A Shark Out of Water

by Emma Lathen

  Mr. Elliman, Head of Sloan travel department seeking to broaden the horizons of Sloan executives business travels by including sightseeing, and usually failing.

  Anthony Melville, from Canada, Head of the International Olympic Committee, the IOC.

  Characters only in Shark Out of Water

  Peter von Hennig, European banker, CEO of Finanzbank, longtime associate of Thatcher’s.

  Madame Annamarie Nordstrom, Head of BADA, the organization running the canal. Considered the Ice Queen since she was respected for her balance and control under pressure.

  Stefan Zabriski, Chief of Staff for Nordstrom and BADA. Dedicated to BADA, some thought too much so.

  Wanda Jesilko, Zabriski’s Secretary and lover for five years.

  Colonel Oblonski, Police Officer handling the murder investigation.

  Eric Andersen, Danish environmentalist representative to BADA

  Leonhard Bach, Swashbuckling entrepreneur from East Germany.

  Carol Gomulka, Everett Gabler’s locally hired secretary who speaks Polish and English, comes from Texas, and her husband, Bill, serves as chauffeur and general handy man while waiting to get his computer consulting practice launched.

  Adam Zabriski, Stefan’s son and caretaker in life after his mother died.

  Jaan Hroka, Estonian representative, upset by German influence over the canal.

  Pericles Samaras, Spanish shipper of wit, humor, and insight, a new Thatcher friend.

  Emma Lathen Political Mysteries

  As R. B. Dominic

  31. Murder Sunny Side Up 1968. Agriculture.

  32. Murder in High Place 1969. Overseas Travelers.

  33. There is No Justice 1971. Supreme Court.

  34. Epitaph for a Lobbyist 1974. Lobbyists.

  35. Murder Out of Commission 1976. Nuke Plants.

  36. The Attending Physician 1980. Health Care.

  37. Unexpected Developments 1983. Military.

  Tom Walker Mysteries

  Patricia Highsmith Style

  Deaver Brown, Author

  01. 18. Football, Superbowl & Business

  02. Abduct. Sexual Misconduct.

  03. Body. Planned Eliminations for Money.

  04. Comfortable. Avoiding Consequences.

  05. Death. Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

  06. Enthusiast. Opportunity Murder.

  07. Fraud. Taking Your Chances.

  08. Greed. Heirs Who Know Better.

  09. Heat. Heir Arrogance.

  10. Island. Startup.

  A similarly popular Simply Media mystery series.

  Financial & Other Facts

  Emma Lathen and Tom Walker

  are about money and emotion.

  Simply Media will be offering Emma Lathen and Tom Walker

  eBook Collections at a discount.

  Thank you for reading our series.

  Enjoy and prosper!

  Deaver Brown, Publisher & Editor.

  www.simplymedia.com

  Chapter 1

  Setting Sail

  Wall Street is haunted by ancient visions. Every investment banker is another conquistador lusting after fabled riches in distant lands. Let a sufficiently convincing prophet descend from the clouds and secular Wall Street becomes a community of faith until the victims far outnumber the predators. Then the outbreak subsides, leaving survivors older and sometimes wiser.

  Among them was John Putnam Thatcher, who had learned enough lessons in his working life to reinforce the native shrewdness he had brought to his apprentice years at the Sloan Guaranty Trust. Now, many rungs higher up the ladder, he was CEO in all but name and the Sloan was flourishing despite booms, busts, and soft landings.

  Wall Street had observed this phenomenon. More importantly the staff, having been spared mergers and downsizing, had also taken note.

  Nonetheless, siren songs wafted into the Sloan every day, seductive melodies designed to lure innocents onto the rocks. Some of them, eluding an early warning system, reached Thatcher’s desk. They were followed, on the double, by Miss Corsa and her dictation book. Since unbridled ferocity was not one of Thatcher’s management tools, his occasional thunderbolts were doubly effective.

