Odessa Sea (Dirk Pitt 24)

“It all makes perfect sense. It’s my blunder, I’m afraid. My blunder.” He set down the glass with a quivering hand and stared, wide-eyed, at the group. Shaking his head, he muttered, “Where else would they have put it?”

• • •

MARTINA SAT on the second-story balcony of their rental flat, seeming to sun herself but in fact scrutinizing the pedestrian traffic on the street below. When she heard Mansfield complete a telephone conversation in the adjacent living room, she stepped inside and closed the balcony door. “Did you arrange for a boat to get us out of Gibraltar?”

“Why, no.” He gave her a bemused look.

“It is not safe. We should leave tonight.”

“Leave?” He laughed. “Just as we struck gold?”

“What are you saying?”

“The letter you took from the British historian.” He waved Trehorne’s copy. “It has the answer after all.”

“But we were at the Nelson Tunnel. They said it was empty. Did they lie to us?”

“No. The fools were pursuing the wrong clue. On a lark, I phoned your London banking friend to see if he had any contacts in Gibraltar. I read Bainbridge the letter and he said the answer was obvious.”

“What was obvious?”

“The storage. It was made at AEB Nelson. He didn’t know the Nelson reference but said the AEB could only be one place. The Anglo-Egyptian Bank.”

“Only a banker would know that. What is this bank?”

“It was a private British bank established in 1864 in Alexandria to fund trade with Egypt. It acted as the primary bank to the British authorities throughout the Mediterranean. A branch office was opened in Gibraltar in 1888.”

“It must be long gone by now.”

“Actually, no. The bank was acquired by Barclays in the 1920s and is still operating. The Gibraltar branch is even in the same location.”

“You think the gold is still sitting in this bank?”

“It’s possible. Bainbridge says there is some logic in the British having placed it in a private institution rather than the Bank of England. He called it ‘plausible deniability.’”

“How do we find out?”

“I just called our embassy in Madrid. They’ll have a diplomat here in the morning with a formal requisition.”

“It might be a bit embarrassing for you if it isn’t there.”

“Agreed. That’s why we’re going to pay them a visit now and find out.”

“Now?”

“There’s no time like the present.”

“We better not take a cab. How far is it?”

“Less than a kilometer. The bank is located on an oddly named street. Lime Kiln Steps.”

The former Anglo-Egyptian Bank Building was a neoclassic structure with a façade of tall doric columns and a high-pitched roof, which disguised its modest interior size. Located near the site of an eighteenth-century kiln that produced quicklime for mortar, the rear of the structure backed against a rising incline of the Rock.

Mansfield stopped in front of the building, noting the year 1888 engraved on the cornerstone. A plastic BARCLAYS sign hung over the front pediment, covering the stone-carved letters AEB.

Mansfield wore dark glasses and Martina was concealed under a hat and scarf when they stepped into the marble-floored lobby and approached an information desk. Mansfield looked past a row of cashiers’ stalls to a large stainless steel vault door. It was built right into the limestone rock.

A woman at the information desk greeted them warmly, but, before they could respond, a man in a dark suit emerged from a side office and rushed over to them. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said in a flustered voice, “but the bank is now closed.”