Going for the Gold Read online

  Arnie Berman, Waymark-Sims seasoned cigar chomping investment pro.

  Claire Todd, Ken Nicolls secretary.

  Burton Claster, the almost retired head of the Sloan Investment Division known as a “knucklehead” throughout the organization, who keeps getting the Sloan into bad investments including National Calculating Corporation among others.

  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 Going for the Gold

  Yves Bisson, German long jumper, shot dead.

  Roger Hathaway, Sloan Lake Placid Bank Manager.

  Captain Phil Ormsby, Policeman in charge of the murder.

  Coach François Vaux, French Olympic Team Coach.

  Suzanne Deladier, French skater that went on the Saranac snowmobile trip.

  Dick Noyes, American amateur, the lowest member of the downhill team, one of the few, whose victory was just to get to Lake Placid.

  Gunther Euler, German jumper, on the Saranac snowmobile trip, who moved into the lead with the death of Yves Bisson.

  Carlo Antonelli, Italian veteran on the Bobsled team, invited to Saranac by Yves and Gunther.

  Tilly Lowengard, invited to Saranac with Dick Noyes.

  Katerina Maas, worked in Administration, separately with Coach Vaux at Saranach.

  Vera Darskaya, Defecting Russian Gold Medal Ice Skating champion.

  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.

  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

  Barometer Falling

  TIME is money almost everywhere. On Wall Street, the reverse holds true as well. Money shapes the local calendar with 90-day yields, quarterly dividends, and annual reports. Day is done in the financial world when the market closes, not when the sun sets. For most practical purposes, the Copernican system is irrelevant.

  But not even Wall Street can dismiss all natural forces. Ultimately sub-zero temperatures, spring floods, and summer droughts are reflected in balance sheets and trade deficits, CPI’s and COLA’s. Accordingly people gather at regular intervals high above the streets of Manhattan to contemplate rainfall in the Ukraine, frosts in Brazil, and the price of fertilizer.

  At the Sloan Guaranty Trust they did so twice a year. And despite the importance of these subjects to the third largest bank in the world, the audience of senior Sloan executives was invariably restive.

  “I think it’s about time to begin. We’ve dug up some stuff about Common Market pork imports that you’ll find interesting,” said Walter Bowman, who was chief of research and an incorrigible optimist.

  He was happily ensconced behind a mountain of data with two agricultural economists flanking him. At the ready was a large screen upon which charts, tables, graphs, and other visual aids were destined to flash.

  Resignation blanketed the conference room as inexorably as the snow was falling outside.

  “Just a minute, Walter,” objected Charlie Trinkam. “Aren’t we waiting for John?”

  John Putnam Thatcher was senior vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust and the man for whom everybody present worked.

  “He’s out of town for a couple of days, Charlie,” said Bowman, riffling his papers. “Now you all remember the French position on trichinosis—”

  But Charlie, who automatically became acting head of the Trust Department during Thatcher’s absence, would not let him continue. “Out of town?” he said with pained surprise. “When did this come up—and where did he go?”

  “Miss Corsa said something about Lake Placid,” Bowman said vaguely. “He took Everett with him.”

  Rarely had life presented Charlie with such an acceptable excuse for ducking corn-hog ratios. “Well, I’m going to see about this,” he said, already scraping back his chair.

  Ten minutes later he was casually perched on the corner of Miss Corsa’s desk. “Lake Placid? I suppose that means Brad Withers twisted their arms.”

  John Thatcher’s Miss Corsa was a pearl among secretaries. When it came to Bradford Withers, president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, she was forced to be tactful.

  “Mr. Withers wanted their opinion about the Sloan operations at the Olympics,” she replied.

  “Oh, sure,” said Charlie with a grin.

  His skepticism did not derive from the facts as stated. The Sloan Guaranty Trust was official bank to the Winter Olympics now in progress. Three Sloan branches in Lake Placid, New York, were serving athletes and visitors from 42 countries, as well as the home-grown thousands converging on the tiny Adirondack community.

  “But if anybody’s claiming that Brad’s keeping tabs on what the Sloan’s doing up there in the snow . . .” Trinkam let an eloquent, disrespectful gesture round out the sentiment.

  Miss Corsa did not approve. “Mr. Withers was very enthusiastic about having the Sloan named official Olympic bank,” she said. “After all, he is a member of the Olympic Committee.”

  Trinkam snorted. “What did John say about having to dogsled up to this winter wonderland?”

  Her faint flush told its own story.

  Because, as everybody at the Sloan except Miss Corsa freely admitted, President Bradford Withers, man of many enthusiasms, did not number banking among them. Small boats, big game, first-class hotels, and five-star restaurants monopolized most of his attention and virtually all of his time. The Sloan rarely benefited from his counsel or his presence. It took the Winter Olympics to keep him in the continental United States in February. This was not an unmixed blessing.

