E-mail this Page - Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Home - Next Chapter

This chapter is provided as a preview. Anybody who wants to can access it for free at http://www.EastCoastGames.com . We ask that no copies, physical or electronic; be lent or given. Offering this portion of the novel is expressly prohibited.

Golden Fury

CTF Deputy Director Krinshaw’s Office

CTF Headquarters

Washington, D.C.

Friday, October 16th, 2015, 5:20 pm

As soon as Peterson had returned, Krinshaw fired him. He deliberately leaked that George was fired for withholding information. Nobody under him would dare to be so arrogant again. Krinshaw knew that had George succeeded to get the Midas machine, George would have gone straight to the president. Krinshaw would have been fired, or demoted. Peterson would have probably, and ironically, taken his position.

After George was fired, Krinshaw went to oversee the New Hampshire branch for a few days. During that time, all of the gold was melted and sold. All the gold in the treasury was also finally sold. At this point, it was obvious that the machine would be in Switzerland, or at least en route. There was no way they could get it now. They had no presence in Switzerland, and the Swiss would be suspicious of a country no longer part of the UN sending a contingent of government agents.

The group of technicians that went with Krinshaw to Nashua could not find any trace of research information for the Midas machine inside the facility or the house. Physical searches were done, but nothing was found. Whatever information they might have had, they took it with them. Even the recently accessed file list on the servers and computers had been wiped, as had all internet cache.

The time had come to strike out at the Midas machine. If they did not act now it was likely the Swiss would start making and selling gold. The best chance they had was to reveal all they had found out and hope the value of gold would deflate so much that any money the Swiss made would be meaningless in comparison to what they lost from their own gold reserves.

Krinshaw had set up a meeting with the CTF’s head of public relations, Thomas Coyle. Coyle was supposed to arrive at 5:00 but was already 20 minutes late. Finally, just as Krinshaw was going to page Coyle, he arrived.

“You’re late, Tom, take a seat.”

“Sorry, Sir, My daughter is in the hospital, and I was on the phone-”

Krinshaw interrupted, “Spare me the excuse. We need to get the news channels working on a new story pronto.”

“Yes, Sir . . . what story?”

“The Millers, we need you to explain to the media about the Midas machine.”

He whimpered, “Midas machine, Sir?”

“Yes,” he said as he reached into his drawer and pulled out a set of pictures. He handed them to Tom. “Here. I’ll e-mail you the originals.”

Tom looked through them. The first pictures were of the gold wall. One of the pictures showed a piece of the wall taken down. The next set of pictures was of a truck that seemed to have gold molded into it. Blood could be seen on the dashboard of the destroyed van. The blood was clearly faked. It had been planted there for the photo. Pictures of fake gold watches were also included. In addition, some pictures of gold bars from the gold reserve were taken inside of the Nashua facility.

“Sir, what is all this gold?”

“This gold was made by the Millers. They have a machine that turns things to gold. Actually, based on the accounts of that wall, it sounds like they can just make gold out of air. Either way, the device has been taken to Switzerland by economic terrorists. They plan to make and sell gold. Eventually the value of gold will be worthless. We want you to speed up the process.”

Coyle asked, “How, Sir?”

“By getting the word out to the press that this economic weapon is about to be used in Switzerland and that people should not buy any gold. They need to make gold seem as worthless as steel because of how easy it is to manufacture now.”

“But, Sir, what about our gold reserves, aren’t we going to have the same problem? Maybe we should keep the information hidden.”

“Coyle let me be blunt. We want to warn our international allies about this. It’s more important that we help them than we help ourselves.”

Tom would know what this meant. It meant the gold reserves were already sold. The press had to be informed as if the information was new and as if the US had not sold their gold reserves. “Won’t people point fingers at any recent gold sales from the US?”

“There hasn’t been much sold to any one country for it to be noticeable. Do you need anything else? I have to get some work done. I’ll e-mail you all the information and images. I want this on the nightly news.”

“All set, Sir,” he replied.

“Dismissed,” Krinshaw barked.

After Coyle left the room, Krinshaw e-mailed the images as well as all the details. Now all Krinshaw had left to do that day was begin reviewing candidates to replace Peterson.

****

Tom went to his little office as quickly as he could and called the major networks to setup a press conference. After he had contacted them, he quickly called the hospital to talk to his daughter, who had broken her arm. She was doing OK but was disappointed that he was unable to visit.

Along with the e-mail, Krinshaw had sent some video. Tom cleaned it up as best he could, but he was no editor. Still, it was far better than the raw video he had got in the e-mail.

