Hays held up his hand, which silenced the moneymen. He read the press release aloud, all of it, including the ultimatum to Mexico.
The bankers cheered. “We’ve won!”
“If this is true,” Jack Hays muttered, too softly for anyone to hear.
He sent an aide to find his cousin JR.
The bankers were leaving when JR came in, so they all had to tell him the news and shake hands and congratulate him. “Best general since Sam Houston,” one of them told JR, who looked a little stunned.
With the door closed, JR read the press release. “Is this true?” he asked Jack.
“I don’t know,” Jack Hays said, shrugging. “But the implications are vast. Either Soetoro wants a political peace, or the U.S. armed forces have mutinied against him.”
“Hadn’t we better find out which it is?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. If Soetoro wants a settlement, we’ll be hearing from them. In the meantime, let’s stop all offensive military operations until we know more.”
“What about that attack boat, Texas?” JR asked.
“You know where she is, what she’s doing?”
“Hell, no. Loren Snyder and a handful of volunteers took her to sea. Apparently they torpedoed two destroyers busy squirting off Tomahawks at our power plants, but there have been no more ships torpedoed nor has the U.S. Navy shot any more Tomahawks.”
“Do we have any way to contact them?” Jack Hays asked.
“I certainly don’t. I think all we can do is rely on Loren Snyder’s good sense and hope for the best.”
“Could you call the Pentagon and talk about this?”
“I can send them a message through the National Guard message system.”
“If they try to locate and attack that submarine, your Mr. Snyder might well fight back.”
“Might? Of course he will. But let’s not get our knickers in a twist. Loren can take care of himself. I’ll pass along a heads-up to the Pentagon, however.”
President Hays leaned forward. “I’ve got another project for you too. Texas has roughly a billion dollars in gold on deposit in a vault in a New York bank, the Bank of Manhattan. I want you to make a withdrawal and bring that gold back to Texas. All the bankers say that backing the new Texas dollar with gold will give it instant credibility. That’s their prescription for the next few years. After that, they want the Texas dollar to float so the money supply isn’t linked to the price of gold, which is nothing but a commodity. We’ll see how that goes, but a gold standard does sound like a place to start.”
“How much does a billion dollars’ worth of gold weigh?” JR asked.
Jack Hays said, “The treasurer’s office said a pound or two less than forty tons. Actually, it’s probably worth a lot more than a billion dollars since Soetoro shut down the markets and gave investors worldwide the jitters. In the past, state government sort of ignored the gold. It’s like oil under the southeast forty or Grandma’s diamond ring — no one gave it a thought. They simply talk about a billion dollars’ worth of gold. However, it’s there and it’s ours, and now we need it.”
JR whistled. “New York City,” he said thoughtfully. “Forty tons.”
“Ingots, I guess,” Jack said. “I hope it isn’t in wafers in boxes or some such thing.” He grinned. “I’ve got a feeling that the sooner we get that gold to Texas, the better. If Soetoro knew we were coming for it, we wouldn’t get it without some kind of political settlement. And there isn’t going to be a political settlement between Texas and the United States with Barry Soetoro in the White House.”
“I’ll need some kind of paper from the treasurer, and maybe a letter from you. You know how bankers are. They’ll want to paper their ass.”
Jack Hays frowned. “They aren’t going to turn loose of that gold without Washington’s say-so even if you have a letter from Jesus. Take some guns.”
“Oh, we will,” JR said with a disarming smile. “Rest assured, we won’t forget to pack those. But give me a letter from the treasurer and one from you.”
Jack called in a secretary and dictated one. While she typed it, he called the treasurer and told him what was wanted. “He’ll send it over to the Guard this afternoon,” he told JR.
When he left with Jack’s letter in hand, JR went to the Texas State Library and Archives building on Brazos Street. He asked to see the head librarian and told him what he wanted. Twenty minutes later he left with a copy of a letter from the White House in his hand, one congratulating some scout for achieving the rank of eagle. That kid’s parents knew somebody, he thought.
His next stop was a printer at the Texas Department of Public Safety. He asked to see the head printer, and after introducing himself, presented him with the copy of the White House letter to the Eagle Scout. “I need at least four sheets of a nice white bond with the president of the United States’ seal on it. Exactly like this, identical.”
“Whoa. On whose say-so?”
“Mine. Or we can get the president’s, or Colonel Tenney’s. Whom do you want?”
“This isn’t going to be used for a forgery, is it?”
“Perish the thought.”
The man sighed and asked, “When do you want it?”
“Well, I have to go see Colonel Tenney upstairs. That should take no more than an hour. I’ll pick it up when I finish.”
“An absolute rush job will take about a week. Every office in government wants new stationery now that we’re a republic again. We have—”
“One hour, or I go get Colonel Tenney and bring him here to talk to you.”
The man frowned at the letter with distaste, as if JR had been using it for toilet paper, then at JR Hays. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I told you. Major General Hays, commanding the Texas Guard.”
“Never heard of you. When the Guard wants something, they always send a sergeant, a gal named Dooley.” He waved the letter. “But okay. One hour.” Then he wheeled and marched away from the counter.
JR went upstairs to see Colonel Frank Tenney and explained the problem. “Maybe the vault will be open when we get there, but probably not. Maybe they’ll open it for me, but maybe not. More than likely I’ll have to help myself. I need some expert advice about how to get into a gold bullion vault.”
“Forget it,” Tenney said. “It can’t be done. There is no way in the world to get into either of the big gold vaults in New York. Texas’ gold is in the Bank of Manhattan, which has a helluva vault. But the biggest gold repository on earth, bigger than Fort Knox or the Bank of England gold vaults, is under the New York Federal Reserve Bank. They have at least five thousand tons of gold there, and it’s guarded by a private army.”
“Explosives?”
“Two Mosler vaults were in banks in Hiroshima when we dropped the bomb there. The banks were obliterated, but the vaults were intact. In 1957 the air force set off a thirty-seven-kiloton bomb near a vault, and it remained intact. JR, you ain’t going in one of those things unless they let you in. And the chances of them doing that are essentially microscopic. Go back and tell your cousin Jack that it can’t be done.”
“That’s probably good advice,” JR acknowledged. He said good-bye and went to the Texas Treasury Department, where he had a private interview with the treasurer of the Republic. The man was prematurely bald and wore a suit and tie even though the building wasn’t air-conditioned. All the juice from the emergency generator was being used to run lights and computers.
They discussed Texas’ gold reserve, how many ounces and so forth.