Gold Read online

  By midday, she was proved right. At noon the quoted price for an ounze of gold was $1300.

  It was ironical that it was the very day she had arranged to visit SAGOMI.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  While Wall assembled the staff he wanted, Collington went up to the penthouse to clean himself up. He shaved and then showered, remaining under the water for a long time to try to drive the fatigue from his body, face against the jets as he went through the instructions he had just issued and attempted to think of anything he might have overlooked. He had transferred most of his clothes back to Parkstown, so he descended to the working level wearing jeans and a bush-shirt. Everyone was waiting and Collington saw gratefully that Wall had remembered coffee. He poured it black and sat with a cup between his hands, staring out at them over the desk. The fust priority was public confidence and share stability, and the quickest way to achieve that was through the media.

  He had rehearsed the statement in the returning helicopter and again under the shower. He went through it generally with the public relations director and then dictated it to one of the waiting secretaries. He purposely chose not to begin with the mines. Instead he set out the scope of SAGOMI holdings, emphasising the mining shares only as a fraction of its overall wealth. Having established that they were big enough to suffer the setback, he described the damage and then added to the release the time that he would personally give a press conference, to go into greater detail.

  He ordered Wall to liaise with the engineers on the five sites and then have the helicopter collect the reports he had demanded, to be back with them in Pretoria before he met the press. He told their communications division he wanted open telephone lines as well as telex maintained between London and New York so they could constantly monitor the share movement, and he entrusted Wall with the task within the country. As he finished, the message came from London that Richard Jenkins was already on his way but would not arrive until the next day.

  Collington had agreed to hold the board meeting at noon. They were all there when he entered the room. No one was sitting and Metzinger started forward, towards him. He was pebble-eyed, his face flushed, and Collington decided he had never seen the man so out of control before, not even when Simpson had defeated him for boardroom control.

  ‘Why weren’t we alerted, when it happened?’ demanded Metzinger. ‘I learned about it first from the radio. And then when someone from the Rand Daily Mail telephoned me for a comment!’

  Wassenaar had moved with the deputy chairman. He had a better hold on himself, but his nervousness was obvious too. ‘When I tried to get into your office this morning I was told you were in conference. It’s monstrous to treat fellow directors like that!’

  Collington stood gazing between the two men, trying to make a judgment. There would have to be an act, if they were in any way involved. But it would have been of concern, not outrage. On his way to Witwatersrand Three, when his mind had been fresher, he had decided Metzinger wouldn’t go as far as this, Collington remembered. Could they have been caught out, intending some other sort of market play? It was the obvious conclusion from their behaviour. Whatever the answer, it would be premature for him to make any challenge.

  ‘I was not being discourteous,’ said Collington, purposely keeping his voice even to contrast with the excitability of the other two men. ‘There were things I considered more important, to regain stability ….’ He looked beyond Metzinger and Wassenaar.’ Shall we sit down?’ he invited.

  For a moment Collington thought Metzinger and Wassenaar were going to remain where they were, blocking his further progress into the boardroom, but they moved backwards, towards their usual seats.

  ‘The market movement has been enormous,’ said Metzinger, at once.

  ‘Which is why stability was the first importance,’ repeated Collington. He had got an update from Wall, moments before entering the room, keeping the value in sterling. ‘Up to half an hour ago, £122,000,000 had been offered for trading.’

  ‘Good God!’ said de Villiers, always impressed by figures.

  ‘But it hasn’t been a protracted slide,’ said Platt, who had waited in the tape-room. ‘There was only one concerted fall below six. That was the greatest volume, I’ll concede. But then it steadied at five with a spread of buying. My view is that the heat has gone out of the trading. In London, for the past hour, we’ve only been two below market par, which is astonishing.

  ‘How bad is it?’ demanded Jamieson.

