no excuses. And if I can find you, then he certainly can. If we’re going to sort this, we’re going to have to do it together. I’m sorry, Tom, but this ain’t just my problem. It’s our problem.’
Fort Knox, Kentucky20th July – 10:05am
A black Ford Explorer had picked Jennifer up from her apartment that morning and driven her to Reagan Washington National, where, in one of the side hangars, a tan Cessna Citation Ultra had been prepped and was waiting for her. Corbett clearly did not kid around when it came to getting things done.
The jet had looked brand new, and apart from the pilot and lone cabin attendant, she was the only passenger. Sinking back into the soft leather seats, she had stretched her legs right out into the narrow aisle, basking in the cabin lights. Twenty minutes later and the plane was arrowing through the clear Washington sky.
Flying had always made her slightly nervous. Once a plane she was on had hit an air pocket and dropped almost five thousand feet. As if they’d hit a glass wall in the sky and slid down it. Takeoff and landing were the worst and she unconsciously alternated between gripping the arm rests and bracing herself for possible impact against the seat in front of her, depending on what stage of the journey they were at. This time though, tired from the early start, she had found herself falling into a deep sleep until the gentle bump of the undercarriage coming down shook her awake.
Blinking, she turned her head to the window. The elliptical porthole framed a quilt work of differently coloured fields, each one bounded by a dark line of trees. A single, cotton thin strip of blacktop ran in an unbroken line right to left and disappeared in both directions into a shimmering heat haze. Lonely farmsteads and barns stood marooned in the flat landscape like small wooden islands. Then, as the plane dropped lower, a low-slung galvanised fence on the military airbase’s outer perimeter surged up to meet her.
‘Welcome to Kentucky, Agent Browne.’ Jennifer stepped down off the steps that had concertinaed out of the jet’s gleaming fuselage and shook the hand of the man waiting to greet her. ‘I hope you had a pleasant flight. I’m Lieutenant Sheppard. I’m to escort you to the Depository.’
‘Thank you,’ she answered, unable to mask her smile. It was quite an outfit. Pink plaid trousers, white polo shirt and yellow sun visor all competed for her attention. Beneath the visor the man’s face was creased into a broad grin as he pumped her hand up and down enthusiastically.
Although Jennifer was mindful never to form opinions of people too quickly, a trait she had inherited from her mother who maintained that time was the only reliable lens through which to view someone’s true character, she instinctively liked Sheppard. He had a breezy, cheerful confidence and an uncomplicated and genuine manner that his gaudy wardrobe reinforced rather than undermined.
Sheppard looked down at himself and then flashed her a guilty smile, brown eyes twinkling in his smooth, sun-tanned face.
‘I’m real sorry about the clothes, Ma’am. I was just heading out for a round when I got word to come and meet you here. I didn’t have time to change.’ Jennifer nodded back, her tone understanding.
‘That’s quite all right, Lieutenant. I appreciate you taking me over. Is it far?’
‘No, ma’am. Not in this baby.’ He pointed to a white golf cart, his clubs firmly strapped to the back.
‘In that?’ She looked at him questioningly as they walked over to it.
‘In this.’ He swung himself into the driver’s seat and then reaching up, fixed a red light to the roof. ‘I had a buddy in the Corps of Engineers make a few alterations. You into cars?’
‘I used to fix up and race Mustangs with my dad if that counts,’ she replied with a smile.
‘Hey – then maybe you should drive,’ Sheppard suggested eagerly, sliding across to the passenger side. ‘Then you can tell me how you think this baby handles.’
‘Sure.’ She shrugged and slipped in behind the wheel, turning the key in the ignition. ‘You holding on?’
‘Hell yeah.’
As well as being the site of the US Bullion Depository, Fort Knox is also the tank capital of the United States, its 109,050 acres home to 32,000 men and women of the US Army Armor and Cavalry which has its headquarters there. It was not long, therefore, before they were speeding past barrack buildings, mess halls, training blocks and groups of soldiers running in tight formation, their chanted cadences blending with each other to form a muscular, sweaty symphony.
Her foot flat to the floor, Jennifer slalomed through the troops and the buildings, the red light flashing, oncoming vehicles sounding their horns as Sheppard called out the directions, his hand fiercely gripping the grab handle to stop himself from sliding across the shiny white vinyl seat as she dived in and out of the traffic. She sensed he was enjoying the ride.
Ahead of them, the granite-clad shape of the Depository loomed closer. From a distance, Jennifer thought that it seemed fairly ordinary; not much bigger than a small office block really, like one of those low-rise bank buildings you get in local malls. But as she drew closer she saw that it had, in fact, the squat solidity of a small white mountain.
Set in a wide compound, it was a two storey building, the upper storey smaller than the lower one, its roof slightly tiered like the first few steps of a ziggurat. Steel-framed windows had been evenly set into the walls of both storeys like embrasures in a castle wall. The only access came through a single gate in the fifteen-foot high steel fence that encircled the compound, itself flanked by two armoured sentry boxes. Once inside, a service road with neatly cut grass verges on each side ringed the building, which had four concrete bunkers surgically grafted onto each of its corners. A lone lawnmower patrolled the outer verge, its engine buzzing.
‘It was built in 1936 and the first gold shipments arrived in 1937.’ Sheppard shouted over the whine of the cart’s electric motor, angrily gesticulating soldiers scattering in front of them like ninepins. Jennifer nodded. She couldn’t imagine it having ever actually been built. It seemed to have been there forever, as if it had erupted out of the solid bedrock millions of years ago and then been shaped and polished by tens of thousands of years of sun and rain and frost.
‘Usage peaked in 1941 when it held about 650 million ounces,’ he continued. ‘Course these days, the main reserves are held at the Federal Reserve in New York, about five stories down. You should go and check it out sometime. I’m told the security there makes this place look like Disneyland.’
She slowed the cart as it approached the gate and then accelerated hard again as they were waved through. The sentries saluted Sheppard, their arms juddering to a rigid halt at the side of their head, their hands stiff, thumb tucked in, seemingly unfazed by his clothes and the sight of Jennifer at the wheel of the careering golf cart.
Up close, the building was even more formidable. The sheer mass of its granite walls seemed to weigh down on everything around it – a dark, dense, oppressive energy that compressed and squeezed and stifled. Jennifer found herself strangely conscious of the sound of her own breathing, of the sheer effort of moving, as if underwater.
Surveillance cameras, positioned high on the granite walls like glass eyes on white steel stalks, covered every inch of the building’s walls. Twin floodlights perched atop black poles gazed out
