“To that end, you’re first task for your new employer will be the transfer of a substantial amount of my liquid assets into his possession — the reason you’ll soon be leaving the country.”
“Assets…? What kind of assets…?” Brandis had been counting on the likelihood that mentioning financial matters would capture his PA’s attention and bring them back to the main thrust of the business at hand, and the ploy had worked perfectly.
“I’ve lived here above this warehouse for many years, Rupert… for many years before you came to work for me…” he began again, effectively defusing any further possible emotional fallout concerning what they’d just discussed. “In fact, this same warehouse has been owned under the ‘Brandis’ name since it was built in 1802, if originally constructed to a somewhat different design. It didn’t start out with all these storage racks…these came along a little later, and I’ve added to them as the years have passed. By the time you started with me, most of these were already filled, so I doubt you’d have even noticed a new pallet load appearing every now and then.”
“It’s the only part of the business you’ve always insisted on handling personally, without any involvement on my part,” Rupert observed softly, forcing a smile and inwardly also happier to have changed the subject somewhat. “It was clear from the start that all this was your project, and that you didn’t want myself or anyone else prying into it… I’ve always respected that.”
“I know you have, although you must’ve been curious,” Brandis gave a genuine smile in return. “To your credit, you’ve never asked me or made any attempt to find out for yourself what I’ve been up to down here. I hired you because I knew I could trust you implicitly, and you’ve never let me down.”
With a smile, he turned on his chair and lifted the desk’s roller shutter lid right to the top, leaving it wide open. Reaching beneath the front edge of the desk with one hand, he found the button he was looking for and there was a soft ‘click’. A small, secret drawer popped open at the rear of the desktop and from it, Brandis removed a small key.
“Let’s head downstairs… there’s something I need to show you.” Brandis suggested, glancing up at his PA once more as he pocketed the key and ignoring the renewed look of surprise on the man’s face.
“I’ve sat at that desk a thousand times…!” Rupert muttered, attempting to mask a wry smile with indignant incredulity. “What else do you have hidden in there?”
“Come on downstairs,” Brandis grinned widely, not answering. “I promise we’ll do our best to make sure you don’t get your suit dirty.”
They descended the stairs and stepped onto the main floor of the warehouse a few moments later. A large bank of knife switches was fixed to the wall near the bottom of the staircase, and Brandis, in the lead, immediately worked his way along the entire panel, manually pulling each one down in turn to engage its contacts with a small spark of electric current. Throughout the warehouse, powerful arc lamps suspended above the level of the highest storage racks burst into life with the faint but distinct crackle of electricity, bathing the entire floor in stark, cold illumination.
It was rare for the lights to be on at all — Rupert had only seen them fully turned on twice in the ten years he’d worked for Brandis — and he shielded his eyes momentarily as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. Still wearing his tinted spectacles, Brandis seemed unperturbed by any of the changes in lighting and immediately walked across to the nearest storage rack, Rupert following the moment his eyes had adjusted properly and he realised his boss had moved away.
Brandis reached out and laid a hand gently on one of the metal boxes, the pallet carrying it stored on the first level of shelving and standing just a metres high. Below it, an identical loaded pallet sat on the concrete floor and above it, three more levels of the same were held by similar shelving, as was the case all the way along the racks on that aisle and on all the others. Underneath the thick layer of dust that’d been disturbed where he’d laid his fingers, stencilled black lettering that was otherwise mostly obscured proclaimed only the figures: ‘BOX 10,141 — MACHINE PARTS — 79AU31011894’.
“I’ve no doubt you’ve thought about what’s down here,” Brandis began, his smile becoming a faint, wry grin. “What wild suppositions have you come up with over the years?”
“It could only have been something extremely valuable,” Rupert shrugged, answering without any hesitation, and this time leaving Brandis a little surprised.
“The logic behind that conclusion…?”
“Other than not hearing your immediate denial?” Rupert’s own smile was more genuine now as he began to feel more relaxed. “Apart from the mostly unseen but nevertheless quite extreme security you protect this warehouse with, the one single thing that makes it obvious is the fact that nothing ever leaves. You’re right, James: I haven’t really noticed the odd pallet or two being added to the stocks here over the years, but I’ve certainly noticed that nothing ever gets removed or taken away. Rather strange, I thought, that there are never any shipments out of here at all considering this is, after all, an import dock intended to receive goods from overseas and distribute them to London and the rest of the country.” He shrugged again as if it were all rather simple. “The only logical conclusion I could think of was that you’re storing something very valuable here. The level of security you’ve hidden inside these walls would put some banks to shame, and to my way of thinking that’s exactly what this warehouse is: one huge, secret bank vault that you’ve managed to hide mostly in plain sight.”
“It’s that kind of intelligence that made me want to hire you in the first place!” Brandis beamed as he took the small key from his trouser pocket, incredibly pleased that Rupert had worked all that out for himself. “It’s also that level of intelligence that I need for the mission I’m sending you on next.” He held the key up between his fingers and gave the young man a sly wink. “After all this time, how about I show you what you’ve wondered about all these years?”
