CITY AND SUBURBAN
The black eagle has landed this must be the gold of the Romanovs
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Rare visitors to the market in gold are black eagles. Dealers must learn to look out for them. They can be recognised by their distinctive plumage and cry of 'I gotta horde! I gotta horde!' Then come the breathless tidings ('Not a word to anyone — think what would happen to the price if this got out') that a diver in an Austrian lake has put his hands on Hitler's gold. Variants on this theme bring in Ferdinand Marcos, Idi Amin and the Shah of Iran. It is true that the Shah backed his currency with his crown jewels. I once went to see them in the basement of the state bank in Tehran. There were several thrones stud- ded with boiled sweets, and an elegant doll's-cup carved from a single emerald. Now, I suppose, they are the stuff that black-eagle stories are made of — after all, they must be somewhere . . . The biggest and blackest eagle of them all, though, is the gold of the Romanovs. The Tsars of Russia backed their currency with gold, and 80 years ago the last Tsar went to war armed with the world's biggest gold reserves. They were twice the size of Britain's. They, too, must be somewhere, but where? The eagles can tell you After all, if the Bolshevik hit squad could somehow miss the Grand Duchess Anastasia (and she, or a black eagle claiming to be her, kept on turn- ing up) it could miss the family's gold. Not a word to anyone, of course, but the train-load on the Trans Siberian Railway, at the mercy of the local warlords — well, a diver in Lake Baikal . . . What this mystery has lacked is a financial detective. Now enter William Clarke, like Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone, to pursue the vanished treasure and provide the explanation.
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