Gold

by Brian Freemantle

  Collington expected Wall to smile at the praise, but instead the man remained solemn. ‘There’s been a personal internal memorandum, from Richard Jenkins,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ann Talbot has quit. Jenkins said he would welcome some guidance from you.’

  Collington hadn’t expected her to move as fast as she had indicated at Princes Gate. ‘She’s to be allowed anything she wants … time to arrange her affairs, things like that. And the fullest severance pay …’

  Wall was nodding, making notations with a gold pen on a small reminder pad.

  ‘What about the enquiry agency?’

  ‘I’ve found it,’ said Wall. ‘They’re the best. I haven’t made any approach, not yet.’

  ‘Don’t,’ instructed Collington. ‘I’m not interested in learning what they found out, just who they are in case there’s a need for any pressure.’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked the other man.

  There was. But Collington would pay her £100,000 from his personal account and send it to her privately.

  Aloud he said, ‘Yes. Make sure the resignation is not communicated to the office in Pretoria. I want the story spread that she’s on an extended leave of absence.’

  It was dark by the time Collington got back to Princes Gate. He went from room to room, conscious that it was a pointless tour because the staff would have cleaned anyway. But he didn’t think it would have been necessary, even if there hadn’t been other people in the house. There wasn’t a trace of anything that belonged to Ann, nor any indication of where it had been before she removed it. It was as if she had never been into the house and lived there as his wife.

  The distance between Hassan’s hotel and the American embassy in Grosvenor Square was short, little more than four hundred yards, which meant that compared to other operatives throughout the world, the CIA men stationed there had one of the simplest jobs responding to the instructions Englehart had issued after his meeting with Henry Moreton. Englehart had attached a priority listing to the orders, because Moreton’s clearance for information about any clandestine activity arrived from the President’s office just two hours after his encounter with the Treasury Secretary and the CIA section head recognised power when it reached out, grabbed him by the balls and squeezed.

  Collington’s arrival, on Prince Hassan’s floor, was noted, as every arrival was. He was photographed upon departure, and because he was a public figure whose picture had frequently appeared in newspapers, he was identified as James Collington within an hour.

  A description of the visit, including its length and the fact that Collington had obviously been received in personal audience by the Prince, was included in the overnight diplomatic pouch that went from Heathrow to Andrews Air Force base. By the time Englehart reached his desk at 8.00 am American time, the file was carefully annotated and personal details about Collington had been added to the London report from the bank of information available about a businessman of such international stature.

  Moreton’s summons came before noon. Englehart had been expecting it, so he responded at once.

  When he entered the financier’s office, Englehart saw that everything else he had provided had been relegated to a document table on the side and that only Collington’s dossier lay on the desk.

  ‘What’s this mean?’ demanded Moreton.

  ‘I don’t know,’ confessed Englehart.

  ‘What’s Collington into?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Englehart, nodding to the documents containing the information that lay before Moreton. ‘One of the biggest multi-nationals in existence. He’s a high flier.’

  ‘But all the Saudis have got is oil,’ mused Moreton.

  ‘The politics are wrong,’ argued Englehart.

  ‘Politics is compromise,’ lectured Moreton. ‘If the pressure is strong enough, any principle will bend.’

  ‘You think it’s a problem?’

  ‘I think it’s something I want to know a lot more about,’ said Moreton. ‘I want a finger up the ass of everyone you’ve got in London. I want access to Hassan’s suite and to wherever Collington is living. I want to know every meeting they have and everything that they say. I’ve got a feeling about this, a feeling I don’t like.’

  ‘Hassan was the yo-yo who got his fingers burned over the silver thing,’ reminded Englehart.

  ‘That’s what I don’t like about it most of all,’ said Moreton. ‘He’s vulnerable.’

  Back at Langley, Englehart looked up from the cables he was preparing to send to Grosvenor Square, thinking back to the meeting with Moreton. He’d encountered men like the Treasury Secretary before, trying to leave scorch marks wherever they went. They invariably burned themselves out. But they caused an awful lot of ripples first. And a presidential sanction, in two hours, was more than a ripple; it was practically a tidal wave. He hoped to Christ that Moreton fouled up soon. But until he did, Englehart knew that every time Moreton said jump, he was going to have to equal an Olympic record. And he’d never enjoyed sport, not even as a kid.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dimitri Krotkov was an experienced intelligence officer and he had a clear, analytical mind. One of his first actions after learning of the grain crop failure in the Ukraine was to order a weekly summary of all applications necessary to travel within the country. It was a staggering instruction, considering the size of the Soviet Union: over two hundred men had to be assigned exclusively to the task and even then it would have been impossible without the aid of computers.

  He also demanded reports from all the agricultural areas, anticipating the information. There had been a cumulative effect in the crop shortages. To maintain the wheat and cereal norms which had been imposed upon them, arable farmers had gradually been decreasing supplies to animal breeders. At first this shortfall had been made up by the American imports, although from the beginning this had been successful only in isolated areas because of the confused inefficiency of Russian bureaucracy. With the worsening of the grain production situation, the Agricultural Ministry had attempted the convenient way out, gambled that the difficulties would be quickly resolved and diverted the animal foodstuff to the consumer market. But the difficulties hadn’t been resolved; they’d worsened, to crisis proportions. By the time of the Ukraine collapse, it had been decided to introduce rationing for wheat, grain, barley and soya. It was then discovered that there was insufficient meat, because the majority of the animals had starved to death for want of the food directed elsewhere by the agricultural authorities.

