Gold

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘I’m monitoring the switchboard here,’ said the Afrikaner. ‘There was a call this afternoon to London.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said dully.

  ‘What about?’

  Ann didn’t reply for several moments, and Metzinger said, ‘Did you read that stuff I left you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘So what was it about?’

  Haltingly, actually moving her pen through the notes she had made, Ann recounted her meeting with Jenkins. At the end Metzinger said, is that all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘I want a copy of the position papers.’

  Ann felt a physical disgust at talking with the man. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve started well,’ said Metzinger.

  And by disclosing what she had done in this conversation, she had committed herself even more deeply, Ann realised.

  ‘Keep it up,’ said Metzinger, concluding the conversation.

  Slowly Ann replaced the receiver, bringing her hand back against her forehead. ‘Oh Christ!’ she moaned into the empty room.

  Chapter Five

  Generals who win wars accept the honours on behalf of their armies and there is a parallel with the selection for the Presidency of the United States of America. Behind every successful candidate there are legions of men committed to the campaign. John William Pemberton’s win was achieved, however, with a military precision unusual even for American politics. It fulfilled not only his own overweening ambition but that of a dynastic Boston family whose founder had amassed millions from the country’s thrust to maturity at the turn of the century and whose descendants, over the succeeding eighty years, had gained all but the ultimate office in government service.

  Under the patronage system of American politics, it is easier for presidents to reward their lieutenants than it is for modern generals. And for Pemberton it was easier than most, because he was sure of those around him. The leaders of his campaign were men who had been vetted and tested and then selected with particular care, each supremely qualified to run what was planned – just as the campaign had been planned – to be a brilliant administration.

  Henry Moreton was one of the men chosen to help Pemberton earn a place in history. And he knew it. Moreton had come from the Harvard Business School, with an honours degree and a rare sense of dedication, to serve as Finance Director of Pemberton’s election machine. And distinguished himself as the ideal worker. Without sycophancy or insincerity, he had subjugated personal ambition and a great deal of his personal life to one exclusive, all important goal – to get Pemberton into the White House. Not once, throughout the four years, was the election machinery threatened by a shortage of money.

  It was a remarkable achievement and one for which Pemberton, not Moreton, earned the credit. Moreton wanted reward, not congratulation. And he got it. His selection as Secretary to the Treasury was one of the first appointments announced by Pemberton when he moved into Pennsylvannia Avenue.

  Because there had been no evidence of ambition during the time he served upon the President’s staff, there were those who imagined that Moreton was a rarity in Washington, a man actually without ambition. Which was quite untrue. Moreton had plotted his career with the personal neatness with which he kept his ledger and account books. He had worked with such obsessiveness precisely to gain the Treasury appointment. Having got it, he intended to benefit from it. The decision in no way impinged upon his loyalty to the President. Everything he did would continue to be in support of the man, but at last he had a public, recognisable appointment. And Moreton wanted to be recognised. During the run up, he had established himself as a meticulous financial planner. Now he wanted appreciation as a financial innovator. The chance to prove himself arrived sooner than he had expected.

  Pemberton had come to office on a pledge of strength, calculating the appeal of a commitment to restore America’s honour and prestige throughout the world. It didn’t take long for political commentators to mock that undertaking by comparison with a falteringly weak dollar.

  Moreton had always been fascinated by the frequent references at Harvard to the inherent, almost mystical appeal of precious metals over any other form of currency, even to hardened financiers. The memory of those early lessons came within the first minutes of the cabinet meeting, when he heard for the first time of the Soviet request for wheat and grain sales, following the successive Russian harvest failures which the CIA had already reported from their aerial reconnaissance.

  Moreton’s presence at the meeting had been little more than a courtesy gesture from the President, but he dominated the discussion after the Soviet gold offer was disclosed. It provided, argued Moreton, a unique opportunity to underpin the dollar. World gold supplies were controlled by two producers, South Africa and the Soviet Union. And South Africa, conscious of the power it gave them, curtailed its output. The Soviet approach provided America with the opportunity to establish gold reserves greater than those already held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. Moreton’s argument was that if they established sufficient reserves, they could resume their monthly open-market gold sales and it would only be a matter of weeks before the metal markets recognised what they would believe to be a miscalculation of the size of the U.S. reserves. They could allow leaks from the Treasury to encourage the speculation. And then confirm their holdings at the much higher figure.

  The effect, insisted Moreton, would be automatic and involve them in no further effort at all. Supported by the unshakeable belief in the strength of gold, the dollar would harden. The chance to disperse the grain stored in hoppers throughout the mid-West would be an additional advantage and increase Pembenon’s backing in states like Iowa and Oklahoma where he had not shown particularly well during the election.

  The simplicity of the argument carried the meeting. The gold for grain treaty was secretly concluded and in the course of nine months, America’s reserves had increased sufficiently for Moreton to announce the monthly gold sales.

