Gold

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘What’s our commitment to America?’ said Krotkov.

  ‘Vast,’ conceded Leonov. ‘Even before the grain problems, our financial experts had calculated the over-extension of the United States dollar, linked as it is to the Eurodollar and oil payments. After the election of the new American President, our embassy in Washington reported the desire to strengthen the dollar. It gave us an advantage when we made the wheat request. We pledged payment for the wheat in gold so that they could mount a currency support operation. We averted famine and they averted a further weakening of their dollar.’

  ‘Muruntau and Zod are practically unworkable,’ reminded Krotkov.

  ‘We weren’t worried at first,’ conceded Leonov. ‘We’ve sufficient drainage equipment. No manpower shortage. Our engineers miscalculated the erosion problems and the resultant cave-ins. After pumping the floods out, the mines practically had to be redug. We actually had Muruntau in production and there was still some stockpile left.’

  ‘The crops failed again this year,’ said Krotkov.

  ‘And the mines flooded again,’ admitted Leonov. ‘To avert a famine so widespread that it would unquestionably have resulted in uprisings throughout every republic in the Soviet, we had to cxhaust our disposable Stockpile iu buy wheat, and when that went, we had to establish a nominee company in the West to buy and then ship to us secretly gold with which to purchase the grain. This in turn enabled the United States to stage their gold sales and support their dollar openly.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ said Simenov, who was religious but usually managed to conceal it in surroundings where such a revelation might be damaging. Neither of the other two men appeared to be aware of the lapse.

  ‘It’s still an equal balance,’ said Krotkov, over-extending himself in his confidence.

  ‘No!’ rejected Leonov at once. ‘It’s impossible to assess with absolute accuracy, but we calculate that the Federal Reserve Bank in New York holds something like 800 tonnes. That’s stockpile sufficient to bluff through any demand we might artificially create. They could sustain a run against reserves. We couldn’t. It wouldn’t take them longer than a month, two at the most, to guess what had happened to us.’

  Leonov turned to look directly at Simenov. ‘To deprive us of grain to feed two hundred and sixty-three million people would be far more devastating than any atomic or neutron bomb,’ he said. ‘The foreign currency reserves to buy gold on the open market are limited. If anyone realised what we were doing, we could be brought to our knees.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Simenov, uncaring this time.

  ‘So that’s why I must know, with absolute certainty, whether you think anyone saw the gold in Amsterdam,’ said Leonov patiently. ‘That information, in the hands of the proper analyst, could be the end of us.’

  He stared, waiting, at the other man.

  Simenov seemed to be debating his reply. He actually started to fumble through the folders, as if in search of a fact which had eluded them all, and then he snatched away, conscious of it being a nervous reaction.

  ‘You have to know, with absolute accuracy?’ he enquired, establishing a term of reference.

  ‘With absolute accuracy,’ echoed Leonov for emphasis.

  Simenov shook his head, helplessly. ‘I can’t give that assurance,’ he admitted. ‘I think the breaking of the boxes was accidental and I don’t think anyone apart from those from the embassy knew what the contents were …’ He stopped, swallowing again. ‘But I can’t be sure.’

  Although the man tried to conceal it, Krotkov saw the moment of despair that registered on Leonov’s face, confirming the pressure that was already being imposed. And he recognised that he could become a scapegoat, as easily as the other man. But Dimitri Krotkov was a clever man. His record of service wasn’t quite as long as that of the Finance Minister, but he’d survived from the days of Khrushchev, which was still impressive. And he intended to go on surviving. Krotkov wondered if Leonov would ever realise how fortunate he was in having him as an ally.

  Chapter Four

  Collington got back to the SAGOMI building first, but he knew his car was only minutes ahead of the rest. He considered waiting for them in the vestibule, and then decided against it: they might identify it as concern and that would be bad tactics. Collington knew tactics were going to be important for what lay ahead.

  He smiled at the Afrikaner liftboy, greeting him by name, and the man smiled back and called him boss. As the elevator snatched upwards, Collington wondered idly how many of those following would even notice the presence of the man. He frowned at the criticism: it was stupid hostility, anticipating the arguments that were to come. He should be considering how Metzinger and his section of the board would seek advantages from Walter Simpson’s death, not worrying about their racism. He hoped to be able to do something about one, but not about the other.

  He didn’t go directly into the boardroom but instead to his penthouse office alongside. Two walls were almost entirely of glass and Collington stood, staring out over the South African capital. It was the time of day when the sun bleached everything, making the white buildings all around even whiter. Simpson had joked about it the first time they had met, reciting the Noel Coward warning about the midday sun and mad dogs and Englishmen and then changing the banter, abruptly, forecasting that one day people being treated like dogs would finally bite back. Perhaps that was what had made him think of apartheid in the lift. Certainly his mind had been upon Walter Simpson – and not just the problem his death had created.

  The circumstances of Collington’s life meant there had been few men whom he could admire. But he’d admired Simpson; respected him, too. A father figure, thought Collington. He frowned at the idea. Never, until now, had he conceded the presence of such a person in his life.

