Going for the Gold

by Emma Lathen

  “What a bride!” he said with an unconvincing laugh. “No eyes for anybody but Carlo! I’ve never been at any Herr Wennerdonk’s. Come on—”

  But Suzanne was dug in. “How can you say that, Gunther!”

  “I say it because it’s true,” he said with a flash of naked anger. “Will you please shut your mouth—”

  With a muttered oath, Carlo forced his way through the group. Suzanne, after a white-faced glare at Gunther, threw herself into Carlo’s arms. He could feel her trembling.

  “Carlo,” she said against his chest. “Gunther says I am lying. Oh, Carlo . . .”

  Over her head, Carlo met Gunther’s gaze. “What is all the trouble?” he asked, in a tone that stilled Suzanne.

  Gunther was grim. “Your wife says I saw the two of you coming out of a bedroom at Herr Wennerdonk’s. She is mistaken, isn’t she, Antonelli?”

  Blue eyes bored into brown eyes.

  “Yes, she must be,” said Carlo evenly.

  “Carlo!” Suzanne raised her head and stared at him unbelievingly.

  “Be quiet, Suzanne,” he said, this time with unarguable authority.

  Dick Noyes, who had been watching the scene with mounting incomprehension, might have been speaking to them from another world. “Hey, what’s going on with all of you?”

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” said Gunther, resuming his jaunty progress until the public address system thundered.

  “At the request of the International Olympic Committee, the announcement of results for the combined ski jumping has been postponed.”

  Gunther stood stock still, the color draining from his face.

  Chapter 18

  Digging Out

  ALMOST immediately a flying wedge of stewards rushed up. Before any onlookers could assimilate what was happening, Euler was first isolated, then marched to a waiting car. With sirens blaring, he disappeared from Intervale.

  This lightning raid was over almost before it started, leaving behind incredible confusion. Those nearest to Euler had overheard garbled references to “grave charges” and “immediate clarification.” By the time they recovered their wits, the public address system was booming non-stop information about the remainder of the day’s events—at Intervale, at Whiteface, at the Arena, at the hockey rink.

  “. . . and at two o’clock this afternoon the final runs of the women’s slalom will take place. At eleven o’clock this morning, the biathlon meet . . .”

  Meanwhile, the stewards who were not escorting Euler bustled back and began re-establishing order for the next Intervale event, which had been originally scheduled for eight o’clock yesterday, as the loudspeaker declaimed.

  The IOC, like John Thatcher, felt the sands of time running out. Only a ruthless push could jam in all the contests dislocated by the blizzard. All over Lake Placid stewards, judges, announcers and timers were on their mettle. They resembled sheep dogs scrambling and barking to keep the slow-witted herd moving in the right direction, to keep stragglers in line.

  The governing body, although sedentary, was also hustling along. Under the spur of necessity, Anthony Melville and his distinguished colleagues jettisoned the leisurely procedures so dear to their hearts and began functioning with surgical dispatch.

  Gunther Euler was only one of their victims.

  Honoring their treaty with Young Switzerland, the IOC had rushed into solemn conclave about Tilly Lowengard first thing in the morning. But these deliberations had been punctuated by rival claims to their attention. Every time one erupted there was a nostalgic stir around the long table, recalling happier pre-dead-line days when discussion could flourish unchecked. But Melville bulldozed ahead, reshuffling his notes and reconstructing the docket he proposed to flatten.

  “We have to move on. Once we’ve decided how to handle Tilly Lowengard, we have other issues to face,” he said, consulting his watch. There was a heated dispute about a judge’s ruling in the hockey match between Finland and Rumania; Czechoslovakia was appealing the penalization of its luge team because the coach had delivered them to the wrong mountain; a poetic English figure skater had finished his stint on the ice by hauling off and socking his coach.

  And, according to several informants, Der Spiegel was on German newsstands this very morning with an exposé of amateur sports, lavishly illustrated with affidavits, vouchers, and photographs proving a covert cash flow between Wennerdonk Sports GmbH and Gunther Euler.

  Before the blizzard, this appalling roster would have consumed days. But realism had set in with a vengeance, even in the unlikeliest breasts.

