Gold (15 page)

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,” Fürglin 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.

Martinez 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.