Darke Mission (19 page)

“Thank you. I hope I can show you something which makes you want to give us an even bigger one!” Vincent replied, laughing out loud.

JJ smiled and the three of them headed off. PLP's laboratory was only a few minutes walk from the famous photographer's foundation. Vincent and Yves-Jacques led the way, chatting away in their native tongue. JJ kept a few paces behind.

It was a very nice day in Paris, thought JJ, fresh, but comfortably warm and a cloudless sky. He wondered, as he strolled, whether he'd get the opportunity to enjoy any more such days or would he soon be lying lifeless in some Pyongyang street gutter, or banged up in some manky British gaol. His wondering ended as Vincent announced they had arrived. Great, thought JJ, and not a nostril's whiff of stinking, burning plastic to tarnish the moment.

The PLP laboratory was housed in a stand-alone structure behind a large retail outlet in Boulevard Arago. Externally, it resembled a garage or a large storage facility. It was on one floor. The building was far enough away from shoppers and other pedestrians to attract no attention. Perhaps even more importantly it was far enough away from any other building that occasional scientific pops, bangs, wallops and smells from PLP would not be noticed. Inside, the décor was bright and industrial. Concrete floor, whitewashed brick walls, overhead fluorescent tube lighting which covered the length of the ceiling. There were about a dozen or so laboratory style tables packed with equipment for the lab's experiments. About half of the tables had at least one or two PLP staff at them. At the near end to the door there were two makeshift offices, packed to the gunnels, with desktop computers, laptops, tablets and all the electric paraphernalia you could imagine. Each office had a small unladen table and a couple of cheap, maybe even IKEA wooden chairs. These scientists really didn't have much desire for meetings. One of the offices was Vincent Barakat's and that's where they headed.

“So, Mr Darke,” began Vincent as they all sat down. No tea or coffee on offer but at least a small bottle of evian each to keep hydrated. “Yves-Jacques has told me that you are interested in the transportation of gold bars but that you are concerned with their security?” asked Vincent.

“That's right, Vincent,” responded JJ. “Specifically, so as not to waste your time, I was wondering whether or not the properties of the transported gold could be changed such that it retained its full purity, and hence value, but did not appear to be what it was,” said JJ anxious to get to the nub of the matter.

Vincent nodded, had a quick look at Yves-Jacques who nodded back. These two friends trusted each other so Vincent was now operating on the basis that JJ Darke was trustworthy too. He seemed OK, he thought, and he'd paid up front. All good.

“Clearly, Mr Darke,” resumed Vincent, “I know nothing about security of gold transportation. What I do know about is gold itself. Without going into the whole chemical history of gold, the two main methods of refining gold after its initial production are the Wohlwill process and the Miller process. The former uses electrolysis and the latter chlorination. The Wohlwill way results in a higher purity of the refined gold, nearly 100%, but it is a complex and time consuming process. The Miller way involves blowing a stream of pure chlorine gas over and through a crucible filled with molten but impure gold. All the elements in the gold that are not pure form chlorides before gold does, essentially leaving behind what is more or less pure gold. Normally, this process is performed on an industrial scale and is extremely messy. It is, however, quick by comparison with the Wohlwill route,” Vincent paused for a long drink of his evian.

JJ was listening intently. Vincent was on the ball but he was skirting the issue as far as the mission at hand was concerned. However backward the North Korean gold extraction and refining process was, JJ felt that the gold bullion in the vaults of the DPRK's central bank would be pure enough. If the DPRK had a gold guru he certainly would not be volunteering to tell Kim Jong-un that his gold was only 90% pure. The supreme leader and his forebears dealt only in fine gold. On top of that, thought JJ, North Korea's gold gifts from Russia and China were sure to be top quality. JJ thought now was the time to slightly redirect Vincent's train of thought.

“Vincent, thank you. In our particular case, though, the gold is already of maximum purity. Being very straight about it, my interest is in disguising the gold. Yves-Jacques told me that your speciality was on the melting of precious metals. Is there anything you have discovered in that research that may help?”

