CHAPTER 12
THE GREAT GOLD STEAL
Starling stood in the vault, holding the big twelve-cell hand torch, directing the operation. He was careful to keep the pool of light from the dead bodies of the bank guards. The vault had been locked on the inside. Now they were systematically stripping it.
Thirteen billion in gold is a great deal of gold. One billion was more than one thousand times the amount they had taken before. That eight-hundred thousand had been a tiny drop in the bucket. The total amount of gold here was over fifteen thousand times the amount they had taken before.
You couldn’t load a truck anywhere near its volume capacity with the gold. Even now the trucks were overloaded in terms of weight. They had fifteen trucks. That was nowhere near enough. He wondered if they could possibly carry off this fantastic, last-ditch operation. It would depend on doing it without being caught. It would depend on the trucks making, many round trips apiece. They were heading out to Staten Island. It would be a round trip of several hours. It would be daylight before too much longer. The fog might help. It might not. His stomach was cramped, and his hand holding the light shook, making the beam seem to flicker. Cold sweat stood on his forehead, his clothes were damp with it. They’d have to take what they could and leave it at that. Thirteen billion was impossible.
He wondered why they were doing this. How could they possibly hope to succeed? There was only one satisfaction. They would be taking the gold to Staten Island, to the Eagle’s retreat. At last he would be able to meet the Eagle!
Outside, Raven backed the last truck into place. He looked at his watch. 4:10. They couldn’t hope to succeed much longer at this. The first truck would be returning soon. He should give a message to the driver of this truck to tell the rest not to come back. He shook his head.
“This is a crazy thing, huh?” he asked the Sparrow.
“How much you think we’ve taken out?”
“I’ve been keeping a rough count,” Sparrow replied. “We’ve gotten maybe a couple of billion.”
“Is that all? I’m gonna tell the driver of this heap not to come back. It’ll be five by the time he gets there.”
“What?” Sparrow’s face twisted suddenly. “You dare to stop the operation?”
“Aw, come on! It’ll be light inna couple more hours. You think we can go on all day?”
“We must complete this job!”
“Look, Sparrow, be reasonable, huh? You tell me. At this rate, when will we be hauling out the last load?”
Sparrow didn’t answer the question. “We’ll barricade the street, if necessary. We have a small army here.”
“Sparrow! You crazy or something? How will we get the trucks out? They’re just ordinary trucks, man. You think we gonna get them over the bridge and on the expressway, with every cop in the city knowing what’s in ’em? Think! Our whole cover is darkness, secrecy. Like, we’d never get across one bridge, let alone two, if it got out what we’re doin’.”
Sparrow’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right,” he sighed. “We’ve been lucky so far.”
“Let’s not push it,” Raven agreed. “After all, ten percent of two or three billion ain’t so bad. We’re still millionaires. I can live on that.” He chuckled again.
Rogers tensed as she leaned over him, but Robin didn’t use the knife on him. Instead she cut his bonds.
He stumbled as he climbed from the chair. His legs were numb, and for a moment his ankles refused to support him. Then he was standing in the center of the room, looking down at the girl. Robin’s lips trembled.
“I—I’m throwing it all away, aren’t I?”
“On the contrary.” He put his arms around her shoulders. Her body was shaking. “You’ve done the right thing. You’ve reached a decisive turning point for your life.”
“I have, haven’t I?” Her voice was thin and small, like a child’s. “A—a second chance?”
“Yes.” He stroked her back, soothing her.
“I always wanted to get out of this. It’s like drugs—addictive. It catches you up and you can’t let go. It’s—it’s being what you’re not, and yet you can’t find who you really are.”
“It’s all changed, now,” Rogers told her.
“What do I do now?”
“The first thing is to wrap up this case,” Rogers said. He reached back with stiff fingers and pulled his hood up and over his head, smoothing the cowl over his face.
“Why do you wear that?” she asked.
“The mask?” He smiled. “It gives people something external to concentrate upon.”
“But…
“Without it, I’m just another ordinary-looking man. With it, I become a symbol. For some people, it creates awe; for others, fear. Look at me. I’m different now, aren’t I? With the mask on?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “You look—bigger somehow. Stronger. Fierce, implacable. You look a little scary.”
“Exactly. You no longer see me as a person, but as a thing—an Avenger. It can be a potent psychological weapon.”
“They were so disappointed, when they took your mask off. As though underneath they’d find a famous person.”
“Maybe that goes on TV—handsome playboys, and all that. But I’ve been anonymous all my life. Even my real name would be meaningless to you, to them. No, the mask is part of the uniform, a psychological device. That’s the whole story.
