The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘Stay in country,’ Papineau suggested.

  She adjusted without hesitation. ‘Romania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. It was internationally recognized in 1878 and proclaimed the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. Under the reign of King Carol the First — who was named ruling prince in 1866 — the country enjoyed an era of relative stability and prosperity-’

  ‘With the king, of course, being the most prosperous,’ Papineau interjected.

  ‘-he ruled for forty-eight years, the longest rule by an individual that Romania has ever known.’

  ‘Then came the First World War,’ Papineau prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ Jasmine said. ‘King Carol the First was German-born, so he wanted to side with his homeland, which was in league with Austria-Hungary and Italy. The Romanian people, however, wanted to ally with England, France, and Russia. Unbeknownst to anyone, the king had already signed a pact with the German-led Triple Alliance in 1883.’

  She paused to make sure everyone was keeping up with her. They were.

  ‘There was an emergency meeting with his court and cabinet,’ she said without inflection. ‘There was a strong disagreement between the king and his people. His death on September twenty-seventh, 1914, at the age of seventy-five, was blamed on the stress of this break with his subjects.’

  ‘Very good, thank you,’ Papineau said. ‘I’ll take it from there.’

  He turned from Jasmine to address the entire group. ‘Romania delayed its decision to enter the war until 1916. They had other, more pressing concerns.’

  The Frenchman turned back to the map and pressed the remote control. Images of gold coins, bars, bricks, armor, decorations, accessories, jewelry, dishes, tableware, and even furniture danced before their eyes. ‘The new leaders quickly grasped that whether the Germans invaded or were invited in, the nation’s treasures were in danger of being seized. Thus, the ad hoc administration made the difficult decision to send it out of their country for safekeeping in a series of rail shipments.’

  The image changed to a map of Eastern Europe. An animated arrow grew out of Romania’s top right corner, passing through the countries to the northeast and ending some fifteen hundred miles away.

  McNutt groaned at the sight.

  ‘We are interested in one of those treasure trains,’ Papineau continued. ‘One in which almost a hundred tons of gold and jewels were sent away.’

  Sarah’s eyes lit up in thought. ‘In modern terms, how much loot?’

  Papineau smiled. ‘Billions.’

  17

  Cobb stared at the map. According to the animation, the treasure had been taken from Romania to Russia. Amongst the vast quantity of details he had learned about the Soviets during his years in the service, three things about Mother Russia had always stuck with him: it had eight time zones, widespread poverty, and a pervasive black market.

  Cobb was excited, but he was not pleased.

  Jasmine continued her history lesson. ‘Germany controlled Central Europe, so the Romanians saw no safe way of getting the gold to where they wanted to send it — the United States or the United Kingdom. They considered Denmark and Sweden next, but German submarines ruled the North Sea.’

  ‘Those Germans really knew how to wage war, huh?’ McNutt interjected.

  ‘Only to a point,’ Papineau said, with a flourish of French pride.

  ‘So the Romanians felt that there was no other choice,’ Jasmine said. ‘They made a treaty with tsarist Russia. The Red Army would safeguard the treasure until after the war.’

  ‘And then — oops! — they lost it,’ Sarah said.

  ‘You’re getting ahead of us,’ Papineau said. ‘Jasmine, tell them more about the players involved.’

  ‘On December the eleventh, 1916, General Mossoloff extended a written guarantee promising the safety of the Romanian National Treasure. He had this authority as the Charge d’Affaires of Russia in Romania — basically, he gave the final opinion on all Russian matters in Romania. Three days later Mossoloff and Ion Antonescu, the Finance Minister of Romania, signed what is known as the Romanian-Russian Protocol. That guaranteed, in great detail, the transport, safekeeping, and return of the treasure. Before the ink of their signatures was dry, Russia took possession — temporarily, the Romanians believed — of seventeen rail cars of Romanian gold. There were over fifteen hundred crates containing over one hundred tons. Worth roughly three hundred million dollars at the time, or upwards of five billion dollars in today’s market.’

