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According to the author's somewhat breathless account, when Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita ("the Tiger of Malaya") moved to Manila in 1944, he took charge of several billion dollars' worth of gold that the Japanese had accumulated in their conquest of Southeast Asia. The bullion was cached in underground caves dug by U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war, who were then buried alive with it. Seagrave claims that Marcos was able to disperse the gold with the aid of a murky global network of coconspirators, including Swiss banks, a London-based bullion cartel, right-wing American political groups (among them, the John Birch Society) and -- guess what? -- the CIA.
The Marcos Dynasty, which ends with Imelda and an ailing Ferdinand flying off to exile in Hawaii, falls into the morbid subbranch of literature that Joyce Carol Oates has dubbed pathography. As such, it is a book with notable flaws. Seagrave, whose previous works include a biography of China's legendary Soong sisters, writes with glum prosecutorial fury, treating as credible any rumor of lurid conduct -- Imelda's alleged lesbian orgies, for example -- that helps his cause. When venturing into broader areas, like Washington's postwar foreign policy in the Far East, the author lapses into a crude historical revisionism, rejecting as paranoiac fancy any suggestion that leftist + insurgencies along the Pacific Rim might have been Communist influenced.
Finally, Seagrave seems so concerned about building an indictment that he fails to answer the question of what really made Ferdinand and Imelda tick. What drove them to accumulate billions they could never have spent in three lifetimes? What possessed her to buy those infamous closetsful of unworn shoes? Still, the author does persuade us that his subjects, Ferdinand in particular, were paradigmatically venal. Lyndon Johnson, no mean connoisseur of cads, may serve as final witness. After one encounter with the self- glorifying Marcos, L.B.J. called in Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy and warned, "If you ever bring that son of a bitch within 50 miles of me again, I'll have your job."