A Raging Storm Read Online Free PDF

It was now his turn to evaluate .
    “There’s another marking in the photograph,” Storm said. “It identified that individual kilobar as being number 951,951. Logic tells us that this means there were 951,950 identical gold bars minted before it was and that those previous 951,950 gold kilobars also belonged to the Communist Party, not to the Soviet government.”
    “Do you know the price of gold?” Jones asked.
    This was more than a simple question. It was a test. CIA operatives chosen for covert missions were expected to know the worth of precious metals. During wars, local currencies were worthless. But gold and diamonds always could be used to buy information, friends, and supplies .
    “You’re wondering if I still keep track,” Storm replied. “Gold is trading today for $1,770 per troy ounce. That means an individual kilogram bar—like the one in the photograph—would be worth just under $57,000. If you were lucky enough to have the other 951,950 kilo bars that were minted before that bar, you’d have yourself a tidy bit of pocket change.”
    “Nearly five billion dollars’ worth to be exact,” Jones said.
    “No,” said Storm, correcting him. “If you want to be exact, you would have $54,124,326,318. When you’ve been busted and had bill collectors pounding on your office door like I have, you don’t do estimates when it comes to cash. You count it to the penny.”
    That was something Jones had always admired in his wunderkind operative. Even though Storm had been rough around the edges when Clara Strike recruited him, Jones had recognized that Storm had a lightning-quick mind and an amazing ability to remember the smallest details—especially when it came to money and instructions .
    “Any idea where this fifty-four billion dollars in gold came from?”
    Jones didn’t throw many softballs. But this was one of them .
    “The failed ‘bathhouse’ coup in 1991.”
    “Exactly.”
    Storm knew the story well. It had been a defining moment in history. On August 17, 1991, a Saturday, the head of the KGB, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, summoned five senior Soviet officials to a Moscow bathhouse to discuss how they could overthrow Soviet president and party boss Mikhail Gorbachev. Kryuchkov often held meetings in steam rooms because it was one way he could insure that his colleagues were not secretly recording his conversations. While sitting naked, they decided to put Gorbachev, who was on vacation in the Crimea, under house arrest and then use KGB troops and the Soviet military to seize control of Moscow. At first, the diehards seemed to be winning. But that had changed when Russian soldiers refused to fire at a huge crowd of Muscovites assembled outside the White House—the home of Russia’s parliament. Kryuchkov and the others were arrested. Only after they were in jail did the Kremlin discover that the KGB had secretly moved out of Moscow several billion dollars of rubles and precious metals that belonged to the Communist Party. They hadn’t wanted it to fall into the hands of Gorbachev and other reformers if the coup failed. Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and all of the presidents who had followed them had searched for the missing billions. But none of them had succeeded in finding them. Stories began sweeping through Russia. The gold bars had been transported by Vympel soldiers—KGB special forces—to a hidden bunker. The Vympel were much like the U.S. Navy SEALs and were used by the KGB for clandestine missions. They first gained notoriety in 1979 when a team of Vympel operatives assassinated Afghanistan president Hafizullah Amin while he was sleeping in his bed inside the Tajbeg Palace in Kabul and being protected by some five hundred guards. Legend had it that the Vympel officer in charge of hiding the gold had killed all of his men and then committed suicide so that none of them would be tempted to reveal where the billions in bullion had been hidden .
    “When was the photograph taken?” Storm