  The recitation was met by silence. It wasn’t the silence of the dumbstruck, but rather the mute inability of anyone in the room to fully process the amount in question.

  ‘That wasn’t all,’ Jasmine continued. ‘Also onboard the seventeen rail cars were crates containing Queen Maria’s jewelry.’

  ‘And that was just the first shipment?’ Cobb asked.

  Papineau nodded. ‘Twenty-four additional train cars were sent in 1917. These transported more gold and money from vaults of the state’s financial institutions, as well as cherished jewelry and other historical artifacts from state and private collections.’

  ‘Jewelry?’ Sarah asked.

  Papineau nodded. ‘Bronze Age jewelry from approximately 1500 BC; Dacian jewels, precious stones and gold mined from their lands before the formation of Romania; jewelry belonging to the Wallachian and Moldavian ruling class; and the Romanian royal jewels. Even at that time, it was worth one and a half billion dollars, give or take.’

  ‘Take,’ McNutt said. He winked at Sarah, who didn’t respond.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Papineau,’ Garcia said, his fingers flying on his phone. ‘Could you be more specific? Specific sums are easier to trace backward than round figures.’

  Papineau straightened. ‘Various documents record the value as one billion, five hundred and ninety-four million, eight hundred and thirty-six thousand, seven hundred twenty-one.’ The Frenchman waited until Garcia caught up. ‘And nine cents.’

  McNutt could only laugh, unable to fully comprehend that much wealth, even as thoughts of strippers and private jets danced in his head.

  ‘Some consider this estimate to be on the low end,’ Papineau continued. ‘The very low end, as the value of much of the artwork and other personal items simply cannot be ascertained.’

  ‘The very definition of “priceless”,’ Sarah offered.

  ‘Indeed,’ Papineau replied.

  Garcia added, ‘By the way, the newly created US Federal Reserve was given intelligence of the relocation on January twentieth of the following year.’

  ‘Well done,’ Papineau said.

  Garcia glanced at him to see if he was being sincere. Confident that he was, Garcia looked down and tapped his phone screen again. ‘The Fed references other intelligence reports. Get this. One of them was from a guy named William Friedman — a geneticist who studied cryptology at the Riverbank Laboratories Cipher Department.’

  Cobb was familiar with the name. ‘That’s where it all started. The military’s Signals Intelligence Service — the code-breaking division.’

  ‘Correct,’ Papineau said. ‘Mr Garcia, do you have the Friedman report?’

  ‘Yeah, and wow. Every dime — excuse me, every leu — and all the stocks and securities of the National Bank of Romania, as well as all deposits from the Romanian Savings and Loan, were sent on the later trains. That’s all the wealth of the royal family, the government, and the people. It included documents from the Romanian National Archives, papers from the Historical Archives of Brasov, art belonging to museums and private collections, manuscripts and rare books from libraries and universities, and even the entire inventory of every Romanian pawn shop.’

  ‘Did any sane human being think that treasure was ever coming back?’ McNutt said.

  Papineau held up his hand. ‘In Moscow on August fifth, 1917, representatives of the Romanian and Russian governments signed a codicil to their agreement, authorizing the creation of a depository in the Kremlin to protect the Rom
anian treasure. There were two sets of keys needed to open the gigantic depository. One was held by the Romanian National Bank, the other by the Russian tsarist government.’

  ‘Two-key systems are like marriages,’ Jasmine explained. ‘They only work if both parties remain civil. And in this case, they didn’t. The Soviet government declared war on Romania less than a year later, January 1918, and announced that the Romanian treasure was no longer accessible to Romania. The decree was signed by Lenin himself.’

  Sarah laughed. ‘The Soviets were a real pain in the ass, weren’t they?’

  Papineau nodded. ‘The French — who had fought valiantly alongside the Russians and the Romanians during World War One — tried to intercede on the Romanians’ behalf. The Consul General of France took possession of the Romanian key in an effort to broker a deal. He went to Moscow to negotiate and was promptly arrested by Soviet authorities. They seized the Romanian key and didn’t return it until 1926.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘In the meantime, let the looting begin.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Papineau said. ‘The Soviet government immediately confiscated eight crates filled with more than a million dollars’ worth of bank notes, claiming it was owed to them as compensation for their “good work”. When peace between Moscow and Bucharest was fully restored in 1934, the USSR returned almost fifteen hundred crates-’

  ‘Exact numbers please!’ Garcia snapped.

