Paul Erdman - The Billion Dollar Sure Thing

IT was just after seven in the evening of Monday, October 27. The fall weather had been fantastic all over Europe that year, and was still holding. The trees in the small park adjacent to the cathedral had not yet lost all of their leaves. But the brown leaves that remained rustled in the light breeze coming over the Rhine from the hills of the Black Forest, darkly brooding on the horizon.

The cathedral of Basel did not rank among the most famous of Europe. Its interior had been completely gutted—including even the stained-glass windows—in the hurricane of the Reformation which had swept through in 1529. But the church’s twin towers and ancient red stone façade remained a symbol for the city which, since medieval times, had served as a metropolis of trade and culture for the Germanic peoples in the surrounding area of the upper Rhine basin. Today these people live in three different countries—Switzerland, Germany, and France. And Basel, the centre of the Christian world during the Council of 1431, later the cosmopolitan home away from home of Erasmus of Rotterdam, of Hans Holbein, of Nietzsche, had sunk into provincialism. In fact, the last of the city’s greats, Karl Barth, had claimed that his fellow citizens were about to become the village idiots of Europe. (Sic transit gloria Basiliensis.)

Such thoughts could not have been further from the mind of the man sitting under the trees. Sammy Bechot was a professional safecracker. This should not necessarily reflect negatively upon all professional thieves. They also have their moments for reflection, even Sammy. But not during working hours.

Sammy Bechot was twenty-seven years old; he could claim 137 successful jobs to his credit—and two rather unsuccessful ones. The latter had led, unfortunately, to prolonged involuntary pauses in his career development. They had also required Sammy to change his technique. His approach to safes had become known throughout Europe. The intricate pattern of borings he left were as sure an identification as ten clear fingerprints. Less devoted types might have despaired. Sammy, however, had persevered and had developed a new methodology which, due to its simple beauty, would have brought recognition, even acclaim, had he been active in a more acceptable field.

Sammy rose just as the tower clock struck the quarter hour, and what emerged from the shadows was not the crew-cut technician one might have expected. Rather, a chubby, longhaired man, burdened down with the standard equipment of modern troubadors. Sammy, with electrical guitar, amplifier, and loudspeaker, crossed the cathedral square and disappeared into the narrow Rittergasse. At the fifth house on the left, lying dark behind a small garden enclosed with iron grillwork, Sammy rested. The street was deserted. Dinner time.

Suddenly Sammy darted down the Rittergasse. It ended at the steep steps which descended to the banks of the Rhine below. A favourite walk for evening lovers. But it was a bit early for that. Within seconds, Sammy, baggage and all, had clambered over the grillwork into the garden, and, after the quick elimination of a pane of glass and the turn of a lock, he moved into the deserted house. It took him seven minutes to locate the wall safe.

He laid the guitar case aside but unpacked the amplifier and plugged it in. He then unravelled two electrical cords. He used the first to connect the loudspeaker to the amplifier. The second wire normally led from the amplifier to the guitar. Sammy, however, employing a rather peculiar attachment on its end, fastened it to the combination dial. He put the amplifier to full power. The resulting hum indicated that all systems were go.

Sammy patiently began to turn the safe dial. Slowly, slowly. “Ping.” The first tumbler was identified, loud, crisp, and clear, through the loudspeaker. And now in the other direction.

“Ping.” The second.

The combination was revealing its secrets in an almost perfect high C. Every time he applied his innovation Sammy could not help but glow with an inner pride. Absolutely foolproof.

The safe door was soon open. It took Bechot no more than thirty seconds to locate what he was looking for. A dossier with a red cover.

Five minutes later Sammy had disappeared into the city. Unknown to him, he had just triggered a process which would lead the world toward one of the most sensational financial happenings of the century: either a total crash of the U.S. dollar or a setup which would allow for the biggest private financial coup in history.

Or both.

Imagine what a Papa Kennedy, a Bernard Baruch, or even a Karl Marx would have done with a situation like this! And all Sammy was going to get for his night’s work was 10,000 Swiss francs.

Oh, to be either Irish or Jewish!

THE president of the United States did not suffer from such disadvantages of birth. He claimed both Irish and Jewish blood, a contention which, though never proven, was of itself sufficient to carry New York State regularly for his party. Sceptics pointed out that the man was neither rich nor drunk very often. The behaviour of his crony and secretary of the treasury, Henry Crosby, they said, was much more in keeping with such ancestry; he never refused a drink, and he had been the roughest and thus most successful banker in the history of Ohio before assuming public office. What was proven was that these two men represented as potent a political pair as Washington had seen in many a year. Henry Crosby’s brash imagination, tempered by the president’s cool judgment, was known to be the source of most of the administration’s successful policy innovations.

Their connection with Sammy Bechot? None, of course. Except for the fact that it was a meeting between Crosby and the president which had led to the creation of that ominous dossier with the red cover. It had happened on September 29. That morning Crosby had burst into the presidential office for their usual ten o’clock appointment and, unilaterally waiving all greeting formalities, exclaimed:

“Those bastards in Rome are out to screw us. And by God, this time I think they’re going to get away with it!”

“Henry,” replied the president, “take a seat and take it easy. What problem could we possibly have with the Italians that could get you into such a state?”

“Italians, hell,” replied Crosby, “It’s the Germans, the Japs, and of course those fuckin’ Frenchmen.”

The president’s eyebrows rose but he did not appear unduly alarmed. For he realized that Crosby had a thing about most foreigners and that his lack of appreciation of offshore cultures was absolute where the French were concerned. The origin of this, as the insiders knew, had been a dinner party in San Francisco back in the fall of 1957, given in honour of visiting General Charles de Gaulle. The Midwestern banker Crosby, liked for his money if not for his manners, had been included among the guests summoned by the Western Establishment. Not one to pass up an opportunity, he had broken into a circle of people conversing with the great man during the preliminary cocktails to inquire about the future of what he had termed “the eternally sick French franc.”

The general had first blessed him with the iciest of stares, then had spoken to the aide at his side: “ Qui a fait entrer ce cochon ?”

Then he had turned and strode across the room. The rather pronounced lull in the conversation which he left behind had been first broken by the startled Crosby: “What’d he say?”

A refined lady from Atherton, who obviously felt a closer spiritual affinity to Colombey-les-deux-Eglises than Columbus, Ohio, offered a translation: “ Monsieur le general inquired,” she said, “‘who let that pig in?’”