Each 50 x 30 x 12cm steel box was flat-sided and featureless, save for folding hand-holds of steel tube welded at the ‘long ends’, each handle recessed slightly so as to leave no protrusions that might prevent the boxes being tightly packed. The lid was hinged, and each trio of boxes was carefully placed to align those hinges back-to-back down the centreline of their respective pallets. A large padlock made from heavy-gauge steel ensured every box was kept securely locked.
“I have a second ‘master’ copy of this key hidden somewhere else,” Brandis explained as he turned his back to Rupert and approached the racks. “I’ll make sure you know where that is and how to find it.” Standing by the box he’d just touched, he carefully inserted the key into the padlock and turned it. “Now,” he continued as he removed the lock and placed it on top of the pallet to his immediate right, “come and see what the fuss is all about…”
He opened the box as Rupert moved to stand beside him, and in the stark lighting there was no mistaking its contents. The surprise the young man might’ve experienced prior to that moment paled into insignificance by comparison to the stunned disbelief registering in his features as he looked on now. Inside the thin steel walls of that box, six gold bars were packed together side-by-side, and as he looked closer, Rupert realised that two more layers of bars were stored underneath. Smiling at his PA’s reaction, Brandis reached in and removed one of the bars, lifting it with some effort and offering it up for Rupert to hold.
“Four hundred and thirty troy ounces,” he advised as Rupert took the bar gingerly in his hands, caught off guard by the substantial weight. “Just over twenty-nine pounds each.”
Rupert turned the bar over in his hands, examining it in detail. Made to the standard ‘Good Delivery’ specifications of the London Bullion Market Association, each bar was a tapered ‘rectangle’ 37mm thick that measured 255mm x 81mm along its top surface and 236mm x 57mm along its bottom surface. The bar’s markings were also standard: its serial number was followed
in sequence by a refiner’s hallmark, its ‘fineness’, and its year of manufacture (which in this case was the year 1894). The fineness mark read ‘999.99’, and although Rupert was no expert, he knew enough about precious metals to recognise he was holding the purest form of gold there was: gold of a higher standard than the generally accepted twenty-four carat measurement of so-called ‘pure’ gold.
“Eighteen bars in each box…” he muttered, almost in a daze, “…six boxes to each pallet!” He stared up for a moment, almost feeling dizzy. He stared at the shelving around him as if only now truly seeing everything there for the first time. “But — but there are hundreds of pallets…” he thought for a moment and corrected himself, “…no… thousands!”
“Two thousand, five hundred and seventy-one pallets, to be exact,” Brandis confirmed, and then added with an almost apologetic shrug: “One of the shelves down the back isn’t quite full, but world events caught up with me…”
“What’s the value of gold at the moment?” Rupert muttered, mostly thinking out loud. “Six pounds an ounce? Seven?”
“Thirty-five US dollars an ounce at the moment… troy ounces that is…” Brandis chimed in, calculating on the fly. “Based on current exchange rates, that puts gold at better than eight pounds thirteen shillings per ounce…”
“Eighteen bars per box… one hundred and eight bars to a pallet…” Rupert tried to work out the math in his head, but the sheer size of the numbers overwhelmed him.
“Two hundred and seventy-seven thousand, six hundred and sixty-eight bars in total,” Brandis advised. He knew the figure off by heart after so many years of work collecting the stockpile.
“But that’s millions of pounds… billions!”
“Just over one billion pounds Sterling… or four billion American dollars,” Brandis nodded slowly, pausing for a moment before coming to the point of the discussion. “And in about a week’s time, it’s all going to leave the country for good… every single bar of it.”
“German bombers make trying to get anything up the Thames practically suicidal during daylight hours now…” Rupert was aghast at the idea. “You’d risk shipping all this out through The Channel?”
“Not in a million years. There’ll be trains coming in at dusk for ten nights running to take it overland to Liverpool. From there, it’ll be loaded onto a battlecruiser and you’ll be accompanying it across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York — arrangements have already been concluded for extra space to be made available. The paperwork you’ll be bringing with you on the trip will clearly transfer ownership of two thousand, five hundred and seventy pallets to Max Thorne, to do with however he sees fit.”
“That’s one pallet short,” Rupert pointed out immediately, something Brandis had been counting on. “You said there were two thousand five hundred and seventy-one pallets.”
“I did indeed,” his boss replied evenly, “and I omitted one pallet from the total because there’ll be another official letter from my solicitors clearly stating that last six boxes of gold belongs to one Rupert Isaiah Gold.”
“That’s more than I could earn in a lifetime,” Rupert had slipped so far beyond the ability to be surprised any further that he now simply received the news with a blank acceptance.
“About five lifetimes at the rate I’ve been paying you,” Brandis shot back with a grin, “or twenty lifetimes for just about anyone else: slightly less than four hundred thousand pounds, more or less.” He shrugged. “I’ve always trusted you as an employee and a friend, Rupert… the exceptionally-high wages I’ve paid you were merely the precautions of a sensible businessman in order to protect your inherently honest nature from ever needing to be tested.