  ‘One thousand, four hundred and thirty-six crates,’ the Frenchman informed him. ‘Although they were replete with valuable documents, the crates contained nothing of monetary value.’

  ‘The art?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Returned in 1956,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘And the rest of it?’ she asked. ‘Surely the Romanians protested.’

  ‘Vigorously and often,’ Papineau said. ‘Although nearly forty thousand-’ he stopped, bowed slightly to Garcia, — ‘thirty-nine thousand, three hundred and twenty artifacts were returned, actual monies received by Romania consisted of only thirty-three kilograms of gold and six hundred and ninety kilograms of silver.’

  McNutt whistled. ‘The Russian bear just stomped through that campsite, didn’t it?’

  Jasmine nodded. ‘The Romanians have repeatedly tried to reopen negotiations for the return of the bulk of the treasure. Unfortunately, Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Andropov all refused to negotiate. They have even said because of Romania’s debt that they owe Russia money.’

  Papineau took over from there. ‘No one outside an elite few in the Kremlin has had access to the vault or its treasure for decades. The best of the Romanian treasure — the parts that would be easiest to pawn or “fence”, if you will — has already been looted, I am sure. I am aware that some of the items have been on the market over the years — though not publicly, of course. They are still stolen goods-’

  ‘You mean jewels, paintings, rare books — most of the “priceless” things,’ Sarah lamented.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But not the gold,’ Garcia stated, looking at his screen. ‘Gold prices went up and up and up until 1931, and they only fell because the Brits abandoned the gold standard and speculators pounced on the outflow. There was no other influx of gold into the world market.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Thieves wouldn’t have bothered holding it for the best price. They would have melted it down and sold it right away.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Papineau said. ‘The gold apparently has not, as of yet, been circulated.’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ McNutt chimed in. ‘Just wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You’re not one hundred percent sure the gold’s even there, but you want us to break in anyway? Into the goddamn Kremlin? The one in goddamn Russia?’

  18

  Cobb smiled, realizing that McNutt and the others had gotten ahead of Papineau’s explanation. Had they let him finish, they would know what Cobb had already figured out.

  ‘It’s not in the Kremlin anymore,’ Cobb announced.

  ‘Just because you say it isn’t?’ Garcia challenged.

  ‘No,’ Cobb replied. ‘Not because of what I say.’ He nodded toward Jasmine. ‘Because of what she said.’

  Jasmine didn’t know how to respond, but her look said it all: Who, me?

  ‘Yes, you,’ Cobb assured her. ‘You said it just a moment ago. They refused to negotiate.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ McNutt admitted.

  Papineau beamed across the table, pleased that Cobb had put the pieces together.

  ‘They won’t negotiate,’ Cobb explained, ‘because if they did, someone might find out that they don’t have the treasure anymore.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Simple,’ Cobb continued. ‘They haven’t told anyone where it is.’

  ‘Chief,’ McNutt said, ‘I still don’t-’

  ‘It’s the twenty-first century,’ Cobb exclaimed. ‘Simply locking the gold away in a depository doesn’t mean anything in this era. There’s no pleasure in just looking at it. The treasure does them no good stashed in a vault, unless they declare it and use it as collateral. If they can’t draw against it, what good is it? And if they had taken out a loan against it, the whole world would have known by now. Ergo, they don’t have it.’

  Jasmine wasn’t satisfied quite yet. ‘Couldn’t they simply be hoarding it in secret?’

  ‘To what end?’ Cobb replied. ‘The only reason to keep it secret would be to privately negotiate its return with the Romanian government. But you already told us that they refuse to negotiate. So unless you can look me in the eye and honestly tell me that you think every Russian prime minister of the last century chose to perpetuate a ruse against Romania rather than bolster his crumbling economy, they simply don’t have the gold.’