  “It’s sad but true,” said Bradford Withers heavily. “We simply can’t give these matters the scrupulous attention they deserve.”

  Melville was dishing out justice, summary or not. “We’ll have to have Euler in, to see if he has any vestige of a defense. I think we should be ready to announce our decisions in about an hour!”

  They were ready in exactly thirty-five minutes.

  Melville read the official document to the very few members of the press who had managed to make it in time.

  “. . . reaching a consensus of opinion,” he droned. There was not one squeak of protest from his brethren who flanked him with the sobriety appropriate to a summit. Consensus had been there all the time; draping it in unobjectionable language was what had detained them. “The IOC has decided . . .”

  To nobody’s surprise, the IOC endorsed all its officials and their rulings, defended regulations even where athletes were blameless, and declined to exercise intrateam jurisdiction.

  Melville moved on to more controversial areas with the same colorless prose. “. . . Miss Mathilde Lowengard. Medical and other evidence exonerate her completely from the charge of having recourse to substances prohibited by Olympic rules. Accordingly, her suspension is hereby lifted and Miss Lowengard will be permitted to compete in the women’s slalom this afternoon.”

  A smoker’s cough from the back of the room made him glare as if tumult had broken out.

  “About Gunther Euler,” he resumed. “We have confronted Mr. Euler with the allegations carried in a current periodical. Mr. Euler cannot, and does not, deny them. There is therefore no doubt that he has forfeited his amateur status by accepting payment for activities as an athlete. The IOC has no alternative but to expel him from this Olympics. The gold medal in the combined jump will be awarded at this evening’s ceremony to Bruno Schecktel from East Germany. Finally, I am happy to announce that weather conditions now permit the resumption of all events. Thanks to the unremitting efforts of the staff, the cooperation of local authorities . . .”

  No matter how Melville camouflaged them with ground crews and trail groomers, Tilly and Gunther Euler were news. And in Lake Placid, news was moving considerably faster than traffic.

  Olympic Village had learned about his expulsion long before Gunther set foot over the threshold. The embarrassed silences, the averted eyes, the halfhearted waves that greeted him were more eloquent than words. Euler hesitated and, quite suddenly, the blinkers of impotent fury fell from his eyes.

  “Fantastic!” he said to himself, resuming his walk. “From a gold medal to a public spanking, all within an hour!”

  The familiar surroundings of Olympic Village only heightened the contrast, the irony, the absurdity of the extremes.

  Gunther preferred to forget the proceedings between acclaim and disgrace. By the time he finished showering, he had managed to do so. The unnerving shock of the IOC’s swooping descent, his own stupefaction at Der Spiegel’s facts and figures and, worst of all, his childishly sullen collapse under questioning first faded, then evaporated.

  Euler was whistling as he sauntered downstairs to show the world that he was himself.

  All the turbulence outside filtered inexorably into the Sloan’s branch in Olympic Village. Everybody who dashed in to cash a check or buy a money order stayed to gossip. John Thatcher and Everett Gabler, working at a desk near the railing, were kept fully abreast of breaking
events.

  But here, too, the specter of a deadline was honing cutting edges.

  “Euler?” Everett repeated brusquely. “The only German athlete in whom I have the remotest interest, Hathaway, is the purchaser of this . . . what was it? . . . this Oswego Indian headdress. With what appears to have been an authentic Eurocheck. John . . .?”

  “Milliken is downtown, talking to the salesgirl at this very minute,” said Thatcher firmly. “But you do remember, don’t you, Ev, that they’re just beginning to tally German and French Eurocheck holders against the varied counterfeit denominations we’ve been landed with.”

  “High time!” Gabler snorted, returning to his long, unrewarding lists.

  With peace restored in that quarter, Thatcher turned to Roger Hathaway. What he saw, reasonably enough, was resentment. Nobody enjoys snubbing dismissal of his conversational coin.

  “The IOC’s fine distinctions about amateurism elude me, although I gather Euler overstepped the mark,” said Thatcher, laying down a pencil to indicate readiness for a brief break. “But I am glad to hear about Tilly Lowengard. It would be a shame if she weren’t allowed to race. When is it?”

