Chapter 30 Wang Chen - 1

At dawn on September 14, 1957, Tudor Angel left Los Angeles.At nine o'clock he reached Barstow, where he stopped for coffee and an apple steak.Angell was a heavyset man with a square jaw; as a young man he was an amateur boxer and had fought some thirty fights, winning eleven by knockout.His ancestry was Romanian, so he had dark shining eyes, and was articulate and eloquent, with a perfect grasp of the gift of babbling empty words, especially when he had nothing to say. It's time. According to the instructions in the letter, he left the interstate about eighty kilometers out of Barstow and turned left onto a road leading east of Death Valley.

The letter he received said: Arrive in Tonopah at four o'clock, go east six miles after Tonopah, take Highway 6, then turn left, and follow Highway 8 (A) for ten minutes Three miles to Route 82, which is an unpaved road... It's almost like hunting for treasure. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, he crossed the California state line and entered Nevada.He ate a spicy hamburger at Devil's Fast Food and then continued driving north, bypassing Las Vegas because the letter said, "Please don't drive through Las Vegas." At a quarter to four he drove through Tonopah.He didn't stop, and went straight through the city, onto Route 8 (A) to Battle Mountain and Elko.Then it turned to the unpaved Route 82...

The road twists and turns and winds its way up between two parallel mountain ranges, Monite and Torquaman, which reach an altitude of three thousand meters and are completely forested. "Twenty-seven and a half miles further on, there is a creek and a narrower path on your right, marked 'Mud Well.'" Angel went that way. "After about two miles, you'll see a hut on your left." The cabin, he realized, was really just a solitary pile of ruins on a rocky platform, next to a cave. "Please wait there." He turned off the engine and suddenly felt a dead silence all around him.The sound of the door opening seemed horribly loud.He walked toward the cabin, which was empty as if it had been unoccupied for a long time, but he noticed a fire that had just been kindled.He looked into the nearby cave, where water was dripping from cracks in the stone.He got back in the car, turned on the radio, but then turned it off, feeling it was inappropriate to listen to the radio in such a remote place.

Half an hour later, he sensed that someone was coming, so he got out of the car, looked up, and felt his pulse speed up.A slender figure was walking along the path, his footsteps were as light as those of a hunter, not disturbing even a stone. He recognized Reb Klimrod. "The mines first," Reber said. Leiber spread out a map on the hood of his car.Angel saw that it was full of symbols such as crosses, circles, bars, and triangles. "Look closer, Tudor." He took a closer look, and saw that there was a box next to each symbol and a letter with a line under it. "Tudor, the cross is Lovelock, the circle is Circle, the three lines are Three Fingers, the triangle is of course West Triangle, the square is Chase and Wilson... the rest is easy: H High Hall and Weston, G Goldman, and so on...”

The names of these companies are no strangers to Angel, and they are somewhat familiar.Then he remembered. "These are companies you asked me to build five years ago." "There are eight others. Please mark my words." Leiber memorized the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of the trustees, relevant lawyers, and banks, and every time a banker was mentioned, he had his address and personal telephone number.After he finished speaking, he asked, "Did you remember everything?" "take note of it." "I want you to take this map and make a list based on this map, indicating which mines and veins each company has. You must take all necessary measures to deal with the trustee and the entrustment agreement. Go through the inspection, and check the escrow agreement in your own name. Please note the number of the registered title document. When you are finished, please give these to Setiniaz as usual."

"Submit in person?" "Submit it as it is." Angel looked at the map in a daze, and was surprised at the same time. "My God, how many mines did you buy?" "Three hundred and fifty-three. I didn't buy one, and I still worry about it." "Are they all gold mines?" "Yes. When you have finished using this map, please burn it." "Of course," Angel said.He looked at Klimrod, who had long hair, a beard, and a green snakeskin headband on his forehead.He would have looked almost Indian were it not for the pale eyeballs that gleamed so brightly in his thin, suntanned face.

Angel thought for a while and said, "Five years ago, you bought some gold mines scattered in the Rocky Mountains. They had one thing in common at the time, that was, they were not profitable. One ounce of refined gold was nothing more than Thirty-forty dollars, because the official exchange rate has not changed, it has been thirty-five dollars an ounce. Do you expect any changes?" Reber didn't answer, just stared at him coldly.He forced a smile, and quickly said, "I take this question back." "I didn't hear your question," Reber said. "Now let's talk about land. You write this down, will you?"

It was getting dark.Angel had to get a flashlight from a small cabinet on the car's dashboard. "I'll hold it for you," Reber said. An Gaier kept writing, but he felt more and more confused in his heart. "That's all," Reber said at last. He returned the flashlight to Angail, and began to wander in front of the dilapidated cabin.At this moment, the cabin was almost completely hidden in darkness, making it seem that everything that happened was unreal. Angel quickly flipped through his notes, and then made a rough estimate〇 "About fourteen thousand hectares..."

