He opened the box as Rupert moved to stand beside him, and in the stark lighting there was no mistaking its contents. The surprise the young man might’ve experienced prior to that moment paled into insignificance by comparison to the stunned disbelief registering in his features as he looked on now. Inside the thin steel walls of that box, six gold bars were packed together side-by-side, and as he looked closer, Rupert realised that two more layers of bars were stored underneath. Smiling at his PA’s reaction, Brandis reached in and removed one of the bars, lifting it with some effort and offering it up for Rupert to hold.
“Four hundred and thirty troy ounces,” he advised as Rupert took the bar gingerly in his hands, caught off guard by the substantial weight. “Just over twenty-nine pounds each.”
Rupert turned the bar over in his hands, examining it in detail. Made to the standard ‘Good Delivery’ specifications of the London Bullion Market Association, each bar was a tapered ‘rectangle’ 37mm thick that measured 255mm x 81mm along its top surface and 236mm x 57mm along its bottom surface. The bar’s markings were also standard: its serial number was followed in sequence by a refiner’s hallmark, its ‘fineness’, and its year of manufacture (which in this case was the year 1894). The fineness mark read ‘999.99’, and although Rupert was no expert, he knew enough about precious metals to recognise he was holding the purest form of gold there was: gold of a higher standard than the generally accepted twenty-four carat measurement of so-called ‘pure’ gold.
“Eighteen bars in each box…” he muttered, almost in a daze, “…six boxes to each pallet!” He stared up for a moment, almost feeling dizzy. He stared at the shelving around him as if only now truly seeing everything there for the first time. “But — but there are hundreds of pallets…” he thought for a moment and corrected himself, “…no… thousands!”
“Two thousand, five hundred and seventy-one pallets, to be exact,” Brandis confirmed, and then added with an almost apologetic shrug: “One of the shelves down the back isn’t quite full, but world events caught up with me…”
“What’s the value of gold at the moment?” Rupert muttered, mostly thinking out loud. “Six pounds an ounce? Seven?”
“Thirty-five US dollars an ounce at the moment… troy ounces that is…” Brandis chimed in, calculating on the fly. “Based on current exchange rates, that puts gold at better than eight pounds thirteen shillings per ounce…”
“Eighteen bars per box… one hundred and eight bars to a pallet…” Rupert tried to work out the math in his head, but the sheer size of the numbers overwhelmed him.
“Two hundred and seventy-seven thousand, six hundred and sixty-eight bars in total,” Brandis advised. He knew the figure off by heart after so many years of work collecting the stockpile.
“But that’s millions of pounds… billions!”
“Just over one billion pounds Sterling… or four billion American dollars,” Brandis nodded slowly, pausing for a moment before coming to the point of the discussion. “And in about a week’s time, it’s all going to leave the country for good… every single bar of it.”
“German bombers make trying to get anything up the Thames practically suicidal during daylight hours now…” Rupert was aghast at the idea. “You’d risk shipping all this out through The Channel?”
“Not in a million years. There’ll be trains coming in at dusk for ten nights running to take it overland to Liverpool. From there, it’ll be loaded onto a battlecruiser and you’ll be accompanying it across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York — arrangements have already been concluded for extra space to be made available. The paperwork you’ll be bringing with you on the trip will clearly transfer ownership of two thousand, five hundred and seventy pallets to Max Thorne, to do with however he sees fit.”
“That’s one pallet short,” Rupert pointed out immediately, something Brandis had been counting on. “You said there were two thousand five hundred and seventy-one pallets.”
“I did indeed,” his boss replied evenly, “and I omitted one pallet from the total because there’ll be another official letter from my solicitors clearly stating that last six boxes of gold belongs to one Rupert Isaiah Gold.”
“That’s more than I could earn in a lifetime,” Rupert had slipped so far beyond the ability to be surprised any further that he now simply received the news with a blank acceptance.
“About five lifetimes at the rate I’ve been paying you,” Brandis shot back with a grin, “or twenty lifetimes for just about anyone else: slightly less than four hundred thousand pounds, more or less.” He shrugged. “I’ve always trusted you as an employee and a friend, Rupert… the exceptionally-high wages I’ve paid you were merely the precautions of a sensible businessman in order to protect your inherently honest nature from ever needing to be tested.
“The task you’re about to embark on will take you into an environment which will be far more cutthroat and mercenary than the one you’ve become accustomed to working for me thus far: while I’ve preferred to conduct the great majority of my business in secret, and we’ve both been mostly sheltered from any unwanted scrutiny as a result, Max Thorne isn’t going to be accorded the same level of anonymity I’ve managed to maintain throughout my life. There’ll be offers of bribes, and I suspect you’ll be tempted… everyone can be tempted. This gold should ensure a level of financial security that precludes the need for anything more than mere temptation.”
“Who are you, James?” That question left Rupert’s lips with more intensity than even he expected. “You work, act and think like no one I’ve ever met… you seem to know what’s going on in the world before it even happens… and I find out you’re sitting on a pile of gold big enough to make you the richest man in the world…”
“Well, the gold is probably ninety percent of my entire wealth,” Brandis conceded with a nonchalant shrug, “but I suspect you’re probably correct. None of that’ll be mine however in a few weeks time.” He grinned widely again. “Rest assured, I’ve nevertheless squirreled away a little something for myself to ensure I shan’t be destitute.”
“You didn’t answer my question, though,” Rupert pointed out, also smiling faintly. “For ten years I’ve given you sterling service — let’s not equivocate on that — and we’ve been good friends that whole time. I’ve never seen you throw a party, socialise, or attend any function that didn’t have some bearing on business. You’ve never given any indication of ever having a crush, love, fling, affair or anything to do with matters of the heart with anyone, woman or man for that matter.” The words were kind but they were serious questions for all that, and they were subjects Rupert had thought on many times during his employment.
“Your birth certificate lists you as eighty years old, but such an idea is patently absurd — one only has to look at you to see that — and I know you’ve grown that beard and ragged hair to conceal any accurate guess at your real age. I’ve heard you speak fluent French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese and Mandarin — I’ve no doubt there are others I haven’t heard — yet your accent, if anything, is no accent at all. Not English nor European… certainly not Asian: yet at the same time, it seems to be an amalgam of all of them, as if you’ve spoken so many languages for so long that the accents have all merged into a unique blend that shows aspects of each.” He paused for a deep breath before asking again: “Who are you, really?”