“The task you’re about to embark on will take you into an environment which will be far more cutthroat and mercenary than the one you’ve become accustomed to working for me thus far: while I’ve preferred to conduct the great majority of my business in secret, and we’ve both been mostly sheltered from any unwanted scrutiny as a result, Max Thorne isn’t going to be accorded the same level of anonymity I’ve managed to maintain throughout my life. There’ll be offers of bribes, and I suspect you’ll be tempted… everyone can be tempted. This gold should ensure a level of financial security that precludes the need for anything more than mere temptation.”
“Who are you, James?” That question left Rupert’s lips with more intensity than even he expected. “You work, act and think like no one I’ve ever met… you seem to know what’s going on in the world before it even happens… and I find out you’re sitting on a pile of gold big enough to make you the richest man in the world…”
“Well, the gold is probably ninety percent of my entire wealth,” Brandis conceded with a nonchalant shrug, “but I suspect you’re probably correct. None of that’ll be mine however in a few weeks time.” He grinned widely again. “Rest assured, I’ve nevertheless squirreled away a little something for myself to ensure I shan’t be destitute.”
“You didn’t answer my question, though,” Rupert pointed out, also smiling faintly. “For ten years I’ve given you sterling service — let’s not equivocate on that — and we’ve been good friends that whole time. I’ve never seen you throw a party, socialise, or attend any function that didn’t have some bearing on business. You’ve never given any indication of ever having a crush, love, fling, affair or anything to do with matters of the heart with anyone, woman or man for that matter.” The words were kind but they were serious questions for all that, and they were subjects Rupert had thought on many times during his employment.
“Your birth certificate lists you as eighty years old, but such an idea is patently absurd — one only has to look at you to see that — and I know you’ve grown that beard and ragged hair to conceal any accurate guess at your real age. I’ve heard you speak fluent French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and Mandarin — I’ve no doubt there are others I haven’t heard — yet your accent, if anything, is no accent at all. Not English nor European… certainly not Asian: yet at the same time, it seems to be an amalgam of all of them, as if you’ve spoken so many languages for so long that the accents have all merged into a unique blend that shows aspects of each.” He paused for a deep breath before asking again: “Who are you, really?”
There was a long pause, during which Rupert stared directly into his employer’s eyes and refused to back down, the challenge he’d laid out containing no malice or anger but intensely serious nonetheless. Brandis, for his part, resisted his instinctive, characteristic urge to make some flippant remark or deflect the question. He didn’t know if he could answer honestly, but he did know that the young man at the very least deserved something more than mockery or the insult of a lie. He drew a deep breath and released an equally deep sigh as he removed his spectacles for the first time and matched Rupert’s gaze.
“As far as my age is concerned, I’m not even sure myself after all this time,” he began, rubbing at his forehead again. “I could give you a figure that’d be physically accurate, but it’d be meaningless in the context of who I am or how old I actually feel.” He smiled weakly. “I know that’s mostly a cop-out, and mostly because I choose not to give you an actual figure, but it’s true nevertheless that any number I gave you would be wildly unrepresentative at best.
“And who I am…? Well, that’s even more complex. It may be a cliché, but it’s no less true for all that to say that it’d be dangerous for you to know who I really am… to know what’s truly brought us to the discussion we’re having right now in this warehouse. I’m nobody… I’m everybody… to all intents and purposes, I’m a ‘phantom’ who operates in the shadows and does so with good reason. I had an single accent once… I had another name, once… was it my real name? I couldn’t answer that now after so many years. It was the name I was christened at birth, to be sure, but the one I have now has been who I am for far longer… why should that first name be any more legitimate than any others I’ve used since then?” Brandi
s tried to smile again, but there was no real strength in it now and he felt an almost overwhelming tiredness sweep through him as he leaned against the framework of the shelving for support.
“You need to understand something, Rupert,” he continued, seeming to veer off-topic but not really doing so. “Few people on either side of this war truly realise what’s happening in the world right now… that regardless of who eventually wins the Second World War, this struggle we’ve begun against Nazism and the Axis is going to create a paradigm shift in the way the people of this Earth view themselves and their future, both as individuals and as a global community… whether they’ll even think in terms of a ‘global’ community. This planet has never experienced conflict on the scale we’re about to see unleashed from across The Channel and around the globe, and no conflict that follows will ever be so clear cut. This is war in its purest form… plain and simple… black and white… no less that a battle of Good versus Evil itself.
“This war will be the ultimate test of democracy against dictatorship, and the outcome will determine which ideology remains dominant for decades, if not centuries to come. I’ve dedicated my entire life to a fight against totalitarianism and dictatorship, and I’m about to hand over the baton to the man you’ll start working for in two weeks’ time. Of all the men I’ve known in my life, Max Thorne is the only one I’m certain can continue that fight with the same intensity with which I’ve begun it.”
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