Gold Read online

  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!”

  Madison was following closely. “But granting this Midas or Croesus was South Africa, couldn’t the figures refer to stockpiles of gold?”

  “Conventional wisdom is that South Africa has always needed to sell all the gold it produced, so it certainly could not have stockpiled to that extent. The figures seem to indicate that South Africa continues to produce at its normal rate—even higher.”

  “Conventional wisdom!” Madison erupted again. “We’re sitting here talking about an absurd international plot by two major countries to swindle the world gold market, and you talk about conventional wisdom!”

  Madison had been bouncing restlessly on the edge of his seat. He finally stood up and came around the desk to stand in front of Drew. The movement was so quick Drew could only meet his gaze looking up into his angry eyes.

  “Dumesnil, goddammit, I warned you about this story. I told you it was your fucking responsibility, and I told you you goddamn better be right.”

  Drew had no response to that. “Two men have died, maybe three,” he said finally. He had not talked to Corrello about the apparent attempts on his own life in Paris or London, nor about the circumstances surrounding his visit to Kampfontein.

  The chairman and chief executive officer of Sun Belt Communications went back to his seat.

  “Kraml was killed in a single-car accident on a road he’d driven every day for months just after he cracked the computer program, before I had a chance even to talk with him,” Drew said. “It was not an accident. He was afraid, once he saw what was happening. That’s why he took the precaution of writing it down.”

  “Yeah, we’re lucky as hell he was so cautious.” Madison remained furious.

  “I’ve been over the letter with Drew,” Corrello said. “I don’t know the market that well, but it explained the significance of the figures very precisely.”

  “This guy gets one glance at a computer screen and he has all the figures in his head?”

  “It was his business.” Corrello’s own temper was rising. “That’s why his salary was higher than mine.”

&nb
sp; “The idea seemed to be that by faking the sabotage of the South African mines they could drive up the price of gold,” Drew continued. “The reduction of supply would do that, and so would the general unsettling of the market.”

  “What did that Canadian have to do with all this?” Madison snapped. His mind did not work in a logical manner, and he was accustomed to asking questions as they occurred to him.

  “I’m not sure whether MacLean’s swindle was part of the whole plan or whether it was just a coincidence,” Drew said. “I don’t think MacLean was in on the hoax, though, or he would have made sure the story got on the wire.”

  Madison snorted when Drew mentioned “coincidence.”

  “So who’s bumping these guys off? The fucking KGB? Jesus, you guys’ve been reading too many goddamn thrillers.”

  “I identified MacLean’s body; I went to Kraml’s funeral.”

  Corrello spoke again. “Tom, we’ve got to decide what to do about this.”

  Madison was silent. He continued to glower at his two subordinates as if damning them to hell would remove the problem.

  “I don’t see that we have to do any goddamn little thing,” he said at last.

  Drew and Corrello sat frozen. They were too stunned to even make a protest.

  That made Madison smile. “You assholes,” he said. He paused to savor his victory. “Fucking asshole journalists. You guys think you have the responsibility of the whole goddamn world on your shoulders. Truth, beauty, freedom, huh? Well, screw that.

  “I don’t know if there was any hoax or plot or Communist subversion. Your precious little figures seem to be damn flimsy evidence.” He tore the copy of Kraml’s letter into several pieces and thrust them savagely into the wastebasket. “Let alone your goddamn hallucinations.”

  He glared at Drew.

  “But I do know this—the fucking New York Times can go win itself another Pulitzer by uncovering this maybe-hoax. What we’re going to do at SBC is increase our quarterly earnings, quarter after quarter after quarter. And I don’t see how owning up to the biggest goddamn boner in the history of business journalism is going to help us do that!”

  Something snapped inside Drew; he felt his tension wash away in an immense flood of relief. He had known from the first numbing realization of the hoax that it would be his responsibility in the end—his alone. Madison’s tirade cleared the way for him; he knew there was no approval Madison could give him for what he wanted to do.

  “But Tom, if the New York Times does find a hoax, we’d be sitting there looking pretty stupid, wouldn’t we?” Corrello tried to maintain a reasonable tone.

  “We’d be in damned good company: AP, Reuters, the Times itself bought the story. Not to mention ‘the markets,’” he mimicked savagely. “Besides, I think the whole idea that this is a hoax is a pile of cow manure.” The worst of his fury spent, Madison seemed keen on repairing his language.

  “Let me make myself clear, Dumesnil—Corrello, you’re a witness—I absolutely forbid you to pursue this South African thing one step further. I don’t want to see anything on our wires about South Africa or gold that isn’t picked up from another agency. I’m going to make a careful review of your status with SBC anyway, but if you fuck me over on this, I’ll destroy you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I understand you,” Drew said quietly. He had grown cold, impervious to the menace in Madison’s voice. Now was not the time for impassioned eloquence in defense of journalistic principles. He needed to stay where he was a little while longer.

  ~

  Drew came through the exit gate and looked around anxiously. Carol stood to one side, spotting him at the same instant. They looked at each other, hesitating a brief moment before rushing into each other’s arms.

