Gold

by Darrell Delamaide

  There was no question of recognizing MacLean from the face, but the very thought that this mutilated corpse might be that of a man Drew had worked with for three years was nauseating.

  Having forced himself to look at the head, he found it difficult to divert his gaze from its riveting ugliness. The assistant had completely uncovered the body. Drew swallowed hard and willed himself to objectivize the corpse in front of him. He looked at the shape of the shoulders, the torso, the legs. He imagined the body standing up, dressed in MacLean’s clothes.

  “He seems right for the height,” the journalist whispered to the policeman in French. It seemed inappropriate to speak in a normal voice. “The shoulders are bony and flat the way MacLean’s seemed to be.”

  The slight bend in the legs corresponded to MacLean’s bow-legged stature as well, but Drew was not sure whether that was due to the body’s position on the table.

  He returned to study the head. Some wisps of hair remained on the back of the battered skull. They acted upon Drew like icons, to reveal the identity of the victim. He suddenly had no doubt that the corpse was MacLean’s.

  “Excuse me,” he said, leaving the room quickly and crossing the hall into the toilet, which had been pointed out to him as if by happenstance when they were going in. There he retched painfully; he had avoided eating anything for fear of just this reaction, but the nausea continued to rack him.

  As frightening as the physical reaction was the numbing coldness in his brain. The recognition of his former colleague froze all emotion and thought in one blast of incomprehension. Drew could not fathom murder and brutality. It did not belong to his sheltered world of words and paper and business suits. For him, violence and even death were the fictions of movies and books.

  The palpable evidence of physical violence brought home to him in a new way the moral disruption it reflected. For Drew, the brutal punishment meted out to MacLean seemed appropriate to the violation of his integrity as a journalist.

  MacLean had been party to a scam, Drew felt sure. He had taken the telex from Van der Merwe and passed on the information to an accomplice, probably Fürglin, who was allied to investors in Kuwait and elsewhere. With a half hour head start they had been able to buy massively in the bullion and futures markets before the news broke and sent prices skyrocketing. MacLean had violated his sacred trust as a journalist and now lay mutilated and dead on a morgue table.

  Drew became dimly aware of his feeling. His reason immediately tried to excuse MacLean, to rationalize the Canadian’s behavior, to reject his own condemnation of MacLean. But the feeling of justice was too strong. He knew that whoever did this to MacLean was not motivated by a respect for truth, but in Drew’s mind the violation of truth had ineluctably carried MacLean to his fate.

  A sharp rap on the toilet door interrupted Drew’s internal conflict.

  “Ça va?” the policeman called.

  Drew emerged ashen-faced. “I’m pretty sure it’s him. The hair is just the right mixture of gray and color,” he managed to say.

  The perpetrators had made some effort to render the corpse unidentifiable but, through the pressure of time or indifference, had not removed the victim’s teeth. Scotland Yard had located MacLean’s dentist and was sending his dental records to Annecy. When they arrived, the records would almost certainly permit positive identification.

  In the meantime, Drew’s companion took him to the police station, where he signed a brief statement identifying the body on a preliminary basis.

  ~

  Fürglin throttled the choke and went flying over the dune, landing on two of the three wheels. The balloon-tired Honda tricycle righted itself, recovered traction, and hurtled along the packed sand to the next dune.

  The Swiss banker was delighted with his “toy,” one of a garageful that Tamal al-Masari kept at his weekend house on the Gulf for the amusement of his children, his guests, and, on occasion, himself.

  Fürglin thought it was good to visit his Kuwaiti partner. Al-Masari had loaned Fürglin his stake for the gold play, but of course it was Fürglin’s cunning and patience that made the play possible. The Swiss banker had multiplied the wealth of al-Masari’s family. The meeting reminded everyone of that. It also muddied Fürglin’s tracks in case anyone was trying to find him.

  The weather was nippy, but not nearly as cold as in Europe. The sky was gray, and the Gulf equally dull. Solitary tankers dotted the water’s surface. Fewer than before, Fürglin reflected.

