Текст книги "Dark Watch"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Eddie was still pinned in the open, and judging at how slowly he was moving, Juan knew he’d been hit. There was no trail of blood, so it was likely the vests had saved his life; however, Juan had taken a hit once through a vest and knew it would be hours before Eddie could even catch his breath. It took several agonizing minutes for Eddie to reach the hatchway into the superstructure, where a pair of hands hauled him to safety.

Through the cordite smoke drifting like a dense English fog, Cabrillo identified potential targets and fired with mechanical efficiency. Until the crew gained the upper hand in the battle, he couldn’t worry about taking prisoners.

Blood ran thick across the deck as bodies piled up, but fire from the SEALs had withered to an occasional desultory burst. They’d taken losses. Cabrillo spotted two pirates dashing forward, moving from a hatch cover where they’d hidden to the base of one of the cranes. One pulled something from the knapsack worn by his partner. Juan recognized the satchel charge and cut them down before they had time to arm the device. Another tried to race for the superstructure. As Cabrillo swung to fire, one of the remote machine guns turned on its gimble. The sustained burst cut the man nearly in half.

That seemed to break the back of the pirate horde. The ten or so survivors ran for the gangway just as the big diesel on the Krabellowed out of idle. They ran into devastating fire from the superstructure. By holding back, Eddie’s men had fooled the pirates into thinking their avenue of escape was clear. Two dropped to the deck, their corpses skidding in their own blood.

The Krabegan to pull away, abandoning their boarding party. Cabrillo stitched the trawler’s deck, but there were no targets. The lines securing the gangway to the fishing boat were still secure, so it was slowly torn from its mounts. Two pirates were halfway down it when the Krabegan to move. The gangway stretched like a bridge from one ship to the other until the ropes on the Kraparted under the strain. The eighteen-hundred-pound set of stairs twisted, then pulled free from the Oregon,dumping the men into the sea, then crushing them when they surfaced.

The Krachanged angle slightly, narrowing the gap to give their men on the Oregona chance to jump for it. Eric Stone at the helmsman’s station in the op center recognized the maneuver and turned the Oregonto port and gave her some speed just as the remaining pirates leapt for the rails. One landed on the Kra’s main winch. High above on the wing bridge, Cabrillo heard bones shatter and saw his body tumble to the trawler’s deck. A second gunman smashed into the Kra’s hull, fell into the water, and never resurfaced. The remaining six landed in the narrow space between the two ships.

Juan didn’t know if the helmsman on the fishing boat didn’t see what had happened or just didn’t care. He continued to turn into the Oregon. Eric Stone hit the bow thruster in an attempt to shove the Kraaside, but the prop’s athwartships tunnel was well forward of the trawler, and its powerful wash merely rippled the waves.

The two hulls came together in a grinding crash of steel, smearing the men struggling in the water, turning flesh and bone into a pink paste that washed away when the ships separated.

Juan fetched a walkie-talkie from a drawer at the back of the wheelhouse. “Wepps, Cabrillo. As soon as you have a sight picture, hole her at the waterline. Let the sons of bitches know they aren’t going anywhere.”

“Roger,” Mark Murphy replied.

As the distance between the two vessels grew, Cabrillo saw a deckhand aboard the Kraattach the cable from the A-frame derrick to lines already secured to the shipping container sitting aft of the wheelhouse. The chairman squeezed off a few rounds from his H&K, but hitting a target that’s bobbing with the swells from an unstable platform was next to impossible. The man didn’t even look up from his task as bullets ricocheted around him. An unseen winchman cranked up the derrick. Because the A-frame angled out over the trawler’s stern, the large container was dragged across the Kra’s deck, leaving deep scars in the wood planking. The bottom edge caught on a bollard, but the winch drum continued to revolve. The container teetered for a moment before flipping on its side with an echoing clang. When it was finally under the crane, it was hauled into the air and swung free over the transom. The winchman released the brake, and the container smashed into the sea, bobbed for a moment, then began to fill with water.