  “Say what you will,” Trinkam mused aloud, “when Brad’s trotting around Tunisia, he’s not dragging John away from the office.”

  Since no one knew better than Miss Corsa that John Thatcher really ran the Sloan, she did not comment.

  “And if the three of them are looking at banks,” said Charlie, deeming it time to return to Walter Bowman’s recitation, “I’ll eat my hat!”

  His homburg was safe. 300 miles away, John Thatcher was watching the French team practice the soaring perfection of the 90-meter ski jump. It was a scene of unforgettable brilliance. The sky, ominously grey back at Exchange Place, was a clear blue canopy over the white mountains. Against the cold glitter, multicolored flags snapped in the wind, and gaily clad spectators were silhouetted against the snow.

  Color, light and breathtaking performances were all exhilarating.

  “Makes you proud to be a
n American, doesn’t it, John?” Brad Withers said happily.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Thatcher, trying to decipher exactly what Withers had in mind. Since they had just spent an hour watching the West Germans practice, and were now watching the French, it was not simple nationalism. Thatcher decided that it had to be the phenomenon itself. “Lake Placid and the whole committee have done a remarkable job organizing this Olympics,” he added, tactfully ignoring last week’s mismanaged transportation, ticket sales, and award ceremonies.

  Withers swelled with pride. “It took a lot of hard work, John. Plus real devotion to Olympic ideals.”

  “I believe you,” said Thatcher, with truth. Prodigies of effort had gone into preparing Lake Placid for this climactic 12 days. Buildings and roads had been built and rebuilt, traffic controls and security systems had been planned and implemented. Everybody from the Federal Government to the Lake Placid High School had labored mightily, so that figure skaters could twirl around the Arena and bobsledders could flash down Mount Van Hoevenberg, while 50,000 spectators on the spot and untold millions around the world looked on.

  Thatcher did not doubt the hard work. Brad’s contribution was another matter.

  “. . . setting a new world record,” Withers was saying, as he narrowed his eyes to follow another member of the French team.

  “You mean the speed skaters?” asked Thatcher. He and Everett Gabler had been in Lake Placid for barely twenty-four hours, and already they had witnessed six world records being shattered. Maintaining keen interest in tiny increments of distance or speed was increasingly difficult.

  “No, no,” Withers harrumphed. “The jumps tomorrow morning! It’s between the Germans and the French, they tell me. That’s why I want to stay to see this new Frenchman—Bisson. He’s got a good chance to break the record and beat that German chap—what was his name?”

  Thatcher had never heard the blond Viking’s name, but he was not called upon to say so.

  “Of the German jumpers, no doubt there is that Gunther Euler is prima.”

  The voice, which came from behind Thatcher, belonged to a sausage-shaped man almost hidden by giant binoculars. The sentence structure misled Brad Withers.

  “A very fine young athlete,” he said gravely.

  This, it developed, was diplomacy misplaced. Mr. Zoffski, Everett Gabler explained meticulously, was not German. He was a sports commentator for Bulgarian National Television.

  As such, he was a serious student of the Olympics. It was inevitable, Thatcher decided, that Zoffski should have floated into Gabler’s maw. One of the guiding maxims of Everett’s life was that, if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well. He would have preferred to remain at his desk on Exchange Place. But if duty required his attendance at the Winter Games, then they would be subjected to the same searching analysis he customarily extended to U.S. Steel.

  “Yves Bisson,” Mr. Zoffski was saying portentously, “he is to the Germans the big thread.”

  Withers, after worrying about the distinction between thread and threat, continued on a lofty level. “The American jumpers, I regret to say, are weak this year.”

  Zoffski paused to let the excitement greeting a fine French jump die down. Then, with the authority of a sports pundit, he said, “Yes, they always are. But in the grand slalom, there you have a good chance.”

  “Ah, the grand slalom!”

  Withers, as Thatcher and Gabler knew to their cost, was capable of now examining prospects of every single forthcoming event. By common consent they both withdrew several paces. With the Sloan’s president safely engaged by the Bulgarian expert, it might for once be possible to watch part of the extravaganza that was absorbing an entire township. Elsewhere crowds were watching hockey players and ice dancers. In Olympic Village athletes were resting in their dormitories—or, more likely, lining up in the cafeteria, watching movies, dancing off their surplus energy or reading the Daily Olympian. Reporters from all over the world, as witness Mr. Zoffski, were buttonholing coaches and judges. TV cameras were explaining “biathlon” and “luge” to viewers who had never heard of them before. At long last buses were steadily shuttling muffled crowds from Keene and Saranac Lake. It was a beehive of frenetic activity, purposeful and non-stop.

  Thatcher himself had always found banking engrossing. But he had to admit that, when it came to visual effects, Wall Street ran a poor second to the Winter Olympics.