  The banker rounded another dune and nearly ran into Mahout, al-Masari’s oldest son, who swerved his tricycle, balancing it precariously as he avoided a collision. Fürglin guffawed with delight, righted his own vehicle, and bent forward, accelerating on the straightaway before him. The speedometer climbed to 60 kilometers per hour, which seemed thrillingly fast on the ungainly motorcycle. Fürglin extended his left leg, decelerated, and banked in the direction of the clubhouse.

  The bungalow was identical to several others spaced out in a row along the shore. Inside he found al-Masari playing cards at a felt-covered table in a corner of the lounge. The Kuwaiti waved to his friend, and disengaged himself from the other players.

  “Had enough?” he said to Fürglin. Face still flushed with the wind and the excitement, the Swiss only nodded.

  “How about a whiskey?” asked al-Masari, reaching into a cupboard and pulling out a bottle of Chivas Regal from one of several cartons. Fürglin nodded again, marveling as he had on a previous trip at how well stocked the club bar was in spite of Kuwait’s ban on alcohol. Al-Masari had explained to him that each member brought home a case when returning from abroad, declaring to customs that it was for his own personal use.

  “It’s chilly, I suppose,” the Kuwaiti said to his guest as they settled into the leather sofas opposite the game table.

  “Oh, ça va, ça va,” Fürglin said. “I like those tricycles.”

  “You must come in the summer sometime to try our motor-powered surfboards.”

  Fürglin nodded, thinking to himself that it would take more than a surfboard to lure him away from the Copacabana. “It’s funny,” he said. “You people have all the money in the world, and you have to haul back cartons of whiskey to have a drink.”

  “We are adapting slowly to the twentieth century,” his host responded nonchalantly.

  A miniature gong sounded across the room. Immediately, the men at the card table rose. Some were dressed in burnooses. One wore a designer sweatsuit from France, and another sported a flannel Western shirt and blue jeans. All were under forty. It was Kuwait’s young financial set, as down home as they got.

  Two big platterfuls of rice were already sitting on the table as the men took their places. Fürglin was given the place of honor at the head of the table. Two boys brought plates steaming with grilled mutton chops, which they deposited on the table. The group politely waited for Fürglin to serve himself. The Swiss ignored the serving utensils placed by each platter. He knew from his last trip that these, like the tableware at each place, were just for show. With a gusto he truly felt, he reached out his right hand and grabbed a juicy chop from the platter. A burst of Arabic greeted this display of cultural savoir-faire, and hands—right hands, always—depleted the mounds of meat on the other platters.

  Fürglin did not have as much luck with the rice. He could not quite master the trick of twirling the grains into bite-sized ovals, as his hosts did. “Don’t worry, it takes practice,” al-Masari murmured next to him.

  After the meal, the Kuwaiti walked with his guest along the “beach,” a desolate stretch of sand marked with black and gray lines of muck from the polluted waters of the Gulf.

  “There’s something going on,” al-Masari said, finally coming to the point.

  The Swiss nodded. He’d gotten the drift of al-Masari’s concern in the brief snatches of conversation they had managed between meetings at the airport the previous evening, his home in Kuwait City, and the weekend bungalow.

  “You’re right,” F
ürglin said aloud. “There is too much gold on the market.”

  “Marcus seems to be the funnel, but who’s supplying?” al-Masari continued.

  Fürglin had trouble focusing his mind. He had $20 million banked in the Bahamas and a discreet refuge waiting for him in Brazil. The money was more than his moderate greed had ever hoped for. It dazed him. It took him some time to realize that al-Masari, who already had a multiple of this fabulous sum, was anguished by how to get more.

  “Maybe the South Africans were hoarding part of their production just in case something like this happened,” offered the banker.

  “Perhaps,” agreed the Arab, plainly not satisfied. “But everybody had the impression before that South Africa was selling and bartering everything it had just to get essential imports.”

