Ryan could make out small brass plates beneath each of them, all bearing the name Heidegger.
“Please follow me,” Borringer said.
“Wait here,” Hussein said to his bodyguards. He turned back to Borringer. “Mr. Ryan will join us.”
Borringer looked first to Ryan’s shoes, then his watch, before settling on his face. Ryan saw the measures and valuations working behind his eyes.
“As you wish,” Borringer said, making no effort to hide his distaste, and walked towards a gated elevator. He pushed the gate aside and waved Hussein and Ryan in before following after and pulling the gate closed.
Borringer pulled a silver chain from around his neck and selected one of the keys that were attached to it. He inserted the key into the elevator’s control panel, turned it, and pressed the single button.
The elevator lurched downward, brickwork sliding past its cage, before coming to a halt below ground. Borringer removed the key and placed the chain around his neck once more before opening the gate.
A guard sat at a small desk in the centre of the room. He stood, his hands rigid at his sides, and stared straight ahead. Nine steel doors, three to a wall, each bearing a combination lock and a heavy handle.
Borringer walked to the centre door on the wall facing the elevator. He stood with his body between the lock and the visitors as he worked. Ryan listened to the clicks and ticks as the dial turned, the solid clank as tumblers aligned. Borringer stood back to allow the guard to haul the door open.
“Gentlemen, your cargo.”
Countless numbered drawers lined the vault, all with pairs of locks, many with wax seals across them. On the floor stood a flatbed trolley laden with wooden crates. Dozens of them, each no more than a six or seven inch cube.
Borringer cleared his throat before he spoke. “Eighty nine crates, each containing fifteen gold kilobars, a value of sixteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty two dollars per crate, making a total of one million, five hundred and six thousand, and fifty eight dollars.”
His voice thinned as he ran out of breath. He took a deep inhalation before speaking again.
“Monsieur Hussein, please inspect the crates before the remaining few are sealed.”
Hussein and Ryan stepped forward. Ryan caught sight of the glistening within the five open boxes on top of the stack, saw the words Credit Suisse stamped in the metal. His heart quickened.
Borringer held a hand up. “Monsieur Hussein only, if you please.”
“Wait there,” Hussein said at the vault’s threshold.
Ryan obeyed.
The skin beneath Hussein’s chin glowed yellow with reflected light. He must like butter, Ryan thought, the foolish memory of a fairytale flitting through his mind before he chased it out. Hussein examined each of the open crates in turn while Ryan listened to the low insistent thrum of air vents. A draught cooled his neck.
“They’re good,” Hussein said. “You may seal them.”
Borringer nodded, and the guard lifted the hammer that sat next to the stacked wooden lids. He set about nailing them in place, three firm taps for each nail, six nails for every crate.
Ryan couldn’t help but feel he was witnessing a ceremony, some obscene communion in a church of concrete and steel, the blood of Christ turned gold.
Habib and Munir loaded the crates onto the van while Borringer stood with his hands folded at the small of his back. Ryan stood alongside him, stifling yawns.
Hussein conferred with the driver of the first escort car, tracing a route on the map with a pencil. Two cars, one ahead, one following, would accompany them to the French border. Once there, the armoured van and its load would travel on guarded mostly by Hussein’s men. Two more cars would occasionally pass them on the French roads, Hussein explained, just to ensure no one followed.
When the crates were aboard, Habib and Munir climbed in and closed the rear doors behind them.
Borringer shook Hussein’s hand before the Arab climbed into the driver’s seat. Ryan took the passenger seat with no farewell.
Stars glittered above the walls of the compound, and before Hussein fired the van’s engine, Ryan shivered at the silence that lay across the world. He checked his watch. Approaching two in the morning.
The convoy left the walls of the Heidegger bank behind in the darkness. Ryan watched the lead car’s lights wavering ahead as the Citroën’s engine droned. His eyelids dropped and his head nodded forward before jerking up.
Hussein blew cigarette smoke from his nostrils. “Get some sleep, Mr. Ryan. We have a long journey ahead.”
Ryan leaned back into the corner formed by the passenger seat and the door, allowed the engine’s drone to soothe his mind. He dreamed of gold stolen from skeletal corpses and pulled from dead men’s teeth, and how heavy it weighed in his hand.
The sound of the driver’s door slamming shut pulled him from his unsettled sleep. The sky had lightened from black to deep blue, but the sun remained hidden beyond the horizon.
The van stood at the side of a narrow road, one of the escort cars parked some yards ahead. Ryan could barely make out the driver leaning against its roof. He guessed the second car had parked behind the van. Trees surrounded them, stretching into the distance as far as Ryan could see.
Hussein’s guards joined him at the roadside, each of the three men carrying rolled rugs. Habib or Munir, Ryan couldn’t be sure which was which, set a plastic gallon drum on the verge. They kicked off their shoes and socks, rolled up their sleeves, put woollen caps on their heads. They doused their hands with water from the drum, rinsed their faces, their heads, their arms up to their elbows, and finally their feet.
Ryan watched as they unrolled their rugs on the ground, stood with their hands lifted to heaven, and chanted. He had seen the ritual in Egypt as a young soldier. There, he had observed some perform the ritual ablutions with sand when no water was available.
He listened to the drone of their prayers and watched the orange glow on the horizon burn away the darkness.
The air had developed an icy chill by the time the lead car had pulled over and stopped. Its driver waved as the Citröen van passed. Hussein raised his hand in return before turning onto a path so slender and overgrown it could barely have been described as a track, let alone a road. Ryan braced his hands against the dashboard as the van juddered and lurched over the rough ground. By the time the wheels found good footing on a decent surface, they had crossed into France.
The mountains rose up beyond Ryan’s vision, mist veiling the slopes. He had not seen another car since the last village they had passed through, a loose gathering of chalets and farm buildings. Goats and horned cattle had watched them drive by. Now a vehicle appeared up ahead, travelling slow enough for Hussein to catch it up.
When the car was close enough, Hussein raised a forefinger from the steering wheel, a small gesture, but enough to tell the driver of the car to accelerate away.
Ryan felt pressure in his ears as they climbed. Hussein had not spoken since they left the bank’s compound, but now he took a breath.
“Soon, you will drive. We will stop and eat, then you will take us to Crozon.”
“All right,” Ryan said.
Eighteen years since he’d been in France, and like today, he’d mostly seen it from the inside of a vehicle. He thought of Celia, and the time she had spent in Paris, and the smoky look of her eyes when she talked about it.