Bullion

Book excerpt: It was probably the greatest private hoard of gold in the world: two thousand tons of bullion lying in a vault in Zurich, which had to be sold. The Greek who owned the gold believed that he was cursed by it; the American underworld who had accepted it as security for a loan wanted their money back. Yet, its sale on the open market would cause the price of gold to plummet and precipitate a global financial crisis. Two men were separately commissioned to secretly sell the gold to private investors. Eddy Polonski, a metallurgist of genius, was being hounded by the South African gold cartel. Dan Daniels, an international attorney, was brilliant but broke. Both recognized the Greek gold was an opportunity to make millions, but did not realize that there was a ruthless force to contend with: a major international bank, which saw a chance to manipulate the market fix of the century-the Gold Rush of 1979. The price of gold doubled in under three weeks; an event as sensational as the Wall Street Crash. In a blend of fact and fiction, in which the fiction pales in comparison with the fact, Bullion tells the real story.