by Chuck Dixon
“This is near a pound of gold, son. How much of this shit do you have?”
“Around sixteen hundred kilograms.”
Big Don set the lumpy little stone on the desktop and tapped his fingers on it.
“That’s like a ton and a half.”
“Closer to a ton-seven. And that’s what brings me here,” Lee said.
Big Don’s bullshit salesman bonhomie melted away to be replaced by the hard lines of pure avarice. Without a word, he pulled open a drawer and retrieved a calculator that he planted on the desk and began tapping on it furiously with one hand. Lee sipped his ice-cold Bud and waited.
The tapping came to an end, and Big Don sat back and rubbed his fingers over his lips.
“So, how many millions, we talking about?” Lee said.
“More zeroes, son. Add about three more zeroes.”
BIG DON WALKED Lee out to his rental parked in the Florida heat. They talked as they crossed the broad lot lined with ranks of shiny recent model cars under colorful pennants hanging still in the motionless air. Seminole Motors. Big Don was no more a Seminole Indian than Lee was Chinese.
“I can’t manage this alone. Not all at once,” Big Don said.
“And I don’t like the idea of bringing in any more players,” Lee said.
“I understand that. I do. I can act as a cut-out. A middleman. I take a percentage for setting the deal up, and no one hears your name.”
“Do I want to know who you’d go to, Don?”
“I’d be providing them the same service.”
“For a cut off their end.”
“There’s enough to go around, son.”
They reached Lee’s rental, a squatty Toyota in only-in-rental blue.
“So, what’s the plan?” Lee said and leaned back on the hood.
“Stay in the area for a few days. Don’t even tell me where. I have your cell. I assume it’s a throwaway. I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you the test results. Just a number. That’ll be karats. Give me another day, and I’ll call you with a figure. The cash. Your total. Again, just a number.”
“Then?”
“We arrange delivery.”
“Good to see you again, Don.”
“You too, son.”
Lee checked the rearview on the way off the lot. Don stood in the wavery haze and watched until the little blue car was out of sight.
LEE WAS NAPPING in a hot tub at the Flamingo Inn when the first call came on his burner.
Big Don’s voice. One word, then disconnect. “Eight.”
Eight karats. The prehistoric gold was raw shit indeed.
The following day the burner buzzed while Lee was on a pre-dawn ten-mile run.
“Ninety-eight.”
That was millions. Like Don said, there was a lot to go around.
THE EXCHANGE WAS slickly made a week later. The gold was divided into four loads and concealed inside four new-model-year Chevy Avalanche pick-ups at a dealership in Chandler, Arizona. The dealership was owned by Big Don through a holding company that was a division of a shell corporation. The trucks were loaded onto a Nu-Car carrier and driven to Gainesville, Fl.
The cars were off-loaded there, given new paperwork, and shipped back to Arizona on the same carrier. Before the return trip, the gold was removed from the trucks, and plastic-wrapped palettes of bundles of non-sequential hundreds and fifties loaded into the beds and tied down. Two hundred million in cash. Almost two tons of money.
No one can trust anyone in a deal like that. Lee insisted to Don that each individual truck have Lo-jack installed and that he be given sole access to the codes. Lee and Jimbo rode shotgun at a discreet distance. They shared driving and made the marathon round trip across the country well behind the semi loaded with the multi-million-dollar trucks. They were all gunned up and prepared to intervene if there was a double-cross or ambush.
It all went down slicker than snot. Four men came into Sunshine Chevy Cadillac on the day the trucks arrived back in Chandler and bought four new pickups fresh from a Gainesville dealership. The deals were cash and all open and legal and registered, and that was that.
A WEEK LATER, Big Don was unlocking the office at Seminole Motors but found someone had unlocked it before him.
“Estelle?” he called, entering.
A man who looked like a linebacker dressed for a court appearance was standing in the waiting room. A second guy dressed the same was behind the reception glass, pressing the buzzer to allow Don in. Big Don sensed that neither man was open to questions and made his way through the door for his own office.
A slim man in a bad hairpiece sat behind the battered steel desk regarding Big Don with lifeless eyes. He was toying with a nickel-plated Sig Sauer. It was one of the loaded pieces Big Don kept in his desk drawers.
“Leonid, this is a surprise,” Big Don said, hiding his surprise behind a fixed smile. “Problem with the gold?”
“What could be the problem with gold?” Leonid said. His voice was lightly accented, the vowels sliding into one another in oily succession.
Big Don, for once, was left without an answer. “Someone wants to talk to you,” Leonid said. “Friend of yours?”
“No friend,” Leonid said. He set the handgun down on the blotter and hit send on a cell phone. He held it up, making Big Don reach across the desk for it.
“Mr. Brinkley, I hope this is a good time to talk.” The voice sounded like one of those guys in the TV shows his wife liked to watch; the ones with high-class British people worrying about how they’re going to save the manor.
“Um...sure.”
“I have a few questions about these people who sell gold by the ton.”
14
Their Separate Ways
“NO WAY! NO way in hell no way!” Chaz said.
“What are you going to do? You going to sit on your ass the rest of life?” Jimbo asked.
