The Sentinels: Fortunes of War

by Gordon Zuckerman

  “Miss Chang, don’t you think that at this point, we know all that already?” a third voice thundered. “What we want to know are the names of the bond owners and how they transported the gold!”

  “I am sorry, sir. I have told you all I know.”

  “Maybe another thirty days here will convince you to cooperate!”

  As her guard dragged her back to her cell, Cecelia allowed herself a tiny smile. Being able to frustrate them wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Chapter 16

  COMPLICATIONS

  By the end of May 1943, the war was escalating. The easy German advances of the early part of the war were all but forgotten; the once-unstoppable armies of the Third Reich were pinned down on the Russian front and at the same time anxiously watching the western coast of Europe for the Allied invasion that everyone knew must be coming. The time was right for the Sentinels to initiate phase two of their plan.

  Ian presented ten million dollars of the duplicate bonds to the London Bank of Commerce, Great Britain’s largest and most active gold center bank. It would take a week for the bank to present the bonds to the corresponding issuing bank in Switzerland, wait for their experts to complete the authenticating process, and convert them into currency.

  Two weeks passed after the first bond had been cashed before Ian received a phone call from the bank’s chairman, Sir Desmond Muirhead, requesting his presence at their offices the following morning.

  Something is wrong. Could the Germans have already tried cashing their bonds, causing the duplicates to be discovered?

  He tried to convince himself that the call had something to do with his family’s day-to-day business dealings with the bank. After all, Meyer & Co. had a long-term relationship with them. But down deep, he knew this meeting had something to do with the bonds he had cashed.

  Ian was waiting apprehensively outside Sir Desmond’s office when the chairman arrived at eight the next morning.

  “Good to see you, Ian. Come in and have some tea,” Muirhead said.

  Inside, he gestured for the young man to sit next to a large bay window, joining him there in an adjacent chair. A tea service had been placed on the small table between them. Sir Desmond poured both cups.

  “Ian, I’ll get right to the point. Last week, we were presented with more gold bearer bonds of the same issue as the ones we cashed for your art-collector client two weeks ago. Two of these bonds had exactly the same serial numbers as yours.”

  Ian took a sip of his tea, hoping that Sir Desmond would not observe the cup shaking. “Surely there must be some mistake.”

  “No mistake on our end,” Sir Desmond said. “My people examined the bonds and could find nothing wrong with them, apart from the two identical serial numbers. When we notified the issuing bank in Geneva concerning the second set, they checked their master list and verified the duplication.”

  Sir Desmond paused and took another sip of tea. “Although your bonds had been approved, they refused to honor the ones with the duplicate serial numbers. The terms and conditions, in case of any duplication, require banks to honor only the first bond presented. But I’m sure you’ll agree that this arrangement is most unsatisfactory, since we cannot presently determine which bonds are authentic and which are forgeries. Until we clear up this problem, we may be denying the rightful owner his money by refusing to cash one of the bonds.”

  Why was the sunlight coming through the bay window suddenly so warm? Ian wondered. He began to perspire.

  Calmly, Sir Desmond continued, “Accordingly, I felt I must advise you not to risk accepting any more of these bonds as art payments until we can clear this situation up with Geneva.”

  “Sir Desmond, I can’t express strongly enough my father’s and my own appreciation for your concern in this matter. You can be assured we will not be accepting any more payments of this sort,” Ian said. He was very impressed by his ability to keep his voice even. I almost convinced myself I was telling the truth!

  ______

  Jacques sat behind the desk in his corner office, high up in the Stone City Bank Building, looking out through the slightly cloudy sky. In a rare moment of relaxation, he watched all the empty ships, riding high on the water, making their way to New York’s East River docks. The ships moving in the opposite direction rode low in the water, heavily laden with their outgoing wartime cargoes of fuel, military supplies, and equipment.

  How vulnerable these slow-moving ships appeared, sailing by themselves. Although he knew things would change once they formed into convoys, escorted by naval war ships, he still couldn’t help but think about all the tremendous losses that had been absorbed. Keeping open America’s supply lines to Europe proved to be a costly operation.

  By the end of the previous year, American wartime production had exceeded the total of all the Axis nations combined. In such a short span, the United States was able to supply a war being fought on three continents. An article in theNew York Times reported that one cargo ship could be built in seventeen days, compared to a prewar schedule of one year. A maverick West Coast builder was promising to be able to produce a ship in only one day. Longer-range bombers were being produced fifteen times faster than when production had begun. Typewriter factories now made machine guns. Auto plants were producing bombers, tanks, and armored personnel carriers.

  The world is changing fast. The industrialists on both sides of the Atlantic are getting rich. The winner will be the industrial economy that escapes most unscathed.

  Recent reports were beginning to sound more optimistic. Allied troops won a decisive victory in North Africa and invaded Italy. The German invasion of Russia was stalled, and three of Hitler’s armies had been defeated at Stalingrad. More of these supplies are reaching their destinations, and Hitler is having trouble funding his war machine. A faint smile appeared on his face.

