A Shark Out of Water

by Emma Lathen

  “Psychologically Bach was right on target. By the time Zabriski’s body was found everybody was already thinking the way he wanted them to.”

  “I certainly was,” Annamarie said ruefully. “I was convinced there was a major scandal inside BADA. Stefan’s behavior was so unusual I couldn’t think of anything else that would distress him to that extent.”

  Thatcher shook his head. “After those rebuffs he received in Kiel, Zabriski virtually fell into Bach’s arms. Then he discovered that the man he had publicly adopted was stealing from BADA. On top of that the fraud was possible only because of faulty staff procedures. He must have seen his career tumbling into ruin.”

  With a vivid memory of Stefan Zabriski snarling threats at her, Annamarie Nordstrom sighed. “That would do it, all right.”

  Von Hennig was simmering with frustration. He had barely been able to extract one word from anybody in Gdansk since Leonhard Bach’s arrest. His phone had been ringing nonstop from Germany with laments about the lawsuit by BADA, the condition of the Valhalla line, the rumors of impending bankruptcy. Peter could be forgiven for considering airy theories about Stefan Zabriski’s inner conflicts as mere digressions. “I’m a good deal more interested in this scam by Bach,” he complained to Thatcher. “Nobody in Bonn seems to know the details.”

  “One of the oldest frauds in the book, Peter. Nonexistent assets.”

  “Just how nonexistent?”

  Thatcher grinned sympathetically. A good many creditors in Germany wanted an answer to that question. “When Bach applied for a BADA loan to fund the acquisition of two more ships he presented documentation proving that he already owned five. In fact, he had three. The other two were nonexistent but Bach knew they would put him ahead of the other applicants.”

  Every doubt Peter von Hennig had ever experienced about BADA’s chief of staff was now confirmed. “And Zabriski fell for that?”

  “Indeed he did. I expect he had never heard of Billy Sol Estes.”

  “So that’s how you pronounce it!” Colonel Oblonski broke in. “I couldn’t begin to imagine.” The Gomulkas were still lost.

  “And who is Billy what-do-you-call-him?” asked Carol.

  Before any of the experts could reply, Oblonski spilled over. “Mobile collateral! Salad oil!”

  Thatcher beamed approvingly. On leaving Gdansk, Pericles Samaras had presented the police department with a parting gift, a book describing the classic frauds of the West. Colonel Oblonski had already read every word. The next sharpie in Poland who thought he had invented a new scheme to fleece the innocent was in for a rude surprise.

  “Salad oil?” Bill Gomulka echoed in bewilderment. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “You are too young to remember,” Gabler said with the pity he reserved for those who had missed great moments of history. “But Estes made quite a sensation. He was the largest wholesaler of salad oil in Texas and a prominent public figure there. The collateral he offered for loans consisted of tank cars of salad oil. Only after his empire collapsed did it emerge that, by moving the tank cars around, he had shown the same ones again and again.”

  Carol still saw a problem. “If he was so successful, why did he have to resort to something like that?”

  “Because Estes was not a good businessman,” said Gabler. “He couldn’t continue operations without an infusion of additional capital and that was the only way to get it.”

  Events at Kiel were proceeding so swiftly that Peter von Hennig and John Thatcher were flying to Frankfurt in the morning. While Thatcher’s thoughts turned to the Finanzbank meeting, Peter’s circled more and more about his reunion with a large, gray stallion. Nevertheless he was paying attention.

  “Many men who can start a business are incapable of handling expansion.”

  “Leonhard Bach certainly couldn’t,” Thatcher said. The first time Valhalla posted losses Bach thought enlarging his fleet was the only way to survive. After all, he had served his apprenticeship in the same stifling bureaucracy as Stefan Zabriski and knew what documentation would satisfy the official mind. So he could produce beautiful forged paper and, with suitable camouflage, move around the ships he did have for visual inspection.”

  Once again Peter von Hennig was reminded of Janow Podlaski. “My God, we should have paid more attention to Perry. You remember he boasted he could put an imaginary freighter in the canal and get an insurance company to pay him for it. He was probably thinking of a shell game too.”

  “And poor Stefan wasn’t,” added Annamarie sadly. “He probably never even thought of looking at the ships themselves.”

  There was a hiss of indrawn breath from Everett Gabler. “Gross incompetence,” he said at his most unyielding.

  “Only on some levels,” Thatcher corrected. “Because Zabriski was not skilled in our areas of expertise, it was too easy to dismiss his other attainments. I remember saying to the colonel that Zabriski’s collection of facts about individual ships was useless. But I was very wrong. That’s what finally alerted him to what Bach had done.”