"It's thirteen thousand eight hundred and nine hectares." "And add the ones you bought in 1951-55." "At that time, we bought 16,653 hectares. A total of 30,462 hectares. 1,412 pieces of land belonged to 64 companies. . "Almighty God!" Angel exclaimed. At this moment, one can hear Leiber's serene, slow, and forbearing voice saying in the thick night: "I don't think God has much to do with it. Tudor, after you've done everything that needs to be checked and inspected, be sure to hand it over to Setiniaz. Tudor?" "What's the matter, Reb?"

Angel thought to himself: Where did he go?At this time, I can't see my fingers. "Thank you for being here. Thank you for helping me over the past six years. Not long ago, I passed by the house you bought in the Santa Monica hills. It is beautiful, and you paid $122,000 for it Totally worth it. I saw your children too, and you have every reason to be proud of them. I vaguely remember that October 3rd will be your twentieth wedding anniversary. Am I right?" "Yes." Angel said.He was under the domination of two contradictory emotions: on the one hand, infinite admiration and respect, full of friendship for Reber; It seems to contain some kind of threat.

"You're still interested in Romanian painting, Tudor?" "This is the medium through which we first met." "Fate has brought me a fine painting by Theodore Paradis, a painter on the same level as Matisse, or almost on the same level. I would be delighted if you would accept it .The painting will be ready in about two weeks—by the morning of October 2, I guess. Now, Tudor, let's go." "This place is so lonely. Shall I drive you somewhere else?" "No, thanks, Tudor. Go to Las Vegas as planned. A room is reserved in your name at the Flamingo Hotel. Your team is probably there already?" "It has been done as you requested." There was a silence.Suddenly, the light-eyed "Indian" was standing at the open door of the car, and he made no sound before approaching. "Now, come on, Tudor, please. I've been invited to eat beans with a local gold digger, Fergus MacTavish. If he sees me getting out of such a fancy car, Will treat me like a billionaire and knock me an extra hundred dollars when he sells me one of his mines." Due to his diligence, resourcefulness, and unwavering loyalty to Reb Klimrod, Tudor Angail became a royal servant from a black dog. The gold mine operation was carried out according to a tried and tested scheme: each small company owned one or more mines, managed by a trustee.This trustee is only a nominal mine owner.In fact, everything he owns is entrusted to a mid-level trustee who controls several lower-level trustees.According to the stipulations of another entrustment agreement, the middle-level trustee himself took orders from a certain prince, this time Tudor Angaier.He was the only person who knew Leiber and was obligated to Leiber by yet another trust agreement, and he himself controlled all the mid-level trustees for which he was responsible. Each of the princes always thought of himself as the sole agent, thinking that Klimrod was an eccentric billionaire who wanted to remain anonymous for personal reasons.Some people think that Klimrod himself is also an agent, and there may be someone behind him, maybe a certain group, or even a certain country.Take Nick Petridis, who always thought Klimrod was a shipowner; Angel saw him as a shrewd speculator in land and gold; Santana thought he was an oil magnate; Sim believed for a long time that he was a rich man who would not speculate himself. The Goldfields operations in Nevada, Colorado, and the rest of the Rocky Mountains were undoubtedly the easiest series of operations Wang commanded. From 1951 to 1957, he invested a total of 3,296,000 U.S. dollars in buying gold mines in succession with great care.These gold mines are virtually unprofitable, and most of them have been abandoned for forty years.If calculated at the legal gold price of thirty-five dollars per ounce, the gold that can be extracted cannot even cover the cost of mining. Klimrod told Angail that there were 354 gold mines in total, and this was the number of gold mines that Angail finally recorded and completed the procedures for mining rights.However, there was another group of people working at the same time as the Tudor team.These three hundred and fifty-four gold mines are only part of the gold mines that Klimrod purchased in large quantities between 1951 and 1957. In the end, he became 2,211 gold mines. Master of the mine. Then the price of gold continued to rise.Gold, which was only worth $35 an ounce in the 1950s, reached an astronomical price of $850 an ounce on January 21, 1980. Two years ago, in February 1978, all these gold mines resumed mining. Not only that, but Nessim Shah also bought gold on behalf of Klimrod with an annual investment of US$200,000 to US$1.5 million.At first the price of an ounce was $35, then rose to $80, and in December 1974, after the opening of the gold market in the United States, it was $180 an ounce. Wang's profits as of January 1980 were estimated at $4.355 billion, unmistakable.