  But the real peril was not posed by sleeping watchdogs on the perimeter. Thatcher was surrounded by an elite corps of close aides, division chiefs, and assorted experts. Collectively and individually they were trustworthy beyond question, yet at the same time more insidious than any outsiders. They were, after all, closer to the action, exactly where the real mistakes happen.

  So when Walter Bowman poked his head through the doorway of the spacious sixth-floor office to interrupt an informal conference with Charlie Trinkam, Thatcher’s welcome was tinged with latent wariness.

  Large, exuberant Bowman was the Sloan’s highly regarded chief of research, a whiz at excavating shards of information from unlikely sources. His facts and figures were always impeccable but, like all his gifted kind, Bowman could fall in love with his own discoveries. “Not interrupting, am I?”

  “I was just about done anyway,” said Trinkam, Thatcher’s second-in-command, as he sketched willingness to leave his casual perch on the corner of the desk.

  “Don’t go, Charlie. You’ll want to hear this too.”

  Bowman’s transparent attempt at nonchalance redoubled Thatcher’s suspicions.

  “What have you got, Walter?” he asked.

  Settling his bulk in a chair, Bowman beamed impartially at both of them.

  “What do you know about the Kiel Canal?” he riposted.

  Charlie and Thatcher exchanged long-suffering glances. Walter’s standard procedure, when introducing a broad new subject, was to elicit a display of superficial knowledge before fleshing out that pitiful framework with his own exhaustive information.

  “Suppose you tell us,” suggested Thatcher, taking them directly to step two. “Or rather give us the basic outline.”

  It was still closer to a doctoral thesis. “. . . carries more traffic than any other canal in the world. It accommodates all shipments in and out of the Baltic and that’s a helluva lot of timber and machine tools. Now, I don’t have to tell you—”

  “No, you don’t,” said Thatcher, cutting off the shipping minutia in favor of essentials. “Still, in view of its international importance, it’s odd you don’t hear more about it. I don’t believe it’s been mentioned in decades.”

  Charlie had the answer for that one. “No political problems,” he suggested lazily.

  Thatcher nodded. Of course that was it. When England wanted a shorter route to India it had to go to Egypt; when the United States wished to link its two coasts it had to go to Panama. But when Germany decided to dig its way from the Baltic to the North Sea it was able to stay on home territory.

  “All right, Walter. So we have a canal that’s entirely German: location, ownership, operation. What’s in it for us?”

  He settled back, prepared to pick holes in a gush of enthusiasm. Instead he found himself on the receiving end of an accusation.

  “You shouldn’t be here, John. You should be in Davos,” Bowman charged.

  Thatcher blinked. The Kiel Canal? Switzerland? Where was the connection?

  “Shame on you, Walter,” Trinkam said jovially. “Urging John off to the ski slopes so you can pull a fast one?”

  His intervention had given Thatcher time to retrieve the missing fact.

  “The World Economic Forum?” he hazarded.

  “What else?” asked Walter.

  Grand old Davos was keeping up with the times by offering Swiss hospitality and Alpine splendor to rich and famous groups as well as individuals. Every year statesmen and moguls gathered to pool their wisdom amidst conspicuous comforts. Thatcher was the first to admit that the Sloan Guaranty Trust had to be represented, while taking care that the assignment fell elsewhere.

  “This year I passed the invitation on to the international division,” he recalled.

  “They were probably thrilled to
pieces,” grunted Walter, an inveterate critic of the information brought back by the Sloan’s frequent fliers.

  Thatcher was accustomed to this intramural rivalry. “Dissatisfied with the caliber of our delegation, are you? Well, go over yourself if you want. Or better yet, ask Everett to drop by. He’s already in Europe.”

  Bowman took both suggestions at face value and shot them down. “I’m tied up with the comptroller and Ev, much as I admire him, would be a fish out of water.”

  Good gray Everett Gabler served the Sloan with great distinction, but he was a puritanical advocate of plain living.

  “Oh, a short exposure to luxury won’t kill him,” said Thatcher lightly. “Then he can rush back to his poor Czechs and Hungarians.” These much oppressed peoples—and their need for seed money—constituted Everett’s current mission.

