Gold (9 page)

The banker seemed to divine that he wouldn’t be counting the money. He closed the case, locked it with the key attached to the grip, and handed the key to MacLean. “All yours,” he said with his gentle smile. He stood up and opened the door, waiting for MacLean to go out before him. The journalist, still in a daze, rose slowly to his feet and picked up the case. The banker again did not offer his hand, but smiled kindly at him as he walked out the door. “Goodbye,” he said after MacLean, who followed the concierge to the front door.

Blinking in the daylight, MacLean stood on the cobblestone street in front of the bank scarcely a quarter of an hour after he had gone inside. He felt like bursting into hysterical laughter. Efficient bastard, that Fürglin. He quickly swallowed his emotion, resisting an urge to clutch the attaché case to his chest and run all the way back to his hotel. The street was deserted except for an old woman in a wool coat who was negotiating the steep path with the aid of a wooden cane.

With as natural a step as he could muster, MacLean started back to the hotel. This time, the neatness of the city didn’t bother him. He conjured up the Brazilian beaches, complete with swaying palm trees and half-nude beauties. MacLean didn’t swim and had an aversion to the sun, but he had always liked the relaxed, sinful air of the beach resorts he had visited in Spain. Brazil would be even more exotic—and safe.

Not that he was worried. He had the money now. He wasn’t even sure if what he had done was illegal. There was no law against knowing something before somebody else. There was no such thing as insider trading in a global gold market. Of course, he wasn’t going to pay any taxes on the money, but he wasn’t sure Inland Revenue even had a claim on it. At any rate, the Swiss certainly did not seem fussy about attaché cases full of money being carried across their border, nor were the Brazilians, he presumed.

The whole thing had been astonishingly easy. These capitalists weren’t really as smart as they thought they were if a nobody like him could plunder them so easily.

He was so wrapped up in his feeling of satisfaction that he only noticed the car stopping at the curb in front of him when the back door opened.

~

The Gulf Stream office building looked just like the parking garage it was. Like most other office buildings in this part of Kuwait, it was built with tiers of parking space around a core of offices and shops. The building had been done in the transition phase after the first oil shock, when new wealth started pouring into the country but before they really knew what to do with it. Newer office buildings looked more like their counterparts in Europe and North America, glistening towers testifying to the primacy of mind over matter. But Dhow Investment Company liked its offices in the older building near the souk, which it kept in spite of its majority ownership in the new office-hotel complex on Airport Road. The hawkers and bazaar booths on the ground level of the Gulf Stream building—just one hundred yards from the covered bazaar in the old core of Kuwait city—were somehow comforting to Yosuf al-Masari, the patriarch of the family that controlled Dhow.

Tamal al-Masari adjusted his headdress as he walked into the reception hall from the parking lot. The evening weather was mild, but he suspected the air-conditioning was still running in the building. No matter, he thought; after their latest killing they had less need than ever to think about making economies. Tamal took the elevator to the eighth floor, the privileged space at the top of the building. His two cousins and his uncle were waiting for him.

Yosuf sat cross-legged on the leather chair at the head of a small conference table. His feet were bare and he fingered his worry beads as the younger men sat down around the table. Tamal was glad he had stopped on the way from the airport to change from his Western clothes. It made everyone more comfortable to be dressed alike.

“We are very rich,” Tamal announced to the group. An ironic smile flitted across his cousin Abdul’s face. After all, the $70 million they had had before their coup, while small compared to the fortunes of some other families in town, could hardly qualify them as poor. Tamal grinned back at his cousin.

The al-Masaris had accumulated a respectable fortune in the flush years following the oil shock of 1973-74. They had parlayed their Toyota franchise into sizable real estate holdings, including a hotel in Kuwait and luxury apartment buildings in London and Paris. They had lost money in the collapse of the souk al-manakh, the parallel stock market in Kuwait, but not as much as some others.

