Double, Double, Oil and Trouble

by Emma Lathen

  Postponing the Macklin Board of Directors did not postpone Macklin for any appreciable time.

  “John,” Bowman came on the line. “How’s the weather over there?”

  “Raining,” said Thatcher briefly, reflecting on the rich variety of atavism lurking at the Sloan. Miss Corsa feared evil spirits inhabiting computers. Walter Bowman, who spent nine-tenths of his time on the phone, insisted on horse-and-buggy niceties.

  Thatcher was not paying transatlantic rates to find out if it was raining in New York. “What’s on your mind, Walter?” he prodded.

  “Macklin,” said Bowman succinctly. “John, the papers here are having a field day with these murders of yours.”

  Thatcher ignored the attribution. Bowman had not flagged him down for ponderous whimsies or idle curiosity.

  “It set me thinking,” Bowman proceeded. “Macklin closed off a fraction yesterday. But on the whole, it’s been holding up pretty well, considering what’s happening to the averages. But if they fumble Noss Head, I have a hunch that there could be a slide. Not that we have a helluva lot. But if you’ve heard anything, we’d better take steps.”

  Thatcher contemplated this shorthand.

  “As yet, there are no solid indications that Macklin has been compromised here,” he said. “True, there is enough uncertainty to cut with a knife, but it is being kept out of official channels. Or, at least, out of some official channels. The Department of Energy is pushing ahead with our financing discussions as if the police were not out in full force. The British are eager to get Noss Head into production and so is Macklin.” Finishing his own analysis, he went on: “Is the market saying something else?”

  Right or wrong, market opinion was always worth a hearing. Management weighed everything it could see; the market examined management, too.

  “I’m not sure,” said Bowman. “Right now, my guess is that everybody’s been shaken up by the headlines. But if Noss Head proceeds according to schedule, the worry will die down. Of course, any more bombshells—”

  “In the context of recent happenings,” said Thatcher, “that is an unfortunate metaphor.”

  “What’s that? Oh, you mean down in Houston?” Bowman jogged his memory. “Hell, Wylie was good riddance to everybody. I don’t know about the wife, though. Well, if you hear anything, pass it along.”

  This specialist attitude was not heartlessness, Thatcher reflected. Bowman simply had another way to look at Macklin.

  Thatcher himself was going to improve on it—by not looking at Macklin at all. He consulted his watch. Thanks to ducking George, he had finished with the Sloan earlier than expected. His next appointment was not until late in the afternoon.

  Between Miss Corsa and equipment leasebacks, a stretch of free time beckoned.

  Thatcher decided to fill it profitably at the National Gallery.

  But before he got to the portrait of Oliver Cromwell, Charlie Trinkam, warts and all, caught him.

  “John, are you sitting in at British Petroleum this afternoon?” he asked, overtaking Thatcher at the curb.

  “I have another engagement,” said Thatcher, shamelessly.

  Charlie was preoccupied. “Hell!” he said, as a cab pulled up. “I wanted to get you before I forget the gory details. But I’m late for MacFarquar already.”

  Hardened by his recent exposure to the Sloan, Thatcher would have gone his way if Charlie had not added: “Either Shute’s crazier than a coot, or there’s something rotten in Denmark.”

  “Something New York will hear about?” Thatcher asked, mindful that rumors do not stop at the water’s edge.

  “If they do, we’re in for some real fun.”

  Thatcher’s conscience got the better of him. “Come on. I’ll drop you off. You’ve got until we reach BP.”

  London taxis are notoriously comfortable and ample, but London traffic is notorious, too. Charlie had time to spare for a report of his morning’s haul.

  “You may not believe it, but you’re attracted by Shute’s theory,” Thatcher accused as they crawled along.

  “Well, you’ve got to admit it’s a beautiful wrinkle,” Charlie countered. “Oh, Volpe must be right that Engelhart didn’t take a dive. But what a sweet way to make a payoff. I’ll tell you one thing, I’m revising my opinion of our pal Shute.”

  “Upward or downward?” Thatcher asked dryly.

  Charlie replied with cheerful amorality. “It’s too early to say. I have to wait until I know if Shute is just pretending to overlook the practical difficulties.”

