In just ten minutes the rotating chain had cut up to the main deck. Savich watched spellbound as the deck began to glow from the heat of the teeth cutting the metal, and then the chain emerged in an eruption of torn steel and cut through the freighter’s railings as though they weren’t there. A sophisticated braking system stopped the chain, and the entire mechanism retracted toward the ceiling. The dismembered section of hull had already been secured to a rolling crane that spanned the shed. The crane lifted the hull slice as the forward doors opened and the four small locomotives backed in to accept the load.

“They will lay the piece on its side out in the yard,” Singh explained. “Men with hand cutters will chop it up to send to the steel plant. The only parts we can’t cut with the saw are the ship’s main diesels, but they are easy to remove once we cut our way into the engine room. By hand it takes two weeks to scrap a ship this size. We can do it in two days.”

“Very impressive,” Savich repeated.

Shere Singh led the Russian back toward the elevator. “So what is it Volkmann sent you around the world to tell me?”

“We’ll discuss it in your office.”

Fifteen minutes later they were seated in an office attached to the largest bungalow. Framed pictures of Singh’s eleven children were arranged along one wall dominated by a studio portrait of his wife, a heavyset dowager of a woman with a bovine expression. Savich had declined a beer and drank bottled water instead. Singh drank through a bottle of Filipino San Miguel and was on his second by the time Savich had his briefcase opened.

“The consortium accepted everything Volkmann and I proposed,” Savich said. “It’s time to expand what we already started.”

The Sikh laughed. “Was there any doubt?”

Savich ignored the sarcasm and slid across a file. “These are our projected needs for the next year. Can you fulfill them?”

Singh perched a pair of reading glasses on his large nose and scanned the list, mumbling the salient figures. “An additional thousand immediately, two hundred a month first two months. Four hundred next two. Six hundred after that.” He looked across at the Russian. “Why the increase?”

“Disease. By then we expect typhoid and cholera to run rampant.”

“Ah.”

Their discussion of specifics over the next several hours was Savich’s way of making certain Singh fully understood the plan he and Volkmann had perfected since learning of the German central bank’s intention to sell off their gold reserves. To his credit, or perhaps discredit, the Sikh had an inherent grasp of criminal enterprise and was even able to contribute a few inspired refinements.