  When he first proposed the idea he had intended waiting longer, but so smoothly was the agreement running that Moreton saw no point in delaying any further: he’d been in the shadows for almost five years and he was anxious for the sunlight.

  It had been necessary to disclose what was happening to the senior permanent advisers at the Treasury and some argued against a premature resumption of sales. If, for any reason, they had to suspend them after a few months, speculators would imagine a bluff to conceal a shortage, rather than a surplus of gold. And then the whole scheme would backfire, draining the dollar even further. But it was a minority opinion and Moreton had no difficulty in convincing them eventually that nothing could go wrong.

  On the day that Nikolai Leonov left the KGB headquarters in Moscow having found nothing to allay his worries, Henry Moreton arrived early at the Sans Souci for his meeting. The sales had started and with them the rumours. And Moreton was lunching with a feature writer for Fortune magazine. It was the beginning of his campaign for recognition.

  Chapter Six

  Long after his call to Richard Jenkins in London, Collington sat hunched at his desk. Jenkins had been right in his blunt assessment. A bloody nuisance, the man had said. But they still had numerical superiority. Collington found it a weak assurance. He’d been beaten. Outflanked and outmanœuvred and beaten, like someone playing Monopoly for the first time and not knowing the rules. There was no excuse, not even distraction of Hannah and Ann. From the time of his very first association with SAGOMI he had been warned of Metzinger’s determination to gain control, and because of the share deal that had been evolved then, he should have remembered the inherent danger of the size of Simpson’s holding. It was a crass oversight.

  Pointlessly Collington jabbed through his diary, knowing before he turned the pages that he had no further appointments that day.

  So what about Hannah? There was no reason why he sho
uldn’t go. And he was definitely curious. Perhaps she had made her mind up, ahead of him. And wanted a divorce. He supposed he would give it to her, if she asked; that was the agreement they had made when they had decided to separate. Which would mean he was free to marry Ann. In London, Ann was increasingly being recognised as someone more than just a mistress. It would be formalising an existing situation. But did he want to? He wasn’t sure, Collington realised.

  He left the room impatiently, announcing to his personal staff as he passed through the outer office that he would not be returning that day. It was just four, he saw, as the lift descended. In the early days he hadn’t been able to quit in the middle of the afternoon. Then he’d worked as if clocks hadn’t been invented, his life regulated by the work to be done, not by the sweep of a second or a minute hand.

  The heat had gone from the day, so Collington lowered the hood of the Corniche, moving out on to one of the feed roads into Church Street and then turning westwards, travelling through the heart of the city. Far away on the hills, the clouds were gathering in preparation for a familiar thunderstorm, and Collington decided he would have to cover the car before going in to see Hannah. He was moving through the oldest part of the city, by the Raadzaal and the Reserve Bank and the Kruger monument in Church Square, and as he did frequently, Collington stared around, trying to find some attraction in the capital. And as always, he failed. For Collington there was an impression of flatness about Pretoria, cupped between the hills, that created for him a feeling of impermanence. He preferred the snag-toothed skyscrapers of Cape Town, with its proper mountains. Or Johannesburg. But at least Pretoria had the jacaranda trees as compensation, Collington reflected, turning off Church Street on to the highway leading to Parkstown. Purple and sapphire flowers blossomed on either side of him, almost artificial in their profusion. Beyond the trees, the clipped lawn and barbered hedges and the methodical sprinklers began their established pattern as he entered the residential suburb.

  He turned familiarly into the driveway, gazing from side to side for any changes in the gardens that bordered the approach to the house. There were more jacaranda trees and roses, with their identity labelled at the base, and more sprinklers, in case the thunderstorms which always came didn’t erupt, just once. The same as last time, thought Collington – even the bloom of the roses.

  He parked carefully to the side of the colonnaded entrance and as he got from the car saw Hannah, standing at the door.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ she said as he mounted the steps.

  ‘Neither was I,’ lied Collington.

  He stopped, uncertainly, on the porch. Hannah hesitated too, caught by the same difficulty. She was the one to resolve it, offering her cheek. Collington stooped, coming into the briefest contact. Like strangers, he thought. But better than last time. Then there had been the lawyers and the formal talks about access to Paul, which was unnecessary anyway because the boy was at boarding school in England.

  Hannah maintained the lead, turning and going ahead of him into the house. He followed slowly behind her, looking around him. Had this seemed like home, he wondered, thinking back to his reflections earlier in the day. He supposed it had, while he lived there. But he hadn’t thought about it, from the day he’d left.

  She went into the smaller sitting-room, the one that led out to the pool. Without knowing why, he had expected people to be there, but it was deserted.

  ‘Outside or in?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it’s going to rain,’ said Collington. And he’d forgotten to put the hood up on the car.

  ‘Inside then,’ she accepted. ‘Booze or tea?’

  ‘Tea.’

  He watched as Hannah rang the small bell and gave the order. The boy was new and looked at Collington without recognition.

  ‘If such a thing can be, it was a nice funeral,’ she said.