  “And I wish him lotsa luck,” Bowman replied perfunctorily. “But he’s not the man for the job even if he’s willing to leave the huddled masses. You are. You see, your pal von Hennig is going to be at Davos. It’s an ideal opportunity for you to pick his brains.”

  Peter von Hennig, recently named chairman of the board at Finanzbank in Frankfurt, was clout personified, both in his own person and as part of the German power structure.

  “. . . and a good friend,” Thatcher conceded. “But I fail to see why I should drop everything to meet him, Walter. He was over here last month and, while we had some very useful discussions—”

  “What did you talk about?” Bowman interrupted.

  “Nothing to put that gleam in your eye,” replied Thatcher. “Look, you’ve given us the Kiel Canal and Peter von Hennig. Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell us what you have in mind.”

  When it came to revealing secrets Bowman tended to ease himself into the subject. “I’ve been picking up rumors,” he confided. “Nothing really solid, I admit. But if there’s anything to it, the Sloan has a chance to get in on the ground floor.”

  “The ground floor of what?” said Thatcher, speeding the tempo.

  “They’re going to completely restructure the Kiel, maybe even double its capacity,” Bowman announced on a swell of triumph.

  Charlie whistled appreciatively. “You’re talking a real megabucks project there.”

  “That’s not all. It looks as if there’s going to be international participation. That’s because . . .” Another flood of information washed over Bowman’s audience. Pruning ruthlessly, Thatcher recapped the tutorial in his own mind. Germany, reunited and back at the crossroads of Europe, was hell-bent on consolidating its position. Wielding deutsche marks instead of panzer divisions, Berlin was reclaiming markets and old spheres of interest. But this program, together with the over-whelming expenses of unification, strained even the vastest resources.

  “Now the Federal Republic is under a lot of pressure to get going on the Kiel,” Bowman continued. “Pressure from all sides, including its own ports. And God knows the plan fits in with their reintegration policies. So the potential returns are tremendous, but it’s going to cost a bundle and the benefits will be shared by a large percentage of the world’s shipping. That’s why they’re mulling over the notion of passing the hat some way.”

  “Germans do not pass the hat,” Thatcher pointed out severely. ‘They solicit participation from the private sector. Of course it would all depend on the kind of syndicate that gets approval.”

  “Which is why you should talk to von Hennig before everyone else does. He’s in the know if anybody is.”

  “Hmm,” Thatcher mused. “It might be worthwhile.”

  Now that he heard a hint of concession, Walter was ready to reveal some reservations. “I’m not sure whether von Hennig will be ready to talk dollars and cents—”

  “He usually is.”

  “—because, as you can imagine, there’s a tremendous amount of red tape to wade through.” Engineers and architects, unions and navies. And, as Thatcher added, “the far-famed German bureaucracy.”

  “Not just them,” Bowman corrected. “You’ve got to include NATO, the European Union and, for all I know, the Court of International Justice. And now there’s BADA too.”

  The brave new world was getting so overcrowded that Thatcher had to ask, “And what exactly is BADA?”

  * * *

  That question, in the opinion of the chairman of the Baltic Area Development Association (BADA), was asked far too often. Annamarie Nordstrom had interrupted a promising political career in Sweden to become not only a delegate to BADA but its first executive chairman. Five years had been allotted for her to create an organization from nothing, to get it airborne and to work out the bugs. Now, at the end of two years and well ahead of schedule, she still had to deal with the total anonymity of her enterprise. Patiently she waited for her latest visitor to produce the customary opening remark.

  “I’m afraid I know virtually nothing about BADA.”

  “I’ll be delighted to tell you anything I can, Mr. Gabler,” she replied cordially.

  This sad state of affairs was, in part, a measure of her success. Ten member nations, five of them from the poverty-wracked east and five of them representing the wealth of Scandinavia and Germany, provided plenty of occasion for division and factionalism. Nonetheless, in spite of early threats to secede and endless grumbling from commercial interests hit by new regulations, damaging schisms had been largely avoided. No member state had stamped out, no lives had been lost under BADA’s new safety regulations, no fishermen’s protest had turned violent. And the net result was a complete news blackout. Nobody was interested in chronicling steady, prudent, undramatic growth.