“I got near ten mil in cash hidden away. If I want to spend the rest of my life doing exactly nothing, then I can do that. Okay with you?”
The pair were shooting clay at a range neither of them would have been allowed on just two months previous. The membership was more than either of them earned in six months at their former jobs. Their custom engraved trap guns cost more than their last cars.
“You’ll get fat,” Jimbo said and raised his brand new Kreighoff over-and-under to blast a pair of clay discs flung over their heads from an automated launcher on the roof of the shooting shed behind them.
“I’m not fat!” Chaz said and missed both his clays. “I said you’ll get fat. Again.”
Jimbo had reloaded and snapped his gun up to nail another pair even before they began their drop.
“Fucker.”
Chaz ejected two smoking rounds but ignored his turn. The twin discs soared away into the treetops unmolested.
“No sense wasting pigeons on you.” Jimbo touched the control screen set into the sheltered gun bench to shut down the launch program.
“Look at you, man. You’re in the best shape of your life. Ranger ready and born again hard,” Jimbo continued. “All because you thought we’d be going downrange again. You can tell me you’ll keep up the PT and the running and the weight training, but you’re lying to yourself. Guys like us need a purpose like a dog needs a job.”
“Why are you so eager to get back into it?” Chaz said. “You like that shit? Does it appeal to the Comanche in you or something?”
“I’ll let that pass.” Jimbo was a Pima.
“I bought a big house on the beach in Alabama, and when the renovations are done, it’s gonna have a state-of-the-art gym and my own running trail,” Chaz said, and slid his double barrel into a leather case.
“Six months from now, that gym’ll have an inch of dust on the floor and the running path’ll be weeds. Next thing you’ll be golfing.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’ve already been golfing, haven’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“This isn’t
about you becoming a fat ass, is it? You really have no itch to see more of The Then.”
“Damn straight, I don’t,” Chaz said and shouldered the gun case to walk away. “It fucked with my head. I keep thinking about it. That woman was dead, and we went back and changed it. She was stone dead for all those years and years and years, and we made it like it happened different, and now she’s alive and Renzi is the one who died.”
“It put everything into perspective for me,” Jimbo followed him along the gravel path back toward the main clubhouse. The bang-bang of shooters at other range stations came through the trees to them.
“I don’t want that kind of perspective, bro. I don’t want to know shit like that is possible. I don’t want to know that anyone can go back and change what shouldn’t be changed. What’s next? You going to go back and save Jesus?”
“Dwayne’s got something going. There’s enough in the kitty for the Taubers to build their own Wayback machine. We could use you. You’re part of the circle.”
“Circle of crazy. Roenbach’s going because he has a hard-on for that little brainiac. He’s too dumb to know he’s too dumb for her. But what’s your excuse, Jimbo? Admit it, bro. You liked it back there.”
“God help me, I did,” Jimbo said.
EVERYTHING WAS MAKING Morris Tauber nervous these days.
At first, all that gold made him uneasy. The cash was worse. It was so much that it seemed unreal. It all felt wrong and dangerous. He let his little sister handle the arrangements for safe deposit boxes at two dozen banks in as many cities. He didn’t want to know about it. They were keeping a half million dollars on hand in a North Face bag as petty cash. Just the idea of that was almost obscene.
Morris could not escape the feeling that something bad was out there, just out of sight, waiting to make itself known.
He insisted they stay on the move. Hammond got them a brand-new set of credentials and fresh credit cards that were legal in every sense except that they belonged to entirely fictitious people. The Taubers received statements each month and paid their bills like everyone else from checking accounts in the same phony names. Paying in cash drew all kinds of unwanted attention. Morris was now Kevin Francis Eckenrode, and Caroline was Helen Elizabeth Martin-Freeborn.
They were on the road each day moving from motel to hotel to cabin for about a week when Caroline announced that she’d had it with second-and third-rate motor-lodges and Wayside Inns and Best Westerns. She booked a flight to St. Thomas, and Morris, at a loss and adrift without her, tagged along.
Caroline was not doing anything to salve his paranoia. She wanted to talk about the Tube; about setting one up on their own and making more expeditions into the past.
“We’ll need the nuke,” Morris insisted from the shade of his umbrella on a white sugar beach. Caroline lay back on a marvelous chaise in nothing more than a bikini and sunscreen. Morris wore a sun-safe shirt and khakis. He was wearing socks, for God’s sake. With sandals. Jesus.
“The Iranians will go along with us,” she said. “They’ll come for the money. Besides, they have nowhere else to be.”
“I know how they feel.” Morris sighed.
“We need to talk about this, Morris. The theories are all proven. But there are engineering challenges to setting up for a trip back to Ionian, Nisos Anaxos. That’s where you come in.”
“Carrie...”
“You can’t be scared all the time, Mo! Hell, the challenge would take your mind off of things. Admit it, for all your worrying, you’re intrigued.”
“You think getting us into more trouble would take my mind off the trouble we’re already in?”
“What trouble, Mo? We got away clean. The perfect crime. We stole something that no one knew existed from people who died when elephants were still native to America. And they weren’t even people in the strictest sense. Now we can do whatever we want. Explore whatever area of science we want.”