  ‘Bad enough,’ said Collington. He had brought into the boardroom the clipboard notes he had made in the helicopter. Referring to them, he set out the damage and repair estimates to each mine, going into far greater detail than he had done in the press release. Everyone in the room was grave-faced by the time he finished.

  ‘Terrible,’ said Metzinger, shaking his head. ‘An absolute disaster.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Collington, allowing his irritation at the other man’s exaggeration to show. ‘I’ve said it’s all repairable, in three months at the outside. It could have been far worse.’

  ‘Only the South African mines,’ mused Jamieson. ‘The one in Zimbabwe left untouched.’

  ‘In a black-controlled country,’ said Wassenaar, impatient at the other man’s inability to understand. ‘They’ve no reason to prove their strength there, have they?’

  ‘No doubt about it being Communist guerrillas,’ said Metzinger, and Collington looked at the man closely, looking for the unease he would have expected had Metzinger had positive knowledge of the cause. The attitude wasn’t there.

  ‘That was the provisional assessment,’ he said. ‘I’m having more detailed reports brought in this afternoon, before the press conference starts.’

  ‘What press conference?’ asked de Villiers.

  ‘I’m giving a press conference, at four.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that have been a board decision?’ persisted the accountant.

  ‘It should,’ conceded Collington. ‘I’ll repeat what I’ve already said. The primary consideration now is confidence and stability. That’s why, without over-elaborating, I’ve set out the damage in the first release. And why I’m not going to try to avoid the press. We’re going to suffer far more from rumour and innuendo than we are from honesty. We’ve gained a lot, from the buying that has matched the selling. We’ve got to build on that confidence.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Platt and Brooking entered the discussion for the first time and said, ‘So do I. It’s the obvious thing to do.’

  Collington looked at the Englishman, fleetingly surprised by his definite opinion.

  ‘It would seem that the action of the chairman has done much to avoid this being the disaster it could have been,’ said Jamieson, reinforcing the other two.

  If only they knew how much, thought Collington. From Wall’s latest figures, he had already spent £12,200,000. The brokers would begetting nervous soon, demanding he increase his maintenance margins. Collington didn’t think he would be able to raise merchant bank loans to give him extra liquidity at under eighteen per cent.

  ‘If we need a formal vote of approval for the conference, then I propose it,’ said Brooking, continuing his unaccustomed out-spokeness.

  ‘Seconded,’ said Platt.

  It had been a meaningless objection, with even de Villiers giving his approval when it was put to a formal acceptance.

  ‘I have another proposal,’ said Collington, once the vote had been recorded. ‘The statement I have already issued is purposely slanted to show the overall strength of the group. At the annual shareholders’ meeting, a month from now, we were due to announce our dividend payments in SAGOMI shares. I propose we go into reserves and declare a dividend of twenty-five per cent, at once.’

  Platt let the air out noisily from between his teeth. ‘That’s a gambler’s throw,’ he said.

  ‘No it’s not,’ Collington immediately challenged. ‘Although if you want to make the analogy, it’s the throw of a gambler who ho
lds all the cards. We’ve got the money, in reserve. And overall we are strong. We could sustain a complete closedown of the gold mine for six months, and it wouldn’t affect the group by more than about a half per cent. The only point of the dividend would be to provide practical proof of what we are saying.’

  ‘How much would a twenty-five per cent dividend cost?’ said de Villiers.

  ‘Twenty-five million Rand,’ said Collington, his argument prepared.

  De Villiers looked up at him, frowning. ‘That’s a lot of money,’ he said. ‘Too much.’

  ‘It could backfire,’ said Metzinger, coming out in predictable opposition. ‘What if the markets interpret it differently, as beings bluff?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ said Collington.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ disputed Wassenaar. ‘I don’t think the risk is justified.’

  ‘I think it’s an intriguing idea,’ said Platt. ‘But I still think there’s an element of gamble about it. It could be misinterpreted.’