  Carol picked up Drew’s briefcase so that he had a hand free for her to take and lead him to the parking lot of the TWA terminal at La Guardia. In the shadow cast by the neon light there, they stopped again for a longer, more tender embrace. They exchanged looks that conveyed emotions they were unable to verbalize yet.

  “I’m so glad to be here,” Drew said, his feeling investing the banal remark with special significance. The burdens of his experience in South Africa, Kraml’s funeral, and the encounter with Madison fell away.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” Carol said simply. The minutes slipped by in the open parking garage, but the two lovers were oblivious to the cold. Finally, Carol disengaged herself and loaded Drew’s bag into the small trunk of her Honda.

  As they drove along the Long Island Expressway, Drew filled her in on his meeting that afternoon with Madison. It was after ten, so the traffic toward Manhattan flowed quickly.

  Drew kept his eyes fixed on Carol’s face as he talked, returning the smiles she flashed at him. He marveled at her beauty, as if meeting her for the first time. Of all the incredible events he had experienced in the past weeks, it seemed to him that falling in love with Carol was the most unexpected.

  “Tell me what happened in South Africa,” Carol said. Drew had been elliptical in describing his visit to the Kampfontein gold mine. He had not mentioned Van der Merwe’s death at all. By the time he finished telling her the whole story, they were driving through the Midtown Tunnel. Carol’s face looked pale in the harsh neon light. When she turned to look at Drew, there was fear in her eyes.

  “What are you going to tell Halden?” she asked.

  “Everything. There’s no reason to hold anything back.”

  “Halden will use you,” Carol said.

  Drew pondered her statement. “What is he trying to do?” he asked finally.

  “I think he is planning to sabotage the monetary system. I only have vague clues about how he’ll do it, but I’m sure he’ll use the gold hoax as a pretext for putting his plan into action.”

  “But he’s the one who’s done so much to keep the system going! How could he destroy his own work?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t understand, but he’s been doing too many things that don’t add up. And I heard he went up to see Wagner over the weekend.”

  “You don’t think Wagner would go along with any plot to undermine the system?”

  “I don’t know. Both of them have fought hard to keep it going, but I’m beginning to see that what counted in the fight is that it was theirs. They felt—feel—as if they have a special mission to do what’s best for the country, but they think they are the only real judges of what that is.”

  “So if the situation seems desperate, they’ll take it upon themselves to control the outcome?” Drew’s question emerged uneasily as he thought through the implications of what Carol was saying.

  He saw Carol nod. “That’s it, I think.”

  “Is the situation desperate?”

  “You know what’s going to happen when you expose this hoax.”

  “It’ll make what happened last month look like a Sunday picnic.”

  “Halden has some ideas about turning the panic into a complete stampede, I’m sure,” Carol said. “It has something to do with the Latin American safety net, and maybe with the United States foreign debt.”

  “But those aren’t directly linked to gold.”

  “No, but you know financial markets aren’t rational. They’re volatile. And gold is a symbol. No matter what any central bank president says, gold remains the reference point for any system of monetary value. You can’t change thousands of years of human history that quickly.”

  Drew wrestled with the idea, although Carol’s argument made sense to him. The news of the gold sabotage had panicked the entire financial market, even though gold had no official role in the world monetary system. Exposing the sabotage as a hoax would completely destabilize the markets. Any further unexpected shifts mounted by Halden would compound the disturbance.

  “But I can’t suppress the news,” Drew protested aloud.

  Carol heard the anguish of Drew’s appeal. “No, of course you can’t,” she murmured, her lips at his ear. �
��You have to go ahead.”

  ~

  It was nearly 10 a.m. by the time Drew got into Halden’s office. The New York Fed president had tried to squeeze in the journalist right after the nine o’clock staff meeting, but several phone calls from Washington had required immediate responses, so Drew sat in an outer office.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Halden said cheerily as he rose to greet the journalist.

  Drew studied Halden as they crossed his office to the sitting group. Carol had convinced him of Halden’s intentions, but the central banker seemed as much at ease and in control as at any other time Drew had seen him. The fact that Halden had not invited Carol to join their meeting this morning, however, even though she had been following gold, lent further credence to her suspicions.

  “I appreciate the appointment at such short notice,” Drew told Halden. “I know you’re particularly busy; I wouldn’t have asked unless it was urgent.”

  “So you said,” Halden responded. “I’ll admit it’s a new one for me. I’m sure it’s the first time a journalist ever called up to give me information.”

  Drew smiled at the irony. “I have evidence that the story about the gold mine sabotage in South Africa was a hoax,” he said, becoming serious again. When Drew had information, he did not measure it out in small dollops but, like a wire story, led with the big event.

  Halden’s eyes lit up. He cleared his throat quickly. Drew watched him carefully.

  “What kind of evidence?” Halden asked.

  “For one thing, a letter from one of Philip Marcus’s traders. He cracked the computer code in Zug and saw figures indicating that Marcus was channeling South Africa’s full production into the market.”

  “Can I see the letter? Do you have it with you?”

  “I brought a copy for you.”

  Halden was already jerking his glasses out of his front coat pocket. He took his time puzzling through Kraml’s European handwriting. When he came to the figures, he whistled softly.

  He took off his glasses with a quick movement and looked at Drew. “Was there something else?”