They could not hope to equal the wealth of the emir’s family and their cronies, but they made a respectable showing. When Tamal took charge of the family business, after returning from the States with his Cornell MBA, the al-Masaris started showing a new aggressiveness in their business dealings. Tamal bought his way onto the board of a commercial bank and began playing the markets, demonstrating a creditable skill in moving quickly in and out of world markets with a net gain that was often quite large.

Tamal wanted to overtake the al-Sayeds, their rivals not only in the auto business—al-Sayed had the Ford franchise—but bitter enemies from an obscure feud that went back ten generations. The competition extended well beyond Kuwait into the major financial centers of the world. The al-Sayeds relied largely on their man in London, David Sangrat, whereas Tamal, comfortable in the West, managed al-Masari activities abroad himself. But Tamal did maintain close contact with Philip Marcus through his trading operations.

“The al-Sayeds wonder what hit them,” he added. At this, the old man smiled faintly through his white beard. “They are chasing their worthless Christian pimp in London to find out what happened,” Tamal continued, with a broad grin.

“How much?” croaked the old man.

“Nearly six hundred million dollars,” said Tamal, not prolonging the suspense. With their friends and the credit lines Tamal had had in waiting for just this purpose, he had been able to put $200 million into the market. The ploy had succeeded beyond his hopes, and he insisted that Fürglin realize his profits immediately. The Swiss had done his work well, selling into the panic-stricken market before it gridlocked. He had kept his nerve.

“We tripled our money in two hours and got out with most of it,” recounted Tamal. He felt proud of himself too, because it was the organization he had set in place that enabled Fürglin to exploit the opportunity when it came. Tamal had been in Paris closing a property deal when Fürglin launched his operation, and the Kuwaiti’s secretary had reached him only twenty minutes later.

“Al-Sayed is still buying gold?” asked Abdul. He didn’t have his cousin’s experience, but he knew al-Sayed was a shrewd operator.

“Yes, yes, he’s following the herd, but he got in too late. We have done much better,” Tamal declared.

He did not go into Fürglin’s worries about the peculiar behavior of Philip Marcus. Fürglin had gone to Marcus to unwind their position, because the expatriate American normally would handle such large blocks without asking any questions, and found himself talking directly to Marcus instead of the chief dealer for gold. That was unusual enough, but then there was a noticeable hesitation on Marcus’s part to take Fürglin’s gold in spite of the panic demand.

It had set Tamal to thinking. Maybe Marcus knew something that made him balk at going long in gold. But if South Africa’s production was crippled, what could that be? Tamal wondered whether he should short gold in the futures market, just in cast the price took a sudden nose dive for whatever reason. No need to bother the old man or his cousins with his speculations though.

A boy shuffled in with thin green coffee, which he served to the four men. He collected the small cups and brought the traditional sweet tea, again serving a round, while Tamal sketched his plans about where to put their winnings once the markets reopened.

~

Hannes Kraml relished the surge of the engine as he pulled around the Volkswagen, his BMW 735i overtaking the smaller car effortlessly. The lake on his left sparkled already as the sun on the horizon promised a gloriously clear day. Kraml loved his morning drive to the office—the lake, the fresh mountain air, the BMW. He was thirty-two, he was rich and getting richer every day, and he was back in his mountains. Not quite Austria, but Alps anyway, just like the ones he had grown up with. After his apprenticeships in Frankfurt, New York, and London, it was nice to be home, even though the Swiss dialect took some getting used to. His wife was happy too. A Swiss girl he had met in London, she had been beautiful enough and devoted enough to his interests to make him forego the pleasures of bachelorhood, or at least abate his enjoyment of them. Now they had their villa at St. Adrian and skiing was just a half hour away.

His quick ride to Zug reminded Kraml every morning how blessed he was. Transacting millions of dollars’ worth of business every day was a pressure, but a pressure Kraml had gotten used to over the past ten years. He had traded everything in that decade: currency, gold, deposits, notes, bonds, stocks, futures, trade bills. He had an instinctive feel for the relationships in the market—how a cut in the prime rate in New York affected stock prices in Frankfurt, or how the price of oil in Rotterdam affected the price of gold in London. More important, he knew what the numbers meant, how to find market opportunities, and how to exploit them. Like a champion rugby player in a scrimmage, he saw openings and got through them.

