Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [126]
From that point on, there was, formally speaking, no city of Washington at all. But no one has ever scrupled over that nicety, and Washington continues to be spoken of and believed in by all, just as if it were a real city.
Progress report, Littlemore,” said Treasury Secretary Houston in his mild Carolinian voice on a late October morning, having summoned the detective to his sumptuous office, which was larger than many New York apartments Littlemore knew. “I should very much like to claim some progress just now.”
“In time for the election?” asked Littlemore.
“Correct.”
“I wish I had more for you, Mr. Houston.” Littlemore was frustrated; none of his leads was panning out. “My boys still haven’t found anybody who saw the getaway truck leaving the alley after the bombing. But they will. Somebody had to have seen it. Meantime, I’ve been investigating everybody who had anything to do with the gold transfer. The only one that sticks out is Riggs, and he’s gone.”
“Riggs?” asked Houston. “Who’s that?”
“Your officer who died on September sixteenth.”
“Oh, yes. What about him?”
“Riggs applied for a passport last July,” said Littlemore. “Planning a little foreign travel.”
“So he was one of the criminals!” declared Houston.
“Looks like it,” said Littlemore. “Unfortunately I can’t find anybody who knew him. No wife. No family. He was hired by Treasury here in Washington in 1917. Transferred to New York last year. Who would have transferred him, sir?”
“I have no idea. I became Secretary only this year.”
“Could you find out?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Littlemore rubbed his chin. “I wonder if they could have taken the gold out by sea. The harbor’s right near Wall Street. Have we been checking the ships sailing out of New York?”
“Have we?” said Houston. “Customs inspects every single container of cargo loaded onto outgoing ships. Gold is very heavy, Littlemore. It would be impossible to get twelve thousand pounds of gold onto a vessel without our knowledge.”
“Okay, let’s say they didn’t sail it out. They took it away in their truck. What then? You’re the expert, Mr. Houston. If you’re sitting on all that metal, what do you do with it?”
“Melt it down. Re-bar it.”
“Why?”
“Every Treasury bar is engraved with our marks. To sell that gold, the thieves need to erase those marks, and the only way to do that is to melt it down. Once melted and re-barred, gold is untraceable. That’s what they do with Soviet metal.”
“The Russians have gold?”
“Vast amounts—from the Tsars’ treasure houses. It’s contraband. Can’t be sold anywhere in the civilized world. Even I’m not allowed to buy it. What the Russians do is smuggle it here by ship, melt it, bar it, and then sell it to us.”
“Us? You mean the Treasury?”
“Certainly. The United States Treasury will buy any and all gold presented to it, no matter in what quantity, and we pay the best price of any country in the world. Except for Russian gold, which we won’t touch—provided we can identify it as Russian. We just intercepted a shipment the other day. Didn’t you read about it? Over two million dollars in Russian metal hidden on a Swedish ocean liner. Customs found it. I sent the Swedes packing. The ship’s back at sea now, taking the Russian gold home with it.”
“Mr. Houston, you better bring that ship back in.”
“What for?”
“Classic bait and switch,” said Littlemore. “That Swedish ship sailed out of New York carrying a cargo of gold with your authorization. But maybe beneath a few bars of Russian metal, the rest of it wasn’t Russian. Maybe it was your gold—the stolen gold.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Bring that ship back in, Mr. Houston. Then we’ll know for sure.”
“I can’t intercept a ship on the high seas and haul it back to New York.”
“Why not? Send out a few