  She’d chosen a neutral comment, thought Collington; just like Brooking.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He tried to think of something more to add. ‘Janet seemed to take it well.’

  ‘She’s as tough as hell,’ judged Hannah.

  ‘She’s retaining the voting shares in Witwatersrand,’ said Collington. Hannah would learn that soon enough, so he wasn’t volunteering anything.

  ‘Is that a problem for you?’

  ‘Inconvenient,’ said Collington dismissively.

  He stared at the woman sitting opposite him, admitting the excitement. She was tall, which matched his own height, and big-bodied, the firmness of her breasts and hips accentuated by the dress into which she had changed after the funeral. In the battling weeks before they had parted there had been a haggardness, but that had gone now. She had obviously been sunbathing and the tan pointed up the greyness of her eyes and contrasted with the blond hair reaching almost to her shoulders, longer than he remembered. Conscious of his attention, she made an embarrassed gesture.

  ‘I had a letter from Paul today,’ she said. ‘He wrote that you had a marvellous time in London.’

  ‘I owe him a letter,’ admitted Collington. He was surprised, if that had been his son’s judgment. He had extended the last of his regular visits to London to take the boy out on one of his exeats. He had told Paul that he and Hannah were separating and had taken all the guilt, without mentioning Ann, and Paul had said he understood. Collington had known the boy was lying. The entire weekend had been artificial, each trying to help the other and failing. The relief when they parted had been mutual.

  ‘He said you explained. About us,’ said Hannah.

  ‘I thought it was right he should know.’

  ‘I think you should have discussed it with me first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would have been the proper thing to do, for a start. The decisions about him are supposed to be joint now, remember?’

  ‘It was the honest thing to do.’

  ‘And upsetting, for him.’

  ‘We are separated, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I thought it was supposed to be a trial.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then what if we decide it’s a mistake and get back together? There would have been no need for him to have known at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Collington. ‘I thought it was for the best.’

  The houseboy returned with the tea, setting it out on the table before them. Hannah poured, remembering how he liked it.

  ‘How are you?’ she said, offering him the cup.

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Fine.’

  They smiled, both aware of the awkwardness.

  ‘How was London?’ she said, breaking the silence.

  ‘Cold. And wet,’ shrugged Collington. Had that been a casual remark? Or had she discovered about Ann? It would have been logical for her lawyers to suggest enquiries to provide grounds for a divorce.

  ‘I don’t suppose this should be happening,’ said Hannah. ‘After the last time we were supposed to meet only through lawyers.’

  ‘I won’t tell if you don’t!’ said Collington.

  She smiled again, but almost immediately became serious. ‘I’m sorry for all those things that were said.’

  ‘Most of them were true.’

  ‘I’m still sorry.’

  Was she offering a reconciliation, ahead of the time they had decided upon for a decision, wondered Collington suddenly. Inexplicably, he was surprised.

  ‘I’m not enjoying it,’ she said in sudden admission.

  Collington found her truthfulness disconcerting. He moved to speak, but she held up her hands, stopping him. ‘Don’t think I’m pleading for you to come back,’ she qualified quickly. ‘That’s the trouble. I’m unhappy when you’re here and I’m unhappy when you’re not ….’ She made an uncertain movement. ‘Why can’t we sort ourselves out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘That was the point of the separation, for us to decide.’

  ‘Why six months? It do
esn’t take that long for two people to make up their minds about whether they want to stay married or not.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want to do.’

  She put her cup down on a side table, too hard, so that the china clattered against the saucer. ‘What sort of an answer is that?’

  ‘An honest one. Do you want a divorce?’

  ‘No,’ she said immediately.

  ‘I thought that’s why you asked me here.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m not sure why I did. I was cross, I suppose, about your telling Paul.’

  ‘So you haven’t …’

  ‘… met anyone else,’ she completed for him. ‘Sounds like something from a movie, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Have you?’ he persisted.

  ‘No. Have you?’

  Now was the time for the honesty he had been portraying a few minutes earlier. At once came the contradiction. The time for that had been months before, when his behaviour had made their living together impossible. And when Hannah had asked him then, he had denied it. So an admission now would be a confession of a lie, as well as adultery.

  ‘No,’ he said, despising his cowardice.

  ‘Paul asked in his letter what we were going to do.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I haven’t written back yet.’

  ‘From what he said, there seem to be quite a few kids with divorced parents at his school.’

  ‘I’m not interested in other children, just Paul.’

  Outside the late afternoon had grown dark with storm clouds. It would start to rain soon, Collington realised, remembering the car.

  ‘When is he due home, on holiday?’

  ‘Not for some time.’

  ‘Why don’t we get together then?’

  ‘Mightn’t that confuse him, after being told we’re apart?’

  ‘I thought he might like the idea of us remaining friends … knowing we don’t hate each other.’

  ‘I could never hate you,’ she said, her voice softening.

  She could if she discovered the truth, thought Collington. ‘I could never hate you, either,’ he said.