"What ended the Eagle's flight?" I asked.
"Another Roosevelt, Ms. Cooper. Teddy's cousin, Franklin. By the time he was inaugurated in 1933, the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. You could buy a daily paper for two cents and a pack of cigarettes for a quarter. The only thing that held its value during this crisis was gold itself."
"So there was a run on the banks, and people began to hoard gold coins," Mercer said.
"And two days after he was sworn in, President Roosevelt closed all the banks, embargoed the export of the very precious metal, and took America off the gold standard. After March of 1933, never again was the United States Mint to issue gold coinage."
"So Farouk's piece was made before FDR's proclamation?"
"Ah, the heart of the matter, Mr. Chapman. The Treasury Department prohibited the Mint from monetizing, or legitimatizing, any gold coins from that point on. But it neglected to forbid the actual production of the coins themselves."
"Farouk's Double Eagle was struck after we went off the gold standard?" I asked.
Stark nodded his head. "The Mint was just a factory, after all. The engraving for the coin had already been completed, the bullion was prepared, and within a month after the embargo, one hundred thousand 1933 Double Eagles had been cast. The Treasury realized the gaffe and immediately told the Mint not to license this particular coin."
"So the Double Eagles existed…"
"Yes, Mr. Chapman," said Stark. "But they had only the value of a small gold medallion. They were never legitimized."
Mike sat back in his chair. "That's an awful lot of gilded birds in the nest. How could anybody account for them all?"
"There are wonderfully arcane regulations that have been in existence since this country's birth," he answered. "Romans had their Trial of the Pyx, so our forefathers set up an assay commission. Samples of the strike were submitted in locked boxes to be weighed and tested-a laborious series of examinations-and while this was being done with just a few hundred coins, all the others were kept in storage at the Mint."
"What became of the one hundred thousand?"
"In 1937, the order finally came from the Treasury-right from the president-to melt down the entire strike. As far as the government knew, not a single coin was left."
"So when did the Eagle fly out of the cage?" Mike asked.
"I'm afraid that's the first time our company came into this mix," Stark said. "Nineteen forty-four. My father had been in business about ten years, doing quite well, when a great private collection came on the market which he bought for auction. The owner was a Colonel James Flanagan."
Stark took another sip of coffee. "Papa put an advertisement in all the papers, announcing the sale. And for the final lot, the biggest prize, the ad read, 'The Excessively Rare 1933 Double Eagle.' He was quite thrilled about his coup."
"I guess that let the cat out of the bag," Mike said.
"Needless to say, that wording caught the attention of a few giants in the numismatic field who were interested in bidding, one of whom took it upon himself to call the Mint and quite simply ask what made it so rare. How many coins had the government actually legalized and released was what he wanted to know."
"The answer was none?"
"Exactly. From there on, the feds moved in pretty quickly. The Mint brought in the Secret Service-"
I interrupted Stark and looked at Mike and Mercer. "I know the Secret Service is the law enforcement branch of the Treasury, but I can't for the life of me remember why. I just think of them as the presidential protection force."
Mike helped me with the history. "The Secret Service was created in 1865 especially to investigate and prevent the counterfeiting of U.S. currency, and enforce all laws related to coins and securities of the government. That's all that they were about at first. They didn't get into the protection business until President McKinley was assassinated."
Stark continued. "So there was my father in 1944, sitting at his desk during the second day of the actual auction. In burst a couple of agents who announce to him that the Flanagan coin had been stolen from the Mint, that it had absolutely no value, and that they were going to seize it from him before it went on the block."
Mike wanted the facts. "So whom had Flanagan bought the illegal Double Eagle from?"
"Precisely what the Secret Service wanted to know," he said, seeming a bit chagrined. "They also questioned my father about where he got the information in the catalog entry that said at least ten of the pieces had gotten into private hands."
"Did he have the answers?"
"Most certainly. He and my uncle were extremely cooperative," Stark said, starting to smile again. "After all, they had paid the enormous sum of sixteen hundred dollars for the coin. They had all the bills of sale, and took the agents directly to the jeweler, who was holding it in his safe."
"So the feds got that one back for sure," Mike said.
"I can promise you that, Detective. It was one of the first lessons I learned from my father. And then this lead agent spent the next few months tracking down the other Double Eagles my father told them about. He was like a bloodhound-Philadelphia, Baltimore, Memphis, London."
"How many were stolen from the Mint and avoided destruction?" I asked.
"Ten. That's what they figured when they went back to examine the assay samples I mentioned to you, which was the only group of coins that hadn't been melted when the orders first came down."
"And how many of them did the feds track down in 1944?"
"Nine. They got nine of them back. All except the one that went to King Farouk."
"Did they ever figure out who committed the theft from the Mint?"
"Seems to be nothing those investigators didn't figure out. There was a crook at the Mint-a man called George McCairn-who was in charge of the Weight Transfer Department the year the Double Eagles disappeared. After 1937, between the time of their theft and the date of the auction, McCairn was arrested for stealing some other valuable pieces from the Mint."
"So he was locked up?" Mike asked.
"For taking these later items. Never charged for the Eagles, because he never admitted being the thief. But the feds thought the method was the same. When the coins came in for assay-and mind you, he had sole control of the keys to the samples-he simply took ten of them out of the bag and replaced them with coins of the same weight and size, but no value."
"The old bait and switch," Mike said.
"Exactly. No one ever looked in the bags," Stark said. "Once it was realized the Double Eagles were not going to be declared legitimate legal tender-never monetized-they were just left to sit out their fate until the moment of meltdown. McCairn had exclusive access to the samples, and had helped himself to ten of the beautiful birds."
"How did they arrive at ten as the exact number?" Mercer asked.
Stark paused. "By the weight of what was recorded in the assay process. That's the best they could figure."
"That Secret Service agent worked damn fast," Mike said, making notes of the people and dates that Bernard Stark had mentioned. "What did you say his name was?"
"The man who tracked down the Double Eagles? It was Strait. Harry Strait."
28
"Did I say something wrong?" Stark asked, scanning our faces.
The three of us must have reacted to Strait's name with the same degree of surprise.
Mike made his notes and picked up the conversation. "No, no. Now this Double Eagle that made its way to Egypt, what can you tell us about how it got there?"
Stark pursed his lips. "Not very much. I think you'll have to get that story from the Secret Service."
He reached for his Rolodex and wrote down the name of the supervisor he'd dealt with when he auctioned the great coin for seven million dollars. "Harry Strait is dead," he said, "but I think you'll find this fellow most helpful."
"But the one you sold in 2002 was legal?"