Gold

by Darrell Delamaide

  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.

  Kraml reached his trading high very quickly. Juggling the half-dozen phone receivers snaking out from his terminal, two or three of them dangling over his shoulders he made the lightning calculations in his head while the three screens in front of him flashed a steady stream of information and prices.

  When London came on, the pace quickened. Kraml’s instincts, so in tune with the market, made him realize that something peculiar was happening with the gold trading. He had the feeling that Blacky was not responding to the market but controlling it. The price was rising steadily, but apparently at the pace and with the volume that Blacky wanted. He sat there, imperturbably chomping on his cigar, constantly on the phone, working his console to feed prices to his dealers.

  Where was he getting all the gold? Kraml wondered. The trader knew that he at least was not talking to any sellers; Bahrain and Kuwait were flooding the market with buy orders.

  The morning went by quickly, never hectic but always busy. Things finally let up a bit as the market waited for the morning fixing in London. Blacky talked to the London man about their strategy in the price-setting session and quickly ducked out when Marcus appeared at the door, leaving Frey, the usual chief trader, in charge.

  Kraml decided to break for a quick coffee. Rounding the corner to the canteen, he passed Marcus and Blacky flanking a third man, gray-faced, who was wearing a heavy coat and broad-brimmed hat. Not too many visitors came to Zug, but Kraml didn’t think much about it until he heard the voice of the stranger. Kraml could not make out the words, although he could tell the language was English. What struck the Austrian was the accent— the unmistakable nasal monotone of a Russian. Like most of his compatriots, Kraml felt an antipathy to the Russians for their long postwar occupation of Austria.

  Kraml resisted the urge to turn around and watch the trio. After all, Marcus always had some deal brewing; Kraml just hoped he would not have too much to do with the Russians.

  Back at the desk, Frey called out to him, “Personal call.” Kraml punched the lighted button.

  “Hello, Drew, how goes it?” he said when the journalist identified himself. The two of them had gotten to be fairly close in London, but Kraml felt ambivalent about taking this call. He was still uneasy in his new situation; he felt self-conscious and was worried about giving something away.

  “Market’s steady enough. Busy, not hectic,” he said in response to Drew’s questions.

  “Sellers? Somebody’s selling, I guess,” he said. “We seem to be getting some supply, yeah, but I’m not on the buying side.” Drew was getting insistent. “No, I don’t really know where it’s coming from, probably a bit from all over.” He didn’t really know, but the buying was coming from all over so he didn’t think the selling was from all over. It was hard for him to dissemble with Drew; they had closed many a pub in London.

  Kraml suddenly thought of the Russian in the corridor. He bit his tongue not to blurt out the news to Drew. But the journalist’s next question threw him off balance.

  “Well, yes, I suppose it’s possible the Russians are selling,” he responded, probably too quickly. “But I haven’t seen anything myself.... Marcus does have some connections with the Russians, I think, yes,” he conceded, under a barrage of questions from the journalist.

  “Look, Drew, I’ll keep my ears open, and let you know what I find out. It’s a promise, OK? But it’s really busy now, and I have to get back to work.” He rang off quickly.

  Was Blacky getting all that gold from the Russians? As Kraml puzzled over the problem, Marcus’s sidekick returned. The trader turned to catch a last glimpse of the gray-faced man standing at the dealing-room door for a moment before he moved away. Kraml was certain the man was Russian. But how much gold could the Russians have?

  ~

  Even at this time of year, Miami seemed steamy from the humidity. Halden didn’t visit Florida’s biggest city often, and the vaporous air always surprised him. The palm trees looked limp under the overcast sky; the heavy warmth was oppressive rather than refreshing after New York’s cold and damp.

  The limousine sent by Southern Bank passed several construction sites on the road in from the airport. Would the building never stop? The central banker grunted; Miami’s prosperity seemed to wax and wane in inverse proportion to Latin America’s financial problems. Even without the statistics to prove it, Halden could not help sharing the view that much of the money missing in the big debtor countries had found its way across the Gulf.

  The driver pulled into the U-shaped drive off Ocean Boulevard, and Halden got his first view of Southern Bank’s massive new skyscraper. He shivered slightly in spite of the humid warmth as he stepped out of the Cadillac. The gold-tinted glass of the fifty-six-story building shone against the leaden sky. The bank now dominated Miami’s skyline. The slight feeling of terror he always felt at the thought of interstate banking welled up as he tilted his head back to take in the building’s size. He was afraid of the power one bank could accumulate if it was free to stretch its tentacles across the entire country. On his last visit to Miami, the headquarters of what had become the third largest bank in the country had still been a construction site too.

  Carol, who had taken an earlier plane to prepare the meeting, came out to meet Halden at the car.

  Inside the huge atrium of the front entrance, Halden met a delegation from the bank headed by Hugh Vane, the chairman. Between the grinning Vane’s white teeth and white hair, his skin had the odious brown of a suntan that never faded. Halden had never reconciled his notions of hard work with the Sun Belt lifestyle. At least no one in the Southern Bank group was wearing white shoes.

  The executive elevator rocketed them up to the conference rooms at the top floor. Halden felt palpable relief as José Martinez broke off from the group of men at the top to gre
et him with his big, warm smile. This time Halden’s own smile was genuine. The two men shook hands and clasped each other’s arms with real pleasure. Since Wagner’s ouster, they had learned to rely on each other in the endless round of conferences to resolve the debt issue.

  The Mexican, who had held on as his country’s finance minister through the difficult series of reverses over the past few years, took Halden by the arm to greet the finance ministers of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Peru. The American knew them all but rarely saw them as a group.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Halden,” said Carlos Angouros, the Brazilian, who had called him the previous night. His voice betrayed a genuine relief. Halden did not tower over the others as Wagner had, but his muscular physique instilled immediate confidence when he walked into a room. The central banker had earned a high regard among the debtor countries for an intellectual toughness that fully matched his physical appearance.

  The markets had reopened as planned this morning. Gold had moved steadily upward, although Tuesday’s panic had abated. Shutting down the markets had worked like a cold shower to calm the incipient hysteria. The gold stampede already showed some signs of petering out, but markets remained jittery.

  One sign of the uncertainty was the desperate lack of liquidity for the Latin American debtor countries. That was why Angouros had called Halden for this impromptu meeting in Miami. “Let’s get started,” said the Brazilian, leading the group of ministers and central bankers into the conference room. Vane and his courtiers smiled as they backed into the elevator. They were glad to offer their premises for the meeting, but that was to be the extent of their involvement.

  “It’s the interbank lines again,” Angouros said immediately, referring to the short-term funds banks lend each other. “And this time it wasn’t only us who got hit.” His colleagues quickly buzzed affirmation.