  The room was silent again as everyone considered Cobb’s statement. Papineau was contemplative too, but mostly about Cobb. He wondered how he had figured it out so quickly.

  ‘So — we’re not going to Russia?’ McNutt said. ‘I’m confused.’

  Cobb ignored McNutt and turned toward Jasmine. ‘Things were far from stable in Russia during World War One, right?’

  ‘Yes. By any standard, it was basically chaos,’ she replied. ‘During the time when the Romanian treasure shipments were sent and secured, Tsar Nicholas the Second and his family were murdered, the Romanov dynasty ended, and the revolutionary Bolsheviks took power. Furthermore, the Red Army and the White Army factions were tearing each other apart, and there were military disasters plaguing the Russian Army at the German front. Between the violent uprising of the new regime and the soldiers everywhere dying and deserting, it was a complete disaster.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘Let’s see …’ Jasmine thought. ‘In October 1916, with the Germans a mere two hundred miles from Moscow, the rail workers went on strike. Soldiers from the front were sent to force them back to work. Instead, the soldiers joined the railway workers.’

  ‘So the lines of defense are disintegrating, the enemy is at the gate, and the capital is in ruins. Time that out with the shipment.’

  ‘Two months after the second Romanian shipment arrived “safely” in Moscow’ — she emphasized the irony of the word safely with air quotes — ‘Nicholas the Second abdicated. The provisional government which preceded Lenin and the Communists was ineffective, to say the least.’

  ‘What was the mood in Moscow?’ Cobb asked.

  ‘Confused. Unhappy. Desperate. They had to burn furniture to keep from freezing. They were starving. Finally, in December 1917, there was an armistice with Germany.’

  ‘Who did or did not know about the Romanian treasure?’

  ‘I’m sure the Germans knew there were treasures,’ Jasmine surmised. ‘If not from their extensive spy network, then from the Romanovs or the Communists who were pawing at power and infiltrating government offices one after the other. Even after the armistice, the Germans kept coming in a classic nineteenth-century-style land grab. They marched into the Ukraine uno
pposed. The Russians ceded that territory and other contested or coveted regions to protect themselves, to give themselves a geographical buffer.’

  ‘Where?’ Cobb wanted to know.

  ‘The Baltic Provinces. Finland, parts of Poland-’

  ‘Which the Russians could never have held,’ Papineau reminded her. ‘Even absent the Germans, the war had not left them with the necessary manpower.’

  ‘Very true,’ Jasmine said. ‘That’s when the Allies invaded Russia, just to stop Germany from getting their hands on Russian resources.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cobb concluded. ‘So let’s say you’re Russia. You’ve got Germany in your face and France, Britain, and America breathing down your neck. What would you do with — let’s round it off to a nice, round number — a hundred tons of gold?’

  He watched the group ponder the question.

  Even Garcia was still. His fingers had nothing to check.

  ‘I’ll make it simple,’ Cobb said. ‘Would you keep the gold where it was?’

  ‘No,’ Sarah decided.

  ‘Neither would I. So the question is: where did they move it?’

  Papineau smiled. That was the billion-dollar question.

  ‘Indeed, Mr Cobb,’ Papineau said. ‘That is exactly what I would like you to determine.’ He paused, letting it sink in. ‘I want you to find it, secure it, and transport it to a safe location of my choosing. The gold and any other valuables you find along the way.’

  ‘Ohhhhh,’ McNutt drawled. ‘Is that all?’

  Sarah leaned forward in her seat. ‘And what if we fail?’

  ‘If you fail, I’ll pay you for your time, but you won’t get the five-million-dollar bonus,’ Papineau said flatly. ‘Your bonus comes from the treasure, not my pockets.’

  Sarah nodded her acceptance. That seemed fair to her.

  Intrigued by the mission, Cobb turned to face the group. ‘All right, everyone, listen to me. If I’m going to lead this team, here is what I require. First, what I say goes. I’ll accept short discussions on anything and everything except in times of danger. Agreed?’