  Platt was against him, assessed Collington. And Jenkins’ departure from London had been too hurried for there to be any proxy allocation. So he couldn’t go to a vote.

  ‘I simply offered it for consideration,’ he said, in unusual acquiescence. Tiredness was pulling at him, so that he kept stretching his face to prevent his eyes from closing. He would have to go upstairs to sleep soon, if he were to perform properly at the press conference.

  Seizing the retreat, Metzinger said, ‘Do you wish a vote?’

  Collington shook his head wearily. ‘It was a proposal offered for discussion, nothing more,’ he repeated. ‘I do formally propose, however, that we meet again tomorrow. Jenkins is arriving from London and in another twenty-four hours there might be a better picture from the engineers’ reports.’

  ‘Seconded,’ said Brooking, knowing the agreement would be a formality.

  After the drama throughout the night, Collington thought there was a strange anti-climax about this meeting with the directors. He hadn’t known what to expect when he entered the room, but definitely something different from this. But how could it have been different? he asked himself objectively. It was the most preliminary of meetings, to pass on the most preliminary information. If there were to have been something out of the ordinary, then it should have come from Metzinger and Wassenaar. There was an attitude but it wasn’t one of guilty awareness; it was of concern, going far beyond that being shown by the rest of the people in the room. Collington was sure they’d been caught out. The difficulty was going to be in proving it.

  Collington walked stoop-shouldered from the room, back to his offices. Geoffrey Wall was waiting with the latest share figures. South Africa seemed to have settled at four below par, with London fluctuating between two and three and Wall Street steady at two.

  ‘Somebody must know something that we don’t,’ said the personal assistant. ‘If there hadn’t been such immediate and heavy buying, we’d be in bad shape.’

  ‘What about the mine reports?’

  ‘Helicopter is scheduled back at three-thirty.’

  ‘I’ll need some clothes from Parkstown.’

  ‘I’ve already sent the driver,’ said Wall. ‘Your wife said hello and told me to say she’ll expect you when she sees you.’

  ‘I’m going upstairs to sleep,’ said Collington. ‘I’ll want a call at three.’

  ‘There is one more thing,’ said Wall.

  Collington turned at the door.

  ‘There was something else in that message from London, apart from Jenkins’ arrival. Ann Talbot says we have over-calculated her severance settlement by£ 100,000. She’s returned the money.’

  Too late Collington realised it had been a mistake anyway. Ann Talbot wasn’t the sort of woman one should attempt to buy off.

  Metzinger and Wassenaar faced each other across the deputy chairman’s office like two purposely enraged dogs about to be released for a fight.

  ‘Why didn’t you stop it!’ demanded Metzinger.

  ‘Don’t try and throw the blame on to me,’ rejected the lawyer. ‘I was the one who argued the stupidity of remaining in such an exposed position. You know damned well that to cover ourselves, we had to work through a Zurich broker. The time difference meant there were two hours of open trading on the exchanges here. By the time I got to him the nervousness had spread, even though London and Wall Street weren’t properly operating. There were off-market disposals, before he could get to the London and New York brokers with whom he had arranged the automatic sell. He was lucky to withdraw what he did.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Metzinger, his voice hollow.

  ‘A total of eighty thousand of yours and seventy-two of mine.’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Metzinger, despairingly. ‘What about Janet?’

  ‘Forty thousand,’ said Wassenaar.

  ‘Do you know the prices?’

  ‘All at five below par. That’s when the big buy started.’

  ‘I’ve lost a million and a half Rand,’ said Metzinger, dully. ‘And Janet is down over half a million.’

  ‘Mine is a million, too,’ said the lawyer.

  Metzinger thrust up from his desk, walking jerkingly around the room. ‘Why did it happen?’ he said. ‘Why the hell did it have to happen, just when we were so close?’

  ‘We were never close,’ said Wassenaar, refusing to allow the man any escape. ‘There hasn’t been any approach from the Arabs for weeks. We knew the danger. We should have scrapped the whole thing.’