  “There certainly are plenty of them,” said Thatcher. “Klaus Engelhart could not deliver Noss Head to Macklin. In the first place, the NDW performance was so good that everybody was surprised when Macklin edged them out. Engelhart may be clever, but I refuse to believe he would risk such fine tuning. Furthermore, I think he is on a tight rein. Pleuger was not giving him much room to maneuver.”

  “And there was no way to buy off NDW,” Charlie said, just as they pulled up to British Petroleum. He was too busy struggling with his umbrella to notice that Thatcher was reaching quite another conclusion.

  Thatcher was barely conscious of his departure.

  “Where to?”

  “Trafalgar Square,” said Thatcher, rousing himself, although second thoughts convinced him that the National Gallery was receding steadily. Right now, words were worth a thousand pictures. Cavemen may have painted walls, but they told stories around the campfire first.

  Thatcher lacked the campfire. But he was beginning to think he had the ingredients of a story.

  Start with some definitions by that grizzled hunter, Walter Bowman. Throw in Arthur Shute, trying to appease the forces of darkness. And for chorus, you could add Roberta Ore Simpson.

  If it was not an epic, it was a damned good cautionary tale, Thatcher thought, debarking at his destination. Heedless of the rain, of clouds of pigeons, of bustling shoppers, students and tourists, he began to stroll around the fountain. The moral of this particular fable was too simple to miss. But, as he turned his back on the National Gallery, it occurred to him that his source materials had to be similarly obvious. His bards, after all, were twentieth-century Americans. Their omens and portents came from tax returns, not solar eclipses. Expense accounts and ledgers had replaced the entrails of a cockerel long ago.

  If you interpreted Macklin’s drama in terms of standard operating procedure rather than poetic license, what did you have?

  An accounting record for the costs of a crime . . .

  A passport revealing two trips to Zurich . . .

  A long-distance call originating from the wrong telephone . . .

  “Good Lord,” he said, stopping short to the peril of two sari-clad women behind him. Barring the car crash, which was an act of God, and the murders, which were acts of desperation, this was the one perfect crime for an otherwise honest man. The rewards were great and the risks were minimal.

  Abruptly, Miss Corsa rose to haunt him. To her, there was no such thing as a minimal risk or an unnecessary precaution. If she had arranged that kidnapping in Istanbul. . .

  One unnecessary precaution would be enough. Thatcher was in the mood to gamble on a long shot. Narrowly escaping injury, he plunged across traffic, forgetting to look to the right as he headed for a taxi.

  “Yes,” he agreed with the driver, “it does take an American a while to get used to looking in the opposite direction. But I think I’ve got the hang of it now.”

  It was a curiously apposite remark.

  His subsequent exertions touched off three fruitful conversations.

  In Istanbul, Captain Harbak was bemused.

  “. . . no, while we looked at everything else, we did not look at that. If you are correct, it will be small consolation that Houston also erred. But it will take a moment. . . . Pezmoglu, bring me the copy of the ransom note. . . .”

  In London, an hour later, Herr Leopold Grimm examined his surroundings with dismay.

  “. . . naturally, every effort to
apprehend these criminals. However, I must tell you that such a place as this, with pictures of naked women wherever one looks, does not fill me with confidence.”

  In Grosvenor Square, good old Endicott Forbes was himself.

  “. . . anything the embassy can do to help. Interpol? Oh, I’m sure somebody here knows how to get in touch with them.”

  By the time John Thatcher reached Imperial Dominion the next morning he had labored long and hard. Entering the conference room late, he discovered that he was not the only delinquent.

  Charlie, already sitting next to Paul Volpe, looked up to greet him. Then, in an undertone, he said: “What have you been up to, John?”

  “Quite a lot,” said Thatcher with truth.

  “You look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”

  “I hope not,” said Thatcher. But he had no regrets, either. The mechanics of problem solving were always exhilarating. Murder did not make them any less so.

  Unfortunately the future was going to be filled with painful debris. Intensive salvage efforts would take care of the corporate damage. But there was no such remedy for the personal tragedy of a man who had stumbled blindly from one crime to another, until he found himself a double murderer.

