Chapter 13 – The Billionaire Adversary
Later that evening, after dinner, Roger told Gwen about the serious incident on The Battery. Gwen said, “I’m glad you’re ok.” She didn’t ask for details, or try to perform a sociological analysis about why some kids develop that mindset, she just sat with her husband.
The next morning, after breakfast, Roger was himself again. He shed the one event of the day before, and focused on the other. The other event was figuring out who sent Glissy into their home, with a still unknown intent. This was Catherine’s last day in Charleston. She had a redeye to LA, and a meeting with Spielberg the following day, so Gwen and Roger spent the day with her. They went out to lunch, with Catherine eating only Charleston specialties. One thing she really liked about traveling to places like Charleston was that she was not as well-known as she was in Europe. In France or Italy, when she went to a restaurant, she had to make special arrangements, so she could eat in relative peace. Most of these restaurants offered to close down to the public so she and her friends could enjoy themselves, but she rarely chose to do this. She liked people, and liked being in public places; she just asked if someone could keep the other diners from getting too close. She understood the effect she had on many people, especially men. That was her life. Here in Charleston, they had a quiet lunch.
Afterwards they walked the two blocks to the Charleston Library Society. Gwen had taken Catherine there before, and Catherine liked its ambience. She wanted to talk with Gwen and Roger about her idea for a movie about Champagne, so the three sat in the beautiful reading room. Catherine did most of the talking, and Gwen did some talking, and Roger did a lot of listening.
She said, “My character will express the ideal that elevating culture is a good thing for any society. We’ll do this via a story about the Champagne region, and the winemaking culture, and the people involved. Great wine, like great food and great art, is a life elevating experience.”
She said she recognized the paradox in this.
“High culture takes money to experience, and most people don’t have that money. How many people have been to an opera? How many to the Louvre? How many have eaten langoustines sautéed in garlic and butter, served with a white Bordeaux? But I think great art can influence societies. Spielberg makes movies for many types of people, and has the talent to show things to many people.
“Are you liberal or conservative?” she asked. “I don’t believe in a philosophy that calls for equality of results. I do believe in equality of opportunity. I don’t want to live in a homogenized society, with everything dumbed down to a common denominator.”
This would be her pitch to Spielberg. Champagne as romance, Champagne producers as family units, Champagne as earth and rain and sun, the wine as a symbol of the enjoyment of life. It sounded good to Roger and Gwen, and they helped Catherine refine and develop her idea. They wondered if they would be in the credits. That evening they took her to the airport, and were sorry to see her go.
Now it was time for the Junes to get down to business. Who was Glissy? And who did she work for? The next morning Roger thought of asking Gwen to take a walk with him on The Battery, but quickly remembered. It would be a while before he went back there for a stroll. So they sat in the study, and Roger went through the suspicion that had developed before the incident with the punks.
He reminded Gwen of the housewarming party on Kiawah, attended by Ashley Archdale, president of the Huguenot Society and amateur historian who knew all about Huguenots from Europe. Roger said, “Jinny invited Archdale because Jinny actually thinks people here walk around thinking of themselves as Huguenots, and he wants to meet some. Archdale is a socialite up there in the ranks with Gale. He knows all the rich and famous. He met the Gromstovs on Kiawah, and saw the antiques, and maybe figured out they were Russian antiques. And then he asks himself, how do so many Russian antiques show up at a housewarming party in Charleston?” Roger looked at Gwen, who sat listening to his train of thought. She had not yet made the leap, so Roger said one word: “Stirg.”
Gwen said, “Oh, shit. Archdale told Stirg.”
Stirg meant Pmirhs Stirg. He was a recluse, or wanted to be a recluse. He was not entirely successful in this, partly because of his past, and partly because of his present. His past was very high profile in several places around the world, and his present was eccentric, which occasionally produces the unwanted result of getting ones name in the local newspaper. Stirg was a lawyer, now retired from international law. This meant he specialized in how one country’s laws interface with other country’s laws. If a person broke the law in Japan, but was a Greek citizen who now happened to live in Zimbabwe, Stirg knew how to defend that person’s interests. But that was a minor field in which Stirg had applied his knowledge, skills, and abilities. For many years, flying under most radars, he had been a Nazi hunter. He did this for two reasons: 1) after showing some significant successes early on, people started paying him large sums of money, and 2) because he was a Russian Jew whose parents had died, very young, in World War II. During the late 40s and early 50s, he had grown up hardscrabble in a small Russian port town outside Saint Petersburg. He was practically a baby then, but old enough to learn to hate Nazis. Being smart as all get out, he prospered after leaving Russia, and turned his talents towards the not mutually exclusive goals of making money, and getting back at the people who killed his parents.
His greatest achievement was confirming beyond all doubt what many people had claimed, that a lot of Nazis had gone to Argentina after the war. Many famous Nazis. And they still were there. Stirg found this expatriate community, and over many years he went on to find a number of individuals. Some were brought to justice formally and publicly, and others were brought to justice privately. Pmirhs Stirg became two fundamental things: very wealthy and very hard.
Stirg applied his talents in international law in other areas too, around the world. Despite his hardness, his various motivations, and his many successes, he was not indefatigable. Eventually he retired, with his wealth. Ten years ago he came to Charleston because of his only granddaughter, Anna, child of his only son, who died young. Anna liked to play tennis as a kid, and at age seventeen, decided she wanted to play tennis at the College of Charleston, which has a great team program. When Stirg checked out the college and the town, he learned some interesting bits of its early history. The charter for the new Carolina Colony was written by the famous English philosopher John Locke. By 1800, South Carolina had more Jews than any other state, and Charleston had more Jews than any other town in America. South Carolina was the first place in American to elect a Jew to public office, and was the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America. That was enough for Stirg, who was looking for a low profile place to retire, one that had a warm climate, and Charleston fit the bill. So he and Anna had lived in Charleston for ten years, and Anna now was twenty-seven years old.
Gwenny June Page 12
