day. He had passed by the hotel to call her before his lunch appointment. Her sleepy “Hello,” had transported him halfway around the world.

  Drew was impatient with their separation, but it was impossible for them to plan a meeting until the situation was clearer. He told her briefly about his problems in Johannesburg.

  “I’m worried about you,” Carol said. “This thing with MacLean is scary.”

  “I’m not sure the South Africans had anything to do with MacLean,” Drew reassured her, “And they hardly want an American journalist to disappear while visiting the country.”

  Carol was hardly mollified. “Be careful. When are you going back to London?”

  “It depends on the interviews, but as soon as possible.”

  “Halden was strange on the way back from Rio. I want to talk to you about it. Not now, not on the phone.” Drew heard her sigh. “Maybe I’ll come to London.”

  ~

  Drew drained his beer glass and looked at his watch. Nearly six-thirty. The bar, restful if somber with its dark oak paneling, was more than half full. Drew had nursed his beer, waiting for Cyril to show up, and hesitated to order another.

  The day had been uneventful. He had appeared promptly at the Information Ministry office when it opened and was duly handed an envelope. But it contained only a single sheet of paper and the paper noted a single appointment—with Andreis du Plessis, director general of the Finance Ministry, for the next day at nine o’clock. The American had requested interviews in four different ministries. Drew was incensed at the short shrift he was getting but knew it was useless to remonstrate. And du Plessis, after all, was the key official for him to see.

  For lack of anything better to do, Drew had visited the stock exchange during its trading session. One of Van der Merwe’s brokerage contacts had shepherded the American along but deflected all conversation about the gold mines and claimed to know nothing about Van der Merwe’s whereabouts.

  The Johannesburg market suffered, of
course, from the loss of the mining stocks, which had been suspended from trading. Curiously, though, the country’s very isolation had invigorated the stock market, as domestic institutions jockeyed for positions in the major non-mining companies.

  Drew signaled the black bartender for another beer. He clung stubbornly to his faith that Cyril would come.

  He was halfway through the second drink when a black man dressed in a sober gray business suit got up from a small table tucked away in the far corner. As he passed through the lounge on his way out, he paused briefly next to Drew at the bar.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  The man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, was a stranger to Drew, but he quickly signed his tab and followed the man out of the bar.

  “George Myeti,” he said, as they stepped onto the escalator leading down to the bar.

  Drew shook his hand, and said, “Cyril sent you.” His companion only nodded.

  After the parking attendant had retrieved Myeti’s car and the two of them were heading toward the southwestern edge of town, Myeti explained that he worked with Cyril at the Heritage Foundation. He said they would meet Drew’s friend shortly but volunteered no further information. Drew respected his silence.

  Shortly before the entrance to the highway, Myeti pulled into a side street. “I’m going to ask you to get into the back on the floor and to keep down. The police are not stopping cars, but they are watching.”

  Drew did as he was asked, trusting his instincts that Myeti was who he said he was. He had figured out by now that they were going to Soweto. Whites had always been required to have special passes to visit the black townships, but the rule had been strictly enforced only since the state of siege was imposed.

  The Ford Scorpio was big, with sufficient room even for someone Drew’s size to fit into the floor space in back. Myeti had spread a blanket there, and Drew installed himself on his back with his legs pulled up. The position was cramped but not painful; Drew kept his mind off it and allayed his anxiety by letting his thoughts dwell on his brief time with Carol.