Vincent Barakat put his evian back on the rickety table. “Gold melts at 1064 degrees Celsius, Mr Darke. Traditional methods of melting gold tend to be messy, sometimes losing part of the gold content. Also, the reverberatory furnace, or cupolas required are large, stationary and demand constant monitoring. With the price of gold at nearly US $1,500/oz, and households all over the world sending in their scrap jewellery, old watches and gold coins for cash, the melting and purifying of gold has attracted the attention of gold refineries around the globe. The specific interest you have, Mr Darke, is also the specific interest of the EuroGet Group, France's largest gold refiner. They gave PLP €50,000, half in advance, to discover an efficient method of melting gold, on a smaller, more versatile scale.”

“How are you progressing with that, Vincent?” enquired JJ.

“Very well,” he responded. “Would you like to see?”

JJ replied in the affirmative. The three of them left Vincent's office, made their way through the PLP lab and ended up at the far end of the building. Vincent unlocked the metal door of a spacious room which had a sign on it:

Empêcher d'entrer. Expérimenter en cours.

Keep out. Experiment in progress.

When JJ entered, it was hot but not unbearably so. He was looking at two machines which resembled elongated horizontal sunbeds with perforations on their top cover.

Vincent began. “The cleanest way to melt gold, Mr Darke, or almost any other precious metal, is through induction. Essentially, you build a super-efficient electromagnet and pass through it a high frequency alternating current. The AC frequency used depends on several factors including object size, material type and penetration depth. For gold bullion bars the frequency would need to be in the range of 5-10 kilohertz. Some specialist refineries already have in production induction furnaces to this end, but again these tend to be large, immoveable constructs. Our innovation here is two-fold. First, we have built these two mini furnaces if you like, to see whether the induction process can be undertaken efficiently on a significantly smaller scale. Secondly, we have improved substantially the conductivity of the water cooled copper rings inside the furnaces, which are necessary to complete the induction process.”

Now we're talking, thought JJ, his analytical brain zooming through everything that Vincent was telling him and projecting ahead.

“Vincent, this is most impressive. I have several questions. Is this process totally reliable right now? How much do these mini furnaces weigh? What weight of gold does each sunbed, for want of a better word, process? How long does the gold stay molten? Any problems with your process?” JJ was sounding keen, perhaps too keen, but Vincent was impressed enough with himself that he just took it for professional admiration.

Vincent resumed. “Each of these ‘sunbeds' as you called them, are around five and a half metres long, and weigh 300kg or a lot more when fully loaded. Due to the materials we have used and the ergonomic design, each sunbed can take up to twenty tonnes of gold. Obviously, we have not been able to experiment with that amount of gold but I think it is a reasonable extrapolation. The gold stays molten for as long as the electromagnet is in use. From a cold start it would take forty-five minutes to an hour to melt the twenty tonnes. That's very fast by comparison with other methods.” Vincent looked at his friend who had also been listening intently. Yves-Jacques gave him the thumbs up.

“Any problems with the process or the machinery, Vincent?”

“Not really, Mr Darke, apart from one…”

JJ raised his eyebrows and gave Vincent a little nod, it was time for the young scientist to reveal the glitch.

“The perforations at the top of the mini furnace provide a degree of cooling,” began Vincent, “as do the overhead fans, but we are having problems with the sunbeds' stability when the internal temperature is over 1,000 degrees Celsius for more than fifteen minutes. We're concerned that the sunbeds themselves will melt.”

JJ was pensive. After a few more moments he asked, “What are these mini furnaces made of, Vincent?”

“Mainly alumina, silicon and magnesium mixed with small insertions of fire clays. We need high refractory materials and these were the ones we could both get supplies of and afford.”

“What about Kevlar or carbon fibre?” asked JJ.