Cable stripped away from the freewheeling winch drum as the Kracontinued to increase the distance. Whatever contraband the trawler was carrying was doubtlessly in the container, and Cabrillo felt if they were quick enough, they could disable the fishing boat and tie on to the unspooling line before it vanished forever.

As if reading his thoughts, Mark Murphy loosened a one-second burst from the Gatling gun hidden in the Oregon’s bow. Fifty depleted uranium slugs punched into the Kraat the waterline just fore of the pilothouse at a spot Murph assumed was clear of hitting her fuel tanks.

The tanks were well aft of the gaping hole, but the rounds impacted the pirates’ weapons cache. The first explosion was relatively small and contained. Only a lashing tongue of fire belched from the gash cut into the hull by the Gatling. The second blast punched through to the deck and blew out an eight-by-eight section of hull. Fire and smoke rolled from the trawler as she heeled over like she’d just fired a broadside of cannons. Cabrillo watched helplessly as more explosions ripped apart the fishing boat. It looked as though she’d been rigged to blow by Hollywood effects masters. The pilothouse vanished in a splintering pall of flame, and then her aft deck erupted when her main tanks detonated, slamming her stern so deeply into the water that her bow lifted clear. Shrapnel and debris peppered the side of the Oregon,forcing Cabrillo to duck behind the rail. The trawler’s stern winch flew right over the freighter’s rear deck, trailing cable that looked like gossamer in the moonlight. The Kra’s keel split where the explosions had weakened it. The smoking bow settled back on the water as the stern sank from view, and then the fore section lifted free again before it, too, was dragged under the waves.

The entire sequence of events, from the first impact of 20mm rounds to the final hissing plunge, took nineteen seconds.

Juan got back to his feet, wiping a smear of blood from where a piece of hot steel had nicked the back of his hand. A wide circle of smoking flotsam coated the sea, no piece larger than a garbage can lid. The quiet roar of oily fires burning on the swells was the only sound once the concussion waves dissipated across the uncaring waters. There were no moans from the injured, no cries from the stranded. No one had survived the conflagration.

He remained rooted for ten seconds, perhaps for as long as thirty, before he realized there was hope of salvaging what had turned into a debacle. The cable securing the pirate’s container lay across the Oregon’s deck, slowly slipping into the ocean as the weight of the container pulled it down.

“Deck party to the aft deck for cargo detail,” he barked into the radio. “Security to the foredeck. Check for survivors.”

He raced through the deserted superstructure, taking stairs four at a time in a race to the aft deck. He burst from a hatchway just as a team of deckhands reached the slithering cable. Because the winch spool had unwound as it sank on the far side of the ship, there was little counterweight to the rapidly sinking container. The cable rasped across the deck, and smoke from blistering paint coiled into the air.

Juan grabbed a length of chain from a pile left haphazardly at the base of a derrick. He looped it several times around the cable where it rose over the rail, then snapped the links into the hook of a small cargo winch. While the winch looked as though it hadn’t worked in years, its two-cylinder engine fired at the press of a button. He threw the lever to draw on the hook, and the chain tightened around the cable. The friction of steel against steel created an acrid stench as the links clenched further. The cable slowed enough for the deckhands to create a loop long enough for them to wrestle over a capstan. The cable came taut, vibrating with the strain, but it held.

It took several more minutes for them to rig a more secure system to hold the cable steady and attach it to the one operational crane on the Oregon’s aft deck. Eddie Seng and Linda Ross joined him just as they started to haul up the container. Seng was pale and walked with a slight stoop, a hand pressed to his chest where he’d taken the two shots.

“How’re you doing?” Cabrillo asked.

“It only hurts when I laugh,” Eddie said gamely.

“Then let me tell you the one about the hooker who walks into a bar with a parrot and a roll of quarters.”

Eddie held out a hand and groaned. “Please don’t.”

Juan turned serious. “How bad was it back there?”

“Believe it or not, I’m the worst of the injured. My boys suffered a grand total of one concussion and a single flesh wound among them.”

“And the pirates?”

“Thirteen dead and two injured,” Linda answered. “Julia doesn’t think either’s gonna last an hour.”

