"Maintaining contact," the executive officer said. Finally Moreno allowed himself to smile. They had their ride to San Francisco.
"Power down to minimum," Moreno ordered.
"Silent running."
Not that anyone was going to hear anything from the sub, given the sound of the tanker's massive screws churning just a couple of hundred meters behind them, but it never hurt to be careful.
"The Golden Lily," Vaughn said.
"Literally," Tai confirmed. They both sat back on their rucksacks, listening to the air being pulled by them.
"At least part of it."
"But our target isn't the gold," Vaughn noted.
"We still have to find Abayon."
"And when we find him?" Tai asked. They were seated on their rucksacks, the only light the dim red glow of Tai's flashlight.
Vaughn pulled out a canteen and took a deep drink.
"Then we get out of here, call it in. The rest of the team comes in. We kill him. We leave."
"Hell of a plan, since we still haven't pinpointed his location."
"That, we do next."
"And go where, after the mission is done?"
"That's too far ahead," Vaughn said.
"All right," Tai allowed.
"Say we find him. The rest of the team comes in. We kill him. Then what?" Vaughn shrugged.
"Then he's dead and the Abu Sayef are fucked."
"And the gold?" Vaughn stared at her in the glow from the red lens flashlight.
"Not my business."
"Whose business do you think it is?"
Vaughn closed his eyes and rubbed the lids, trying to momentarily drive away the irritation he felt there. He'd been up now for over thirty-six straight hours and it was beginning to wear on him.
"Who are you?"
When there was no answer, he opened his eyes and looked at Tai. She was staring at him, and he knew she was trying to figure out if she should trust him, which he didn't give a shit about, because he had no clue whether he could trust her.
"Remember back in isolation where I mentioned the Black Eagle Trust?" she finally said.
"Yes."
"It came out of the Golden Lily," Tai said.
"After the war, we recovered a good portion of the treasure that the Japanese and Germans looted. Some of it was given back to the rightful owners, mostly pieces of art in Europe where the scrutiny level was higher. But gold – like that below – a lot of it was untraceable, or could be melted down into bars that were untraceable."
"And that became?"
"The Black Eagle Trust," Tai said.
"At the end of the war some far-thinking people saw the threat that communism posed for the West. And they realized that they would need money – a lot of it – to wage the fight."
"I thought that was called taxes," Vaughn noted.
"The Black Eagle fund was a slush fund," Tai said.
"Used to bribe people, influence elections, pay for black ops with complete deniability."
The last thing she'd mentioned caught Vaughn's attention.
"There was an OSS operative by the name of Lansale," Tai continued.
"He went into the Philippines before MacArthur invaded and linked up with the guerrilla forces – not to mobilize the guerrillas, but with the explicit order to find as much of the Golden Lily as he could. Which wasn't as easy as it sounds, since the Japanese were brutal about trying to hide places like this. They thought nothing of executing all the slave labor they used to build them – and even killing their own engineers who worked on them – in order to keep the locations secret."
"How did this Lansale know about the Golden Lily?" Vaughn asked.
Tai shrugged.
"That's an interesting question. After the war, General Yamashita, the Japanese commander in the Philippines, was captured. He never talked before his execution, but his driver, a Major Kojima, was secretly tortured, and it was rumored he gave up the location of several of the caches, including some that Marcos recovered directly for his own fortune."
"But you said Lansale went in before the war was over," Vaughn noted.
Tai nodded.
"I don't know what Lansale knew or how he knew it, but however he found out about it, he realized its significance right away. He went to three of Roosevelt's top advisors – the Secretary of War and the two men who would shortly become the Secretary of Defense and the head of the World Bank. They told Roosevelt that they needed to gain control of as much of the Golden Lily as possible – and when Roosevelt died, we have to assume they went to Truman with the same cause. The treasure they recovered was spread out around the world, to a lot of banks. They used that to create gold bearer certificates that could be used in any country in the world. The war against communism was, in a way, fought in a most capitalistic way.
"There was more to it than just fighting communism, though," Tai continued.
"If so much gold flooded the market, it would have destabilized all the currencies that were based on a gold standard."
"So this Black Eagle Trust was a good thing," Vaughn said. She shrugged.
"It was illegal."
He gave a short laugh.
"You think what we're doing here is legal?"
"No, it isn't," Tai allowed.
"So what the fuck is your point?" Vaughn snapped, tired of being strung along.
"My point is that there's a lot more going on in the covert world than we know – or maybe than anyone except a select handful know."
"So?"
"So, I think we better be damn careful and watch our backs."
Vaughn let out his anger with a deep breath.
"I agree to that."
He stood, shouldering his ruck.
"Let's go find Abayon."
"How do you propose to do that?" Tai asked.
Vaughn pointed at the various openings that lined the walls.
"Pick one."
She walked to the wall and went to each opening, shining her light into them. Vaughn waited in the middle of the room, listening to the thump of the air circulator.
"This one," she finally said.
"Why that one?"
"It goes up. Bosses always like being above it all. Plus the air intakes should be up there – and we're going to need another way in and out of this place."
It made as much sense as anything else. Without waiting, Tai climbed into the tube. Vaughn followed. The pipe went upward at about a twenty-degree angle and was about two and a half feet wide. It was uncomfortable moving through it, and Vaughn was forced to tie his rucksack to his boot and drag it behind him. Every so often they came to a grate and paused to check out what was on the other side. So far the grates had opened onto dark rooms, and Vaughn was reluctant to shine a light into them for fear one might be a barracks room with sleeping guards.
Finally they came upon a grate with light shining through it. Tai peered through, then moved up, gesturing to Vaughn. He crawled to the grate and looked inside at a room with a half-dozen long tables. From the odor wafting in, he assumed it was some sort of mess hall. There was no one in sight.
Tai was already moving, and he followed her.
Another grate. A single lightbulb glowed in what was obviously a storage room. Tai kept moving. Vaughn estimated they had gone up at least two hundred feet in altitude, but it was hard to tell.
They came to another grate where light shone through. Tai spent several moments looking, gesturing for Vaughn to be very quiet, then slid up, giving him access.
He slid up to the grate, peered through and saw a medical dispensary. A woman in a white uniform was working on some sort of machine, checking it. It seemed they were getting closer, since the dispensary would be close to where the people were.
As they continued to ascend, Vaughn began to wonder how much farther they could possibly go. He also worried about a way out. Reversing course meant they would have to find a way to get back up into the tube they had slid down, which he didn't think would be possible. He hoped his information about air intakes was correct.
Tai stopped at another grate, and Vaughn waited as she peered through for over a minute. Finally she moved up the tube and signaled. He crawled up and peered through.