Beethoven's Tenth Page 30

  “Tu es charmant, mon cher,” she said, fastening a kiss to his lips while sprinkling a soupçon of turmeric over the risotto. “Anyway, why isn’t it an easy call? Sedge Wakeham is right—the Germans aren’t entitled to any special consideration.”

  “Sedge lives in a bubble—way down the rabbit hole. Harry may feel he has to opt for a bird in the hand, possibly a very large, German-speaking bird—and then try to buy off Mac.”

  “That would be a big mistake—Mac is Mr. Integrity. If Harry tries to buy his silence, Mac will blow the whistle on the whole thing. Harry just needs a little infusion of steel in his spine.” Then Clara remembered Lolly’s unsanctioned efforts to raise a kitty among Lincoln Center patrons to buy the Tell manuscript at the C&W auction. She had never mentioned the scheme to Mitch because Lolly had sworn her to secrecy—neither of their husbands could be told without creating the appearance that they’d helped hatch the Lincoln Center plan; besides, Clara doubted Lolly had the persistence to bring off that big a deal. But if Harry told Lolly about the conniving Germans’ attempt to intercede now, would she alert a posse of backers from her Lincoln Center group to come galloping to the rescue and try to snatch the prize away from the krauts? And if so, how angry would Harry and Mitch become when told of Lolly’s covert carryings-on, even in a noble cause?

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Clara said. Mitch listened to her account of Lolly’s campaign and why Clara had failed to apprise him of it earlier. “I knew you’d either make me make her tell Harry—which she doesn’t want to do in the worst way until the thing’s a fait accompli,” she said, “or you’d feel you had to tell Harry yourself, which might have caused an ugly row in Cubbageland and finished me with Lolly. So I saw no point in speaking up until the authentication issue was settled.”

  He nodded, took the stirring spoon from her hand, and said, “Go call her—right now. Harry’s got to know about it right away—the Germans have to be given an answer by midnight, and she has to tell him. A Lincoln Center bid at the auction engineered by Lolly could be questioned afterward as a setup and hurt C&W badly, couldn’t you see that?”

  “I told her that. But Lolly’s another one down the rabbit hole.”

  “On the other hand,” Mitch conceded, “it could be useful for Harry to know the Germans might not be the only big fish in the game.”

  As Clara was about to lift the phone from the receiver, it rang and Lolly’s voice caterwauled in her ear. “Thank God you’re home! You can’t believe what’s happened!”

  “Harry told you about the Germans, and you told him about your Lincoln Center plot—and he’s delirious.”

  “How the hell do you know?”

  “I’m psychic. What kind of delirious is Harry—good or bad?”

  “If you know so much, smartypants, you shouldn’t have to ask. He’s orgasmically happy and half drunk already, which is pretty rare. He called me a bad, bad girl but said I’ve given him the ammo to fight off the Huns. He even loves my idea of the philharmonic doing the first movement of the symphony as a come-on for potential big bidders. He says he didn’t think I had it in me—the big lug!”

  “Marvelous. Any downside?”

  “Oh, that. Yes, well—he says from now on, I am absolutely and totally to withdraw from any dealings with the Lincoln Center group—I’ll have to ask Weezie to take over—she’ll be just thrilled to bits, smarmy climber that she is. Of course, Harry may wake up in the morning and decide to sell out to the Germans.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Clara said and reported back to Mitch.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Next time, don’t keep secrets from me—even for my own good.”

  “No way,” she promised, still certain that unburdening herself to him about the pair of scares she’d braved while out jogging when he was abroad would benefit neither of them.

  Piet and Gladys Hoitsma, paragons of discretion, were entrusted with full disclosure of the unfolding Tell adventures, up to and including Lolly Cubbage’s wayward dickering with Lincoln Center’s better angels. As a resistance fighter in his youth against hated Nazi occupiers, Clara’s father had never learned to love the rehabilitated German state. An unexpected chance now to deliver a retributive blow for unforgotten brutality was too alluring for him to pass up.

