Читать книгу Torch for a Dark Journey - Lionel Shapiro - Страница 4
ОглавлениеThis is the story of a foreign correspondent bent on a mission which promised that rarity among newspaper feats, a genuine scoop. It happened in western Europe during three days of June in 1949. But the newspaperman involved, Philip Channing by name, was not entitled to full credit for the ultimate sensation. He had nothing to do with the discovery of the story. This took place in the Bankers’ Club in New York....
James S. Marriner, president of World News Service, was on this day having his regular midyear lunch at the club. Being a meticulous person as to both time and money, it was his habit to meet with his investment banker twice a year, in June and December, which seemed to him frequent enough to hear a personal report on the state of his conservative holdings. His host, Richard Felson, senior partner of the investment house of Chartman, Felson & Company, had telephoned that morning to confirm the date. He seemed unusually anxious about it.
The reason for his anxiety was not immediately apparent. Marriner’s bonds scarcely changed from year to year in market value and yield, and the business of the occasion was dull, as usual, and quite completed by the time a waiter removed their dessert plates and put down a fresh pot of coffee. It was a gray June day. From their table by a window atop the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway they contemplated Governors Island, which lay far below, an uninteresting blotch on the dull harbor water.
“How is the market today, Mr. Felson? Up or down?”
“Sideways,” the banker replied. “Just sideways.”
They had been meeting thus for more than thirty years and still called each other Mr. Marriner and Mr. Felson.
“That’s the trouble, Mr. Marriner,” Felson continued. “When your business is brisk, mine is bad. You people publish too many scare headlines. Investors won’t step into the market.”
Marriner said, “We don’t make the news, you know.” He glanced at his watch. It still lacked ten minutes of two o’clock. He poured a fresh cup of coffee for himself.
At the same time Felson looked at his watch. He had ten minutes remaining to him. Marriner always took his leave at two o’clock.
He said, “You’re not interested in a flier, are you, Mr. Marriner?”
“You mean a speculation?”
“More or less.”
“No, sir,” Marriner said decisively.
Felson flicked his nose and looked wise. “There’s something awfully good going. Clayfield Oil.”
The other gave a rather comfortable shake of his head. “Not for me.”
“The stock’s way down, around 26 today. And yet Justin Clayfield has one of the best-run companies in the business. I know. We handle his personal holdings. It’s going up, Mr. Marriner.”
“Never bother with oil stocks, Mr. Felson.”
Felson said, “I thought you might be interested in this. Everybody knows why Clayfield’s dropped. The company spent fourteen million last year on land leases in northern Texas and they’ve gone for about five million more trying to make the fields pay. Drilling’s expensive, you know, especially when you drill in the wrong spots.”
“I suppose.” Marriner was plainly uninterested.
“Another thing. Clayfield is in Europe. He’s been there for two months and a lot of people wonder why. He’s an old Texas wildcatter, not the kind to run away from trouble.” Felson leaned across the table and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I found out this morning.”
“Why?” It was Marriner’s news instinct, not his cupidity, that impelled the query.
“Just this.” Felson’s fingers rapped lightly on the table to emphasize his hushed words. “He went there to see if he could hire the one man who can pull him out of the hole. A Czech called Gregor Karlene. The name mean anything to you?”
“I’ve heard of him. Scientist, isn’t he?”
“A geophysicist, to be exact. What’s more, he’s a legend in the oil business, although curiously enough he’s never been in it—commercially, that is. He won a Nobel Prize, oh, some twenty years back. Got it for developing the Karlene magnatometer. It’s a well-known thing, practically standard equipment for oil surveying all over the world. Besides that, Karlene himself is a genius in his way, like a doctor who can take one look at your complexion and tell you whether you’ve got gallstones or ulcers. This fellow can examine a field and put his finger literally on the exact spot to drill. He made Ploesti what it is, and the eastern Slovakian fields.”
Marriner was interested but dubious. “Why hasn’t anybody hired him long before this?”
“My God, Standard offered him half a million a year before the war. He just wasn’t interested. Curious fellow. Never accepted anything except a grant from his government. You know the kind—pure scientist. He headed up the geophysics department at the state university or whatever they call it in Czechoslovakia, until his retirement.”
“Then how can Clayfield get him?”
Felson smiled. He knew he had gained Marriner’s close attention.