  To be forewarned is not always to be forearmed. Thatcher had made one miscalculation by underestimating the speed of the forces he had set in motion.

  “Boy,” said Hugo Cramer heavily, “will I be glad when you experts hammer out all your numbers. I’m fed up with all this talk. I want to get back to work.”

  With an oblique look at MacFarquar and Nicholas, across the table, Arthur Shute bantered clumsily. “You’re more at home in the field, aren’t you, Hugo?”

  “It depends on the field,” said Cramer unhelpfully. “Look, what are we waiting for? I’ve been here for half an hour.”

  “We’re waiting for Livermore,” said Volpe wearily. “You know that, Hugo.”

  “Well, why the hell don’t we start without him?” Cramer rumbled, flushing a confused babble of explanation from the English and advice from Charlie.

  “Relax, Hugo,” he said. “A few minutes one way or another—”

  “Yes,” Shute broke in. “Where is Livermore? Paul, why don’t you go call his office and make sure he hasn’t forgotten.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—” Nicholas began.

  “Yeah, Paul, go on,” said Cramer crudely.

  Volpe got up and smiled unhappily at Nicholas. “All right if I use your phone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  When Volpe left, complete silence descended. No one ventured any small talk. Since Francesca Wylie’s death, any attempt to simulate normalcy foundered on what was said, and what was not said.

  “Perhaps we should start considering these investment credits,” Thatcher said, to dispel the general embarrassment.

  “Yes,” said MacFarquar eagerly. “We can sketch it in. Then, when he gets here, Simon can give us the department estimates.”

  “Great,” said Hugo sarcastically. “We sit here and work our butts off, then we do it all over again when Livermore gets here.”

  “For God’s sake, Hugo,” protested Shute.

  Just then, Paul Volpe returned, his face drawn.

  “Did you get Simon?” MacFarquar asked, happy to abandon Cramer.

  Paul Volpe might have been reciting a schoolboy poem. “They’ve arrested him at Heathrow. He was on his way out of the country—and they arrested him.”

  This time it was shock that stilled the room.

  Then, like a storm bursting, their voices began battering against each other with questions that had no answer.

  And quietly, two large men pushed Paul Volpe to one side and advanced on the table.

  “Hugo Cramer? I have here a warrant for your arrest...”

  Chapter 22

  Refining the Crude

  “So Hugo Cramer was the SOB behind everything,” Norris Upton marveled. “To think I’ve known that guy for years and I never figured him to run around Houston bombing cars.”

  “And some British civil servant was involved, too, wasn’t he?” George Lancer mumbled without lifting his eyes from the ornate menu.

  “Surely it would be preferable to allow John to tell his tale in an orderly manner.” The words were those of Roberta Ore Simpson, but the tone, mellow, benign, non-censorious, was not.

  If Thatcher had been surprised that his report to Macklin’s outside directors was taking place in an uptown New York restaurant, he was even more surprised at the extent of the report they required. To all appearances, even the newspaper accounts had passed them by.

  It took him some time to realize that vintage wines, out-of-season asparagus, and rack of lamb represented a song of triumph that had nothing to do with Macklin. While he had been gallivanting around the British Isles, his companions had been fighting on other fronts. For example, Miss Simpson, on a flying trip back to campus in Michigan, had uncovered an audacious coup in the making. Faculty, students, deans, and alumni were conniving to replace her with a 22-year-old husband-and-wife team. Defeating this unnatural alliance and its appalling standard bearers had been an invigorating but time-consuming interlude. The foes of Norris Upton sprang from an older tradition. By the skin of his teeth, he had retained control of Upton Enterprises against the combined attack of his two sons. It had been a ferocious proxy battle, even by department-store standards. True to form, George C. Lancer had not been a combatant, only a mediator. He had been sucked into New York City’s latest fiscal crisis, to emerge a sadder but wiser man.

  Naturally the absence of juvenile intellectuals, voracious offspring, and His Honor, the Mayor, encouraged an atmosphere of euphoria. No man could have asked for a better audience.

  “Thatcher can do it any way he wants,” Upton said, holding a wine bottle to the light. “Here, son! Another one of these.”