  “Is there any reason,” Piet asked, “if this Tell gemstone is about to be certified, why its sale should be restricted to a private deal between the Yanks and the Boche? Wouldn’t Cubbage & Wakeham be still more likely to hold off making a preemptive arrangement with the Germans if the firm knew our people might jump into the bidding game as well as this Lincoln Center crowd that Lolly Cubbage has organized?”

  “‘Our people’ meaning who, exactly?” Mitch asked his kindly father-in-law.

  “Exactly who, I couldn’t say till I chat things up a bit—but British and Dutch interests, acting in concert and all too glad to keep the property out of German hands.”

  Piet dug into a pocket for his smartphone, punched a few keys, and reported that he was breakfasting the next morning with Unilever’s chairman and three of the company’s prime Wall Street lenders; that the Concertgebouw board, on which he chaired the finance committee, was to meet in Amsterdam the day after the Hoitsmas returned to Europe; and that he was scheduled to lunch two days later with Heineken’s chief operating officer, a frequent golf partner. “Oh, and the Tillinghasts—Charlie is executive director of Covent Garden—are coming to dinner on the twenty-first. I suspect we could whip up a pretty substantial pot of gold from this bunch to bid for the Tell manuscript—and manage to have it paid back within five years—assuming that Mitch and his experts assure us the symphony is the real thing and even half as good as vintage Beethoven. Imagine the global audience for the premiere telecast, performance fees, and all the recording sales!”

  “You sound as loopy as Lolly,” Clara said with an excited laugh. She turned to Mitch. “Any reason not to encourage Daddy? Neither you nor I would be involved—beyond tonight.”

  “The more bidders, the better, I suppose, from C&W’s standpoint,” Mitch said, “so long as the auction is aboveboard and there are no secret conditions.”

  “Fine,” said Piet, swallowing his last spoonful of Clara’s triumphant risotto, “let me make just one quick phone call. Raymond’s probably back in his hotel room by now—he mentioned that he was turning in early to be fresh for our breakfast meeting with the Wall Streeters.”

  “Who’s Raymond?” Mitch asked his mother-in-law after Piet had slipped away from the table and gone to the study.

  “CEO of Unilever,” she said. “He doesn’t brush his teeth until he checks with Piet. A dear man, actually, but they say he likes to wrestle with saber-toothed tigers for aerobic exercise.”

  After ten minutes, Piet came back to the dining table wearing a broad smile. “Raymond is up for the idea—thinks it’s just the sort of marquee to banner the Unilever name globally. Says he’ll talk to the board—and also to Mel Attwood at NatWest—about helping fund the bidding party as soon as he’s back in London.”

  “Incroyable!” Clara cried and planted a noisy kiss on her father’s brow.

  Once the Hoitsmas had left, Mitch phoned Harry to advise him of the possibility that a substantial Anglo-Dutch bid for the authenticated Tell might materialize, and Harry told him about Lolly’s Lincoln Center initiative; they agreed there was even a chance, Neugebaur’s bluster aside, that the Germans might swallow C&W’s rebuff of their preemptive buyout maneuver and take part in the full-dress auction—“assuming,” Harry added, “your pal Emil doesn’t wreck the whole deal.”

  “There’s no telling,” Mitch said. “And he’s not exactly my pal.”

  Gordy phoned the German Embassy at seven in the morning and had his call put through to Maximillian Neugebaur’s residence. C&W was appreciative of the German interest in the Tell manuscript, he said, but was unwilling to enter into a
private arrangement for its sale.

  .

  mitch stood vigil in the c&w reception hall, waiting uneasily for the members of the authentication panel to arrive for their ten o’clock meeting. Three of them came on time. Anna Hayes was five minutes late and full of breathless apologies. At 10:15 a.m., Mitch asked his assistant to phone Emil Reinsdorf’s hotel room. There was no answer.

  Dread pelted Mitch’s brain. Had the man worked himself into a fatal frenzy overnight and expired? Or leaped from his hotel room, shameful for having served the fatherland ignobly?

  But a moment later, Emil puffed into view, looking haggard and agitated as he stubbed his cigarette out in the foyer ashtray. Nothing in his greeting to Mitch hinted of truculence. They walked to the library together, their silence portentous. Mitch left him at the door.