He met the press at 6 pm. He was only able to get them there by saying it was the biggest news they would ever cover. Unfortunately, some of the press had heard that from him before and did not make it on time. He started without them. Any network that did not run the story would pay for it in ratings.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming on such short notice; we have just found out that the Millers are not only murderers but also economic terrorists. Had we not done a residential inspection over a month ago we might not have found out this information until after our economy had been hurt by their actions. It turns out that they have a device that makes gold.” At this point, he brought up a video showing the wall. “Here you can see a wall of gold that was quickly erected by the Millers during their escape. This technology was able to allow the Millers to elude our teams. We have evidence that this technology will be used against us by aiding terrorist nations. In this case, we know the Millers went to Switzerland. The Swiss are notorious for protecting terrorists, which is one of the reasons the UN feels so comfortable there. We are not sure if the gold will be given to the Swiss, to another nation that protects terrorists or even directly to a terrorist group. What we do know is that all sales of gold should be postponed, cancelled, or at the very least investigated prior to the sale to insure legitimacy. So far, our scientists have found no way to distinguish the gold made by the Millers’ Midas machine and real gold from the earth. I’ll e-mail you all photos and video. As always, whatever you choose to use let your colleagues know so none of them are reused. Are there any questions?”

A pudgy man in the front said, “The Millers escaped several days ago. If they made that wall to escape several days ago, why did it take you this long to realize the source?”

“Gerald, we didn’t realize it was made until a few hours ago. This whole thing has taken us by surprise. If not for our perceptive technicians, we would have never known the truth. In addition, if you imply that to the public I’ll hold you personally responsible. I’ll also hold you responsible if that is leaked to an international news source.”

An older woman in the back said, “What about the US gold reserves? How will this affect us?”

“As you know, we have been off the gold standard for so long that it won’t affect the value of our money. The gold will affect our treasury, but fortunately we had no plans to sell the gold any time soon and don’t need the money.” Even the reporters knew that was a lie. While they were unaware that the gold was sold, they knew the state of the economy and the state of treasury. Since the UN made sanctions against the US, most countries refused to lend the US money. Even worse, many countries asked for their debt to be repaid.

A woman with bright red hair in the middle asked, “One of my network’s sources in Panama told us that there was a recent sale of gold to Panama from the US. I know you only just discovered this device, but won’t there be international suspicions that you sold the gold knowing full well that there was such a device?”

Tom had expected this. He had hoped with the last question that nobody knew about the sales. This woman knew full well that gold had been sold to at least one country. She masked her opinion by saying it might be a concern from international sources. “Jane, you’re right about the Panama sales. I hope that international sources will not jump to conclusions, as . . . some people are prone to doing. It is a possible issue, but not one to be concerned with. The sale to Panama was a routine sale and was done before we realized the impending crises.”

She went on, “What about the sales to Cuba?”

“Jane, you may be more informed than me on this issue. The US routinely sells gold, as you now see in evidence. I’ll take no further comments on this and expect that it not be brought up in an implicating manner on the air.” With that, the journalists were silenced as much as they had been when Gerald accused them of prior knowledge. Fortunately, for Tom, terrorist charges could and would be brought against any people who aired a contrary story. Sometimes even stories that made it to the major international news still would not be allowed on US networks.

A bald middle-aged man who was asked, “If gold can be made so easily, won’t the market quickly be flooded with gold as the technology spreads?”

“Well, we’re not sure how complex the machine is that makes the gold. There may be very few countries with the resources to make such machines. However, it is possible. What we are hoping is that we can find a way to identify this artificial gold and label it as such, much as DeBeers did with diamonds. Unfortunately, as was the case with DeBeers, this is real gold and eventually the price of gold will go down. One more question.”

A young women with long blonde hair asked, “What can be done to stop these terrorists?”

Tom smiled, glad that somebody was at least pretending to take his story at face value. He responded by saying, “To start with, we need you to help us get the word out that artificial gold will be on the market soon. I hope that this will protect people from being taken advantage of. We will also contact the Swiss government and try to get their cooperation in stopping them, but we are doubtful that our efforts will have any effect. In fact, we expect that much of the gold will benefit the Swiss government, which makes it unlikely they would want to interfere. That is all the time I have for questions. Thank you all for coming. Please contact my office if you have any further questions.”

With that, Tom walked off and headed back to his office. After e-mailing the photos and video, he called his daughter to let her know he was on his way to see her.

E-mail this Page - Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Home - Next Chapter

Amazon Honor System