  “Maybe the sabotage wasn’t quite as bad as they made out,” said Fürglin.

  Al-Masari grunted, then stopped abruptly. He looked quickly at his companion.

  “What’s the matter?” said Fürglin, watching the nearly invisible progress of a tanker on the horizon.

  The Kuwaiti paused a moment. “That might be the case,” he said finally. He changed the subject. “It was a drastic measure you took with that journalist.”

  “Oh, I don’t think two and half million dollars was too much, given the situation.” Fürglin turned to his companion with a smile, which disappeared when he saw the look of horror on al-Masari’s face.

  “He has been murdered,” al-Masari said, recovering.

  “Murdered?” Fürglin’s surprise was genuine. The bank had told him that MacLean came right on schedule to pick up his money. “How? Why?”

  “He was found in Annecy, across the French border,” al-Masari explained, scrutinizing the Swiss carefully. “It’s all right, my friend. It need not concern us.”

  Fürglin didn’t pursue the subject but walked silently at al-Masari’s side, solemnly reflective. The Kuwaiti made no attempt to hide his suspicion, but Fürglin could think of no way to allay it.

  Very quickly, Fürglin’s concern turned from MacLean to himself. He could not figure out who would have put out a contract on MacLean or why, but those same people might have designs on him.

  “Perhaps it would be well to short gold in the futures market,” the Kuwaiti said, returning to his top priority.

  “You think the supply really is greater than the market knows about?” Fürglin said. “But why be greedy? Why not just sit on your profits? Why take a needless risk?”

  “You don’t understand our world, my friend,” responded al-Masari, looking out toward the Gulf. The slender figure was dressed in a well-used sweatsuit and shabby tennis shoes. The sole sign of wealth was the leather jacket he had thrown over his shoulders, an exquisitely worked piece from Italy. “It’s not just the money.” He did not say what else it was, and Fürglin did not feel like inquiring.

  “Well, it’s the money for me,” the Swiss said, smiling smugly. Money and the pleasures it could buy: the beach, the girls, the freedom.

  “You may find yourself bored in Brazil,” al-Masari suggested.

  Fürglin turned sharply toward the Kuwaiti. The news about MacLean had made him nervous. How innocent was this remark of al-Masari’s? How had the Kuwaiti known about MacLean’s death anyway?

  The Swiss said nothing. He was dependent on the Kuwaiti’s good will until he arrived in Rio and confirmed that his money had been safely transferred to his Nassau account. Al-Masari was smiling enigmatically. Fürglin walked on in silence.

  EIGHT

  José Martinez opened the safe in his office with quick, sure movements. The Mexican finance minister’s face was drawn, his eyes bloodshot. But his starched white shirt was fresh, he had shaved, and his hair was combed in the neat, waxed style that was his trademark.

  José Martinez had not slept that night. His wife and children were already in bed when he returned home from his meeting with the president. He sat in his study, sipping bourbon, all night long. He brooded, and thought, and made up his mind about what he was going to do.

  He had arrived early this morning at the Hacienda, his ministry, his home away from home. It was Sunday, but the guard was not surprised to see the minister. Martinez worked often during the weekends.

  It was quiet. Martinez had not called upon a secretary or assistant as he usually did when he came in on Sunday. Today he needed to be alone.

  Martinez relished the tranquility. He imagined how different it was right this moment at Zócalo Square, where the president would be coming to the balcony to address the crowd. The television news had announced the previous evening that the president would be making an important speech today. The party left nothing to chance; busloads of enthusiastic fans would guarantee the president a fervent audience, even if the speech were not so important.

  But it was indeed important. Martinez had been made privy to its contents last night, during his hour-long session with the president.

  Martinez’s temple throbbed with the memory of that meeting. How he hated that man, the president of Mexico. Sitting there with Jésus Moncloa at his side, the two of them gloating over Martinez’s defeat.

  What a defeat they had prepared for him! The president was going to announce a repudiation of all foreign debt, effective in two weeks. It was a repudiation as well of Martinez’s policy of conciliation with foreign banks and governments, of his efforts to reach a compromise that respected all legal and diplomatic commitments his country had made.