  Annamarie was all attention. “Now that I’d like to hear about. I suppose it had something to do with his review of shipping when he got back from Kiel. That sent him racing around the Baltic, didn’t it?”

  “Actually it started in Kiel the night of our party at the Maritim.”

  Bill Gomulka was beginning to take an intelligent interest in the social habits of big business. “Another party? I didn’t realize it was nonstop. Carol, we’ll have to get more clothes.” Recalling the doldrums of that evening before Stefan Zabriski snatched up his accordion, Thatcher hastened to rectify a misimpression. “Party was a misnomer. Never mind about that. After the musical performance,” he said pressing forward, “Zabriski condoled Bach on Valhalla’s loss from the canal disaster. Bach didn’t know what he was talking about until Zabriski reminded him of the supposed movements by one of his phantom ships called the Gudrun. Bach then tried to sugarcoat his forgetfulness and succeeded for the moment. But Zabriski later realized how odd that moment was. For that matter, I should have as well.”

  Peter von Hennig felt there were limits to the omniscience to be expected from bankers. “Why?”

  “Partly because of you. The Maritim was stuffed with people discussing their losses. Then you came in from your night out complaining the evening had been a dead bore because your companions reviewed the dislocations of every one of their vessels. For heaven’s sake, back in Janow Podlaski Perry had all the details of the insurance claim he was bringing to Gdansk. If people with worldwide operations knew where they stood, it was inconceivable that a small fleet did not know chapter and verse about its losses. And by the time Zabriski was back at BADA, information was pouring into his computer about the plight of every freighter stuck inside the Baltic or prevented from accessing it When he found absolutely no reference to the Gudrun, his suspicions were roused. He probably conned his memory of past schedules and became alarmed when he could recall nothing about two of Bach’s vessels. Then he took off on his trip and Madame Nordstrom is the one who can tell you about that.”

  Obligingly she took up the tale. “Everywhere I went it was the same story. Stefan had reviewed all movements in major harbors by Valhalla. Apparently I wasn’t as quick as you were. It took me until St. Petersburg to catch on. The Gudrun and the Brunhilde simply didn’t exist. Stefan must have been devastated.”

  “Particularly as he expected to be charged with complicity,” Thatcher commented.

  “Now why in the world would he think that?” she protested.

  Bill Gomulka had not wasted his long hours in the BADA cafeteria awaiting Gabler’s pleasure. “Probably because he was always making accusations like that himself. If this had happened to anybody else, Zabriski would have claimed he was a silent partner in Valhalla.”

  “Oh dear, you’re absolutely right.” But Madame Nordstrom was still extending tolerance to her late chief of staff. “If only Stefan had had the sense to protect h
imself. He shouldn’t have tried to handle things on his own.”

  “A strange criticism,” Oblonski said severely, “from a woman who ran around by herself doing the same thing.”

  Her serenity unimpaired, she said sweetly, “But scarcely in the same way. Every night I sent a tape back home to Stockholm. In the unfortunate event of my demise there would have been proof abundant of my activities.”

  Once again she had the last word and once again the colonel did not like it. “It is unbelievable to me,” he muttered, “that Zabriski thought a confrontation with Bach was the ideal procedure.”

  “Zabriski must have longed for an alternative explanation,” Thatcher reasoned. “Bach probably said there was a minor mistake and that he could prove it the next day, anything to prevent immediate action.”

  “And Stefan would have wanted to believe that so much,” Annamarie lamented.

  “Then, with time in hand, Bach planted his rumors in the lounge before lying in wait by Zabriski’s car. After you left us that evening, Madame Nordstrom, Bach started to speculate in a way that almost forced Peter to snub him. No doubt he wanted an excuse to leave that seemed inspired by someone else. As I said, he was clever about people.”

  Von Hennig did not like to think that he had been manipulated by Bach, even in so inconsequential a matter. “Cold-blooded bastard,” he grated. A somber nodding of heads attested general agreement.

  “At least he was facing a genuine threat with his first murder,” Carol said indignantly. “But with poor Wanda Jesilko, he didn’t even wait for that.”

  Annamarie was stony-faced. “It took me a day to realize that she was going to retrace Stefan’s steps. Bach was faster off the mark than I was and he was taking no chances.”

  “He took plenty of chances. The man was a fool,” Oblonski said angrily. “Without a motive for him, I had to place Herr Bach to one side. But after Frau Jesilko’s death there was no doubt who led the pack when it came to opportunity.”

  Thatcher could almost hear the jovial voice of his host at the party. “Bach arrived just as Wanda was unveiling her travel plans.”

  Everett was more property-minded. “Furthermore Bach rented the house and was familiar with the geography.”