  The speed with which the order was filled gave Thatcher pause for thought. It was axiomatic that every busboy in New York could distinguish Savile Row tailoring from Brooks Brothers. But were the personnel of La Garonne also connoisseurs of Stetsons, boots, and silver trappings? Could they tell at a glance if they were dealing with off-the-rack buckskins? Thatcher decided they probably could. After all, everyone at the Sloan knew that the real money these days was in the Sunbelt states. The headwaiters of this world are never far behind its bankers.

  George Lancer had finally decided that hothouse strawberries were worthy of the occasion. Setting aside his menu, he said mildly, “Yes, but first John has to tell me what was really going on. You mean Dave Wylie wasn’t stealing for himself?”

  “Precisely. What’s more, we had Klaus Engelhart constantly telling us that if there had been no kidnapping, Macklin would not have won the Noss Head bidding. He said the right words, but gave them the wrong interpretation,”

  “I fail to see how Mr. Engelhart’s statement clarifies anything.” For once, Roberta Ore Simpson did not sound like a college president. She was simply offering a neutral fact.

  “Come now, Roberta,” said Thatcher, taking the plunge into intimacy as he let the axe fall. “What if I rephrased his sentence and said that Macklin would not have gotten Noss Head if a million and a half dollars had not changed hands?”

  It was a godsend for all of them that she had her recent victory to sustain her as the implications of his words sank home. She was almost bereft of speech. “A Lockheed payoff,” she whispered hoarsely.

  Thatcher bowed his head in silent assent.

  Norris Upton’s views on bribery were, to say the least, a good deal more flexible. But he liked to see the thing done right—no publicity, no bombings, no Scotland Yard arrests.

  “For God’s sake!” he demanded. “Why do it in front of TV cameras?”

  “Because that was an integral element of the plan. Let me start at the beginning,” Thatcher suggested. “When the Noss Head job was first announced, Wylie realized that it was his big chance. He immediately went to work. He becam
e familiar with the customers, he fed information back to Houston, he nagged Cramer into producing a Macklin bid that was a virtual replica of British needs. Inevitably he came to know Klaus Engelhart and the NDW bid. Engelhart was not ingratiating himself with anyone. He took the position that his offering was superior and the Department would be fools not to choose it. Wylie was a salesman pure and simple. Instead of realizing that Engelhart was suffering from youthful arrogance, he accepted this evaluation. Wylie could see his golden opportunity going up in smoke, unless he managed to fix the race. It was at this point that he redoubled his hospitality to the Department of Energy. He was no longer making friends; now he was looking for someone corruptible, and in Simon Livermore he found his man. But almost immediately, he ran into problems.”

  “I should hope so!” Miss Simpson grated.

  “Mainly thanks to you,” Thatcher said generously. “Hugo Cramer said the plan was impossible. There was no slush fund in existence. Arthur Shute would never authorize its creation, and the new accountants made it impossible to establish one on the sly. Nor were Wylie’s difficulties confined to the payment end of the bribe. Simon Livermore was petrified with fear at the action he contemplated. Bribery is not a way of life in England—far from it. So Livermore’s conditions were almost impossibly exigent. Nobody at Macklin except Wylie and Cramer was to know that there had been a bribe, let alone the identity of the recipient. There must be absolutely no paper record leading to him. The money had to be laundered and relaundered. Given all these obstacles, Wylie’s grand plan seemed doomed to abortion. And then one day—no doubt after reading of a terrorist outrage in South America—he was visited by an inspiration. He could not only meet Hugo Cramer’s objections, he could achieve a small miracle on the receiving end.”

  Norris Upton only saw half. “So he could fool Arthur Shute. But what did this do for Livermore?”

  “Livermore insisted that there be absolutely no paper record, and that is not easy when you’re talking about a million and a half dollars. Even the Watergate burglars were paid by check. Both Charlie Trinkam and I have spent our lives transferring funds from one place to another. But, as we lugged those briefcases in front of TV cameras, neither one of us could remember ever doing it with cash before. For that matter, I doubt if there are any other circumstances in which Arthur Shute could have persuaded George to count out over a million dollars in small denominations—not without a lot of questions.”