  Metzinger came back to his desk but he didn’t sit down behind it. Instead he went round to the front, so that he was staring down at where Wassenaar was sitting. ‘I’m not going to lose,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go on, to remove Collington. And I’m going to get my money back, every last Rand of it.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ said Wassenaar. ‘Absolutely bloody mad.’

  ‘No,’ said Metzinger. ‘I’m just determined.’

  Although he had only managed two hours sleep, Collington awoke without the cotton wool feeling in his mind. There had been no appreciable share movement while he was asleep and the provisional engineers’ reports went little beyond what he already knew, merely adding measurements and slightly reducing the repair estimate in mines One and Two. They had managed to plug the breach in the river wall in Witwatersrand Three and auxiliary pumps were being installed to speed up the extraction of the water. In all five it was being suggested that a great deal of refrigeration trunking could be repaired, rather than wait for entire replacement, and if that proved possible then working could resume sooner than the estimates already given.

  The press were assembled in the ground-floor conference room and initially Collington was surprised at the number until Wall identified the European and American journalists, as well as local reporters and television crews. Collington had prepared blackboard displays of each mine. He made an opening statement, repeating what he had made clear in his earlier release about the group strength, and then went from display to display, pointer in hand, illustrating the damage. He refused to be drawn about reopening dates, not wanting to give a commitment which circumstances might prove over-optimistic, and he said, in response to a flurry of questions, that every indication so far was that it had been a concerted terrorist attack. He concluded by quoting the share value of the mining division on the world exchanges as evidence of the confidence of investors. The conference lasted for over an hour and Collington had insisted it be video-recorded, to enable him to watch an instant playback. He and Wall sat before the television screen in the penthouse office and at the end Collington said, ‘Well?’

  It was an objective question, insistent upon an honest answer and Wall said, ‘I can’t help thinking we were a bit too open.’

  ‘Rather that than rumour and supposition,’ said Collington, repeating his earlier argument.

  ‘You’ve been absolutely honest,’ said Wall. ‘What if the interpretation is that you’re covering up and that it’s wor
se than what you say?’

  ‘Today’s Friday and apart from Wall Street, the markets are already closed,’ said Collington. ‘I’m drafting extra people to clear Witwatersrand Four over the weekend. We can repair the refrigeration trunking rather than replace. On Sunday I want a press release distributed to every journalist and television crew who were present today, inviting them to an on-site inspection for Wednesday. That story will be carried in Monday’s papers and stem any uncertainty at the beginning of the week. The markets should hold until Wednesday and then there will be the reports and television pictures, showing a virtually undamaged mine. And that should bring us to Thursday and even Friday. After a week, the interest will be diminishing. We should end on a high.’

  Wall listened admiringly. ‘That’s clever,’ he said, honest still. ‘That’s very clever.’

  ‘And necessary,’ said Collington.

  ‘It’s going to be a busy weekend,’ said Wall.

  ‘I expected that.’

  ‘By the way, there’s been a personal call for you from Louis Knoetze.’

  ‘Knoetze?’

  ‘The Security Chief. He wants a meeting.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Collington at once. ‘Would he agree to Saturday?’

  ‘It was his idea.’

  ‘Fix it,’ ordered Collington. ‘His convenience.’

  Wall started sifting through the other messages that had been held for him during the conference by his secretary. ‘Even getting brokers from as far away as Amsterdam,’ he said, as an aside.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Wall, uncomfortable now that he’d attempted any lightness. ‘Just a request for a meeting from a determined woman from Amsterdam. Doesn’t seem content with middle management.’

  If it hadn’t been for the mention of Amsterdam, where the bullion plane had crashed, and Collington’s recollection of Metzinger identifying the Soviet purchase broker as a woman, Collington would have ignored what his assistant was saying. Instead he leaned forward, intently, and said: ‘What’s the name?’