“Damn.” They might get something from forensic autopsies, the ages and ethnicities of the pirates for example, but nothing to lead them to who was behind the attack.

“Clear the rail,” a deckhand shouted.

The trio stepped away from the ship’s side as the container was lifted from the sea. Water poured from its top and jetted from holes drilled along its sides. The twenty-foot container swung over the rail, and the crane operator settled it onto the deck as though it was as fragile as an egg. Juan was handed a pair of bolt cutters, which he used to shear the padlock securing the doors. Everyone crowded around, each with their own private thoughts about what they’d find inside. It was inevitable that some believed the pirates’ trove would contain gold and precious gems, as though this was the eighteenth century.

Cabrillo held no such illusions, but he wasn’t prepared for what spilled from the container when he unlatched the doors. A crewman retched when he realized what he was seeing, and even Juan had to clench his jaws as acid surged up his throat. Borne by several tons of water still trapped inside the steel box, a tangle of thirty naked bodies tumbled onto the deck of the Oregon.

6

THE chateau sat in a valley near the base of Mount Pilatus just south of Lucerne and only a short train ride from Zurich. Although the forty-room mansion looked as if it had dominated the landscape for generations, it had been constructed only five years earlier. With traditional steeply pitched slate roofs and countless gables and chimneys, the structure was storybook beautiful. The circular drive curved around an enormous marble fountain decorated with a dozen nymphs who poured water into the clear pool from filigreed urns.

Around the main house were several stone outbuildings to make the estate look like it had once been a working farm. In the surrounding alpine meadows, brown Jersey cows sporting bronze bells kept the fields trimmed and fertilized.

Seven dark limousines were ranked in a parking annex next to the garage, and behind it lay an enclosed field where a pair of Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters sat, their pilots drinking thermos coffee in the cockpit of one of the executive choppers.

The summit meeting of European finance ministers in Zurich drew little media attention, since nothing much was expected of the gathering. However, it provided an excuse for the men meeting at the chateau to be in the same city at the same time. They met in the mansion’s great hall, a lofty two-story room paneled in oak and decorated with boar and stag heads and large Swiss horns crossed over the walk-in fireplace.

As Switzerland is one of the world’s great banking centers, it was little wonder that with one exception the fifteen men represented some of the largest banking concerns in Europe and America.

At the head of the table sat Bernhard Volkmann. Raised Catholic in a strict household run by his banker father, Volkmann had forsaken his religion early in life for another, that of wealth. Currency had become his god, cash his Eucharist. He was a high priest in the world of finance, respected for his dedication and a little feared for his uncanny instincts. Every action of every day went toward the accumulation of more money, for his bank and for himself. Volkmann had a wife because it was expected of him and three children because he’d allowed himself to sleep with her on a half-dozen occasions. He considered them a necessary distraction from his professional life but could not recall any of their birthdays or the last time he’d even seen his youngest, a twenty-year-old student he believed was at the Sorbonne.

Volkmann arrived at his office on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse at six each morning and left at eight each night. This routine varied begrudgingly on Sundays and holidays when he would work out of his home for at least twelve hours a day. Volkmann neither drank nor smoked and would be no more likely to enter a casino than a Muslim would become a swineherd. At sixty, he was paunchy and almost uniformly gray. His skin was the same washed-out shade as his hair, and behind his glasses his eyes were the murky color of dishwater. He even took to wearing gray suits, and though his shirts were white, they invariably took on his gray cast.

Those who worked for him had never seen Volkmann smile, much less laugh, and only a severe financial upheaval would elicit a slight downward tug at the corners of his mouth.

Around him were similarly severe men whose dedication to money was no less intense. They were presidents of banks whose decisions affected billions of dollars and millions of lives. And today they were gathered because the very foundation of the world’s economy was about to crumble.

On the table in front of Bern Volkmann a simple black cloth covered a small rectangular object. When the men were settled around the table, water poured, and attendants withdrawn, Volkmann reached out and pulled away the cloth.