“But, Carrie...”
“Do you have to be such a pussy?”
“I see Mr. Roenbach has had an influence on you,” Morris sniffed.
“I wonder what Dwayne’s doing?” She plucked her cell phone from her tote and hit speed dial. She lay back and watched the surf as the speaker in her ear rang on the other end.
DWAYNE DIDN’T REALLY need his arm twisted to fly to St. Thomas. He’d been a multimillionaire only two weeks and was already bored out of his mind. He didn’t know what to do with himself. The fact that Caroline was the one who made the invitation didn’t hurt.
There was a limo waiting for him at the airport that took him to the Ritz-Carlton on Big Bay. His room was waiting for him under his cover name of John Henry Dent, and it turned out to be a suite. There was a fruit basket on the dinette table, and a note with only a suite number written on it. The mini-fridge was loaded with Coors long-necks. She remembered his brand.
It was raining by the time Dwayne showered and changed. He met Morris and Caroline at a private cabana at the edge of the beach off the pool area. There was chilled crab and fruit salad waiting for them, and a pitcher of margaritas with three glasses. Morris had a cola. The hiss of the rain would drown their conversation and keep anyone curious away.
“You’re never going to get clearance to set up on the island,” Dwayne said. “Even if there was property available, buying land overseas raises all kinds of red flags. And that’s without all the crazy EU regulations about building any kind of structure.”
“You have a Greek real estate license now?” Caroline said.
“It’s all there on the internet.”
“So, you’re saying that the Greeks may object to the installation of a stolen nuclear reactor on one of their island paradises?” Morris said.
“Yeah, there’s that, too.”
“There has to be a way,” Caroline said.
“It’s all right to admit defeat, Caroline,” Morris said. “The island is small and remote and surrounded by smaller islands. There’s nowhere to set up. And we can’t build the plant on the African mainland because it would make for too much travel time to the site. Too much exposure and too many variables.”
“And the coast of North Africa is no place to be these days anyway,” Dwayne put in.
“Shit,” Caroline said and swirled her margarita. The men sat without speaking. Caroline sat looking out at the sea as the rain died away. Broad streaks of sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating a gleaming white shape out on the water. It was one of the many party boats that sailed out of Long Bay packed with seniors by day and hipsters by night.
“A boat,” Caroline said.
“What?” Morris said.
“Let’s buy a boat,” Caroline said.
Morris was relieved. He thought his little sister was finally changing the subject.
15
To Sea
CAROLINE HAD NOT changed the subject. “We manifest at sea,” she said.
“We what now?” Dwayne said.
“Manifest. It’s the term Mo and I have decided on for the exit phase of traveling through the Tauber Tube.”
“Oh.”
“We build the new Tube in the hold of a ship, right?” she continued like she was only warming up. They were back in her suite now. Morris sat channel-surfing in silence. Dwayne had switched back to beer. Caroline sat at an imitation Queen Anne desk with her fingers flying over the keyboard of a laptop.
“Impractical,” Morris said without looking away from the big flat-screen on the wall of the common room.
“Really?” Caroline’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Think about it. The Aegean is full of ship traffic. We could hide in plain sight. And the Mediterranean is a constant. Open water presents far less risk than manifesting on land. The ocean levels are relatively constant give or take a few feet. We’d be portable and on international water. It’s an elegant solution.”
“What about the Tesla Tower?” Morris said, turning from the TV to take an interest. “The nuke charges the tower and gives us
the jolt of electromagnetic energy to power the Tube array. I need terra firma for the tower.”
“So, build your tower on the boat,” Caroline said. “You can’t buy a boat,” Dwayne said.
“The hell I can’t,” she said and dipped her head at her monitor. “We can pick up a container ship for a couple million. Peanuts.”
“Ship owners get looked into. At purchase time. Each time they enter port. Each time they depart. There’s paper at every step from customs, immigration, local coast guards, environmental agencies, anti-terror agencies, and any official looking for a handout. Our IDs are number one, but they won’t stand up to that level of scrutiny,” Dwayne said.
Caroline pressed her lips together and tapped furiously on her Alienware. Morris settled on NFL cheer-leader tryouts on ESPN 3, and Dwayne turned his chair to watch as well.
The Patriots were down to the final twenty and the boys were admiring the pompom work of a stunning redhead when Caroline slammed a hand down on the desk.
“We charter!” she said.
THE OCEAN RAJ was a container ship registered in Sri Lanka and berthed at Alexandria on the coast of Egypt and available for charter. A hundred and ninety meters in length and thirty-two meters abeam. The owners, Sea-Globe International LTD, with offices in London, Mumbai, and Trincomalee, were anxious to see their vessel put to sea from the Egyptian port. They offered the bargain rate of a bareboat charter at ten thousand dollars a day on a thirty-day open-end lease with a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars. Insurance was extra, as was fuel.
A bareboat charter meant that the newly-formed Praxus Enterprises (incorporated in Delaware) would have to supply a captain and crew on their own. They had thirty days to do so or forfeit their deposit. In the meantime, the Ocean Raj would be prepared and guaranteed seaworthy by the agreed upon departure date.