  Even practice sessions exerted a special appeal. Here at Intervale, the winter-shortened afternoon was drawing to a close and the sun was beginning to trace long shadows on the snow. It was getting perceptibly colder and Thatcher began shifting from foot to foot. Withers and Zoffski, deep in conversation, were en-wreathed by white puffs of frosted breath.

  But people were not drifting away, to catch the buses that would transport them back to the fireplaces of their distant lodgings, or to the cheer of their quarters in Lake Placid if they were part of the official Olympic family. Instead, in twos and threes, they were taking up stations from which they could watch the last of the ski jumpers. Huddled in down jackets, turning up their collars, they waited with growing anticipation.

  “Ah . . . excuse please . . . it is Yves Bisson just now,” said Zoffski, raising his binoculars.

  Yves Bisson was a small distant figure at the top of the giant ski tower, crouched over in the taut stillness that touched answering concentration in everyone who watched him.

  Then, to the accompaniment of a murmur from the crowd, he was streaking straight down, it seemed, until he spun skyward with impossible smoothness, up and out with a strong, true line.

  Despite the ooh’s and ah’s below, Bisson carried silence with him—up and up. At the height of his arc, he became even more elongated, almost lying on his skis as he stretched for every possible centimeter of glide.

  He seemed to hang for a moment, defying gravity with the perfection of his technique. Then suddenly it all went wrong. Bisson crumpled into shapelessness as a great cry went up. He was no longer an arrow, but a helpless ball turning and tumbling, his skis flailing like a windmill.

  When he hit the ground, the discipline of athletic competition held firm. The crowd was silent, hoping and praying, while the official first-aid men ran forward. Yves Bisson had landed well short of the run-out area, in deep cushioning snow. Every onlooker was straining to see and to hear, unconsciously waiting for a groan, a twitch. Even a tight contortion of agony would have been welcome.

  But the first-aid men knew better. After one look at Yves Bisson, they leaped to their feet and began waving wildly at the crowd.

  “He’s been shot to death!” one of them screamed. “Run for cover!”

  Chapter 2

  Heavy Accumulation

  PANDEMONIUM followed this stark announcement. John Thatcher and Everett Gabler found themselves swept behind a bus as spectators stampeded for shelter. Everywhere they were crouching behind cars and tumbling into service trucks, anything to remove themselves from that austere white background which turned every colored jacket into a perfect target.

  “My God!” Thatcher heard one ashen-faced man exclaim. “It’s Munich all over again.”

  Meanwhile the officials, hampered by turmoil and confusion, continued to operate. Thatcher could see them struggling against the tide. The ambulance that had been summoned at the first break in Bisson’s performance inched its way through the throng; the attendants jumped down with a stretcher and ran forward. Then they stopped short, the first-aid men gesticulated, and the pool of blood staining the snow grew and grew. A man with a walkie-talkie dashed past, tears streaming down his face, as he pleaded with those in the jumping tower to stay where they were. Then, incredibly, several competitors wearing skis began to charge off in the direction the first-aid man had indicated. Three security men floundered helplessly in their wake, ordering them not to expose themselves. But suddenly those below realized the meaning of the semaphoring arms barely visible at the top of the tower.

  “Th
ey can see the sniper!”

  Thatcher never knew where the cry came from but its effect was electric. On all sides French and German jumpers went into action following those distant signals. Within minutes a posse was streaming over the hillside. At the same time three carloads of police streaked into the parking lot.

  After that it was a matter of organization. Brad Withers was at his very best as he supervised the evacuation of spectators.

  “I don’t care what the police want,” he thundered with remarkable authority. “The important thing is to get these people away from here. John, take those four buses on the right and load them with people going back to Lake Placid. Everett, the ones on the left will go to Saranac.”

  As the last bus trundled off, the posse began to straggle back to base. Their dejection made it clear that the pursuit had been futile.

  “Now before we go,” Withers continued, “I want to have a word with these brave boys.”

  “Brave boys!” snorted the police sergeant in charge. “They could have gotten themselves killed.”

  “That’s why what they did was brave,” said Withers firmly.

  But the first skiers to arrive disagreed. “We never even saw him,” they reported. “He was gone before we started.”

  Confirmation was forthcoming when the party from the tower was finally allowed to take the elevator down. Their attention had been riveted on Yves Bisson until the walkie-talkie told them there was a killer on the slope. Only then had they scanned the surrounding area. One of them thought he had seen a figure just disappearing into the woodland at the rear. But he could not be sure.

  “And there are a bunch of roads and trails back there,” said the sergeant in disgust. “So we don’t know anything.”

  “Yes we do,” objected a very tall, very fair German who had just skied to a halt. “We found the place where the sniper was. You can see the marks where he was lying.”

  “Gunther’s right,” chorused several of the others. “And you can follow his tracks back to the road.”