  There was a purge within the ministry, and the director and two of his deputies were jailed for varying terms, on an umbrella charge of activities prejudicial to the interests of the Soviet Union. That did nothing, though, to cure the problem.

  More rationing was introduced, this time for meat, in Gorky and Kuibyshev and Yaroslavl and throughout Kazakhstan and Siberia and the Urals, limiting the holders to two kilogrammes a week. Briefly the public believed the authorities were able to control the problem. And then it was realised that supplies weren’t sufficient for even two kilogrammes.

  No open restrictions were imposed in Moscow, where the Western embassies and journalists were concentrated. Periodic shortages were commonplace and hardly commented upon. But official restraint would have been. To conceal the truth of the situation, they actually put food on display in certain shops. It worked one way but not the other. No outside observer learned of the difficulty, but the rumours that there was food available in the capital spread into the countryside.

  It was then that Krotkov’s foresight proved itself. He learned of the upsurge of travel applications almost as soon as they started. In the short term, the danger was easily avoided: he issued orders throughout the country that fewer visas should be issued and only then when his officials were convinced that there was a genuine reason for the request, other than food buying. At the same time he flooded Moscow with informants and observers of his own. In two weeks there was an increase o
f fifteen per cent in the number of people arriving in the capital from the provinces, nearly all of them illegally. Extra guards were installed at airports, railway stations and bus depots to intercept those who had anticipated the checks and disembarked just outside the city, hoping to escape the net by finally arriving on local transport. There were too many offenders to impose penalties; they were simply refused entry on the grounds of insufficient travel documentation and returned, immediately, to the place from which they had begun their journey.

  Krotkov waited until the facts were irrefutable before informing Nikolai Leonov. This time the Foreign Ministry official travelled to Dzerzhinsky Square and sat in the starkly bare office overlooking the Lubyanka jail, blinking rapidly at what Krotkov had to say. The KGB chief talked in an even, unemotional voice which heightened the seriousness.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Leonov. Increasingly, as his scheme foundered, Leonov was calling upon someone in whom he was not supposed to believe, just as the scientist had done at their first crisis meeting after the plane crash.

  ‘What about the increased wheat purchases from America?’ said Krotkov.

  ‘I haven’t been able to get any.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘To get wheat, I need gold. To get gold, I need foreign currency. I’ve virtually exhausted all I’m being allowed, even before trying to make up for the Ukraine shortages.’

  Krotkov leaned earnestly across the desk. ‘For the moment, I can contain what’s happening,’ he said. ‘But only just. I’m stopping most of them, but some are getting through. At the moment, someone in the Ukraine thinks the problem is only local. He doesn’t know it exists in Siberia and Lithuania and all along the Black Sea. And neither do the residents here. But now people are meeting in Moscow. From all those places; from everywhere. And they’re going to talk and they’re going to realise it isn’t local but something affecting the whole country. And I can’t contain that. The Politburo couldn’t contain it and the Central Committee couldn’t contain it and the damned Red Army couldn’t contain it!’

  ‘I’m not the one you have to convince,’ said Leonov. ‘It’s Igor Struve.’

  ‘Apply again.’

  ‘I’ve made four applications already.’

  ‘Make a fifth. And I’ll support it with everything I’ve told you today,’ promised Krotkov. ‘And if he tries to block that, then I’ll find a way around the damned man. He might be able to stop you but he won’t stop me.’

  For the CIA agents in London, the most difficult part of obeying Englehart’s surveillance instructions was obtaining accommodation at Claridge’s on the floor immediately below that occupied by Prince Hassan and his entourage. They finally resorted to direct embassy pressure, something they would have preferred to avoid, convincing the management that the would-be guest was an American with influential connections in Washington. Once installed, the eavesdropping was comparatively easy, because of the incredible efficiency of modern electronics. Microphones boosted by microchip circuits were attached to the ceiling throughout the suite, providing listening access to every room used by the prince. Listeners were equipped with antennaed earphones, which provided clear, undistorted reception. Yet in spite of their sophisticated gadgetry, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that, among themselves, those above would speak in Arabic. Fortunately they had two tape recorders with them, initially intended just for back-up, so it was not a serious oversight. It just meant that there was a delay of a few hours while the material was translated.

  It was far easier at Collington’s Princes Gate home. They gained admission there by the very old but usually effective pretence of posing as Post Office engineers, checking a line fault. In the telephones on every floor they installed miniscule receivers that turned each instrument into an open microphone, relaying every conversation to a listening van parked a hundred and fifty yards away in Hyde Park.

  Englehart was impressed that everything was done within twelve hours and said so in a congratulatory cable.