  “First thing after lunch,” said Hathaway shortly. Then, with a smoldering look at the oblivious Gabler, he said, “Well, I’d better keep an eye on the tellers. Unless there’s anything I can do here.”

  “Not at the moment,” said Thatcher, with an inward sigh. His regret did not stem from the impasse that was turning Everett so tetchy, but from his own executive shortcomings. When push comes to shove, when the day of reckoning approaches, when the curtain is about to fall, the man-at-the-top has one supreme responsibility, to keep his troops from falling apart.

  Thatcher feared that he was not pulling it off. These were countdown days with athletes and everybody else preparing to leave Lake Placid. Each passing moment increased the possibility that the whole Eurocheck swindle might go unpunished. Everett was growing more fractious. Hathaway, already under strain, could barely meet the demands of current Sloan operations.

  Only Milliken and his band of specialists were happy as beavers with their incessant, meticulous work. And from where Thatcher sat, it did not look as if their dam would be finished in time.

  He sighed again and attracted Everett’s attention.

  “Come up with something, John?” he said alertly.

  “Not yet,” said Thatcher, diving into another one of Milliken’s immensely detailed master lists.

  For a short period they worked in silence amidst the cheerful hubbub of young people swirling in and out of the bank. Then the orchestration changed and Thatcher realized that he was being singled out.

  “Mr. Thatcher! In case we do not see you again, I want to say au revoir. Suzanne and I are leaving this afternoon for Rome.”

  Thatcher rose to greet the Antonellis and wish them well. Suzanne, with her cheeks still rosy from the cold, with a furry hat framing her face, was pretty as a picture. And, Thatcher suspected as he concluded his courtesies, she knew it.

  Meanwhile her husband was chatting without a care in the world. “I was lucky to get tickets to Rome,” he said. “Since it is not too easy to make reservations these days, we thought we’d better skip the closing ceremonies. Besides, with the French team being so disagreeable about Suzanne, I am not sorry to be leaving this Olympics. In fact . . .”

  His remarks might have continued indefinitely but suddenly awareness cut through the bank, freezing everybody in place. Like a figure out of an old-fashioned Western, and Thatcher later decided that the Oswego headdress had summoned this image, Gunther Euler filled the doorway.

  Then he located what he wanted. In two long strides, he joined Carlo, Suzanne and Thatcher.

  “They told me you were in here,” he said heartily.

  Suzanne glanced imploringly at her husband.

  “Gunther, I . . . and Suzanne, too . . . we are both sorry you were disqualified,” Antonelli said. “And I hope you believe that neither of us had anything to do with it.”

  With a deep laugh Euler reassured him. “No, no. That was reporters, always out for dirt. Well, Der Spiegel found it, and who cares?”

  He looked down at Suzanne benevolently. “So I’ve come to apologize. You understand how it was, don’t you, Suzanne?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said with asperity.

  It was Carlo who explained to her. “Wennerdonk’s, Suzanne,” he said. “Where we saw Gunther.”

  When Suzanne nodded, Thatcher allowed himself a significant ahem.

  “Of course, you weren’t there,” Carlo remembered. In a few carefully chosen words he described to Thatcher the squabble about the ski chalet rented by Wennerdonk Sports GmbH.

  All this discretion was wasted.

  “Wennerdonk’s is where I never should have been at all,” said Gunther unrepentantly. “Not when I have my . . . er, arrangement with them. So I said you were mixed up, Suzanne. I thought I had to. But now it turns out that Der Spiegel already knew. So it was all a waste of time. And I hope you forgive me.”

  He put the full force of his personality into a winning smile.

  “Of course I forgive you,” she cried warmly. “And I just wish that . . . that . . .”

  “That the IOC didn’t take away my gold medal this morning?” he finished for her. “Don’t worry about it! I am still the best ski jumper in the world and everybody knows it. Nothing these old men do can change that! I’m all right!”

  Thatcher wondered if Wennerdonk Sports GmbH would take the same view. The commercially desirable golden lad does not solicit under-the-table payments.

  “. . . so they do not worry me at all. And I told them so to their faces,” Euler continued, grandly pulling out a bulging wallet. “I have what I came here for, and now I’m ready to go. I’ll have to cash some checks . . .”