  “It was more than that,” Oblonski insisted. “Whenever I questioned the staff, their replies were filled with complaints about Bach. He was always bursting into the kitchen, he was always dashing out to hurry the deliverymen. Nobody would have noticed his absence outside for five or ten minutes.”

  “You know,” Thatcher said thoughtfully to Annamarie, “you have plenty to complain about in Bach’s dealings with BADA. But you must have paid him back when you asked to leave by the rear door. The last thing he wanted was attention drawn to that exit.”

  Colonel Oblonski reinforced this impression. “That’s why he never mentioned your departure to me,” he told her. “It wasn’t until you described it that he pretended to remember. And no wonder he was nervous. By my calculations you approached him just after he returned from murdering Frau Jesilko.”

  “He must have been appalled,” she decided with open satisfaction.

  “But motive was the real problem with Frau Jesilko,” the colonel continued, “because I could never understand what she was up to, with you, with the younger Zabriski, even with Eric Andersen.

  “That is because you misread Wanda from the start.”

  Oblonski raised arctic eyebrows. “Indeed?”

  “Although Wanda was fond of Stefan she did not have a high opinion of his common sense. She saw herself as someone who had to protect him from the consequences of his own folly,” Annamarie expounded. “When he was murdered I’m sure she felt she had failed him. But she was convinced that Stefan had gotten himself into trouble with his canal enthusiasm. Wanda was on the wrong track entirely and I wonder how Leonhard Bach will feel about that.”

  “I wouldn’t count on a wave of remorse,” Oblonski advised. “If I didn’t understand the Jesilko woman, you don’t understand types like Bach. He’s convinced that he had no other choice. It was hard luck that Zabriski became suspicious, it was too bad that Wanda Jesilko couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  Carol was taken aback by this analysis. “I guess I don’t know much about people,” she confessed. “Mr. Bach seemed like such a nice man when I talked to him at his party. I would have sworn that he was a cheerful, uncomplicated optimist.”

  Out of his newfound knowledge, Colonel Oblonski said gravely, “Just such a one was Billy Sol Estes.” Thatcher thought Carol deserved a fuller explanation.

  “Basically there are two kinds of people who commit fraud. There is the professional with his intricate system and then there’s the casual optimist, like the clerk who needs a $100 for a sure thing at Belmont. He’s always confident he can replace the money after he’s won his bet. Bach and Estes didn’t think they were stealing, they were simply arranging financial accommodation. It is a form of irresponsibility, and the colonel is saying that Bach goes one step further. He doesn’t feel accountable for any action, including beating a man’s brains in with a tire iron.”

  Shuddering delicately Carol said, “I’ll take the professional any day then.”

  “There’s another distinction between him and the cheerful amateur. The money he steals sticks with him. The lowly clerk simply enriches his bookie.”

  “And what about the big-time company men?” asked Bill Gomulka.

  “Estes was so determined to succeed that he undersold his competition. That’s why he didn’t make sufficient profit. The same was probably true of Bach. The real beneficiaries were the customers who got salad oil and freight shipping at bargain rates.”

  Gabler could not resist pointing a moral. “And so, young man, build your business prudently with adequate attention to your price structure. Do not expect easy, painless solutions.”

  Carol broke into gales of laughter. “But I’m the cheerful optimist in this family, Mr. Gabler. Bill always spots 10,000 difficulties at every turn. He even saw problems with the suggestion that Gerhardt Enteman made.” German software kings were right up Everett’s alley. Within minutes he and the Gomulkas were deep in the subject. At the other end of the table trouble was brewing.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t manage to become another corpse,” Colonel Oblonski was saying to Annamarie.

  “I had the sense not to make my plans public.”

  “You mean you displayed your customary reticence about taking the police into your confidence.”

  “And how glad I am that I didn’t,” she flashed back. “With my methods BADA was able to file its lawsuit and you, I might add, were spared the ministerial haggling that would have allowed Leonhard Bach to escape.”

  Before these hostilities could escalate Peter von Hennig weighed in with a more tactful rendition of Madame Nordstrom’s defiance.

  Momentarily ignored by his guests, Thatcher had time to examine this variegated trio. They could have been figures in a morality play. To the right sat the policeman, dark symbol of the rigidities of the East. On the left was the banker, epitome of the freewheeling West. In the middle sat Scandinavia, embodying the conviction that extremes were unnecessary. Then, more realistically, Thatcher decided this was the theater of the past. The one thing certain about the continent exploding under his feet was that the new Europe would in no way resemble the old.

  Madame Nordstrom, noticing her abandoned host, sent him a friendly smile. Raising his glass to her, Thatcher assembled his stray thoughts.

  “To all of you,” John Putnam Thatcher said with a final toast!

 

 

 
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