He said, “Prague’s been behind the Iron Curtain for over a year now. Clayfield played a hunch. He figured Karlene might not be so damned patriotic with the Communists in charge. So he flew over a couple of months ago to see if he couldn’t get him out. A man like Karlene could make Clayfield’s holdings show a profit overnight.”
“What happened?”
Felson held back enjoyably. It was not often that an investment banker found himself commanding a dramatic situation. Then he whispered, “I got word this morning that Clayfield has succeeded. They’re meeting in France.”
“That’s interesting,” Marriner said in a matter-of-fact way which rather deflated the other.
“It was all very cloak and dagger,” Felson went on. “Bribery at the border, disguise, and all that. The Czechs were watching Karlene like a hawk. But he’s out. And when the news leaks, Clayfield Oil will jump twenty points. I’m convinced of it.”
Marriner said promptly, “I wouldn’t touch an oil stock with a barge pole.”
“That’s your privilege, Mr. Marriner.”
“But I’m interested in the story. Do you think, Mr. Felson, I can put a man on it without—well, I don’t want to break a lunch-table confidence. You know what I mean.”
Felson shrugged. “Clayfield can’t keep it a secret. I don’t suppose he wants to. He doesn’t like his stock dragging its fanny on the ground any more than I would.”
“I suppose you’re buying in on Clayfield Oil.”
“That’s my privilege.”
Marriner said quickly, “If we published the story, I dare say it would help the stock.”
This was Felson’s turn to be matter-of-fact. “Let me put it this way. It would accelerate the rise.”
Marriner glanced at his watch and came abruptly to his feet. “Well, I’ll look into it. If it’s a legitimate news story, that’s all I really care about. By the way, where are they meeting?”
The banker consulted a slip of paper.
“Place called Bonnar in northern France. The Hotel Spa Bonnar.”
2
When Marriner returned to his office he instructed his secretary to look up the name of Gregor Karlene in the “morgue.” Presently she returned carrying a dusty folder thick with yellowing tear sheets.
The man was indeed a world-famous scientist. There was a picture of him as he received the Nobel award from the King of Sweden. A score of clippings from various Sunday science sections described his research in the field of geophysics. A 1936 copy of Life magazine contained a layout on the scientist and a cross-section diagram in color of the Karlene magnatometer. What interested Marriner intensely was a yellowing cut from the New York Times which showed Karlene in a pose of intimate friendship with Beneš and Jan Masaryk.
He said to his secretary, “Ask Bendels to come in.”
Jack Bendels was chief of the foreign desk of World News Service. A slight man, still under fifty, with an enormous expanse of forehead under his thinning hair, he had moved up steadily in twenty years from copyreader to the top news executive job. Some said he was lucky. The correspondents who worked under his direction knew better. He was honest, immensely capable, and ruthless. He fired men for ineptitude without a flicker of pity, and when a correspondent received a cable reading OKAY—BENDELS it was almost as good as a Pulitzer Prize though not as profitable.
He came into Marriner’s office with a lethargic step. He always moved in a lazy shift, the legend being that he had developed this mannerism in order to disarm those meeting him for the first time.
“Something important, Chief?”
Marriner pushed the Karlene clippings across his desk and while Bendels studied them he recounted in full detail the story he had heard at the Bankers’ Club.
Bendels was a long time reacting. Finally he said, “Sounds like a plant. Clayfield’s trying to use us.”
“I’m sure of it,” Marriner agreed. “But what about Karlene? Do you see a story?”
“If it’s true.”
“Well, handle it in your own way.” Marriner had a certain fear of interfering with Bendels, a fear born out of respect for his judgment.
Bendels made two or three slow and aimless circles around the office. Then he said, “I’ll put Channing on it. A good tough boy, Channing. He’ll spot the difference between a story and a stock promotion.”
Marriner nodded. “All right. Channing. Where is he?”
“I’ve got him in Brussels digging material on Leopold’s exile. That can wait,” Bendels said, and he eased out of the room like a creaky old man.
3
When Felson returned to his office he asked his secretary, “Any cables for me?”
She replied, “Just the one this morning, the one from Mr. Clayfield.”
“Good. Then take this for Clayfield. You know the address. Say, HAVE CONTACTED MARRINER OF WORLD NEWS SERVICE STOP BELIEVE SUCCESSFULLY STOP. Uh—better add CONGRATULATIONS. That’s all.”
He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his stomach, and gazed out of the window with a wry, boyish curiosity as harbor tugs far below shouldered their way through the gray water.