  As Euler continued his challenge to the world, Carlo Antonelli grew restive. “Well, good luck, Gunther,” he interrupted, taking Suzanne by the arm. “We’ve got things to do before we leave. We told you we’re flying to Rome, didn’t we?”

  Euler watched them depart. “The happy bride and groom,” he said, half under his breath. “Between you and me, I don’t envy Carlo.”

  Thatcher, holding his tongue, wondered. Gunther Euler might not want a young, and to all appearances spoiled, wife. But how did an indulgent family, an exclusive ski resort in Cortina, look to him?

  Euler could have heard the question, unspoken though it was. “Everything Carlo’s got, papa gives him,” he said matter-of-factly. “My father works in a foundry.”

  Then, as if regretting this self-revelation, he turned to business. “So, I’m cashing a check. Will 4000 American dollars be all right . . . or should I wait until I get to New York? I’m going to be staying with friends, but we’ll be going out a lot. Of course I’ve got credit cards, but I feel better with enough cash.”

  A trumpet would not have been more effective. Gunther had his audience back, in no way diminished. Carlo and Suzanne had left, but this showy display of wealth drew all eyes, including Everett’s.

  “You did say Milliken was just starting on the German marks, didn’t you?” he hissed in Thatcher’s ear.

  But Hathaway was all business.

  “4000 is fine,” he said, extending his hand for Euler’s checks and signaling a teller.

  When the cash duly appeared Euler could not resist a dig.

  “Maybe I do all those bad things that the IOC gets so uptight about . . . but at least the checks I give your bank are good.”

  While Everett Gabler quivered beside him, Thatcher felt a pang of sympathy for this young giant. He had everything to fulfill the Olympic ideal of gentlemanly amateurism, everything except money.

  “No, despite what the IOC says,” Euler continued, “I haven’t been the worst person here at the Olympics. Compared to the rest—”

  He broke off and swiveled to face the door.

  “Tilly!” he roared, spreading his arms wide.


  Chapter 19

  Radiational Cooling

  TILLY Lowengard came bouncing past the writing tables with Dick Noyes, her eyes shining. After hugging Gunther, she scanned the long lines of customers. Thatcher could tell she was looking for an excuse to shout her good tidings aloud.

  “Bernard! I’ve been cleared to race!” she yodeled joyfully the length of the bank.

  Bernard Heise, who was just finishing up with a teller, stuffed his money into a wallet, smiled broadly, and strolled back to join Tilly at the end of the line. His arrival was a relief to Dick Noyes, who was finding Gunther a major embarrassment.

  Tilly, however, was riding such a wave of happiness that she had soared beyond the reach of social pinpricks. “Oh Gunther,” she cried. “I’m so sorry it didn’t work out for you, too.” Today she wanted a world in which everyone felt as wonderful as she did.

  Faced with this exuberance, Gunther Euler proved his claim to at least one facet of the Olympian spirit— the ability to take pleasure in someone else’s triumph. Leaning down to kiss her cheek, he said steadily, “I am, too, but better one casualty than a whole bunch. And don’t worry about me, Tilly,” he added. “I got my chance to show them what I can do.”

  Dick, casting around for another subject, spied the knot of bankers and recognized a diversion.

  “Say, Roger!” he called. “And Mr. Thatcher! Did you know that Tilly had her hearing this morning and everything’s okay now?”

  Thatcher said he was very pleased, Hathaway stoutly maintained he had never doubted the result, and Everett summoned a wintry smile in honor of the occasion. Thatcher then decided that, in this orgy of felicitation, there was one further accolade to bestow.

  “I understand this is all your doing,” he said to Bernard Heise.

  “Oh, yes. I wouldn’t even be here today, if it wasn’t for Bernard and Egon,” Tilly chimed in eagerly. “It’s a shame they weren’t with me this morning. It was really their victory.”

  Bernard’s zeal for tactics had not been exhausted by Whiteface.

  “I would have enjoyed it,” he said, admitting weakness, “but we didn’t want any last-minute hitches. I knew Melville would back down more readily if I wasn’t there. And Egon, thank God, is in the 50-kilometer cross-country today.”