  Just then, his secretary was behind him, looking at a strange invoice statement from London. “Mr. Roth, we have received a letter from Meyer & Co.,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what it means.”

  Jacques took it and read:

  Please accept our apologies for your last invoice. Upon further review, we have determined that it was issued in error. The invoice in question seems to be a duplicate of another party’s order, sent to you by mistake. We have notified our bank of this error, and the problem is being researched.

  —Meyer & Co.

  Jacques had no trouble deciphering the true meaning of the invoice. Their duplicates had been discovered, and the Germans would start searching for their identity.

  ______

  The leaders of the German industrial families had gathered once again in Karl’s library. This time, there was no formal party, no fancy dinner, no cigars, only the well-filled snifters of cognac.

  The atmosphere was strained. Germany was fighting on two fronts—something they had hoped would never happen. If their reports were accurate, the Allies would invade France in the spring of 1944. Already stretched thin, German resources would have to support a third front.

  To make matters worse, Erhart Schmidt had just received a report describing London Bank of Commerce’s discovery of the duplicate bonds. The war problems were serious, but the safety of their private wealth was far more personal.

  Addressing his nervous friends, Herr Schmidt said, “Should more of these duplicate bonds begin to surface at other banks, it’s safe to say that they’ll adopt the same policy as the London Commerce. We have to ask ourselves which is worse—losing access to some of our own money or risking possible exposure to the government.”

  “But Erhart, our entire investment could become frozen, at least until the banks determine which bonds are duplicates,” Heinrich Bimmler said. “That could put a real cloud over the liquidity of our capital for a very long time.”

  Karl Schagel considered for a moment. “Privately and quietly, we must find out who is behind this. Money doesn’t just disappear. Once the bonds are cashed, we should be able to follo
w the money trail back to the source.”

  “Karl,” Erhart said, “you don’t seem to understand our priorities. It is much more important to bring this situation to a quick conclusion, regardless of what we have to do. Should Hitler or the High Command discover that two billion dollars in gold has been smuggled out of Germany, it won’t take them long to figure out whose money is missing and come after us.”

  “If the war continues to go badly, and we wait too long, what will happen to us?” Heinrich chimed in. “The Allies could confiscate all our wealth, our factories. It’s possible that we’ll have to be ready to leave Germany at a moment’s notice. That means that all our financial arrangements must be in order well in advance of our departure. Now, do you understand our sense of urgency?”

  Before Karl could respond, Schmidt spoke again. “Karl, maybe your connection in Geneva could help us. In the meantime, we must do something to find out who is behind this forgery, and we must act immediately!”

  Chapter 17

  INVASION OF PRIVACY

  Having received the urgent call from Erhart Schmidt’s solicitor in London, the Insurance Fraud Investigation Company of London appointed their two top agents to the case. Kevin O’Sullivan had been with the investigation company, IFIC, for almost as many years as it had been in existence. It was rumored that he had underworld connections and wasn’t afraid to use them, which didn’t bother the executives at IFIC—provided they weren’t directly implicated.

  Considered trustworthy by snitches and street people alike, Kevin could rely on their cooperation. More recently, it was said that he had gained the cooperation of certain people inside the government intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Kevin was a bulldog of a man, both physically and emotionally. He was only five feet, six inches tall, but he weighed two hundred pounds and had well-developed muscles. His hair was cut short, and he had several mean-looking scars on his jaw, around his right eye, and near his right ear. These were the well-earned marks from a lifetime of brawling, much of it in neighborhood bars. All of it added to his legend—which suited his purposes quite well.

  O’Sullivan was an intelligent man, meticulous and extremely detail oriented. Once assigned to a case, he would go at it with tenacity and tirelessness. He had never failed to solve a case, and IFIC believed that he was exactly the investigator to solve this one.

  A large part of Kevin’s success could be attributed to his partner, the thirty-five-year-old unmarried daughter of a Scotland Yard inspector, Katherine “Cricket” Williams. She was a tall, figureless woman with plain features whose main pleasure in life was derived from her work. She thrived on the intrigue, the excitement, and the large fees. If she had a personal life, no one seemed to know very much about it. Some wondered if she was a well-concealed lesbian; others saw her as a totally dedicated professional whose only personal pleasure was making money.

  Cricket had previously worked as a bank data security officer, an accountant, and an auditor for the British government. She was also a tax fraud expert. Her technical and analytical skills were a perfect match for Kevin’s street smarts.

  During the five years Cricket had worked at IFIC, she had partnered with Kevin on more than several occasions. Together, they had recovered tidy sums for both the company and themselves.

  It was common practice for IFIC to bill clients ten to twenty percent of what was recovered, depending on the size, complexity, and risk of the case. After recovery of out-of-pocket expenses, fees were then split fifty-fifty between the company and the members of the designated investigative team. Both Kevin and Cricket sensed that this case would involve the kind of fees that could change their lives.