“Now let’s get out of here. You have a good deal more to tell me yet, and we can’t waste more time.”
A call brought a police car from the 68th Precinct to Raven’s Second Avenue garage. Captain America pumped the girl of what she knew, and left her in the custody of the police at the station. There he borrowed an unmarked car, and drove toward Manhattan.
The police had been alerted now, but if possible he would try to see the thing through to its end by himself. From what Robin had told him, two things demanded it.
First, Sparrow, Raven and Starling had a large gang of armed men. Any full-scale assault upon them would result in the possible loss of life of many brave policemen. He could not permit this if it was avoidable. Most of the fighting would undoubtedly have to take place in the tunnels. It would be too dangerous—a slaughterhouse.
Second, and equally important, a shadowy figure stood behind this entire criminal operation, the man known only as the Eagle. Robin had told him that none of them, not even the Sparrow, had ever met the Eagle before. But the gold was to be taken to an estate on Staten Island—the Eagle’s own estate! This would be the best chance to catch the mastermind, who had so carefully until now held himself at arm’s length from involvement. To catch him with the stolen gold would be to implicate him in a way he’d never squirm out of. They’d have the whole gang, and all the goods, in one neat package. The thought pleased him.
The car was a 1966 Plymouth, a six-cylinder Belvedere. New York City had one of the few police departments in the country that bought six-cylinder cars. They were outfitted with taxi upholstery, and a calibrated speedometer, but otherwise standard. They were auctioned off after two years, or eighty thousand miles, whichever occurred first. They gave rugged, economical service, and were rarely driven over fifty miles an hour. Like the regular cruisers, this car had a radio. Rogers was now patched in directly to headquarters in downtown Manhattan, where the radio equipment was running off a basement Diesel generator. Unmarked cars similar to the one he was driving were standing by at the bridge and tunnel approaches. As he drove down Hamilton Avenue, under the expressway (it was faster than retracing his route to the expressway entrance), patches of fog swirling across the road before him, a scratchy voice filled him in over the radio.
“The Con Ed plant at 14th Street is a total wreck. Every generator completely smashed, ruined. The same goes for the electrical switching yard. The transformers are burnt-out husks. Con Ed says the whole thing is a complete loss. Six men were killed there—the five men on duty, and a foot patrolman.”
“Dangerous people we’re working with,” Rogers said. “That’s why we’re doing it my way. There’s no sense in sending more good men where those went.”
He nosed the car into the ramp down to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The radio static faded momentarily as he went through a short tunnel to pick up the main expressway. He drove with tight-fisted silence until signs pointed out the Brooklyn Bridge exit. He pulled the car into the tight curve of the ramp to the bridge at twice the posted exit speed, jockeying the car as the back end broke loose, skidded, and then straightened out, pointing directly up the right-hand lane of the bridge.
A slow-moving car, its taillights dim in the billowing fog, honked its horn at him as he barreled past, and he set the red flasher on his dash and turned it on.
There was no traffic waiting in the left lane at the Manhattan end of the bridge, but the traffic signals were still working, on a separate circuit apparently. It seemed strange to see the city streets so dark. He made a left through the red light, his own red flasher working, and cut through the Municipal Building, west on Chambers, for Broadway.
Again he turned left on a red, and continued to ignore the lights as he pushed the car down Broadway at forty-five, the highest speed he dared without using his siren.
He drew up short at Maiden Lane, pulling into the curb, and shutting off the lights and flasher. He was still in the car when a heavy truck lumbered across on Maiden Lane, its tires flattened under its load. He stared at the truck, memorizing its make and license number, then thumbed his radio sending switch.
“A 1952 Mack truck, heavy-duty van body,” he told them, reciting its license tag number. “Heading west on Maiden Lane, probably turning uptown for the Manhattan Bridge. Check it out and see where it goes. Don’t stop it.”
He glanced at the dash clock. 2:15. They’d let the trucks pass through without interference. They’d let the crooks make a complete haul. There was no sense in complicating things. He waited, then a car pulled up alongside. A man jumped out. He pulled open the other door, and slipped quickly in. “Okay,” he nodded at Captain America. “I’m all set.”
“Keep low. Don’t let them see you.”
“Right.”
Rogers stepped quickly from the car and moved, through the fog, down the street.
The clammy air felt chill upon his bare arm, where Starling had cut his uniform sleeve, despite the sudden warmth that had hit the area. He moved around onto Liberty Street, staying close to the sides of the buildings.