To further enhance his marketability, Kraml had made a point of gaining expertise in computer programming. He had worked on some state-of-the-art trading programs in London to make sure he stayed at the head of a volatile profession.

Coming up to Zug, he steered the BMW automatically toward his office. It had not been an easy decision to join Philip Marcus. After all, the trader had run afoul of judicial authorities in the United States and had a seedy reputation as a result. But his operation seemed first-rate and professional. Marcus had maintained his business contacts in good standing, had an inside track on many deals, and had not lost his touch in making huge amounts of money in the markets. The opportunity afforded by Marcus’s operation to play the market was unparalleled; certainly the timid U.S. investment bank Kraml had worked for in London could not match it. And the pay and benefits were outrageously high even compared with Kraml’s extravagant London salary.

It had been a difficult decision, but so far Kraml was not disappointed. He was dealing from time to time with people of questionable reputation, but that had been true in London as well. It was hard to know when too many of the people were questionable, but Kraml didn’t think things had reached that point.

He eased the car into his parking place in the underground garage. He was earlier than usual this morning, after a late night the evening before. But then, the markets didn’t gridlock every day. The first night of the crisis he had not gone home at all, but last night Marcus had insisted. For having such a sinister reputation, the guy was remarkably considerate with his subordinates.

Marcus was there when Kraml stepped out of the elevator. He was gliding down the corridor—he walked with a slight crouch that made him seem to glide—pulling at a big cigar in spite of the early hour. He smiled when he saw Kraml. “Hannes, come into my office,” he said, moving away. A decade in Europe had not rid him of his Brooklyn accent.

Kraml had not seen much of Marcus since his arrival in Zug. The American spent long hours in his headquarters on the top two floors of the modest five-story building, but he usually stayed in his office. He could be seen sometimes gliding in his peculiar way past the trading room, but Kraml had never seen him actually come into the operational hub.

The Austrian knew that Marcus inspired as much fear as he did respect. The other traders were polite enough, but Marcus’s taciturnity seemed contagious, and Kraml missed the camaraderie that generally characterized a trading operation.

Kraml went into Marcus’s office, a corner room with windows along two sides. He had been there only once before, on the day of his arrival two months ago. Once again, the sterility of the room struck him. There was nothing on the walls save a map of the world, no plants, no decoration of any sort. Marcus himself had removed his jacket and sat behind a large walnut desk in a starched white shirt. His thinning hair, slicked back with oil, gave him a sleek appearance.

“You’ve dealt gold,” he said. It was a statement of fact; Marcus knew these details about his traders, and he had landed a big fish with Kraml. “Help the gold boys out today, OK?” Marcus ended the brief audience by picking up the phone for a Hong Kong call he had just put in.

Kraml had been working on oil finance, but it made sense to switch him to gold just now. He went into the dealing room, a vast hall with five circular desks of computer screens and a bank of teleprinters on the far wall. The night shift was finishing up some late Asian trades, but already several European shift people like himself were at their terminals. He walked across to the precious metals desk, noticing to his surprise that Blacky himself was holding down the chief trader’s position. Blackford Teller III had been Marcus’s sidekick long before the two of them left New York to branch out on their own. A WASP with Mayflower heritage, Blacky was an unlikely partner for the poor Jewish boy from Brooklyn, but the years had made them practically alter egos. Blacky was paunchy, balding, and chomping a cigar that might have cost a nickel.

Blacky barely glanced up as Kraml took his place. The young Austrian quickly saw that special times made for special organization at the desk. Normally, the traders fixed the price for a transaction within limits set by the chief trader. This was not the case today. Instead, they had been instructed to deal only at the price Blacky flashed onto their internal monitors. Even while he talked incessantly into his receiver, Blacky changed the price every thirty to sixty seconds. Trading was heavy.