  At the beginning of the meeting, as the tape of the morning’s proceedings later revealed, each member was handed an envelope with a check for the balance of the agreed-upon honorarium. Payment in full preceded the vote, so there could be no question of coercion. Mac asked if there were any questions. No one had any. Then he reminded the panelists of their four choices and asked them in alphabetical order to declare their preference, reserving his own vote for last.

  Anna Hayes said she thought the William Tell Symphony was “probably” written by Beethoven, “but no one can say for certain.” Torben Mundt agreed with her but questioned in passing the authenticity of Nina Hassler’s letter. “It may be an invention,” he added, “to suit circumstances beyond our awareness.”

  Emil Reinsdorf yielded his turn to Rolfe Riker on the grounds he did not wish to sway the youngest member of the panel. Riker, with a shake of his head and look of disbelief, chose not to quibble over the put-down. The Salzburg musicologist said the work was “probably composed by Beethoven, but the accompanying documentary evidence seems too suspiciously selective for us to conclude with certainty where and when the composition was created.”

  Emil Reinsdorf, disclosure of his vote now inescapable, coughed thickly, then emitted a single word:

  “Likely.”

  Mac Quarles asked him to please state his position less elliptically for the record.

  Reinsdorf said he didn’t understand.

  “We need you to give a complete sentence, sir,” Mac explained.

  Reinsdorf considered the directive, grunted, and finally said, “I think it’s likely that Beethoven wrote this work, though I hesitate to categorize it as a symphony.”

  Mac nodded his thanks, then said that he, like the first three panelists, thought Beethoven had “probably”—“by which I mean ‘more than likely’”—written Tell. He turned to Reinsdorf and asked if he would consider joining the rest of them so that their report could conclude with a unanimous finding of probability.

  The German shook his head emphatically, paused, then added, “Likely—not probably—no need to go quite as far as the rest of you. I might have chosen ‘possibly written by Beethoven,’ but that was not among your four options.”

  “You’re free to say whatever you’d like in a dissentin’ statement,” Mac reminded him.

  Reinsdorf shook his head again. “No, I’m satisfied that we have a strong consensus—and willing to be part of it,” he said and fell back into a nasty coughing spasm.

  The session was over by a quarter to eleven. Since their business had been so speedily concluded, the planned farewell buffet luncheon was cancelled, and, after C&W’s executives had come by to shake their hands, the panelists went home.

  “But no one gets to shoot an apple off my head,” Harry wound up his celebratory report on the authentication panel’s vote to a nearly giddy meeting of his entire staff that afternoon, “though possibly an extra-large pumpkin.”

  “There’s been talk of an olive,” Gordy piped.

  Everyone laughed, even Harry.

  {12}

  More cheering news arrived at C&W’s headquarters hard on the heels of the Tell authentication. The US District Court summarily dismissed Ansel Erpf’s motion to halt any sale of the manuscript and have it returned to Switzerland, but did so “without prejudice,” leaving the door open for a renewed application if further developments warranted.

  Gordy Roth found only small comfort in the ruling, which he had anticipated, because uncertainty remained in the form of a potential suit by the Erpfs for title to the manuscript as well as the Swiss courts’ delay over probating Otto Hassler’s will. The delay meant that Jake Hassler was not yet free to sell the Tell, though it also held back the Erpfs from claiming title to the work under Otto’s will.