In the middle of the block he saw overhead the slatted stairs of a fire escape. Perfect! He jumped, his muscles thrusting him high into the air, where he caught the bottom rung of the ladder. Flipping his body up, he swung his legs through the railings and pulled himself up. Soon he was standing on the bottom landing.
He climbed quickly, fleetly, being careful to make as little noise as possible. The last flight was a straight ladder that led him to the roof.
The roofs of all the buildings along here were within a few feet of the same height. Two- to three-feet walls bordered each roof, while the roofs themselves were covered with tar paper and asphalt, and sometimes with gravel as well. This roof was not graveled. The tar paper was ripped in several places, revealing lower layers, and Rogers judged that the building’s roof had received no attention in years.
The roof sloped slightly to the rear, and seemed to sag toward the center as well. A cupola poked up at one side, where the inside stairs debouched onto the roof. Further back were chimneys, and a clutter of miscellaneous hardware that might once have been a TV aerial.
Rogers moved quickly to the eastern edge, and climbed over the wall onto the next roof. It was depressingly similar.
In this manner he made his way from rooftop to rooftop until at last he was at the corner building, overlooking Maiden Lane. He edged his head over the edge and stared down.
Below, the street was filled with trucks and men. It was amazing; like something on a movie set. It was hard to believe it could really be happening, here in Lower Manhattan. The street was in deep shadow, but here and there flashlights showed, an occasional match flared.
They were robbing the Federal Reserve Bank of over twelve billion in gold! It was fantastic. He had to marvel at the audacity of the man who called himself the Eagle. What could the man be thinking of? How could he dispose of such a fantastic quantity of gold—assuming he could get it? As Rogers had told the girl, gold is not negotiable in the United States. A billion in gold might as well be so many lead bricks. It was traceable, and fantastically hot. No one would handle it.
No one in this country, at any rate.
That set his brain to work. They were taking the gold to Staten Island. Staten Island had miles of unpatrolled beaches and bays. If you were taking the gold out of the country, what better way? A large boat, a freighter, standing offshore—freighters often anchored off Staten Island or in the New York Bay for days—quietly loading by launch at night.
Where could they take the gold?
He began considering the deeper implications. The United States was already having trouble with its balance of payments. When U.S. tourists spent dollars in foreign countries, or American companies set up shop there, the money they spent was redeemable by those foreign countries in gold. France was one country which had recently begun cashing in its hoard of dollars against United States gold, at the rate of fifty-four million dollars a month.
While France insisted on possession of its gold, many countries did not, banking their newly acquired gold right where it had always been, in the New York City Federal Reserve Bank.
Suppose you stole the gold that belonged to other countries?
Suppose you stole U.S. gold?
Either way you would badly damage the United States. Its gold reserves back its currency, making the dollar the most stable currency in the world. Steal foreign gold on deposit, and you create an international incident of major proportions. Restitution would be demanded. U.S. gold stocks would necessarily be substituted.
The effect would not be very different. The dollar would be undermined, and the United States would be badly hurt.
And who would stand to gain by this? Who could reintroduce the gold to the world market as freshly mined and refined?
Only two countries today are doing much serious gold-producing—South Africa and Russia. Russia supports itself on the world market with the gold dug from its Siberian mines.
It all began to make an ominous sort of sense.
At five o’clock, Raven poked his head up the hole and into the vault, the rays from Starling’s light catching him full on and making him blink.
“That’s it,” he said. “We’re closing shop.”
Starling glanced at his watch, and then shuddered. “I wondered.”
“How much we got left?”
Starling gestured with the light, sweeping it around the vault. It looked scarcely touched. It was empty only in the corner nearest the tunnel exit.
Raven sighed. “A shame to leave all that stuff, but I guess we’ll have to make do. I hope the Eagle ain’t too disappointed.”
“Let’s get out of here!”
“Yeah, yeah.”
They watched the last load taken out, rode up the elevator with it, and saw it stowed away in the last sagging truck.
Starling called in his men.
“Okay, this is it. You’ve all been paid. It’s over. Time to disperse. Don’t think about going back in there for a last one for your pockets. You couldn’t cash it.” He waved his arm. “Let’s go.”
The men moved by two’s and three’s up the street, heading for subways and buses, or cars parked nearby. None of them would successfully escape.
Raven and Starling joined the Sparrow at the black Continental. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get outta here, huh?”
The car doors slammed, and then the engine started up. The lights came on, cutting thick beams through the fog. Without turning into Liberty Place, the car headed east on Liberty Street.
It rolled quietly past the square Federal Reserve Bank building, and then was swallowed by the fog.
Monday: the Finale...and a Major Reveal!
Chapter 13
Birds of a Feather!
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