A Glibertarians Exclusive:  Blood and Gold, Part IV

19 September 1987 – Marseille

The phone finally rang. Belos picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” He listened for a moment. Hess was seated in a chair at the suite’s small table, idly flipping through a French magazine. Alex van Helsing was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Both turned and watched Belos.

“Yes, all right. We can meet to make the exchange. At your place of business, yes. Tonight? At midnight? Certainly, what could possibly be wrong with that?” Belos looked at the other two and rolled his eyes. “Very well. We shall see you then.” He hung up.

“It took him two whole weeks to figure out how to rip us off?” van Helsing asked the ceiling.

“Thugs are not cheap,” Hess pointed out. “And he probably had to arrange for several.”

“You know,” Belos pointed out, “if he breaks faith with us – if he should seek to take our gold and give nothing in return – we would be perfectly justified in turning the tables. Take the Swiss gold and the gold from the cache. Find another way to convert the Nazi gold.”

“Maybe we should have just melted the Nazi gold down and re-cast it,” van Helsing groused.

“It is not so simple,” Hess said, “to simply appear at a financial institution with several million dollars in unmarked gold ingots for deposit.”

“I suppose so.  What are we going to do, then?”

“We will meet him to make the exchange, of course,” Hess said easily.  “Belos – or Braxton, I should say – would you care to take a stroll with me through the area first, say around eleven-thirty, to see what we might see?”

“I think that is prudent, yes.”

At the agree-upon hour, Belos and Hess left van Helsing in a late-night winery and went walking, all about the tiny, run-down storefront where the little Frenchman Bouchard had his ‘business,’ but were surprised when that reconnaissance was complete.

“Nobody,” Belos said.

He spoke in a low tone, so quietly that a passerby could not possibly hear, but Hess had no such trouble.  “Quite so. I can hear Bouchard inside.” In fact, he could hear the Frenchman’s heartbeat.  “There do not seem to be any others in there with him.”

“Agreed.”

“We proceed, then?”

Belos looked thoughtful for a moment.  “I can see no reason to do otherwise.  We collect van Helsing from that dive, then – I hope he’s still sober – and make our appointment.”

Van Helsing proved to still be sober, seated at a small table nursing the same glass of wine Hess and Belos had left him with.

“See anything?” the young American asked.

“Nothing to concern us.  This Bouchard, he appears to be on the up and up, at least, for a fence. Come along,” Hess said. “We’ll go and make the exchange.”

Belos picked up the heavy leather knapsack from the floor next to van Helsing’s chair; neither he nor Hess had been happy about trusting van Helsing with the gold, but neither did they want to take it out on their scouting mission.

They walked quietly through the darkened Marseilles streets.  Several times locals, with the looks of thugs, looked them over.  One followed them for a block, until Hess stopped and started pointedly at him.  The two older men cast a distinct “you don’t want to try anything” aura, and Marseilles’ criminal caste seemed to pick up on it very quickly.

Outside Bouchard’s place of “business,” the three stopped.  Hess, again, listened closely.

“He’s alone,” Hess said at last.

“We proceed, then?” van Helsing seemed oddly anxious, drawing a sharp look from Hess.

“Yes,” Belos replied. “Let’s have done with this.”

Inside, Bouchard was enthusiastic.  “Ah, friends,” he greeted them.  “I have the very thing you asked for; Swiss gold francs, in the amount we discussed.”

“Let’s see them,” Hess ordered.  The Frenchman quickly complied.

Hess picked one of the heavy coins up.  He examined it, closely, tapped it against his yellow teeth, and then, finally, pulled a small vial from the pocket of the battered old navy peal-jacket he wore.  Extracting a dropper from the vial, he laid the coin on the counter, dripped a vinegary-smelling solution on it, and watched it for a few minutes.

“What are you doing?” van Helsing asked.

“Just wait.”

Bouchard fidgeted.  Van Helsing stood, tapping one foot nervously.  Belos stood very still as Hess, ignoring the others, watched the gold coin.

Finally he picked it up, examined if closely.  “Very well,” he said.  “This is real gold.”

“We will watch you count the coin out,” Belos announced.

Nobody objected, least of all Bouchard.  He counted the coins out slowly.

“The number is as we agreed,” Belos said when this was done.  “Here,” he said, handing across the leather knapsack.  “You may inspect the bullion.”

Bouchard did so, extracting the ingots one by one, subjecting them to a different test that involved rubbing them on a rough ceramic tile.  “Very fine,” he said at last.

“It is good,” Hess said, “to have trust in such an enterprise.  It is, also, if you will permit me, unusual.  You, Bouchard, are to be congratulated.  You have earned your profit.”  He picked up the case containing the Swiss coins.

Hess tensed.  Van Helsing’s heartbeat had increased, suddenly, as had Bouchard’s.  The Frenchman was suddenly nervous.  He reached under the table on which lay the scale and the ceramic tile, touched something…

The room flared into burning heat. Ultraviolet lights, Hess realized.  He hunched; his pea-jacket offered some protection, but he had worn no hat on the Marseille night; nor had Belos.  Both were driven to their knees, arms over their heads.  Hess heard a hiss of agony, and realized it was coming from him.  He had spent years building up some resistance to ordinary sunlight – not much, but some – but this was concentrated ultraviolet, and it was agony.

“You two,” he heard Alexander van Helsing say, “you really should have known better.  You know who I am.  You know who my family is.  You obviously know my history.  You should have never trusted me.  But you did, and now, finally, I can earn my way into the family’s confidence.  They didn’t much care for me, you see – thought I was too reckless, too lacking in caution – not a real van Helsing.  Oh, and I’ll be taking the gold, too – a two-way split with Bouchard is a much better deal than a three-way with you two assholes.”

“Oui,” Bouchard agreed.  He said nothing more.

Hess felt himself burning, almost shriveling in the blast of UV.  Damn him, he thought, he hits on one part of the old legends that is actually true.

“What… what will you do with us?” Belos ground out, painfully.

Van Helsing withdrew an object from his pocket.  A pistol.  “This won’t kill you,” van Helsing said, “but it will hurt.  A shot through each of your knees will hold you in place for a while.  Then, we’ll burn the building around you.  Bouchard won’t be needing it anymore, after all – not with all that gold.”

Bouchard picked up the leather knapsack and the case of Swiss francs, grunting at the weight.

Van Helsing aimed carefully at Belos’ knee.

Hess reached into his jacket.  No one had noticed that he had not put the one gold franc back in the case.  He wrapped his hand around it.  He could see, on the wall, a fuse box.

I can only hope it’s the right one, he thought.