Gold (31 page)

Suddenly the mirror flew down into the sink. Before he could think, Sinclair found himself flat on his back. Instinctively, he raised his hands to ward off the door that came crashing down on top of him. He heard a thunderous clap outside and choked as dust filled his lungs.

He scrambled out from under the door. Miraculously, his trousers were still hanging on the hook above his bed. He jerked them on as he stumbled through the gaping hole left where the door had been.

Outside was pandemonium. Someone had managed to switch on the floodlights, but the beams hardly penetrated the thick, roiling clouds of dust. Sinclair lost his balance and fell as another shock rocked the mining complex. A machine gun hammered to his right as Sinclair regained his feet. He ducked low and ran for the office, just twenty yards from his hut.

The building was still intact, affording some shelter from the dust. Tom Lacey, the chief engineer, was at the phone, holding a handkerchief over his mouth.

“What in the hell is going on?” Sinclair yelled.

Before Lacey could respond, the crash of shattering glass deafened the mine manager. The large window facing the mine-heads disappeared. Glass shards lacerated Sinclair’s exposed arms and chest as the blast knocked him down again. Repeated bursts of automatic fire followed the explosion.

Lacey came over to pull Sinclair to his feet. His arms and neck were slick with blood from the cuts.

“Phone’s dead,” Lacey yelled. Hundreds of voices shouting created a din further augmented by the machine-gun fire and the sound of heavy motors.

“Who are they shooting at?”

“Miners, trying to get away,” Lacey shouted through his handkerchief. “We should get out of here.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“It looks like the sabotage is for real this time,” Lacey called back, lurching for the door. A muffled explosion from farther away caused a slight trembling in the hut.

“Where’s the captain?” Sinclair yelled as he followed Lacey’s dim figure outside.

An armored car wheezed to stop in front of the office as the two men emerged. “Hurry up, get in!” A uniformed figure at the wheel waved at them. They clambered into the empty vehicle, which promptly lumbered away. Captain Terry Limon, commander of the garrison force at Witsfontein, crouched bareheaded at the large steering wheel.

“They’ve gone and done it,” he yelled to the two men behind him. The clumsy vehicle rolled blindly ahead as Limon steered for the camp entry from memory.

“Did you see them?” Sinclair leaned forward. Lacey was on the floor. The rattle of gunfire drowned out Limon’s response. Sinclair could not see a thing.

How could they have done it? The fence, the garrison, the dogs—how could anyone have planted enough explosives to cause this much damage? The ALF sabotage was supposed to be a fairy tale. He had always reckoned that security made it impossible for any black terrorist to get that close to the mines. Or had it?

He sat back on the hard leather bench as the armored car ground along. The loss of blood made him lightheaded. He felt nauseated. The dust choked him.

He saw how it had been done. A chill shook him and he tightened into a crouch. In that case, he thought, there really is no hope. He lost consciousness.

TWENTY

Drew punched the flashing light on the phone.

“It’s Tony Edwards,” a thin voice said.

Drew fumbled for a response, not recognizing the name.

“In Johannesburg.”

Of course, the managing editor of the Sun.

“Thank you for your note about Van der Merwe. I was sorry to hear about him,” the thin voice continued. Drew had given Cyril a short note about Van der Merwe’s death, not specifying the circumstances, to deliver to the Sun.

Drew waited. The tension crackled over the transcontinental connection.

“ALF launched a nationwide offensive last night,” Edwards said.

“There’s been nothing on the wires.”

“The government’s trying to put a cap on it, but it’s too big. We’re putting out a special this morning. The publisher says the Ministry won’t be able to stop us.”

“What have they hit?” Drew felt a tingling at the back of his neck.

“The airports at Johannesburg and Cape Town, some power plants, the Sasol coal-gasification plants ...”

Edwards paused. Drew’s apprehension grew.

“Our reports are spotty, but they seem to have hit some of the gold mines.”

Drew’s mind reeled. He felt a sudden churning in his stomach. “The government just affirmed that the sabotage took place a month ago!”

“That’s a crock of shit and you know it.” Still thin and tinny on the phone, Edwards’s voice lost its hesitancy. He talked in a quick, clipped stream. “The ‘sabotage’ a month ago was a hoax, you know that. But today it’s happening for real. We’ve gotten calls from Carletonville, from Welkom. We had a call from Ron Sinclair, manager of Witsfontein—that’s the big one on the Far West Rand—he says they’ve bombed the hell out of his mine.”

Nausea welled up in Drew’s throat. He could not respond.

“Sinclair says white miners planted the explosives—that’s how ALF could get to the mines.”

The precision of Edwards’s explanation calmed Drew’s incipient hysteria. It made sense. It removed one of the anomalies from the previous reports.

“Why would they do that?” Drew asked.

“Who knows what they’ve been promised, or by whom?” Edwards sounded indifferent.

Drew tried to picture the busy, banal newsroom in the Sun building, so like his own newsroom, like newsrooms all over the world. The special edition would come out in spite of the doomsday ambiance. Drew had sometimes fantasized, seeing himself putting news on the wire even during a nuclear war, up to the last possible minute.

“Why are you calling me?” Drew asked suddenly.

Edwards did not respond immediately, inarticulate once again. “I suppose for Tony’s sake,” he said, almost a whisper. “You must—”

The line went dead. Drew felt the blood drain suddenly from his head, he nearly swooned. He shook off the dizziness and slowly put down the phone.