The bankers and their guest were among a handful of people in the world who wouldn’t noticeably react to the object on the table. Yet Volkmann saw that even these seasoned professionals couldn’t mask all emotion. A few drew shallow breaths, one contemplatively stroked his chin. Another’s eyes widened for an instant, then the person glanced around as if he’d given a tell in a poker game. The six billion other people on the planet would have gasped in wonder and rushed to touch the object as their minds filled with possibilities.

The trapezoidal bar weighed twenty-seven pounds and was known as a London Good Delivery. Its facets radiated a warm buttery yellow, and it possessed an almost oily sheen in the subtle lighting of the great hall. Refined to 99.9 percent, the ingot of pure gold was worth approximately one hundred sixty thousand dollars.

“Gentlemen, we have a crisis,” Volkmann began in accentless English. He spoke crisply, enunciating every word so there could be no confusion or misinterpretation. “As you are all aware, the world will run out of gold very shortly. In fact, demand far outstrips supply for a very simple reason. Some of you became greedy.

“Starting more than a decade ago many of you approached your country’s central banks with a proposition that at the time seemed profitable for everyone concerned. You, as bankers, would borrow the gold held on deposit with the promise to repay at one-quarter percent interest. The gold, as it sat in vaults in New York, Paris, London, and elsewhere, had no value so long as it was kept out of circulation. By paying a quarter point you would make the gold work for the central banks as it never had in the past.

“Had it ended there, we would not be facing a crisis. But it did not end. You turned around and either sold the gold on the open market or used the value of your holdings as leverage and collateral for other ventures. In essence you pledged or sold a commodity you had only the right to borrow. The central banks gave tacit approval to this action yet maintained the right to recall the gold at any time. Had this scheme taken place in only one country or on a small scale, there would remain enough surplus gold on the market to cover such a call.

“However, your greed got the best of you all. As it stands today, twelve thousand tons of gold valued at one trillion euros is on the books of central banks but is, in fact, on the fingers and around the necks of women all over the world. In a word, gentlemen, it is beyond redemption.

“Several central banks are aware of the situation and continue to accept their quarter percent on the gold’s value, but some are asking for the gold’s return. Two years ago the French national bank announced they were going to sell some of their reserves. We got together to finance the purchase of enough gold to replenish their treasury so the sale could go through. As you recall, the price of gold rose fifty euros in just a few weeks when traders realized such buying was taking place. The French then sold their gold, and the price stabilized once again. Our scramble to cover the call cost us nearly a billion euros. We told our stockholders it was a one-time charge-off, but in truth it is a charge-off we will face any time a central bank calls in their assets.”

“Bern, we don’t need a history lesson,” a New York banker said testily. “If you look around you’ll see there’s a few familiar faces missing because they were canned by their boards of directors.”

“Being ‘canned by their boards’ as you put it, Mr. Hershel, is now the least of our worries.” Volkmann gave the American a stare that silenced any follow-up rejoinder.

“Banking is a business of trust,” he continued. “A worker cashes his paycheck, spends what money he needs to survive, and trusts a bank to hold the rest. What happens to it afterward is frankly beyond his understanding or threshold of interest. He has done his job of converting labor to capital and trusts us to do our job of maximizing that capital. We lend it to entrepreneurs who build new businesses to employ more workers to transform more labor into more capital in a system that has worked well for centuries.

“But what happens when that trust is abused? Surely there have been banking scandals in the past; however, what we now face is a crisis of confidence of unprecedented proportions. The store of capital that governments use to assure their people of the country’s strength, their gold reserves, has been sold off for what is in essence an IOU that can no longer be paid. We cannot honor our promise to the central banks. Even if we had the money to buy the gold to return to the central banks, there isn’t enough of it in the world to cover what we owe.”

“Production can be increased to buy us the time to fill a call order.” This from an Englishman in a Savile Row suit.

“It can’t.” The answer was short and blunt, like the person who gave it. He, too, had an accent, somewhat British in nature but with a Colonial twang.

“Mr. Bryce, would you care to explain.”

Bryce stood. Unlike the others, he had tanned, weathered skin, and his blue eyes were hidden behind a permanent squint. His hands were large, with swollen knuckles. He was someone who’d worked to obtain his wealth, toiled in ways the bankers could never understand.