  It was a pity that so much enterprise was wasted. The next meeting between Prince Hassan and Collington was to take place in the Saudi Arabian embassy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The response came after three days and Collington calculated he was still in control. If the second meeting had to be in London at all – which it shouldn’t have been – then Hassan should have strung it out for at least a fortnight, perhaps even waiting until Collington had tried to make contact again, either through the ambassador or personally, at the hotel. A proper negotiator, or one less desperate, would have considered a month the minimum of time. And then insisted that the conference be in Jeddah, which would have given him the psychological advantage of being on his own territory.

  There was none of the artificiality of the first encounter. Collington’s appointment at the embassy was immediately acknowledged and he was ushered without any of the previous hindrance to an office which he guessed, from the fittings and the drapes and the portrait of the king, was normally occupied by the ambassador.

  Even Hassan had changed, literally. He was wearing a superbly cut, dove-grey suit of silk, a white shirt and a patterned, dark tie. Collington thought it made him appear more forceful than he had done in his traditional dress.

  ‘I wondered if you would still be in London,’ said Hassan after the greetings, and Collington guessed he was trying to account for the speed and make it appear a concession.

  ‘I said my departure was fluid,’ said Collington. He allowed a short pause and then said: I hadn’t intended leaving for several weeks.’

  Hassan’s mouth was fixed in a tight line and there was a tightness about his face, too. ‘I have communicated your approach,’ he said directly.

  ‘I appreciate the importance you attach to it,’ said Collington.

  ‘The response was that the dollar holdings are currently a good investment,’ said Hassan.

  If it had been, then he wouldn’t have been sitting opposite the man in a flamboyantly decorated ambassador’s office, Collington knew. ‘Currently,’ he picked up at once. ‘But surely there was a more long-term interpretation of the advantages of my approach?’

  ‘Yes, there was,’ conceded Hassan.

  ‘And an acceptance of the weakness in the past?’ pressed Collington. The verbal minuet was over: now was the time for positions to be established. Hassan had assumed the role of negotiator. He’d been a royal prince the last time. Now it was different.

  ‘That was also acknowledged,’ said the Arab. He leaned back from the desk, wanting to recover. ‘The official attitude within my government is that we should cut back, rather than increase, our oil output. As the demand and therefore the price increases, it is more valuable to us in the ground than in storage tanks or giant tankers.’

  Collington had anticipated the argument. ‘More valuable if it remains denominated in dollars,’ he agreed. ‘But that is not the point of this discussion, is it? Oil prices have fluctuated in the last year, from a scarcity high of thirty-five dollars a barrel, to an overproduction low of sixteen. At thirty-five dollars, it makes good fiscal sense to leave it in the ground. At sixteen, you’re only fifty cents ahead on your overall investment. You would have to reduce by at least $31,250,000 the development plan that is to run until 1985 because of a drop in anticipated earnings, and you would have to go deeply into your reserves, actually threatening the stability of the dollar from which you are at the moment benefiting, to maintain refinery and drilling equipment.’

  The scope and yet the conciseness of Collington’s knowledge momentarily silenced Hassan. He sat beyond the desk, clearly attempting to think of something to say and failing.

  Collington saw the advantage and pressed it. ‘There is only one commodity that remains consistent. No matter what the fluctuations, gold remains high. In the period during which the dollar has risen and fallen through a graph of twenty-two per cent and oil has climbed and dipped through twelve per cent, gold has shown an uninterrupted ascent. If, three years ago,
you had invested in gold the £35,000,000,000 you have placed in currencies throughout the world, your valuation would have been £53,500,000,000. As it is, in real terms, £35,000,000,000 three years ago is today valued at £29,000,000,000. As I said before, that is a bad return. As a businessman, I would regard it as unacceptable.’

  ‘You advance a convincing argument,’ said Hassan, in grudging praise.

  ‘It is not difficult,’ said Collington, ‘It is based on indisputable fact.’ He waited, leaving the other man at a disadvantage.

  Hassan conceded his position. ‘In principle, we are interested,’ he declared. He watched for any reaction, but Collington remained impassive.

  ‘I am very pleased,’ said Collington.

  ‘But only in principle,’ stressed Hassan.

  ‘I’d need your feelings explained fully,’ said Collington.

  ‘We both know of the potential danger to the stability of my country if this arrangement were to become public knowledge after an agreement were reached?’

  Collington nodded.

  ‘We are speaking directly, as businessmen. And as a businessman, I know you will not be offended by what I am about to say. We feel at the moment we are conceding too much, even by continuing the contact that has been opened, without the slightest proof that you can maintain your side of any proposal that is agreed.’

  ‘I am not offended,’ said Collington. ‘In your position I would feel exactly the same way.’

  Hassan smiled his quick, automatic smile and Collington was reminded of the up-and-down mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘For this discussion to continue beyond today, there would need to be such a demonstration,’ said Hassan.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eventually there would have to be a contractual agreement, but we think it is too premature for that.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Practical proof.’

  ‘Practical?’

  Hassan hesitated, like a child about to risk swearing in front of a parent for the first time. Then he said, ‘South Africa is shortly to make a gold release.’