Two oversized monitors comprised the entirety of the wall in front of Bern Gold. On the right was a single image, a flat view of the world with several red dots spread across it. On the left, the space was gridded into several smaller squares, within each of them a face from one of the men he had met with just days before.
From where he was seated, he couldn’t help but admire how much better the view looked with thousands of miles separating each one.
Tucked away behind his desk, Gold kept the lights in his office dimmed so he could survey each of them without being seen himself. He watched for several minutes as some of them waited patiently while others fidgeted. One even seemed to grow quite agitated and made a show of checking and re-checking his watch.
Exactly five minutes after their agreed to meeting time he raised the lights in his office, calling the meeting to order. “Good evening, gentlemen.”
Several of the men flinched at the sound of his voice. Every one of them leaned forward and grew attentive.
“Thank you for coming together like this. I know this does not afford the same optimal protections of a face-to-face meeting, but I’m afraid given our wide array of geographic locations, it’s the best we can hope for.
“I trust everyone was able to follow the cyber-security guidelines you were given at our last meeting?”
A series of murmurs and a few bobbed heads answered his question in the affirmative.
“Despite these cyber-security measures, I would prefer to keep this meeting as brief as possible. We can never be too careful today as to who might be watching. The list of agencies the world over that would love to prevent us from moving forward is quite infinite.”
He paused just a moment, passing a cursory glance over the grid. “That said, we’ll get right to it, starting with Liverpool. Thomas, the floor is yours.”
Gold watched as an older gentleman with thin gray hair combed straight back leaned forward in his seat and cleared his throat. He had deep wrinkles encasing his mouth and a flat nose that barely managed to hold up a pair of wire-framed glasses.
“Thank you, Mr. Gold. As you all know my name is Thomas White and I have been on board the Liberation Day project since its inception.
“My most recent task has been to seize control of the Liverpool, England ports. Using simple English greed to my advantage, I have been able to persuade officials to hire who I wanted them to. I can have the docks ready for use in as little as twenty minutes.”
It appeared there was more he wanted to add, his body poised to continue, but he stopped himself there and leaned back.
“Excellent work, Thomas,” Gold said, jumping right in to keep things moving. “You have indeed been a loyal member to the project since its birth and have always done well with your charged tasks. I have no reason to believe this will be any different.”
“Thank you,” Thomas said, bowing his head.
Gold flipped a small switch and the light over Liverpool on the map changed from red to green. “Harold, how do we stand in Marseilles?”
Harold Buford adjusted his tie and said, “Hello again everyone, Harold Buford, Jr. here, son of Harold Buford, a near and dear friend to both Mr. Gold and Mr. White. It has been my privilege these last few years to take his spot and work with you gentlemen.
“For my part, I too have managed to use bribery to secure the French port. Not money mind you, but rather fine wine. The man who owns the Marseilles port is a loathsome sort that fancies himself a high society man of great taste. For the tiny price of a small ownership share in an outlying vineyard, I was able to acquire a controlling interest in the docks there.
“I have used that interest to slowly eradicate his entire work force and replace them with my own. We are ready for whatever Liberation Day requires at a moment’s notice.”
“Splendid,” Gold said, his voice not relaying the same sentiment, as he flipped another light from red to green. “Your father would be quite proud.”
“Thank you,” Buford said, flushing slightly in the cheeks.
“Next, we have Genoa. Mr. Miller?” Gold said.
Miller gave a small wave to the camera and said, “Hello, brothers in arms. It is good to see you all again. Banick Miller, the only person here with the privilege of being a third generation member of this elite club.
“The docks in Italy have been secured through my role as a venture capitalist. Using assorted contacts, I slowly squeezed the flow of traffic into Genoa for the last year until dire straits befell the port. Only then did I walk in with a bottom dollar bail-out scheme.
“Two months later, Operation Liberation Day had its Italian port and was turning a tidy profit to boot.”
It was quite obvious Miller was proud of what he had done, a fact that forced Gold to hide his true feelings as he flipped the light for Italy from red to green.
“Very good work indeed,” Gold deadpanned. “Vladivostok?”
A large man with a hooked nose and long stringy brown hair leaned forward into his camera and gave a curt nod. “Gentlemen, Gerald Werner. It has been my privilege as part of the Liberation Day project to secure the busiest dock in Russia.”
As he spoke a slight accent became apparent, though its origin was not.
“While you all have been able to prey on greed, I focused on traditional Russian custom. We’ve all heard the expression that possession is nine-tenths of the law. In Russia, the easiest way to gain possession is to simply have the most guns.”
A few of the men swayed before their cameras and Gold furrowed his brow, a concerned look on his face. “You staged a violent coup in gaining the docks? That seems a bit against the covert nature we are trying to operate under.”
Werner’s eyes widened before a look of realization spread across his face. “Oh, no sir. I did nothing of the sort. I said having the guns was the way to gain control.