  Since everyone had been marking time until the authentication process was completed, C&W now resolved to tie up all loose ends before setting a firm auction date. Accordingly, Gordy transmitted an offer to the Erpf family’s attorneys and Swiss legal attaché Saulnier proposing (1) a payment equal to 1.5 percent of the eventual sale price of the Tell manuscript, to be divided equally between the Erpfs’ realty firm, holder of the lien against Otto Hassler’s estate, and the Zurich Philharmonic plus other artistic entities chosen by the Swiss Ministry of Culture; (2) the strongest possible recommendation to the winning bidder at C&W’s auction that no public performance of the symphony be given anywhere prior to one on Swiss soil; (3) prominent mention in C&W’s forthcoming authentication report of the role played by Ansel Erpf in the discovery of the manuscript—furthermore, Ansel would be rehired by the Swiss Philharmonic, designated first cellist, and introduced from the stage before Tell’s premiere performance in Switzerland; and (4) a recommendation that the manuscript itself be housed and displayed at a Swiss cultural institution for six months of every year under suitable conditions of safekeeping, with the Swiss government insuring the owner(s) against theft, damage, or deterioration. In return, C&W asked that Otto Hassler’s will be probated forthwith and that the Erpf family and all its members and business entities agree not to challenge Jake Hassler’s title to the manuscript and his right to dispose of it however he saw fit.

  As a courtesy, Mitch phoned Margot Lenz in Zurich to advise her of the offer and urge her to accept it and press her brother to as well. “I’ll do my best,” she said, “but Ansel’s beyond controlling just now. He’s off his medication and touring Europe, trying to stir things up.”

  Within a week, the Swiss government replied that it could agree to the C&W proposal only if the auction house made its “recommendations” a binding part of any sale of the manuscript. More daunting, the Erpf family lawyers, for all Margot’s conciliatory posture and avowed effort to tame her brother’s antics, asked that the cash compensation for relinquishing all claims on Tell be raised to 5 percent of the gross auction price—with the bulk of the sum to be donated to the Swiss Ministry of Culture.

  “No can do, laddie,” Harry told Gordy. “Enough nice-nice, let’s get cracking over there—we want a mandamus writ, or whatever they’ve got like it, ordering the probate division of Zurich canton to quit farting around with Otto’s will. We’ve got a business to run. Chop-chop.”

  All C&W hands now joined in firming up the schedule and ground rules for the Tell auction. Its date was tentatively set for mid-March, not quite four months away, in the hope that the legal situation would be sorted out by then; if not, they would have to postpone and reassess the situation. This built-in flexibility was welcomed by the company’s director of authentication. For despite the thoroughness of the certifying procedures and the minimal equivocation in the findings by the panel of experts he’d assembled, Mitch Emery continued to be flogged by doubts about the authenticity of the work. There was nothing he could put his finger on; it was just the phenomenal nature of the event that gave him pause. Tell was not like some long-lost painting by an Old Master who had done dozens or hundreds of canvases over a lifetime. This was a long, complex symphonic work being attributed to the peerless master of the art form who had produced only nine others, an
d it diverged markedly in form from the rest. If authentic, this was A Historic Cultural Event.

  “Sorry, but I’m not quite ready to sign off on this thing,” he told Harry and Gordy. “It’s like rolling the dice with destiny. It’s good that we have a little extra time before the train leaves the station—we have to keep digging.”

  “Digging for what?” Harry demanded. “We’ve spent a small fortune answering all the questions—or coming as close as possible. Why the long face? Do you know something all these other brainy characters don’t? Speak now, Mitchell, or forever hold your whatchamacallit.”

  “I can’t put it into words, exactly,” he replied. “It’s just a gut feeling that we’re all being had by some diabolically clever bandits, only I can’t figure out where the payoff is for them.”

  Harry was understanding, though impatient to reap rewards on the firm’s sizable probative investment.

  “Well, you’re paid to have gut feelings—keep looking if you like, but try not to bust your department’s budget.”

  Clara was less understanding over his diffidence. “You’re not being rational, Mitch,” she told him. “You’ve brought in world-class experts to comb over every detail, and they’ve done a meticulous job. If you’re not willing to take their word for it, why did you enlist them in the first place? Do you think you’re smarter—individually—than all of them together? Why not take a victory lap and accept the cheers graciously?”

  “Because if the pack of them are wrong, it will ruin Cubbage & Wakeham. My job is to prevent that from happening.”

  “Does ‘the pack of them’ include me?” she asked. “Look, I was way more skeptical than you in the beginning, remember? I thought you wanted me at your side in this thing because you trusted me and my judgment—”

  “I do—it means more to me than all the others’ combined—but that doesn’t mean I’m obliged to come out where you do. I never promised you that.”