  As if to prove her point Mr. Gabler had dredged up a fugitive memory. “I do believe that I did see an item in the German press about one of your operations.” This was the final irony. That story had featured BADA’s only major gaffe in public. Fortunately interest had subsided when some fancy footwork on her part had retrieved the situation and ultimately soothed a foaming Estonian delegate and his supportive colleagues.

  “That,” she replied with a pleasant smile that gave no clue to her inner annoyance, “would have been in connection with our monitoring of toxic waste. Our mandate, I must tell you, is extremely broad, covering as it does the provision of marine services, environmental improvement, and economic development at both private and public levels.”

  As the familiar phrases fell from her lips she was covertly examining the spare man across the desk with the tight mouth and disciplined gray hair. She noted with amusement that he was not similarly engaged. Mr. Gabler’s attention was split between listening to her remarks and checking them against the brochure he held. Probably he already knew about her training as an economist and her term as a junior minister of trade. He might even know that her husband was head of a firm making expensive crystal for the international market. Apparently that was sufficient.

  At the end of her speech Gabler pursed his lips. “That sounds remarkably expensive,” he commented.

  “Of course it is,” she agreed readily. “Our services, now almost all in place, have certainly not come cheap. But it’s in the development area that we need all the financing we can get. Our program there began with loans to new entrepreneurs in eastern shipping. Now we are about to award our first grant for a major harbor revitalization.”

  “And where will that be?”

  “The list of applicants has been narrowed down to two, with the final decision to be made by the council at its meeting next month. But I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you that one harbor barely scratches the surface of the problem. You will have seen with your own eyes the state of the Baltic infrastructure.”

  That was one of the great advantages of having BADA’s headquarters located in Gdansk, Poland, thought Madame Nordstrom. The Bay of Gdansk, situated halfway along the Baltic coast, boasted centuries of tradition as a great natural harbor with evidence of its glorious past still visible in the older part of the city. But visitors to BADA, whether delegates
arriving for their regular sessions or bankers in search of investment possibilities, were forcibly reminded that today’s reality was a port decaying beneath their feet. If she had her way, Gdansk would be the last spot on the Baltic to achieve a face-lift.

  “In view of the extent of the undertakings you propose, I would be most interested in seeing your financials,” Gabler said sedately.

  Having already labeled him in her mind as a numbers man, Annamarie was thankful that she had long since perfected her technique for dealing with that tribe. Congenitally suspicious of verbal communication, they tended to regard all general description as designed to obscure the painful numerical truth. It was her standard practice to provide them with a pleasant surprise. Without any warning they were allowed to discover for themselves that, while BADA might be financially modest, it was rock solid. Furthermore BADA was no longer entirely dependent on member contributions. Royalties from mineral development and subscriptions from the private sector were beginning to mount up. Indeed, the new computerized shipping service was generating a very healthy income and even the harbor grant would, in the richness of time, create a steady flow of dock fees. The sound psychology of Annamarie’s understated approach had proved its worth in the past, and today it could almost be viewed as a humanitarian gesture. Mr. Gabler did not look as if he had been receiving many pleasant surprises.

  “Certainly,” she said, a latent twinkle in her eye. “I know you merely dropped by today as a courtesy. Why don’t I have the material prepared for you and we can meet tomorrow to review it? Just let me make sure that our chief of staff will be available. You’ll want to tour our facility and Herr Zabriski is far more competent than I to discuss the technical aspects of our work.”

  “That would suit me admirably.”

  While these arrangements were being confirmed, Annamarie considered the form of tomorrow’s tour. Stefan Zabriski, rightly proud of his equipment on the cutting edge of technology and personnel, would leave no corner of BADA unexplored. Enthusiastically he would expand on hydrology and meteorology as Mr. Gabler, his internal cash register ticking, confined himself to adding up assets. It was remarkable how long two single-minded men could be together without ever realizing that their interests were not congruous.