  There hadn’t been one in the Barnado’s home, at Kingston. The orphanage officials had discouraged attachments like that. Or afterwards. British Rail had insisted upon suitability reports and Collington knew that the stationmaster at Richmond had actually praised the independent self-confidence in listing him the best junior porter on the station. And this quality had been isolated again in the Army character assessments by the officers who promoted him, unaware that it extended to nighttime excursions in blacked-out National Service lorries during the Berlin airlift, running from one divided section to another the contraband which was the carefully concealed beginning of his entrepreneurial career.

  Father figure, thought Collington again. That was undoubtedly what Simpson had become: a father figure who had adopted him and over fifteen years curbed the excessive enthusiasm and developed the maturity for him to head a multi-national the size of SAGOMI. It seemed a long time since that first meeting on a clingingly damp October day in London. He had been suspicious at first, remembered Collington, wanting to know why the takeover of his Rhodesian company by SAGOMI was already so far advanced without any involvement by the controlling English directors, but realising almost at once, from the blankness of Simpson’s expression, that the man knew nothing whatsoever about it. And Simpson unsure if the approach were genuine or that of a provocateur. Simpson’s questioning had meant that he had learned everything about him at that first meeting. About the orphanage and the porter’s job at Richmond: even about Berlin, although he had avoided specifics. To have done otherwise would have made him seem a crook and he’d never considered himself that. An opportunist, accurately gauging the potential of an unusual situation, perhaps. But never a criminal. He’d refused to run drugs or medical supplies or human cargo. He had transported status symbol washing-machines from the American to the Soviet sector in exchange for vodka. From the French, he had shipped wine. And from the British, cigarettes. In twelve months he had amassed £7500 and lost interest in returning to the early shift at Richmond. He supposed it was the Berlin experience that made him think immediately of washing-machines when he was demobilised into a Britain emerging from the austerity of post-war restrictions and shortages. He had bought
washing-machines from the factory and sold direct, undercutting by twenty per cent the retail prices in the high streets of Richmond and Twickenham and Hounslow. After washing-machines there had been refrigerators. And then television sets. Gauging the public response to television had probably been his most astute move. At the end of three years he had had a personal fortune of £60,000 and experienced the first unease of boredom; which was why the buy-out approach from one of the major manufacturers had been so welcome. The takeover proposal had intrigued him, too. Not just because it came at exactly the right time, but because of the nature of the initial proposal. It was a low cash offer, backed by a share portfolio and an invitation to sit on the board. He had refused, insisting on an outright cash settlement, but learned for the first time that one company could take over another without any money changing hands; it was a lesson he committed to his ever receptive memory.

  Collington considered that coincidence had been partly responsible for his success. It was coincidence which had made the Army utilise his ability with timetables and freight problems. Coincidence again that he had been sent to Berlin and its money-making environment. Coincidence that his demobilisation had come at the beginning of the consumer boom. And coincidence that he should have decided with his buy-out money to holiday in the then-named Rhodesia. In two days he’d become bored by swimming pools, decided to tour and by the end of the week recognised the under-developed potential of the country. Within three months he had settled there permanently. He had founded a commodity brokerage and negotiated future contracts on the tobacco and produce from dozens of farms, and within a year he had had to establish a transport division to handle it. He had bought a farm of his own, with a manager to run it, and it had been at a farmers’ annual dinner at Salisbury’s Meikles Hotel that he’d met Hannah Metzinger. That, too, had involved coincidence, although he hadn’t known at the time that her father was connected with one of the biggest mining corporations in South Africa. The coincidence of that had emerged much later, after the opposed marriage and the near estrangement, when he had agreed with the neighbouring farmer upon whose land the gold lode was discovered to set up a development company and work it, with experts imported from South Africa’s Witwatersrand.

  Metzinger’s approach had been surprising because of the hostility which existed between them, particularly after the marriage to Hannah. In every other respect, the suggestion of a SAGOMI take-over made sound, practical sense. Already the political uncertainty of the country, just prior to illegal independence, was sufficient to make Collington think of moving on. SAGOMI had superior trading experience in metals, and appeared prepared to take the risk in Rhodesia where Collington was not.

  Despite the feeling between him and his father-in-law, it was not suspicion which initially prompted Collington to examine the share register. He did it in order to study the construction of the various companies and learn their government by interlocking boards of directors, rising like a pyramid with the controlling SAGOMI directors at the top. The realisation that he was dealing only with Afrikaners who didn’t control the company was accidental – coincidence again – but it needed Simpson, over a civilised, unhurried lunch in the subdued elegance of London’s Connaught Hotel, to explain it, once he’d satisfied himself of Collington’s integrity.

  The SAGOMI board was determined by the holding of ‘A’ shares in the original Witwatersrand mining company. The English directors maintained supremacy with three hundred shares, against the two hundred and fifty held by Metzinger’s Afrikaner caucus. It was the simplest arithmetic, but it illustrated the deep Afrikaner resentment, not just in SAGOMI but throughout South African commerce, that the majority of their major businesses were British dominated.