“I’ve been chosen to represent South Africa’s mining concerns here,” Bryce said. “Mr. Volkmann told me what we were to discuss, so I talked with my people beforehand to give you accurate information. Last year South Africa produced about thirty-four hundred tons of gold at a cost of around two hundred and eighty dollars an ounce. This year we project the same tonnage but at a price of three hundred and eighteen dollars an ounce. Labor costs have risen since the end of apartheid because of the power of the trade unions, and we’re under heavy pressure to sign a new contract that’s even more generous.”

“Don’t give in to them,” the president of Holland’s biggest bank interjected.

Bryce shot him a look. “Hard rock mining isn’t assembly line work. It takes years of training to become proficient. A strike now would cripple us all, and the unions know it. They see gold trading near five hundred an ounce and know the mines aren’t losing money.”

“Can you increase production?” Another at the table asked.

“Our mines are two miles deep now. Every level we sink farther is a geometric increase in cost. It’s like building a skyscraper. To make it taller you can’t simply add a floor to the top. You must first reinforce the foundation and the structure. You must make sure the elevators can reach and that your water and sewer lines can take the additional capacity. Adding a floor to the top, architects say, costs as much and is as difficult as slipping a new floor under an existing building. Every new level we dig in our deepest mines costs two to three times as much to excavate as the one above it. We could get the gold, sure, but the expense far outweighs the profit.”

“Then we need to find alternative sources of bullion. Russia perhaps? Canada? The United States?”

“Not enough capacity to make a dent in the shortfall,” Volkmann answered. “Also, environmental protections in North America add a thirty to forty dollar premium per ounce.”

“What about exploration? We develop new mines, maybe bring order to the chaotic gold mines of Brazil so they can increase production.”

“Even with the latest equipment and management, the veins in Brazil aren’t big enough to fill an armored car in a year,” Bryce replied. “And as for exploration, there are gold reefs out there. We even know where some of them are. It would take years just to cut through the bureaucracy to stake claims, and then you’d need to invest billions of dollars to bring any of them up to the production levels you gentlemen require.”

“Then the solution is simple,” a Frenchman said into the short silence following Bryce’s gloomy assessment. “We must convince the central banks to never call in their reserves. Perhaps we could promise them a greater interest rate to ensure their cooperation.”

“That’s just a temporary fix,” said another New Yorker. “We can’t run from our obligation forever.”

“But if we have time to refill the central banks’ coffers, we can maintain price stability and avoid what happened when my country announced their sale.”

“And when the Wall Street Journalbreaks this story,” the New Yorker countered, “what then? People are going to demand to see the gold their government promised them existed. Joe Six-Pack thinks there’s a vault at Fort Knox brimming with the stuff. He’s not going to be too happy when he learns it’s empty except for a bunch of worthless promissory notes. He’s going to panic because his government lied about the one thing it never had in the past, the surety of the greenback.”

“Which is precisely why I said earlier this is a crisis of unprecedented proportions,” Volkmann said. “We have removed the foundation of the capitalist system, and as soon as the public learns of this, it is going to crash down like a card house.”

The Swiss banker paused, scanning the room. He saw that he had their attention, and he could tell by the dour expressions that some of them already anticipated what he was about to say, even if they didn’t know the specifics. He sipped from a glass of water before continuing. “For the past six years Germany has embarked on a series of failed economic policies. The result has transformed the country from Europe’s industrial engine into something akin to a welfare state. Productivity is down, unemployment is at the ceiling allowed by the EU, and shortly the government will face the likelihood that it will default on their overly generous pensions. In a word, Germany is about to go bankrupt. I learned two weeks ago that they are going to sell all of their gold stock.”

The collective gasp was the sound of men realizing they were facing the abyss.

“That is six thousand tons, gentlemen – or roughly two years’ worth of South Africa’s production. As it stands there are only two thousand tons on reserve in Berlin and Bonn. We have to make up a four-thousand-ton shortfall.”

“How soon?” the Frenchman asked, having lost his earlier bluster.

