“Pa-pa-pa-resident Dickson, an unbiased study of recent history reveals how deeply you must share in the United States’ responsibility for the downtrodden condition of the little people. . . .”
Dickson looked at me and frowned. Alicia’s tone, even more than her words, no longer sounded like a kidnap victim in fear of her life. On the contrary, the accusatory voice and the rhetoric came across like a dedicated collaborator, rather than an anxious hostage.
“The LLA has been made aware of certain moneys in your possession,” the tape continued with Alicia speaking. “They know full well how these moneys came into your hands and they also know that these funds were immorally extracted from the people and that they are rightfully the property of the people. . . .”
“[Expletive removed]! She must have told them!” Dickson had gone quite pale.
Told them what? I didn’t ask; it didn’t seem the time to do that. “Do you think they tortured her?” Instead, that was the question I raised.
“Either that, or . . .” Dickson left it unfinished.
Alicia’s voice continued:
“I will not be released until these sums are returned to the people. I am being held as a prisoner of war under the terms of the Geneva Treaty. I have not been mistreated. But the conditions of my release are dependent upon your following the instructions which follow to the letter.”
Her voice came to an abrupt halt. Once again we heard the male voice which had opened the tape:
“President Dickson, you will fly to Geneva, Switzerland, and withdraw one million dollars in cash from the secret bank account you maintain there. . . .”
“[Expletive deleted]! [Expletive removed]! [Unintelligible]! [Characterization omitted]!”, Dickson remarked. “She must have told them!” he muttered angrily. “Only she and I knew! She must have blabbed!”
“From Geneva you will fly to Zurich which, as you know, is the gold capital of the world. You will proceed directly to the Gold Exchange and purchase one million dollars worth of gold at the daily rate of exchange. Allowing for variations in the market, this should buy you approximately three hundred and ninety pounds of gold. The purchase should be made in denominations of two-hundred-fifty-ounce bars. Twenty-five of them. You and your companion will immediately return with the gold to your friend Rococco’s island in the Caribbean. Shortly after you land there you will receive further instructions.”
End of tape.
Dickson did a lot of muttering about blackmail and such, but we followed instructions. We drove to the airport on the outskirts of Paris and boarded the Lear jet which Rococco had put at our disposal. His pilot followed Dickson’s instructions unquestioningly and flew us straight to Geneva. Here I got my first lesson in international finance and it was something of a surprise.
Dickson withdrew the million dollars from the bank in cash.
“Why not a bank draft?” I questioned. “If we’re just going to fly to Zurich and buy a million bucks worth of gold with it, then why take the chance of transporting it in cash?”
The answer was simple. Dickson explained the ins and outs of concealing financial transactions in Swiss banks to me. What it added up to was that by withdrawing the money in cash and later buying the gold with the cash there would be no official record to tie Dickson in with either transaction. (His account in Geneva, of course, was hidden behind a number.)
So we left the Geneva bank with a suitcase stuffed with bills of relatively small denominations. We took the suitcase to the airport where our plane was waiting. It was a nervous trip. But we reached the Gold Exchange in Zurich without incident.
Here things became a little more complicated. Dickson arranged to have the twenty-five gold bars, each weighing a little more than fifteen and a half pounds, delivered to the airport by an armored truck supplied with the cooperation of the Gold Exchange. I watched as the guards transferred the large metal box containing the gold into the storage compartment of the Lear jet.
After the transfer had been made without incident, the plane’s pilot was still bogged down in the red tape of filing his flight plan with the Zurich airport authorities. Dickson boarded the plane and planted himself in front of the storage compartment containing the gold. I stayed outside the plane, gun at the ready inside my shoulder holster35 .
I stationed myself by the entrance to the cabin. Any threat to the gold would have to get past me first. After about ten minutes of standing there, bored, I lit a cigarette.
My hand missed my pocket and the cigarette lighter fell to the ground. I stooped over to retrieve it. As I straightened up, my gaze swept the area under the fuselage of the plane and beyond. Behind the opposite wing, just about where the jet engine was, I spied a small pair of feet above which were the bottoms of lederhosen.
Quietly, I walked around the back of the plane and came up on the figure from behind. It was a Swiss youth, a boy with very red cheeks, about eleven or twelve years old. He was tall for his age, but he still had to stretch to do what he was doing.
What he was doing was drawing a face, in pencil, around the engine exhaust. There was a vague, caricature-style resemblance to Nick Dickson. In particular it was pointed up by the sweep of the ski-slope nose the kid had drawn.
I grabbed the kid. He wasn’t easy to hold. He wriggled like a greased eel.
“Don’t you know graffiti is verboten?” I chided him.
“Let me go!” He was small but wiry, strong.
“I should turn you over to the police.”
“Don’t do that.” The kid started to cry.
“Why did you decide to practice your artwork here?” I was curious.
“To protest U.S. imperialism.”
He looked pretty young to be into left-wing politics. I looked at the drawing again. “How did you know Dickson was on this plane?” I asked the kid.
His jaw dropped open. He didn’t have to say anything. Obviously he hadn’t known that Dickson was on the plane; this was the first he’d heard of it.
Chance? I doubted it. “Who put you up to this?” I demanded.
“They made me promise not to tell.” He was blubbering again.
What the hell, it was only a drawing. And I can’t stand the idea of making a kid cry. I let him go.
In his haste to get away, he dropped the pencil he’d been using. I picked it up. It was a garden-variety Number Four lead pencil. I stuck it in my pocket and returned to my post outside the plane’s cabin door.
A few minutes later the pilot arrived, and he and I boarded the aircraft. Dickson was dozing. I strapped him in and then sat down next to the pilot for the takeoff. He primed the jets and a couple of minutes later we were taxiing down the runway. Then we were in the air and the Lear was practically flying itself.
“What took so long back there?” I asked the pilot idly.
“I ran into an old buddy of mine, an aeronautical engineer. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. We got to talking.”
“A Swiss?”
“No, an American. He’s over here for our government. Working on some aircraft sabotage cases. Or at least some crashes where they suspect there might be sabotage.”
“You mean like that big Swissair liner that went down en route from Bern to New York recently?” I remembered.
“Yeah. Only he’s more interested in a seven-o-seven that almost ditched but didn’t. That’s what he’s over here running tests on. Damned interesting what he’s found out, too.”
“Which was?”
“On the seven-o-seven one of the engines went in flight. Started to disintegrate. At that speed it should have torn the wing off. It almost did, but not until the pilot managed to land the plane. It was sheer luck. One in a million. On a plane the size of ours, not even that. The wing would have gone a lot sooner.”