  For this investigation, as with all the others, Kevin and Cricket would pursue different trails. He’d follow the people; she’d follow the money.

  “I think the place for me to start is with some people in the art community,” he told her as they first began discussing the case. “According to the bank report, Meyer cashed a number of bonds for one of his company’s clients, who chose to remain anonymous. Despite the mysterious identity of the buyer, someone must know something. It’s been my experience that once someone starts to pay big sums for art, word of his presence spreads quickly.”

  Cricket nodded. “And I’ll begin by searching the records of the London Bank of Commerce and some of the other large banks capable of handling deposits of a multimillion-dollar magnitude. If the funds were deposited in one of those banks, a trail will have been created. Who knows how many more of these bonds there are? All told, we could be talking about a lot more than ten million dollars.”

  They grinned at each other. This was going to be fun.

  ______

  Morgan Stone barked to his secretary, “Get me the bank commissioner. I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now!” He had already berated the security guard who was on duty.

  “Sir, they were claiming to be bank examiners. They had badges and paperwork that appeared to be official. As a matter of fact, I recognized the blonde woman as the same one who visited Stone City a few years back.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “I remember having a friendly conversation with her when she signed in on her previous assignment. It was just a few days after my first daughter was born. If you’d allow me a few hours to search our records, perhaps I can find her name.”

  “Mr. Stone, the bank commissioner is on the line,” the secretary said, trying to tiptoe around the boss’s anger.

  As Morgan grabbed the phone, the security guard took the chance to slip out of his office.

  “Stone here. What do you mean by sending two examiners over without notifying me?”

  “Unless I’m mistaken, Mr. Stone, we sent no personnel to your bank. If you’ll give me their names, I’ll check my records,” the commissioner said.

  “The visitors’ logs are on their way up to my office,” Morgan said. Just as he uttered the words, one of his young vice presidents came through the door.

  “Here they are now,” Morgan said, holding the receiver between ear and shoulder as he opened a book and found the signatures. He glanced in disgust at the VP, who backed slowly out the door. “Well, I can’t tell you their names from these current signatures—they’re illegible. But our guard recognized one of them from an earlier audit. Ah, here it is, backlogged. Her name is Eloise Cooper.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Stone, but I have a list of our current examiners and that name is not on it. Whoever she was, she is not one of our people.”

  Outside the door, Jacques was listening to Morgan’s side of the conversation. He suspected that the unauthorized search was related to the bank’s cashing of another ten million dollars’ worth of the duplicate bonds. The transaction had gone smoothly; the Swiss had verified the authenticity of the bonds, accepting responsibility, and Stone City had converted them into dollars.

  The problem must be with the Germans. Perhaps they are searching bank records in an effort to identify the deposit of a corresponding amount of money. That magnitude would be easy to trace. Thank God Ian didn’t deposit anything.

  ______

  Erhart Schmidt’s face turned almost purple as he read the initial IFIC report. Their undercover investigation of the records at four gold center banks revealed that not ten but forty million dollars’ worth of gold bonds had been redeemed!

  Worse still, there was no indication that any of the money had been redeposited into the banking system. There was absolutely no trail for IFIC to follow.

  Whoever it is knows exactly what they’re doing, the bastards!

  Schmidt swore to himself that not a single person involved in the forgery would escape justice—swift and very final justice.

  Chapter 18

  PASSIVE RESISTANCE

  Jacques dialed the number for Tony’s California ranch. Tony answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Tony, it’s Jacques. Have there been any new developments?
”

  “Not a word! Mike is driving himself crazy with concern. Not knowing what has happened is bad enough, but not being able to do anything about it is making things much more difficult for him.”

  “Maybe you should remind him it’s Cecelia we’re talking about. In many ways, I think she may be the strongest of us all. We’ve got to keep the faith that something will turn up soon.”

  “Thanks, Jacques. I’ll try my best.”

  “As long as I have you on the phone, perhaps we could take a few minutes and talk a little business?”

  “Mike and I have been talking a lot about old times—our thesis work, and how it relates to your recent plan. He mentioned that the two of you may have… found twenty-five million to invest in my development of, uh, Sentinel Wines.”

  “That’s true,” Jacques replied. “Of course, there’s not much more we can do without a complete write-up of your business plan, but if this deal is going to happen, it will happen quickly.”

  “Well, that’s the only good news I’ve gotten out here.”

  “Mike explained the details to you, right? You know what you’ll be getting into? And you realize that any profit will go to the organization, not be used for personal purposes?”

  “Stopping the pervasive misuse of wealth and influence is a lot more important to me than sharing in profits. I want to do it for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is for what my family went through.” Tony paused, then added, “It’s a good idea to invest the money in land here, Jacques. I can make it disappear like a drop of wine in a vat.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re on board,” Jacques said. “We’ll discuss it in detail when I see you. I would appreciate it if you would tell Mike I’ll be arriving on TWA Flight 812 tomorrow, and while you’re at it, tell him to keep his chin up.”