“I concocted a few high-profile arms deals and let the information leak to the right people. There never were any weapons, but by the time I got done, everybody in Vladivostok thought I was preparing for a third World War.
“Once I approached the various owners, they almost begged me to take the docks.”
A thin smile of understanding spread across Gold’s face and he said, “An elaborate bluff and nothing more. Very well played.”
Werner exhaled and smiled back at the camera. “Thank you. The docks are secure and awaiting instruction from you, sir.”
Gold changed the light over Russia from red to green and swept his eyes across to the right. “Japan?”
A smaller man with hair dyed black and an expensive suit cleared his throat and said, “Hello, Mr. Gold, members of the project. Leonard Watts coming to you from Nagasaki, Japan.
“Unlike the situations before most of you, the sheer expansiveness of that the Nagasaki docks dictates there is no central ownership. Three different companies own sizable portions.”
“A problem indeed,” Gold said, playing the part, knowing Watts was only building up for his own faux moment of glory. “And how did you manage to circumvent this?”
A prideful smile spread across Watts face. “I now sit as the chair of one of those companies and own the controlling stake in the other two.”
“No easy task for a non-native in Japan I am sure,” Gold pointed out, fighting to keep the boredom from his voice.
“Nothing is difficult enough to keep our project from being completed,” Watts replied, his head bowing a bit, the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile.
“I could not agree more. Fine work, Mr. Watts,” Gold said, already pushing forward. He glanced at the screen to notice many of the men leaning forward in anticipation, a few fidgeting as they stared into their respective cameras. “Hamburg, Germany?”
A small, frail man rested a pair of thick-framed spectacles onto his nose and peered into the camera. His skin was pasty and pockmarked and more hair grew from his ears and eyebrows than his head.
“My name is Michael Black,” he began in a bombastic voice that did
not fit his appearance. “I too have been on board this project since its inception and it has been my privilege to oversee the work here in Germany.
“As you are all very aware, Germany in the wake of the second World War was a veritable mess. No government infrastructure. No private protection. Nothing.
“As a result, actual ownership of things such as transportation went decades without being parsed out. That chaos was our gain, as I acquired the docks in 1962 and have been waiting for the day when we may be able to put them to use.
“That day is now here.”
Smiles of varying degrees spread across each of the men’s faces and several bobbed their heads.
Gold reached forward and flipped the switch for the light over Hamburg, giving the map a sweep of solid green. “That, my friends, is a beautiful sight.”
More heads nodded and a few even said, “Here here.”
“As I said before, gentlemen,” Gold said, seizing on the bit of good will present on the line, “we shall keep this as short as possible. We cannot be too careful of who may be watching us.
“Each of you will receive personal instructions from me in three days time telling you when and how your Brugmansia will arrive and what you should do once it does.
“As this may be the last time we all meet like this, I would like to say it has been a privilege working with you. Good luck and Godspeed.”
The moment the last syllable left his lips, the lights dimmed around him as he retreated back into the shadows. He watched as a few of the men made shows of clapping or pumping their fists into the camera.
One by one, almost all signed off the call.
Gold stayed deep in the shadows until finally there were but two faces remaining before him. He pressed a button to put them each on one of the monitors and raised the lights again in the room.
“Thomas White and Michael Black,” he said, shaking his head. “Black and White? Several decades to come up with pseudonyms and that’s the best you could do?”
Both of the men on the cameras before him laughed, the sound little more than labored wheezes.
“Seemed more feasible than John and James Doe,” Black said.
“And you’d already taken Gold,” White added.
Gold smirked and nodded his head, letting them both see the mirth on his face. “Yeah, I suppose I did. Were you gentlemen as bored through that as I was?”
“If not more so,” White said, adding an eye roll for effect.
“But did it work?” Black asked.
Gold slid the images of the two men to one monitor and brought up a computer screen on the other. On it were the names of each of the other men on the conference call, beside each the IP address they had been logged in from.
“All present and accounted for,” Gold said, scanning the list from top to bottom. “We only needed three and a half minutes to complete a trace. That lasted an eternity.”
“It is a shame it has to be this way,” White lamented.
“But, it does have to be this way,” Gold said.
“For sure,” White agreed. “The others have not been through what we’ve been through. They cannot and will not enjoy the culmination of our plan as if they are one of our own.”
“I agree entirely,” Gold said. He paused for a moment, watching as both of the men nodded, before adding, “Three days, gentlemen. We shall speak again in three days.”
Both nodded in assent, already briefed on the plan moving forward, before they too signed off.
Gold waited in silence, watching as their names appeared at the bottom of the list, their addresses just as clear as the others.
“You have everything in order for dispatching of them?” Gold asked, his attention aimed on the screen.
“Yes,” Ling said, stepping forward from the corner of the room, his body hidden by the heavy curtain covering the entrance.
“All of them?” Gold asked.
“Certainly,” Ling replied.
Chapter Thirty-Six