Tom had returned to the slot. He peered intently at the monitor screen, his hands tapping vigorously on the keyboards in front of him. Bart, too, was intensely preoccupied with his screen. “Jesus, Drew, look at this!” Tom nearly cried for help. Drew looked blankly over Tom’s shoulder at the story on the monitor screen. The Johannesburg correspondent of the French Press Association had profited from the open lines used to disseminate Pretoria’s denial of the hoax to transmit another report.

ALF Claims New Sabotage of South African Gold Mines

Johannesburg (fpa)—Radio transmissions of the Azanian Liberation Front monitored here announced that ALF commando units had succeeded in sabotaging South Africa’s major gold mines. The ALF radio denounced earlier reports of mine sabotage as a defamatory lie, but claimed that today’s attack has truly crippled the country’s gold production.

The mine sabotage appears to be part of a coordinated nationwide offensive. Sporadic reports of strategic commando raids have filtered through the news blackout since early this morning.

—More—

Drew numbly signaled to Tom to go back to the rim, taking the seat in the slot. He saw his hands playing across the keyboard, coding the story, as though they belonged to someone else. He pushed the execute button and sent off the item.

“Tom, see if you can get anybody to answer the phone at the banks,” Drew said, in a voice that mildly surprised him by its normal tone. A high-pitched singing filled his ears. Other, stronger feelings fought for his attention, but he held them back. “Bart, you try to get through to the Bank of England for a comment.”

The markets went quiet, as though the whirring, buzzing trading rooms and floors had been suddenly wiped out. A dizzying flurry of government communiqués from various capitals announced the cessation of foreign exchange trading, the closing of stock markets, bank holidays of unspecified duration. Washington, Tokyo, London, Paris, Bonn, Berne, Rome—time zones had become irrelevant. It was as if the entire globe had suddenly entered a new dimension of simultaneous perception. The age of instantaneous communication had brought an instantaneous crash.

“Holy shit,” Tom whispered almost reverently. He held the telephone receiver in front of him, waiting in vain for bankers to answer their ringing phones, as he watched the monitor.

Drew saw the figures blur on the screens before him. He blinked and felt hot tears tracing down his cheeks. He breathed deeply, pushing the keys.

He felt giddy. He suppressed a sudden urge to laugh out loud. The full irony of the situation hit him. The double reversal in the gold market had whiplashed the financial system. Halden and du Plessis certainly had not counted on this.

Abrassimov had. Drew understood the Russian’s ambiguity. He wondered if the Russian would really be pleased with the outcome of their machinations.

He wasn’t sure that Halden or Abrassimov was getting what he had wanted. It didn’t matter to him, anymore than du Plessis’s defeat. Drew felt he had remained true to himself in spite of the confrontations with these men.

Halden, Abrassimov, du Plessis, Madison, Marcus—their faces flashed through Drew’s mind. His stomach tightened. Each of these strong and powerful personalities had tested his resolve. He had stood up against them and done what his own sense of integrity demanded. He felt good about that.

He took another deep breath. The second take from South Africa came up on the monitor.

ALF Claims New Sabotage -2-

Terrorists have apparently hit international airports in Johannesburg and Cape Town. The Sasol coal-conversion plants are reported crippled. Power plants throughout the country have been hit.

Reports filtering through indicate that major mines on the Rand, including the large mines in the West Rand area, have undergone extensive damage. Also, several mines in the Free State are reported damaged.

The government has denounced foreign intervention. But initial reports indicate that white blasting engineers have aided ALF, enabling the liberation group to carry out the coordinated sabotage.

Drew coded the story and sent it off.

~

Marcus lit his cigar with a slight flourish. He leaned back to watch the screen.

It had worked! In spite of himself, Marcus broke into a huge grin. My God, how it had worked!

He had sensed something in the Russian. Oh, he was a crafty fox, but Marcus had detected the touch of falseness in the old man, Abrassimov knew all along about the sabotage plans.

Midas, Croesus! Marcus exulted in his victory. His timing had been impeccable. Thank God for that damned nosy journalist. The encounter with him had given Marcus the clue for the timing.

If the Russians were going to act, it could not be too long after the hoax was revealed, or the gold price would collapse. Seeing that the journalist was near to disclosing the hoax, Marcus knew he had to move.

He had moved fast. He had unwound his short positions, even taking a slight loss. Then he had simply gone long in bullion. How easy! He had bought thousands of ounces of bullion from his two favorite clients, Midas and Croesus, the two leading producers! And on credit! He now owned billions of dollars of gold and his creditors were bankrupt.

Marcus’s head swam. He had been astonished at Halden’s actions. It was a coherent plan serving an insane goal. It was not in the interest of the United States to sabotage a financial system that enshrined its hegemony on the world’s money. Why Halden or anyone else would think it was baffled Marcus.

But he did not mind. He had never put much stock in monetary instruments anyway. Gold, oil, minerals, property—these were the things that counted. These were the things he owned.

He puffed madly on his cigar. Blacky would join him shortly, once the dealers had been carefully instructed in what they were supposed to do. Nothing! Let the world get itself sorted out; then everyone would come to Marcus, bidding for his gold.

Marcus savored his triumph. He smoked his cigar and happily watched his screen.

TWENTY-ONE

Drew was watching Dan Rather when Carol came home.

“So the conference will be held at the chateau of Rambouillet,” he said, relieving her of the folders she clutched to her chest.

Carol gave him a quick hug and heaved her bulging satchel onto the kitchen table, sighing heavily.

“Yes, in three weeks. Keynes had three years to get ready for Bretton Woods. I have a feeling I’ll be working late tonight.”

“Carol Maynard Keynes,” Drew said. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“How were your interviews?”

“Nothing earth-shattering. One thing that strikes me, though, in all these talks I’m having, is the undercurrent of relief.”