“I’m not certain,” Volkmann replied. “In order to keep prices stable I suspect it will be over some time.”

“But not enough,” the New Yorker muttered.

“And keep in mind,” Volkmann went on doggedly, piling disaster on top of disaster, “if commodity traders realize the bind our banks are in, they will gouge us, and prices might double or even triple.”

“We are ruined,” the banker from Holland cried. “All of us. Even if the Germans accepted currency, we could not repay. The money we made selling the gold has already been lent to others. We would have to recall loans, all of our loans. It would ruin the Dutch economy.”

“Not just yours,” the banker named Hershel said. “We bought and sold twenty billion dollars’ worth of German bullion, and a good chunk of that evaporated during the dot-com implosion. We would have to deplete our savings-holders’ accounts to pay it back. There would be runs on banks all over the United States. It would be the Great Depression all over again.”

A despondent silence enveloped the room as they considered those words. These men were too young to recall the Depression that enveloped the world in the 1920s and ’30s, but they’d heard firsthand accounts from grandparents and other relatives. But this time would be much worse, because the global economy was so interconnected. A few even thought beyond their own losses and those of their home countries. With nations struggling to provide for their own people, international aid would end. How many people in developing nations would die because the men at this table had sold borrowed gold in order to fatten their profit ledgers?

Suddenly the sleek corporate high rollers were as gray as Bernhard Volkmann.

“Is there any way to dissuade the Germans?” one asked after a few moments.

“We can try,” another answered, “but they have to look after their own interests. They need their gold back, or they’ll face insolvency and possible rioting, maybe insurrection.”

Volkmann allowed the conversation to continue for a few minutes on its own as the bankers bandied ideas of how to save themselves, their banks, and the world. In the end they had no answers. It was as the talk died down to silence once again that he asked the South African mine representative, Bryce, to leave the room.

When the door closed behind him, the bankers gave their undivided attention to Volkmann. He remained silent until someone finally asked the question they all prayed he could answer.

“Did you call us here because you have a solution?” asked the English CEO of the world’s sixth-largest bank.

“Yes,” Volkmann replied simply and almost felt their relieved sighs on his skin. He tapped a text message on his PDA and a moment later the great hall’s doors swung open again. The man who entered strode in with a sense of confidence that the bankers would never admit they only possessed as a front, camouflage to hide their insecurities. He moved loose-limbed and with his head high. He was their age, early fifties, perhaps a little younger. It was hard to tell. His face was unlined, but his eyes seemed old and his bristle-cut hair was more silver than brown. Unlike the bankers, he didn’t have the self-satisfied smugness of entitlement, the sense of superiority that came with the illusion of wealth and power. He was simply a presence, an undeniable force that had entered their meeting and seemed the center without having to utter a word.

“Gentlemen,” Volkmann said as the stranger took a seat next to the Swiss. “This is Anton Savich, formerly of the Soviet Bureau of Natural Resources. He is now a private consultant.”

No one said a word or made a move. None could fathom the presence of a former Russian functionary.

“I’ve known something like this was coming for some time and secretly made plans,” Volkmann continued. “There can be no argument about what I propose, nor any dissent. This is our only option, and when I am finished, each of you will agree to it without reservation. Mr. Savich will outline the particulars.”

Without getting to his feet, speaking casually with an arm draped over the back of his chair, Anton Savich told them how he was going to save their banks. It took ten uninterrupted minutes and left the faces of the other men with a mixture of shock, anger, and outright revulsion. The Dutch banker looked like he was going to be physically ill. Even the tough New Yorkers, one of whom Volkmann knew had fought in Vietnam, had gone ashen.

“There is no other way, gentlemen,” Bern Volkmann said. No one could actually agree orally. Volkmann passed his gaze from man to man, meeting their eyes, and knew he had their assent when they either looked away or gave an almost imperceptible nod. The last was the Dutchman. He gave a weak moan at the thought of what he was agreeing to and dipped his eyes.

“I will make the arrangements,” Volkmann concluded. “We need never meet like this again.”

The New Yorker who’d spoken of Fort Knox said, “Oh, I’m sure we will. In hell.”