Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

‘Take,’ McNutt said. He winked at Sarah, who didn’t respond.

‘Excuse me, Mr Papineau,’ Garcia said, his fingers flying on his phone. ‘Could you be more specific? Specific sums are easier to trace backward than round figures.’

Papineau straightened. ‘Various documents record the value as one billion, five hundred and ninety-four million, eight hundred and thirty-six thousand, seven hundred twenty-one.’ The Frenchman waited until Garcia caught up. ‘And nine cents.’

McNutt could only laugh, unable to fully comprehend that much wealth, even as thoughts of strippers and private jets danced in his head.

‘Some consider this estimate to be on the low end,’ Papineau continued. ‘The very low end, as the value of much of the artwork and other personal items simply cannot be ascertained.’

‘The very definition of “priceless”,’ Sarah offered.

‘Indeed,’ Papineau replied.

Garcia added, ‘By the way, the newly created US Federal Reserve was given intelligence of the relocation on January twentieth of the following year.’

‘Well done,’ Papineau said.

Garcia glanced at him to see if he was being sincere. Confident that he was, Garcia looked down and tapped his phone screen again. ‘The Fed references other intelligence reports. Get this. One of them was from a guy named William Friedman — a geneticist who studied cryptology at the Riverbank Laboratories Cipher Department.’

Cobb was familiar with the name. ‘That’s where it all started. The military’s Signals Intelligence Service — the code-breaking division.’

‘Correct,’ Papineau said. ‘Mr Garcia, do you have the Friedman report?’

‘Yeah, and wow. Every dime — excuse me, every leu — and all the stocks and securities of the National Bank of Romania, as well as all deposits from the Romanian Savings and Loan, were sent on the later trains. That’s all the wealth of the royal family, the government, and the people. It included documents from the Romanian National Archives, papers from the Historical Archives of Brasov, art belonging to museums and private collections, manuscripts and rare books from libraries and universities, and even the entire inventory of every Romanian pawn shop.’

‘Did any sane human being think that treasure was ever coming back?’ McNutt said.

Papineau held up his hand. ‘In Moscow on August fifth, 1917, representatives of the Romanian and Russian governments signed a codicil to their agreement, authorizing the creation of a depository in the Kremlin to protect the Romanian treasure. There were two sets of keys needed to open the gigantic depository. One was held by the Romanian National Bank, the other by the Russian tsarist government.’

‘Two-key systems are like marriages,’ Jasmine explained. ‘They only work if both parties remain civil. And in this case, they didn’t. The Soviet government declared war on Romania less than a year later, January 1918, and announced that the Romanian treasure was no longer accessible to Romania. The decree was signed by Lenin himself.’

Sarah laughed. ‘The Soviets were a real pain in the ass, weren’t they?’

Papineau nodded. ‘The French — who had fought valiantly alongside the Russians and the Romanians during World War One — tried to intercede on the Romanians’ behalf. The Consul General of France took possession of the Romanian key in an effort to broker a deal. He went to Moscow to negotiate and was promptly arrested by Soviet authorities. They seized the Romanian key and didn’t return it until 1926.’

Sarah smiled. ‘In the meantime, let the looting begin.’

‘Indeed,’ Papineau said. ‘The Soviet government immediately confiscated eight crates filled with more than a million dollars’ worth of bank notes, claiming it was owed to them as compensation for their “good work”. When peace between Moscow and Bucharest was fully restored in 1934, the USSR returned almost fifteen hundred crates-’

‘Exact numbers please!’ Garcia snapped.

‘One thousand, four hundred and thirty-six crates,’ the Frenchman informed him. ‘Although they were replete with valuable documents, the crates contained nothing of monetary value.’

‘The art?’ Sarah asked.

‘Returned in 1956,’ Jasmine said.

‘And the rest of it?’ she asked. ‘Surely the Romanians protested.’

‘Vigorously and often,’ Papineau said. ‘Although nearly forty thousand-’ he stopped, bowed slightly to Garcia, — ‘thirty-nine thousand, three hundred and twenty artifacts were returned, actual monies received by Romania consisted of only thirty-three kilograms of gold and six hundred and ninety kilograms of silver.’

McNutt whistled. ‘The Russian bear just stomped through that campsite, didn’t it?’

Jasmine nodded. ‘The Romanians have repeatedly tried to reopen negotiations for the return of the bulk of the treasure. Unfortunately, Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Andropov all refused to negotiate. They have even said because of Romania’s debt that they owe Russia money.’

Papineau took over from there. ‘No one outside an elite few in the Kremlin has had access to the vault or its treasure for decades. The best of the Romanian treasure — the parts that would be easiest to pawn or “fence”, if you will — has already been looted, I am sure. I am aware that some of the items have been on the market over the years — though not publicly, of course. They are still stolen goods-’

‘You mean jewels, paintings, rare books — most of the “priceless” things,’ Sarah lamented.

‘Exactly.’

‘But not the gold,’ Garcia stated, looking at his screen. ‘Gold prices went up and up and up until 1931, and they only fell because the Brits abandoned the gold standard and speculators pounced on the outflow. There was no other influx of gold into the world market.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Thieves wouldn’t have bothered holding it for the best price. They would have melted it down and sold it right away.’

‘Exactly,’ Papineau said. ‘The gold apparently has not, as of yet, been circulated.’

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ McNutt chimed in. ‘Just wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You’re not one hundred percent sure the gold’s even there, but you want us to break in anyway? Into the goddamn Kremlin? The one in goddamn Russia?’

Cobb smiled, realizing that McNutt and the others had gotten ahead of Papineau’s explanation. Had they let him finish, they would know what Cobb had already figured out.

‘It’s not in the Kremlin anymore,’ Cobb announced.

‘Just because you say it isn’t?’ Garcia challenged.

‘No,’ Cobb replied. ‘Not because of what I say.’ He nodded toward Jasmine. ‘Because of what she said.’

Jasmine didn’t know how to respond, but her look said it all: Who, me?

‘Yes, you,’ Cobb assured her. ‘You said it just a moment ago. They refused to negotiate .’

‘I don’t follow,’ McNutt admitted.

Papineau beamed across the table, pleased that Cobb had put the pieces together.

‘They won’t negotiate,’ Cobb explained, ‘because if they did, someone might find out that they don’t have the treasure anymore.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Sarah asked.

‘Simple,’ Cobb continued. ‘They haven’t told anyone where it is.’

‘Chief,’ McNutt said, ‘I still don’t-’

‘It’s the twenty-first century,’ Cobb exclaimed. ‘Simply locking the gold away in a depository doesn’t mean anything in this era. There’s no pleasure in just looking at it. The treasure does them no good stashed in a vault, unless they declare it and use it as collateral . If they can’t draw against it, what good is it? And if they had taken out a loan against it, the whole world would have known by now. Ergo, they don’t have it.’