  Repudiation was like a declaration of war. But the president shrewdly delayed the impact, turning his threat into an ultimatum. The banks, and the governments that backed them, had two weeks to concede terms that would nullify the repudiation. It was a gamble, a desperate act by a president too convinced of his own power to consider the consequences of his actions.

  A deluded president, egged on by an ambitious Rasputin. Moncloa was a Socialist, but Martinez had always been able to convince the president that Mexico’s obligations to the United States should prevent anyone espousing Socialist principles from coming to power.

  Until now. Now, Moncloa had prevailed. He had convinced the president to brandish repudiation in the face of the Yankee dictator.

  Of course, Martinez could not continue as finance minister. Repudiation went against solemn personal pledges Martinez had made, not only to Halden and other U.S. officials but to his colleagues in the other debtor countries who looked to him for leadership in the endless agony of negotiating and debt rescheduling. His resignation was expected and accepted on the spot.

  Martinez took the papers from the safe. He sorted through them quickly, removing several dossiers and replacing the others in the safe. There were certain facts that must disappear with him.

  He went into the small room between his office and his secretary’s reception room and quickly fed the dossiers into the paper shredder. Then he carried the receptacle full of confetti out into the hall, to the incinerator shaft, and dumped the contents into it.

  Martinez came back into his office. Several documents were neatly laid out on his desk. On the top, a brief letter to his wife. He had written nothing for his sons. There were many things he was aching to tell them, but they were too young to understand.

  José Martinez was forty-two years old and his life was over. His single ambition for the past twenty-five years was the presidency. Last night he had learned he would never be president. Nor would he ever again hold government office in Mexico.

  He had invested too much in his ambition to accept the humiliation. It would be easy for him to retreat to the United States. A Harvard professorship, a seat on the Council of Foreign Relations, a voice in the deliberations of the U.S. administration regarding its southern neighbors.

  But he would be tainted with failure, clearly distinguishable to all those he came in contact with. No comfortable academic title could compensate for the princely wealth and status he was about to lose after hoping for so long to augment it.

  Marti
nez turned on the radio behind his desk. The strident tones of the president, with his harsh northern accent, blared forth. “Dictatorship,” “Yankee,” “imperialism,” “repudiation”—the words thundered.

  With an angry movement, he switched it off. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a glistening, well-oiled Colt .45.

  Halden would know what he meant, and that might be revenge enough. Martinez had a boundless confidence in the American central banker. Halden would appreciate the hopelessness of Martinez’s situation—and of his own.

  The room was completely quiet now. With quick, sure movements, Martinez put the pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  ~

  The countryside remained placid as the French bullet train sped through the rolling Burgundy plain at 180 miles per hour toward Paris the next morning.

  The view reassured Drew, who was still shaky after his look at MacLean’s corpse. The dental records had arrived and confirmed Drew’s tentative identification. The journalist had spent the remainder of Sunday with the police, telling them what he knew.

  The identification of the corpse had removed any doubt about MacLean’s participation in a scheme to beat the markets, though it raised a whole host of other questions. A warrant was out for Fürglin’s arrest, but the Swiss banker had already fled London. Interpol was after him, starting in Lugano, where his bank was based.

  Drew checked his bags at the Gare de Lyon. He needed to hurry to keep his lunch appointment. Emerging from the station, he joined the taxi queue; within two minutes, he was seated in a Peugeot 505, speeding to the Pré Catelan restaurant.

  It was one of those breathtaking late autumn days in Paris. The sky was a deep bright blue and the midday light etched the white stone buildings in arresting detail. The sheer grandeur of the Place de la Concorde impressed Drew once again, as it always did despite his innumerable taxi trips across the wide carrefour.

  As the taxi came to the end of the Champs-Elysees and began negotiating its way around the Arc de Triomphe, Drew tried to arrange his thoughts for his meeting with Christian.