“Apart from the fact that we could not afford those materials, Kevlar is out,” began Vincent. “Kevlar loses its tensile strength nearly exponentially as the temperature rises. At just over 250 degrees Celsius, Kevlar's strength is reduced by 50% in about two to three days. If the temperature was over 1,000 degrees then any Kevlar structure would start to buckle, after twelve to fifteen hours at best.”

“What about carbon fibre?”

Vincent thought for a moment. “Yes, in theory,” he said. “There are many carbon fibres and carbon fibre composites. The ones which retain their tensile strength at super high temperatures are used by NASA in their space programmes. I believe they are a composite material involving a glass-ceramic matrix combined with specialised heat-resistant carbon fibres.”

JJ now knew what he had to do. He thanked Vincent for his time and information, it had been very helpful. He promised to wire PLP a further €20,000 in good faith so that JJ could contact Vincent if and when necessary over the next few days. He would add a further €20,000 if, for the next two weeks, Vincent and his team put JJ's interests and requests above those of all other clients, including EuroGet. He didn't need or demand permanent exclusivity, just a head start, a window of exclusivity. Vincent agreed. Short term cash flow can often be the key financial bugbear for a small skunkworks outfit.

JJ and Yves-Jacques made it back to the Gare du Nord in time for their 4pm Eurostar departure. They chatted about the day. JJ thanked the young Frenchman for his forethought and the introduction to Vincent Barakat. It had turned out to be a fruitful day trip. Though JJ and Fathead had agreed to leave Yves-Jacques out of the North Korean loop, Toby's alcohol induced loose lips and Yves-Jacques' stellar contribution meant that he was well and truly in the loop now.

As the train was whizzing along, JJ checked his emails and texts on his smartphone. One unread text was from Ginger. It simply stated:
I've found us a safe cracker.
That was good news. Ethel was well aware that the safe cracker for this trip better know how to get into a serious mega-vault. No cat burglar or opportunistic gonk that wanted to drop a safe on its head and hope it burst open. This was the real deal. JJ replied thanking Ginger and suggesting they meet up tomorrow to discuss.

There was an email from the slime Robson. He wanted to know how things were going as the clock was ticking. JJ sent a one word reply saying:
Fine.
He realised Neal Robson was not going to be satisfied with that but he needed to check out a couple of things on his tablet before formulating a proper reply.

“Yves-Jacques,” said JJ, getting the attention of his young colleague sitting opposite. “How long do you think it takes Renault to build an average family car?”

Yves-Jacques pondered the question. Clearly Renault family cars were not hand built and clearly they were chugging along the production line at pace. “From scratch?” asked Yves-Jacques.

“From scratch,” confirmed JJ.

“Maybe a day?” ventured the French man.

“Actually, depending on the specifications it would be two to four days from scratch. High spec sports cars or rally cars would take longer. Renault aren't any better or worse than other major car manufacturers. I just wanted to be local about it,” JJ smiled and Yves-Jacques went back to his laptop game.

JJ returned to his smartphone and texted an old friend of his, based in Surrey, Harold McFarlane. He hadn't spoken to Harold for a few years but the Surrey born and bred Englishman had been instrumental, nay essential, to JJ's fun a few years ago. Harold had hit upon hard times, not through ill health or job loss, but his extended family were not as productive in their daily lives and had become quite a financial burden. He loved his two daughters enormously and they were bright, lively girls. Harold could not afford to send them both to university at more or less the same time and it was this issue that weighed on his mind more than any other. JJ gave him £10,000 to allow both daughters to get their desired higher education. Harold did not want to accept the money, and only agreed when JJ had said to treat it as a loan. In their hearts they both knew it was a gift. Harold in all likelihood would not be in a position to repay £10,000 and JJ had no intention of trying to recoup it. The last he heard, one of Harold's daughters was an accountant and the other one ran a small, but successful internet-based business.

JJ's phone vibrated. It was a reply from Harold.

It was all fitting into place now. After a few more moments thought JJ decided it was time to bring Gil into the picture. He sent another email.