'What do you mean - what limit?'
'You'll perhaps think I am ridiculously cautious, but people have come to sticky ends in chasing Zaharoff.'
'Sticky ends - what do you mean?'
'I mean they have died, Sir Horace. Two to my knowledge. One found dead in a hotel, the other drowned in the lake at his French estate. So I repeat, sir, that I'm near my limit. I'm enormously discreet, you see. Always. And I can see the general direction of your interest, though not, of course, the precise nature of it. But there is one more thing. Are you aware of the story -1 hesitate to describe it as fact, though it was reported quite widely - that soon after Russia entered the war in 1914, and just before ice closed the port of Archangel for the winter, two British warships dropped anchor there?'
'No,' said Malory. 'I'm not aware of it. Is there more?"
'The New York Times then, and a lot of historians since, reported that the ships were met by barges loaded with gold from the Tsar's own mines. The warships took it to Britain. It was to buy armaments. The Tsar's private contribution, you might call it, to the war effort.'
'How much?' Malory asked.
'The story is,' and Aston enunciated with care, 'that it was two point seven billion. That's dollars. But you could say about five hundred million in sterling. At 1914 values.'
'I'll be damned!' said Malory. And though there was no letter S in the epithet, it emerged as a longish hiss.
It was so clear! No mistaking this, Malory thought. The historian had gone by now and his books with him, and Malory paced slowly up and down the room at 6 Athels-gate, while the ingredients boiled together in the cauldron of his brain.
What a pity it was that Sir Basil had burned his papers (he'd also damned near burned down his own house, at 45 Avenue Hoche in Paris, at the same time, Malory recalled). Because it was a safe bet that Zaharoff was in Russia touting for business as soon as war was declared. God, he thought - the whole thing stank of Sir Basil. The richest man on earth, Tsar of All the Russias, who had a million a day in private income, setting up a war chest with his own gold. To buy arms, from Vickers!
Who could send warships? Not Zaharoíf. But Lloyd George was Minister of Munitions, then. Five hundred million! But brought out of Russia fairly secretly. Distant press reports, no more. And no arms were delivered.
Andrevolution followed.
And the murder of Nicholas and his entire family followed too!
So no heirs? . . . No, no heirs.
Or were there?
Malory stopped pacing and glanced down. His highly-polished shoes gleamed black against the deep red of the carpet. But the gleam, he thought, savagely, was as nothing to the gleam of the gold bars three floors below, in Hillyard Cleef s celebrated vault.
As nothing*.
Oh yes, he knew the details. One hundred million in what are known as 'good delivery bars' each of 400 troy ounces. Placed in the vaults on January 1st, year of Our Lord, 1915. One hundred million kept permanently on display, by agreement with Her Majesty's Government. And the Bank of England. Because for many years after 1915 there were tight and difficult restrictions on gold holdings . . . But it was a simple enough proposition, so hallowed by time that Malory had barely thought of it in years. By agreement, the hundred million was a constant. If the gold price rose, a number of bars were taken from 6 Athelsgate to the Bank of England. If the gold price fell, the process was reversed. It was a simple thing. The Government and the national reserve benefited inevitably, in the long run, because the price of gold rose with equal inevitability over the years. Hillyard, Cleef benefited because its gold reserve was always there to maintain confidence.
Malory thought about gold. He had touched one of the bars, once only and with his fingertips, when he was quite young. It had had a slightly greasy feel, he remembered. Remarkably easy material to work, though, and salted away under mattresses all over the world in bars of variousweights. The firm of Johnson Mathey, here in London, made bars of all sizes, from the 3.75 troy ounces of the ten-tola bar upward. No difficulty in finding a way to put new markings on a gold bar, either: you melted it down, re-moulded it, and put another stamp on it. You might remove a South African stamp and replace it with, for instance, that of the Banque de France or Credit Suisse.
Five hundred million.At 1914 values.
God!
The Tsar's war chest. That's what it was.
But Lloyd George needed a war chest, too.
'Despite repeated promises, the munitions were not delivered,' reported Pares. They got their hands on the gold - Zaharoff and Lloyd George - and used it: one to stuff his exchequer, and the other to underwrite his business.
Brilliant - absolutely brilliant! Malory thought. Zaharoff s idea, of course . . . But he did not linger on the delights of so ineffable a stroke. It was necessary to think it through. There was no surviving heir. Hillyard, Cleef and the British Government had in effect inherited. There was no heir because there was no proof. The Tsar, who would by now have been a hundred and ten years old, was not even legally assumed to be dead.
The Grand Duchess Anastasia had failed in her claim, and for no sensible reason that Malory could see, the rest of the Romanov family had never tried with any show of determination to get their hands on Nicholas Romanov's huge assets abroad.
Why not? Because they knew something? Because lawsuits were expensive and the Romanov cousins knew they would fail? Yes, all that was possible.
So - a single survivor or proof of death. Either would suffice. Either was the key to enormous wealth. And Dikeston was in Ekaterinburg in July 1918, at Zaharoff s insistence!
At dinner that night, though he was already thinking of the means to have the Hillyard, Cleef ingots recast, Sir Horace Malory was not himself. He punished the malt whisky beforehand, and opened a second bottle of claret.
'You're getting worse,' said Lady Malory disparagingly, 'you sound like a pit full of vipers.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
-----------------------
Seventh and final instalment of the account,
written by Lt Cdr H. G. Dikeston, RN, of
his journeyings in Russia in the spring and summer of 1918
When first I encountered it, I was much struck by the degree of mutual distrust common to the Bolsheviks. Here, after all, were men who had fought a long-established autocracy and overthrown it. They claimed their victory in the name of the People and proclaimed Brotherhood and Equality. Trust, though, was not to be their way, as history shows.
Bronard first explained it to me, grinning in contempt. Within the Urals Soviet were a dozen shifting alliances, he said. A pair of Commissars might agree on one matter and disagree on three more. Factions proliferated, as did enmities. 'Friendships,' said Bronard, after I used the word,1'do not exist. Too dangerous.'
'But Sverdlov and Goloshchokin are old friends, surely?' I said.
'Old acquaintances and old allies, but not friends,' said Bronard. 'Does one friend threaten another with death?'
I had not sought Bronard out; rather he had come to me, having learned from Goloshchokin that my plan must perforce be abandoned.
We were sitting in a room at the Americana, Bronard nursing half a tumbler of vodka. A great pity that we don't know where Nicholas keeps the paper,' he said thoughtfully. To tell the truth, I had forgotten, until that moment, about the document. After all, it was safe in the Finnish Bank in Moscow. And for many days my mind had been concentrated entirely upon the hope of rescuing the Romanov family.