  Simpson had long feared an attempted coup and identified it as being the take-over of Collington’s company. The only way the balance of power could be altered was by a vote of no confidence from the shareholders, on a motion showing British neglect. He guessed Metzinger intended to get that no-confidence motion by bringing the take-over to the point of actually obtaining Collington’s legally binding agreement. And then making the announcement immediately before the annual meeting, to show that the acquisition of such a valuable holding had been solely the work of Afrikaners maintaining the success of the company, without the support of the English.

  Collington had never forgotten how they had confronted deviousness with deviousness.

  Already he had been aware of the wealth of SAGOMI from his share register investigation. The meeting with Simpson convinced him that to achieve their apparent stability, the company had sacrificed opportunities to expand further: and that if he became a part of it he would become even more successful. At Simpson’s urging, he agreed to appear to accept the terms of the take-over. And to continue as a pawn in the negotiations, accepting without any contractural backing Simpson’s assurance of protection if they were successful in resisting Metzinger.

  Under Simpson’s instruction, Collington returned to South Africa to negotiate with Metzinger not simply for a cash settlement, but for the secondary ‘A’ share apportionment in SAGOMI that had been floated to raise development money in the first year of the Witwatersrand operation. And to insist that Bruce Jamieson, the neighbouring farmer on whose land the gold was actually located, should be treated equally. There were two hundred secondary shares, carrying none of the voting power – and therefore the importance – of the normal ‘A’ holdings. They had all been owned by the Afrikaners who had used their purchase to gain access to the company in the first place. Confident that there was no danger, Metzinger and his two fellow Afrikaner directors surrendered them to Collington, dismissing it as a minor sacrifice that would contribute to their absolute coup.

  Metzinger delayed until the last possible moment his revelation of the take-over, wrongly expecting the week before the annual meeting to be occupied by the panicked arrival from London of the rest of the board.

  But Collington had kept Simpson informed of every stage of the deal. On the day when Metzinger planned to make the surprise, embarrassing announcement, all the English directors were assembled in Pretoria. They summoned a full meeting of the SAGOMI board to coincide with it, giving the impression of complete awareness of what had been happening, and approved the merger. Once that had been made irrevocable, Simpson proposed an alteration of the share structure, elevating the secondary ‘A’ shares to voting power. It had been a vicious, angry meeting, with Metzinger and the Afrikaners attempting every opposition and being met at every effort by Simpson and Richard Jenkins. With insufficient votes to prevent the adoption of Simpson’s suggestion, the Afrikaners were outmanœuvred.

  When Simpson had spoken of rewards, Collington hadn’t expected the deputy chairmanship. Nor the chairmanship that followed two years later, when he’d adjusted to the power of a corporation spanning two continents and was setting out to work towards the expansion which had brought SAGOMI to its present position. Collington knew there were many men who would have resented the speed with which he established his own control; objected, through jealousy and hurt pride, at the suggestion of the chairmanship which Simpson held. But it had never happened, not once. And it was not until today that Collington fully recognised that Simpson had groomed him to succeed, conscious of his age and of the need to pass on the corporation of which he had been justly proud to someone who had filled the place of the son he never had.

  Groomed him but for one omission, thought Collington angrily. The annoyance burned through him at the thought of his incredible mistake. It had been Simpson’s, too, he supposed, but he exonerated the man. Simpson had been ill, dying. It was unfair to apportion any responsibility to him. There was only one person to blame for the oversight and Collington accepted the responsibility.

  Collington turned at the sound from behind, and saw his father-in-law framed in the doorway. Collington was a big man, well over six feet, but although he didn’t have the height, Metzinger appeared bigger. The large-bodied impression
was not of fat, but of muscle, broad shoulders and huge hands, and hair cropped militarily short around his unlined, tanned face.

  A Boer and proud of it, remembered Collington. That had been Metzinger’s own description of himself, the day Collington had travelled from Salisbury to Pretoria to tell the man of his intention to marry Hannah. Metzinger had offered it as the reason for opposing the marriage, not wanting his daughter to marry outside the Afrikaner caste system.

  Hannah had prepared Collington, just as she was prepared to ignore the anticipated objections, listing the Voortrekker commemorations in which her father had taken part and recounting the efforts to which he had gone, locating the spot in the English-built concentration camp where he believed his grandmother had died so that he could erect a headstone in her memory. The year-long search had reflected the fetish Metzinger had about his ancestry and his country’s history. At his ranch, on the outskirts of the capital, he had preserved and restored three covered wagons in which the Boers had fled into the Transvaal from the Cape, and the walls of the house were filled with original pictures and prints of the Voortrekkers.

  ‘A sad day,’ greeted Metzinger.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Collington. It was not surprising that Janet Simpson had refused his offer to travel back from the funeral, going instead with Metzinger, decided Collington. There had never been any friendship between them, despite Simpson’s attempts to create one. How the hell could he have forgotten Janet’s Afrikaner ancestry!

  ‘He’ll be sadly missed.’ Metzinger succeeded in making the platitude sound sincere.

  ‘Yes,’ said Collington again. The brevity was intentional, in the hope of drawing Metzinger in advance of the board meeting.

  ‘Surprised he wanted to be buried here and not back in England, with his first wife?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Collington. ‘I think he’d come to regard South Africa as his home.’